California Dreamin'

Nate and I had a BLAST in California. It started great (se previous post) and just got better. Not only are my parents the best hosts in the world, they're a lot of fun! And they like to do the same fun things that we like to do, which is an added bonus.

Exhibit A:  We all love to eat cinnamon rolls. Fortunately for us, my mom makes the best cinnamon rolls on the planet. Aren't these beautiful?

Exhibit B: We like to tromp around in the woods and see cools stuff. First we stopped by the Empire Mine and toured the visitor center and grounds. I tried to wrap my mind around going to work 11,000 feet below ground every day. The visitor center had a model of what the mine looks like under ground and it was incredible. The grounds were also beautiful.

Next we went to Malakoff Diggins and hiked around the rim, ending in the old mining town North Bloomfield. It was all very pretty, and here's the proof.

GREEN!

My dad and Nate wanted to hike through this tunnel even though there was a bunch of freezing cold water running through it. But eventually they decided against it, and we hiked around instead of through.

Sometimes my dad is silly

My parents are so cute

This is my favorite picture

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of it, but we wrapped the trip up with a little (and by little I mean huge) hamburger lunch at the Squeeze In:

Does it sound like we're obsessed with food yet?

Monday we went to Old Sacramento and had a great time at the Crocker Art Museum and looking at the little shops and the river walk.

Reminded me of the Tower Bridge in London....only not as crowded!

Hot fudge sundae in a waffle cone? Yes please!

Cute boy

We're dreaming of the day we get to come back and play more!

Valentines Day Happenings

We went to California to visit my parents over Presidents Day weekend, and just happened to get to spend Valentines Day with them too! I think I can safely say this was my favorite Valentines day I've ever had.

My mom is the cutest mom in the entire world and made Nate and I this adorable breakfast, complete with heart shaped hash-browns, bacon, and Belgian waffles. She also made these really cute wooden blocks, decorated with hearts and family pictures and they're the perfect decoration. And we had little valentines and favorite candy waiting for us on our plates when we came out. It really reminded me how important it is to do fun things like this - clearly extra work and preparation, but I felt SO loved and it made the day extra fun and special.

We also fulfilled the dream I have EVERY Valentines day and made heart shaped sugar cookies with pink frosting. I always consider it a success if the cookies actually get made, without me eating the entire batch of cookie dough first.

We decided it would be fun to cook our own fancy dinner that night and I must say, it did not disappoint. For me, this was due to three things:

1. My mom had scouted out these beautiful china dishes just the day before. It was a huge set of gorgeous  china for a smokin' deal, and therefore purchased (for me!). Using the newly acquired china was really fun, and make the table look extra fancy and beautiful.

2. Nate took the role of steak chef very seriously and with the help of YouTube and allrecipes.com, he made the most delicious steak I have ever eaten in my life. I'm not kidding when I say that I was still thinking about how good the steak was later that night as I was drifting off to sleep. And I don't even normally love steak.

3. Spending the night with my three favorite people. Obviously. They're SO much fun.

Oh yeah, and it never hurts to follow it up with a little cream puff cake (also a close up of the china - though pictures really don't do it justice)

If it sounds like we focused a lot on food this Valentines Day....well, you're probably right.  

It should also be noted that Nate conspired with my dad to have a dozen red roses waiting for me on Friday morning (tricky since we flew in late Thursday night). I wasn't expecting it. Sneaky Nate!

We Went To The East Coast

Here are a few pictures of our trip to New York and Washington DC....mostly for you dad! I'll post more and maybe some stories later.

This pretty much sums up our trip. It was really cold. Hot chocolate was a necessity. Every day.

Breakfast

Second Breakfast

Our incredible and amazing and fun and knowledgeable hostess (in DC)Tali. She even made me birthday cookies and we had a party! 

The Library of Congress

The Washington DC Temple. Even more beautiful (and large) than I had imagined it would be!

The Lincoln Memorial. The monuments were so beautiful at night! (but made for poor pictures)

Yankee Stadium

Museum of Natural History

Central Park (it was WAY colder than it looks!)

Blowing up balloons for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. We were so close! It was pretty neat.

THE UNISPHERE There will definitely be more on this later. It was probably my favorite thing.

911 Memorial

Stopped by NYU to scope it out for David....and I'm so glad I did. Now I can warn him that they can't spell "University" (with a "U").

Santa!

This really doesn't represent everything we did, but it's a start. We had a great trip and as we've come back we've discovered that we narrowly missed a couple possible tragedies and we're very grateful for the safety we enjoyed.

