Seattle!!

The weekend of Sept 10th I went to visit Amber and Scott in their new home in Seattle (actually North Bend, WA). I've been to Seattle before, but I was excited to go again and also to see them. They always take such good care of me and feed me so well. Here is the trip in pictures......

I took the train from the airport into Scott's work. As my train pulled up I saw this cute little scene....SO CUTE!

As we walked from the train into Scott's work it was evident that the kids were happy to see me. Note how I'm dragging my luggage still, but Andrew is trying to hold my hand at the same time.

We dropped my stuff off at Scott's office and went across the street to eat a hot dog and then walked through the waterfalls. Andrew didn't like it too much....


Needless to say we were a bit soaked after that. Luckily I had a change of clothes in my suitcase. Not so lucky for Scott though....

We then headed over to a famous view point to view the city. I had been here before, but not at night. We were able to get some great shots!


The next morning we took a hike to Twin Falls. It was a pretty decent hike (3 miles round trip) for little Ashley, but she made it. Here are some pictures from the hike (sorry there are a lot!)


Note the fear on Ashley's face....a dog was coming. We saw this look along with a scream many, many times on the trail. By the end though we at least had her saying "hello" to the dogs as they passed...

Andrew's just enjoying his lunch here.....

Andrew following Ashley's lead....

Ashley throwing rocks (while looking like a ballerina).....

And my all time favorite picture of both kids (not necessarily me and my unshowered look....)


After the hike Ashley, Amber and I went for a run, showered, ate dinner and then headed into Seattle. Our plan was to go to Pike's Place, but it closed earlier than we thought. We did get to sit on a big piggy bank though.....

We then decided to go and see the famous troll under the bridge. Amber asked the brilliant question of "why would they put a troll under a bridge?" Apparently she is not up-to-date on her nursery rhymes. It was a kind of creepy troll....


After seeing the troll we decided we were hungry again and tried to find Dick's drive-inn for some quick hamburgers. Let's just say the GPS is not always accurate. We eventually found it and stood in line with the rest of the Washington Huskies fans cause the game had just got out. We were the only people with kids. I thought about mentioning BYU and how awesome it was to beat the Huskies the previous week, but I decided I had better not!!

After a long day we were tired......


On Sunday we went to church and then for Scott's birthday he made me an excellent dinner of BBQ chicken and yummy potatoes. In the meantime Amber & I helped to make the kids gifts for Scott's birthday to Scott and then they took me to the airport.

All in all it was a fantastic weekend! Amber & Scott live in a gorgeous place and I can't wait to go back. As Ashley said "You sure didn't stay long!"

Top 10 things I've learned living alone

So some of you may or may not know that Nicole moved to Omaha and I've been living alone for the past 3 months. Overall I actually enjoy it, but I have learned a few interesting things along the way that I thought I'd share:

1. I only run the dishwasher once a week tops
2. 4 bedrooms is a lot of space for a single person.
3. Water in un-used toilets evaporates and leaves a ring in the toliet. It is hard to remember to "use" each one
4. The A/C bill is very, very low since I don't get home until 9pm. I also don't have to worry about freezing Nicole out!
5. I can walk around naked. Please note I said CAN, not DO!
6. I have to get rid of the mice and spiders myself :(
7. Making sure the front door is actually closed is important. I have come down to an open door later in the night several times which is not fun checking the house for intruders with my baseball bat!
8. I wonder if I should rotate using my 3 showers to make sure they keep running properly
9. Moving furniture for the carpet cleaners is not as easy as it may seem!
10. I still miss Nicole......especially at dinner time when we would normally chat!

Adult EFY aka Lake Powell

Last weekend I have the opportunity to go to Lake Powell. I love Lake Powell mostly because I love the sun, boats and not wearing make-up. This trip, however, was one of the oddest that I have ever been on. I went with 60 "mid-singles" of which I didn't know 57 of them.

Let's just say we had 1 houseboat and I didn't know that they made houseboats this small. It literally was sinking on many occasions (due to too many people on the boat). It only had a toliet....no shower and there were no "cabins." The "beds" were futons that doubled as couches during the day. My friend Janie and I had paid to have a bed in the houseboat, but I didn't really feel like sleeping on the same couch that everyone in their wet suits sat on throughout the day. I also didn't want to try and sleep in the major walkway of the cabin that everyone had to go through to get to the top of the houseboat or out to the shore. So Janie and I slept in a girl's tent who had extra room, but I had no mat to sleep on and let's just say the sandy shores of Lake Powell were not enough. I think I slept about 45 minutes the first night. I was on the boat at 6:30am....

