What we've been up to

We had some fun this Halloween. We were invited to 2 consecutive Murder Mystery Dinners. One on Halloween night and the next one the day after. They were both pretty fun and we had a good time putting together our costumes. Angie really went all out and sewed her own costumes (refer to pictures and be impressed). Mine were more-or-less thrown together at mom and dad's house from their costume box. We found out at the first dinner party that Garret and Rachel are engaged! congrats to the two of them. 

Since Halloween we've just been hangin' around trying to find time to get out and do things. Last saturday we went fishing at 3rd dam. It has been really nice weather here lately and we have been enjoying the outdoors while we still can. Yesterday we hit up the park and had some intense tennis games. We're pretty evenly matched so it's fun. I've been working on making a new boardgame and Angie is really good about helping me test it out when I need to. We play a lot of games besides. We've been playing this game called Vikings that Angie bought me for christmas last year that is really fun. Angie is unbeatable, at least so far. But I've been narrowing the gap with every game we play. We're excited for Thanksgiving in Salt Lake this year and can't wait to see everyone who'll be there!

Angie and i got back from cancun sunday night. that was really fun we spent a week there with josh and deena and got to see some really pretty scenery and also some rad mayan ruins. our hotel was soo nice. it was the grand mayan. each couple had their own huge room , then we had a comon room in the middle with a kitchen and stuff. angie and i had problems with our tub one night and the maintenance people came and tried to fix it. we didn't get to bed until like 12:00. my favorite part was seeing the ruins. we toured Chichen Itza, Tulum and Coba. my favorite was tulum. it's right on the shore and it was just a really cool charming place. Chichen itza was just huge and had that enormous pyrimid, but we couldn't climb it. i guess someone fell and so they won't let you do it anymore, but in coba we could climb the pyrimid. it was really high and took alot of energy to get up there. for Chichen itza and tulum we had an LDS tour guide named lemuel. he's a local bishop and does tour proffesionally. it was pretty cool to hear about some of these places from an lds perspective. you kind of had to take alot of it with a grain of salt. One common theme that came up at all the places was the mysterious descending god and the white bearded man. kind of cool stuff. lemuel shared some theories aobut the uses of some of the buildings for ordinace work etc. it was pretty cool. we swam in 3 or 4 cenotes and they were sooooo fun! some of them were really shallow and fun to explore around and others were so deep that noone has even seen the bottom of them. we spent one day just walking around cancun. it was not our favorite part at all, but nice to say i've been there. we really liked playa del carmen though. its a closer city to where we were staying and it had some really cool pedestrian streets with shops and stiff right by the beach. i got to drink coco verde for the first time since the mission, they call it coco frio in mexico. it was so yummy and i talked everyone else into trying it too. Since we've been back things have been so crazy with school trying to catch up etc. But it was a really nice break! hope you all like the pics. In one of them Josh and I are impressing some locals with our own demonstration of how the mayans might have sacrificed people. try to guess which one it is :)

dutchin' dangie

we've been talking about it for a couple of weeks and tonight we finally did it! we pulled out the dutch ovens and set up camp next to the compost piles in the backyard. it's already pretty chilly here. so it was now or never. we had one dinner oven and one dessert oven. as it should be. after some misunderstandings between ourselves and the coals we finally got them going and three hours later...voila! good thing we started around 3:30. boy, was it tasty! i have no idea why we haven't been doing this more often.  maybe it has to do with the cleaning up and re-oiling and prepping the ovens for storage again. it's a bit of a process.  dan, however, was so kind and did most of it. hmm...i think i'll go have another bite of peach cobbler.

adventures in owl-making

my nephew, matt, turned TWO this month! i had asked my sister if there was something he needed and after giving me the usual "you don't need to get him anything" line she said there was this cute owl from the pottery barn kids catalog that might be neat if i could try to copy. so i tried. he's pretty cute though i don't know how much like the original he looks. this was my first attempt at a little softie and there are a lot of things i could improve but it was fun to try something new. so thanks, aimee, for the suggestion!

what we've been up to

Angie and I have had a bit a fun the last few weeks. We went to Moab with Kent and Melissa and had a great time camping and hiking. It was great weather and even a little cloudy and misty. That's perfect Moab hiking conditions. While hanging out in Goblin Valley Kent was trying to show off and fell from a goblin rolling his ankle. He was on crutches for a couple of days after we got home, but he says he's fine now, just hurt pride. Angie and Deborah went to the So You Think You Can Dance tour at the Delta Center. Angie said it was the best time she's ever had in her life (she didn't actually say that, but you could tell she really liked it). They did her favorite dance and she said it gave her goose bumps. Last week we took a fun hike up to Mount Naomi here by Logan. It's the tallest peak in the area and a really pretty hike. I'd never done it, so I'm glad to have it under my belt now. We watched the salmon run at Porcupine reservoir, and I went to the USU / BYU football game with Dad, Josh and Caleb. And as if all that wasn't enough, Angie and I have been playing Zelda for the Super Nintendo. We want to beat it together (its the best game ever!) Angie hung in there for a little while, but it's pretty much been me for the last week. She watches and cheers me on. What a good time we've had these last couple of weeks!  (the aspens are to make jake jealous, and the rock art I swear is authentic)

....And we're done!!!

Saturday was Snoasis' last day and boy howdy, did they have a crowd! Angie and Deborah worked all day, everyday for the last 3 weeks and were pooped but glad when it was all over. I was glad too because it meant I got to take my wife home :). So we're finally both back in Logan again. Hurray! way to hang in there Angie, you're the bomb.

Viva Mesa Verde... or something

We had us a good time this last week. Mom and Dad gave us some PTO (benefits of working at the Snoasis for 11 years). We decided to wander southward. First stop Cortez, CO. It was a cool little town and we had a really good time at Mesa Verde National Park. We checked out the abandoned shacks of the "ancestral Puebloans". Apparently it's no longer politically correct to call them Anasazi (Calling an ancestral Puebloan an Anasazi and dropping garbage out your car window are the only 2 ways to make Native Americans cry). My favorite site was Long House. It reminded me of Machu Pichu with cool terraces where they had planted some green grassy stuff.
One day we hit up Four Corners. It was cool being in 4 states at the same time and it was even cooler having to pay $6 to do so. Is this a "free country" or not? My letter to the president is on its way. Angie went to colorado to check out some indian jewelry and I wandered around New Mexico for a while. We decided that all 4 of the states were really similar.
Next stop: Hovenweep National Monument. This was alot like Mesa Verde, but no cliffs. there were only a few ruins and they were all really close together along this ravine. there were really cool towers and it was after hours so we got the "VIP tour". Translation: I didn't have much respect for the chains and signs warning us to stay on the paths. But it got us some cool pics.
One of our last stops was on the way back outside of Moab. We'd heard there was an Indian petroglyph of a mastadon in the area and after researching and making some calls we got some loose directions. It was pretty cool, and it's cooler when you think that the people that made this drawing lived here 200 - 800 years ago. Think about it. When your brain gets tired and the Archeologists at the local university have laughed you to death try looking in the book of mormon. 

Well that was our trip! Back to the grind.