Turkey!

I'm SO SORRY for being so far behind on our trip this summer! I still have like, 6 countries to do! Today is all about our day in Turkey! Ephesus mostly. We've actually been here before and we LOVE it! The ruins are amazing!  Our first stop of the day was to this little village called Sirince, it was amazingly beautiful. It was full of all of the locals shops and everything was hand made and incredibly detailed.

I had fun taking shots of the little Turkish women, this one is consoling her cat after Evie scared the death out of it lol

Thus, our first lesson in not touching stray animals in foreign countries...

Natalie and I bought these GORGEOUS hand painted plates in this little shop just before we left.
I wish I had a picture of them they are beautiful!

After Sirince we went to an old turkish Mosque 

Women need to cover their heads and we only had one scarf lol

This is the cute little man who showed us around the Mosque :)

Afterward he took us outside to his little shop and drew all of our names in Turkish for us

He was so nice we just loved him!

The place we love most in Turkey is Ephesus. It's this city of ancient ruins with an amazing library! We went there last time we were in Turkey so this time we decided to also hit up the Ephesus Museum, it's full of all the artifacts that they've found around the ruins! 

Evie was a little bit of a handful with all of this ancient stuff to climb all over! 

Luckily we found a ramp and she did that for the rest of the time :)

After a while she and Jared were going crazy so we headed off for the rest of our day

 The place where The Virgin Mary was thought to have lived is in Turkey and it's a really beautiful sacred place. It's all the way up on top of a mountain so we had to take a little drive. 

It's okay though because the locals along the way never disappoint lol

 The middle picture is outside of Mary's house. There are no cameras allowed inside but once you get out you can go light candles in the garden and then pass the prayer wall. This is my favorite part. 

People write their prayers on little pieces of paper or tissue and stuff it into this wall in hopes that they will be answered. It's AMAZING how much is stuffed into this wall!

We drove all the way down the mountain again toward the ruins at Ephesus!

We of course stopped for some legit turkish lunch first.

Middle Picture: this is the Arena that the Apostle Paul (I believe, correct me if i'm wrong) preached in,

 it's the arena thats in the picture section of your scriptures

after you pass the arena you walk further to the ruins and 

this

is the first thing you see when you round the corner...

The Library of Celsus

 It's the most beautifully detailed ruin I've even seen! It's so overwhelming because you start out so close to it and you can't take it all in at once!

Once you back up further into the city you can see it all

 My mom always researches each country for months before we go on these trips so she always knows all the answers to any questions we randomly throw out! 

Example

Me: "Man, I wonder how many people lived in this city!?" 

Mom: "well this was a seaside city so it was actually one of the most populated cities of it's time, during the war between turks and the greeks the only place to get resources was from the ocean so the turks moved here after their leader Amid Heduish died in 160 BC"

(That was a bunch of bologna I made up but you get the point)

Here's my mom (putting off heat stroke) and reading to us about the Library of Celsus from her book she's been reading all year :)

(and jared being a teenage boy)

dad always taking pictures :)

I very much love that about my dad. He documents EVERYTHING and I definitely get that from him.

Evangeline passed out thankfully

When we were here a few years ago my brother Ryan took a picture just like the one of Jared below. Since Ryan couldn't be with us on this trip (he's on a Mission in Cambodia) Jared decided to honor is memory by doing the same pose on a broken column

Then we decided to all be ancient gods ha ha ha

I love my dads pose! Not sure who he's supposed to be portraying but he's a good participant!

GO DAD!

After that my mom got heat stroke so we had to sit in the shade and cool her down. 

After she was better we had to BOOK it back to the ship! 

We (as usual) were the LAST ones back on the ship. 

Like they pulled in the gang plank as soon as my dad stepped off it and we got in trouble lol.

.oops.

To cool off from our long day we hit the pool and then had formal night!

Where Evie later became addicted to Pina Colada's lol

My hubby is so handsome...
if I do say so myself :)


Okay thats Turkey!
Next up

JERUSALEM!

