Vacation.... :)

75 foot rappel in Birch Hollow

There truly is nothing more enjoyable than time off of work. Two weeks ago we had a full week of vacation. Well, let me correct myself, when I say a full week, I mean the students got to get off for a week while we the teachers had to keep going to school for 3 days. The next sentence may cause you to think that I dont really like my job, but I do. Truth be told, I didn't mind going into work for those 3 days, with no students, it was plenty vacation for me! *sigh* In fact I feel like it was just the thing I needed. I got back to work last Monday feeling absolutely FANTASTIC.

Matt is really getting into this canyoneering thing. He has gone to Zion a couple of times in the past month. He spends his whole week researching a canyon, getting opinions, studying Google Maps. On Thursday night he prints his maps, laminates them, packs his bags, and then strives to get off work early so he can head down to Zion ASAP. Because of school and other commitments I generally don't go. Since I had a holiday I pretty much figured, "Why not?"

We went down on Thursday and went through Birch Hollow on Friday. Eric and Kiley came down with their cute family and we went with Eric on Saturday and did what is called the "Boltergeist"... or something like that. Here are some pictures!

The next day we went to Eric, who sometimes I wonder was a monkey or a lizard in his past life. 

   

 

...see what I mean?

Boltergeist was pretty fun.



Unfortunately because Matt was taking most of the pictures we have little pictures of him... but just imagine him coming down the lines. :) When I took my time, Matt zoomed right down. 

Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer

I really do think about posting....
However, life has become unusually busy. Sadly, summer vacation is over. I keep singing to myself those famous lyrics of Nat King Cole:

Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer
Those days of soda and pretzels and beer
Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer
Dust off the sun and moon and sing a song of cheer

Just fill your basket full of sandwiches and weenies
Then lock the house up, now you're set
And on the beach you'll see the girls in their bikinis
As cute as ever but they never get 'em wet

Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer
Those days of soda and pretzels and beer
Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer
You'll wish that summer could always be here

Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer
Those days of soda and pretzels and beer
Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer
Dust off the sun and moon and sing a song of cheer

Don't hafta tell a girl and fella about a drive-in
Or some romantic movie seen
Right from the moment that those lovers start arrivin'
You'll see more kissin' <wolf whistle> in the cars than on the screen

Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer
Those days of soda and pretzels and beer
Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer
You'll wish that summer could always be here

You'll wish that summer could always be here
You'll wish that summer could always be here

I didn't really have a lot of soda, pretzels, or beer.... but I would say I do miss the warm air, the freedom, and italian ice. Especially that Italian Ice. Where has the time gone?? Winter is coming... it was pretty obvious when I drove home Tuesday afternoon to this view:

Half of it is melted now.... regardless it's coming. 

I remember the days, when I was a freshmen at the University of Utah, and something like this looked ever so serene and beautiful, as I walked to class in the morning. It even made me feel all giddy and tingly inside. 

It's funny what a little experience and time can do to you.

Yellowstone

Right before school started we went on a little trip with Matt's family to Yellowstone. It was the first time I had ever been. It was beautiful!

We saw....

    a bison......

    

  

                heat loving bacteria.....

                                    

and lots and lots of geysers! 

....including "Ol' Faithful".

My personal favorite. I've been waiting for this moment all my life!

I imagined meeting Smoky the Bear around every tree and corner. Luckily we didn't meet any bears. :)

Here are some more fun photos of the trip.

Matt & I threw some rocks for fun and she wanted to do it too.
Here she is trying to throw a rock in. She kept throwing them directly into the ground. She didn't understand the "throwing" part.

                                                

Matt's family is really so much fun! His dad has a job in Pocatello and his sister & brother go to school in Pocatello. The whole family is there! Sometimes I just tell Matt that we should find something to do so we could also live in Pocatello. I swear if we all lived together, each day would be more exciting than the previous one. I love vacations with the Hickenloopers. 

We saw Yellowstone in one day and rented a cabin. After a long, long, long day at the park, with everyone coming back exhausted, his family blew up balloons, through together a fruit pizza, and busted out with presents for Matt, to celebrate his birthday. Matt, I think, is the best person to give presents too.... I've never seen an adult get so excited over gifts. He got a couple of carabiners, an ATC, and a harness. He loved everything! 

