And I finally arrived!

So I arrived in NZ and I'm alive!!! Not for long though because the stunts these folks like to do for enjoyment is crazy nuts!!! I met up with Sarah a lot easier than I orginially thought and we hung out in Christchurch for a night and then headed over to Queenstown where we've gone skiing and snowboarding for 2 days, met up with 2 of our buddies from Snowbird randomly and today we took a day off due to lack of killer snow conditions to play on a swing...obviously not your ordinary swing! It was pretty nuts! You free fall 60m after being as high as the Statue of Liberty and then you swing over a river for about 200m. I did the backwards jump first because I knew there was no way I would find the courage to jump off that platfrom myself....they made me on the second jump :/ Some pretty fun stuff though. I'm having a blast over here! Now we're off to go jet boating through an icy canyon! Seriously these people are crazy and I'm LOVING it!!!!!

Take care everyone!

I'm unemployed!!!

So this was my final sunset I saw from Snowbird (I think someone really wants me to come back!) I will say that my last week wasn't as breezy as one would think! We had a couple lightening storms roll in which means we can't run the tram. We do try and do one final run getting the people off the peak and down to safety while sending one poor soul up to the top to wait the storm out. Yeah you guessed it, that poor soul was me......TWICE!!!! We had a storm on Saturday and Wednesday! Normally being stuck up there isn't so bad because the patrol shack has a fridge, tv, dvd, couches etc but no worries when I get stuck up there it's when the place it gutted for remodeling. (Oh how remodeling has ruined my life!) That wasn't the only thing that happened to me on Wednesday though, the second to last day....some girl fainted dead to the ground! It was possibly one of the scariest moments of my life!!!! She collapsed with a loud thud and was unconscious for about 7 seconds and then came back to me thank goodness! I had to get everyone off the tram, head right back down and give her oxygen, which I had no idea how to use the oxygen tank! Pretty intense last couple of days and surprisingly I'm sad to be gone. I guess it's a good thing I'm coming back in a couple months!

Recently while I've been driving, I've seriously just been admiring the beauty of the mountains here. Who knows where I'll eventually settle down in life. I'm just glad that I don't have to make that decision quite yet! (feel free to give me any advice)

Perks for working at the Bird

I absolutely LOVE my job!!! I seriously never thought working could be so much fun...if only I would have found this out earlier maybe my dad would be happier with me jk! No but seriously working at Snowbird is taking me NO where in life but it's a great in between kinda job. You meet all sorts of people, guests and employees. Driving the tram I always take the horse back riding guides and ATV guides up to the peak. We see each other almost day so we get to really know them. My buddy Zane is in charge of all the horse back riding tours and said he'd hook me up and unlike most emplyees at the Bird he actually followed through with his word and even put me down in the book for a tour this morning!

I hang out on the peak all the time and I've started taking the view for granted. Going down into Mineral Basin I truthfully thought would be kind of a lame tour, afterall I've taken horse back riding tours beach side in Hawaii and up to waterfalls in Costa Rica! I'm not going to lie but it seriously was one of the prettiest tours I've ever taken! The pictures don't nearly do it justice but I would but them all in the same category; obviously Hawaii and Costa Rica are cooler places than Utah but as for the scenary in the tour it was a 3-way tie!

I was a total tourist taking pictures...I was the only one with a camera! This was my horse, Cheyenne. He is Zane's favorite and was by far the BEST horse! We even led the end part of the tour because he was behaving the best. I think it had a lot to do with his rider :) I honestly felt like a real cowgirl today! I even wrangled myself a cowboy by the end of it ;)

Zane and I waiting to take the tram back to work....I was over an hour late oops!

My favorite holiday!

I rushed back from my cabin to head to work on my favorite holiday! Yep that's right, the 4th of July is my favorite holiday...even over Christmas! It just goes to show I'm a better republican than I am Christian :)

We decided to spice things up on the tram and put American flags on the front of them. The boys were ontop of the tram cleaning and greasing beforehand and all helped in putting the flag on....it was too priceless of a picture not to take.

