Stranded. Cali Bound.

Stranded.
Last Saturday on my way to work my battery light turned on.  I wasn't quite sure what it meant so I headed towards two different shops only to discover they were closed on Saturdays.  Ignoring the light I continued to drive towards work.  On 1300 East and 100 North my car decided to literally DIE.  Stuck on the beginning of a hill I was in panic mode.  I had to be to work in ten minutes and driving wise I was only 2 minutes away, but I knew I would never make it in time.  I popped my hood and grabbed jumper cables and tried to wave down a cop who just waved back and drove away... (a hole), and then finally got a nice guy to pull over and give me a jump.  After numerous tries with one set of cables my car wouldn't take a charge.  Finally after changing the jumper cables (luckily I had two sets in my trunk) we were able to get the car started.  The nice gentleman began to drive away, I switched my car into Drive and DEAD.. again!  The guy pulled back around and tried to give me a second jump. Same thing happened with dead being the final result.  Luckily Debi was close enough by that she was able to pick me up and drive me up the huge hill to work.  Lance and Russell came by later to deal with the car and get it back to my house. 
Monday we drove the car to the shop and learned that the alternator had given out.  Half a day and 400 dollars later the car was drivable and was taken back to my house.  Later that night we drove the car to discover an awful screeching sound that got progressively louder the faster you drove.  With us leaving for California at 6am, there was NO way we were going to make it 800 miles with the car not falling apart.  We post-poned our trip to take the car back into the shop.  The alternator's belt was broken (I still don't understand why they didn't know that from the day before) and after 2 hours and 50 more dollars we were headed south....

Cali Bound.
Last Tuesday Lance and I hit the road and headed south.  By 1:30 we arrived in the heat of Las Vegas (I'm still unsure how I lived in that heat for 15 years of my life).  We met up with my dad and had a nice lunch that consisted of Tropical Smoothie and Raising Canes before we hit the road once again to make it to California before dark.  It was a long ten hours in the car filled with movies, great conversation, and sleeping.
Getting to California safely was such a relief.  We were tired and just enjoyed the remainder of our night catching up with my family and watching netflix (Lance's new addiction). 
Wednesday we headed towards Newport where we enjoyed a lovely meal of seafood at the Crab Cooker followed by an afternoon and evening of shopping with my mom.  It's pretty hilarious to see the difference in Lance's mood and attitude towards shopping with my mom verses just with me.  Because of my mom's stubbornness she refuses for us to buy anything when we are with her.  This really spoils us because the second we go to a mall without her neither of us wants to look at anything...
We spent the night on our computers looking up new cars.  We never intended to get a new car, but to see what our options were...
Thursday we enjoyed some more family time in the morning and then headed out solo to test drive some cars.  Not really wanting to commit to anything we went to Lexus and test drove the IS 250.  It was a bit on the smaller side with an impractical trunk so we then headed to Acura.  Once at Acura we test drove their newest model the ILX.  It was perfect! 4 cylinder so it was decent on gas mileage, but with enough pep. White with tan leather. Classy and sleek.  After numerous hours of negotiation we decided to lease a new car instead of continue the road of nickle and diming with the Acura TL that we currently owned.  After the number crunching it was a better "investment" to lease a new acura with a decent monthly payment and take the equity that was in our TL and put it towards Lance's student loans.  It also has given us a little peace of mind knowning it isn't going to break down anytime soon. 
Friday we went to Sushi with my family and spent the afternoon swimming and shopping.
Saturday we woke up at 6am and went to IHOP with my mom (she insisted) and hit the road to Vegas to make it in just enough time to greet everyone at my cousin's baby shower (we just barely missed Elder Hollands son.. dang it).  Another afternoon swimming and shopping was concluded with a lovely dinner with my dad, brother, and brother's girlfriend at my favorite restaurant Lucille's Smokehouse!
Sunday was another early day of driving with us leaving Las Vegas at 5:30am and Lance driving the entire way to Salt Lake- bless him and his ability to be alert and functioning in the mornings!

