Richardson Reunion

Richardson reunions have existed as long as I have been alive. It consists of a massive gathering of my mom's 10 siblings and their families. We haven't been able to make it to any reunions in a few years but this year they were honoring my mom so all of us Beck's made it a priority to come and support her. It was also Garrick's first experience with all of my extended family together. These reunions are legendary and have quite the rep, it was fun exposing that side of our family to him. What typically happens at these reunions is the Beck family gravitates towards each other-only because we love each other so much!

Carrie let me try on her baby carrier, Mary and I got up close and personal!

Hanging out in the parents bedroom

Aunt Amy rocked the planning of the reunion and created the theme of Olympics. So we were each assigned country and competed against one another in different events. To my surprise Garrick got really involved and was volunteering for nearly all of the events! Here he and Kayla are competing in the hula  hoop contest. 

During the events that Garrick wasn't participating in, the beck boys created their own challenges and competed against one another. 

This is a pretty epic picture of Garrick.

Garrick teamed up with little Jay for the balloon toss, they actually made it pretty far!

Here's the whole Richardson clan!

Garrick and I were on team Chile with Aunt Margie (the best team)

The Beck clan

My sweet mother couldn't pass up the opportunity to get an updated family picture!

The highlight of the reunion was the night dedicated to mom's life. Each family prepared a skit from an event of mom's life. Dad was in charge of our skit and we recreated his proposal story, it was adorable! Then each of mom's siblings and kids all prepared a little speech about how much we love it. It was so sweet and I was bawling through the whole thing. I have the best mom in the world. 

Here dad is proposing to mom for the second time!

I just love my family so much!

Bits of Summer

Here are more bits and pieces of our summer!

Garrick took a much deserved backpacking trip to King's Peak in July. We backpacked 30 miles in 2 days!! I would've died...But he fell in love with backpacking and has been trying to get me to go ever since. His pictures are breathtaking!

Over the summer we've been able to spend a lot of time with the Beck clan. We've gone to the Mapleton house countless times (mainly to do free laundry) and it's been so nice hanging out with everyone. Recently we celebrated cow appreciation day by getting free Chick-Fil-A at BYU. Last year we all went together but Garrick was at drill so it was much more fun having him with us!

Here we are getting ready to float the Provo river. Garrick is taking our picture, he was very much a part of this experience we shared. For some reason we chose a cool summer day to float the very freezing water. To make matters worse, we were impatient and didn't blow up our tubes enough so we were in the water more than we would've liked. Poor Garrick was a gentleman and took the smallest tube which resulted in his entire body, sans his arms and thighs, immersed in the freezing mountain water. I have never seen him cold but his entire body was shaking the whole way down! After a pretty miserable hour down the river we all decided we had had enough and walked the rest of the way. This was the second time Garrick and I had braved the cold river and floated down, both experiences have been disappointing. So my conclusion is that floating the river really isn't fun at all, it's just extremely cold!

One of the items on my summer to do list was fly kites. I had gone 22 years without having flown a kite before so I was so excited to finally do it. We went with our "little brother" Tommas and it was so fun! We went on a pretty windless day so we did a lot of running around to keep the kite flying but it was awesome. We became pretty pro kite runners, it'll definitely be an activity we do again!

I've decided UVU is a pretty awesome school, Garrick has always thought so and I'm now on board. This summer they played movies in their courtyard every Thursday. Not just any movie but new movies! All the movies we had been waiting to come to the dollar theater they played! And to make it even better they had FREE movie snacks! Like I said, I'm a fan. I hope they do this again next year!

Garrick and I had another family camping trip with his mom and all of 7 of his siblings at Pine View Reservoir.  The lake was hands down the best part, the water was so warm and it had a real beach which was awesome. We ran to the grocery store for supplies and had to get the 25 cent ice cream cones!

Another fun summer event that happened was my good friend Christina got married! These girls were my freshmen roomies and we've been friends ever since. It's so fun now that we're all married and can get together with our hubbies!

