Moab or Bust!!

Girl's Camp in my ward was scheduled for the first week in June this year, and as the days grew nearer, some very wise Camp leaders determined that the 5 FEET OF SNOW that was covering even the very roads up to the camp would not melt in only 4 days, so it was postponed. However, seeing as how I had already requested that week off at work, Gio and I decided that this would be the perfect time for our first impromptu road trip/camping trip of the summer! And what better place than warm, sunny, beautiful Moab?! I had never been, so we were pretty excited. This was actually the first time that we tried the MREs. We also used our last gift card from our wedding to buy a new camping stove called the JetBoil system. When we first used the new stove, I was pretty frustrated because we could not get the thing to work! It has a feature where you just press a button and it sparks and ignites the gas. It's really cool and handy when it actually does work! But the first morning we were there it was so cold that it wouldn't spark. And of course, we forgot to bring matches! :) That's a bit of a joke for us now because everytime we've gone camping together we've forgotten to bring matches, one of the most important things. And Gio's an Eagle Scout! But by the time it warmed up a bit, the stove was great and it has worked wonderfully ever since.


We left Provo pretty late, so when we got down to Moab, ate dinner, and found a campsite it was already pitch dark. We just put up our tent and crashed. The next morning, like I was saying, was freezing, so I woke up early (around 5:30) and couldn't get warm enough to go back to sleep. Instead of fighting it, I went outside and to my surprise we had pitched our tent not 15 feet from the Colorado River! It was so beautiful! I let Gio sleep a little longer while I took pictures.



We went fishing that day at Ken's Lake and caught NOTHING, so we decided to pack up and go for a hike close to the lake that takes you up to some waterfalls. We saw some gorgeous plants and flowers along the way.



The next day we drove up to Arches National Park to check out the delicate arch. I was really excited to hike up and see this, and since we didn't get up there til almost sundown, we had to book it up the trail so we wouldn't have to walk back in the dark! It was well worth it, though. When we got to the top, it was so windy that I felt like I would get blown off the side if I wasn't careful. There was one lady who kept screaming things in German and wouldn't take a step for fear she would fall off. Her husband kept screaming back and pushing her because she was blocking everyone's way. I felt so bad for her!





We headed home early the next morning after having a lovely oatmeal breakfast, cooked on our lovely stove which sparked on the first try! Lovely!

All in all, it was a GREAT trip and we had a lot of fun!

Giovanni's Graduation--April 24th and 25th

I'm trying to play catch-up a little since some cool things happened before we started this blog, so I'll start with Gio's graduation. He graduated from Brigham Young University with a BS in Molecular Biology and I couldn't be more proud of him! Way to go Gio! Many thanks to Patricia, Gio's mom, for encouraging him (with love and money!) all along the way.

These are all the 2008 graduates at Commencement on April 24th. I had never been to a BYU graduation ceremony before and one of my friends took advantage of my innocence by remarking, "Man, it's gonna take so long to read all their names!" I flipped out. Then she explained she was joking and that all of the different collages have their own ceremony the next day where they read the names. Whew, close one!

Elder Bendar spoke at Commencement about Learning to Love Learning and how that was the most important thing that the graduates would take with them from their time at BYU. It was a very moving speech.

After Commencement, we ran into Gio's good friend Chris Morales. He grew up with Chris in Glendale, California and their families were very close. It was fun to see him. I think he was there taking pictures for his job. He writes for the newspaper in Salt Lake.

We also ran into our friends Brent and Cassie Rowse. Cassie is actually the one that graduated, but for some reason we only have a picture with Brent. That picture is below.

We had a bit of a photoshoot after that, so I'll just post a few of those pictures next.

The next day was when Gio actually walked across the stage and got his "diploma." It's actually a fake and they send the real one to you in the mail after final exam scores are in to make sure you actually did graduate! Here's a few pictures of that day.

Here's Dave, Katuska, Ethan, Heidi, and Gavin with Gio.

Here's Servio, Lissy, and Aileen with Gio.

Milena and Jonathan with Gio.