Overall our trip consisted of a lot of driving with equal amounts of shopping and eating! My mom is hilarous when it comes to food and insisted on taking us to nice restaurants every day and filling us with snacks and other treats what felt like every 2 hours.  We are so blessed to have my mom so willing to help us and give us advise on a lot of things shes experienced that we have yet to stumble upon.  She is a very wise and generous woman whom we LOVE to death!



local grocery store grand opening. Can't even walk with all the people and carts!!



Outlets at Orange- Enjoying some kettlecorn as we shopped around

Driving home.. Finally. Lance spent the entire drive from LV to SLC with one head-phone in listening to movies so I could sleep with just the music on!

At the Sushi Buffet



Test driving the new car



Buffet Time



shake it

Today after Zumba I said "Lance, zumba really isn't hard if you consistently exercise. I didn't die during the class and I feel fine now..."  Lance freshly responded with "DUH! Health and wellness major." 

Embarrassing. I have a bachelors degree in exercise and wellness, and for whatever reason I totally spaced on how your body gets used to exercising and being in shape.  In the past I have gone to zumba once every other week/ here or there and each and every time 20 minutes in I am completely exhausted and wanted to sit down and eat a doughnut instead.  Since having trained for the 10k over the last two weeks.  Exercising 6 days a week has changed my mindset as well as increased by abilities.  I think it is important to note that not everyday do I go out and exercise hard for an hour.   Most days its a solid 20-30 minute run and then a shower and the rest of the days responsibilities.  Today I just happened to have enough time to make it to zumba, and enjoyed my workout.  3/4 into the class the instructor called me (yes me!) to the front to lead the class in a "booty bumping" dance.  It was my first time meeting that zumba instructor as well as my first time doing the dance! (i guess she thought my booty shaking was pretty good ;)

Chubbuck Days

On Thursday morning Lance and I traveled up to Pocatello, Idaho for an eventful weekend spent with family.  We started off the trip with a brief trip to Nick's grave site.  Nick was killed while serving in the army 5 years ago.  Lance and Nick are super close in age and grew up as super close cousins so it was a great feeling to be able to take the time and visit Nick.   

 

 Before we even arrived at Lance's aunt and uncles house we headed straight over to the tennis courts to watch his cousins Megan and Stephanie play in the Chubbuck Days tournament.  While we were there, a fundraiser across the park was having a Zumba-a-thon.  I haven't ever seen that many people (outside) doing zumba!  Only in Chubbuck!!  We watched tennis from 3pm-9pm on Thursday with games for Megan, Stephanie, and Lance (2 games each).  

 Friday we slept in and just relaxed at home.  The girls headed down to the courts to start their matches while I took a nap on the couch and Lance watched the mens USA basketball game.  Towards the end of the game we heard a huge noise and the power shut off.  Confused and hearing crazy wind outside Lance went out the backdoor to see what was happening.  Just a minute later his uncle Steve came rushing in very worried and freaked out when he saw the door open.  He told us that he had received a call that there was a fire nearby and wanted to check to make sure the houses in his ward were safe (he's bishop).  We jumped into his truck only to find the fire a few streets away.  We pulled into a driveway with two houses next to a field.  The flames in the field were getting closer to the home and Steve rushed to the door where the homeowner had NO CLUE the fire was happening!  We grabbed hoses and began to fight the fire ourselves.  We watered down all the hay bails close to her fence, but as we continued to hose everything her vinyl fence melted from the heat.  Just as I was getting a little more worried the firefighters came and put out the big flames.  We left her house and went to another field across the street that was on fire and helped the surrounding neighbors put out numerous flames.  Below are the remains from the fire...

 What an absolutely crazy day to be a real life volunteer fire fighter!!

Saturday morning I was a little skeptical when I woke up to a sky of grey clouds.  For whatever reason I got super anxious and nervous about my race.  All prepped and ready to go I Lance drove me down to the starting park.  Just as we pulled in a half our prior to the start it began to rain and gust wind.  I continued to get ready and luckily it all calmed down by the start of the race (it was still super cold... especially in a tank top for the first mile). 

