Don't you hate it when you have a dream that seems to linger all day? After taking Tylenol PM last night I had some very vivid dreams. In one of them my brother (who is leaving on his mission next month) had already left and I saw him at the MTC just long enough to beg him to stay for just one more week.

I know it is just a reflection of my great anxiety about him being gone for two years but its not easy to let the feeling of dread go and convince yourself it was just a stupid dream. When you wake up feeling depressed you know its going to be a long day.

Nature sucks

A few days ago I was going to make a posting about the cute swanlings that were born last week right out side of our apartment. I even have video of their second day out of the shell.

They are so adorable.

We love watching them swim around in the creek below our balcony. This is them a few days out of the shell.

I check on them periodically to make sure they're alright and no one's picking on them. So when I heard a strange bird call sometime after noon yesterday I went outside to see what it was. To my horror it was the swan song of a mother and father searching for their lost babies. For hours they swam up and down the creek looking everywhere and making the saddest sound and waiting to hear a response. I don't know what happened to those babies in the hour or so since I saw them swimming close behind their mother in the creek. All I know is that I'm done with nature.

I haven't felt much like posting though a lot has happened lately...

My brother, Tyson, got home from his mission in South Carolina. (he's the one in the middle)

The aforementioned brother and I went to an awesome concert together, my fav band, Death Cab For Cutie, performed.

I got a drastic hair cut which has kind of grown on me (no pun intended). I'm gonna skip the embarassing before and after pictures I took...

Chase, my other brother, got his mission call. I just knew he'd get his call this day. (I even have a picture of the mailman coming down the street.)

My family and I risked the dreaded "pig cold" and went to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. We had a lovely time. We stayed in a condo at an empty resort, I could enjoy this view for the rest of my life.

 We pretty much had the pools to ourselves.

Brady took precautions against drowning on a catamaran tour. I was more worried about the swarm of jellyfish we passed through.

The boys got super burnt

We went on the longest zip line in history. It was like 2 miles of air time.

I got to ride a half dead horse on a dusty trail while wearing way too much white. Luckily I brought a towel to sit on or it would have been just my bathing suit on that nasty saddle. I do love horsies though. On the way back I snuck a way better horse and even got it to gallop. (Which was extremely uncomfortable without my feet in the stirrups).

Brady quickly made friends with the local dogs.

We got to do awesome things that we could never do in yuppie animal rights-y california; Like entering a monkey cage and feeding the squirrel monkeys by hand.

And don't worry they scanned us for disease so that we wouldn't bring the swine sniffles into the US, except that it had already spread to the US... oh well, it made us feel important.

And finally, after a 30 hour straight driving marathon, Brady and I are in Chicagoland again.