Year of Firsts....March

First red eye flight

 January and February were amazing and fantastic, and March was equally great....once again, don't want to make any other months jealous!

Let's flash back to several months prior.  I am sitting at breakfast with my "girls" (5 of us girls from the mission who have remained best friends).  We are getting together with Kristy one final time before she moves to Dominican Republic for her husband's work.  She invites all of us to come visit her for a girl's trip.  Immediately everyone gets excited and starts talking about when is good and who do I know with buddy passes, etc.  Spring break is in March, so that caters to those who are students.  Someone else knows someone who works for an airline and could probably get some buddy passes, but not enough for everyone.  Strategies are flying all around the table.  I sit there quietly, adoring and loving my "girls" but thinking that the reality of catering to 5 people's schedules and different lives is going to be near impossible.

I walk out of the restaurant and say to Kristy, "Despite whether or not everyone else falls through, I'm coming to visit you.  Im serious."  She smiled her sweet smile and said that she would love that!

view from the condo

 March came and my sister Shantell and I flew to the Dominican Republic.  I was excited!  Partly because Kim Kardashian frequents the DR for her vacays, but mainly because I was getting a tropical vacation in the middle of a cold Salt Lake City March.  I was also very excited to see my friend Kristy and her cute little family!  Our other friend Stacey had been living down there the past several weeks to help Kristy transition, so we would get to spend some good quality time

Our practically private beach

 with her also!  The view from their condo on the beach was amazing!  We could walk out the back sliding door, go down the side walk past the pool, and we had our very own uncrowded beach.  The waves were huge!  There were no tourists to be found.  The weather was hot but not scorching.  It was perfect!  It was everything that I wanted my Hawaii trip to be, that it wasn't.

One thing that is for certain about the DR is the crazy drivers and crazy streets.  I literally saw 2 guys riding a little motor bike, and the guy on the back of the bike was carrying a mattress.  Who needs moving trucks when you have motor bikes.  We, of course, had to get a ride on some!

One day we went on an excursion to 27 waterfalls.  It was a full day of stops and culture.  We went to some small villages outside the town and got to see a more simple life.  Little kids would run along side the truck yelling, "benta, benta."  I could totally be spelling and pronouncing that incorrectly, but basically, they wanted us to throw them candy.  Had I known I was going to be riding in the back of truck throwing candy like a parade, I would have come more prepared.  Much to the little kids' disappointment, they didn't get any candy from us..  At one point, we saw a little herd of piglets following their momma running down the path.  It was the first and only time I have found pigs adorable!

We also got to see a cock fight.  They put punching gloves on the claws so the cocks didn't actually hurt each other, but it was pretty intense.

 I don't have pictures of 27 waterfalls because we didn't have a waterproof camera, but that was such a fun time!  We had some tour guides that helped us.  We had to wear life jackets and helmets because we were literally swimming through ponds of water and hiking up the water fall.  I don't mean hiking along side the waterfalls while walking on a trail.  I mean treading water right below the falls, looking up with squinted eyes to avoid the water blurring you vision, climbing up the water while it is pounding you down....all with the help of the guides, of course.  Now, if you are envisioning a huge waterfall of 100+ feet, you are giving me way too much credit for my waterfall-hiking skills.  These were more like cascading waterfalls, each reaching the height of 5-10 feet.  We only hiked up the first 7.  If you wanted to do all 27, you had to hike on a trail along side the waterfalls.  I would rather do 7 and hike up them, than take the easy way out and stay and solid ground.  After we hiked our 7 waterfalls, we got to slide back down each one of them.  They were like natural water slides.  For those of you who know how much I love water slides and water parks, you can only imagine how much I LOVED 27 waterfalls!!

 We went to another place called Monkey Jungle.  They had little Capuchan monkeys that, as you can see, will come right up to you and make themselves at home.  This particular monkey decided to his its meal on my head and left a little sunflower seed for later.   They truly were adorable.

 I also got to hold a parrot on my shoulder....a little less friendly, but still eventually came to me.

As part of Monkey Jungle, they had a 7 zip line tour.  We had a group of about 12 people, 10 were from Canada who just happened to be there the same time as us, and 5-6 tour guides.  Each tour guide had a fun name that explained their personality.  Long story short, Bob Marley had become fond of me.  If you want details, you'll have to talk to me in person, but let's just say, he helped me accomplish yet another "first" for March.

