Friends, Survivor and a few days away...

This past Sunday evening some wonderful friends stopped by and surprised me. They had plotted and schemed with N8 for me to go on a girls trip with them to Utah. N8 and I don't do surprises, so this was a little hard for me to digest. Once it all sank in, I was in!

One of the "main" purposes for the trip was to watch Survivor with Dawn. She is a current cast member, professor at BYU and mother of 6! Megan contacted her via email and made all of the arrangements. Dawn & her friends graciously allowed us to come up and watch with them. It was pretty surreal.

Here was are in the car figuring out exactly where we needed to go:

Before the episode started there was visiting. We watched in the basement of a friends home. They had it all decked out in beachy decor. One of Dawn's friends and neighbors is author Shannon Hale! How awesome is that!! I got brave and asked if I could get a picture with her! Yes I'm a total dork, but I knew my sisters and nieces would think it was totally awesome.

Right before we started watching Dawn gave a little "intro" of sorts.

Throughout the episode it was amazing. Dawn gave little tidbits into what else was happening that we didn't get to see in the episode. One of my burning questions was answered-She took with her and still has the long striped socks! It was quite surreal and just made me more excited for the rest of the season.

This was our view as we left (Oquirrh Mountain Temple) and went to stay at Shar's parents home in West Valley City.

On Thursday morning we headed back down to Utah County and started shopping!! There was a lot of shopping. I now know we NEED a Hobby Lobby somewhere nearby! That store was like the craft part of JoAnn Fabrics on steroids!

For lunch we went to Diego's Taco Shop in Provo. This was a favorite place of my brother's when he was attending BYU. It's moved locations and actually has table and chairs inside, but it's still the same great Mexican food!!

Then it was onto BYU campus. Since it had been so long since Megan and I had been to campus and Shar was a USU grad, we decided to take the campus tour on the golf cart! It was nice not to have to walk the campus and see all of the changes that had been made.

After the tour, we found my nieces and nephews that are currently attending BYU! While brief, it was fun to be able to see them.

We also got some silly pictures with the Indian statue. Megan has some seriously hilarious pictures. Mine is VERY tame!

We also did a little stalking and found Dawn's office on campus!

That night we went to Noodle & Co. for dinner. They had the coolest drink machine ever!!

I like my noodle dish, but I would not recommend the pot stickers!

For dessert we went to this little hole in the wall called Sammy's and got Pie Shakes. I got the Mint Oreo Pic Shake-Yum!!

Friday we went off to the mall and got glitter toes! Mine are the green ones.

Then lunch at Guru's. I got a Cilantro Lime Chicken Quesadilla that was super yummy!

We did more shopping and then headed back to the hotel to get a jump start on packing up all of our shopping items. For dinner we went for Indian food. I am a very tame eater, but enjoyed my "snack plate" of Indian Appitizers:

For dessert we went to a weigh your bowl yogurt shop called Farr's Frozen Yogurt. We really need a place like this here!

It was such an awesome trip full of laughs, tears, and just joking around. I had never done anything like this before and is going to have to do it again!!

A huge thanks to Megan, Shar and Rachel for planning the trip and stealing me away and to N8 for taking care of the kids while I was away!