With so many older adults you would think it would be a great opportunity to meet people, but it felt like a really long networking activity instead of a bunch of singles flirting. Sometimes it felt like adult EFY, but with no leaders to make you sit on everyone's lap in a circle (LOL!). Maybe I was just left out of the loop, but looking around it didn't seem like there was much flirting going on at all. Everyone seemed indifferent to the whole trip. I felt that if I had to tell one more person I worked at Monavie and was getting my MBA that I was going to die! I once had a conversation about SEO for over 45 minutes with one person! Seriously I'm on vacation can we not talk about work??? On Friday night they had a dance, yes a dance. Last time I danced outside of Zumba was at least 7 years ago (and it still is since I just watched while others danced). I must be old cause I was happy when the park ranger showed up and told us to turn it off. I was so sleepy, but my tent was not far enough away from the dance party :(

Overall I loved the ride down and back as well as all the time on the boat (which I had a lot of). I just work way better in smaller groups. I have come to accept that I am not the life of the party and that I don't enjoy this big of groups. It would have been nicer to have been with 20 people so you could actually get to know people on a little bit more of a personal level.

On a better note a lot of people didn't go out on the ski boats which was odd....why go to Lake Powell and not get on the boat? Anyways, it meant that I got lots of time to wakeboard which I really love. Overall I met a few cool people, but with 60 people it was just too big of a group. But I came home tan and sore which means that I definitely got some fun in.

Here are some pictures. I didn't really take very many on the trip, but Janie took some of me on the wakeboard so that is mostly the pictures I had.

Stadium of Fire!

Yesterday was nearly a perfect 4th of July. The weather was gorgeous and the company was great. First the day started off with Zumba. I love that class! Then a quick change of clothes and Nicole and I went golfing with some of the guys from her MBA class. We went to South Mountain up in Draper which was a beautiful, but difficult course. I lost 4 balls on the first 2 holes. I have to admit I was a bit rusty, but by the last 3 holes I was playing much better and not nearly as embarrassed. It was a great time with lots and lots of laughing.

Then we came home and laid out in the backyard since it was only 75 degrees (crazy for the 4th of July!). Then we got ready for Stadium of Fire. Monavie gave everyone tickets for our summer party. I love Stadium of Fire and this year seemed to be even better since we were in the west stands with backs on our chairs and such cool temperatures. I even had to put a jacket on at the end. Monavie also provided us with a BBQ beforehand, but it was actually catered by Cafe Rio (my favorite)! Carrie Underwood sounded amazing. I was a casual fan of hers, but man can she sing. WOW did she sound good live. She also sang the national anthem and God Bless America during the fireworks in addition to her normal show. The fireworks were great as always and we chatted for a bit afterwards and got home in only 10 minutes which has to be a record.

Me, Elisa and Nicole from our seats. I would also like these seats for the football games!

The dancers didn't jump into the splits like years past, but I guess they were okay :)



The Air Force jets fly-over...LOVE it!

Carrie Underwood....

Hiking Timp

While Nicole was visiting from Omaha we decided to hike Timp. We've done this hike before, but this time we decided to start from Aspen Grove instead of Timponeke. All we knew as that the Aspen Grove hike is supposedly shorter but steeper. We had no idea how much prettier it would be. It was definitely more difficult especially with the trail hidden by snow a lot of the time. There was still a lot of snow up on the mountain and as a result there were waterfalls EVERYWHERE. Nicole counted at least 20 that she could see at one time. It was such a green, gorgeous hike. It seriously rivaled our hikes in Kauai and here we were in our own backyard!!

Seeing that there was snow at the higher elevations it also provided for some scarier moments on the hike. The park ranger was a head of us and said that it was safe, but we had to climb over a ton of "snow bridges" over waterfalls in our tennis shoes. The phrase "this is the trail, right?" was uttered too many times to count, but we kept seeing people every so often ahead of us and behind us so we figured we were good.

Once we reached Emerald Lake (just at the base of the Timp summit) it was evident that we would not be able to make it to the top of Timp since people were coming down from the top of Timp in snow pants, snow shoes (with spikes in them) and skis! These guys also stopped at the temporary shelter and told us that there were 50 mph winds at the top and it was quite scary and then they just changed their clothes :) They followed us down the mountain for a while, but we were too fast for them...LOL!

So we only made it to Emerald Lake, but it was well worth the hike and worth doing it during the run-off even if you can't make it to the top of Timp. It was one of the best hikes I've ever been on. Here are some pictures that I hope do it even a little bit of justice.

