Tunes and Blooms

I had a great weekend! On Friday we went to Bianca Merkley's concert in SLC.  I love, love, love her new Album "A Part of Me"  you guys should check it out.She is a singer/songwriter and is incredibly talented!  I was really glad I went.

After a pit stop at Red Robin we went to Solitude for the night.  On Saturday we went skiing.  I feel like I am finally starting to get a little better at skiing.  I love feeling like I have enough control to go a little faster and not be so afraid at the top (or sometimes the middle) of the diamond runs.  For the most part the snow was great for spring skiing (akin to snow cone/mashed potatoes).  I love spring skiing! At the end of the day it started to get colder and the snow was getting crusty so we called it quits. 

Kellen had been itching to go to REI so we headed there and hit City Creek and the flowers at Temple Square.  I have to say I loved the flowers at Temple Square more than seeing City Creek but City Creek was pretty cool.  I'll have to go back when I can shop a little more. It was a little stormy and rainy so there weren't very many people at Temple Square.  I loved walking around holding his hand and taking in all the beautiful blooms. 

I have been craving oysters all week so before we headed back up the canyon we stopped and had oysters and clam chowder.  It was everything it could be and the company was even better. : ) How was your weekend? 

How Old Am I ?

I've been dealing with shingles.  Not the kind that go on your roof, the kind that come from the chicken pox virus.  At first I went crazy thinking I had something biting me in the night causing the series of painful bumps appearing on my back.  I literally tore apart our bed.  I took all the blankets off, the mattress and even lifted up the box spring to see if anything was devouring my skin in the night.  Nada. I was thinking what the crap/thank goodness we don't have any sort of pest problem. After almost a week I finally broke down and followed Kellen and my Mom's advice to call the Good Dr.  It took about 2 seconds before he said I have shingles.  In some ways I was relieved that I wasn't totally losing my mind (my leg had been painful and itchy for no apparent reason).  In other ways I was freaked out and in total denial.  I thought only older people get shingles.  I'd seen the commercials for shingles vaccine before.  It clearly stated it was for people over 50 but apparently I'm one of the lucky few.  The good news is I most likely won't ever get it again and I am not contagious.  I have been very lucky to not have a bad case.  Some people are in a lot of pain for a long time and get huge patches of blisters.  Mine really haven't been that bad.  Luckily even though I procrastinated seeing the Good Dr. I caught it really early and started taking an anti-viral (aka horse pills) which helps stop the progression of the virus.  I'm gonna go celebrate with some prune juice and watch matlock.

Go Ahead, Taste Your Face

I haven't been feeling exactly attractive lately. You are probably asking yourself why I would put a picture of myself in this sort of state on the internet for all to see, seeing as it isn't a particularly flattering image. For my adoring fans of course! (JK) In addition to not feeling very cute lately (rather frumpy) it seems like every time I have a holiday that I don't have to work I don't feel good. In some ways it is a good thing since at least I'm not having to miss work or feel like crap when I'm at work but honestly, I had stuff I wanted to go do.  So to help myself feel a little better I decided to try a honey, nutmeg, and cinnamon mask I found here: http://www.bellasugar.com/DIY-Honey-Facial-Mask-Acne-Scarring-6913455.  I did, in fact, taste the mixture.  It's pretty delicious.  I was thinking of what foods I could put it on.  It might be a fun mask to put on while baking holiday pies or watching a Christmas movie.  Or you could run around the neighborhood scaring people. . . luckily no one came to the door and my phone didn't ring.  That could have been an issue. Maybe now I'll go tame these eyebrows...   

Hot Chocolate, Horses and What is that smell?

We finally made it to Yellowstone in the fall!  We have been talking about going for a couple of years and we finally did it.  We got ourselves all pumped up by watching every documentary about Yellowstone we could find on Netflix. I had never been to Yellowstone and Kellen hadn't been since he was little. We,of course, procrastinated booking our hotels until the day before we left. We got to Jackson around midnight.  I'm always a little leery of how the hotels we book will really be, especially after our experience with a motel 6 in Seattle having dead ants in the sheets (Yep, done with Motel 6 for life!!! But that's a story for another day).  We stayed at the Elk Country Inn. It was clean, and pretty nice.  I would stay there again.  In the morning I only got to catch a little glimpse of what Jackson is like.  I really liked it but we were anxious to get to the park so we got our hot chocolate, bagels and headed for the park.  