Yellowstone National Park

This summer we went on our very first Gaffney family vacation to Yellowstone! It was a little stressful to plan on Garrick's part since he had the MCAT leading up to it. But it ended up being a pretty great trip! We camped, talked, played games, and saw the sites. Yellowstone was beautiful, I wasn't sure if I would be able to get Garrick to leave! He was so in love with the place. We went at the very beginning of the summer so everything was super green and there were so many animals out! I was pretty nauseous through the whole trip but being outside seemed to really help! I'm so glad I married someone who loves the outdoors and makes camping a priority. It's been so fun to experience so much beauty!

Anniversary Getaway

Fist pumps for taking the MCAT!

While Garrick was studying for the MCAT I asked what was one thing we wanted to do to celebrate. His response was all you can eat crab legs. Of all the things he could've said, crab legs was all he wanted. Around this same time we had also decided that we would postpone celebrating our anniversary until the MCAT was behind us. So Vegas was our solution to celebrate everything! Since Garrick was busy studying I was in charge of planning this trip. The first thing we did when we got there was sit down at a casino buffet with all you can eat crab legs. We ate until Garrick's tummy was good and full! (We paid quite a bit of money for the buffet and while it was fun to splurge, we definitely didn't think it was worth it.) The next thing I had planned was a list of sites to see on the strip. Garrick had only been to Vegas for brief visits and had never experiences the strip so I was happy to show him the sites! 

My all time favorite part of the strip is the Bellagio fountains. Beautiful fountain shows during the day and night were magical. The highlight was when they played a Celine Dion song, I almost cried it was so beautiful!! It was definitely Garrick's favorite part as well, we were both mesmerized and watched several shows. It was fun taking in the whole experience. We did everything on my list except gamble of course ;)

During this time my morning sickness had kicked in and eating at the buffet only made the day harder for me. I had done the strip before so I was confident that being pregnant wouldn't be an issue. But after walking up and down the entire strip things started to go south.Towards the end of the night we ran out of water and no where on the strip can you get water! It was baffling! No water in sight. So I was dehydrated and my body was extremely tired. We had on going to the old Vegas strip right after we had finished the main strip but I couldn't last another minute so we decided call it a night.  Heading back to the car, we discovered we had walked in a large circle and didn't know how to get back to the car. It was then that I broke down in tears. Hot, tired, thirsty, and nauseous; I just couldn't handle it anymore.

Garrick being the incredible husband that he is, sat me down and ran to find water. Once I was able to rest and drink water I was able to make it back to our car. I happened to be wearing my fitness tracker that day and discovered that we had walked over 13 miles!! No wonder I was so cranky. He was so sweet and took such good care of me. I felt so guilty for not making it to our final stop of the night but he kept saying how much fun he had, how tired he was (I know that was a lie)  and that we would be back to do it another time. He definitely cheered me up.

Well since I had been in charge of planning I figured that getting a hotel wouldn't be worth it since we would be on the strip so late and would be leaving early the next morning. My brilliant solution was to sleep in the car at the closest rest stop. I'm cheap and I know it. Garrick, not complaining once about my sleeping solution, hopped on the interstate and started driving until we found a rest stop. There was just one problem with my plan. There was no rest stops. We had been driving for an hour with no rest stops in sight. Garrick was growing in patient and I was getting emotional again. My plan for the next day was to visit the Hoover Dam which was an hour and a half away. Garrick decided to just drive to the Hoover Dam since we had no other solutions. Just outside of the Dam was one casino/hotel, and across the street from it was a dirt parking lot with semi trucks parked to sleep through the night. This was our only option. So we pulled in to the lot, laid our backseat down and tried to sleep. It was hot, uncomfortable and neither of us slept. It was a pretty awful night. We got up early the next morning, drove across the street to the hotel, and used their lobby bathroom to brush teeth and freshen. 

Tired and cranky we headed to the Hoover Dam. To our surprise, it was beautiful! Neither of us had been before so we didn't have any expectations, but we were happily surprised. We spent a couple hours walking around, reading the monuments, and enjoying the view. It was the perfect ending to our semi-disastrous trip. 

On the drive back we talked about our highlights from the trip and overall it was pretty great! I had my stress-free husband with me to experience a fun new adventure. What more could I ask for? We can laugh now about that horrible night's sleep as well as my break down on the strip. I am, however, suspended from planning future trips for awhile...