High School Reunion - 5 years!

Due to wonderful timing, I was able to attend my 5 year high school reunion on Saturday, May 16th, the day Robert and I got off our cruise. Right as we got off the ship his family dropped me off at the airport. I decided to make a pit stop in Georgia on my way back home to Utah. Robert did not go with me because we decided he should stay in Florida for a couple more days to look for housing in St. Petersburg in case we were going to go to Stetson for school. It was a wonderful trip! My brother picked me up from the airport, and I was able to stay at his house for the night. I arranged my flight home on Sunday to depart later in the day, so I could spend some time with them. We had a lot of fun together. We played with their new kittens, played Mario Kart and Mario Party, watched Mamma Mia, and I helped Lori, my sister in law, set up a blog for her family!

Below are some of the highlights from my reunion:

Some of my best friends from High School from right to left: Jenny Shular, Caty Szczepanski, and Brittany Edmondson. It was so great to see my girls again!

We had our reunion at an Atlanta Braves game, and we tailgated beforehand. It was great to see old friends, eat some southern BBQ, and get to go to a Braves game! I could not think of a better way to kick off the start of summer. Luckily, the weather ended up cooperating because it was going to rain all night, but it held off.

Some of the girls

Some of the guys

One of my good friends from back in the day, Adam Bashakes.

The view of the whole group sitting and watching the game.


You know you are in Atlanta when...you see life size cows doing the chop!

Brittany, our class president, did an awesome job planning the reunion. Thanks Brittany!

Here is everyone from the Starr's Mill High School class of 2004 that showed up. We had a pretty good turn out, 100 out of 400 is not too bad. I can't believe it has been five years.

Summer sun, something's begun...

The first day on the ship

We all went up on the sports deck and played some mini golf. It doesn't take us any time at all to adjust to vacation.

The best and only way to start off a cruise, with a mustard drill. Cheers!

All aboard!

This is a picture after we finished playing in the first of two ping pong tournaments. The guy in the middle with the gold medal around his neck is named Larry. He quickly became our biggest challenger that we would try to overcome all cruise. I took the silver and Robert finished with the bronze.

Here is Rob in action! Go Rob!

Robert's parents relaxing and chatting on the pool deck.

Formal night.

Can I just tell you how much I love this chair! I love it! I need one in my house. While we waited to be seated for dinner we filled the time up by posing like supermodels.

True Love

Me and the boys

The family at dinner.

Robert's grandparents dancing at the Platinum Members' party. Aren't they cute?

Here is a video of Rob's grandparents and us dancing out on the dance floor.

Almost every night before dinner we would play shuffle board.

I think I won almost everytime. :)

The whole gang after dinner.

Robert and I shopping in the Promenade.

Ice Skating fun!

It was a little boring because they would only let us go around in a little circle, so we had to make up our own fun. Although, we did enjoy getting out there for thirty minutes to goof around.

I love this picture of the grandparents. Thank you so much for a wonderful cruise experience! We had a blast! It was a great way to start off summer vacation!

Laying out on the sundeck trying to get that base tan for summer.

Isn't he handsome?

Robert and I went out before dinner one night to watch the sunset. It was beautiful!

I just love sunsets.

We celebrated Mother's day on the cruise, as well as Chris and Teri's 24th wedding anniversary. Robert and I surprised the mother's with roses delivered to their staterooms, and we had the wait staff surprise Chris and Teri with an anniversary desert.

What a happy couple! Awww...

Yay, our first day at port! Look at our pretty ship. She is a beauty.

St. Maarten

Toes in the sand. In St. Maarten, we started the day off with a brief shopping visit and then we took a taxi to the French side of the island where we spent the rest of the day playing and relaxing on the beach. It was fun to take a taxi across the island because we got to really get a feel for the area. While on the French side, we did happen to see a few topless sunbathers, but all in all it wasn't too bad. Got to love the French right?

Robert taking it easy out on the beach.

Having fun playing in the ocean. The water was warm and crystal clear. We ended up following a school of angel fish as we watched them feed on a school of bate fish. Eventually we ended up feeding them by hand with bread. It was awesome. They completely surrounded us.

I think he is starting to look a little pink, don't you?

