Memorial Day Weekend

Of course, we went to Zion.

For Memorial Day weekend we headed up to Zion on Friday and stayed until Monday. Everyone went canyoneering, doing some pretty gorgeous hikes and I well.... did not. I blame pregnancy. I was kind of nervous, but in retrospect I probably could have done at least one of them. Oh well.

Matt tells me next year he'll take me back to some of the canyons they did. Here are some fun shots of their trip.

Iara, Zach, Matt, Jen, Duke, & Lauren-- They're hardcore.

When I decided not to go we invited Jen to take my spot, using the permit. She's pretty hardcore
and pretty funny too. Taking Jen was a good choice.

If you'd like to go canyoneering Matt would love to take you!

Now this was my part of the trip.... 

Rebecca was every so kind as to come down and do a little hiking with me. She brought her two kids and we explored a few trails. Her son Vincent was pretty adventurous. 

Vincent, Rebecca, & Joselyn 

For example, he really wanted a hiking stick and if you look really closely you can see which stick he selected to use. :) He walked around trying to balance himself, hunched over this with this 16 inch stick. We were able to find one more appropriate for his height. However, I was pretty humored at his excitement of using this twig.

If you look closely I was able to find a spot that kind of resembled a canyon. It was a gap between two rocks. There's even a pool of water! (I didn't climb up, but climbed around it. ;))

The view was pretty nice too. Unfortunately I didn't take any shots of us climbing up to this spot. (See the photo above.) There were a bunch of cacti. My most memorable experience was Rebecca's daughter Joselyn. We were climbing up a pretty slippery incline and the kids found it to be easier to hike barefoot up this slick rock instead of wearing shoes. Honestly, a good choice. However there were some cactus, which were easy to avoid, as well. Joselyn was coming up on some cactus and Rebecca points and says: "Joselyn don't step here it's cactus." Right when she says that Joselyn plants her foot down on the prickly plant. Yes it was painful. At the same time (I'm a bad person) slightly humoring. Joselyn shed a few tears but really didn't complain that much. She did great, really.

It was a lot more fun afterwards too. When she would complain about anything (not that she complained a lot) I would ask her, "which is worse, this or cactus?" Silence followed as she told me that cactus was by far worse. 

Zion---The Subway

May 19, 2012- Zion National Park- The Subway

Doing the Subway was on my list of things to do before I die. I've seen pictures of it and I've heard a lot about it. I assumed that because I had heard so much about it was essentially not hard. I wouldn't go as far as deeming it "easy" but I didn't think it would be too difficult. For the first half it really wasn't difficult. In fact when we finally arrived to the part known as "The Subway" I thought, "I'd do this again next week!" After walking the next half, wading through river, and tripping over rocks I decided that I think I really would do it again, but not for a couple of more years. 

Seeing the Subway was GORGEOUS. If you have a chance to do it, don't even hesitate!

This is how the trip started off. It was REALLY cold by the way.

I love this picture.
Katie, Richard, Matt, Lauren, & Duke

This is as belly photo as I get. Here I am at... er... 27 weeks?

This is all of us after we have suited up. We're all in wet suits
except for Matt who's wearing a dry suit. (Almost a better option.)
We did Das Boot first, which is a canyon that leads into the Subway.
The water in Das Boot was FREEZING. Needless to say I was grateful for long sleeves and water proof
socks and gloves. I was comfortable. :)

Katie and Richard--I think they look like spies.

The pools in this area were GORGEOUS. We thought this one looked like a "hot tub". So here we are "hot tubbing".
(**Disclosure: The water was not even hot. Comfortable but not hot.)

It was so BEAUTIFUL!
I often find the most beautiful places on earth are the ones that are the most difficult to get to.

  

"The Subway"

So we did this the weekend before Memorial Day weekend. We had a lot of fun with Katie, Richard, Duke, & Lauren and would do a trip like this with them AGAIN. Duke & Lauren were also the ones that came with us on that Labor Day Trip that took us 2 nights in the wilderness (unplanned 2 nights). I'm surprised they still want to come with us. :) 

It was FUN! I did have a hard time being pregnant and I think a lot of it stemmed from paranoia. A few weeks before I met a climbing instructor who told me that his wife, as a midwife, told her patients to not do any climbing or canyoneering after 24 weeks. I'm not really sure specifically why, but that scared me enough where I almost didn't go. Lucky enough, it went fine. Yes I was really slow and yes I was really tired really quickly, but I did it. The satisfaction of doing it and seeing the Subway with my own eyes outweighs the pain. 

Stay tuned for more catch up stories. The next post will be about what we did on Memorial Day Weekend. 

