Back in the Game

We've got a bit to catch up on but I'm aiming for at least Darrell's canoe trip and our trip with my family back east.
Darrell went with the scouts on a 70 mile canoe trip down the Green River and then spent part of a day in Moab. Here's a sampling of their adventures.

Darrell has more specific stories, but I'll just tell you that they ate well, he got an awesome Chaco line, and none of the clothes he wore will ever be any color but brown again. Turns out the Green River isn't so green. In a nutshell, Darrell has the calling of his dreams and loves getting to go on adventures with these boys.

Darrell got home Saturday afternoon and we got on a flight late that night to head to Washington, D.C. where my sister Brandaige and her family have been living for a few months this summer. Here's some of what we saw/did in D.C., including a few of the cute nieces and nephews.

 Washington, D.C. temple

 Smithsonians

Pentagon Memorial for 9/11

New MLK Memorial...that is now under construction

 Lincoln got graffitied so he was also under construction along with the Washington Memorial

 Got a private tour of the Capitol building through one of Darrell's old mission companions

 The White House, right before some cops overheard my jokes about rushing the fence

 The World War II Memorial was a new one for both of us

 Stopped in New York for a few hours to see the World Trade Center Memorial in the rain and get good street food

 Boston!!!

 No, this show is not playing the background as I type...

 Freedom Trail

 Sox game at Fenway Park for my momma's birthday!

 Took forever to get back to the hotel

 Hayden was sleeping a little too deeply after the game while Darrell was carrying him. Poor guy-both of them!

 Got my momma's name on the scoreboard wishing her a happy birthday!

 Elsie became aggressively involved in sampling ice cream for the first time while we were there

 Greta loves Darrell

 Finally gave in to local tradition and tried out one of the million Dunkin Donuts on the East coast

 11 hour layover in Philly resulted in learning a lot about Ben Franklin and eating yummy cheesesteaks

All in all we had a great trip spanning 8 states in 7 days with the fam.
Since we got back we've worked a lot, seen extended family, Darrell took me to the batting cages for my first time, and we've picked up house hunting again. Last weekend we went up to Logan for Darrell's sister Mariah's wedding and saw some of the fire up in Cache Valley on our way back.

Looks like I overachieved and we're all caught up. Sorry for the brief summaries. Then again, if a picture is worth a thousand words, you just read a novel. Chalk it up on your summer reading list.
As for us, we're just getting through the next week and a half until our second big vacation of the summer-my first cruise! Trust me, we're way more boring than I lead you to believe on our blog. Then again, how could I be bored when I'm lucky enough to have such a great life with such a wonderful guy?
Thanks for being patient during our hiatus from blogging! Hopefully you won't wait as long for the next one.

Celebrity Sighting and Sunday Funday!

