*****IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT******

In light of recent spontaneity and desire to travel Justin and I have finally decided we are....


GOING TO BRASIL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


I think I'm going to wet my pants I'm so excited. December-January... so New Years in the Brasil?? HECK YES!!!!!! We have our plane tickets now just need to update my passport and get our travel visas! We're staying with Justin's friends in Brasilia and Cuiaba. I CAN'T FREAKIN WAIT!!!!!!

Our Married College Life

I know that one day I'll look back and miss these days... but studying ALL day long and still having piles of crap to study is exhausting. Justin and I are barely able to drag ourselves out of bed each morning at 6:30 am.
Here is the basic layout of our day:

6:30 Wake up
7:30-2:30 Classes
2:30-3:30 Unwind at home and eat linner (lunch and dinner)
3:30-6:30 Study
7:00-8:00 Test Review back on campus
8:30-11:30 Finish physics and study for test in the morning while eating french toast and drinking coke slurpees

GAHHH!!!!! Where did my free time go??? When can I go back to the mountains and hike??? Oh yeah. FALL BREAK. That's not for.... like.... ever!! Lame.

So I'll just go back to my chemistry and finish my french toast at 11:00 pm. I'm looking at Justin lying face down on the floor sleeping with a organic chemistry book laying open next to his head. Poor guy.

That's all for now. Just had to complain a little. But on the bright side at least I can afford an education and am getting a quality one. Some people don't. G'night.

AMAZING COOKIES!!!

So Saturday was a fun day for us. After working all morning we went to dinner with a bunch of my friends from high school. I set up the time and place and invited everyone (since everyone else is way too passive.) We went to Cafe Trang and had a great time. If I had a picture I would post it. But I'll just say that my girlfriends, the twins-Becky and Heather- came. Ryan Himmighoeffer, who just returned from his 2 year mission in Germany/Austra came as well as my long time friend Cory Klein who was recently engaged. Everyone brought their spouses, girlfriends and fiances. It was way fun and I had some amazing vietnamese pork Ha Noi noodles. We spent most of our time talking about how most of us met/starting dating our significant other via Facebook. The rest of the conversation revolved around making fun of Becky and Heather. Good times!

Later that night Justin literally made the best Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies I have EVER eaten... EVER. And Oatmeal Chocolate Chip were already my favorite! Just wanted to spread the love by giving out the recipe:

2/3 C sugar
2/3 C brown sugar
1/2 C butter
1/2 C unsweetened applesauce
1 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
3 C oats
1 C flour (he used wheat)
1 C dark chocolate chips

Beat together, adding the oats, flour and chocolate chips last. Bake at 375 in 2 inch balls for 10 minutes. You will wet your pants they are soooooooooooooooooo gooood!!!!!

Bye now!

The infamous Lotoja

Justin trained for this all freakin summer. He and his friend, Chris Hardy worked so hard to gear up for the 2 man relay they did. Last year Justin and his group came in with a time of about 12 hours, this year they did it in 10:42!! Woo hoo! I was impressed because Justin had a busy summer and worked everyday from 6 am-2 pm and did a lot of traveling with me. Chris and his wife, Emily had a baby boy in June and he studied for the LSAT in the meantime. Finally, the day came and they were ready.

We stayed up in Logan, UT with Justin's cousins. They were across the street from the starting line. Justin's brother, Josh also did the Lotoja, but in a 5 man relay. It was fun to see everyone! I was the support crew for their relay, lazily named "Team Supercool" at the last minute for lack of better ideas.

The first leg, from Logan to Preston, ID was a breeze for Justin as he got in a really good draft group. However, right before Justin pulled in, Chris asked to borrow my car keys, then realized Justin was coming in and took off with my keys. It took me 90 seconds to realize what had happened and Justin sped off in an effort to catch him. He never caught up to Chris. The whole time I was praying Chris would remember he had the keys. Nope. So I got a call from a neutral support car telling me to find someone to break into our Subaru (luckily I had spare keys in the car!!) 30 minutes later a policeman broke into our car, and off we sped to reach Chris in time in Montpieller, ID. We BARELY made it.

In Montpiellier I asked, "Hey Chris, mind if I have my keys back??" It took 2 seconds to dawn on him what had happened. He looked horrified! But nonetheless, we made it on time and got the keys successfully. Just goes to show you that sometimes you ask God to give you Halibut, and he gives you Trout. It's still fish, just a different kind than you thought you were gonna get. Thus it was with the key fiasco.

Chris went on from Montpiellier to Afton, WY. He took all the major climbs because he rides like a madman on the hills, but can't keep up on the straightaways. Justin took it from there all the way to Jackson Hole. He just rode his hardest on the flats and drafted off whomever he could. Nothing major occured from there on out. There were some nasty crashes near Preston and Star Valley, but all in all they rode really well.


Ten hours and 42 minutes later Justin crossed the finish line and his big day was over!! We drove home straight after that (after a dinner with the meanest latina server I've ever experienced who refused to split our checks and told one of our riders she would only split them for us because he spoke spanish, and was therefore educated... freakin piece of work, that woman, I pity the man she bosses around all night). So at 3:00 am Justin and I collapsed on our bed and fell asleep. Yay!!

School sucks

I was so excited for school last year after my two year break. But then again, I was taking some of my favorite classes: intellectual traditions of the west, anatomy and nutrition. This year the night before we started school both Justin and I were feeling like this:

Anyway, I think I'm finally starting to get into the groove... 4 weeks into the semester. It's really hard to focus when there are warm summer days, farmers markets and weekend trips. I am finally panicking this week as my physics and trigonometry test are looming this Friday. But in the back of my head I just want to hang out, can some salsa and fruit, shop at Ann Taylor Loft and go backpacking in the mountains. Today is a lovely rainy day and I'm enjoying sitting on my red Ikea couch (thanks auntie liz!) while I do physics problems and check facebook intermittently while the rain pours down in the avenues.

Since our whitewater adventure, we went boating two weekends ago and Justin did his huge bike race of the year: the Lotoja! I'm totally stealing Brandi's pictures of our boating trip, but here they are:

My brother-in-law, Josh, surfing with 4 year old nephew, Ashton... WHAT??!?

Justin got up on the wakeboard... AFTER the camera died. So here is a failed attempt.

And after surfing, everyone just left me stranded in the lake. Probably to help my fish phobia.

Oakley ate 1/2 of my sandwich. The reason it's interesting is because the sandwich had sprouts, lettuce, tomato, pickle and havarti cheese with turkey. How many 3 year olds do you know that love those???

Josh and his wife, Melissa were way good at wakeboarding.

Zach got up on a fluke attempt. Melissa wasn't paying attention so she drove 28 mph, 4 mph+ than the pros board at. He ate it pretty bad in the end.

And here we are, chilling in the end. I'll post Lotoja pics later. (BTW, it's LO-TAH-JAH, not LA-TOE-JAH)

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.

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.