Here are the links to my countries I've already blogged if you are just joining us ;)
Iceland
London
Athens 
Patmos

Christmas // New Years // Bieber Fever // Surgery

So i'm so sorry for the utter neglect my blog has had over the last 6 months! I update it MAYBE once a month ( if that ) and I'm only 3 days in to our month long trip we took this summer! ( My next post on  that will be about Ephaisis Turkey so stay tuned! I know it's almost february but I SERIOUSLY need to catch up on Christmas, New Years and my birthday! This post is going to be the definition of picture overload too! Like, crazy amounts of pictures folks! And I'll appologize now, it will be the ugliest post you've ever seen too ha ha ha. I have 15 minutes to post this post and then we are leaving for our date night (aka, go wonder through the mall for a few hours and play in the princess castle at the Disney Store). So i'm putting a Blue Ginger filter on ALL my photos or I am just uploading them from my iPhone. Sorry guys, my blog is seriously suffering!

We'll start with Christmas...

Christmas this year was TOTALLY different for us because we live so far away now! It made it that much more fun to come home though! ... oh wait, no the extra 5 hours in the car this year was a NIGHTMARE! 

Evie had a HORRIBLE stomach flu and was throwing up every hour on the hour the night before! 

Luckily she only threw up 3 times on the 10 hour ride home, but to top it off it was a BLIZZARD for most of the drive! We had to go SO SLOW which didn't help the situation at all.

And worse, Evie and I drove back to Utah with my Brother-in-Law Joe
(B had finals for another week so we bummed a ride with Joe early)

So my POOR SISTERS CAR

.bless her heart.

Is completely full of throw up smell and old milk.

(If you know my sister you know how strong her sense of smell is and how OCD she can be)

(those aren't bad traits to have nat and I love you for them!! xo :)

To make it worse, I, 

like an idiot

filled up Evies camelback water bottle with Sprite to make her stomach feel better...

have you ever put Sprite in a leak proof water bottle?.... 

I don't recommend it...

as soon as I opened the lid Sprite SHOT out of it at 100 MPH!

Hitting the ceiling of the car and then spraying out in EVERY DIRECTION!!

So.... we were a smelly, nasty, sticky mess by the time we got to Utah...

.kill me.

My poor brother in law...

MOVING ON!

The reason we had to go to utah early with Joe was so I could get surgery on my ankle! The funniest thing happened while I was at the hospital! I was signing in for my surgery and when I told the lady behind the desk what my name was she looked up at me and said "OH MY GOSH! I FOLLOW YOUR BLOG!" ha ha ha that has NEVER happened to me! A total stranger new all about me! She was so cute! We talked about my trip this summer and how fun Evie is! It was so cool! It's nice to know people read my blog but it's even nicer to know that total strangers can read my blog and find enough joy in my journey to follow it! 

Evie came with me and was NOT happy about Nurses coming in left and right and messing with her Mamma! My mom finally had to just take her home, it was so sad :(

So after that my next week or 2 pretty much looked like this

FINALLY Brandon got to Utah and Evie was STILL sick so his next few days were like this...

not that i'm sure he much minded :)

Finally Christmas came around and Evie and I were feeling a little better. Evie was still super grumpy and not really herself and I was still heavily medicated and on crutches ha ha ha

 Evie opening her wagon!

 Evie ADORES Uncle Jared! She just smothers him with love it's so cute :)

Evie was the best "present hander-outter" you've ever seen

She unloaded that tree faster than we could keep up! and of course, she couldn't read so any present went to anyone she felt like (mostly dad)

I made Jared some artwork for his room, I was KIIINDA worried he'd be like "ugh.. cool... art?..." but he seemed pretty excited about it luckily!

Usually for breakfast on Christmas Day we end up filling up on Christmas sugar cookies all morning and then just wait around till lunch to really eat something and this year we decided our stomachs couldn't handle that kind of breakfast anymore ha ha ha

So Nat & Joe treated us all to a yummy Crepe breakfast

I seriously hope this is a new Christmas tradition for us now.

 Then Grandma and Grandpa came over for a visit and TO TALK TO UNCLE ELDER ANDERSON!!

 Elder Anderson is serving out his last few months in the Phenom Phen Cambodia mission!

He'll be home April 12th!
Evie has never even MET Uncle Ryan so we are SO EXCITED for him to come home!!

Evie was REALLY excited lol

So... My sister and I came home for Christmas to a 13 year old brother who had a  "rat tail" coming off the back of his head...

It's like where you grow the very back of your hair in one spot really long?...

he insisted it was cool...

we insisted it was not...

We threatened him the entire week that we were gonna cut it off in his sleep ha ha ha

Well, while we were talking to Ryan he noticed Jareds disgusting hair cut and commented on it!

