Mindy's Wedding

Christmas break was a very long awaited trip for me. I hadn't been home in over a year! I hadn't seen the Mickelsen kids for a long time either. We had a good trip. Rosie and I made this chocolate house, and I was shocked by how dexterous and focused she was. She put on all the individual roof lights candies herself, and made sure the colors alternated. I think from now on I'll be making chocolate houses. It was much easier than using weak frosting. 

Christmas was healing and fun in a new way this year too. Grandma gave everyone her book she wrote for Christmas, and I haven't really been able to read much of it even still because it makes me tear up to read all the stories of our ancestors. Mom decided to let us pick our gifts and instead surprise her with them. We bought ourselves some tools, and our surprise was that we bought our first house! 

We finally got to go down to the cabin to hang out for a little while for the first time. It was a funny experience, and a great way to get to know Rob better. I think he and Garrett will get along great, because they seem to think alike. When we showed up to the cabin, the power was out and we almost called it quits, but then it was restored a little while later. Then we headed up to Mt Spokane and ski'd for a while, and had probably the best night skiing conditions I've ever seen. The trees were straight from a candyland gameboard. Somehow Jake survived no hat and his hair was frozen up.

 

((LEAVE SPOT FOR TICKET HERE))

After we waited impatiently for food and Aunt Mindy to show up to say hi. Eventually we jumped ship and had a memorable night complaining at Walmart and bought enough cookies to eat all night long. 

Mindy's wedding was a flurry of stressed mom and last minute scrambling. We had a photo booth all set up for pictures, but found that both Polaroid cameras and film were no where to be found in the whole tri-cities. Garrett drove to every store within an hour that would have one. It was a travesty, but the show went on. 

Garrett also hung most of the lights after Rob and friends laid the sticks on the netting my dad installed in the Hazel's barn. The final result was enchanting, but pictures couldn't really capture it with the lights down because it was too dark.

Chelsea did my hair. It was like I was 14 all over again. She did a way neater and more pro looking job than I could possibly do, even though I changed my mind and made her redo it a million times. The amazing thing was that it actually stayed in! I had  a lot of fun playing bridesmaid again with these girls, and it was nice to see Justine again and hang like old times. This is what- my 7th time being a bridesmaid? It never gets any less fun.

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Disneyland 2015

Disneyland never disappoints. We all stayed at a house together, which worked out superbly. On our first day we seemed to be followed by ride breakdowns, but fun was just inevitable. On Casey Jr Madilynn and I chose the monkey cage, and played the part. We also broke down and had some time to hang out in Storybrook land.

McKinley's driving reminded me of the scene in 101 Dalmatians when Cruella is chasing the dogs in her flaming car that she crashes in the snow. "Crazy woman driver!!" What delightful weather.


I have a lot of ride pics on my phone, but these ones stood out as a particular gems.



These daddy skills make me so happy. Hannah took a break with us when I refused to go on Soarin' over California. There is nothing but motion sickness that comes from that ride. The Star Wars one is the same but they somehow got me on it twice. Indiana Jones is still my all time favorite. I don't think I'll ever be able to ride it again without remembering Eric's opera singing in the back seat. Still laughing.

Right as we were coming up on the big drop in Splash Mountain, the ride just stopped. We ended up getting pulled off our log and escaping out a secret door. It was kind of neat to see the secret area behind the ride. It's amazing how even areas unseen are decorated thoroughly.

I was a dork and made Garret buy us classic Mickey hats. He wore his for 20 seconds and it was over. Best 20 seconds of the year. 

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Our Birthdays and Anniversary

   I've been trying to establish some kind of anniversary tradition but every year it seems like things happen differently. Maybe our tradition will be to never do the same thing twice? I don't know. Our first anniversary we ended up at Bear Lake with the family, our second we went on a backpacking trip in the Uintas, and this year Garrett took me back to Loghaven in Millcreek Canyon, which is where he took me the night he proposed to me. It beautiful in the daylight, and I had no idea that the seat I sat in last time was looking straight at a waterfall hidden in the dark.

