Joo Lin and Seoul

Joo Lin and Seoul came to visit me (and a few other people) this last weekend! Hurray! It was so fun to see Joo Lin again and catch up on life, and Seoul is the cutest, smartest little thing ever!

The day Joo Lin got here, it just so happened we were having a joint baby shower for Amy and Kara. Look at me and all my prego ladies!

This is a picture that Jack took of Seoul. He loves taking pictures with my camera and calls it my "pop, pop, pop"...I think because of the flash that pops up. Isn't Seoul adorable? I hope Jack will wed her some day. :)

This is the situation that Jack is working with for the rest of his life. Dear, dear, dear! Poor kid has the double tornado cowlick!

Seoul is such a big girl! She went to town on this corn on the cob. I feel like she looks like she's 6 in this picture and that I will take her to first grade after she finishes this C on the C! Stop growing up so fast!

We drove up the Little Cottonwood Canyon on Sunday to see the wildflowers and take some cute pictures of Seoul. The wildflowers were dead, and Seoul wanted nothing to do with taking pictures. This was the best one I took.

Seoul's face is perfect in this one. She's like...I know exactly what you are up to, Mom, and I'm not going to cooperate!

This one is pretty dang cute!

We tried to distract her with my earrings hoping that would brighten her mood...

...didn't work!

Here's a pic of a JuJus and me. Hard to believe it has already been 12 years since we were roommates at good ol' David John Hall!

On the way down the canyon, this big ol' ma'am was sitting along side the road with her two little meese babies. I have been wanting to see a moose all summer during my hiking adventures. Hurray!

We met another of our freshman year roommates for dinner and visited Temple Square, but all those pics are on Joo Lin's camera. We need to do a little picture swap, so there may just be another post of more pics of Seoul coming soon.

Continue reading for another new post...

Fun a Mile High

I got to go to Denver a few weeks ago for work, and since work was paying, I went a few days early and spent some time with Scott and Nancy and the boys. I took some family pictures for them. My fav is below. The first pic is vintage Uncle Scott!
Matthew, Luke, and I. When I was a freshman at BYU, Matthew was 1-year-old. What in the world!?! How does time fly so fast? Aren't we cute cousins?!

I had so much fun hanging out with these boys!

Scott and Nancy took me into Denver Sunday night to my hotel. This was the view from my window. I'm not complaining!

And this was the view at night. It was a great hotel! Thank you, Sheraton! Best feature = every piece of exercise equipment had it's only little TV!! Since I spend a lot of quality time working out these days, this was a major plus!

The last night I was there, my coworker, Holly, and I went to this cool restaurant up in the mountains. We were sitting out on the patio enjoying our appetizer of rabbit and rattlesnake sausage (Yes, I branch out into new and unknown foods when I'm not the one paying for it! It was actually quite delicious!), when a freak hail storm passed over. We got pelted pretty good and ran for cover inside the restaurant. It was sunny again five minutes later. You would think I would be used to this living in Salt Lake!

After dinner, we went on a little hike up Dinosaur Ridge. Supposedly there are dinosaur tracks somewhere, but we never saw them. Oh well, the view was awesome! I think you can see the cloud that caused that freak hail storm in the distance!

The last day we were there, we all went out to lunch together and then went miniature golfing. It's always so fun when we all get together! It doesn't happen too often anymore! Jen (Denver office), Holly, and Cindi (Denver office).

Rob (Denver office) getting ready to get his mini putt on!

One of the holes had this little fake graveyard by it. This was just too wrong to pass up!

The whole Rocky Mountain crew, minus Brett. He had to leave after lunch, and I was lame and didn't take any pictures before he left. Holly, Cindi, Rob, Jen, Me, and Jay...and miss you, Brett!

We hopefully get to go back to Denver in fall!!

Mineral Fork Hike

The last few weeks have been C-R-A-Z-Y! I packed up all my stuff and moved to a new apartment (pictures to come once it's all put together), and in between packing and moving, I spent a week at home in California (pictures to come soon). I had to do this quick little post about a hike I did because it was sort of a momentous life experience.
In early June, my friend, Michelle, and I attempted to hike the Mineral Fork trail in Big Cottonwood Canyon. We had fun, but we were only able to go a little over a mile up the trail before we hit major snow. I guess we were a little early in the season for hiking this one. So supposedly there was an abandoned mine at the end of the trail, but we weren't able to make it that far. We were telling people about our hike the next Sunday at church, and one of my friends said that it was one of his favorite hikes in Salt Lake and there really was a mine. I wasn't so sure I believed him, so he and I hiked it a couple of weekends ago. There were actually three mines, and an indescribable view of the Salt Lake Valley. Who knew?!
This is me at the beginning of the hike. Apparently there are wild raspberries that grow in this area, but someone or something had already eaten them all. Bummer!
This is how we dined on our Subway sandwiches. This is my friend, Brett. Who needs a recliner when you have a couple of good rocks?!

Brett at the first mine. It is sort of crazy to think that people really came up here and worked back in the day. Did they ride horses? Did they walk? Was the mine active when cars existed so maybe they could drive up to it? I need to know the history of these things! It's times like these that I wish I could travel back in time and see this place in its prime.

Yeah! We made it to the first mine! Pardon the wild hairdo on my part! Note to self....wear bandana next time like Brett! It eliminates wild hairdos, soaks up the sweat (I am a sweaty hot mess when I do any sort of physical activity), and it prevents sunburned scalp which I experienced firsthand after this hike! Not so fun! It's not dandruff, I swear! Just chunks of my crisped, dead scalp skin!

When we got to the first mine, we met an ATVer who said there was a second mine up the trail a ways. We didn't have anything better to do that day, so we pressed on. At the second mine, we could see up at the end of the trail that there was a third mine. There was only a few switchbacks up to the third mine, so we pressed on. On our way to the third mine, another ATVer said that there was a little steep trail up from the third mine to the ridgeline and that there was an amazing view that we couldn't miss. So when we go to the third mine, we scaled a very steep mountainside (without injury or death thankfully) for about 100 yards to see this view...

What?! How can such beautiful things exist? That is Lake Blanche in the foreground, with the Salt Lake Valley and Great Salt Lake off in the distance. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry or shout for joy. It was quite the trek and worth ever step for this view. I really couldn't believe that I was standing on top of a mountain. Those of you who follow my blog know of my little personal journey to get healthy and take better care of my body. This was just another huge step in that journey. Six months ago, I would never even entertained the idea of going on a hike like this. I would have been dead on the trail long before the first mine, and here I was standing on top of a mountain and I felt pretty dang good!

This is a shot of the last little stretch of the hike. The second mine is darker brown blob at the beginning of the switchbacks. The third mine is down at the end of the switchbacks where we started our scaling of the mountainside.

And another bonus of this hike was that I made a pretty good friend in the process. Thanks for being a great hiking partner, Brett! You get to know a person pretty well after hiking for 9+ hours. Originally we thought we would only be hiking for 3-4 hours to the first mine. He was even nice and let me set the pace. I may be in decent shape now, but parts of this hike kicked my bootie! I can't wait for my next hiking adventure! I see mountains now and just want to climb to the top of them. What has gotten into me?! :)

End of summer goal = hike Mt. Timpanogos

P.S. The Forest Service says the Mineral Hike trail is 4.5 miles oneway. It felt like a lot more than that, but still quite an accomplishment! My muscles felt every step of those 4.5 miles that night!