Oh.....hi

Remember me? It's been a while. July has come and gone in a whirlwind! I really have been out of town pretty much every weekend this month. It's been a little nuts. Drained all desire to do anything productive, really.

Just a nice little selfie Paul took on my phone the other day and lovingly put it as my background. It was a. . .pleasant surprise when I found out. 

Anyways, I might as well blog about last weekend, and then we'll see if I ever post about our family reunion on the 4th, and then the cabin we as a family rented that whole weekend, and other random stuff that's been happening.

For now, here's a little bit on the weekend I flew out to see Tonya! Andrea was out there too, and we had a nice little girl's weekend. Collin was out of town doing a wrestling camp, so Ton really wanted some company. It was a perfect little get-a-way. I decided to fly out there because it wasn't that much more expensive than driving, and saved me 4 hours of travel time. It was a good choice.

We didn't do a ton, which was totally fine with me. We watched numerous episodes of Saved By the Bell. This was the first time Andrea had really watched it, and we have her hooked now. 

Saturday night Tonya got a sitter for Ashyln so we girls could go out on the town! We went bowling/dancing (meaning. . .we had some sweet moves going on while bowling) and then got some good ol' frozen yogurt. It was tasty and a fun night out.

Andrea doin' the granny style:

Tonya won, but didn't beat me by much. None of us even broke 100, if that gives you an idea of how awesome we are at bowling.

Also hung out and played with Lucy a lot:

And had a lot of fun playing with this cutie:

She is quite hilarious and a lot of fun, even though I still can't figure out what's she's saying sometimes.

It was fun! And I think Paul had a fun weekend by himself. . ha ha. Really, I think he did. He reverted back to his bachelor ways by playing Zelda until 3 in the morning, eating Taco Bell for dinner, etc. Pretty hilarious. He did clean up our house really nicely though while I was gone, it was wonderful to come home to it! He definitely is the neater one in our marriage. . . . . 

Camp

I seriously almost didn't blog today because the camera was sitting on the other end of the table and I was almost too lazy to get up and walk three steps and grab it. Then I realized that was a little pathetic. I know I can be a very lazy person, but really, Tara? Three steps? That's pushing it.

So, as you can see, I walked three extra steps today to bring you this blog post. You can thank me in the comments.

My main topic today will be on our almost camping trip last Friday. Yes, almost camping. We were hoping that camping trip #2 would be more successful than camping trip #1. (Remember. . KANNARAVILLE and RV people) Weeelllll. . . .it kinda sorta was a little bit better.

Let me explain.

We were all excited and got up to our camp site up in Logan canyon and set up our cute little camp like so:

And Paul made us a fire:

And we ate our traditional meal of hotdogs and marshmallows.

That's when it stopped being so fun.

I don't know if we both caught the flu bug that's been going around, or if it was a bad batch of hot dogs, because we both felt pretty queasy after our meal.

And on top of that. . ..we were right across from a group campsite. A family reunion was going on and they were drinking and were LOUD. AND, one of the guys from that group really must have some sort of mental disorder because he was walking up and down the road right outside our campsite yelling to himself about guns and shooting people. It was scary!! So adding all that up= let's pack up and go back home.

Luckily it wasn't very far away so it wasn't a total waste of time. . . just not nearly as cool as we were planning. I don't know if we will ever have a fun camping trip this summer. Gosh dang it.

Oh, and here's a picture of a caterpillar that was on our table. I wanted to put it in a plastic sandwich bag with holes in it and bring it home and put in a jar like I did when I was little, but Paul wouldn't let me.

Things

I feel like I'm the worst at coming up with post titles. Anyone else feel that way? Because of that issue, you get creative titles like "things". I think from now on I'll just put the first word that comes to my mind when I'm writing a post, whether it has to do with what I'll be blogging about or not. Like "banana" or "crap" or "yum". 

We'll see.

"What have the Siddoways been up to lately?" I'm sure is a question all of you ponder all the time. Well, good thing I'm about to fill you in on our exciting life.

First (and all these things are out of order. Sorry. . . kinda):

Paul took me on a date down to Salt Lake to a cute/amazing greek restaurant called Aristo's. I had eaten there once years ago when I lived there and remembered it was really good. I suggested it to my parents a couple weeks ago when they were down there looking for a place to eat out for their anniversary. They said it was wonderful and that a lot of the appetizers looked really good. Paul's date consisted of going somewhere and ordering only appetizers and let me tell you-it did NOT disappoint! 

We tried some fried kalamari (squid, for those who didn't know) and it was actually really good! They were like onion rings only. . . not. Ha. Really really tasty though. We also tried some bruchetta (sp?) type stuff and a yummy spicy cheese spread over pita bread pieces. So so good. And what I liked the most was that I didn't feel gross and oily after eating out like I do at other places. No wonder Europeans are so much healthier, their food is lighter! I don't know if that's actually true about the healthier part. .. but maybe.

Next: I've broken out the roller blades. We found a neat river parkway place that winds from Riverdale, through Ogden, and up some canyon. We have yet to do the whole thing. It's mostly flat which is perfect. Paul bikes along beside me and when we get to a steep hill (usually going under a street) I just grab onto his bike seat and he pulls me along. It's a nice little arrangement.

Caught up with my old friend Hailey! I think it's been a year or so since we've last met up so there was a lot of catching up to do. I love reconnecting with old friends like no time has passed. And any excuse to go out and get ice cream is great too!

Oh, and these pictures were from the second part of our date when we went to Aristo's- there a randome little sculpture park right in the downtown of Salt Lake City called Gilgal. Never heard of it but Paul did and thought it would be fun. It's really not that big but it was really neat! Some guy years and years ago took some scriptures from Revelation, Isiah, and Nephi, and probably more and made sculptures to go along with them. It was thoroughly enjoyable.

And lastly, this little gem I found while cleaning out some stuff. One of Cory's senior pictures. Ha! I took a picture of it and sent it to his wife Hayley. If I remember, I'm going to give it to her so that she can keep it in her wallet. Ha ha ha. What a baby face!