I think this is the cutest picture!!

Gio and me

Good Job Giovanni!! We're proud of you!

Can I get a Hi-Yah!?

As I was perusing through my camera the other day, I happened upon this little gem.

For your viewing pleasure, here are our friends Chris John (right) and Joel Hood (left).

Please note: I happened to catch this not a second before and not a second after the instance. I don't even think I meant to film them. This, my friends, is what you would call a "miracle".

Also, although this video is but an instant and Chris's face is quite captivating during the outburst, please do not make the mistake of overlooking Joel's incredible performance. Thank you boys, you've brightened our day.

Yellowstone!

Here are some of the highlights from our Yellowstone trip! I'll add more later when I get pictures off my camera. (These are from our cousin's camera.)

This is Old Faithful. It wasn't much different than I expected having seen it erupt on TV and movies and having seen several pictures of it before. But it was pretty cool to watch in person. I couldn't believe how HIGH it got!

On the second day of our trip we all decided it would be awesome to go mountain biking. So we rented bikes and found out that it's really just a paved trail that takes you about a mile and then branches off into a mile of gravel. Not exactly mountain biking, but it was really fun! Here's all of us with our biking gear (minus the bikes).

Gio's cousin Guillermo (in the bottom right corner wearing yellow) is a really good amatuer photographer, so he decided to take some cool action shots of us on the bikes. Here's how mine and Gio's turned out. Notice how I'm just riding the bike and Gio actually did something hardcore. He's so cool! :)

On the third and last day of our Yellowstone adventure, we went for a beautiful 6 mile hike around Jenny Lake in the Grand Teton National Forest. It was one of the best parts of the trip! Here's a picture of the whole group up at the top of "Inspiration Point." It doesn't look like we're very high up in this picture, but trust me, we were.

Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends

Last week was a crazy week. It all started with Girl's Camp on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I'm the Girl's Camp director in my ward this year, so I was in charge of planning activities and food for our ward (about 8 girls total) and then just generally making sure no one died or got into cat fights while at camp. I was pretty stressed out about it for a few months, trying to pull everything together and although it was a complete blast, I'm definitely glad that it's over and there will be less stress in our lives.

When Gio came up to Camp Mia Shalom (about an hour and a half south of Provo) to pick me upon Thursday around noon, he told me that his cousins had decided to go camping in Yellowstone for the weekend, and wondered if we wanted to come with them. Heck Yeah!! Since all our camping gear was already in the Jeep it only took us about an hour to shower and grab food stuffs and we were on the road. We did have a couple stops on the way to the Interstate and one of them was to Emergency Essentials in Orem (right next to Deseret Book) to buy some MREs. If you've never heard of these, they are the military rations (Meals-Ready-to-Eat). They come in a little packet and you pretty much just heat them up and chow down. And let me tell you, they are actually really tasty and extremely handy if you are going backpacking, camping, or just taking a day hike and don't want to pack bulky food or sandwiches that will inevitably get squished. We've even eaten them cold when we didn't have a fire going. You can buy the packet that warms them up, but we figured we didn't need to spend the extra money. If you're interested in trying them, they're only $1.95 each and we're pretty partial to the Beef Stew (AMAZING), the Chicken and Dumplings, the Cheese Tortellini, the Chili with Beans (kind of spicy), and the Filled French Toast, but there are several others to try!

Since we were so close, we decided to run over to Barnes and Noble to grab a map of Idaho as that was the direction we would be traveling. While Gio was examining the maps, I snuck away under the guise of needing to use the restroom so that I could surprise Gio with Coldplay's new album, Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends. He definitely was surprised as I popped it in upon hitting the interstate. This album turned out to be the perfect soundtrack to our Yellowstone adventure and I highly recommend it to everyone. This new album is, to say the least, epic, as are the Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Forests. We both agreed that this album helped us appreciate the grand beauty of the area and helped this trip become the most incredible impromptu road trip thus far in our young lives. When we get pictures onto the computer, I will expound on the awesomeness of our Yellowstone adventure.