22 Things To Do While Visiting Family

For those who didn't know, I was in Utah for  3 weeks to spend some time with my family. It was so fun to be with everyone but SO hard to be away from my hubby. Since I was there for awhile everyone else still had to go about their everyday lives with work, school, appointments etc. Luckily we were able to still plan simple activities to allow us to spend some quality time together! Here's what we did...

• Alcatraz Escape Room
• Ice blocking
• Took some family pictures
• Welcomed a new baby cousin into the family
• Boating
• Went to the book store
• Lunch at Sushi burrito
• Chilled on a hammock
• Bowling
• Top Golf
• Brunch
• Lagoon
• Breakfast at Ihop
• Top Golf
• Shaved Ice at Hokulia 
• Took a drive to a look out spot
• Went to the movies
• Cooked yummy food together
• Shopping
• Swimming
• Biking
• Went for walks

Most of these things are simple and didn't take up too much time so my family could still live their daily routines AND do some fun things while I was in town!

Comment your favorite thing to do with family! 

The Ultimate Guide For Movie Night

Movie night is a regular thing at the Rudd's house. It's perfect for unwinding after a long day while getting your one on one time and cuddle time with your significant other. The worst part of movie night though is this conversation...

"What movie do you want to watch?"
"I don't know. Whatever. What movie do you want to watch?"
"I don't care. Just pick one!"
"Well, I don't care either! You decide!"

This conversation sometimes goes back and forth for forever and can get annoying pretty fast. That's why I put together a list of 100 movies to make the start of these kind of nights easier! Enjoy!

MOVIE NIGHT IDEAS

Comedy
- Mean Girls
- Ferris Bueller's Day off
- Forest Gump
- Happy Gilmore
- Dodgeball
- Mrs. Doubtfire
- School of Rock
- White Chicks
- She's the Man
- 17 Again
- You Again
- Little Rascals
- Freaky Friday
- Grown Ups
- The Water Boy
- Daddy's Home
- The Benchwarmers
- The Devil Wears Prada

Romance/Romantic Comedy
- The Notebook
- The Titanic
- The Fault in our stars
- Sweet Home Alabama
- Leap Year
- Hitch
- 50 First Dates
- The Wedding Planner
- Just Go With It
- The Proposal
- How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days
- When in Rome
- The Prince and Me
- Confessions of a Shopaholic
- Safe Haven
- The Best of Me
- The Longest Ride
- Age of Adaline
- Phantom of the Opera
- Charlie St. Cloud
- Take Me Home

Action
- Pirates of the Caribbean
- Inception
- Jurassic Park
- Avengers
- Thor
- Spiderman
- Captain America
- Iron Man
- Transformers
- Hunger Games
- Taken
- Avatar
- Men in black
- Eagle Eye
- Cast away
- Maze Runner
- Wonder Woman
- Divergent
- I am Legend

Feel good
- The Greatest Showman
- The Help
- Hidden Figures
- Catch Me If You Can
- A Beautiful Mind
- Unbroken
- The Blindside
- Miracles From Heaven
- Cuncussion
- Karate Kid
- Sully
- Life of Pi
- The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
- The Gameplan
- The Princess Diaries
- October Baby
- Cool Runnings

Kids
- Finding Nemo
- The Croods
- Wall-E
- A Cinderella Story (With Hilary Duff)
- The Incredibles
- Up
- Moana
- Ratatouille
- How to Train your dragon
- Zootopia
- The Sandlot
- Despicable Me
- Cars
- Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs
- Big Hero Six
- George of the Jungle
- Ice Age
- Wreck it Ralph

Stupid Funny
(The kind of movies that you can only watch when you are extremely tired and in a goofy mood.)
- Dumb and Dumber
- Monty Python and The Holy Grail
- Nacho Libre
- Napoleon Dynamite
- Hot Rod
- Weyne's World
- Zoolander

Our New Home

Alright, I'm sure everyone is just dying to see how life has been in St. Thomas. (Or maybe I'm just dying to share with everyone?) anyways, it has been SO different from Grand Cayman in so many ways! Our first reaction to landing here in St. T was, "Whoa, mountains!" We have missed the mountains so much! Growing up in Utah Dan and I grew so  accustomed to them. I grew up hiking, biking, and just all around enjoying the beauty of them! Then, we move to somewhere with not even the slightest hill to walk up! Needless to say, I missed the mountains. So now we get to St. Thomas and we have mountains again! It's the best of both worlds, mountains AND the ocean!
Our place is so beautiful! It's at the very top of the far north mountains so it has such an amazing view! It's pretty spacious with a guest room for visitors so if anyone is looking for a place to stay, we've got your back!
I'm so sad to say that though we have been here for three weeks we have only been to the beach once and for just a couple hours. We have been working our tails off to get this store up and running! Not only did we have to make a store out of an empty room, but we had to go through TONS of product. The previous store was ruined in the hurricane so they had to move buildings. The old place was very big so it had tons of product. Here in the new place, its about half the size and we have had to try to fit the same amount of product in such a smaller space. So its been hard. Lot's of late nights, and any free time is still spent at work trying to get things organized, counted, and other stuff needed to get the store in order. So, we were not expecting to be working this hard for this long so its been difficult to be able to go to the beach. But once it's done, we will be basking in the sun any second we get!
We have been told of a few fun things we need to do while we are here. If anybody else has been to St. Thomas or any of the other surrounding islands, comment some suggestions! We are open to anything!
Hope everyone has the best rest of the day! Thanks for following along with our journey!