I'm pretty sure they seated us at the exact same seat we sat in last time! We got the same Alpine nachos as last time too, but they changed the cheese so it's not raclette anymore- still delicious. 
      Later that night Garrett surprised me with an absolutely gorgeous handmade headboard that he had worked on while I was in New York. It's perfect. It's exactly what I wanted, and its only that much better that it was made by him.
     Whitney and Austin Lee were in town this weekend and stayed at our house much to our delight... but somehow I managed to not take any pictures. Garrett and Ken have been working lots of hours in cram time for their first pipeline pull though this weekend, and everything has to go right so I haven't seen much of him. He did manage to take some time off on my birthday to take me on a lunch date, and then later at night we went on a wonderful bike ride around town on the old fixies to look at a house we were considering buying. It looks like that one is out of the question at this point though. I was also able to fit in a ride with the South Jordan team up by Equestrian park, and discovered all the fun pump track stuff in that back little area. We were planning on spending some time with the girls all together to celebrate but Mckenzi ended up getting admitted to the hospital for decreased fetal movements and other things just took over. Luckily Krysta came over the next night and we had some time to sit and chat. Garrett was so thoughtful as always and showered me with everything I love. I'm pretty sure he's better at choosing my outfits than I am, and I trust him completely to buy me clothes.
   The next morning after my bday I met up with good ol' Sadee for some time out doing what we do best together- discovering new adventures!

Her hubby Sean was our mountain guide and took us up the Wasatch Crest in Big Cottonwood Canyon for an awesome bike ride. I had a pretty good fall on the Spine, but actually managed to ride the whole thing.

I need to catch up more often with my good nursing friends again, it's just so fun!

Oct 2nd 2015

      For Garrett's bday I went waaaaay overboard and got him the mountain bike he's been looking at getting for a while. He's getting to the point were his skill exceeds his bike by quite a bit and he needs something with new grippy tires and decent brakes. After some shopping around, haggling, and a mistake made by the store owner I ended up getting the bike for 1000$ off, which is better than the deal Garrett was getting from them, so I thought I did pretty good.

I wanted to go see our Murray team race in Moab last weekend, and thought it would be a good opportunity to try out his new toy on a good trail down there, so I bribed and said I'd give him his bday present early if he would take off work and come down with me to do the Whole Enchilada. Little did I know what we were getting ourselves into.

We took a shuttle up to the top of the La Sal mountains at 11,200 feet and did 2,000 feet of climbing, and then the 6,000 foot descent into the town of Moab.

36 miles of extremely  difficult terrain. It shook me to pieces, and wore me into the ground. My legs look like a trauma case, although I only fell once. Halfway through we realized we were getting low on water even though we had brought 3+ liters apiece, and I started getting worried. It seemed like my body was done, and I couldn't handle another jolt. Refer to my diary for a more detailed explanation of the miracles that happened that day. I made it out alive! That in itself was an accomplishment. The trail itself was beautiful, and descended through multiple different climates, starting with alpine forest, then birch forest, then Park City-like scrub, and ending in redrock. It was probably the hardest day of my life thus far. That night Garrett went home to work and I stayed with Emily, Justine, and Joe Collett to explore Arches and watch the races. They got to see Delicate Arch for the first time.

Our boys did well racing for the most part and we had some fun discovering Dead Horse Point, which I'd never seen before and loved it. I always imagine what the first people to discover these places were thinking. I wonder if the cowboys that corralled their horses here were as amazed with it as we were. We arrived right at sunset, which we couldn't have planned better.

   It's such a shame Justine and I don't get to hang out very often. We're both so busy and she had to skip a capstone shift to come. Worth it.

I hopped the fence to sit close to the edge to get a picture, but I was too scared to hang my feet over the edge. The drop was definitely just as far down as it looks here.

    

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Strong family reunion

This years Strong reunion was less stressful for me than normal cause we were able to stay at home. My family stayed with us at our house in the basement. During the day we all met up in Lehi at a cabin we had up there that belonged to Ilene's brother. We of course spent some quality time playing games every day all day. The two biggest hits were games called Renegade and Bang. Garrett and I opted to just watched the basketball.

On Friday Garrett took the day off and hung around with us at Trafalga. We played mini golf and I was surprised at how much fun we had. Garrett won mini golf of course.