It was so fun to play, travel, and hang out with his family. Truthfully one of my favorite parts was Ainsley. Talk about a little girl with no fear,  tons of curiosity, and humor. As we walked along the trail she had no fear to climb up things or to jump off of them. (This gives anyone obvious reason for concern.) We did stop at one place to look at some bears (behind some gates) and she showed us the sign language for dog. I can see the furry thing with four legs could be a dog.... but the friendliness of a dog? I think not. I was pretty good about seeing the bears behind a gate in a managed environment, again, I'm pretty grateful we didn't REALLY see a bear. :)

  

Don't you wish you could just take her home?!

The Zion Narrows

**We recently have purchased a camera. Whether we will keep it is another story, for the time being though.... I have pictures! Ah ha!

I remember many, many, many years ago, I wanted to go to Boy's Camp-- let's be honest what 13-14 year old girl doesn't dream of this? ;) I finally got my wish Thursday night. (For the record... Girl's Camp is better. ;))


I can't tell you how many times Matt has told me about the Narrows, and that "this one time with Eric..." If I had just one penny every time Matt talks about how awesome the Narrows was with Eric.... I'd be rich! 
So of course, after hearing how wonderful the Narrows is, I've been wanting to go.


Matt left early Monday morning to meet the Young Men in our ward and then I bummed a ride off of some other leaders Thursday night that were headed down as well. After chatting it up with the Young Men and observing how young men do things, it dawned on me that it was probably better that my 14 year old self never attended boy's camp. :) 


We left early Friday morning and the hike was nothing short of GORGEOUS--- we didn't take nearly as many pictures as we should have. Everything is beautiful but because you are always hiking in water you're afraid of your camera getting wet, so you wrap it up tight and only take it out occasionally. In other words.... we only took pictures when the water was below our waists. :)


 The pictures do a better job at explaining it all than I do. Enjoy!

It says "Hi Mat" one group got farther ahead of us and lefts a message for Matt. :)

 

                                                 

                                                               It's so crazy how tall the walls in the canyon are!

                                            

                                        We are about done and this is the look of joy.

Summer Concerts

Josh Ritter performing at Red Butte Garden. In case you can't tell
it's outside. Those are flowers under the stage. :)

I believe, that possibly, my favorite summer activity is outside evening concerts. On Tuesday Matt and I laid out our little blanket on a lawn and enjoyed listening to The Devil Makes Three, Blind Pilot, and Josh Ritter. All bands were excellent. Don't be fooled by the name "The Devil Makes Three", they're pretty cool---look 'em up! 

In February we saw Josh Ritter at Sundance. For your enjoyment I have inserted my favorite song that we recorded there, Galahad. He didn't play this, but that's okay he plays A LOT of good things. The best part about watching him perform is watching him act like a little boy in a toy shop. He seemed just SO EXCITED to be there. Jumping on stage and grinning from ear to ear. He is one of the happiest performers I have ever seen. I love him and his curly locks. Unfortunately when we saw him it looked like he had, had a hair cut. Oh well.... he still has nice deltoids!

 

                                      

The next concert we went to last week was the Decemberists at Pioneer park. They played for free! I love Salt Lake City... many a free concert you will find in our city. There were a lot of people there and I could barely see through the crowded heads! Below you will find another inserted clip of one of my favorite songs by them.

It was hard to see!


I love this song. :)

You can't go wrong with summer concerts in the park.

I love summer. I am now trying to savor every last moment of it. Winter is upon us!

Camping with the Parents

**Author's Note: I still don't have a camera, but I stole these from from my Dad's camera. They beat drawing stick figures! However, dont be sad, I'm sure more stick figure interpretations are yet to come!


Matt worked 90 hours this past week. Yes, it was horrible. Worse yet, they're not done..... in any case. While Matt worked long hours (coming home after 10pm) I went camping!

