It's Been a LONG While...

Looks like I treat blogging just I treat like everything else in life. My apologies for the painfully long wait I've made all of you avid readers endure. So without further ado let's begin before your fingernails disappear in a frenzy of excited nibbling.

First update: I got a job! I'm also so late on writing this in my blog that the job is halfway over, but that's beside the point. What is my job, you ask? I get to work with prairie dogs! For the first two weeks I was out trapping and tagging and basically violating unconscious prairie dogs but now I'm sitting out on the golf course watching prairie dogs writing down what they do every 15 seconds. It doesn't get much more exciting than that.

Yes, that is a drugged up prairie dogs in my BARE hands.
Hardcore doesn't even begin to explain me.

In the process of gassing a prairie dog.

About a month ago, after a road trip DeLaney planned with friends fell through, my dear mother and I decided that we didn't want all that planning to go to waste so we took the place of DeLaney's friends and off to the sunny West Coast we drove.

We took part in the typical activities of Utahns in California, i.e. go to the beach, stare at the ocean in awe, go shopping but never buy anything, mutter about the frustration of not understanding anyone because we don't speak Spanish, etc.

We visited a pier (the name of which I cannot remember) and DeLaney and I found some super hot boyfriends. Ignore the fact that I look really creepy here.

Climbing some weird climbing toy by Balboa Island.

By far the BEST thing we did during this trip to California was go to the Jazz/Lakers playoff game. I went completely decked out in Utah Jazz clothes and was scorned many, many times, but I didn't care. It did suck a little that we lost but oh well, is it bad if I say I didn't expect them to win?

Also, a note to all Lakers fans: grow some originality and wear a jersey other than Kobe Bryant's.

A few days later and I went on another adventure with my dear mom and sister. This time to Las Vegas for DeLaney's 19th Birthday. Yes, that did confuse people. Too many times to count people commented, "What are you going to do here on your 19th birthday?" (Referring, of course, to the fact that most people go to Vegas for their 21st) Little do they know it makes little difference when you're Mormon. Anyway, we went to the show Jersey Boys as DeLaney's big gift and it was basically amazing, I'd never heard of it but now I highly recommend it (if you can stand a few F bombs and a smattering of less-offensive offensive words).

The Bellagio fountain show. Can't spend the night in Vegas without visiting this spectacle.

Strawberry Shortcake at that one restaurant in the Venetian.

Next event of adequate importance to make it into the blog post: the Utah Summer Games! These are always a treat but this year they were especially cool because it's the 25th anniversary. In all honesty the only difference this appeared to cause was that the fireworks lasted a little longer, but we all love fireworks don't we?

The only reason I'm including this segment is because I think the pictures I got are pretty magnificent. That's the kind of word you come up with when you type "awesome" into a thesaurus because you don't want to use "awesome" too much.

And during the weeks of the Summer Games my little brother Sam competed in the Hershey Track Meet. He took second in the 100 and I think the 200 as well, meaning he qualified for state (pretty good considering he's the youngest in his age bracket).

This picture has nothing to do with anything except that this fire was made using a tampon.

And now for the last little bit of excitement in my life to inform everyone about: two weeks ago my family took our yearly family trip to (drum roll please) Southern California! The exact same place we went a couple weeks before this!

You'd think I'd have been bored of the sun and beaches after having already visited the place so recently. Think again. As it turns out, having your whole family there makes the entire affair a little more enjoyable, especially when compared with sitting in a car for hours listening to my mom and sister talk about kissing boys (just kidding...).

Anyway (and I'll try to make this quick enough that you don't fall asleep while reading), the first day we went to the beach. DeLaney decided to be a jerk and put sand in Sam's mouth while his body was buried. So naturally, in defense of my then helpless little brother, I threw sand in DeLaney's face. She was not happy. As you can see, I was very happy.

She tried to get me back but I mean, come on, did anyone expect her to be successful against my greatness?

Below is a picture of Leuben, my dad, and Sam battling a wave. And those feet on the left belong to DeLaney's friend Hamilton.


Would a trip to Cali be complete without a visit to Disneyland? I think not.

I was amazed I actually got everyone in the picture.

I particularly like this jumping picture because everybody around us appears completely ignorant of our jumping.

I decided to be nice and take a picture for some Asian ladies. After I took the picture another Asian lady runs up and begs me to take a picture with her. Confused, I concede and take the picture with her. She says, "Tank oo!"

This isn't the first time this has happened with Asians. Who do they think I am??

Probably my favorite Splash Mountain picture ever. I am ridiculously impressed by DeLaney's ability to pull that off while dropping at a near free fall.

Hey, look, there's Cassie's family in Toon Town, except let's remove Cassie and replace her with cousin Sara.

I love Leuben. He's reading this over my shoulder right now.

Maybe not as good as Splash Mountain, but gosh, I was holding my face in that expression for the last half of the ride because I didn't know when to expect the picture. That counts for something, right?

And when you're too cheap to buy the pictures, just risk hold the camera out and take a picture of yourself! It costs about as much as taking a picture of the screen when it shows the preview.

I will leave this picture descriptionless.

No, we are not relieving ourselves even though DeLaney's expression says otherwise. We're doing squats while waiting in line. Can't go too long without workout out, right?

Aww, cute picture of me standing in front of the Disneyland Castle, and with nobody behind me! Pretty lucky, right?

Aww, cute picture of DeLaney standing in front of the Disneyland Castle. And look, we even got a bonus security guard in the background!

Guh, so I really do need to finish this post, it's taken three days already.

So after Disneyland we took one of those Whale and Dolphin Watching tours. Look behind DeLaney. That's basically what we saw all day.

Yes, that is just a lot of water. And no dolphins. The guys who took us on the tour felt so bad that we saw nothing except some sea lions and two dolphins far away from the boat that they offered to let us go on the second tour of the day for free. My mom and I took them up on the offer (we were the only people from the 45 who decided to go on the second one). The second tour was SO MUCH better. Not only were there only 17 people on the boat, we saw loads of dolphins and even saw a whale (too far away for a picture but it was still a whale).

Yay dolphins!

Yay rainbows and dolphins!

Yay for me and dolphins! (I'm getting a little sick of writing captions).

Evil bus.

Awesome hat.

Sadly my dad and Sam had to leave the vacation early because Sam made All-Stars in Little League and the game was coming up. So the rest of us continued on in our little vacation, mainly going shopping, visiting beaches, boogie boarding, and visiting Old Town San Diego and randomly running into the Mormon Batallion Historic Site.