cabins and road trips galore

Once again, it's been a month since I've posted anything. I have a good reason though.. life has gotten in the way. Summer is busy, too busy to spend in front of the computer. Sooo, I'll try to summarize the month as well as I can.

The first theme of the month is ROAD TRIPS. Only a couple of weeks after my Phoenix trip, it was time to head back to Iowa for my grandma's 90th birthday. Most of you have never met my grandma, but she is one cute little lady. She was thrilled to have made it to ninety, and kept breaking into the giggles throughout the day :). I unfortunately don't have a lot of pictures of the trip because I forgot my camera charger, but here's a couple of the first day I was there..

A short 2 1/2 weeks after my Iowa road trip (yes, I drove), I headed out again to Lake Tahoe. My dad had a work conference there, so I met both parents for a few days. Lake Tahoe is gorgeous! We enjoyed a catamaran outing, and went Kayaking with my dad.

Then in typical vacation-with-my-dad fashion, we wento down to Yosetime National Park the next day...

and Salt Lake the next..

We like to pack a lot in!

The weekends I have not been on road trips, I have mostly spent at CABINS.

It's really quite nice having friends with connections :). The first weekend was an all-girls over-nighter celebration the birthday of my friend Callie. You never really get too old for slumber parties..

I unfortunatly don't have any pictures from the next cabin trip, but it was a bit more adventurous. We got lost for about 3 hours, was surprised by a sudden thunderstorm in the middle of the night (wouldn't have been remarkable except we decided to sleep on the deck!), and enjoyed a river rafting outing. Since I enjoy surprises of all types, I thought the whole trip was quite enjoyable!

Now hopefully you understand why I haven't been blogging so much lately. I think I'm about done with trips for awhile now, so we'll see what Salt Lake has in store for the next month!

I've been trying to get a new post out for several weeks now, and just haven't had a chance to sit down and work on it. It will have to be a quick summary of the past month. There's just so many wonderful things to do in summer, it's hard to take the time to sit down in front of the computer! I just managed to figure out how to hook up my hammock yesterday (it's been a very long time since I've had a place to use it)! Do I dare take my laptop in it for blogging time??? We'll see..

Anyway, the past few weeks have been highlighted by some wonderful church-related events. Below is a picture of a couple of kids from my church helping out at the all-congregation work day we have twice a year. I always enjoy this day. There's something about physical labor that seems to bring people together. It's a great time to get to know new members of the congregation and other people that you normally don't talk to as much.


I also learned a little about power tools throughout the day. The guys quickly admitted they would be able to do their projects much faster without me, but said they had more fun helping me learn. So wahoo for patient men! I've always been a little intimidated by power saws and other items with big blades, but I'm a little less so after this day!

Below are a couple of not-so-hot pictures of another very enjoyable event I attended a few weeks ago. Even though the pictures didn't turn out well, I wanted to mention it because of it's it's importance here in Salt Lake. Many people in Salt Lake don't realize that evangelical churches in Salt Lake consider themselves to be ONE church with many congregations and denominations. The organizational systems that many other cities have (working together primarily through denominations) doesn't work very well here because of the small size and number of evangelical churches. Because our community is so small, it is always wonderful to get us all together, and the Church is increasingly making efforts to do so. My roommate and a couple of her friends set up this picnic, and got the word out to as many young adults as possible. I think about 200 people came, which, if statistics are correct, represents the large majority of evangelical christians of this age group in the city. It was perfect weather that day, and people played together for hours and hours. It was a great example of the Body of Christ joined together, and after living in Salt Lake for almost 5 years, I have learned not to take advantage of how refreshing this can be!

I've also accepted a couple of leadership positions in my church over the past month. I've agreed to head up the teen group, and am busy planning lessons and activities. Since the group hasn't had a "just for fun" activity in awhile, I decided to start the year off with a bang and we headed over to Boondocks for the day. Even though we only have 6 teens in our church, they are great at bringing friends, so we ended up with about 15 kids for the day.

In between all the church stuff, I headed over to Phoenix for the annual Child Life Conference. I admit I reverted to my past photography habits and only took one picture the entire time (a reminder that I started this blog partly as an effort to force myself to take a picture every once in awhile - I had whole years of my life that are pretty much entirely undocumented!). In my defense, there's not a lot to take pictures of when you are sitting in a conference room listening to speakers every day, and you can only take so many pictures of a group of girls going out to eat before everybody loses interest. I did find the trip to be worthwhile though. It's always to see what Child Life Specialists are doing in other hospitals and many of my seminars were excellent. I especially enjoyed touching base with a couple of past coworkers who had moved on to other places. And no, Phoenix was definately not to hot for me! I love heat!!

