Vacation- All I ever wanted!

I am not doing a very good job of keeping up on my new blog! but hopefully I can get better at that. So at the beginning of August, we got hit with a few pieces of bad news with Scott's school. The first was that Scott didn't get a scholarship he applied for. It was a pretty significant scholarship amount, and would've helped us out quite a bit the next two semesters, but unfortunately I guess the school didn't think we met the "financial need" qualifications of the scholarship (which- if Scott is one of two people in his whole class with a family, who else could possibly be more financially needy than us? I don't get it, but anyways...), so we didn't get it. Then we later found out that a clinical site up in Murray, Utah was going to be opening up for Scott to do his next clinical rotation at for 10 weeks. SCORE! It was inpatient (experience that he needs), at a prestigious location (Intermountain Healthcare headquarters), and close to family! We knew we wanted it. So, as we were applying for it, we were told that it was no longer available as they had already given the spots away to other schools. Awesome. And to top it off, Scott missed getting an A in his clinical anatomy lab by .21% because of a group assignment that was graded as a group, not individually. So even though Scott's part was done extremely well, other members of the group did not do as great as he did and poor Scott's grade suffered because of it. Needless to say, we had had enough of grad school drama. So, we figured a break was definitely in order. We packed up our suitcases and headed home the day after Scott was done with finals. We spent 10 days in between Idaho and Utah, and it was just what we needed. Sometimes when we go home, we kind of get tired quickly and want to be back home in Denver and back to our routine. But this time, we really didn't want to come back. We had so much fun with our families! And it was great to just get to relax, and not worry about any of the stresses of Denver. Not to mention that we were able to do so many fun things!

So our first stop was in Idaho to see my family. We decided that we wanted to knock the horrible Wyoming drive out of the way first, and save the prettier drive for coming home (if you ever have driven through Wyoming, then you know what i'm talking about. If you haven't, I hope you never have to. I wouldn't wish that upon my worst enemy. It's that bad. Ugh, so much ugly...). We got there the evening of the 14th, and just hung out, got cleaned up and then went out to dinner with my family. Then the next day, we couldn't really figure out what to do, so we decided on running up to the Idaho Falls Zoo, grabbing lunch, and then grandma and grandpa reeeeally wanted to take Sophia to "Toys R Us" and let her pick out a toy, so we did that as well :) (They didn't get conned into buying too many things for her, haha).

She decorated herself with stickers the last hour of the drive :)

And she slept a lot, which was kind of nice...

I got to play with my sister's selfie stick! i thought they were kind of dumb, but after playing with hers, I went and bought my own! haha. 

On Sunday we went to church (Sophia got to go to nursery with grandma and grandpa since they are the nursery leaders in their ward!), and just relaxed. Then on Monday, we all woke up early and got ready to hit the sand dunes! My family is BIG into recreational sports, and summer means four-wheeling/dune season! Although this year, we were not on four-wheelers. My dad decided to buy a RAZR, which is basically like a sand buggy, and try that out instead. Now for those of you who haven't heard of the St. Anthony sand dunes in Rexburg, Idaho, I can only describe them in one word: HUGE. They are these massively tall mountains of sand, and can be a little scary at times, but it is a blast to ride on them! The pictures that I took of them were just the dunes by the truck and trailer as we were unloading, so they really don't do them justice as to how big they really are. *side note- I really know that I am a mom now. Yes, I know that I have been a mom for almost 2 years now, but it was on this day that I knew I had the "mom mentality". When I was younger and my dad would take me to st. anthony, i had absolutely no fear! I would climb any dune, no matter the height. I would jump my four-wheeler, I would go off all of the steep cornices... I am super surprised that I never got severely hurt, to be honest. But this time, I was 100% FREAKED OUT. I screamed almost the whole time, and I was constantly worried about the RAZR tipping over and my whole family dying right before my eyes, haha. I know it sounds stupid, but that was what was going through my head. I felt like a big chicken! I never freaked out this bad at the dunes! And then my mom looked at me and said "It's because you're a mom now". Ah, yes- Mom mentality! I love it! :) But nevertheless, it was still a lot of fun :).

Sheldon and Scott got stuck, so of course I had to document it :)

And may I add- Sophia was a champ! She loved it! (her mommy on the other hand.... yikes). 

After we came home, grandpa watched Taylor Swift videos with Sophia. :)

The last two days were spent just hanging out, and then we headed on down to Utah! We stopped at Scott's mom's house first, and got to hang out and visit with her (and go look at her cute new house, yay!). The next day we got up and went to seven peaks with Scott's brother, Colbey and his wife, Veronica. I had never been there, so I was pumped to go! just as we were getting ready to leave, Colbey called Scott and told him that the park didn't open until 4! it was 12! I was kind of bummed, but we just went back and hung out at Colbey and Roni's pool until 4; we were literally in our swimsuits all day! (which was awesome!).

The next day I had an appointment to get eyelash extensions put in before we left to go to Scott's dad's house. I won the extensions on an instagram giveaway from one of my friends from high school, and I loved every part of it! It was so fun to get to catch up with her since we hadn't seen each other in so long, and my eyelash extensions looked great! After I was done, we headed down to mt. Pleasant and hung out there for a couple of days. We really didn't do much while we were there except sleep and go on walks and sleep some more, but that really was ok with us. It was super nice to just chill before coming back to Denver :).

We came back to Denver on the 24th, and Scott still had a week left of vacation, so we just hung out and did a few things around here. We looked at our closets before we left and decided that we all probably could use some new clothes, so we went shopping for a couple of days (no complaints out of me!), and just relaxed before Scott had to go back to school. He went back yesterday, but now things are better, we're not as stressed out by life anymore thanks to our vacation, and we're ready to get this last fall semester over with! once we get past December, Scott does a 10 week rotation, does a half of a spring semester, a summer semester... and then we're DONE!!!!  completely done with grad school! woo hoo!
Well that's all about our fun little trip, and I decided to write this sitting in our recliner, so now my neck is killing me, haha. Thanks for reading!
Amanda