America's Favorite Pastime

BASEBALL..... more specifically Bees Baseball. 

For the 24th of July holiday, my single's ward went to the Bees game last night. Baseball may be America's favorite pastime but it sure has never been mine. I can easily count the number of baseball games I have ever been to  

1 Braves game

4 BYU baseball games

and 5 Bees games. 

As you can see I've been to lots of games : ) 

(and I have never willingly watched or followed the games on t.v.) 

Although it rained almost the entire game, it ended up being a lot of fun and I even learned a thing or two about baseball. I may have to watch more games in the future... just maybe. 

I absolutely LOVE fireworks, which is the main reason I went to the game!

Happy late Pioneer Day Utah!!!

New addition

Yesterday was a joyous day. Morgan Catherine Lincoln moved into our house. Morgan is my sister, Raye Ann's freshman roommate and she will be living at our house for the next few months as she does her student teaching. Many adventures are sure to come with the new addition to our home.

Also she has hair extensions with real human hair. They kind of freak me out a little 

An ending and a beginning

I know I'm a bit behind with the blogging world but I just had to write about July 14/15.

The Ending: Harry Potter 7 pt 2.

I have never been obsessed with Harry Potter but it has definitely been a big part in my life.I have so many great memories of Harry Potter throughout my life.

-I remember sitting in the car waiting for the bus as a 7 year old while my mom read me and my sister the first Harry Potter book every morning. And then reading to us again when the 2nd book came out.

-I remember reading the books by myself for the first time and realizing my mom had edited some choice words and scary parts out.

-I remember seeing the first few movies and my mom would bring my niece who is 10 years younger than I am. I remember I would be scared and freaking out while my niece was perfectly content and enjoying her popcorn.

-I remember sitting on the front porch of our house in Virginia waiting for the mailman to deliver the 5th book and he made fun of me when he saw how excited I was for the package.

-I remember sitting in the front room of our house here in Utah reading the 6th book all in one day and crying while reading a book for the first time as I read about Dumbledore's death.

-I remember going to see the 6th HP movie for my 18th birthday with two of my best friends. And yes we did dress up and act like idiots the whole night. It was my first midnight premiere ever.

-I remember going to a Harry Potter dance my freshman year at BYU with my favorite girls from the dorms.

- I remember the best/worst day of my life. I woke up at 3am in the morning to take a night bus to Leichester Square to sit around in the freezing cold and rain for 18 hours for the HP 7 pt 1 World Premiere in London. I remember seeing Draco Malfoy and Neville in real life and realizing how attractive they both are. I also remember stealing signs and parts of the red carpet :) For more on this amazing day see this blog post.

-I remember going and seeing HP7 pt1 for the first time with my sister and Olivia at the Odeon Theatre where the stars actually go and see the movie.

- I remember seeing HP 7 pt 2 for the first time with my family at 7pm July 14 for my birthday then again at midnight with some of my favorite London friends.

July 14th was also a beginning because it was my BIRTHDAY!!!!  My 20th birthday to be exact. It feels so great to no longer to be in my teens.  

So here's to being 20....to a new beginning, a new decade, and to new adventures!

Making my birthday wish :)

Sweden

For the final week of our trip, we were in Stockholm, Sweden for my dad's meeting. I absolutely LOVED Stockholm. Stockholm is made up of 14 islands and has a archipelago made up of over 30,000 islands. So pretty much there is a LOT of water.

These lovely ladies had two suitcases  full of rats.... and they were in our train cabin from Copenhagen to Stockholm.

This is the Royal residence of the Swedish Royal family. The Crown Princess and her personal trainer husband live in another palace though. I've been surprised by the palaces and castles in Scandinavia. They are surprising ugly, plain and fake. Nothing is real and very few of the pieces are even copies of originals.

We got to tour City Hall where they have the Nobel Peace Prize banquet each year.

Um, someone is about to lose their bike.

We went to the Vasa Museum. The Vasa was Sweden's largest warship from the 1600's. It set sail in 1628 and capsized within 20 minutes, never even making it out of the harbor. It sat in the harbor, completely forgotten until it was salvaged in the 1950's. 

Skansen is the Europe's first open air museum.

I love roller coasters so we went to the Tivoli Amusement Park and went on the craziest ride I've ever been on. The rides name is INSANE which describes it perfectly.

The swings have always been my favorite : )  Swinging over the water was crazy though.

Our last day in Stockholm we took an 11 hour cruise through the archipelago. It was beautiful day with incredible sights.

Overall, we had an amazing 3 weeks in Scandinavia. In 24 days we went to 7 countries, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Russia, Finland and Sweden. Out of every day of our travels, we spent all but 4 days on the water in some way or another. 

Denmark

Ever since I saw the movie The Prince and Me years ago I have been dying to go to Denmark, and I finally made it there. Sadly I did not meet and fall in love with the Prince. ( He is actually not attractive and is married with three kids. )

After our cruise we stayed in Copenhagen, Denmark for two days. It was an adventurous and busy two days. We did a little bit of everything while in Denmark. We went to palaces, churches, art museums, river cruises, amusement parks, and squatter villages.

Bertel Thorvalsen is a famous Danish sculptor. Mormons all know his most famous work but have probably never heard his name. Ever seen this statue before?!..... (sorry it's small)

Yup, that is the original Christus.