These are the girls that I drove (yes drove!) to Phoenix with. We stopped for the night in Las Vegas before heading to Arizona.


And last, but not least, I got in touch with my nostalgic side and went to "prom" once again! Also a church event, it was actually quite a bit of fun. We originally intended to go 80's, but as you can see in the pictures below, we didn't quite get there!

Oh, I said I would get a picture eventually of my new roommate, for those of you who are wondering who she is. She's the one with the dark hair sitting on the ground in the picture above.

And the Guys.. (looking their best of course!)

We were going to take a picture of all of us together, but it turns out the guys have a short attention span for things like that :)

ahh, Iowa

I love the picture above. The sunsets are spectacular in Iowa just about every night, and there's no buildings to block my view! I was there for the week, and we had perfect weather each day (especially appreciated considering it snowed twice in Utah last week :(

I spent quite a bit of my time home outside with my family. Here's my sister Melissa and my brother Matt..

My nephew Ethan..

My niece Abby..

And my grandpa and grandpa..
A few of you have asked about the Tulip Festival in my hometown area. i was only there for half an hour or so, but I did take a few pics. Here they are for those of you who are curious!

Home Sweet Home

Things I like about my new house:
1) It's so much bigger! I can stand in my room and twirl around and around, without knocking into walls or bumping into furniture.
2. A wood burning fireplace!
3. Wood floors

4. A cute red front door


Probably the cutest neighborhood in Salt Lake. I dare anybody to find a nicer street! Besides, how nice is it to live in a place called "Sugarhouse"? So much better than "Murray", which sounds like a fifty year old man in a checkered shirt and construction boots. When I enter my neighborhood, I feel like I've stepped into a 50's sitcom in color!

Close to I-80, a shorter drive to work. Yay for an extra hour each day NOT driving! Plus, it's right next to Sugarhouse park!

Great running routes. Even better, I usually run mostly up the first half, and mostly downhill the second.
Naria style street lights!

Our very own girls' room!

And when you get in, the arch about the "throne". Makes me feel special every morning :)

A big backyard with a deck to have barbaques on

Lots of windows.

Unique knooks and crannies. This may very well drive me nuts later on, but right now the electrical outlets make me laugh. Why are half of our (very few) outlets up by the ceiling? Above the shower?? Did the makers really expect me to plug in my toaster while holding it above my head? Good thing neither me nor my roommate use outlets very much. We do have one outlet in a normal place per room, which helps a lot.

Especially important, I like my roommate. No pictures yet, but hopefully one will come soon! It's also nice to have lots of friends and aquaintences living nearby. It's almost like a little town within a city.

So there you have it! More than you ever wanted to know about my new house. It's been a great change so far and I've really enjoyed it. As if this post isn't long enough already, I'm going to continue with a few random odds and ends from the last few weeks:

Packing: Why is it that I have never been able to find any scissars when I need them, and yet I found 5 while I was packing? I also found seven random chargers to some long lost technology, 10 pads of paper, and about a hundred pens. I considered giving them out to my movers as thank you/party gifts, but thought that might be a bit condenscending :)

Breakfast: A common practice in Utah is to maintain a food storage stock for hard time. I've decided that those who follow that practice should learn my secret: it's all about Grape Nuts. Buy a few boxes, and they'll last forever. It's like the everflowing flast of oil in the bible - eat and eat and eat, and your box will never get emptier! I bought one box a few months ago because I wanted something crunchy to go in my cup of yogert, and I think I'll be eating it until next November!

Watermelon ice cream: Don't try it. Just don't.



Recognition: Ever since our trip to San Fransico, we've been passing around this trophy. The Oakland Children's Child Life Specialists had recieved these trophies as a donation and they passed them all out before realizing they were headless "sexiest costume" awards. Hmm.. maybe not so appropriate for a children's hospital giveaway. It's also fun for us to see him standing guard outside your office door, ready to great you. This time it was me giving it away, to my friend Callie for making it through her first year of grad school.

