Camping in the Uintas-W/Friends from the Ward!

I had a three day weekend in August which almost never happens. We decided we needed to make the best of it and take a camping trip before the weather got too cold. As always summer went by WAY too fast. I realized today that we never got to go out boating! Sad!

We were originally going to go camp up at Smith and Moorehouse Reservoir (we really like that place), but we got talking to the Sorenson's from the ward who told us they were also going and already had a spot saved. They invited us to tag along and since more people is always better, we accepted their offer. We ended up going with Jordan and Alyssa (who slept in the trailer with us), the Sorenson family, and the Owen's family who are also in our ward.

It was pretty much just a weekend full of riding the RZR! The weather stayed nice most of the time, although we did get rained on for a bit. The Uintas are BEAUTIFUL so the scenery was amazing.

Of course it's never a complete camping trip without something going wrong! We realized we had a flat tire in the truck once we got up there. Luckily we were at a place where the boys could swap in the spare!







The Hendrick's

Us!

The Sorenson's

The Owen's

My Hottie Husband :)

Everyone from our "Adult Ride"

Our little family!

The friggin' cliffs of INSANITY. For real. This drop off was huge. Gave me anxiety when Riley insisted on standing at the edge and throwing huge rocks down. Really cool view though!

Riley standing at the edge watching the boulders fall down. I know I tend to exaggerate (mostly because I have no concept of height), but Riley agreed in thinking the drop off this ledge was 1000+ ft. I wish there was a way to show just how crazy of a drop it was.

We had a great time! It's always fun to get out and get dirty camping. Makes you appreciate your shower that much more when you get home!

Utah is such a cool place to live! We have TONS of beautiful places right in our own backyard. We love exploring and finding new adventures.

Jackson Hole 2013

This past July we were able to go for entire week up to run the Snake River and go camping! It was a blast and I'm so happy that Riley and I were both able to get the time off from work to be there. Our friends Mike and Alicia Sly were able to come up for a few of the days, too, so we had a really great time!

The very first day it was just Riley's parents and us, and the rest of the family would join us the next day. We drove and set up camp, then met up with the Sorenson family from our ward who was staying in Alpine for a family reunion. We brought up the RZR so we could do some riding with them before we did rode the river. I'm sure it's evident by the pictures but man was it DUSTY!



The Sorenson's are an amazing family and we were so happy to have the chance to meet up with them for the ride!

Here is a recap of the rest of the trip in pictures:

The Snake River truly is a beautiful thing. All the trees are amazing and the air is so fresh! The water is always chilly, but totally worth it.















Alicia was excited to have survived their first run!!

We made this fire all by ourselves! Built the log cabin and everything. Can't say girls never did anything ;)

On this particular run the raft was a bit under-inflated. As evidenced by the "raft taco" you see here.



Mike quite enjoyed eating his donuts inside two chips.

This picture has quite the story behind it. On this run we were about halfway down (but before we hit any rapids) with Wes guiding us. Riley looked over and noticed that his dad didn't have a life jacket on. The second he realized he had inadvertently left it on the boat, the whole demeanor of the run changed. We went from having the objective to hit every rapid head on to trying to miss them so we could get him safely back. The whole run was filmed on the GoPro, and the reaction Wes had when realizing he didn't have his jacket was pretty priceless. It was scary but luckily we made it down without any incident. Therefore, if we all look pretty terrified in this picture, that's why...





A few random tidbits about the trip:

-This was the first time in all the years of going that we were able to float the WHOLE river. Usually you drop in and get out at the same places because the bottom half of the river has some INSANE rapids and the lake levels are really high. Well this year the river levels were high and the lake levels were low, making it possible for us to float down the last section. We hit some HUGE rapids and saw some awesome scenery. Very cool experience.
-We ate elk steaks, omelets in a bag, pancakes, tin foil dinners, and an unhealthy amount of assorted cobblers. Delish.
-We played cards for countless hours before going to bed.
-We figured out how to take delayed pictures with my camera while writing our names in the air with glow sticks. Happiness ensued.
-We spent Sunday up in Jackson, where we bought ice cream and meandered around the little shops.
-We love making this annual trip a tradition, even if it means not being home to celebrate Riley's ACTUAL birthday.