There is also a museum in Copenhagen at the Christianborg Palace containing many of Thorvaldsen's works, collections and his grave.

We went shopping along the famous Storget.... so many shops, so little time...

This car says "Pink my Ride". I want someone to pink my ride :)

Nyhaven is the harbor front in Copenhagen. It is lined by brightly colored 17th and early 18th century townhouses.  Hans Christian Andersen lived in one of these for a number of years.

Amalienborg Palace is the current royal residence. There was a lovely little exhibit showing royal gowns from the past 100 years. There was also an exhibit on the royal Christening of the new royal twins.

Hans Christian Andersen is probably the most famous Dane. The statue on the right is of him while the statue on the left is the famous Danish statue The Little Mermaid. This statue was commissioned in honor of Andersen's children's story, The Little Mermaid, which then was turned into one of my favorite Disney movies, The Little Mermaid.

Rosenborg Castle just outside of Copenhagen houses the crown jewels. Nothing can even compare to the British crown jewels, so these seemed quite unimpressive.

I found some Strawberry white Magnum bars........ SOOO delicious!

We hiked to the top of this church. As you can see, the spiral staircase is on the outside of the church. The moment we reached the top is probably one of the scariest moments of my life. ok, not really, but it was pretty scary. It was incredible windy and the point at the top is so thin. I started getting dizzy and refused to stand there and take a ton to pictures like my dad wanted.

From the top we could see the squatter village Chistiania. This is a "freetown." The residents have set up there own rules independent of the Danish government. You aren't allowed to take pictures and that was ok with me. The main street was called Pusher Street.... you can buy hash and a bunch of other drugs there. I hated every minute I was there. The whole place smelled like weed. GROSS. 

Tivoli Gardens is the oldest Amusement Park in all of Europe. I love roller coasters and was incredible excited to go on the rides. Sadly within minutes of getting into the park, a torrential downpour began. I have never seen so much rain. We dashed into Wagamama for some dinner to get out of the rain. By the time dinner was done the rain had slowed a bit but it was still raining pretty hard as we heading back to the hotel. Sadly this was our last night in Copenhagen so we didn't have the chance to go back to the park another day.

The next morning we went to the train station to head to Sweden. The train station in Copenhagen is multi-level and the bottom level of the station was completely flooded from the rain the night before. The water level was half way up the stairs to the main level. This shut down the entire station and caused us to have even more transportation problems. We had to take a local bus about 30 stops to the airport and catch a train there.

Traveling can be a lot of fun but the unexpected adventures sure do make things a lot more interesting. Some say that's why they hate traveling, but over the past few years I've learned to enjoy these little adventures because they always lead to some great memories.

Cruising the Baltic

Our trip started a little unexpectedly......Within an hour of boarding the cruise ship we heard an announcement over the intercom for Raye Ann and Keith Blauer to come down to the guest services immediately...... Um, yeah.... Out of a thousand people on board they called those two. A hundred different scenarios started running through all of our heads as to why they could possible want to talk to them and  it turns out they dropped a piece of our luggage into the ocean!!!!!!! Yeah, we never expected that one! Turns out it was the suitcase that had my dad's snoring machine in it and of course the machine was destroyed. Not a good thing when you have to share a room with him for the next 9 days. The cruise directors had to call a shop and they drove for a hour to get to the port with a new $1,500 machine with 10 minutes left before we left port!!

The first day of the cruise was spent in Berlin, Germany! On our guided tour we pretty much just passed by all the cool sights while stopping to take pictures with a few such as the Berlin wall, check point charlie and some palaces.

 

The next country was Estonia and we spent the day touring around Tallinn. Tallinn was interesting but it seriously felt like a city that was set up just for tourist to visit. There didn't seem like there was much life there except for the tourists and those serving the tourists. Oh well, we saw some cool sights.

Russia was kind of meant to be the highlight of the cruise. We spent two days there but we had to be with a tour guide the entire time. St. Petersburg was not what I expected AT ALL! I literally expected every building to be like the onion domed looking things. Turns out there are actually only two...... I was definitely not expecting all the baroque styled buildings. We toured some churches such as St. Isaac's Cathedral, Cathedral of the Resurrection, St. Peter and Paul's (Where Anatasia is buried)  and some palaces such as Catherine's Palace and Peterhof.

The entire time I was in Russia I just went around singing Anastasia songs!

Have you heard
There's a rumor in St. Petersburg?
Have you heard
What they're saying on the street?

Too bad I never saw Demetri.....

 

 

Helsinki, Finland may have been my favorite city we visited on the cruise. Maybe it was because it was an absolutely gorgeous day. We toured a few churches, took a boat tour around the islands and just walked around the city.

Yes that is a church made completely out of rocks!

Our last port was Nyhashamm, Sweden. This town is a bit south of Stockholm and since we would be spending the whole next week in Stockholm we just toured around Nyhashamm a bit and spent the afternoon on the boat.

When we docked in Sweden we couldn't dock on the shore so they anchored in the middle of the bay and we had to take one of the lifeboats to shore. It was cool to see the lifeboats and to know that they actually run.

5 countries in 8 days!!!

Overall cruise was a blast. We ate a lot, saw a lot, learned a lot and already forgot a lot.