Wonderful Weekend

Brandon had fall break on Thursday and Friday, so Friday I ditched my lab responsibilities and we drove to southern Utah to do a canyon. Thursday night we stayed at a super nice place in Cedar City. And I mean it was probably super nice in 1927. Friday we got up early to go to Water Canyon just out of Hildale. It was SO beautiful. The leaves in the canyon were at the peak of their color. It was a steep three mile hike in, and then we dropped into the canyon. It was full of freezing water and fun rappels. By the end of the day we were shivering like crazy! Worth it.



I love this video. We were trying to set the timer on the camera; it's not often I get to see Brandon dance.



On Saturday, Matt and Audrey took us to the BYU game. It was so great! They had tickets to get us all this free food (like ribs and ice cream before and during the game) and we had awesome seats. It was SO nice of them! It was pretty much Brandon's dream come true.

A good feeling

So I was going to title this post "the best feeling," when I realized that I couldn't put my finger on the actual best feeling. There are lots of best feelings; and this is one of them. Today, after a week of bad weather, being sick, and living indoors, I decided to go on a bike ride. I'm still getting better so I didn't want to push it. Today I wasn't going for speed or mileage; I just wanted to get out. And it felt wonderful! The evening was beautiful; right before sunset. Snow still caps the mountains, but the temperature was perfect and the leaves have decided to stick around despite last week's snow. I rode a little ways up Slate Canyon and then across the foothills to the south. I love riding up a difficult hill, stopping at the top to admire my surroundings, and then flying back down (except for when I almost run over a big fat pheasant). It is definitely a good feeling.

Letter to my upstairs neighbors

Dear neighbors,

Don't you hate it when you can hear everything that the people in the upstairs apartments are doing? I don't. Except for when the only thing that they are ever doing grosses the heck out of me. Five out of seven nights a week I am woken up in the middle of the night (like 3 am) by the rhythmic "squeak, squeak, squeak" of the upstairs bed. "Gross!" I moan, roll over, and stuff the pillow over my head. But no. It only gets louder and more constant, and goes on for at least half of an hour. Seriously. Seriously? Why does it take so long? To make matters worse, after every "event," my kindly and private friends, I get to listen to you take a forty minute bath in a shower that squeaks even worse than your bed. So by now, I have been awake for over an hour cursing the day you said "I do." I really should be more understanding and caring, but I just can't.

Twice I have resorted to chucking books at the ceiling in hopes that you would hear me and become terribly embarrassed, but each time Brandon (who has also woken up) takes the higher road and tells me that you can't help it. Can't help it? If I can hear the bed squeaking through the floor, I am sure that you can hear the noise that you are making in your own room.

Do you even have school or responsibilities? Not only do you do this most nights during the week at 3 am, but the few times I have been home early I have been fortunate enough to hear that this party goes on multiple times a day.

I am glad you love each other but I don't want to hear you love each other.

Thanks,


Your Downstairs Neighbor


This was the best angry face I could find.

Still missin that Italian food!

Tonight I made pizza! First time ever. Thin crust, tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, grilled chicken, and pesto. Had to document because it will probably never happen again.

One year

Well we did it. One year. We have made it past everything difficult and have nothing left to work on. To celebrate, we had wonderful Italian pizza, spent the night in Park City, ate our year old (pretty yucky) cake, and spent Saturday at Park City. We rode the Alpine Slide a million times, rode the alpine coaster, the zip line, and mountain biked. It was so fun! We finished off the day at our favorite little dump, El Chubasco-best horchata ever! Although we had to admit that the food seems to taste better after a day of skiing. It has been a wonderful first year!

Gnocchi!

So...we got home from out trip to Italy and Spain on Monday night. And ever since, I have been very much missing the delicious Italian food we had every day. Delicious! Like this.



And this. (I think Brandon gained fifty pounds in this one meal)



For our wedding, Brandon and I got a Williams Sonoma Pasta cookbook. About once a week, I sit and look at the pretty pasta pictures while eating a bowl of cereal. I have never ventured to try one of the recipes. They take a lot of time and I have a very biased husband when it comes to Italian food. I'm a little intimidated to cook pasta for him. But today, I decided I was going to try and make homemade gnocchi (little potato dumpling noodles). First I had to boil the potatoes, peel them, rice them (just learned that term), mix them with flour and seasoning, and then knead them for fifteen minutes. Then, I rolled out the dough and cut the little dumplings from it. For the sauce, I soaked grape tomato halves in lemon juice and olive oil, then roasted them for ten minutes. Next I added garlic and fresh basil and a touch of vodka sauce. All in all, the whole meal probably took three hours; I haven't spent that much time in the kitchen in the last three months combined.
But it was sure yummy!

Canyons, canyons, canyons!

Well, he did it. Brandon took the DAT and aced it. And now we are celebrating. We bought a national parks annual pass, so we can go to any recreation area or national park for free for the next year. So far, we have already done three canyons and had many adventures.

Two weeks ago, we went to Englestead Hollow with Laura and Jake and Summer and Nelson. The canyon started with a crazy three hundred foot rappel. It had to be broken up into two rappels, and Brandon stayed a hundred feet down the cliff on a little ledge to help us switch out ropes to go the last two hundred feet. We planned to go up another canyon so we wouldn't end up in Zion, but we missed our turn. At about seven in the evening, we gathered together to make the decision to go back up the canyon or keep going down. We decided to go down. It was another five or so miles through rivers and waterfalls, and most likely would be in the dark. But we weren't sure where the turn was if we were to go back up, and would risk spending the night in the canyon. So down we went. In the dark. A couple hours later we made it, but our cars were both still at the top of the canyon! Luckily, a Zion shuttle driver was willing to drive Brandon and Nelson to their cars. The rest of us hung out for three hours, cold and wet in the dark. Jake found us a roll of paper towels and we wrapped ourselves up like mummies to keep warm. I wish I had pictures of this, but by this time we were so tired and cold that pictures were the last things on our minds. We finally got picked up at 3:00 am and headed to Cedar City to stay at Brandon's grandparents.




It was one of those experiences that is stressful and uncertain while it is happening, but after, you feel like you have just been through a great adventure.

This last weekend, Brandon and I went to Zion again. Friday night, we did Pine Creek by ourselves. Brandon finally trusts me enough to go alone with me. I feel so special! We rewarded ourselves with hot juicy burgers from Blondie's. And an oreo shake.


The next morning, we met up with Jason and Eliza Cook from our ward and decided to do Orderville (part of the last canyon) mostly because those were the only permits left. This time was much less eventful but still way fun. We actually finished the Narrows when it was still light. In honor of Shark Week, we bought two inflatable sharks and swam through the Narrows with them. my shark hated me and kept bucking me off on the sharp rocks.





My shark!