Jackson Hole

I am playing catch up. This was a fun trip too.

Jackson Hole!

We went up with some friends, rented a cabin and did some exploring. Matt and I went up a little earlier and did some hiking of our own first.

I say hiking but we biked as well. Look at Matt with his bike. :)

We rode our bikes from the visitor center to Jenny Lake. Took a little boat ride and hiked up.

Jenny Lake was quite beautiful.

Matt wanted to capture the belly at the lake. I think I'm less than 30 weeks here. 28?

Mama moose and baby moose. Apparently the Daddy moose took off when humans showed up.

I have to say I was pretty impressed with Matt's skill of taking a picture while riding a bike and getting both of us in the shot too. It was a gorgeous bike ride!

We met with Matt's friends and headed off to Yellowstone. 

We saw lots of gysers!

Bison too.

Some of us also decided to do some white water rafting. Here we are looking great in our wet suits. :)
The water ended up being pretty cold so lucky for us the wet suits were complimentary, no additional cost.

They even provided us with some pretty cute matching wind breakers!

Melanie & Salina

Eric, who strongly suggested/threatened that he was going to throw someone in. 

Luckily, we all stayed on the boat and no one got thrown in or fell out. Yes I was a little worried but it really wasn't that bad. I was honestly a little bit disappointed that we didn't go over more rapids. 

Anyways I'm not really sure what to say about the next series of photos. We did some hiking and took some fun shots. Yellowstone was pretty. 

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.