Max has been very mobile these days. Last Saturday he took two steps. Must have been the day for twos. He also cut his first two teeth which kept me up with a screaming child for four hours in the middle of the night. Hmmm - don't like that part. His new found mobility has also come with a price. Here is his first significant war wound. He pulled himself up on the wood burning stove (it was not hot) and slipped. This is the day after. The swelling and purpleness was gone by the time I took the picture. Poor kid!

I think we are trying to set a record on how many national parks Max can get to before he is one year. So far he has been to The Grand Canyon, Zion's National Park, Bryce Canyon, Jacob Lake, and Arches National Park. I will spare you the zillions of picture we took, however cute they are, and give you the highlights. These are from Zion's. We forgot to bring his hat so we went grunge and used a bandanna.

Max loved playing in the water. He kept wanting me to put him in deeper.

Can you say Milk Comma? He was worn out from all the hiking and didn't even make it through a full 8 oz. before he was out.

Max's First Halloween. I couldn't help but to post several pictures of my "little tiger". He is just so cute! He kept trying to take the hood off his head. Lucky for me he couldn't get it off so I could get some pictures.

Doughnut Falls

Last Saturday we went to Doughnut Falls with my brother Nathan, sister Sammy, and good friend Shawna. It was lots of fun, but I was a little dissapointed that the large doughnut has colapsed and is now filled with rocks. Of course I hadn't been there for about 9 years. I guess it has been like that for a while. Now it is quite dangerous. A teenage boy broke his leg or hyperextended his knee or something while were were there and the medics had to come in and carry him out. I also slipped and fell - but I can't claim any cool battle wounds. I just have a big bruise on my tricept and one on my knee. Here are a few pictures...

Sammy, Nathan and I at the top of the waterfall.

Shawna and I in the cave under the waterfall.

Kent on the "balance beam". He really didn't want to get his feet wet.

I am back in school now and I am thinking that I have over extended myself. I am taking 18 credit hours (because it is the same price as 12) and it is killing me. I think I would be just fine if I didn't have to take math. I hate math! My brain just doesn't function that way. Give me music or a paint brush and I am good - anything creative will do, but graphing, functions, substitution and elimination - forget it. I havn't even got into the hard stuff yet. Blah! I love my other classes though. It is fun, just very time consuming. Kent is still looking for work and finding all kinds of local classes and seminars to go to. He has also been spending a lot of time helping our friends Tom and Jesse landscape their yard - AKA - play HALO. Actually they have gotten a lot done on the yard so I supose the deserve the gaming time. Well, better go to bed - I have an 8am class.

Camping Trip to Escalante

Kent and I just got back from Escalante where we got to do some awesome hikes with our friends Tom and Jessy. We stopped at the visitors center first where there is this giant lizard. We later found out why - there were lizards everywhere we turned the whole trip. It was fun.

The first hike we went on was to Lower Calf Creek Falls. It was five miles round trip and so beautiful.

We then drove about 26 miles down Hole in the Rock Road to the slot canyons trail head. We did a couple of slot canyons, but Peek-a-boo slot canyon was by far the most amazing. Here is Jesse and I at the entrance to the canyon. You had to climb up about 12 feet to get into the canyon then weave back and forth, up and down to get through the canyon. It was amazing. I only wish the pictures showed how beautiful it really was.



Here is a picture looking into the canyon from the top of the entrance.

Here is a view from the top back end. We climbed up the sides to get this shot.

What a great trip. Very, very hot, but very fun. We had a blast. I would highly recommend these hikes. I do want to go back sometime and go all the way down Hole in the Rock road to see Devil's Dance Hall and the actual Hole in the Rock where it meets what is now part of Lake Powell. I read a book about the San Juan mission and the company that traveled through Escalante, the Hole in the Rock, Slick Rock and on to San Juan. What an amazing story. I am even more impressed now seeing the terrain. There is a lot of sand. I can't even count how many times I had to empty my shoes and just can't imagine having to pull wagons through it. Not to mention the heat and lack of shade and water. What amazing examples of faith those saints were. The ones who conquered "impassible country" literally. Well, that's the latest excitement. I will make a more general update post soon.

Moving back to Utah

WOW! It feels like forever since I last blogged. We have been so busy. So, here is the scoop. Kent got a job working for KKO Lawyers doing litigation and loss mitigation. YEA! SO - we packed up all out stuff and moved to Cedar City over Labor Day weekend. We are thrilled to have a house for a reasonable rate instead of our insanely high price one bedroom California Apartment, but we will miss the ward and our friends who are still trudging through law school. I will be moving out there this week after finishing up work here. Pepperdine has offered me the opportunity to continue working for them part-time remotely through December to finish up their online community project. What a blessing to be able to do so from home.

Just to catch up... Last July we took a trip to Bryce Canyon with my sister Sammy. It was so amazing! I think I had been there once before, but I was too little to remember. We got some amazing pictures. This is my favorite.

Our totem Pole...

We got in some fun bowling time with our buddies Tom and Jesse. We are always such goofs. It's a wonder anyone wants to be seen with us. :)

AND THEN...Drum Roll Please... Kent and I tried out for WipeOut! It is a hilarious story. We found out about try outs, I made shirts at 8 am right before leaving to try our luck at getting our chance to jump on those big red balls.