Moving On

Dan and I are officially moved out! We left the beautiful Grand Cayman Island a couple weeks ago and landed in our new home in St. Thomas! We are so excited to start this new chapter in our lives and can't wait to see where it takes us! For now, I am going to tell you about my favorite moments in Cayman. We had a blast living there and can't wait till we can go back and visit.
If you ever go to Grand Cayman, I would say the number one tourist activity, and Dan and my favorite thing we did, was Sting Ray City. It was the coolest thing to be out in the middle of the ocean, standing in four feet of water on a sand bar, and have wild sting rays swarming around you, nudging you for food. It was such and awesome experience and I wish I could go back right now and do it again!
Our second favorite thing was the beach. Just going on our day off and laying on the beach, playing in the water, watching the sunset, was the best feeling ever. The beaches in Cayman are white, with very fine sand, and clean as could be! They are beautiful! Three of the prettiest spots we would hang, would be Smiths cove, seven mile beach, and rum point. Smiths cove was within walking distance so we would go there a lot after work and on our days off without having to pack a lunch or anything. We were able to go there for the morning, go home for lunch, then we would be there again for the rest of the day. Seven Mile Beach was where all the resorts were located. So it wasn't as private as smiths cove was but it was a much bigger beach that gave us more space to play. We also could walk along the water for forever. A lot of times we would take the public bus to the beach and walk along it during the sunset. Rum point was pretty far away from where we were so we couldn't go there as often as we would have liked to, but it's like a little heaven on earth. There are big trees everywhere that give you plenty of shade, cute little board walks, a long pier, and the water color was just amazing. They also have a little restaurant the serves the best food! That was where Dan and I went on our anniversary and we hung out there all day long and enjoyed the water and most of all, the scenery.
Our last but not least top favorite activity is snorkeling. Cayman is known to have some of the best snorkeling and scuba diving spots! We saw so many pretty reefs, bright colored fish, Sharks, Eels, turtles, pretty much everything! There are so many great places to snorkel I wouldn't even know where to begin! I would probably say anyplace you snorkel, has something amazing to see.
Dan and I will miss Grand Cayman and look forward to visiting it again! We loved our time there, the things we did, the people we met. It will all be missed.

Resolutions

How is it that we are already at the end of January?!? I hope everyone had a good and safe holiday season! I wanted to talk about New Year resolutions. Hopefully everyone has made and written down their resolutions already and have been working towards any goals you have set for the year. If there has been one thing I have learned about goals, it is the importance of writing them down. Dan and I sat down and wrote down everything we wanted to accomplish and what steps we would take to  accomplish them during 2018. I've listed some of my goals so that you can hold me accountable hah. So if you notice I'm slacking give me a little push and remind me I made these goals to keep.

- Get fit (the same goal I have made every January of my life haha)
- Get started in my career (interior design)
- Grow stronger in my church
+ a few more that I can't quit tell everyone. Lets just say I have some big plans for myself during 2018

Please please please comment some of your goals below so we can all help each other accomplish them! Hope everyone has a good week and thanks for reading!

One Anniversary Down, Many More to Go

I can't believe Dan and I had our first anniversary! Life just seems to speed right past us! Yesterday was such a fun day. We got work off, rented a car and explored the island. Our main destination was Rum point which is literally like heaven on earth. It was so serene and so pretty there. It wasn't crowded and it was shaded by a ton of palm trees and was just a quiet and relaxing place. We grabbed some lunch there and it was AMAZING. If you are ever in grand cayman, if possible, I would definitely suggest going to rum point, eating at the restaurant there, and getting the jerk pork... SO good. We did some snorkeling then relaxed in the sun before we headed off to our next destination which was a cute little dock down the road a couple miles. We stopped there and took some pictures, then watched the ocean. Following that, we headed over the the blowholes which are holes in the rock that water shoots out of when waves pass under it. It was very entertaining and we stood in the "splash zone" for awhile enjoying the thrill of getting sprayed. Next up, west bay. It is the complete opposite side of the island from where we were. There we just drove around and did some site seeing before we stopped for dinner. Another amazing restaurant I would recommend, Peppers located on west bay road. Next up on our list of things to do for the day, was Christmas on Cardinal. This was a little Christmas party on Cardinal street where they had food, fireworks, face painting, and other fun things like that. We finished the night off at smiths cove where we put our feet in the water and watched the waves wash over our them. It was the perfect end to a perfect day. Thanks to everyone who wished us a happy anniversary! Thank you for reading and following along! Until next week!

Practically Pros

We have been on the island a total of three weeks and it has been amazing. I am starting to get a little home sick but I'm sure it will pass over time. Does anybody have any remedies for home sickness? Please do share! We are getting the hang of things here. We are feeling confident working in the stores and having a blast while doing it. The weather hasn't been the kindest to us. The people here say its not normal for the weather to be like this but expect the cold front to pass by Wednesday or Thursday (hopefully).
The ward here is so super nice! We had our ward Christmas party and it was a partayyyyy! Not to mention the food was amazing. We have been able to go to the beach a couple times but the weather has mostly been windy and rainy so we haven't had too many opportunities to go.
I think it was the third day being here when we woke up to head to work and realized that my bike was missing replaced with a big slit in our screen door. We kept out bikes out on the porch which is enclosed with the door locked and were told that our bikes would be perfectly fine. Unfortunately, we were wrong. Luckily we were able to find another bike online a day later that was actually nicer then the old bike.
The company has a place that they have all the interns stay at but the past interns had to move to another apartment temporarily because a manager had to come into town. So the past interns were at that other apartment the whole time they were here. We were there about, two weeks. We got moved on Friday of last week. The last place was in a killer location. It was literally a five minute walk to work. So we would come home for lunch everyday then head back to work. But this new place we are at has two levels and is nicer. It was pretty dirty so a cleaning lady came and cleaned it up for us. So now we are all settled in (again) and hope that the weather clears up so we can go have some fun in the sun! Thanks for reading and if you have ever been to grand cayman and have any suggestions of things to do, places to eat, please let us know!!