[.so what? maybe I'm a little OCD.]

I have always known this about myself, but have come to the conclusion that this little obsession may be somewhat out of hand.  Well, actually I know it's out of hand when I look forward to working my night shift at paces just to have my drink!  Let me explain, and you tell me, OCD or just crazy?

I get to work, wash my hands and fill my normal cup half way full with the best crushed ice and water.
I drink it all.
Get a 12 oz "kiddy" cup and fill it half full of ice.
Then I proceed to cover that ice with vanilla, so that it soaks perfectly into the crushed ice.
After that, I take one bite of ice with just vanilla on it.
(Oh I know, sounds disgusting, but it's probably my favorite part)
Once I've eaten my one piece of ice I fill the cup 3/4 with Diet Dr. Pepper.
And because I can't go all diet I finish it up with 1/4 regular Dr. Pepper.
Then I take a spoon and eat my drink.
...Do not bother me, I'm in heaven!...
Once I'm done with my bit of perfectness I throw away the cup and spoon and get some more water..


I realized how absolutely ridiculous this was of me when I once asked my slave friend Sarah (whom was up front and not so busy) to get me my drink.


Oh you better believe she got me my drink alright.
I took only half a sip,
"Sarah!? Is this diet?"
"Serious Ken?  Okay fine, give it back!"
(I hand her my drink, she fills it and hands me my drink again)
"Thanks my love!"
(I take another sip of my diet dp)
"Sarah?  Did you put vanilla in it?"
"Are you kidding me Kendra?  No, give it back and I"ll put some in, but only because I love you and want to make you happy!"
She took my drink again and added the vanilla.
I seriously almost went up front and made it myself because the vanilla went in after the soda, and wasn't able to soak into the ice.
But I didn't want to seem that crazy.
So I kindly and sarcastically said, "thank you slave" and went back to work attempting to try and love my only somewhat perfectness.
Crazy?
I don't think so, just something to keep me happy through the night when working with idiots my lovely paces people.

[.g-mas & g-pas.]

This last weekend was finally a little laid back.  We went to my g-ma and g-pa Hamblin's to celebrate my cousins birthday and have a BBQ.  Quite honestly I think we have hamburgers about 80% of the  nights during the summer.  Seriously this is how the conversation goes, "what we gonna plan for dinner?" ... "Oh let's just have a BBQ and have hamburgers and hot dogs."  Not to mention working at Paces 2 nights a week doesn't add any variety.  So yes, there are a TON of BBQ's.  Anyway, Lance and I ended up staying with Jake and Jenna talking with the g-parents for a few hours.  Around 10:00 we decided to go bowling.  Can I just say, that I am becoming absolutely horrible at bowling.  I at least used to have some luck and would break 100!  Now it just seems that my ball is magnetically attracted to that dang gutter.  I'm pretty sure I finally broke 100 half way through the second game!  Sheesh!  Once we all finished our games we went to get ice cream and red box.  We ended up renting The Karate Kid to go back to the house and watch.  But really, we were all too tired and just wanted to go to bed.
The  next day Lance and I made it to church for once (in a couple months).  Lance and I decided that since the 6th absent week is usually considered the in-activation mark we probably should go since we were actually able to this time.  I kinda feel bad that each time we come back all the teachers rave about how much they love it when we are there.
Is it really that bad when we aren't?
But then it also makes me feel good to know that we are at least wanted/needed/loved by the nursery.

After church we went up to my parents to mooch some food and mooch their washer and dryer, then headed to my other g-ma and g-pa Neilson's to visit and talk to my uncle Griff.  The one thing (out of the many) that I look forward to when going to their house on Sunday's is that my gma always makes everyone a shake of their choice.  I always just choose to have a chocolate shake and love it every time!  We ended up staying a few hours chatting.  Usually when leaving their house I'm stocked up on some sort of fruit or vegetable (grapefruits, strawberry jam, cucumbers, etc.), this time I was handed a huge back of sugar snap peas! Mm!!  Except instead of leaving with them this time, I sat and ate almost the whole bag before we left!  They invited Lance and I to go to Taggarts Grill with them tonight, I've never heard of it but I must say I am very excited!