It literally took about ten minutes for Darrell and I to figure out what we did each day this week. Time is apparently really relative for us. Here are the highlights:
Monday (when we posted last) we went and helped Ben & Angela (cousins moving to Taiwan) patch and paint a little in their house as they were moving out. Not sure we were very helpful and positive that doesn't even come close to making up for them letting us babysit cool things like a bike stand and elliptical machine.
Tuesday Darrell got caught golfing in the rain and I watched/heard the thunderstorm from work.
Wednesday the Young Women had a good time crackling marbles, playing volleyball and making Dutch oven cobbler (I'll explain the marbles if you ask, and yes I realize I'm overusing parentheses. I like them so back off.) while the Young Men finished up some planning for their canoe trip this week and played ridiculous amounts of basketball.
Thursday Darrell tried golfing again while I worked and since I can't remember anything else, I'm guessing we vegged and watched "The Mentalist" after I got home.
Always happy when Friday gets here. Darrell's annual statewide work picnic was at Cowabunga Bay water park so I saved up some hours at work during the week to get off early to join him over there. Water parks are weird as an adult. We tried all the slides, hung out in the lazy river, basked in the sun a bit and then left because we had our fill and felt good. That took about two hours. Life has changed since we were kids. Highlight of the afternoon: WE SAW JASON KREIS! For reals. He was just hanging out in the pool as we passed by on the lazy river. After our brains processed this fact we were too far past him to not be awkward if we headed his direction. We went one more quick loop and then got out to look for him. Unfortunately he was leaving with his family when we caught sight of him again and Darrell got up the guts to go talk to him a second too late. We felt content with having seen him and not manifested publicly the fact that we were so giddy about it. Basically we're cool because we maintained our cool. We were both super impressed by his calves however. Just saying.
After leaving the park we picked up a bunch of gear for Darrell to use on the canoe trip this week and I got me a cool headband/headwrap that can be worn like 20 ways-running, under a helmet, as just a headband, to cover my face when we're four-wheeling in the desert, you name it! Then, we were social. That's right. We had our friends Jeff and Jessica come down and hang out. I'd tell you all the fun things we did but you'd be overwhelmed by our awesomeness, so I won't.
Saturday morning we drove to Park City to go demo some snazzy mountain bikes for free! Giant (mountain bike manufacturing company) was there and set us both up with cool bikes that have now made us want to upgrade our bikes even more. Mine was a bike made for women, by women. 'Nuff said. We went on a short but nice ride before heading back to make dinner because a Swiss girl Selina who is staying with a family in our neighborhood came for dinner. We spoke French and ate good food. Then another set of our friends (yes, we are about to be social again here) Stephanie and Matt came to watch some of the RSL game with us. We intended to hit a fireworks show in American Fork but the game was too good. And then the game ended and we hung out until late again because they are likewise awesome.
Today was pretty great. Church was good and a few hours after we got home we left on a motorcycle ride. We went up Provo Canyon, through Midway, up and over Guardsman Pass, down through Big Cottonwood Canyon, and to my grandparents' house in South Jordan for their monthly extended family FHE. Our butts weren't super happy by the end and we both feel like we hung out in an oven for a few hours, but it was gorgeous! After we made it back home we watched the TV show "Wipeout" for this week because Darrell's old roommate Thomas and his wife were on it. We'll go ahead and tell you that they made it to the last round and lost by a minute. We were jumping off the couch and yelling through the whole thing. We were mad because the other couple definitely wasn't as cool.
Now we're down to blogging and packing up for Darrell's trip tonight. I'm stoked he gets to go on this trip but super bummed I won't get to see him for almost 5 days. Call me pathetic if you must, but I like the guy.
I'll warn you now we most likely won't get in a post next week because after Darrell gets home on Saturday we're packing up and taking a red eye flight that night to Washington, DC for a trip with my family. We'll have time on our layover but I'm praying that time will be filled with sleep and not blogging. Sorry, sleep wins.

Another Darrell Post!

Well folks, Kaela is off making brownies in the kitchen so it’s up to me to bring you up to speed on our summer. 

Wow, it is flying by! July 15, 2013 already. 

It’s sad to say goodbye, and it’s even harder to say goodbye to family.  This week Greg and Carlin Pickett headed to Texas.  Ben and Angela Williams packed up their home to head to Taiwan for two years!  We are going miss them and will hopefully get a chance to see Ben and Angela next summer on a vacation to Asia.  I mean, you might as well go over there when you have a connection right?  That’s what I thought. 

Any way as much as we are going to miss them, it’s nice to poach their old stuff.  Greg and Carlin let us have their old kitchen table, which is a big step up for us considering our old table could only fit two people and just their plates.  All of our meals up until this point have been buffet style.  Not only can we fit our food on the table, we can now fit more than just us!  So if you’re in the Utah County area, let us know, we’d love to have you over for dinner. 

Ben and Angela are really good one uppers.  We borrowed an elliptical machine, two book shelves, a bike stand, camping gear, lawn mower, and a power washer.  Since so much of their stuff has to be put in storage, and they only get to have so much of it stored.  We were able to lessen the amount of stuff their bulk and get to use it in the meantime while they are away.  I’m super excited for the bike stand.  Now I just need a new bike to put in it. 

Wednesday, mutual activity adventures landed us on the Provo River. Kaela in tubes up the canyon, and me in canoes down by the lake.  Kaela’s group wanted to float the river up past Vivian Park.  They had some issues with tubes not being inflated enough to keep them out of the river.  Many of the girls got cold and they eventually bailed from the river early to get out of the water.  When the leader got back up to the top (thanks to a friendly fly fisher who was willing to give them a ride) they found a police officer waiting for them.  Apparently it’s illegal to have anyone under 18 without a life jacket.   Kaela has a suspicion that one of the commercial float crews had a stick up their butt and called it in.  Fortunately the cop just gave them a verbal warning. 