James is on a mission. Aline is in Boston. Muriel is in Provo. Finally, I was an only child all over again, after 24 years! It was fun to reconnect with my parents, I feel like we dont get to bond as much as we used to. ALWAYS, after spending time with them I realize how many of their quirky characteristics are my own. Picture below to demonstrate:

I know I've posed this way for pictures before. I was looking for some on my computer but I couldn't find any. I've probably posed this way for other people's pictures. My Mom did this on her own accord, without prompt. I wanted to take a nice picture of her smiling holding the marshmallow... No, she had to do this. Also look at the color of the marshmallow. She likes to burn them. Again, if you've ever roasted marshmallows with me, I get the most satisfaction by sticking it directly into the fire and pulling it out to see the mallow in flames. Apparently, my mom is the same way. The similarity is a little creepy. I had no idea she was like this.

I feel like as a family another characteristic we share is being unprepared..... good thing my Aunt Nicole doesn't have this trait! She brought us wipes to clean our hands and she brought us WOOD! Somehow I thought making tinfoil dinners on just charcoal was a good idea. (It's not.)

She drove all the way from Farmington to hang out with this at Tanner's Flat up Little Cottonwood Canyon. She didn't spend the night and she was probably there for less than 2 hours. I thought it was awesome.

It was fun to cuddle up with my parents in a tent. It brought me back to the good 'ol days, when I was 3 and I was an only child. :)

This pose was my mother's idea.

My Mom made us take a picture in front of the rental car.
She wanted us to prop open the trunk so you could see all of our stuff
but I thought otherwise. :)

Fourth of July Weekend

So... I lost my camera. I'm not really sure where it is and I've looked in my house, I've asked the property manager 3 times if he seen it, I even looked through the car of one of my friends (sorry Emily), hoping I would find it. I have no clue! Anyways, so I decided to depict our 3 day weekend in the form of stick figures. You'll see....

We went down to Goblin Valley Friday night.

The sunset behind the plateau and hills was absolutely beautiful! I felt like I was looking at a water color.

Saturday morning we decided to hike Little White Horse Canyon which looped into Bells Canyon. It was a slot canyon which provided a lot of shade for us and it was fun to explore. Below on the left is a picture I took off of Google and the picture on the right is Matt in a similar scene. (Love my art skills?!)

However at one point we got out to the open and it was pretty scorching hot. When we were done with that, we thought to do another hike but thought we should cool down first and so we sat for a while and played some card games.... however we never really cooled down. The shade was even hot!

Chillin' by the fire.

On Sunday morning we packed up and headed off to church in Hanksville and then off to the Capitol Reef to a little town called Fruitas. Can you guess how it got it's name?

The Mormon settlers planted fruit trees here! They'll let you can eat right off the tree, but unlike my picture there were no fruit on the trees yet. It was too early in the season. Fruitas is hands down one of the cutest small towns in Utah I have ever seen. If it wasn't in a national park (they wouldn't let me live there) I'd want to move here---especially with fruit trees on every corner.

In Capitol Reef we hiked up Sulfur Creek. This reminded me of my Right Fork Canyon experience in Zion's during Labor day , except the sun was out, the creek was warm, and I had complete confidence I'd be out of there before night fall. (3 hour hike) (Click here to read about that trip.) There were mini water falls we got to climb around and the water wasn't even chilly!

Again, I have the picture ont he right of what it really looks like and my depiction of Matt & I. :)

My dad is in town and so we thought we'd come back for July 4th to spend time with him. When my dad comes to Utah there is nothing more he wants to do than to hike or to go camping. He loves hiking. We let him choose the place and we were off. When we started he said, oh by the way the first 700 feet is pretty much directly up hill. Well... yes the first 700 feet were directly up hill, but then the parts after it weren't that much easier either. Although Matt and I had been hiking Saturday and Sunday, we weren't ready for the 90 degree up hill hike. On the other hand, my dad couldn't have been happier.

Regardless of the strenuous climb, hiking with my dad is one of my favorite past times. He helped me look for some igneous and metamorphic rocks for my classroom and taught me a few things about rocks that I didn't know before.

Later that night we bough some fireworks and decided to hang out at home and just light our own fireworks in the street. We wanted to see if any of our neighbors were home so they could do it with us, but alas, it was just us two. It was fun for me, I'd never did fireworks before!

After seeing Matt throw a firework into the air and having it land on our lawn, turning the surrounding grass black and then trying it again only to have it come inches a way from catching our neighbors american flag on fire.... I can see why my parents never bought us fireworks.

Happy July 4th!