[.if.]

if I was a season, I’d be fall

if I was a piece of furniture, I'd be a bed

if I was a country, I'd be Europe

if I was a food, I'd be a homemade roll

if I was a flower, I'd be a plumeria 

if I was a song, I'd be a love song

[or one everyone could dance to]

if I was an instrument, I'd be a grand piano

if I was a color, I'd be white

if I was a letter, I'd be I

if I was a book, I'd be a bibliography

if I was a time of day, I'd be dawn

if I was a drink, I'd be a piña colada 

if I was a holiday, I'd be Independence Day

if I was a store, I'd be Steve Madden

if I was a word, I'd be unique

if I was a person, I’d be me

if I could know the future, I'd want to know that all my family is happy

[.Richens Ranch.]

Only having to work one day last week was SO nice!  Right after Vegas on Wednesday, Lance and I packed up to head to Arcadia, UT on Friday.  Some of my family owns a ranch in the city of Arcadia called The Richens Ranch this is where we go for our Richens Reunion.  I took about 300 pictures, but those will be emailed to me later.  So for now, it's just a boring ole post.
___________________________________
We left around 2:00 Friday afternoon thinking we'd beat traffic.  Well, we beat it alright, but others were causing it going extremely slow (and by slow I mean going the speed limit while in the "fast" lane and having all other lanes going the [exact] same speed so you can't pass their butts).  Lance and I are both very bad at trying to be patient with other drivers, if you couldn't tell.  Put us together in one car around annoying drivers and you've got yourself a show!  But I must admit, when I have such road rage I laugh about it, because I think it's much better to laugh than be upset and let it ruin your day.  Lance it slightly different than me in that area, he gets mad, then I think it's funny so I laugh even more.  At one point Lance looked at me and told me that he needed a  stress ball, I told him to grab my forearm and start squeezing!  So he did!
We actually made it to the Ranch quite quickly, just in time to make the rounds to go say hi to everyone.  I have to say, sadly, that this was probably the first year I actually remembered who people were and how I was related.  All these years I always thought my 2nd cousins were uncles, and never knew (or really cared) how all 200 of us were considered relatives, I just knew we all always got together once a year.  So this year I tried to make it a goal to remember the relationships.  Out of the 200, I remembered about 15 of them this time.  I guess it'll just take more practice and more  years.
That night, Tracy, Jenna, Jake, Braydon, Lance and I played phase 10 before going to bed.  

Saturday morning Lance, Jake and Braydon played catch out in the fields.  Jenna and I went out to play a little later.
Every year at the reunion they host an auction to make money to help pay for the next years reunion.  So we sat at the auction for a while.  During the auction we found two of the cutest puppies, and we fell in love!  Afterward, there is a huge lunch where everyone brings one thing then we all eat like heathens.
Once lunch was over, we rested for a bit.  Then all families got together to play a big softball game.
It was hot and fun, and we all drank a couple gallons of ice water I'm sure.
Later, we went with Jake and Jenna on a hike to watch the sunset before we had to leave the next day.  We were going to try and watch the sunrise as well, but ya know, that's just way to early to get up while on vacation.  So the sunset it was.  We hiked up to the top of the hill and walked over to a pond (probably like a mile-ish away from camp).  When we got to the pond there were misquitos ev-ery-where!  So we started walking back and watched the sunset along the way.  On our way back we realized that we could hear the music playing from our camp.  Yeah, so loud that we could hear it that far away!  But that just means that dancing and karaoke had started.  As we were walking Lance noticed a ginormous snake!  To me.. he was ginormous!  That only made us get back even faster.  

We went into the pavilion and danced along to all the songs.  A little later, I noticed that my step mom Tracy and boy cousin Tracy were doing some karaoke.  When Dixie Chicks came on I braved up enough to go sing into the mic.  Actually I didn't really have to brave up, I was already hyper enough to just take the mic and start singin'.  Jenna joined in with me, then once the chorus came along Jake and Lance joined as well.  It was fun making up our own appropriate lyrics when we didn't know the words.
After a late night, we went back to the trailer ready for bed!  We woke up, packed up our stuff, said bye to all our relatives and headed home.

[.What happens in Vegas.]