Speaking of San Fransisco, one of our friends that we hung out with while we were there came to visit this weekend! Even though we've known each other for only a short time, it feels like much longer! In memory of our hotel stay during our trip, we stayed overnight at my friends Rachelle's house, went out for breakfast at one of the most famous restaurants in Salt Lake, and headed to Park City for the day.

Yes, all in all it's been an eventful, but very enjoyable couple of weeks. Tomorrow, on to Iowa!

whirlwind

My blogs have been a bit sparse lately for good reason. Three things have dominated my life over the past couple of weeks, and my life has been a whirlwind! First, the above picture has become a very common sight for me each morning and afternoon, and Primary Children's has barred me from its parking structure. No, I did not start a fight or drive 60mph through the garage.. the hospital has been having a parking crunch for several years and they are slowly kicking employees out to make room for patients and families. I can't complain as long if it really is for patients and families, but it does significantly add to my commute! It takes almost twice as long now as it used to. Therefore, I decided that it was time to pursue my options in living closer to work. To my surprise, after talking to 2 people, I had 4 offers! I've settled on a nice little house with a big backyard in a perfect neighborhood. I'm excited to move! I unfortunately have yet to start packing though, because I've been gone every night. To complicate the matter, my car won't pass the Utah safetly regulations for registration (don't even get me started on this, it makes me very cranky!). I've spent 3 full days in the car shop this week, and my car is not yet fixed!!!). Not fun on the bank account either :(
Anyway, here is a picture of my new house. I'm sure I will follow it up with many more soon!

I'm going to have to briefly sum up the past few weeks.. but I don't want to skip out on Easter. It's one of my favorite holidays (even though it snowed this year here!). Our church likes to really celebrate the day. Below is one of our traditions during worship - we all bring flowers and add it to the cross and lay it at the feet. It may sound kind of funny, but I really enjoy it!

Of course, even a snowy Easter must come with an Easter egg hunt and egg decorating, and I managed to get that in too! Actually, I had to boil 5 dozen eggs for the place I volunteer and we only used a few of them, so I had my fill of eggs that week. You could say I figured out how many eggs I can eat in a week before the sight of them makes me sick :)

These next pictures are just brief, random glimpses of situations while hanging out with my friends..hopefully some of them will make you laugh..

Really enjoying dinner at the Blue Plate Diner!

Are you a failure? Would you like to learn how to fail better? Come to First Congregational at 11am!

Krystal and her really big balloon..

On a final note, I'd like to leave you with a funny coincidence at work. There's a doctor there who recently got married. Her married name? Dr. Jacklynn Hyde. Always a good one to have at the hospital!

I've been trying all winter to convince various friends to go cross country skiing with me. I have never gone, and thought it sounded like fun. Unfortunately, everybody else seemed to think that the sport was "a lame second to REAL skiing" or too much work for a Saturday afternoon. "pphaww" is what I say. True that it doesn't have the adrenaline of downhill, but it's 10 times cheaper, which makes me a fan! And no, it's not that much work. My 6 month pregnant friend Emily did it with no problems. So there.

I really did think it was a lot of fun. We spent the day at a cabin and had a gorgeous day with the forest all to ourselves all all the hot chocolate we wanted in between excersions. It was a little more skill that I initially expected, so we a fair bit of time the first while on our seats. Good thing the landing was so soft!

I've had the pleasure of spending several weekends in a row up at cabins in the mountains. Last weekend my church had a woman's retreat up near Heber, on another beautiful weekend. Below is a picture of the cabin. I would love to rent something like that out again sometime with a bunch of friends or family, so if your interested, let me know :). The best part to me was the hot tub under the stars. Living in the city, I hardly ever see them, and I almost forget about them sometimes. Out there though, they were incredibly clear!

snowshoing with a few ladies from church..

And hanging out a bit last week with cute little Nora..

I hate to end this blog on a tirade, but I would like to take a moment to tell the world that living in a city is NOT as covenient as living in a small town, contrary to popular opinion. The stores are huge, you have to DRIVE to them, and they are always out of things! Every time I go to Walmart, I end up making multiple trips because they never have everything I need. What a waste of time! I couldn't resist taking this picture since it shows just what I'm talking about. And no, there was not a big, irresistable sale on these items that cleared them out. It was this way last time I went to get this product too. Maybe I'll have success next week.. sigh..

Oh, I don't have to end it on a sour note! I have one more picture! I also went to the Lava Hot Springs in Idaho last weekend. Yay for hot springs and random road trips!