I’m sorry I didn’t write at all this past weekend. but if I had, it might not have been totally coherent. Chantelle, Leah, Kelsey, Eliesa, Ashley, Makenzie, Aaron Mitchell, Riuki, Aaron’s friend Dallin, and I drove up to Oregon this weekend to visit Tayler/play at Aaron’s house. it was a 15-hour-drive of death.seriously, almost unbearable. but overall the weekend was pretty fetching© awesome.

© belongs to Garrett

thursday/friday
we’d been talking about this trip for like months, but it’d been off and on for a while. thursday night, it looked like the trip wasn’t going to happen at all because of complications with Chantelly’s car. we had enough seats to get to Oregon, but Aaron and Ashley’s cars were staying there, so we didn’t have enough seats to get home. the Magster is definitely safer than Chantelle’s car, but there’s no way she would have made it to Oregon and back without something breaking. I’m not even allowed to take her home, let alone to Oregon. but last minute, Aaron’s random freshman roommate Dallin said he’d come with… even though he didn’t know any of us… and it was a 15-hour-drive… but more power to him; it was an awesome trip. so we ended up driving Leah’s brother’s car, Dallin’s car, Aaron’s car and Ashley’s car.

we left Provo at 3 a.m. on thursday night/friday morning. the whole drive there was pretty spacious because we had four cars for only ten people. on the way there Aaron got a ticket for speeding, and in Portland, Eliesa hit another car with Leah’s brother’s car. but other than those few minor details, we made it to Oregon safe and sound.

we drove until we got to Eliesa’s house in Wilsonville (near Portland) at about 4 p.m. ish and waited for Aaron and Tayler to get done with their date. they took longer than expected, so we just hung out at Eliesa’s, ate a really wonderful dinner, and played Buzzword until they got back a few hours later. after Kenzie’s family came to get her and we left Eliesa at her house, the rest of us drove to Aaron’s house in Florence, Oregon, which was about 3 hours south of Portland. we didn’t get in till like midnight there, and after almost a complete 24 hours of driving, it was AWESOME to be finally done.

saturday
Aaron woke us up at 7 a.m. to get ready to go boating and play on the lake. we were out on the lake by 8 a.m. but that’s not saying much considering the lake is Aaron’s backyard. for the first couple hours we played on the jet skis (I rode with Riuki the first time and Leah the second time, and never once tipped over), then we went wakeboarding/kneeboarding (or at least attempted to). Ashley was a wakeboarding pro, but that’s not surprising, considering she’s pro at everything athletic.


everyone else that tried wakeboarding, um, wasn’t. I think Ashley was the only one who actually got up on the board. but I swear Garrett tried for almost 30 minutes. I got up on the kneeboard on my second try, but I’d done it before with the Hendersons at home on Buena Vista Lake last summer. I felt like I was up fooooooorever, and my arms and thighs got so tired, I had to just let go of the rope. I wish I had held on though— it was super fun.


then the tubing began. this was probably my favorite part of the entire day. the Mitchells had this giant three-person tube that Aaron’s mom said was practically impossible to flip. his dad definitely proved that wrong. Tayler, Ash and Aaron’s little sister were the first ones on, and Aaron’s dad had a blast trying to flip that tube. Ashley went flying once, and they got some crazy air, but the tube never completely flipped.

then the exciting stuff happened. when Leah, Chantelly and I went, I felt like I was going to die slash have some crazy whiplash the next day, but it was insanely fun. Chantelle sat in between Leah and I on the tube, and there were a few times when I could have sworn Leah wasn’t on anymore, but we all stayed on despite the craziest bounces and highest flying.  we always knew when all the craziest bumps were going to come because the boat would bounce on them in front of us before we’d hit them. I don’t even remember what kind of bump we hit, but all of a sudden I felt the tube tip like crazy, and the next thing I knew, I was face planting on the lake and disoriented underwater. I seriously couldn’t tell which way was up for the first few seconds, and when I finally did come up, the whole right side of my face was numb, my right foot felt SO dead, and my throat was full of water. it was kind of a scary feeling, getting THAT hurt from a water landing.
I totally had a headache for the rest of the day. none of us could remember what had happened, so we asked everyone on the boat. apparently, Leah’s side hit the water first and because I was the farthest from the water, I went flying through the air. I must have hit the water with my face first to explain the headache, but I still have no idea how my foot got so hurt, and Leah had a hard time breathing the rest of the day. but seriously— it was my favorite part of the day.

