Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Wedding and Whitewater

Last week was a friggin blast. We only had to work a few days and the rest of the week was monopolized by a wedding and vacay to Jackson Hole. Justin's best friend, Tyrel married his girl Samantha. Tyrel is the kid that looks like Frodo and was nicknamed that in High School. We thought it was funny that Frodo was marrying Sam. Here's the recap:Monday: Justin threw Tyrel a bachelor's party. Okay, semi-bachelor's party. In the Mormon world a bachelor's party usually consists of XBox or poker. Justin and the boys went mountain biking on the Crest trail from Big Cottonwood into Millcreek Canyon. Afterwards they ate at Braza Grill (A Brasilian churrasco restuarant) and then played XBox at someone's house til 1 am. I thought they were too tame so I spiced things up by sending Justin off with some jell-o boobs. I made flesh colored Jell-o in some round bowls and added cherries for the nipples. I would post a picture... but it might be a little inappropriate for some. Tyrel's friend pinned him and his brother in law shoved the boobs in his face.

Tuesday: Tyrel's mom threw him a block party. Justin and I manned the giant inflatable slide so that the little kids wouldn't get out of control. They also had a climbing wall, jumping pin, snow cones and cotton candy.

Wednesday: The wedding!
They got married in the Bountiful temple and the sealing was beautiful. I cried. Haha. Afterwards we watched them take pictures on the temple grounds. The rest of the day we lounged and went to their reception that night.

Thursday: Scott and Briley flew up from Phoenix. Justin met Scott on his mission in Brasil and Briley is Scott's girlfriend. After work they picked me up in Park City and we drove to Jackson Hole where we all crashed after a long day of travel.Friday-Sunday: Justin guided the rafts 3 times as we ran the Snake River. He's a pretty studly guide in my opinion. It's the cyclist farmer tan that makes him so hot without a shirt on. Lunch counter is a baby rapid now and Big Kahuna is HUGE. We discovered that the best boats to hit the rapids are the smaller more gooshy ones so here is a huge hit on the red one. Once when the people on our boat wouldn't paddle so we got stuck on a rock I got thrown to the middle of the boat with three other people on top me. I incurred a slight injury. At one point it got way cold, started to rain and we had to pull over to wait for another boat to pass. After 20 minutes it was miserable.Between river trips we roasted marshmallows, played cards and Jeff (Tyrel's dad) made about 10 different dutch oven cobblers. I never realized how much I love cobbler. Listen to the insanity of these varieties: peach, blackberry peach, cherry peach, rhubarb, apple, cherry and a bunch of others. The 60 of us on the trip went nuts. Especially since most of us were young starving students. The night before we left we went into Jackson and got candy at Yippy-I-O and dinner at the Bunnery. The next day we left in the morning as the clouds had rolled in and a mist settled on the river. That night had been creepy because everybody but the 4 of us left leaving the group campground empty and quiet. Every little noise freaked us out. But after a prayer and getting ready for the night we calmed down and slept through the cold night. It probably got into the high 30s that night. Well, that's the end of our 3rd trip to Jackson this year.

Saturday, August 8, 2009

Red Pine Lake

We just got back from our overnight backpacking trip up to Red Pine Lake. The trailhead is about 3/4 way up Little Cottonwood Canyon and sits at the base of the Pfeifferhorn Mountain. The hike was gorgeous, with a steep incline at the end and loads and loads of wildflowers. The temperature dropped 20 degrees from the day before we left so starting out it was about 65 degrees. But as the night when on it dropped to the 40s. Justin's toes almost froze because he wore his chacos.

Our sleeping bags were toasty warm. Justin tried out a Big Agnes sleeping bag that he borrowed from work. Those bags are sick! They have a sleeve on the bottom that your thermarest slides into and has no padding/down on the bottom because the thermarest insulation keeps you warm instead. That way, you don't slide around at night because you're attached to your sleeping pad and it provides extra room that most mummy bags lack. I recommend them to anyone. As we were going to bed we discovered my year old thermarest had a leak in the stitching. LAME!! So although I was set on insulation, I had no cushioning and I woke up with a stiff back. He also borrowed a lightweight tent from work by Sierra Designs. The tent SUCKED it big time. The engineer who designed it probably only read about camping because it had a weird design, it was awkward to assemble and the stupid fly didn't even stay attached. Lesson learned: Stick with Big Agnes tents and bags!

Besides a few gear malfunctions, the view was gorgeous. I was obsessed with the wildflowers and I probably drove Justin nuts with how many pictures I took. At one point on the way up it actually snowed on us for 5 minutes. In August!!

Here is Red Pine Lake, where we camped. And here is our friend the pot gut. And of course, a few jewels of the Rockies. My little "wee wee" toe had a really long nail that kept digging into the toe that didn't have roast beef. Without toenail clippers I had to improvise. And this is us on the way back down.

Friday, August 7, 2009

Tour de Park City

What is this? Two blog entries in one day? I was inspired today when my Aunt Liz said she actually reads my blog. So I decided to catch up on all our recent adventures and news.

This is about the century ride Justin did last Saturday in Park City. Apparently it's a pretty intense ride. Some of the climbs are pretty difficult. It didn't help Justin that he had given blood that week to the Red Cross so his hemoglobin levels and RBC were way low. Despite the fact that I made him suck down water the night before and eat a huge plate of whole wheat pasta, he bonked a few times pretty bad. Lesson learned: don't give blood 2 weeks within a major ride. But thanks to his ride we now have a free ProBar, a coupon for free bread at Great Harvest, 15% off at the Pearl iZumi outlet and he has a new pair of cycling socks... all for $65 and 100 miles of sweat. I had to wait for Justin for three hours. Yay. Here he is crossing the finish line! I just love a man covered in spandex bearing his bare chest. So hot. Check out his hair in this picture. The sweat had plastered his hair in the shape of his helmet. This is our car, Giselle, by the way. Justin named her after the Brasilian supermodel because he thinks our black Subi with tinted windows is super sexy. I actually do too. And here he is, with bloodshot eyes, digging into a Cafe Rio salad after riding 6 hours straight. Good job babe!

The Little Monsters

This summer has been occupied by none other than the McCall children. I love these kids. Each one is different, adorable and sometimes very difficult. Being a nanny has its ups and downs but with Ibuprofen and sugar bribery I can handle these three munchkins. Here are some pics I took with my phone. Here is an example of bribery with sugar. I told Quinn if she was good I would take her out for a muffin and juice. So here we are at Starbucks while Grayson and Luke were sweating away at mountain biking camp. Another thing the kids and I love to do are little hikes. Even though Quinn is always jumping at the chance the hike, she's usually the one complaining about how hot or hard it is. The boys are awesome hikers and here we are throwing rocks into a stream on a trail between Jeremy Ranch and East Canyon. Sometimes we do lunch at the park. It's great for me because I can usually sit back and chill while the kids find little playmates. I just have to make sure the boys don't climb on everything because they're literally fearless. And this week I brought over sugar cookie dough with food coloring and white frosting. They went nuts. Here is Luke with his "worm" cookie. Quinn of course wanted to make pink frosting for her cookies. Grayson thought it would be funny to make brown vanilla frosting to trick his dad into thinking it was chocolate.