Kind of a funny picture... as we all start our GPS watches to keep track of out time!! haha

I started off the race in the front of the pack, which I'm not sure was the smartest choice since I was running at 7:45 pace to keep up with everyone.  Just a quarter of a mile into the race my body had other ideas of what it wanted to be doing (peeing).... I had just gone to the bathroom 10 minutes before the race, but I guess the nerves got the best of me.. For the first 2 miles all I could think about was "oh i should stop.. there's a tree" at every single house I passed. Finally the group of runners I was with went a little ahead of me and there wasn't another runner for 50 feet.  Perfect! i thought.  I pulled into someone's RV pad and in between the fence and RV was 2 feet of rocks. So I peed... and then kept running.  HAHA. (sorry family of who ever's house I peed at!) 
The run was pretty flat and nice for the majority.  At the end we had a half mile run around the entire park with the finish line visible which made it feel like a forever finish.  Just as I entered the park there were two ladies taking turns pushing a stroller and I didn't want them to beat me so I picked it up and passed them. 

Total there were only 22 women who ran in the 10k.  Most of them were in their 30's and because of that I got first place in my age group!

 Finish time: 102 minutes 55 seconds.

 Directly after the race we headed to the tennis courts to watch the semifinal and final matches.  Lance played in the double semifinal as well as Steve and Aaron (lance's uncles) and Megan and Stephanie.  The men loss in their semifinal match, but the girls won and played in the final match.  It was an absolutely crazy day for the girls.  They played in 3 matches with their final scheduled for 2pm! Super hot!

Steve and Aaron

Lance and his partner

 After Lance, Steve, and Aaron lost their matches we headed home to quickly shower and rushed to Lance's cousins wedding: Kadee.

 They had their wedding ceremony in the outfield of a really nice baseball field at 2pm in the afternoon.  Other than the heat factor it was a great day for a wedding and she looked absolutely gorgeous.

Cousin Casey and his wife Haley

cousins Derrick and Krisitne

cousin Kamie

Casey's son Coen and Christine's son Tallen

Kamie's daughter Emma

uncle Clay and bride Kadee

Kadee and Taylor

officially Kadee Smith!

 After the ceremony we rushed back to the tennis courts to watch Megan and Steph in the finals.  They took runner-up and we headed home to get ready to go to the lake.  The lake was only 30 minutes from Chubbuck, and it was so fun to get wet after a long day of tennis and running.  We tubed for a few hours before heading home.  Going to the lake was my "only reason" for going to idaho! I don't think anyone else was nearly as excited to as as I was. 

At the family reunion a few weeks ago I lost my sunglasses going tubing so Lance's second pair were my only option!

 On our way home we stopped to pick up pizzas.  As we left little ceasars Lance decided to go the wrong way on a one way street just 10 feet to get to a side street.  Just as he went there was a cop coming down the one way.....

 

We got pulled over and luckily just got a warning!  Thanks Chubbuck for your nice police force!

Sunday was Travis's Farewell talk.  Here are just a few pictures from the brunch before we left Idaho to head home. 

We had such a fun and event packed trip to Idaho.  It was so great to spend time with family and enjoy a break from our busy lives!!  Thanks for the hospitality Chubbuck!!

Grouting #3

Since we remodeled our bathroom last summer I. Decided it would be a good idea to regrout with a sealer. Couple months ago I bought some grout re-stealer and resealed bathroom floors however the color that I chose was accidentally Arizona Orange. We've lived last couple months with Mesa colored grout until today I finally had time to fix it. It's pretty awesome how easy this stuff is. You pour a drop into the grout and with the toothbrush you scrub it into the grout. Wipe off all the excess from the tile and let it dry. It took me about 20 minutes and look at the difference.

Gummersall Reunion 2012

Hit the border!!

On our way!

Ready to get to the Farm!

Last weekend we traveled up to the farm in Grace, ID where we spent 4 fun filled days with family.  With 60+ people crammed into a farm house and surrounding tents it was a crazy Gummersall-fest. 

