Zion National Park--Anniversary #1 (Parte Dos)

No more school for 2 months! Yay! Took my final, finished my projects and now I am free to blog. Expect to see me a lot more around these parts. Just kidding, don't expect anything. Not so sure I can fulfill that promise.

Back to my lovey dovey wovey anniversary with my shweetiepie sugar plum lovey wovey dovey Dawin.

Sorry. I know you came back for hiking pictures, not to hear how I talk to my husband when we're all alone listening to Take My Breath Away with just enough light glittering from the candles for us to dreamily stare into each others eyes...

So let's get to it.

We got to the park right around 11am and it must have been our lucky day because June 9th just so happened to be National Park Day, so we got in for free. Suhhhhweeeet.

We decided to do our most intense hike first and headed straight over to Angel's Landing. If you haven't done this hike before, do it! It's great. It's also pretty steep and unnerving when you see the sign at the bottom of the hike that says that six people have died since 2004 while doing this hike. But we made it, and it was so worth it.

Destination: UP:

The first 1/4 to 1/3 of the hike is A LOT of pretty steep switch backs:

Then, when you feel like you are about to die, the hike levels out slightly and goes behind the mountain into the shade. That's where we saw this owl and her fuzzy lil baby (couldn't get a good pic of the baby, it blended in to well with the mountain).

Then we arrive to more steep switchbacks. I know it's hard to see in the pic, but look closely at the people and you'll get the idea.

Then we finally reached the last 1/2 mile, which easily took us 30 to 45 minutes to climb.

We got passed the first part of the chains and Darin looked at me thinking it was the end and said, well, that wasn't too bad. I turned around and pointed behind me and told him that we weren't finished yet and that we still had to climb this:

Darin wasn't as excited as I was.

But he pushed through it, and it was totally worth it. GORGEOUS. He might not have talked to me much while we were on top, haha, but he didn't regret doing it.

After sweating buckets on this hike we decided to cool off in the narrows. It was beautiful and very refreshing. We didn't go in really far, but far enough to have some fun and add to the soreness in our calves and thighs.

Then to finish off the day we pushed our little overworked legs on to one more hike. It was small and simple and we got to see weeping rock and a pretty large deer at the end. It was a good way to finish off the day.

It was a hot and pretty exhausting day but it was totally worth it. We had a lot of fun and I just love being outside!! We both wanted to crash on the shuttle ride to our car. Let me just tell you, we slept GOOD that night.

The End.

!Santo Jorge! -- Anniversary #1 (Part I)

Saturday was our one year anniversary. One year! Can you believe it!? It felt like it took 20 bigilion years just to get to the actual wedding, but this first year has flown by. It's been a great year and surprisingly enough, living with Darin has only made me fall more in love with him :).

To celebrate the special day (and sweat our guts out the way we did last June 9th), we decided to go down South for the weekend. It was glorious. We left Friday morning and got down to St. George a little after 12pm. We couldn't check in to the hotel until 2pm, so we made our way right over to the temple where we enjoyed an endowment session. What a beautiful temple!

After the temple our plans for the rest of day went like this: RELAX.

One of my pet peeves is going on vacation and not really getting a vacation.  Since our Saturday was going to be jam packed with hikes at Zion National Park I made sure that we got the relaxing part of the vacation on Friday afternoon.

After checking out the visitor center we went straight to the hotel and checked in (thank you Expedia for helping us find cheap and not completely run down hotels. And thank you customer reviews for helping us avoid the hotels with blood on the ceiling and bullet holes in the doors. We decided that we didn't need to go that cheap). Took a little nap, watched some TV and then hit the pool. My darling Idaho boy was a bit surprised when I told him I wanted to go out and read by the pool and just relax outside. Apparently that's something that he has never done before (I know! Crazy right?). But whatda you know, he liked it. There will be much more of this in our future.

After reading and swimming and reading some more, we showered up and went out for a yummy dinner at Texas Roadhouse. Uuummm... YUM. Argentina has turned me into a meat girl. I tell you what, I love me a good steak.

After dinner we were driving around down here:

When we saw this little diddy up on the mountain:

So we went up and explored. It was really cool. There were all kinds of rocks and little cliffs that we could climb around. We ended up just sitting right above DIXIE and talking while the sun set over St. George. Really pretty.