4th of July 2013

Don't worry, I'm only four months behind on my posts!

On the evening of the 3rd we went to Centerville Elementary and watched the fireworks show there. They always put on a decent show, but it's never quite the same as Davis High's show!





Check out this cheeser! What a cute little face he has.




Odin absolutely LOVES his Uncle Riley. He calls him "Ya-Ya" and it's the cutest thing in the world. PS-My husband is pretty handsome, if I do say so myself. But for real, look at that smile.

For the actual 4th we were able to attend the Centerville Parade. We sat on Riley's parents front lawn and watched all the fun floats and collected tons of candy (mainly taffy, but I love it so I'm not complaining).









This photo was my attempt to get a decent sibling shot. You can see how well that turned out. This was actually the best of the 2 dozen others that I took, if you can believe it :) After the parade we made our way down to the carnival and ate some delicious snow cones. We also watched the police auction for a few minutes before heading back to set up the slip n slide.

We shared some special bonding moments....



After we had thoroughly exhausted ourselves running up and down the yard on the slide, we went home to clean up for the fireworks show. It's a tradition to go to Davis' show and have our special spot. We were disappointed this year to find that they had blocked off our "spot" because apparently they thought it was in a shrapnel zone or something. So...we had to find a different place to sit. It wasn't as awesome as in years past because we didn't get to sit as close, but it was still a good time!!



We drove the Wrangler to the fireworks, so of course we had a fun ride back home. These pictures were taken BEFORE we got mooned by some chubby kid at the light next to us...That was pretty awesome. I can't even imagine what our faces looked like AFTER that lovely event.





Needless to say we had a pretty eventful Fourth of July. It was packed full of food, family, friends, and lots of fun. We're so blessed to live in such an amazing FREE country.

Official Start of Summer 2013

I really need to work on being better about this whole "blog" thing. I know that I don't have many people that follow it, which is totally fine because it's really more of a journal for us anyways. There were a few cool things that happened for us in the past few weeks that I wanted to make sure I got written down somewhere. I started a journal last year and did a few weeks of consistent entries but it kinda fizzled out after that. This is such a fun time in our lives that I want to make sure we remember all the crazy/awesome/stupid stuff we did. First and foremost, we did something incredibly irresponsible. We bought a RZR. A brand. new. RZR. And you know what? I don't even regret it! We've only had the chance to use it once but it's already one of the best purchases we've made. I can't wait for all the fun we'll have on it in the coming years.





We took Carter on our maiden voyage. He rode his four-wheeler most of the night, but before leaving I let him drive the RZR around for about 20 minutes. I didn't think he'd ever get out!



Back up to earlier in the week. I had a random Thursday off so McKenna and I decided to take the dogs up to Pineview to swim. At first we were a bit disheartened because we realized we weren't allowed to take them on the main beaches. However the cute ladies at the ranger station pointed us in the direction of a separate beach to use.

We were practically the only people there!! It was a little inlet with buoys blocking boats from coming by so we didn't have to deal with any waves! We had stopped at Subway for some lunch, so we munched away while the dogs played in the water. Neither of them particularly enjoyed their lifejackets...but it's better than having to worry about anything happening. Sidenote: We both BROUGHT sunscreen but neither of us actually remembered to USE it. I'm still feeling the effects of toasted shoulders...yikes.





Not pictured for this post: We were invited over by a family in our ward for hobo dinners! We had a fun night sitting around the campfire singing songs along with the guitar and eating our fair share cobbler and s'mores. We also invited Baker over another night for hamburgers/hot dogs on the grill. Again, we chased down that food with s'mores and slurpees...So much for the diet, eh?