Yeaaah, that was purdy.

The past few months have been eventful to say the least, between camping trip upon camping trip and house shopping (thanks Tay!) and buying, and painting, and moving....(oy!) time has been scarce.

Last month I got to go backpacking up and over Pine Valley Mountain, the lush mountain island in the middle of the hot, hot dessert. I got to hike it with the twins, who both entertained me and provided me with freeze dried goods from the storage room of mom and dads house before we left. You guys we have to go again soon! There were loads of pretty places to stop and take pics along Mill Canyon, Whipple Valley, and all trails in between.

Let it Snow X 3

Snow three days in a row--ROCK No work today because of it even, and school was cancelled. I drove to my mommies house to visit the twins and jump on their beds and yell "snowday!" but they were already out playing in it. Go figure.

There hasn't been much happening around here besides hustle and bustle (mostly bustle) for the holidays and hiking and web-developing (that one's dave's) however I did make a thing for the wall.



I call it "rippy bits"! No actually I don't because it's cut not ripped, but I am shameless when it comes to spongebob squarepants references.

We went to an Aquabats concert at the electric theater recently. It wasn't quite as fun as the one we went to in salt lake when then had concertgoers racing inflatable rafts crowd-surf style across the venue and back, but it was still fun. We dressed up in obscenely colorful tracksuits in honor of Ricky Fitness once again.

I went hiking with Maddie, Amanda, and Sara last Saturday to Camelback out by Gunlock. It was too cold for any froggies to be out, but the weather was beautiful. Perfect for shadow pictures and running around in the vortex.

The year...in pictures

Que the cheesy montage music! Actually we may not have music, but cheesy and montage we can do. Since I'm so good (and by "good" I mean "bad") at updating there will be a lot of stuff you haven't seen!

Feb: For my b-day/valentines day we went to San Fransisco. Ate good sushi, wandered the pier, and china town, discovered art galleries and an awesome deli.





March: Family camping trip to Whitney Pockets...campfire, dad reading stories about our ancestors who settled the area, monkeying up rocks...good times.






Also in March: Maddie turned 4, thus making her eligible to say "I'm four, I sleep in a drawer".



July: Dave planned river rafting in Montana for our anniversary. "Duuuude, wetsuits!"



August: Spencer and Taylor got married! (see Laura's blog for pics)

Also in August: Hiking on Pine Valley, picking wild raspberries, conducting "secret trail" maintenance, getting our picture on the old boiler.



October: Marathon for me, rainy, not as fun as last time, but I got boston qualifying time which was my goal. (can't find my marathon pics, curse me and my orginizational skills)

Also October: Hawaii. Maddie made up a Hawaii song, we were beach bums for days, petted dolphins, had yummy crab, body surfed in the dark. Yesssssss.







Holidays I left out, just they're all "we ate some turkey and stuff" (sorry Chris, Shawn & munchkins, we missed you at Thanksgibbing though, and are excited to see you at Christmas!)

Oh! Hi blog. (and happy happy hair stuff)

So I know I haven't exactly been all updatey lately. Forgive me?

We're all good, Dave is still dying to quit SkyWest to do freelance full time. He finished his bachelor's since last I wrote (more than a year ago!? that's sad). But, we want to squeeze in a trip to Ukraine (his mission area) before he gives up his flight benefits (P.S. my passport came yesterday). I'm still guiding hikes. It's still fun. Maddie still loves playing with her friends at pre-school more than helping me clean house. Figures.



A while ago I got clip in color extensions for my hair. They're human hair so they can be curled or straightened along with my own. They were relatively cheap considering that having my own hair colored or having extensions weaved in would cost around $75-$100 and only last a few weeks. The clips are easy to put in and can be taken out at night. Probably the best thing about them is that I can put in a different color every day if I want without the trouble of bleaching my dark hair to ruination.

I got mine from this site: Extensions.com, but I have also seen similar extensions on ebay. A search for "color extension clips" should yield some good finds.

I loves me my snacks.

I also loves me my skinny jeans.

If you're like me then you must visit the Hungry Girl site. It rocks.

Friends, Hungry Girl. Hungry Girl, Friends. You'll get along just peachy.

Hungry Girl's Fruity Fantastic Summer treats

Like a popsicle. Or maybe more like a hot dog.

Thus far the summer has proved summerriffic. I only work three days a week, and I get home around 10:30 a.m. when I do, so by the time I’m all showered and dressed it’s like I didn’t work at all. ‘course, if I wasn’t working I’d probably be sleeping in till around 9:00 and then mulling around in my jammies until about 10:30 , so it all evens out. I love my early morning work schedule. If I didn’t have work to get me up early every other weekday I’d pout about how I never get up early enough to enjoy the cool mornings. The heat kinda depresses me.

