Suprise Anniversary Trip!

Joel this is for you! I will post details about the trip soon, but here are pictures!

Lake Powell!!

In July Quinn and I were able to go to the best place on earth...Lake Powell. My family has gone every summer with the Nay family (my aunt and uncle) since before I was born. Summer is not Summer without a week on the My-Ski-Tow with the fam. Nothing beats early morning wake board runs, fishing, campfire stories, POWELL FOOD, tube wars, and sleeping under the stars. We did all of the above and more; Quinn actually found a very special friend while we were down there...

Yeah...Quinn found a lizard in a slot canyon and adopted it for a few days. Croc (as he was so named) actually stayed on his arm through an entire movie and overnight!



And who would have guessed... that this amazing couplewould get engaged only a week after we left Powell. Congrats Natalie Nay and Brian Sanders!!


We spent a lot of our time wakeboarding and tubing out on the lake. Here is a little slide show of all our Powell pics (a lot of wake boaring ones of Quinn and I).

Back to the days...

On our flight home from our trip to Boston, we decided to extend our 1 hour layover in Chicago, to a 6 hour layover so that Quinn could show me his childhood stompin' grounds. His family moved to Utah from Chicago when he was 12 and he has not been back to visit since. He was so excited to visit his old house, elementary school, and swimming pool in the cute little city of Geneva, IL. The day was filled of stories and memories of Quinn's childhood. It was fun to see where he grew up and to hear all of his stories as he walked me around to each place. Quinn posing in front of the steet sign that he and his brother Abe tied a neighbor kid to so that they could see how long it took him to untie himself.
This is the fire hydrant that Quinn knocked his teeth out on when he went over the handlebars of his bike.
The big white house on DeerField Way, lots of fond memories in that place.

A Trip back home

Quinn was sweet enough to drive all the way to Colorado in July with me to attend one of my old choir and track buddies wedding. My highschool friends are finally starting to get married, they all thought I was CRAZY when I tied the knot two years ago, now they are finally seeing the light! I have known booth the bride and groom since elementary school, so it was great to see them get hitched! Plus, Quinn and I were able to visit my parents and hang out with the younger siblings.

The wedding ended up being like a high school reuion of sorts. It was so weird to see all the people that I grew up with again (it has been almost 5 years). A lot of the people that were in Summit Singers (a select choir in my high school) including the bride and groom were at the wedding. We decided to sing a little song for the newley weds, for old time sake. It tunred out, that we had our pianist, our choir teacher, several tenors and bases, 2 sopranos, and me...the lone alto. Just enough to pull off an impromptu performance.

Our Boston Photo Album

Boston

In June Quinn and I were able to go to Boston... on the compnay dollar (at least my part of the trip was). Tandem Labs (my current employer) had a tradeshow in Boston that I put together; so of course, I had to go. I thought to myself, why not turn a business trip into a vacation and invite Quinn along!! We had a awesome time sleeping in a 5 star hotel, eating fresh seafood, and enjoying the sites!






Quinn was in Heaven all morning (it happened to be 10am when we got there). Nothing like award winning ribs for breakfast!

Bunker Hill Cemetary...I felt weird smiling around a bunch of dead folk!

You can't go to Boston without visiting historic Fenway!! I also must say...Flirting is sooo underrated, how else are you supossed to get 10th row seats when you were supossed to be sitting in nosebleed?

A Fenway way park must...Sweet Caroline!

No ballgame is complete without this song.

Our final destination after our 20 mile bike ride around Nantuckett Island. And yes...we were SOO sore the next day!

Just as the ferry was leaving Nantuckett to take us back, a dense fog rolled in. It made the whole island look like a ghost town and the temp. drop about 40 degrees!!

We loved Boston, I would move there for the Gelatto and Canaloi (italian pastry that I may have been OBSESSED with!) We can't wait to go back again!

Capital Reef

The last weekend in May, my cousin Devin came homw from his mission, so Quinn and I decided to head down to Richfield to listen to him speak on Sunday. Since we were already driving part way Quinn and I decided to venture a little farther south and pay a visit to Capital Reef National Park. We had driven through many-a-time on our way to Lake Powell, but had never actually stopped and stayed.

We learned a couple valuable lessons on our dirve down to Capital Reef...
1. You will NEVER get on the road until at least 1 hour after you wanted to
2. Never assume that just becuase you believe there will be open camp sites, that it will actually happen (whose stupid idea was it to only have 1 campgound in the whole park anayway!!)
3. When a campground says it is full...it really is (now matter how long you drive around with your parking lights on at 2 a.m., you cannot blind people out of their camp sites)

We ended up sleeping in a R.V. park across from a gas station for $25 a night (they did not have seperate pricing, we paid for elecricity and poop dumping when we only there for a total of 6 hours(including sleep time)!!

That day however, we managed to go on an AMAZING hike that overlooked the entire park.

A cute little arch I found on the way up to the top!

The view from the top, thankfully there was another couple up there to take our picture (we did not see ANYONE the whole 5 miles up and at the very top...there they were!)

Here is a video of the view that we had from the top of the hike...it was amazing!