I chickened out of participating in bumper boats cause everyone was getting drenched. Garrett seemed to enjoy it though.

This little roller coaster was made for small children but it was surprisingly  fun.
On Saturday we went and hiked Timpanogos cave. We somehow didn't end up with enough tickets and Garrett had just gone last week so he didn't go. It was fun to see everything up close, and I thought it was a little more interesting than the Minnetonka caves at Bear Lake. 

We became junior rangers by filling out these little quiz books and got awesome plastic badges.

The best part of the reunion was that Grant and Carly had their baby!  After spending a few fun hours at Seven Peaks we went and bombarded the hospital and met Emmett for the first time. He's a charming one. Grant and Carly make cute parents.

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Washington DC

   On our day in WA DC we neglected to take a lot of pictures. I think I didn't because I already have a lot of them from the last time I went there. We had a pretty chill day because we were getting a little tired of walking all day, and it was the last stop of our trip. Mindy especially was not too excited about walking around. We did the Jefferson memorial out on the little island in the Potomac, 

the National Aeorspace museum for the boys, and then went to the National Art Museum, which I was surprised to find had a lot of European pieces. I guess it's not just for American history. I guess we don't have that much really old history to show off. After that I talked everyone into running down the street to try and get into the Ford theater before it closed. They didn't think we could make it but I got in just in time to get the last tickets of the night. We saw the place where Lincoln was shot, all with it's original decorations. 

After that we went into the little brick house across the street where they took him after and he died. The room was very small and humble. They broke out the wall into the neighboring house and made a little exit through the gift shop with a museum for Lincolns story. It was all pretty neat.

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Philly

Philadelphia was kind of a short stop but that was ok. We got in later in the day after driving from NY. We did the important things like the liberty bell and Independence hall tour before they closed, and then walked around the city and saw some other neat things like the Betsy Ross house and Ben Franklins grave.

Liberty Bell

During the tour we realized that we were visiting the room that the Declaration of Independence was signed on the anniversary of the signing on Aug, 2nd 1776. We sent a short video of us singing happy birthday to Chelsea and the Declaration to Chelsea. The constitutional convention also happened here. 

Independence hall

Benjamin Franklin's grave

    We also tried some real Philly cheese steaks and they were pretty good. 

Elfreth street is "the oldest residential street in America" and I was totally in love with the secret gardens behind the gates. I want a secret garden!!

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New York day 3

"I can see why shootings happen in big cities now. If I had a gun I'd totally do the same thing." -Mindy. Mindy isn't too thrilled about the people trying to trample us on every side in Chinatown. I don't think she's ever felt anxiety in her life till this moment. Turns out Kenny and Mindy aren't urban souls. We have discovered this on this trip. I love the excitement of seeing new places and ledgends in real life, and I can tolerate the rush and crowds, but today is testing even me. The heat is so unbearable and mom picks all the most overcrowded street corners to stop and look at things. I found a little place famous for dumplings and we got a meal for the whole family for pretty cheap, and it was good. After eating we tried to do the shopping there but we only got 1.5 blocks in before it was time to head back. We're so slow it makes me crazy sometimes. Oh well I guess if you've seen one shop there you've pretty much seen them all. After we shopped in Times Square for hours and decided to skip the night tour cause the line was too long. I'm exhausted and ready to slow it down tomorrow.

    We've seen a ton on this trip. The ferry out to the Statue of Liberty was fun and kind of reminded me or the Alcatraz ferry. We all kept getting split up cause the crowds were so thick that I just gave up and went off on my own. We also did Ellis island but everyone was so pooped that we basically walked through the building and that was it. Most of our time in the city has been spent on the top of the big red buses, which seems to me to be the best way to see a lot and hear the relevant info. 

   On Sunday we went to church inside the Manhattan temple.  I guess the chapel is just sandwiched between the baptistery and the other temple floors.  The outside of the building is super unassuming and blends right in with all the other high rise buildings around it except it has an angel Moroni on top. We saw it on the bus downtown tour too. After sacrament we went down to Central Park and wandered around but we didn't have time to find St Paul's Chapel cause we had to go drop off dad at the Brooklyn airport and head to Philly.

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