our group was taken back to the shore while others went on the tube of death. I got back on the boat for the third round of passengers, just to watch, but the excitement of it all got me back out on that tube with Leah and Garrett. Garrett sat in between Leah and I, and we were getting whipped around soooooo fast, that it sort of scared me and I asked for them to stop the tube because I got so freaked out. the tubing sort of ended after that (I felt super lame for ending it all on that note).

once some of us had showered and gotten cleaned up from the lake, Aaron wanted us to go play at the sand dunes. to get to it, we had to climb up this incredibly steep sand hill and we got super windblown once we got to the top. once we got up to the top, Garrett decided he wanted to slide down it on this plastic disk. he was going super fast for approximately two seconds before he fell off and started rolling down the hill. we were yelling and screaming for him to stop but it was just too steep for him to control anything. just before he landed in this giant sand puddle, he stopped for like a millisecond. then he fell back and splashed everywhere.


poor guy was super wet and sandy for the rest of the afternoon. then a bunch of us took turns jumping off this little cliff and landing in the sand. some people did flips, but I was kind of freaked out so Tayler jumped off it with me while holding my hand. the biggest thing about this cliff was that you couldn’t really see the bottom because of the way it steeped. then others started wrestling and rolling around and doing more flips and burying Ashley from the neck down in the sand before we headed back to Aaron's.


once we all got back to the house and cleaned up from the dunes, we drove to Waldport, OR (about an hour away from Florence) for a fireworks show. the place we sat was seriously cool— it was like an ocean inlet surrounded by coast and a huge bridge. we started a fire, cooked hot dogs and roasted marshmallows all before the fireworks began. once they started, it was pretty cool, but I think this year I decided I’m not a huge fan of fireworks. fireworks are cool every once in a while, but I’m glad fourth of july is only once a year. fireworks are kind of laaaaaaaaaaamesauce.

we got back around midnight, and everyone crashed the second we walked in the door.when I was putting my pjs on, I noticed how AWFULLY sunburnt my legs were— I can’t believe I wasn’t in pain before, because they were BRIGHT red and splotchy. I spent the rest of the weekend drinking as much water as possible to get my legs to heal asap.

sunday
sunday morning we went to church at 10 a.m. and sat in the very front row. Aaron wouldn’t let us sit in the back, so a bunch of visitors from BYU sat in the front row of a strange ward. awkward, to say the least. the funniest part was that Garrett had forgotten his sunday clothes so he just had his BYU t-shirt and jeans on, so this giant visitor man, dressed in casual clothes, had to sit front and center. I’m sure he felt super embarrassed, but we all thought it was hilarious. in priesthood, Aaron even said that Garrett was an investigator, to which Garrett responded that he was a “returned missionary, thank you very much.”

church was church. it was hard to remember that it was 4th of July, too. we all struggled to stay awake in sacrament, and they had this “musical” sunday school lesson full of hymn singing because the lesson was on psalms. to me, it sort of felt like the teacher just didn’t want to prepare a lesson, so she filled up the time with songs. and then there was relief society. the RS lesson was on personal liahonas and she spoke about patriarchal blessings, the scriptures, and the holy ghost. it was a good lesson, but kind of awkward at times. she started off by asking for an opening prayer and reminding us “young ladies” that "the more prayers you say, the hotter your husband will be." Chantelle had never heard that before and couldn’t stop laughing for like 3 minutes. ironically enough, she called on me to say the closing prayer because I had gone to scratch my head when she asked for volunteers. everyone laughed because they thought I’d volunteered. so that was weird. then parts of the lesson became group therapy for this relief society teacher. apparently she has this sort of wayward teenage son, and everyone in the group was reassuring her and telling their experiences with raising children— not really anything that pertained to the lesson. we definitely felt awkward and out of place being there for that. Aaron’s dad mentioned after church that we probably lowered the average age of the ward by 50%. so so true.

after church, we came home and made chocolate chip waffles for lunch because apparently college students are terrible at fasting. then we all took a 3-hour nap all over Aaron’s house before he woke us up for another adventure. this time we went hiking up near this waterfall. I’m not going to lie, the hike was soooooooo beautiful and I’m really glad we went. I honestly couldn’t believe how green everything was. Oregon is seriously a gorgeous place. at one point on the trail, Ashley said how all this green reminded her of Twilight. Kelsey jokingly suggested we take creepy Twilight pictures, but we quickly learned that if someone suggests a photo op, no matter how ridiculous it sounds, Ashley will always want to do it. so she quickly positioned us by saying, “okay, pretend you guys are fighting over my body because I have really sweet blood…” most hilarious statement of the entire weekend. Kels & I just could not take her seriously after that. but we took the picture anyways. I’m really glad we gave in to Ashley’s awesomeness/craziness.