Hot rod Rob.

Our next port was San Juan, Puerto Rico. I loved their cobbled streets and colorful buildings. In San Juan, it was overcast and rainy all day, but it wasn't too bad. We were still able to do everything we wanted to. It apparently rains there all the time.

Notice the cool basketball court behind him. We thought it was awesome. They have NBA logos painted all over the court.

Here we are in San Juan on our tour of the San Cristóbal Fort.

It was a lot of fun and we were able to stay dry from all the rain for most of the day.

This is the dungeon area. It was our favorite part of the tour. We walked down a long dark tunnel to get here. You can't tell how dark it is by the flash, but it was. There were no windows because this tunnel system goes underground.

It would not have been fun to be held captive here.

These were some drawings that prisoners drew on the wall. Most of the prisoners held in this prison were held there for treason and probably did not survive.

This is how my hair looked most of the cruise. It was always so windy!

The view from San Cristóbal. As you can see, there is another fort on the island.

Our next and last port of call was Labadee, Haiti. This is one of our favorite islands to visit. It is Royal Caribbean's island, so it is completely private. We love it because you can just relax. You do not have to take a taxi to get anywhere. They also feed you a big BBQ lunch that we love.

Most of our time spent on Labadee is spent playing volleyball. Austin, Robert, and I were all on the same team and had a great time playing together. After that, we cooled off in the ocean, grabbed some lunch, did a little shopping, and then took a nap. What more could you ask for?

They allow certain Haitian vendors to come to the island. This is David, Robert's favorite vendor because he likes to talk politics with him. David is always reading and trying to learn new things when we come by. He is the only one in the warehouse that does not try to pressure you into buying his things. I always buy these cool mahogony bowls he makes. He is always in the same spot, so we know where to find him. This time David gave us a free mahogony plate and glass that he made because we always stop by to see him.

This is when Robert joined in the pool games out on the pool deck. Their team ended up winning.

Robert was trying to cheat...you were not allowed to hop.

Robert showing off his skills on the Flowrider.

So I have to apologize, I apparently stink at videography. I took the video from the wrong camera angle, so enjoy watching it sideways. Nevertheless, it is still a cool video because he almost lands his barrel roll. He did land it later on in the week.

Nice form!

This was my first attempt on the Flowrider. It is harder than it looks. The water is rushing at you at 30 MPH. Not bad for a beginner...

After that, I tried standing up. I was doing pretty good there for a little bit.

This is one of my favorite pictures! Remember Larry...well we played in another ping pong tournament and this time Robert beat Larry and won the gold! I just love that you can see Larry's disappointed face in the background! Go Rob! Also on a side note, Larry was the Canadian National Champion for four years between 1968 and 1973.

Here are the medals we won. Our main accomplishment, besides Robert beating Larry, was winning the dodge ball tournament with Austin and Chris.

I never thought this would happen...

Last Monday was my final day off before I returned to work, so I decided to go golfing. Since JoAnna was at work and I have no golfing buddies left in Provo, I went out on my own and got paired up with two older gentlemen. It turned out that one of the two men was the lead sports editor for the Deseret News (Provo newspaper). As we were golfing, we discussed many aspects of BYU sports because his main job is to cover BYU basketball and football. He even travels with the teams. He began to ask me my opinions on the BYU recruiting process and how I ended up at BYU. I spoke openly to him about it, and he seemed to agree with me. Well, JoAnna's co-worker found this column/blog the sports editor wrote about me a couple days ago.

Before you read the article, let me clarify a few things he exaggerated on, or simply misunderstood.
- We were talking college football and I mentioned Tim Tebow played in the same area as me. In the article, he says we are "friends", which is far from true.
- Next, he combined my academic and athletic scholarships together. I had academic scholarships at Florida and Florida State. I had athletic scholarships at Hawaii and Valparaiso.

Anyways, it was pretty cool to talk with this sports writer and discover that he wrote about me. I still can't believe our conversation was important enough for him to write about it, but I guess you never know. Oh and for those of you who are wondering whether or not I beat him in golf, the answer is, "Yes".

Here is the link to the article:

http://www.deseretnews.com/blogs/1,5322,19,00.html?bD=20090501&sc=dmn