I'm going to cover the last month or so in a couple of segments since it's been so long :(. I'm obviously still having trouble getting back into the swing of bloggging. Still, I hate to give up on it since it's such a great way to record life and keep in touch with all the random people in my life. Don't lose heart faithful followers!

One of the highlights of the month included a last minutes Labor day trip to Jackson Hole Wyoming. It was with a very random group of people, which is sometimes my favorite way to do things. It was nice to get to know some new people - let's face it, getting squashed in the back of a van with 7 other people and a week's worth of camping gear does it quickly! If I had been able to reach my camera, I would have taken a picture. As it is, you'll have to use your imagination. For those of you over the age of 22 (which I think is all of you!), remember the scene in ET where he hides in a pile of stuffed animals? Substitude sleeping backs and smore ingredients, and that was us. Good thing the Tetons are only a few hours away!

I have always wanted to go white water rafting, and have scheduled several trips in my lifetime, but none of them have ever panned out. I finally can cross this one off my list! We went on the Snake river - absolutely freezing, but a lot of fun!

Here are a few of my favorite people I met on the trip. You never know what you're going to get on Labor day weekend, but we were fortunate to have great weather the whole time.

I've also been able to enjoy quite a bit of the outdoors. It had been quite awhile since I had been able to go rock climbing, but I've been able to go a couple times this month. We've also been playing sand volleyball just about every Sunday afternoon.

I can't end this post without mentioning to most um.. unusual event of the month: the Dirty Dash. I've run quite a few fun runs in my life, but this one was definately in a league of its own. It's a 10K that lives up to its name. Here is our "before" picture..

And here is our "after"..

In case you're not satisfied, here are a few action pics of the in-between..

Coming in for a crash landing on the world's largest slip-n-slide..

Hurdling a large wall - there were plenty of obstacles throughout the course. In case you're wondering (which I'm sure you are), the floaties were our gimmick. Don't worry, there were plenty of other costums on the course. I have proof!

All in all, a fun day. Lucky for us, we had our own photographer who walked the course and somehow managed not to get her white shirt and sweatshirt full of mud. It was quite the process to get clean enough to get in the car for the drive home!

One thing that I love about life is that no matter how old you get, you still regularly experience "firsts". Over the past few weeks, I had my first drink from a whole coconut (worthy of a theme party, I think!)..

Saw my first 3d movie (not too bad, though sometimes my eyes felt a little boggled)..

and randomly joined a slip-and-slip party with a bunch of strangers at a park (how can you resist after a good run with a friend??)

August was full of a few not-so-much firsts as well. Three baby showers (if only I could count the money I have spent by now on other people's babies. You all owe me, by the way!)

Helping friends move..

picking up after storms (though this doesn't happen nearly as often since I moved to the mild state of Utah!),

And harvesting nice flowers from my garden.
A few other highlights..

Helping the kids get ready for school at the Dream Center..

Another inter-church bbq for the Christian community in Salt lake..

Attending free concerts in downtown Salt Lake..

And mountain biking up in Park City..

Summer seems to be coming to a close soon. Already the days are getting shorter and the mornings cooler. Looking foward to seeing what new things September holds!

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!