the hagerj's have done it again.

on thursday april 11th, jon and i left sunny san diego for equally as sunny st. george!! i decided to be rebellious and skip class on friday so that we could drive thursday and miss vegas traffic. 

(that is seriously rebellious for me. in the past 5 semesters i think i have missed a total of 6 classes. what whaaat)

the j's drove through the night as well so that their kidlets could sleep in the car. we woke up at my dads condo to jayden staring at our door waiting for us to get up! cutest child!

we headed straight to the pool to soak up the sun splashing around and playing tennis. it was actually kind of breezy, so we hung out in the hot tub and laid out too. jon and i did a work out class at the gym and i regretted in the whole weekend. my entire body was screaming non stop.

we had dinner at cafe rio, went to target to walk around and buy a swimsuit, and had dessert at menchies. 

on saturday we woke up and went straight to the outlets to shop. the boys found these terrible shirts and seriously wanted to buy them. if they hadn't been over $50, maybe i'd have considered it.

after shopping, we went out to climb around on the rocks. jayden loved being able to run everywhere and throw rocks around! he loved it so much he almost threw a rock at his moms head. i'm sure it was unintentional though.

jeno bought a st. george themed shirt at the outlets before we went hiking. he changed into it for the hike and said "i make a shirt mine by sweating in it." so gross. 

we decided to keep up the tradition and go to texas road house for dinner. it was disappointing though and we decided to cross it off our list of places to go. that's alright though because st. george is basically made up of restaurants so we have plenty other options to try out.
lynn and jeno love to talk about how nice everyone is in utah. when we got out of texas road house, someone had parked really crappy next to their car. when we saw it, we talked about what a jerk this person must have been. then we joked about the owner of the car running out and apologizing to us. he didn't. 

lynn and i started coloring our pictures at menchies the day before this. we took our drawings home and brought them back to finish them the next night so that we could hang them on the wall. we were very proud of our drawings. jayden's wasn't as good as ours, but he was proud of his as well. (just kidding. his was better than both of ours, i'm just putting him down to make myself feel better.)
when we left menchies, someone had parked like a jerk next to lynn and jeno again!!! we could not believe it because people in utah just don't do that. ( ;) )
before we could get too mad about this person, a girl and her friend ran out of menchies yelling "i'm so sorry!!" she was the one who parked next to them and she said she thought she was going to be in and out quick so that it wouldn't matter. she was very apologetic about how she had parked. how funny is that!! we had just been joking about that at texas road house. people in st. george are just so nice. i bet they don't have any worries like us regular folks do. :)

the next morning jon and i woke up and got breakfast at the clubhouse. it was a beautiful morning and a relaxing breakfast although it wasn't as good as kneaders was the day before. after breakfast, the 6 of us drove straight to vegas!

this little guy was such a dream the entire vacation. he sat in his car seat or stroller most of the time while the rest of us were having fun, and he had hardly any complaints. he even carried my stuff for me.

our favorite thing to do in vegas is to go drink all the coke's from around the world. lynn and jeno had never done this before and it was so funny seeing their reactions! jon and i would have a little sip of it and pass it to lynn who would have the tiniest sip ever. by the time it got to jeno there was always almost half a cup left. he was sick so no one could drink it after he tried it. he drank so much soda, haha! the other best thing was paying $11 for $2 worth of m&m's! the colors were soooo cuteee thoughhhh!

for lunch we went to margaritaville. seriously. margaritaville. the j's love that place, so we gave it a shot; most interesting restaurant ever. it's like an adult rain forest cafe. the burgers were awesome though, so i can't complain too much! 

immediately after lunch we walked at least a mile to new york, new york to ride the roller coaster. the j's went first while we watched the kids and then we went. don't do it! worst roller coaster ever! it hurt my entire body. head, neck, shoulders, even my fingers hurt after riding that ride. i've done it before and i swear i liked it last time. fortunately we got the tickets 2 for 1 as a military discount! it will be very sad when we can no longer rate a military discount (starting on saturday!! :(((! )

it took. so long. to get home that night. jon is such a trooper and drove the entire way. he said that it was the worst road trip in his entire life and i'm not sure he was kidding. 

the trip was a huge success!! we love hanging out with the j's so much and we are so sad to be moving to a different state as them. we are hoping to keep st. george as an annual tradition and also hoping they'll come visit us in texas! i can't believe that in 5 and a half weeks we will be official texan residents. i haven't come to terms with that yet. 

orange county and the orange balloon.

i worked through january and february at my seasonal job again. i really hope having these two jobs on my resume is worth the stress. i've been saying that i'm going to work there again for mother's day so that i can have a full year on my resume by the time we get to san antonio, but i just don't think that would be the best thing. we will see. 

i worked monday, tuesday, wednesday, and thursday nights while i had the two jobs. i had friday, saturday, and sunday off, but it was filled with homework since i am taking four classes and two of them are my final upper division graduation courses (aka: demanding!). I usually spent all day (all. day.) friday and sunday afternoon/evenings doing homework so that i could hang out with jon on saturday's. isn't there a song or something called working for the weekend? yep.

the first weekend in february, we finally went to the orange county great park balloon! amandie told me  about it long ago, and i've since seen the balloon from the freeway anytime we drive through orange county.

we went with this cute family! what's better than three j's? 

four j's.

it was a somewhat gloomy day. i was hoping to see the coast from the balloon, but it was too cloudy. nevertheless, it was beautiful up there.

 it made me quite queazy to look down, we were so high up! just when we thought we'd gone as high as we would, we'd go a little bit higher...
jon and i walked from one side of the balloon cart to the other, and it tipped the whole thing!

it was a great experience! and best of all, it was free. i even saw someone i knew there! one of amanda's good friends from huntington was there with her little one at a birthday party. small world.

the main reason for our weekend to orange county was to spend some time with these two! my cousin bev and her husband scott. we've been here for almost three years and the four of us haven't ever done anything together. we went to dinner at ristorante rumari in laguna beach (and went a little crazy with the desserts) then went to the irvine spectrum to ride the ferris wheel that i've also seen a dozen times from the freeway and wanted to ride! it was so much fun and we were grateful to bev for planning a fun night to entertain two tourists:)

 bev and scott have the funniest stories ever! they kept us laughing the whole night. 

after hanging out with the rice's, we went back to the j's and spent the night there. we had intended on watching a scary movie, but instead stayed up until 1am talking and catching up. we miss having them live only fifteen minutes away. before our drive home the next day, we went to eat at 50/50. that's a hamburger with 50% ground beef in the patty and 50% bacon. we drove home feeling fat and happy, which is usually the case after hanging out with lynn and jeno, and i am not complaining.