Manti Trip and Walking in the Rain

On Saturday Chris took me on a fun, date adventure. We decided to check one more temple off of our list. (We want to go to every single temple in Utah while we are living here)

We took the new Subaru on its first trip to the Manti Temple. The temple was absolutely gorgeous! There were several wedding parties taking pictures on the grounds. Chris even stated that he thinks it is a prettier temple than the San Diego. (Wow! That's saying something)
We loved the Live Session and seeing the murals. It is a beautiful temple with a great heritage.The temple is made from beautiful cream/pink rock. We learned that the temple was actually built right on the site of the stone quarry and they built the temple right out of the hill.
Chris had planned on taking me out to eat after the temple. We drove through the little town of Manti trying to find a restaurant (that didn't take long) and then drove through Ephraim. We consulted Google and the GPS, but no restaurants came up. After trying around for another half hour, we finally settled on McDonalds. Not quite the romantic meal we had pictured, but by that point we both were so hungry we didn't care.

On our drive home we stopped at the Hare Krishna temple in Spanish Fork. We saw it from I-15 and neither one of us had been there before so we decided to check it out. It was quite the contrast from the Manti temple where we had just been. A very kind lady gave us a tour of the property and explained a little bit about the Krishna belief in reincarnation. They believe the soul is eternal, and the body is just a vehicle for the soul and that when a person dies their body decomposes to never be used again, and their soul immediately enters a recently conceived organism. The soul could enter another human, an animal, or insect. The soul is neither male nor female.

Having just come from the temple, I was struck with gratitude for the knowledge that my soul is composed of both my body and spirit, that I am female and always have been and always will be, and that I can progress in this life, and that after I die, I know I will retain all my knowledge of who I am, and that I can receive my same body again.

After the Hare Krishna temple Chris showed me a memorial in Spanish Fork which commemorates the early Icelandic pioneers. After they arrived in Salt Lake, Brigham Young sent them to Spanish Fork to develop a community.


Over 400 Icelanders joined the Church and came to Utah. Chris says that in the Icelandic history books it talks about how a large proportion of the population emigrated to Utah.



We have absolutely loved the crazy summer thunderstorms the past week.
One night Chris and I both got the itch to go outside and play in the rain. We went for a walk along the Provo river trail. At first we walked slowly, bumping along under an umbrella until we came across some sprinklers on the path.


We abandoned our efforts and ditched the umbrella and had fun walking and splashing along in the warm rain.

Playing catch-up...again

Recently I've been slacking on blogging. Here is my attempt to re-cap some highlights from our summer.

New Car

As a wedding/graduation gift my grandma generously gave us her Ford Windstar minivan that my grandpa had loved and taken great care of. We had a lot of fun with this car, and it even earned itself the nickname "HeVan" on its maiden voyage with us to Moab. Unfortunately, HeVan started having some expensive transmission problems that would have cost almost as much as the car was worth to fix. So, sadly, we put him up for sale on KSL and began looking for a replacement.

After a lot of research and comparing cars (ok that was mostly Chris), we were excited to find this little gem posted on KSL. A 2009 Subaru Impreza with 13k miles. No, the car is not orange, the color listed on the Title is "Paprika red pearl."

And yes, we are now Subaru people. Don't worry though, I will still continue to shave my legs even though we drive a Subaru.

Any suggestions on a name?!

Be-lated Birthday

We spent Chris' birthday this year on I-80 driving back from Iowa, so we didn't have too much of a chance to celebrate. A couple weeks later I finally got around to making his birthday cake. I actually came up with this idea last winter for a cake, and was excited that it turned out so well!





New Orleans
In July Chris went on his first business trip with Bard Access Systems to a conference in New Orleans. At the conference he helped administer surveys to doctors and hospital administrators about their feedback on Bard's products.

The most exciting thing about the trip was that Chris was able to meet some family from the Little side who he had never met before. Chris has never met his paternal grandfather, but he was able to make contact with his sister and her daughters, and learn about his family.They were very sweet and generous and drove all the way into New Orleans to meet Chris.

Apricot City

Apricot overload!!!

This year my parent's apricot tree went wild. There were MANY more apricots than we knew what to do with. I made 8 batches of apricot leather, 8 frozen apricot slushie mixes, 12 jars of apricot syrup, and 3 batches of apricot jam.

After that, I just gave up.
The fruit this year has been mushy and tasteless. Not worth the time and effort of canning anymore.

This morning mom, Nate, Christian and I decided to completely clean the tree of all its fruit. The boys grabbed on the branches and shook them, mom climbed up into the tree and knocked down everything within her striking distance, and we used rakes, brooms, and anything with a long pole to beat the branches of the tree until it yielded in defeat and dropped the fruit.

The result, a naked tree! We are thrilled we don't have to pick up anymore apricots, smell them, and especially eat them.
Good riddance!!

Hiking Adventures

This morning I dragged mom and Christian with me up to the Y. After living in Provo for 7 1/2 years, mom had never been up there.

They made it!

Last Saturday Chris went on a hiking adventure with Kenny and Nicole. They left at 5 am to hike Cascade mountain. A hiking website described Cascade as: "a difficult mountain compared with most others in the Wasatch and only a few diehard peak-baggers seem to even pursue this peak." It's highest point is 10,908 feet.

Chris' pictures from the trip are on his new phone and he is still trying to figure out how to get them off.
Kari and I opted to sleep in a little later and then we hiked up Rock Canyon to the campground while the "die-hards" were scaling up the side of a mountain.


Chris was exhausted, scraped up, and covered in mosquito bites and dirt when he got home. All he wanted to do was lay down and sleep and shower. The sleeping came first. I wouldn't let him sleep in our bed because he was so dirty, so he konked out on the floor.

On July 10 we hiked to Stewart Falls with Erik & Nicole, Nicole's sister Lyndee, and Kari & Kenny.

The boys playing in the water. Erik and Kenny did push-ups in the waterfall and came out with brain freeze

Moving out

Last Thursday I realized my track days are officially over when I cleaned out my locker. It was actually a very sad moment; I felt like I was giving up my one last tie to BYU.

Stadium of Fire!!

REAL soccer game

Adam's first sonic slushie--he loved it