August has been quite a month. My friend Brooke and I decided to try for another Dutch Oven Cookoff. It was great! We made Pizza Rolls, Smoky Citrus Pork Tenderloin, and Turtle Cake. We took 7th place (out of 7 teams) but we had a great time. We got a bunch of really great prizes and met some really fun people. If you're ever in Salt Lake for the county fair, you should definitely stop by. Everyone got to try all the food the contestants had made. We were busy cooking so we didn't get to try a lot but the stuff we did try was delicious!
I'm a bit of an amusement park junkie. Some friends and I got season passes to Lagoon again this summer and we've had a great time. I've spent a lot of time at Lagoona Beach (you think I'd be tanner with all the time I've spent in the sun). I don't think I'll ever get tired of riding Wicked, the Spider, Jet Star 2, or the Screamer (one of the most underappreciated rides at Lagoon). We went for my friend Wendy's birthday a couple weeks ago and we stopped at Pace's Dairy Ann for Rainbows afterwards. Mmmm! I'll never get tired of the peach ones!!
One of my favorite places to visit is Trial Lake in the Uintahs. It's on the way to Mirror Lake about 45 minutes past Kamas. My family's been going there almost every year since I was about 10. They've missed the past couple years but I've taken some friends up and introduced them to the amazing campground, fun hikes, and beautiful lake. My family decided that it had been too long since they'd been there so we booked our favorite campsites (months in advance) and headed up for the weekend. We had great food, some pretty good fishing, and tons of rain. It always rains in the Uintahs but this was borderline ridiculous. It rained from about 9:00 on Thursday night and then it started raining about 7:30 on Friday.
I slept in my car because I wasn't about to deal with the rain in the leaky tent. My poor family was soaked. Saturday morning, we got up early, packed up camp, and headed home. I was back at my house unloading the car by 10 a.m. It was still a lot of fun. We went hiking, ate WAY too many s'mores, and played some great games. A couple of cousins, aunts, and uncles came up to join us and we all had a great time. I wish I could say I beat them all during our game of 5 Crowns but that would be a complete lie. I'm pretty sure I lost by almost 100 points. :( What a sad day.
This month I've also been to a couple of Bees' games (they lost), seen 2 fireworks shows (another secret addiction of mine), started guitar lessons, taken up tennis, and been golfing more times than I have the rest of my life combined. I've been repainting the baseboards in my house, reading a couple of great books, and sleeping a lot less than I should be. Overall, it's been great!!
Just thought I'd share a picture of myself and my fantastic poodle skirt for Halloween. It took me much longer than I thought it would to make - that stupid little poodle on the skirt took me FOREVER to attach. But I think it turned out pretty cute if I do say so myself. I was talking about a my costume with a couple of auditors from work and neither of them had ever heard of a poodle skirt before!! I thought everyone at least knew what they were but apparently they didn't. One of them actually thought I was going to dress up as a poodle wearing a skirt!!
Well, I just crossed off #39 this weekend. I've always thought it would be fun to ride in a hot air balloon. It's definitely not something that everyone has the chance to do so I decided it should probably be on my list. My friend Emily and I have been talking about going for the past 3 falls. This year, we decided we needed to go for it. We tried last weekend but it was too windy so the hot air balloon couldn't fly. I was so disappointed!!!!!! 