The young men and I loaded up a few canoes in preparation for our upcoming float trip down the Green River in two weeks.  We didn’t have enough canoes for all the boys but we had a few in tubes and switched halfway through.  One of the tubes popped and the others we under inflated.  Anybody sensing a theme to this blog post yet?  The boys did well paddling and should do well going down 70 miles to the bottom!  Super excited!

Friday we made a somewhat impromptu trip back up to Logan again to help my soon-to-be brother in law shop for a suit for his wedding.  We didn’t find exactly what he was looking for, but hopefully put him on the right path.  We had intended to just stay a few hours but got distracted by the sidewalk sale on main street, taco trucks with my mom (so freaking good), and picking fresh raspberries in the back yard that we figured ‘eh might as well spend the night’.  Saturday morning we checked out the Logan Farmers market at Willow Park, before coming back down the state. 

Kaela and I both feel so blessed to have great friends and family all around country and soon, the world.  We are extremely excited to be seeing a few of them in the next weeks in our nation’s capital.  Stay tuned for that blog entry.  Hopefully I won’t be too burned in next weeks post!

Short and sweet. That's how it's done.

Before you go getting in a tizzy about us not blogging last week, let me just tell you about my state of health a week ago. Get excited-it includes a bout with the flu that left me 8 pounds lighter and with a pretty incapable digestive system. Oh you don't want to hear about that? Good because I don't want to relive it.
Before the flu hit, there was some fun thankfully. We went to the Anberlin concert last Friday night before heading up to Logan for the weekend. For those who don't realize the significance of Anberlin, I shall inform you that we met at one of their concerts. Yes, they know. No, they did not respond to their wedding invitation. But the concert was the best I've ever been to. It was completely acoustic and was seriously so gorgeous. Not sure if that makes sense as an adjective for a concert but you'd understand if you were there. Ask us to show you videos sometime. We will.
Saturday Darrell went mountain biking while I went to breakfast with Alyssa. Both were delightful. Then we headed up to Bear Lake with Darrell's parents and Mariah. Mariah rented an inflatable kayak for us to use from the ORP so we had a good time with that and playing in the sun all afternoon. It was my first time to the north end of the lake and I'd say the drive is worth it. Everyone else had shakes on the way back out of town while my flu's sudden onset caused the ride home to take a lot longer than planned. Don't get me started on how dumb it is for them to keypad lock those bathrooms at Second Dam. Not cool. Further details aside, we made it back and spent the night and most of the next day in Smithfield.
On to this week...
Monday we got to see one of my cousins and her family while they were in town from Washington. We spent some time Tuesday with another cousin who is moving to Taiwan with her family in a couple weeks. Wednesday night we got packed up after YM/YW meetings, took a quick nap and then headed up Rock Canyon during the night. We set up hammocks at the top (hammock camping=our new favorite thing) and then headed back down in the morning. Fortunately we have the most incredible snow cone shack by our house so we shared this beauty (yep, that's the small size) in the name of re-hydration.

We spent most of the rest of the 4th of July getting things done around the house and napping before heading out to watch the Stadium of Fire fireworks from afar.
Sadly, Friday and Saturday were spent working. That does mean I'm coming up on a three day weekend this week though! Don't know what we're going to do with it yet, so feel free to offer suggestions. Friday night we went to dinner with friends at Communal and then we watched Warm Bodies on recommendation. Reviews: restaurant-pricey but super delicious and high quality, movie-quirky and kind of funny. Saturday Darrell took apart my car door to try to fix my window, that sweet guy. He also got to demo a snazzy mountain bike so that was probably his favorite part of the day. Tonight we went to see another set of cousins who are moving away this week to Texas and got to have dinner and play games with them. I swear, we aren't driving all these people to move away. Well, I don't think we are at least.
And now that I've reached the end of the post, I do have pity on anyone who reads our blog. I made it this far, why not post a few pictures? I'll even put most of them here at the end so they feel like a reward. Hopefully they all still make sense even out of context.
We are hoping we'll have news about the short sale we have an offer on by next post. Sorry for those who already know about it but haven't gotten updates-we don't have much information to offer, as well as to those who just had never heard anything about it. More information will come and frankly, I'm a tiny superstitious so we weren't telling many people until we heard back for sure. The bank that's running the short sale is killing the information flow and the process though so at this point I figure, what the heck?