"dude whats going on with the back of your hair?!"

Since Ryan is Jareds IDOL we asked Ryan if he thought we should cut it off?

Ryan said yes defiantly!

So we pinned Jared down 

and cut that disgusting thing off!

Thank goodness!

The next morning we took of for our Christmas in St. George with Brandon's family
(no throwing up this time)

The highlight of this trip was this girl right here

this is my baby sister Dani

(I love my sister-in-laws like my own sisters!)

This amazing girl has been called to serve in the Barcelona Spain Mission!!!

She leaves in May so we decided to go through the temple with her while we were home for Christmas.

The temple was awesome as always, it was awesome but I hated it too lol

Brandon made me wear my crutches (even though I was 2 days away from when the doctor said I didn't have to anymore) and the entire time EVERYONE was making a fuss over me! I had to take the stinkin' elevator, everyone kept asking me if I was okay, I couldn't get up and participate with my family like I usually love to and I HATE being the center of attention!!

 especially on someone else's day... 

But all around it was a great night. 

I'm really so proud of her :)

Now we just have to keep the boys off her till May and THATS gonna be the hard part!

After we spent a few days down in STG Brandon took me and Evie to Richfield where my parent's met us.

Oh yeah! I forgot to tell you!

So Backup...

I've had 4 or 5 bone grafts up in my mouth and they've all failed so I got another one in March and we found out while I was home in SLC that that surgery failed as well and I'd have to stay in Utah for 2 MORE WEEKS to get surgery AGAIN and try to save my implant. 

Fast forward...

So B dropped us off at my Grandpa's house and took off to Colorado and Evie and I headed back up to SLC for another few weeks and another few surgeries. 

We did do some fun things though

We hit up the Aquarium, Evie LOOOOOOOVES the Aquarium!

aaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnd!

I got to go to the 

JUSTIN BIEBER CONCERT!!!

It was AWESOME

My dad is an Orthodontist so to get more business in he got the VIP Suite at the concert and had fun giveaways and prizes at his office! New patients who started braces got a ticket and others had to win theirs! It was literally, Me, My parents, 4 other adults and 30 screaming girls! It was SO FUN!!

the suite was HUGE and there was SO MUCH FOOD!!

 such a blast!

 After that I had my surgery, got way swollen and never really left the house again ha ha ha

to end my million mile long post i'll leave you with some of the texts if fired off when I was under anesthesia lol 

read them.

.you won't be sorry.

ha ha ha ha

Happy New Year!

xo

Our Merry Little Christmas

This year we are going home again for Christmas! but this time home for us is a 10+ hour drive in a very packed car with a very active 1 year old. We decided this year, instead of packing our gifts for each other all the way to Utah just to unwrap them and pack them all the way back we'd have a little Christmas with just the 3 of us.

.i LOVED it.

We finally got to make our own little traditions and do our own thing on Christmas eve. It was so much fun. As I was unpacking my Christmas decor this year I kept setting all of our Christmas books under the tree so Evie wouldn't get to them until I could find a better spot for them, well they ended up just staying there and so started a new Christmas tradition! 

Every night at "wind down" time Evie, bathed and snuggled up in her jammies, would go get a book out from under the tree and bring it to me to read to her while she drank her bottle! 

We did this EVERY night! I loved it! We are for sure doing this while our kids are little, Evie would have destroyed the gifts if we would have put them out any earlier anyways so we just left the books there instead! 

Then she noticed a big difference the next morning when all the books were gone and presents were there! 

We woke up around 8 and let Evie walk out and find the presents

She of course went straight for the BIGGEST present in the very back 

ha ha ha

It was a big Princess castle! We got her a few little princesses to go in it and she LOVES it! We had to set it up right then!

I made Evie and Brandon big snuggly Blankets

I'm obsessed with Evies lol

B got the leather hooded jacket he's been wanting

He looks pretty good in it (minus the bed head and pajamas lol)

I must say though my gifts were the BEST :)

IPHONE 5!!

(we're not weirdo's I promise...)

Evie loved her gifts but of course

like any true one year old

loved the box more

....

Here's our little Christmas turn out :)

We ended the morning with a Christmas morning call to Grandma and Grandpa on my computer mouse?... 

and now it's time to pack and get ready to leave for utah in the morning!

.... wish me luck...