Zip lining....LOVED it!!!!

Shantell and I posing for a picture with Eddie Murphy and Bob Marley

Year of Firsts....February

 Month 2 of my new year's resolution to do at least one new thing a month.  January turned out to be pretty exciting and hard to top, but February turned out to be equally exciting...I don't want to make January feel jealous by saying one was better than the other. :)

When I posted a picture on Instagram of my list of ideas, one of my favorite mission friends Alisa put in a plug for me to come visit her in Minnesota.  She hooked me when she said, "I can take you ice fishing..."  Sold!  Booked my plane ticket shortly after.....and seeing her was a nice perk also.  Not only did she introduce me to ice fishing, but she helped me accomplish several more firsts while I was there, and I'm not referring to dirty diapers being thrown at my head to wake me up in the morning.  Kids can be so cute!

There is a gentlemen from Utah who makes "ice castles" in a couple different locations through out

A throne in the ice castles.  Where's Olivia?  Oh just facing the back of the seat. LOL

the United States and Minnesota was one of them.  Pictures don't do justice with how truly amazing these were.  They were literally castles made of icicles bigger than me.

 We also went to the Mall of America!  When I told Alisa I wanted to go there, she immediately thought it was for the rides.  Really, I just knew it was a huge mall and it was a must see when visiting Minnesota, so the first time I told her and she said, "....and we can ride the rides if you want...." I just agreed and nodded my head.  I had zero expectations for rides because I don't think I truly understood what she was talking about.  A couple other times we talked while arranging my visit, she would refer to the rides, and I would again just agree and nod my head.  First day she picked me up at the airport and we were driving and discussing our game plan and she turns to me and says, "Did you know there are rides?"  I responded, "only because you keep talking about them."  Came across a lot more rude that I intended.  We both just started laughing!

 Well, as you can see, we chose to go on the rides.  This was tricky with 2 kids.  They rode most of the

 rides and we would occasionally switch off going on bigger ones.  I was quickly reminded that in my older age, I cannot do roller coasters anymore, but I still love a good log ride.

It took some coaxing to get Owen to ride the log chute with me, especially since his Mom was staying back with Olivia.  He was a brave boy and decided to go.  As you can see in the picture, he shows fear by wide-eyed silence.  I scream!  I had my hand on his little chest to help him feel safe, and his heart almost beat out of his chest in that moment.  When we got off the ride, he was silent.  "Hey Owen, did you have fun?"  Owen responds, "yeah."  "Do you want to go again?"  "NO." hahaha  Hopefully we didn't scar him for life.

This is what we envisioned our experience to be.

Next adventure was ice fishing!
Those of you who know me, know I'm not big on the outdoors and hunting, fishing, etc, but let me tell you 3 reasons why ice fishing is fantastic:  1) you can see the fish swimming below, so you can see them being tempted by your bait.  It's pretty cool.  2) it's less common and made me feel pretty special I was trying it, and 3) you can hear the ice crackling beneath your feet like you are going to go plunging into the lake, so basically you are living on the edge and cheating death.  It's pretty exciting!  Seriously though, there were several times I was unsure we were going to survive based on the thunderous ice cracking sound.  We are sitting in a trailer with 10 people, the whole thing weighing over 1,000 pounds or more.  I'm grateful to still be alive!

This is how it really was...heated trailer...

Ryan, Alisa's husband, was kind enough to show me how to use the miniature pole.  Since it had been over 15 years since I had used a fishing pole, I had no idea how to keep the reel from getting tangled, how to lock the reel so my line didn't keep falling, etc.  Those are tricky things...

I even learned how to bait my own hook....and we're not talking about just putting fake cheese on a hook.  I actually put a little maggot on a hook.  You gotta go through it's butt and push it all the way through til the hook comes out its head.  Ew!

I was proud to say that I was the only girl in attendance willing to bait her own hook.  If I was going to do this ice fishing thing, I was going to do it all!!

After about an hour of fishing, I caught my first fish!!  I was so excited!!!!  Apparently, they are called Crappie fish....all I know is it was my first catch...EVER!

They told me that since it was my first fish ever, I had to kiss it....I was going in for a fake kiss for the pictures sake, but Ryan pushed it onto my lips....so I have now kissed a fish!  I didn't care....I had gone ice fishing....and skirted death by not plunging into frozen water!

Thank you Alisa and Ryan for an amazing visit to Minnesota and providing several new "firsts!!"