WOO! We went out to Sand Hollow reservoir last Saturday for the FR employee pick nick. It was shenanigans. Living up to her title of “drama queen” Maddie had a grand old time decked out in her floaties and tube kicking out beyond the shallow water towards the bigger kids and calling “heeow me! Heeow heeow!” (heeow= help). They totally fell for it and offered to tug her back to shore. Little did they know she just wanted free rides. All three of us took a ride on the wave runner. It was windy and the water was choppy, but we didn’t tip luckily, then we sent Dave out on his own so he could be all stunt-tastic without us. I got sunburned because I didn’t put on sunblock, though I made sure Maddie and Dave did. I hung out with Laura later and she put aloe vera stuff on me a whole bunch.

Apparently the effects of the lake trip wore Maddie out for two whole days afterward. Here’s her trying to stay awake in the car (this one’s for you Spence-O)



Ah, I can’t believe I’m already tired of summer. Even the forf of Juwy isn’t making me all giddy with anticipation like it usually does. I kinda just want school to start again and make it cool off. C’ept then I remember that I don’t have any creative classes going on, just Spanish, and then after that Spanish 2. Maybe I’ll have to try and wedge Intro to Illustrator in there somewhere just to keep me sane. Until then artsy fartsy projects’ll just have to hold me over. I’m currently making a rainforest-y depiction for Maddie's room. Check it out, I get to use mod-podge. I KNOW!

In closing, I can't believe my last post had snow in it. *tear*

like a virgin

My birthday day in Vegas was exceedingly fun, and filled with firsts. We ate lunch at in-n-out and had animal style french fries for the first time ever. Previously, only animal style burgers have graced our arteries. a'course, first I had to stop at Carl's Jr. for two side salads with balsamic vinaigrette because I didn't want to fill up on junk. I got my first ear piercings while Dave watched and inwardly giggled at me while the lady was drawing and re-drawing the dots on my ears. I briefly considered gambling for my first time ever, but we weren't anywhere near any slots the whole time we were down there. We had dinner at Eliseevsky, a Russian restaurant, for Dave's Valentines present. I felt slightly out of place because almost everyone in there was speaking Russian. Vegas has a tiny Russian community, who knew? We shared an order of Pelmini (meat dumplings with hot sour cream) and I had shashlik, it's basically a pork kabob with really extremely good sauce (Me and Dave determined that the sauce was tomato based, but besides that we couldn't even begin to guess what else is in it). We were able to squeeze in some dessert this time, we had crepes with warm strawberries and cream filling. With the live music (a petite little blonde russian woman dressed kinda funky played an accordian...thing?)it ended up being kinda romantic. We spent two and a half hours at dinner, but it didn't feel like we were there that long.

For my birthday I got a gift card, which I used to buy some leopard print ballet flats. Surprisingly they go with almost everything. Laura got me some earrings (she knew I'd be getting my ears pierced), and Dave gave me a really great time and some pierced ears.

Midterm exam last night. I studied and aced. This week I have to get cracking on designing a logo for my made up company. They do high end custom cabinetry. I was thinking of doing a really simple image of woodworking. I have no idea if I'll be able to pull that off though so I need to come up with some alternate ideas.

Yesterday I worked. We hiked through Snow Canyon State Park, which is where most of our hikes are. Snow Canyon, named after Lorenzo and Erastus Snow, not for it's abundance of frozen precipitation, was uncharacteristically filled with the cold white stuff yesterday. I got some pictures while I was on the hike. I was sad that my camera wasn't picking up the red in the rocks very well. Red rocks and snow: in my opinion one of the prettiest sights to behold.

The night before the big snow I had been online playing World Of Warcraft with Dave (sometimes we play with Alan from across town). My character is an elf, but since the Lunar Festival was going on I got to travel (via Lunar portal) to any of the major alliance cities. I went to Ironforge, the dwarven City in the mountain. Outside Ironforge is a wintery white snow-filled forest, so me and my pet bear tromped around in the snow (we even left foot and paw prints wherever we went) and chatted with dwarves that called me "lass". Anyhow, when me and Dave went to bed that night Dave shrieked and asked why my feet were so freezing. My reply was something about how me and Bear had been running around in the snow all night. I was unimaginably tickled the next day to be hiking through so much real snow.





ah! I almost forgot. Alan was in an offroad motorcycle race and we went and watched the beginning (only the beginning because we had to leave early for yet another visit to the emergency room because Dave accidentally gave maddie what the doctor and nurse called "nursemaids elbow", but that's a story for another day). It was cool to see the insane amount of motorcycles lined up far away and then hear the roar of the motors as they kicked up a cloud of dust on their way towards us. I got pictures.

far away in the distance you can barely see the mass of motorcycles lined up.









My brother’s wife, her little boy (in the back carrier) and little girl, maddie, the twins, me. We were totally spectating.



...and this is me playing with the close-up function on my camera