Sunday morning Lance and I packed up to head to Vegas for a few days with some friends.  Doug and Britt came to pick us up and we were going to meet Jill and Andy at the airport.  Once we arrived the lady at Flamingo offered to give us a discount for upgraded rooms.  She mentioned they had jetted showers.  Oh what the heck, why not, it's Vegas right?  So we went up to our room and I thought it was the coolest thing ever.  But I'm somewhat of a nerd that way.  By the way they "jetted showers" were pretty much a light spray to the back, not that great, but oh well...  Anyway, the mirror in the bathroom had a television on it!  I immediately turned it on to try it out.  The coolest part I thought, was that the bathroom had frosted "walls", it was just that frosted transparent looking glass stuff.  And even better was that the bathroom had pink lights so the whole room glowed pink.
yes i know, a nerd.
but I did take pictures for who knows why

the bathroom even had a Jesus sink.

the windows were pretty cool as well and had switches to open up the curtains.

of course.. the big screen
and definitely of course...the Finals on the big screen

The first night we all went to Margaritaville

 Lance and I enjoying our food!

andy&jill

doug&britt
___________________


The next day we spent a lot of time in the sun!
Our pool was awesome!  Good music and chairs to layout everywhere

 

andy.doug.lance
Our "macho" men

 the view of our hotel from the pool
_______________________


We also did some gambling!  What's Vegas without it right?  Well we spent a fair share in those dang casinos!  Actually one of the days we were [all] able to get onto a black jack table and all spent a good 5 hours there!  It was probably my most favorite parts of the trip.  Except for one drastic moment...when.. I went to put our $150 winnings into my purse, and lo'n'behold, I lost my purse! Yeah..I know!  That's what I'm good for right!?  I left it in Wyoming once before, what difference is a casino, in Vegas?  Oh yeah, that's right Kendra, it's VEGAS!!!  As my stomach dropped I anxiously looked at Lance..he had that look of, "are you bleeping, bleepedy bleep bleepin me!"  All of us stopped playing to look around the table when the dealer asked what we were looking for.  Well, I really lucked out.
One of the hostess ladies from Bosnia asked, 
"iz eet black with a 'Gee' on it?"
"Aahh!! Yes!! That would be it!"
"A man came and gave eet to mee about tree hours ago!"
"Good, crap!  3 hours!?  I hope it still has everything in it"
"Fahllow diz man, he will take you to Lost and Found"
My heart was racing.
I was heating up as I walked down a flight of stairs, turned the corner and came to a desk with a glass window and a small opening.  I saw my purse sitting behind a man.  He asked,
"Can I see some form of identification to verify that this is your purse?"
"uh..it's in my purse.....go ahead and look"
As he was looking I filled out some paper work to show that it was just lost and not actually stolen.
the man: "Okay, I see this is you, here is your purse ma'am."
I quickly searched through it to make sure everything was there and went back on my way to the table.
A good 20 minutes later I hear the Bosnia lady say..
"You SOH luhcky"
I looked at her and laughed then said, "Very! Thank you so much."
_______________

Besides that, we also walked the strip a few times.  Luckily our hotel was on the strip so we didn't end up needing any rental car.  Which would have been a pain anyway, because have you seen the traffic on that street?  But I did ride in a cab for my first time ever on our way to lunch at the Rio.

jill.andy.me.lance

walking the strip

this picture was taken right before we saw some drunken man's bum.

All I have to say..I'm glad I was walking behind him!

 

The last night we to dinner at Planet Hollywood -definitely the best buffet to eat at in Vegas- and stayed up pretty late hittin' the penny slots.  On our way out Lance felt like putting in one dollar on a Deal or No Deal dollar slot, pulled the handle and won us a good $40!  I think total we probably won about $400, but the rest is history.

 
~Thanks Doug and Britt for some of the pics,
and the invite~

[.wanted.]

my brain has decided to disappear on me
reward for anyone who finds it

thanks

[.New Grad.]

On Thursday Jake graduated from Layton High!

Be prepared for quiet a few pictures!

Cortnie and I waiting for Jake to walk.

We pretty much talked the entire time, and looked at all the names to look for ones we thought were cute and ones that were kinda funny.

Layton High's Class of 2010

So proud he got his diploma!

then realized it was empty!

Jake with Grandma and Grandpa Rose

Jake with Gma and Gpa Neilson

and with Gma and Gpa Hamblin

Braydon and Jake. Only 6 more years for Brayd! Only!

Dad, Brayd and...Isaac?

Tracy, Cort, Me, Dad and Brayd

Mom, me, Jake, Kevin and Ike

We all went to Olive Garden afterwards.  We all told stories about Jake growing up and some people gave speeches.  But we all had fun and laughed pretty much the entire time.

Congrats Jake we are proud of you!

Jake's Grad Video

(I'm hoping this link works)