Book Report on Knysna!

What the heck is Knysna you might ask? Well, let me tell you...

So some of you may have heard about my trip to South Africa on September 15th. I'm going to visit my Aunt Betti who lives there and I'm so excited! She lives in a town called Knysna (pronounced nice-na), which is on the Garden Route. Here's where it is on the map:

Knysna is a small town nestled around a lagoon on the Indian Ocean. Knysna is famous for the Knysna Heads-large cliffs that loom over the entrance to the lagoon. In the lagoon are two "islands" and my aunt lives on Thesen Island.



Knysna has a diverse ecosystem, with the Knysna Forest to the North...
...and the Knysna Lagoon to the South.
Some things that I want to do while I'm there is check out the Addo Wildlife Park. There are all kinds of animals in the reserve:

















But it is very famous for it's elephants.



















I'll be there for about 10 days. Some other things I want to do are go shark cave diving (not for a lack of want, but may not be able to do if it's too far away) and get a tattoo! No, I don't have any currently but I really want a small one to commemorate my trip. I might be too scared to get it in a foreign country so it may have to wait until I get back to the states...we'll see. It takes about 24.5 flight hours to get there! Anyway, that's it for now. I'm sure as my excitement grows, so will my blog.

Shakespeare Festival

This past weekend, we joined my Dad and Patty to go see Fiddler on the Roof at the Utah Shakespearean Festival. Fiddler was the best play we have seen so far-it was fabulous! I know, I know, it's not a Shakespeare play...but sometimes they can get really boring! We also saw the Greenshow (which doesn't seem to change every year but now it's sort of tradition).

















Patty and I have a tradition of getting a tart that the hussies go around selling.






It was so nice to get out of the heat-we had dinner on the lawn at the Garden House and the weather was perfect...it seems like Vegas weather is either hot or cold. Anyway, it was a great weekend!

BFF

I was going through some of my pictures and I ran across some of these pictures of me and Amanda (previously Jones, now Johnson).
We've been friends since I was 2 and she was 3. They just made me giggle so I thought I'd post them. She and I have been through a lot so this is my homage to Manda. By the way, this picture of us dancing cracks me up...why aren't we together??? Hot mess. And speaking of hot messes...what's with that yellow outfit of mine? I think I'm hot snot with my side ponytail. Why did my mother let me run around lookin' like a raggamuffin?

Raggedy Duck

My dad cracks me up. If any of you know him, he's very modest (well, let's face it-he seems to prefer raggedy things-visiting the dump used to mean a good time). This past spring my Dad and Patty went on a road trip to visit Nauvoo and all that. They went to Mt. Rushmore, went on a steamboat down the Mississippi River, saw Mark Twain's house, and even visited Marceline, MO (the home of Walt Disney). Of all these cool places they went to, you'd think he'd pick up a souvenir or two. No-no, no. Patty had no trouble finding keepsakes from their trip, but the only thing Paco (my dad) wanted to keep was this. This mangy, rotted duck decoy he plucked out of the Mississippi. As you can tell, it's disgusting...but he is very proud of his raggedy duck.