Thursday: Arrival Day.  Lance was so giddy to get out of town and get up to the farm that we arrived in Grace at 12:30pm... and were the 3rd ones there out of many travelers.  

Lance got tired from driving.. so I took over while he took a nap!

Most didn't come until 7-10pm, but we spent our time setting up our tent and I picked out a lovely spot under a shady tree to finish reading A Child Called It for my psych class.  We spent much of the late night just talking and catching up and it wasn't until 12:00am that we finally got in our tent and ready to get some sleep.

While setting up our tent we realized that our rain cover was no where to be found.  We didn't make a big deal about it because the forecast didn't say it was going to rain.  So into our open tent we went with ellie under the covers and Winston laying on a blanket in the corner of the tent.  3:00am rolled around with gusts of wind that were swaying the tent from side to side.  Drop. Drop. Drop.... it starts to lightly rain.  I woke up in a panic thinking my phone and clothes were going to get drenched.  Lance reassured me they'd be okay and he responded to my question of if we should go inside with "no... lets just take cover for a bit."  We took our other sleeping back and put it on top of our blanket to create a waterproof barrier and pulled our blanket over our heads to not get rained on.   It lightly rained on us for 3 hours with sparatic DOWN POURS! Everything was SOAKED.  At 6:30 am I couldn't handle being wet or cold any longer.  I grabbed my pillow and headed into the house thinking I could sleep a little more, but was sadly greeted by Grandma and Grandpa Gummersall who were already awake and getting started on breakfast!  Grandpa came up with a brilliant idea for me to go sleep in my car.  I ventured out there and let me tell you... it was heavenly.  I laid the seat back put on my hoodie sweatshirt and fell asleep until 9am!

Friday:  Float the River.

We ventured to Lava where we separated into two groups:  the pool or the river. Many of the aunts and uncles as well as the older cousins chose to float the river in tubes.  On our first pass down the river I was in a tube with 2 of Lance's Aunts.  Sitting in the front I got most of the splashes as we journied down the rapids.  It was a pleasant and really fun ride down the river until we arrived close to the end.  Our tube flipped over and none of us could grip our feet on the slippery rocks.  The current pushed us further down the river tubeless as our shins, knees, head, and feet scraped the under water rocks.  Needless to say we were all extremely scared and were hesistant as to whether or not we even wanted to float again.  We paid 6 bucks for 2 hours of floating, so we just sucked it up and kept going. This time we through a guy in each of our tubes incase we fell again. 

We came back to the farm and set up everything for an awesome adult volleyball game (which my team won... not Lances!)

soaked.

Wet from dominating the kiddie pool

Super hot all weekend. Searched for shade.

Both dogs were PISSED that I chained them up to their kennels by our tent... they wanted to party with the people so they dragged their kennels 50 feet from where I left them.. kennels tipped over.

Saturday:  Kickball slip and slide!

Lance was so excited to have thought up a fun game that they played 2 years ago at the reunion.  Kickball slip and slide.  At the time we only had a slip and slide to home base, but Lance gathered all the materials prior to leaving SLC so we could have a slip and slide into EVERY BASE!  With painters plastic, kiddie pools, and 4 hoses we were in business.  Towards the last inning Lance went to kick the ball and kicked it straight into the quanset and we thought it was a home run.  After running ALL of the bases and sliding into home with water splashing everywhere, the referee said it was a foul ball and Lance totally pissed had to kick again.  Lance didn't realize that where he was kicking was completely drenched from his slide into home so just as he kicked BOTH of his legs went FLYING into the air and Lance was down for the count on his back.  Broken he said forget it and went to the end of the kicking line. 

After Church Sunday.  Jared refused to be IN the picture...(but he was there)

Sunday: Church 

Sunday we spent the morning watching the olympics and going to sacrament.  Afterwards we just packed up our things and puppies and hit the road.  Our two dogs have never been so happy and free as they were on the farm.  They didn't run away so they were lucky enough to be free and not tied up.  They ran around and played... and played... and played! They were so so so exhausted by the time we got into the car that they slept the entire way home.

pooped out... Winston placing himself in the most awkward positions

friends....

lovers?....