the falls were super fun and we had a great time making up for our lack-of-picture taking.


for the second time in two days, Garrett fell in the water. but this time instead of a sandy puddle it was a river that was like neck deep, and he was soaked and freezing for the rest of the afternoon. poor guy…


 but we just played around the falls for a while before heading back. we all told first kiss/awkward date stories while hiking back down and on the drive home, and telling those stories always make for great conversation. we got a lot of good laughs from that.

when we got back, Aaron’s mom had made and awesome pasta bar with cheese tortellini and fettuccini noodles, tomato and alfredo sauce, fruit salad, caesar salad, and garlic bread. it was DIVINE. we were seriously so grateful for the hospitality of the Mitchell fam. they were the best and so awesome. I’m pretty sure I said thank you approximately 87 times over the course of the weekend, but I’m sure that wasn’t even enough. we gave the Mitchells a really cool BYU picture frame with a picture of all of us that we’d taken when we stopped at this waterfall on the drive up to Oregon. they were so cute and grateful for us.


dinner somehow turned into a talent show consisting of Aaron singing “if I were the king of the forest” like the cowardly lion from Wizard of Oz, Aaron’s little brother doing the jerk, watching Ashley’s waka waka dance video on youtube, Garrett doing the Just Dance moves to Katy Perry's “Hot and Cold” (imagine a 240lb dude doing this), the girls and I doing our Britney Spears’ “crazy” dance from last year’s ward talent show, Aaron’s parents smooching (weeeeird), Aaron’s brother Jake and their little sister dancing cha cha, and Aaron’s dad leading us in this crazy-awesome aerobic workout to prepare us to sit for 15-hours on our drive home.

at about 11 p.m. on sunday night we left the Mitchells and headed back to Utah. we went to Portland I started out in Dallin’s car, but I switched to Leah’s car where I stayed for most of the drive. somewhere in Oregon when I was in Dallin’s car, we saw Garrett get pulled over in the other car for speeding. at first he wouldn’t tell us how much his ticket was, but we knew it was more than Aaron’s. later we found out it was for $270 something!! I’m pretty sure he developed a fond hatred for Oregon after that.

I switched cars after we picked up Kenzie & Eliesa in Portland, and I’m super glad I did. not that I didn’t love the other car, I think we just had more fun. :) somewhere in the midst of our lack of sleep and frustration with being in a car for way too many hours, we (as in, me, Chantelly, Kenzie, Leah & Garrett) all got super loopy. well, Garrett wasn’t really that loopy. I think he was just annoyed with all of us and frustrated with the drive. but we played “would you rather” with the app on my iphone (looooooooove), “I have never…” (which turned into “I have…”, for some rounds) and MASH.  the “would you rather” app is kind of glitchy sometimes, but totally worth it when it works. the best one we encountered was “would you rather zip skin in your zipper or suck a fart out with a straw?” really, iPhone?! really?! are you really that insane that you would ask us this question?!? Garrett was the only one who said he’d rather suck the fart. he said it was because guys have zippers in very, urm, inconspicuous places. we told him it could be a jacket zipper or a zipper somewhere else, but he stuck to his first answer. we laughed so hard at that game. then our game of “I have never” just became a further manifestation of our loopyness, and became increasingly, um, sexual. I won’t go into exact details, but one of Garrett’s “I have never”s had to do with the fact that he had never touched female anatomy, followed by the statement that it was even truer because he was a c-section and a “booyah!” the hilarity of this question came from 1) Garrett’s excitement to get all of us out one point, 2) for the whole round before, he’d been saying how he had a really really good one, and 3) it was just totally random and out-of-the-blue so none of us were remotely expecting it. I couldn’t even tell you how long we laughed about that. also at one point during the drive, when most of us were falling asleep, someone had asked Garrett to “tell us a secret” (basically the theme of our trip all weekend). after thinking about it for like three minutes and after most of us were already half asleep, he responded with, “I have a friend that looks like a turtle.”

my conclusion of the weekend— it was long. it was beautiful. it was very, um, outdoorsy. it was GREAT weather. it was the most exhausted i’ve ever been in my life. it was fun and crazy and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawesome.

Music Tuesday: ohhhhhh boy, so we had like eight or nine Oregon trip theme songs, but "Somebody to Love" by Justin Bieber was prolly my fave. I hate how much I adore this song. it's super good and really addicting- I think Leah & listened to it like three or four times on repeat on the drive up. :)