As we got there we saw that we were going to be a the back of a line comprised of 450 random WipeOut enthusiasts wearing outfits that hit every end of the spectrum. As the WipeOut staff came running down the incredibly long line of people with a camcorder apparently Kent thought, "This is my chance". Just as the camera was on him he literally wiped out on the ground. It was hilarious, and a little painful. I was of course contributing to the yelling and wild flailing of arms too. They thought we were so cool that they told everyone else they should be more like us and took us all the way to the front of the line. We went through the first interview and they made an appointment for us to come back. We then had to strut our stuff on camera to show our outstanding TV personalities - that was interesting. We even did the jump in the air and bump your chests together move - TWICE. Only once successfully. The second time I got slammed by Kent pretty hard, but everyone else seemed to think we had planned it that way. Hmmm. We then had to fill out the disclosure packet that is a million pages on and now... we wait. Turns out all our waiting paid off. Kent is moving on and may be appearing on your television screen soon while wildly maneuvering big red balls and out avoiding the motivator.

Last story, My sweet mother got me into making this quilt. While I tend to be fairly crafty, I don't sew. So after 6 months of strugling with this quilt and finally completing it succesfully, I realized that my new homeade bed set look atrocious with my cherry wood bed. The colors by themselves I love, but they just don't match the wood. So all that work goes to the guest room. But our guests should feel loved knowing how much time I put into their comfort, Right?

Play Time

With Kent done with the bar and awaiting his results, it feels as though we finally have a break from stress. I should say ACTIVE stress. We are still very worried about the current economy stumping all the job opportunities in California, and are a little frustrated at the amount of resumes Kent has turned in without any responses. The good news is that Kent's found a way to keep busy and bring in a little bit of money on the side. He is tutoring math to a couple of different kids in the area. Despite what he may say - he loves it. He is stopping by the store on his way home tonight to buy "incentives" AKA candy bars for his kids to show their work. We were able to get in some fun hiking this past weekend.
We went to Malibu Creek state park and did a five mile "hike" up the river to the lake at the top. What this hike secretly beheld was no trail, thousands of huge boulders, no ground to walk on in some placed (as you can tell from the rock climbing pictures below), and my favorite part, wait for it.... the place where there was no alternative solution to just plain swimming across the river. Kent, somehow found a much treacherous way to hack it, but I chose to swim, well kind of. I tried to jump the big underwater rocks so I only had to get wet up to my waist, but slipped and skinned up my knees and shins pretty bad. Four days later - the swelling is finally gone, but some pretty blue, green and purple shades are starting to peek through the skin. Kent says I am an "enemy to nature", but I think this is just my kind of hike. Who wants a boring stroll down a dirt trail where the coolest thing you see is the spider that you just stepped on or a chipmunk run under the bush next to you? I know a lot of people like that, but it's just not for me. We got to see giant tadpoles with heads the size of golf balls!!!! No joke - you couldn't make this stuff up. If you want to see pictures of them shoot me an e-mail and I'll forward them along. I also wanted to conclude with the continuation of my spray paint marathon. Below is a picture of my newly refurbished china hutch. It was sure a pain and Kent wasn't happy with my using our plastic lined deck for my work station, but the end result looks pretty good. Fun stuff.

Back from Costa Rica Alive

We had a blast in Costa Rica although I have to say I should have gone down at the beginning of Kent's trip rather than the end. He was kind of pooped out and a little less enthusiastic than me. We went to Arenal - the third most active volcano in the world. We stayed at a resort with a perfect view of the volcano over looking the lake. You can hear the volcano erupting continually and even see some lava running down at night. It was so beautiful. We then took a van to Manuel Antonio. Here we had cute geckos in our hotel room which thankfully kept the mosquitoes out. I called them my friends. We went to the National park there which is a real jungle (no pun intended). The video below is of some of the white faced monkeys stealing one of the tourists lunches right out of her backpack. The are cute, but they are thieves and they bite.

We also saw huge iguanas, crabs, sloths, deer, large spiders, lizards of all kinds including one that ran on its hind legs like on Rescuers Down Under, and large beautiful blue butterflies. There was a waterfall that we found a trail to - we had to climb through rivers, vines, bugs, and mud to get there. I really felt like I had stepped into an Indiana Jones movie with the monkeys, birds and bugs so loud in the background of our adventurous hike. We then went ocean kayaking. it was a blast! I loved it. I think Kent and I are going to invest in a couple of Kayaks now as a new hobby. The beaches there are so beautiful and the water is about 82 degrees. We then took a bus back to San Jose where we spent a couple more days among the ticos. We went to see Dark Night for $3.50 each. All our friends are jealous. We about died on numerous occasions in the taxi's, either that or our driver almost killed someone else crossing the street while we were in their car. The traffic there makes me grateful for the traffic in Los Angeles if you can believe that! We also got to walk around in down town San Jose where they have about 200 giant cows that companies decorate and donate. They then auction them off and give the money to charity. Some of these cows were hilarious. One last thing, Every one asks about the food, well - it was really good, but one experience was my favorite. We were at a little "soda" at I glanced up while we were waiting for our food and noticed that the sign on the wall was moving. I kept watching his phenomenon until I saw four cockroaches peek from behind the sign and then quickly run around and sneek back behind the sign. This happened for the duration of our stay at that restaurant. It was delicious. As was this last cow. If anyone wants to see more pictures, just let me know and I can email some to you. All in all, Costa Rica is highly recommended in my book.