This big waterfall is about a 45 minute hike that you could take any kids that can walk a ways on. (probably 4 and older). It isn't super steep to get there, but this waterfall is amazing and you can see all the others up higher. I assume after all the snow melts that the waterfall isn't as powerful. If you want to do it let me know, the kids would love it!


Another big waterfall....


You might want to click on this one to make it bigger, but look for all the waterfalls all the way up the mountain. We ended up hiking over at least half of these waterfalls on our way to the top of this mountain.

So, So green and tons of vegetation!


Note how the water falls from the top and then goes under where I'm walking on the snow. One bad step and I was going down that waterfall. Luckily the snow shoe people had made some pretty good tracks, but as you can see I had to be careful.....




Here I am near the top. I felt like Julie Andrews in the Sound of Music as I sang "Climb every mountain!" I bet Nicole wishes I also sounded like her :)


Once at the top by Emerald Lake I had to do the important things....update my Facebook status! With AT&T I was shocked to even have service! I also love my brown towel I'm pretending is a coat. It was cold up there with the wind blowing.

Emerald Lake....still frozen over!


Here is Nicole just walking through snow in July. I ended up "Skiing' on my running shoes until I fell and slide on my butt. It provided a good laugh for Nicole and the guys behind us with their snow spikes and ski poles. I showed them how you don't need all that equipment!!


More snow bridges!

Roommate Reunion

This post is about 3 weeks old, but it will definitely be worth it. A couple weeks ago Stacy and I got together with one of our roommates, Heather (Whittaker) Barlow, from 12 years ago! Wow, it really had been that long! Heather has been living back east forever, however we have kept in touch via our blogs. It was crazy to get together considering we haven't seen each other in person for so long, but with the blogs we are all up-to-date on each others lives. It was fabulous to get together again.

So for old times sake I thought I would show our improvement in the last 12 years. Thanks to my scrapbooking (prior to digital cameras) we are provided with these beautiful photos from the glorious King Henry Apt. 76 (1997-1998). I realize not everyone may approve of these being posted on the internet, but oh well :)

Roommate pictures after church. I also love our "Tennessee Prom Queen," Miss Heather who I believe had her bridal pictures hair done with overalls on afterwards....LOL

Sadly I saw overalls in the Gap just this week. Looks like it's time to pull those back out :)


BYU Preference (Heather, Me, and Stacy are in the middle).....yep we still went to dances, but for all those that don't know, we did have FREE tickets from our glory days at Hogi Yogi. I guess there were some perks to working there other than the pay ($4.40/hr).


Self-explanatory photo shoot at our apartment. We weren't camera shy.


A picture of us 12 years later. Sadly all the shots above were taken long before Cafe Rio existed.

Last weekend was the half marathon that Stacy, Amber and I have been training for since January. Seeing that it was scheduled for May 1st one might assume that the weather would be decent, however that was far from the case.

Watching the weather we knew it might be cold (35 degrees!) but prayed that it wouldn't rain. Apparently my prayers only hit the ceiling (this explains a lot of unanswered prayers in the past years :) ). We started running and it was cool, but okay. Mile 2 it started raining, then it started pouring, then it started SNOWING! At about mile 4 I had to stop and literally wring out the bottom of my pants because the weight of the water was making them fall down. I then tied them in a knot so that they would not be dragging on the ground under my feet! So yes I was looking extremely cute!

I had been nursing a recent back injury and by mile 7 my body had completely cramped up and I was running slower and slower. I could tell Stacy was still doing okay so I convinced her to leave me and run ahead. I didn't want to be the dead weight holding her back on her first half marathon. With my aching back, knee and quads I knew I was going to end up walking ALOT.

Luckily I had grabbed a trash bag at the last second and I put it on so my core stayed pretty dry, however it did not cover my extremities that were dripping wet and frozen. My shoes were also nice and sloshy!

Needless to say the 2nd half of the marathon was not fun. I would run a half a mile and then walk for some, run and walk. It took me almost 30 minutes longer than the first half and I literally at times started crying and talking to myself (and God) about why it just couldn't stop raining/snowing. When I was running my last mile and saw my sisters and Scott waiting to run the last little bit with me I lost it and started sobbing. My iPod magically flipped to "we are the champions" and I made it. Yes, who would have thought on my 3rd half marathon I would be crying. Luckily with all the rain it was hard to see my tears. I crossed the finish line at 2:33 which is 25 min slower than my best time (2:09). Here are some pictures of the event.

The home stretch.....I had stopped sobbing at this point and yes I'm still wearing the trash bag!


This looks sums up how I felt......


The very cold runners post race......