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While we were on our trip, Braxton turned the big 2-5! We were lucky enough to be able to spend it with his family in Ames and have a great day with them. We started the day off right with some breakfast pizza from Casey's, which I crave on the regular. I ate mine so quickly that I didn't get the chance to take a picture of it, but just imagine: pizza (already delicious) but with a light layer of cheesy sauce and then topped with scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, and more cheese. It's delicious.

Braxton and Honey celebrated in style. (Neither of them liked it much, to be honest.)

Later that night Steve made us a big family dinner of steaks and dutch oven fries. He made Brax what was literally the biggest steak I had ever seen someone eat in my entire life. 30 oz.  It was huge. And B amazingly ate the whole thing!

Here it is next to a strawberry for comparison. 

We finished the night off with some cupcakes and bowling for a very happy birthday boy. :)

July

Oh, is July over? And it's been a month since I blogged about anything? Weird. I guess I've been a little too busy doing this:

Just kidding- we really have gone out and done things besides just hanging out on our couch singing to our food. (Although, I don't think that L.L. is bad company to be in. Just sayin'.) Let's start at the beginning.

Early in the month the Huang family, who Brax taught and baptized on his mission came out to visit Utah for a week, and we got to spend the day giving them a little tour of B.Y.U. Plus, it was a great chance for Brax and I to practice our Chinese! (They actually asked me if I spoke any Chinese. Embarrassingly enough, I've tried to learn a little bit, and all I can ever remember is the number two. So luckily their English is much better than my Mandarin.)

The Huang Family- Cherry, Louise, and Henry. 

Their daughter, Cherry, is going to be a senior this year, so we even got to ride around campus on a golf cart with a guide from Admissions. Personally, I think Brax and I gave a better tour than our zoobie guide, but every time I was walking across campus as a student and saw one of those golf carts, a little part of me was dying for a ride, so it was good to finally fulfill that dream.

(Excuse the baldy in the middle of the picture- its even more impossible
to take a classy selfie while riding on the back of a golf cart)

The next week, we decided there would never be a better time than right then to go on a trip and visit our families! We had been thinking about it for a while, and realized it would probably be an even longer while before we would both have as many days off together as we did. So we packed up the car and headed out for about 15 hours of this:

(This picture actually makes it seem even better than it is in real life. It's rough.)

It was a long drive, but Brax was a great sport and we made it to the blessed land of Iowa in record time! We spent the first few days in Ames for some quality Excell time and lots of trips down memory lane for B. He went through all of his boxes of things from his mission and downsized so that we could bring it home with us.

The glory that is an Iowa cornfield.

Then we headed up to the Cities for a few days to hang out with my family- which was basically us touring around town during the day when they were all working and then seeing them for dinner. (Which is to be expected when you tell them the day before you're leaving that you're coming out, to be fair.) But we did get to go see a lot of the sights that I hadn't taken Braxton to before, since we've never been out when the weather's warm enough to spend much time outside.

 The White Sox just happened to be playing the Twins at home while we were there, so we got to go with the family as a part of Braxton's Ostler birthday celebration. Normally we have to make bets on these games and try to find them streaming on the internet somewhere, so it was great to be able to see our two rival teams go at it in person! (I lost the bet by the way. So instead of Brax watching the next season of the Bachelor with me, I'll be wearing his Sox shirt to school when we have a sports day this year.)

We decided that for the vacation we wouldn't worry about eating healthily-- there's just too much good food in the Midwest that we can't ever get in Utah! I couldn't even get pictures of all of it- but here are some of the highlights:

Top: Red Cow in Mpls- Brax got the 60/40 burger topped with onion rings AND bbq pork. I got the "Breakfast Burger" which had a fried egg, bacon, cheese, and peanut butter on sourdough. Sounds weird, tastes delicious.
Bottom: Eating a huge cheeseburger in Ames with the girls; sushi- which I totally eat now sometimes; and a cookie from Insomnia Cookies in Dinkytown- the picture is blurry and the cookie is half eaten because it was just THAT good.