I haven't posted much for quite some time which means I now have quite a few things to post about. And I've got lots of pictures because (da da da da!) I got a new camera!!! Yay!! I'm excited. :) The occasion upon which I got my new camera: my 21st birthday!!!!

I got lots of really cool presents. I am so spoiled!!! Most of them are pictured below. The picture of the camera on the box is silver but it is actually pink! :)

My birthday was on a Sunday so we played a nice reverent game of croquet after eating a delicious chicken cordon bleu dinner made by my mom.

Take a moment to notice the color in this picture of Casey playing croquet. I didn't even edit it! I am quite pleased with the quality of pictures captured with my little pink camera.

The monday after my birthday we made a trip to Hatch for some calf branding. It's always fun to gather with the family and work with the cows. Kinda smelly but still very enjoyable.

Casey joined in the project and got a taste of Heap family ranching. He did good for his first time branding! Better than me probably. I never seem to get it straight without a little help holding the iron on.

It's been quite a challenge finding a job in Cedar but Casey has been nice enough to let me wash windows with him. It's been fun working with him and we've had all sorts of adventures repelling out of windows, climbing tall ladders, and battling the creepy crawly window well dwellers. I snapped this picture of him washing the Graf cabin. It's been a good job to help me work on overcoming my fear of heights and spiders!

One of my favorite songs in Primary when I was little is the one that says,

Whenever I hear the song of a bird
or look at the blue blue sky
Whenever I feel the rain on my face
or the wind as it rushes by
Whenever I touch a velvet rose
or look at a lilac tree
I'm glad that I live in this beautiful world
Heavenly Father created for me.

I have been reminded of that song a lot in the last little while. I'm so grateful for the Earth!! And this is why....

Today as I walking into my house after church I noticed my mom's roses and had to grab my camera really quick. They are so pretty! We always have a beautiful yard thanks to my parents landscaping.



We've had several trips over Cedar Mountain and one day we stopped to take a picture at the Zion overlook.


One of the reasons for driving over the mountain was to travel to a new favorite bouldering area at Bunker Creek near Panguitch Lake. I really like climbing in the mountain area and the hike it takes to get there! I can't wait until Casey's fingers are better so he can climb with me. In the meantime he makes an excellent photographer I would have to say.

Another place we've climbed recently is American Fork Canyon. We went with Casey's little sister and Tommy and Bridget. It was a beautiful canyon with some fun climbing routes!

Of course I had to stop to take a picture of the wildflowers on the side of the trail. :)

On the same trip to northern Utah we found some time for a hike to the waterfall near my aunt and uncles cabin after washing the windows. It was incredible!!! So green and refreshing and amazingly beautiful!

Yesterday my little sister graduated from highschool. Soon she will going to school at Snow College and I'm going to miss her so much! Aubree is so much fun. I'm glad she's my sister. We have had so much fun growing up with our late night stuffed animal wars, kitchen dances with the table pushed to the side when no one else is home, doing hair for formals or just for fun, tennis trips, finger exercise videos, etc. I'm so glad she's my sister so I've had someone to be silly with. I think sisters make some of the best friends. I love you rB! :)

Last weekend we had a bridal shower for Miralva, my brothers fiance. We played a couple of fun games (I won the cutest little cereal boxes ever!) and had some really good food. My mom's family brought the most delicious salads and desserts. I was in heaven. :) It was so fun to spend time with the girls. I'm excited for June 20th when Mason and Miralva will be married! She is a sweetheart and it will be fun to have her in the family!

Once upon a time Casey and I were trying to think of something fun and different to do. An idea came to mind, we should design shirts to wear rock climbing! We bought some plain colored t-shirts at Wal-Mart and using fabric markers began what has become a favorite pasttime of ours. Since then we (joined by a few siblings) have designed several shirts using markers, bleach, and fabric spray paint. It's really quite fun! I've included a few pictures of some I've made. Mine are probably the least cool of the creations but I didn't have pictures of the others and I think they're still pretty cool.

For Christmas this year the girls in our family got tickets to Wicked so we had a girls weekend and went to see it right after my finals ended last weekend. It was kind of crazy getting all cleaned and moved out early enough to leave on Friday afternoon but it was so worth it! We had a blast!
The fun began with dinner at The Mayan. What a fun restaurant! We decided it reminds us a lot of the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland. It wasn't too hard to keep ourselves entertained during the wait for an available table.

We were so full afterwards as you can see from Shannon and Aubree's facial expressions below. :) It was delicious though! A very HUGE special thanks to Cherene for the meal!!! After dinner it was off to the Capitol Theatre for the show! It was amazing!!!! I was not disappointed even one tiny bit. The actresses voices were incredible and the girl who played Glinda was hilarious! I laughed so hard I cried at one part. It was especially funny during the song "Popular" because she was spazzing out and then when she threw her wand up in the air it got caught in the props! I guess you had to be there to experience the funniness but even the actresses started laughing and acted like they didn't know what to do for a minute. Finally Glinda just flopped on the bed and after recomposing themselves they went on with the show. I loved the plot and the clever script and the music and basically almost everything about it. Another HUGE special thanks to Cherene and Kris for the t-shirt and program!!

I think chandeliers are so pretty so I had to take a picture of this one...especially because it was hanging from a giant golf ball! Ok so it wasn't really a golf ball but it looked like one! You can sort of see it in the picture. It was hard to get a good picture with the lighting and everything.

After the show it was crazy with all the people trying to get out of the theatre so we went out the fire exit and ended up in this alley. It was a fun little shortcut!

I've been busy with finals, moving, cleaning, and job hunting so I have lots to post on! I only have a minute before Aubree and Cameron's choir concert this evening so I'll just start with pictures from Casey's birthday. I think I had more fun celebrating his birthday then if it was my own! It started with him opening a few presents at midnight and continued the rest of the day. I was so excited to give him the popup dinosaur book I ordered. My professor in my class for teaching reading showed us this book one day and immediately I thought of Casey. It's really cool with at least five dinosaur popups on each page and facts to go with each one! I think he liked it. :)

My mom and my little sister also helped me with a bouldering cake for him. It was quite amusing. It started out as a tunnel of fudge cake (so yummy!) that's made in a bundt pan so it's in sort of a donut shape. We then broke it into chunks which we tried to mold into boulders. The frosting for the cake is a kind you just drizzle over and the cake is really gooey so it was quite a tricky task getting it to look like something other than some handfuls of cake we threw on some tinfoil. The finished product turned out pretty good though I'd have to say! We even used some powdered sugar to make little holds with chalk on them. The pictures didn't turn out too great but you can sort of get an idea of what it looked like.

Casey's parents came down for the weekend and we went hiking at Red Cliffs in the morning. It was so pretty and hot! The water was icy cold so we weren't going to get in, but after we watched some highschoolers swimming through Casey and I couldn't resist! There were some fun little slides we went down as you can see in the video below. The water was freezing but it was fun!

We ate lunch in St. George and finished the day bouldering with the clan at Moe's Valley.