Anniversary Trip: Part 1

Nate and I celebrated our eighth wedding anniversary this year. On the evening of the fifth, I took Nate out to Color Me Mine to paint a serving platter, since the traditional 8th year anniversary gift is pottery. We have never had a basic, every day, large serving platter. We did get a really fun Halloween platter one year, but it always seems odd to pull that out unless it is October.


The week following our anniversary, Nate and I went on a trip together while my parents watched Austin. We drove down to Page, Arizona on Wednesday, May 13. On our way down, we had planned to hike to the Wahweap Hoodoos in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. However, after stopping at the nearby BLM visitor's center, we learned that the road to the trail we planned to use was now closed and inaccessible. The other trail option to the hoodoos was about four times longer, and we didn't have time for that. Instead we ended up doing a very short hike to The Toadstools. We were happy to find that the desert was very pretty at this time of year, with all sorts of wild flowers in bloom from white stemmed evening primroses, to lupines and yucca plants.

Here are some of the "toadstools"

After our short hike, we stopped by a beautiful view point. We arrived at an ideal viewing time. The light was soft and inviting, turning the scene it illuminated into a stunning pastel toned landscape.

From there we continued to our place in Page and bought some things to make dinner at a local store.

Thursday didn't go at all as we had planned. The main purpose of our trip to Page had been to see Antelope Canyon, which can only be viewed on a tour. We had reserved tickets to see Upper Antelope Canyon during the time slot when the lighting in the canyon would be at its prime. We had a relaxed morning with a waffle breakfast and arrived at the tour place at 10:00. We had been concerned at the rain that had hit the area that morning, and our fears were confirmed since the tour was canceled due to the flash flood danger. Actually, while we were at the tour place, the Navajo Nation called to re-open, then re-close the canyon all within a few minutes. We called the place we had booked an afternoon tour of Lower Antelope Canyon and were informed that that canyon would also be closed for the day. We re-scheduled our tour of the upper canyon for the next morning and hoped for the best before heading to the town's visitor center as we tried to re-schedule our day.

After waiting in line for quite awhile and not getting much information from either the visitor's center or from a phone call to the Navajo Nation, we decided to drive out to the reservation and see if we would be able to get a backcountry permit to hike Upper Water Holes Canyon. It turned out that there was no flash flood warnings for that slot canyon, so we spent of good chunk of the remainder of our day there.

This hike turned out to be a real highlight of our trip. After descending into the canyon, we found that it quickly opened up and the path was pretty wide for a good way.

This was a small narrow side slot canyon we found

But as we continued, the canyon walls drew closer together and became increasingly interesting. The wash that we walked on weaved in, out, and around the wavy sandstone walls. These narrow undulating rock forms seemed to demand that visitors play a game of peek-a-boo while wandering through the windy sand filled depths of the canyon.

 At the end of this narrow section, we found a ladder to climb up. After ascending the ladder, the canyon opened up again. We walked to the power lines (which is as far hikers are permited to go), before heading back.

Looking back down toward the ladder

We were quite hungry by then. It was late afternoon, and we hadn't taken lunch with us. But we still stopped by Horseshoe Bend before returning to our place to eat.

After "lunch," we didn't really have time to go see anything else that day. So, instead we ended up seeing Avengers: Age of Ultron at the local theater. That was actually the only movie playing there, so it is good we were interested in seeing it.

Birthdays!

We celebrated the all the April birthdays in my family on April 11th. The family party turned out to be pretty crazy because a little before dinner my dad's nose started bleeding. It kept bleeding for a couple hours, so he went to a care center. Consequently, he was gone for most of the party, as were other family members who were taking him to the care center or otherwise helping him. Thus a lot of our time was spent being concerned about my dad.

Nate made a nice cake for the party though.

And Austin got lots of exciting gifts, like this stuffed Lightning McQueen from his grandparents.

Austin also received a cool handmade sock monkey from his Aunt Katie. When it is pushed, it plays "Happy Birthday" Actually, he didn't get this at the original birthday party; it came late. Austin loves it!

Since we were celebrating my mom's birthday too, I made her a wooden basket.

We had another party at home for Austin on his actual birthday. He got to have his choice of dinner (macaroni and cheese) and cake.

Then he got to open another round of gifts from his parents.

His favorite was a set of toy vehicles I made for him. Some of them even had peg people that could sit inside, and the trucks had round pieces that could be loaded and unloaded.

His main gift was a new bed. So, now Austin has graduated from his toddler bed to a twin sized bed. I don't know how excited he really was about the bed, but he does really like the Thomas the Train themed sheets, bed spread, and pillow.

Graduation, Women's Conference, and Such

The last few weeks have been particularly jam packed and busy for us. All sorts of events, appointments, and other happenings seem to have been packed into the same short time period.

One such even was graduation for my brother Ben and my sister-in-law Katie from BYU on April 24th. Ben is going onto graduate school after doing an internship this summer, and Katie has found a teaching job. I am really happy for both of them!

We also were planning on going to a party for my grandma's eightieth birthday the next day. However, a sudden rain storm on our way there caused problems for us. We were in the HOV lane in an area where freeway just doesn't seem to drain well in general. We hydroplaned on a large puddle and fishtailed for awhile before our car turned and crashed into a small trailer. We spun around from there so that we faced oncoming traffic as our car went across the other four lanes before stopping on the right side of the freeway. We were very blessed because no one was hurt. At all! It was a miracle we made it all the way across the freeway without being hit by anyone else. I was just waiting for someone else to hit us or for us to hit someone else the whole time...but I am so grateful that didn't happen. God was really watching out for us, and we feel very blessed.

Unfortunately, our poor car was totaled, and we have had to spend a lot of time since then sorting out insurance, looking for a new car, buying the new car, registering the new car, and other such things. Our new car is a Subaru Outback, and the extra space it has compared to our little Ford Focus will be nice. Nate finally was able to go to the secured lot where our totaled car has been last week so he could get our personal things from it, but found that much of our stuff had disappeared. So, now we have to sort that out too...

The week following graduation, we celebrated Austin's birthday (as I will detail in another post) and I attended part of Women's Conference. The primary purpose I had of going to Women's Conference was to hear my wonderful friend Lori speak Friday afternoon. Seeing her and a number of my other good friends there was so much fun, and I really enjoyed hearing her talk!

While a number of us were going to be together, we also had a baby shower for my friend Heather since she and her husband are planning to adopt a baby boy soon. (Yay!)

I don't get to see my friends nearly as often as I would like, so it was really fun to spend some time together with them!

Friday after the conference, I met up with Nate and we spent the evening helping his brother move. Then we got up Saturday morning in time to attend the Payson Temple open house. The temple was really beautiful and I am so glad we got to see it!