My Birthday

Growing older doesn’t thrill me, but this year I have to say that my birthday was the best! The night before my birthday, Ben came home and surprised me by saying we were going camping and kayaking. I have been wanting to go camping ever since last summer but I was too big, pregnant and uncomfortable to go. So…we started packing up our stuff and were almost ready to go when it started to thunder, lighting, and rain really bad. After several minutes of debating and checking the weather reports, we decided that we should not go camping. Instead we just took off and headed north. We stopped and bought a new game at Wal-mart and then decided to stay at Thanksgiving Point.

After an exciting dinner at Cabela’s we went back to the hotel and took a walk around the gardens. They were gorgeous and so peaceful. It was nice just to walk and not have to be anywhere in particular. Ben and I don’t get out just the two of us much anymore and so it was especially wonderful! We stopped at an art gallery and saw how they blow glass into cool shapes and we saw that they also made stained glass windows there. We saw one that they must have been making for a temple somewhere, it was beautiful.

Playing on the water contraption...

Stopping to smell the roses...

Ben's favorite glass sculpture

This man was completely made of crackers, yummy!!!

Our new glass Christmas tree, he he! Ya right can you imagine Jade and a glass tree!!!

As we walked around the gardens we saw some pretty cool scenery. I thought this tree looked so old and cool!

Tarzan swinging from the grape vines!

The next day, my birthday, we went up American Fork Canyon to Tibble Fork Reservoir and went kayaking. Ben had rented a two man blow-up kayak from UVU. It was quite the task to blow it up but we did it and then hauled it down to the water and off we went. After our legs and backsides adjusted to the bitter freezing cold water we set off across the lake. It was absolutely beautiful all day as we were surrounded by nature! I loved it and could not have asked for a better day! Thank you Ben, you made my birthday the best ever!

There was this dog that was just sitting by the drain hole to the reservoir. He looked rather funny.

This was the drain hole where all the water from the reservoir gets sucked down to the river below. Ben thought it looked cool.

The pretty flowers

Ben hugging the kayak, actually he had just rolled it back up to go home.

Ben thought it would be fun to try and go up this little stream and fight against the current to see how far we could get. You can see from the next few pics that we got stuck in the weeds. It wore us out and our arms got so tired, we just decided to let the current take us back out onto the reservoir.

The adventurous kayakers!

This is the gorgeous view we saw all day...

Later that night, my mom, sister, Ben and I went to dinner at my favorite place, the Olive Garden and I ate way too much salad and bread! But, who doesn’t when they go there!!! Then Ben treated us all to a movie, of course he would not tell us which one until we were walking down the hallway to the theater. He knows I love surprises and today was a day full of them. I finally saw that the movie was Toy Story 3. I had been wanting to see it so I was way excited.

My sister and Mom at Olive Garden

This was the yummy cake my mom made. My favorite...funfetti!!