Lyndsgrove decided to fly into town for the day which sucked because I was working the entire time she was here! So thanks to my dear friend Brentis Maximus he covered for me while I ran down the canyon to say hi for literally 20 minutes! It's better than nothing though because I won't see her or her adorable kids until I get back from down under!

After work I rushed to a friend's house that overlooked the entire city at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon to watch the fireworks from ALL over! This is why it's my favorite holiday because I absolutely LOVE fireworks!!!!!! Here is a picture of me and Cory (my 40yr old friend from work...he doesn't look 40 to me at all! And he certainly doesn't act it either) and a really blurry picture of what I was hoping would look like fireworks!

At this house I met a dog that reminded me exactly of Sara (Elizabeth and I guess Bridger's old dog) so of course I played with her for most of the evening. It was too patriotic not to post!

Pinedale Wyoming!!!!

So my brothers, sister and I just bought my grandparents' cabin out in Pinedale, Wyoming! It has always been a childhood memory of mine going out to visit my grandparents out there every summer and I'm so glad that we were able to keep this awesome place within the family :) For those of you who don't know where it is, it's about an hour east of Jacksonhole, right at the mouth of the wind rivers....beautiful location and still a bit of a secret because we were able to get glassy water even around 2pm!!! The day after my birthday we drove out there to scope things out.

We enjoyed cleaning (so it can now be up to Laura's standards)...

Bbq's and plenty of gorgeous sunsets!

And plenty of wakeboarding/water skiing! Roger and Kari got up tandom on the skis. I don't have any pictures because they're on his camera but it was pretty tight! Oh and let's not leave out the fact that my father who is a very young 61 shore starts on his ski! He is the reason I have to ski at least once a trip!!!! I mean I can't have him show me up!

And here is me doing my absolute FAVORITE thing in the entire world!!!!!!!!

It was such an awesome trip and I'm stoked that Roger and Kari came out to make it even that much cooler! My family usually goes in August but I'll be doing my own adventure in Australia so I was really excited to get the chance to head out. I had to make it a quick trip so I could get back to work. I drove my mom's lovely BMW home but no worries I wasn't alone...they loaded me up with some good company!

Here is a fish my grandpa caught and then Spunky...he used to be downstairs in one of the bedrooms. As kids we were always scared to sleep in "Spunky's room". My sister and I always made the boys!

Birthday at Snowbird!

My brother Roger and his wife Kari flew into town for my birthday (my parents came into town a couple days earlier) and the celebrate the 4th of July! It was so much fun to see them and show them around "my neck of the woods". They really wanted to see where I work so the original plan was to go up to Snowbird and hike around, do dinner, activities etc but I woke up with a cold :( So we took it easy and decided to just do dinner.

We rode the zip rider down from the car. I made them pull the brake joke on my mom (they just pretend that the rider has control of the brakes that don't exist). I've never laughed so hard when she came soaring down screaming. My friends could hear her all the way in their office!!!

They really wanted to see my actual job so we of course took the tram up to the peak and walked around. They were amazed with the view and I even took Roger and Kari up on the platform by the carriage part of the tram! Here is Kari climbing up the ladder! Isn't she just to cutest sister-in-law?!?!?!

Here are some more pictures of us enjoying our time at 11,000ft! My dad has this fear of the peak so he went down on the first tram but not before we got a picture with Heber in the background. My mom, Roger Kari and I walked around for a bit. I think we tukered my mom out pretty well!! How crazy does Snowbird look without snow?!?!? It's amazing!

I had an amazing birthday and I just wanted to say thanks to everyone for all your loving birthday wishes! It's days like these where you truly realize how grateful you are to have such awesome family and friends surrounding you! Thanks everyone!!! P.S. Dan called and wished me happy birthday twice because he got the date wrong...gotta love him, at least he was earlier rather than later!!!