Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends

Last week was a crazy week. It all started with Girl's Camp on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I'm the Girl's Camp director in my ward this year, so I was in charge of planning activities and food for our ward (about 8 girls total) and then just generally making sure no one died or got into cat fights while at camp. I was pretty stressed out about it for a few months, trying to pull everything together and although it was a complete blast, I'm definitely glad that it's over and there will be less stress in our lives.

When Gio came up to Camp Mia Shalom (about an hour and a half south of Provo) to pick me upon Thursday around noon, he told me that his cousins had decided to go camping in Yellowstone for the weekend, and wondered if we wanted to come with them. Heck Yeah!! Since all our camping gear was already in the Jeep it only took us about an hour to shower and grab food stuffs and we were on the road. We did have a couple stops on the way to the Interstate and one of them was to Emergency Essentials in Orem (right next to Deseret Book) to buy some MREs. If you've never heard of these, they are the military rations (Meals-Ready-to-Eat). They come in a little packet and you pretty much just heat them up and chow down. And let me tell you, they are actually really tasty and extremely handy if you are going backpacking, camping, or just taking a day hike and don't want to pack bulky food or sandwiches that will inevitably get squished. We've even eaten them cold when we didn't have a fire going. You can buy the packet that warms them up, but we figured we didn't need to spend the extra money. If you're interested in trying them, they're only $1.95 each and we're pretty partial to the Beef Stew (AMAZING), the Chicken and Dumplings, the Cheese Tortellini, the Chili with Beans (kind of spicy), and the Filled French Toast, but there are several others to try!

Since we were so close, we decided to run over to Barnes and Noble to grab a map of Idaho as that was the direction we would be traveling. While Gio was examining the maps, I snuck away under the guise of needing to use the restroom so that I could surprise Gio with Coldplay's new album, Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends. He definitely was surprised as I popped it in upon hitting the interstate. This album turned out to be the perfect soundtrack to our Yellowstone adventure and I highly recommend it to everyone. This new album is, to say the least, epic, as are the Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Forests. We both agreed that this album helped us appreciate the grand beauty of the area and helped this trip become the most incredible impromptu road trip thus far in our young lives. When we get pictures onto the computer, I will expound on the awesomeness of our Yellowstone adventure.