Labor Day Weekend

 According to my camera, three important things happened Labor Day Weekend:

THING #1

My nephew got baptized. It was such a wonderful baptism. My parents and one brother came from out of town to be there and it was so great to be with them. My nephew learned a primary song on the piano and played while his six and four year old sisters sang, and it was absolutely beautiful. I was very impressed that they were able to do that. 

THING #2

We ate ice cream. At Nielsen's. Nielsens is a big deal in Mesa. If you go there after any LDS event in the area it's jam packed with Mormons. It's funny. Anyway, they accidentally doubled our order and kept bringing duplicates of what we'd ordered. They let us keep the duplicates, but I was sad when they figured out what they'd done and didn't bring me my second brownie sundae. Ha. 

Picture 1: What we look like when we're about to take a picture but the camera snaps a shot prematurely

Picture 2: The picture we took on purpose

THING #3

We had a BBQ on Labor Day, and made some special cheeseburgers. For the buns you use grilled cheese sandwiches. So it goes two grilled cheese sandwiches with a hamburger patty and tomato, lettuce, etc. in between. Pretty tasty.

I wouldn't be my fathers child if I didn't take a picture of some food.

We did other fun things too, but no pictures of that. Mostly is was just great to spend time with my family.

Hiking in the Arizona Rain Forest

Wait, what? The Arizona Rainforest?! Okay fine, there is no rainforest in Arizona, but this was the next best thing. There's a canyon just south of Flagstaff with some pretty amazing hikes. Nate has raved to me about this one, Westfork, since I moved to Arizona four years ago. Even with as much as he talked it up, it did not disappoint. The elevation is much higher than Phoenix and you're in a rock canyon with a stream so it's shaded, cooler, and very very green. I felt like I was in another world (and I truly was, compared to hot, dusty and dry Phoenix).

This was the first indication that my camera was having trouble focusing. It later stopped focusing completely and died.

We're so good at taking pictures of ourselves...

It rained the entire drive to the trail head, and for the first half of our hike. But it couldn't have been more welcome. We were largely shielded from the water while hiking because the canopy of trees was so dense.

Nate is getting so good at posing for all my picture taking.

LOOK AT THE GREEN. IT'S EVERYWHERE.

(okay, I understand this may not be as exciting to you folks in CA and WA, but for us it was better than Disneyland)

No way. Is this really Arizona in August?

One magical thing about this hike was that there were several parts of it that reminded me of other places in the world I've hiked. This part reminded me of when David and I went through the Lauterbrunnen valley in Switzerland. The weather was similar too.

I LOVE bridges in the rainforest (or any hike really). This one was up really high and you could see the stream far below. It was actually raining at this point, but Nate was so nice and let me stop and take pictures anyway.

Sometimes I hike in a skirt. It's something I picked up in Uganda, and that's probably a conversation for another day, but for now I'll just say you should try it some time. It's ultra comfortable and keeps you both cool and warm enough. If the hike is very steep or requires any degree of climbing I recommend wearing leggings or shorts underneath, but honestly it's a really great way to go.

Did I mention that this canyon is in a red rock area? So the colors are very vibrant. Bright reds, bright greens, blue sky (when the rain stopped).

Like I said, it was raining and I had my green jacket on over my camelback. so basically I was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

A large bettle. Maybe the size of a quarter? Not the biggest I've seen, but I still felt it was noteworthy.

This was absolutely gorgeous.

So you hike for about 3 miles on the trail under the trees and then the trail turns into the stream, so you walk in that. It felt great on our feet and reminded me of the Narrows in Zions National Park, with tall red rock walls on either side of us.

There was this small swamp pond next to one portion of the trail. Of course, that reminded me of the Okefenokee swamp in Georgia. I kept waiting for a gator to pop up...but thankfully there weren't any. Isn't that green amazingly bright?

This looks like a fairy tale to me.

The very first portion of the hike is through what used to be an apple orchard (and kind of still is, though I don't think anyone maintains it). The park rangers were really nice and said we could pick a bag of apples while we were there. This made Nate very happy.

Apple Picker Nate

He actually climbed a tree because all the lower apples had been picked. We took them home and he juiced them and had fresh apple juice all week.

This picture is only to prove that my camera really did die (thankfully at the end of the hike). It's of the bag of apples we picked.

So, we had a great hike at Westfork. It feels so great to get out and be in different surroundings and breathe fresh air and talk for hours with your spouse. After our hike we drove up to Flagstaff to eat at Nate's favorite restaurant "Big Foot BBQ" (which sounds fabulous). Unfortunately, the power was out on the entire block of the restaurant so we went to Nate's second favorite - a hamburger place. Where we each ate a delicious hamburger the size of our face. You'll just have to believe me on this one, since the camera was broken.