So good news, Levi likes to build things. One night after FHE he wanted to go to Home Depot which is pretty much his favorite store in the world. It's like if I went to Daylight Donuts or Target or something. I mean, seriously. He loves it. He could go there every day.
Levi is also super into fixing our cars on his own. Which is actually pretty amazing. Saved us a tonnnn (and I mean a TON of money) fixing one of our cars a couple months ago. Had a super sore back after being bent over the car for 9 hours, but still. A TON of money. And we drove the car to Utah and back the week after he fixed it. Oh yeah!
Also, Levi likes to build things and so does Mitchell. Somehow Levi convinced Mitchell to buy a table saw (Mitchell says he wanted it, but I'm still a little worried that Levi may have pulled out some of his bullying tactics from his playground days to get Mitchell to buy it...) Anyway, Levi designed a guitar pedal board and that was their first project on the new table saw. It turned out pretty awesome. Since then they have also built these really cool shelves for me and Heather. They hung ours in our living room recently and I'm so obsessed with it (I'll have to post a picture of it soon!). Seriously, in just the past couple weeks, we've moved our bookshelf out to the living room, someone gave us a couch for free and we hung that shelf. It's really starting to feel like a living room now that we have more than just the 1 1/2-man couch (though we are so grateful for that little couch as well--we've been very cozy in it for the past year!). But now that we have two free couches we can actually have friends over! It's the best.
So now that the worst of the heat is upon us here in Oklahoma, the daily grilling has begun. Also, fun fact: we didn't turn on our A/C until June 4th this year. And if you live in Oklahoma, you know that is a big deal. So, our apartment would be pretty dang hot until like 10 pm, but usually in the evenings we have mutual or we go to the gym or we go to our friends' house. I will admit, I didn't love sweating like crazy in our apartment when it got up to 85 or 86 degrees, but it was probably worth it. We still set it at 78 degrees (#pennypinchers) but hey! I don't want to pay that much money for cold air! Anyway, thank you to Levi who lived without complaining as I slowly melted away without A/C. But even still, we had to buy a little grill so we wouldn't have to heat up the oven or stove or anything. It's the best.
In other news, Levi and Mitchell found a turtle (this was the day Levi was fixing the car--hence the nasty hands and old work clothes).
Also, apparently there is a chair at OU where Levi works that the queen sat in once. So apparently now Levi sits in the queen's chair. ID even K, people. It's Levi. Also, yes he wears shorts and workout socks to his professional job. #summersatuniversities
Utah-apalooza!
To go whitewater rafting on some rivers, you have to apply for a permit. Sometimes you have to enter a lottery and then only some people get a permit. Soooo, my family wanted to go rafting. So we all entered the lottery and guess who won?! This girl!! Oh yeah! The chances were crazy slim, but I worked my magic and luck was mine! So captain Stacy was in charge of the trip! Actually, what really happened was that my dad and mom and uncle and aunt basically got everything ready and I just showed up with the permit. I texted my family a picture of the permit to confirm that we really did have it in the car as we headed out on our long, long drive.
We had such a magical time on the trip except for a little hiccup at the beginning. So, the one thing that I was required to do was talk with the ranger for every little thing. He had to go over all the rules and requirements with me to ensure that we were doing everything right. So I'm going over this stuff with him and I'm like, umm, I have no idea if we have a z-line kit or 50 billion life jackets or where the first aid kit is? I was like, um, can we just wait until we have the boats all set up and then my dad can tell you if we have everything? He was like, yeah that's fine, just come and get me. Fortunately, before I convinced him to stop going over the list, I had heard a couple things. One of the things he said was that we had to have 5 extra life jackets (one for each boat). So later while they were still setting up, I casually asked my uncle how many extra life jackets we had and he said we had two. I told him what the ranger had said (not expecting it to be a big deal) and then people started to get concerned. Five extra life jackets?! We've never had to do that before! Anyway, we go talk to the ranger and he confirmed that yes, you have to have 5 extra ones and there are no exceptions and the closest place to buy new life jackets was THREE HOURS AWAY, six hours round trip. It was so sad and it was set to ruin the day and potentially the trip.
So we go back to where everyone is setting up and we explain the situation and RANDOMLY the other group that was also setting up just so happened to have tons of extra life jackets and offered to let us use them. Talk about a huge blessing! As it turns out, they had actually forgotten something that they had to have and so they had to drive the six hour round trip to get the stuff. If that hadn't happened, they would have been long gone by the time we realized our huge problem. So it was a bummer for them, but a huuuuuuuge supersized blessing for us.
We were then able to start our trip on time and had just the best time. It was so fun to spend a week with my family out on the river. And even though it was still super hot at night, it was still such a blast and so beautiful! Plus, it was Levi's first trip and homeboy looks good on the river. Please note his mega short shorts in the picture above (they're somewhat hidden by the backpack he's carrying, but they're there). Plus, he got way mega tan.
Oh, and I forgot to mention; we were able to stay with Levi's family the weekend before the trip and as luck would have it we got to Utah the day before good ol' Rachy face and her family left Utah (back to South Carolina). It was so awesome to get to hang out with her and Kenneth and her two adorrrrrrable little boys. It was awesome because little Kenny loved Levi and convinced him to play with him the whole time. Although things got slightly out of hand when Levi convinced Kenny to crawl through the cat door. Haha, but seriously I was so stoked to see Rach. You should seriously consider going through the "Rachel" tag on my blog because there are some quality gems in there...one of my favorites being this one when she thought she was doing a "polishing" service project. Literally, I die.
And then finally, the picture of breakfast. Free continental breakfasts at hotels are what I live for. Truly the best. Bagels, donuts, ham, golden. Best start to the last leg of our trip home.
And last but not least, 4th of July shenanigans. Basically we spent the whole weekend with the Walsers because that's what we do. The 3rd of July included an awesome trip to Lowe's to buy wood (this was the day they built the shelves!) and then to the Walser's house to build the shelves...or if you're me and Heather it was the time to make homemade oreos because duh. Later we grilled and then we did fireworks! Mitchell and Levi looooooove fireworks, but were so kind as to buy some sparklers and "tro-its" (I think most people call them pop-its?) for Heather and me.
Then the next day we went to a friend's house to have another BBQ and more fireworks and of course, for Levi to sit on the children's toy horse. Obvi. We ended the night by watching the town firework show from the roof!
I love America.
And that's a wrap.
