Thursday, October 23, 2014

Sixth Anniversary Trip

Are you ready for the big reveal?  Robyn took me to (drumroll please) Idaho!  Okay, I know you're thinking that Idaho doesn't sound very exciting.  It's actually a trip we've talked about taking lots of times but we just haven't gotten around to it until now.  We went to both Idaho Falls and Rexburg.  We went to those two cities for a very specific purpose.  There are LDS Temples in both of those cities.  We enjoy visiting new temples and we've been to all the temples in Utah except for the newly completed Ogden Temple (we'll get there soon, just hold your horses) so we're continuing our ongoing temple tour with these two in Idaho.  That brings our total number of temples visited to 27!

What what!  Selfie with the temple!
We really enjoyed the Idaho Falls temple.  It's one of the older ones.  It was dedicated in the 1940s.  After going inside the temple we walked along the river.  We got a few really pretty shots of the temple from across the river.



I really liked this one.  Robyn took the picture and Google Auto Awesomed it to make it look extra cool.
Besides the temple, we really enjoyed how pretty the river itself was.  The Falls of Idaho Falls are not very tall but they are like half a mile wide.  Basically, the river is cut in half with a waterfall running down the middle of it for a long way.


Here's a panoramic shot of some of the falls.

Look how cute Robyn makes the falls look.

Here's a shot of the temple with the falls.
After enjoying a beautiful temple and some beautiful nature, we went out to dinner and also explored the city a little bit.


Every city needs a giant skateboard.

Have you hugged a moose today?

I made Robyn cuddle with the snake.  She assured me this in no way changes her dislike for snakes/

After Idaho Falls on Friday, we made our way up to Rexburg on Saturday.  The first thing we did there was visit another temple.

This temple was beautiful as well.  It looks almost exactly like the Brigham City Temple.

After the temple we explored a bit of Rexburg.  I think my favorite thing in Rexburg was when we went to a picnic in the park.  We had delicious sandwiches, but more importantly I got to be amused by all of the college students and their various antics.  The most fascinating was the girls who were having a photoshoot of them laying on top of each other among the fall leaves.  It was very precious.

The last and most important thing I need to tell you is that our hotel room was an error code.

Error 404: hotel room not found.
If you don't understand the 404 joke, you're not nerdy enough.

It was a great trip.  It was pretty chill.  We enjoyed beautiful buildings and beautiful nature.  We had plenty of time to enjoy each other's company.  It was like a 2 day long date.  We even had some time to read a book.  Robyn did a great job planning it.  I need to put her in charge of more events.

Monday, October 13, 2014

6 Amazing years!

This last Saturday was Jeff and my 6th wedding anniversary.   Sometimes 6 years seems like a long time and we have done so many things together, while at other times it seems like just yesterday we were sealed in the temple for time and for all eternity.   Well either way I have loved being married to Jeff and I'm pretty sure he is a fan of me too.  How do I know this?  Well, he took me out to a special dinner to celebrate.  He kept it a secret so I would be surprised.  I was almost certain we were eating somewhere in downtown Salt Lake (that is where most of the fancy restaurants are located, I know, I've had to plan dates too).  We drove north (my guess was still valid) and we drove right into downtown (guess confirmed).  Jeff took me to Spencer's For Steaks & Chops.  It was in the Hilton Hotel.  The food was amazing (we were NOT counting calories that night and It was a good thing I ran that morning).  Here are just a few pictures of some of the things we ate:
My french onion soup had LOTS of cheese!


The mac and cheese had candied bacon.  CrAzY!

Jeff got the cheesecake (and I'm not sure he wanted to share with me)

It looks like chocolate cake but it tasted more like a truffle. Yum!

What is a dinner out without a selfie?!
  Well, it was a nice quiet night with the best guy in the whole world!  I loved that we could spend the night talking and be perfectly happy.  Now next weekend we will be on our anniversary trip (planned by me, I hope Jeff likes it) so let the celebration continue!

Monday, October 6, 2014

We are Groupies!

My little brother, Justin, has a very devoted fan base.

For a long time, he was in shows at the Hale or the Scera, both located in Orem.  Then he started taking his show on the road.  He started school at SUU in Cedar City, but he was living in Montana for the summer, and was in some shows at a playhouse there.  Naturally we drove to Montana to see his performances in August.  Now that he's back in school at SUU, we drove down to Cedar City to see him in A Midsummer Night's Dream this past weekend.  (He played Snug, and his lion costume was epic.)

It wasn't a very long trip.  We drove down Saturday afternoon, went out to dinner with Justin and my parents, followed by the play, and then drove home Sunday morning.

It's unfortunate that I didn't get any pictures of Justin, since we were down there to see him.  They don't allow photography during the play, and I suppose we just didn't think about taking pictures during dinner.  (It's really unfortunate that I don't have a picture of him as a lion.  Perhaps if enough people comment that they would like to see one, we can convince him to provide.)

But, I did get some precious pictures of the rest of us.  We had to drop Justin off early so that he could go get in costume before the play.  That meant that we had a good hour to kill on SUU campus.  Naturally, we got some truly precious pictures.

It may be a bridge to nowhere, but we still make it look precious.
There was a statue of Shakespeare sitting on a bunch.  How could I not cuddle him and look at him longingly?
My Mom didn't want to be outdone, so she had to cuddle as well.  What she doesn't know is that she was still outdone, because she forgot to look at him longingly.
SUU even has a little waterfall in the middle of campus.  (But it doesn't always have my parents at the top of the waterfall.  This was a special and rare sighting.)
I'm sure you'll see more pictures of Cedar City in the future.  Justin's kind of a big deal in the acting world, and his groupies aren't getting any less devoted.