Long Time

Honestly I can't believe it's been since the beginning of April that I posted last. I feel like I was pretty good at consistently posting too. We've done a lot of fun things. Some of you may be wondering what being pregnant is like for me too. In short, it's been pretty good, in fact almost easy--- too easy. It's beginning to make me feel uncomfortable, like something horrible should be happening to balance out all this good fortune.

In any case, expect a few posts of "updates".

The first one I can think of is...

GRADUATION!

May 4, 2012.
(Here's a little disclosure... I did walk at graduation and invited my parents and Matt's parents and my aunts, but really I didn't finish until last Thursday.)

My Mom made this sign and at graduation was waving it
ferociously and yelling my name. It was pretty much as cool as it
sounds. ;)

I finished school and I got my Masters. After two years of working full time and going to class at night, it's done. It would be a lie if I didn't tell you I felt some type of pride from the experience. Now let's see what I'll do with it, because getting paid a lot more money isn't one of those things. Getting paid "a lot" seems almost like an oxymoron---I am a teacher after all. 

A few of the ladies that I have studied with. 

Actually, next year I'll be working SUPER part time. When I say SUPER I mean 10 hours a week. (That's not even half time!) I'll also be teaching Reading to 7th and 8th graders at my school. I am a little concerned on the classroom management dynamic, because they are 7th and 8th GRADERS not 7 and 8 YEAR olds. To my second graders I say something like, "Oh I love that Suzy is folding her arms and looking at me" and then ALL my kid sit up straight with their arms folded dying to hear to me praise them for their efforts of looking straight up at me. Try saying that to a 12 year old, "Man I really love the choices you are making. Thanks for coming to class on time!"

We'll have to see.

Happy Easter!

On Friday morning we got a knock on a door and I saw a delivery truck pull away. On our porch were two tiny boxes from my Mom and inside were these two cute easter baskets! I got the baby lamb and Matt got the bunny. *cute*

I did tell you that my mom has recently gotten into sending us gifts for every holiday. With this fun package we each got the same note except it was modified for our specific gender. Thanks Mom!









Friday afternoon we headed up to Idaho where we were planning on spending Easter with Matt's family. Friday we spent the afternoon hanging out with Matt's brother, sister-in-law, and sister in Pocatello and then we headed off to Burley. Saturday morning started off with an Easter egg hunt.

I have to say that Easter is always cooler with the Hickenloopers. Can you find the eggs hidden in this picture??

How about this one:

My niece was so cute! She kept referring to the eggs as "snack". We'd point to one egg, that was labled with her name, and she'd say, "Snack... snack... snack..." If you've ever seen Finding Nemo, think of the seagulls that always say "mine, mine, mine..." and if you substitute that for "snack, snack, snack" and you have capture this Easter moment.

She was so stinkin' cute with her little Easter basket.

I hope everyone had enough chocolate and candy to carry them through the weekend plus some.... I know I had my yearly quota of chocolate on Saturday. :)

Happy Easter!

Donuts!

A couple of weeks ago I saw someone post a link, on Facebook, about some Pintrest baked donuts. I love donuts and baked donuts seemed to be the solution. :)

It's actually because of the link about baked donuts that made me want to look into Pintrest a little more. I'm not an official member yet but I am certainly a Pinterest moocher. I'm sure that one day when I decide to be an official Pintrest member I won't have those annoying banners on every window that says: "Login now! Not a member?! Click here!"

The first attempt:
1. I started making donuts and then realized I needed a donut pan. As a result I made a bunch of cake balls that didn't taste very good and took me, no joke, 3-4 hours to make.

2. Last week I bought a donut pan from Gygi's. I love Gygi's! We even had a gift card that was floating around from our wedding so I pretty much got it for "free". Great day. Great day. Matt convinced me to get a 'mini' donut pan--- because it's cuter, but I think one day I'd like an upgrade or even better a giant cupcake pan! It makes a cake in the shape of a cupcake.

It was Muriel's birthday and I thought I would make her some funfetti donuts. It's my favorite cake! I found a recipe online where converted a cake mix into a donut mix.

Notice how they're brown? Well, when they're fresh out of the oven they're pretty soft but after they cool they turned into something with a hard shell and hallow inside. I'm not sure how that's possible but sadly it's true.

However I felt that putting powdered sugar all over them made them more presentable and possibly more desirable, even if they were a little hollow on the inside.

3. I made some today!

These turned out a lot nicer and I used a completely different recipe.

Coated in brown sugar, cinnamon, and white sugar. These are not PERFECT but they're pretty darn tasty! I'm stil out to try more recipes. I'm in search for something just as good as Hostess. One day... one day... I'll figure it out.