Get ready for hiking pictures later this week!!

June 9th

One year ago today, this happened:

Photos: Molly Hunter Photography 

Instead of boring you with lovey dovey details from our wedding, or even from our first year of marriage, I decided I'd prefer to share a few of those little things that I've picked up from Darin and some things that he's picked up from me this glorious first year of mawage. We've been talking quite a bit the last few weeks about the random things that we pick up from each other, and the funny little things that begin to define both of you, not just one of you.

Things that I have picked up from Darin over the past year:

1. Ice - I now drink ice in my beverages, even my water. I still don't love how the chunks of ice hit me in the face while trying to drink, but ice cold water sure if refreshing!

2. Loofa - Darin is not the first to try and get me to use a loofa when I shower, but he's the first one that has finally convinced me to use one. Not bad.

3. Nightly News - Growing up my parents always watched the Nightly News and I never paid attention. Now I love watching and learning about what is going on in the world. If we're both home at 5:30pm we get really excited to watch the news together. Weird, I know. (Still working on NPR. He was a little disappointed that I didn't automatically turn it on this morning when we left for our weekend get away and instead put in the Hairspray soundtrack. Oops.)

4. Good movies/staying awake during movies - I have finally started staying awake through movies! And let me just tell you, there are some GOOD movies out there. Thanks to my husband for introducing them to me (Gladiator, the Bourne trilogy, X-men, etc.). (We'll just ignore the fact that it took us 3 days to finish Iron Man last week. Give me a break okay? I'm not perfect yet).

5. Homemade Popcorn - Heaven. I've eaten more popcorn this last year than I think I have in my entire life. Homemade popcorn is SO good.

6. Bacon - I've always been more of a sausage girl, but I'm slowly converting.

7. Potatoes - Similar as the last one, I've always been more of a rice girl, but can't live with an Idaho boy and not fall in love with potatoes. 

Things that Darin has picked up from me over the past year:

(Just for the record, Darin told me these things, I promise I didn't make them up)

1. Softball/Orioles baseball - It's been so fun to hear Darin so excited about O's baseball, and to hear him want to go to the cages and play catch. Fabulous. (Of course if it were Braves vs. O's he would be tomahawking it all the way).

2. Les Miserable - Dar listens to Les Mis all the time and has become a huge fan :).

3. Exercise - I remember begging him to go running with me while we were dating and him telling me that I was going to have to accept not going running with my husband. Now he's the one begging me to run with him :).

4. Weird night time rituals - Poor guy, he can't go to sleep anymore without the sheets being a certain way or without water by the bedside. I like to think that he wouldn't be able to sleep without the fan on either (not so sure if this one is true, but a girl can dream).

5.  Better social skills - Basically I push Darin to be friendly, converse more, ask people about themselves, talk to strangers, etc. etc. All things that make him feel very uncomfortable Poor boy. But he really is more social now, sort of...

6. Exploring - Hiking, swimming, driving around not knowing where you are going to end up. Spontaneous things outside.

7. Rice - He would probably still choose potatoes over rice, but he's started to do more than just tolerate it  and even decides to make it on his own without me asking.

Things we've picked up toether:

1. Graham Canyon Ice Cream

2. Scrabble

3. Watching TV shows on the computer together 

4. Chopped 

5. Homemade smoothies

6. Night time runs

7. Saturday sleep-ins/waking up to Wait Wait Don't Tell Me and breakfast in bed :).

So fun to think about the ways in which our lives have meshed together in the past year, and also the ways that we have created new traditions and memories together. 

I love this boy. It's been a perfect year. Love you Darin!

First ESL class... Gone.

Just finished teaching my first ESL class this week. They all left at the beginning of the week and now are out and about preaching the gospel to the world. I loved teaching this group of missionaries. They amazed me everyday. They learned English so fast and always pushed themselves to do more and try harder. 

I should get a new group of missionaries in a week or two and I'm pretty nervous. I started teaching this group in their 4th week, so they already knew quite a bit of English. I'm nervous to start from day one with a new group that might not know anything. Oh man. Should be fun. And not to brag or anything, but I'm gonna be pretty dang amazing at games like Gestures, Catch Phrase, Taboo and Pictionary (not that I was ever bad at them...).