To get to Yellowstone from Jackson you have to drive through Grand Teton National Forest.  Talk about gorgeous!  We'll have to go back and just see the Tetons.  There were lots of horses just off the side of the road!  So of course I had to stop.  Could you pass up a view as spectacular as this?

Finally, Kellen was able to peel me away from all the pretty horses so we could see what we came to see.  First stop, West Thumb. It was so cool to see all the different hot pots.  The blue ones are my favorite.  Along with the mud pots that really have mud in them, not just dirty water.  More on that later! We also saw Old Faithful.  It was different than I thought it would be.  Old faithful wasn't my favorite.  I preferred some of the lesser known geysers.  I guess I expected too much out of old faithful. We did run into a bit of a snag.  With it being so cold there were some features we couldn't really see because of the steam.  It made seeing Old Faithful a bit tricky too.  

But there was still a lot we could see and it was cool, some of it unbearably stinky!  Some of my favorites:



Wolf



Pine Martin



Coyote

One of my very favorite features is one you have to hike to.  You pass by Fairy Falls on the way there. 



Fairy Falls



It has a geyser that goes off randomly and also a mud pot. Some mud pots we saw were very watery and weren't really mud but this one had thick mud so it was cool to watch.





We, of course, saw lots of buffalo and elk.  The animals were in their rut and you could tell some of the buffalo were a little testy.  They made these deep grunting noises that were scary! Some of them were fighting a little. We came across one buffalo on our way back from Fairy Falls.  It was right on the side of the trail.  We weren't about to walk right past it and risk bursting it's personal bubble so we walked clear up on the side of this hill to avoid it.  

  

Kellen and I love to spot animals everywhere we go so we loved Yellowstone.  We stayed in West Yellowstone for two nights at the Moose Creek Inn.  It was okay.  I didn't think anyone had a bathroom smaller than ours but this motel did!  We were going for inexpensive, not fancy so it was just fine for us. I would probably stay there again. West Yellowstone had a Wolf and Bear refuge.  We debated whether or not to go.  I really enjoyed it.  They fed the wolves while we were there and they tested out bear proof dumpsters on the bears.  I was pretty excited about seeing the bear proof dumpsters since I've bought some for work and I think it is funny to watch the bears do "CPR" on the dumpsters.  They were pretty smart and got the dumpster open in about 20 minutes so the manufacturer will have to go back to the drawing board to try to make it bear proof. 



Trying to Crack the "Bear Proof" dumpster



Going to Yellowstone in the fall was nice.  There weren't very many people there but they do start to close things down.  There was one road that was completely closed so we didn't get to see some things.    I went expecting there to be a lot of fall color but Yellowstone mostly has pines with just a few aspens here and there.  While it was different than I thought it would be, I thoroughly enjoyed it.  It was so nice to spend time with Kellen. We spent the last night of our trip back in Jackson.  We walked around and window shopped, scoping out what stores we'd like to look at the next day when they'd be open.  I love the artsy feel of Jackson.  We spent the next morning looking at art, and browsing in the stores. On the way home we went through Paris, Idaho and looked at some family graves, drove past Bear Lake and went through some beautiful canyons with fall colors. 

Bread and Butter

The garden has been producing these: Cucumbers, Peppers & Cherry Tomatoes
Zucchini & Even more Cucumbers

So I made these:

Veggie Pasta

Zucchini Bread

Yay Bread!

Springtime

Skating on the Lake

Before this year I had never been skating out on the lake. It was a blast! We went out a couple times. The boys played hockey and the girls skated around with the kids. I did try to play hockey a little. When these pictures were taken, it was so windy. You didn't even have to skate. The wind just pushed you along as far as you wanted to go.