The Last, Last Day of Summer

Well sadly our lovely first summer married has come to an end, but I believe it was well spent!  We had a wonderful time relaxing and only having work to worry about.  We started out the summer by taking a trip to Carlsbad for Nate’s birthday, Nate’s brother’s graduation, and mother’s day!  We also squeezed in a few trips to the beach.  I was going to try to surf for the first time, but apparently according to the surf master, Nate, the waves were not right for learning.  So I just relaxed on the beach and took a pictures instead :). It was a great way to start out our summer!  One definite highlight was the Mother’s Day celebration at the park when the boys made a train riding on their skateboards.  It was pretty cool.  See vid below thanks to my wonderful videographer skills :).

Sorry for the quality, it was just videoed on my phone :(

Then we went with my family to reunion in the middle of nowhere Idaho over the Fourth of July.  There was so much fun to be had in the two days we were there!  It was just play, play, play!  And Nate was a hit with all the family there, obviously with that mustache! (see couple pic below, please ignore the awkward hand holding)

Then instead of going home, we continued our vacation to Yellowstone with my family!  It was an amazing place!  We say deer, elk, moose, bison, foxes, and bears! The only animal we missed was wolves, next time.  It was beautiful!  We took a couple of hikes and really had a wonderful time sightseeing!  Our personal highlight was petting the bison we found!  We would have taken him home if we could have fit him!!  And then Nate at a bison burger!!  Obviously he didn’t care about saving the bison even after we befriended one! So sad. (But also super cool.  Probably cooler than it is sad. He ate bison!!!)

That is a moose and her babe there that Nate is clearly ecstatic about :)

(That is Nate petting the bison!!!)

Then we came back to Provo and worked our little tails off, only sometimes taking break to do cool things, which were mainly weddings I might add.

Finally came the first week of August and we took our week long vaca to Lake Powell!!  Nate talks about this trip seriously all year long, and for good reasons.  It was amazing.  We water skied and wake boarded all week long!  I almost jumped the whole wake by the end of the week.  I will do that next year for sure!  Nate has amazing tricks of course and looked super good.  We did some tanning, some reading, and some swimming.  Next thing we know, the week is over and we are driving home! :(  The relaxation and fun just flies by!  My favorite memory was definitely the dance partay (shout out to all our cool cousins for their sweet moves!  Nate and I learned a lot from your great talent) and then the night swim to the island and back afterwards! 

Brother Love. Too great of a picture to not include, right?

The Lake Salon - a definite highlight! And yes, Nick wanted to get his nails painted, but we explained to him that boys usually don't paint their toes. We were kind and let him join the picture instead :)

Then two weeks later, I had the conference I slaved away planning all summer!  And it went just wonderfully.  355 freshman successfully arrived, enjoyed Aspen Grove, learned about leadership, made some friends, and went back to start their wonderful years at BYU.  It was such a great experience!  I loved seeing all the hard work pay off and have so many people thank me for the conference.  I will greatly miss not being a part of FOL next year!

Next we hit our one year anniversary!  Can you believe it?  One whole year!  So crazy!  It was my turn to plan our anniversary plans and I spent quite some time trying to plan the best possible one year anniversary.  Finally I decided on a romantic sunset sail on Utah Lake.  And it was amazing!!!  First we went to eat at Little Gloria’s Italy, which was where we went to eat on our first date.  Then we went sailing.  Seriously check out the pictures.  It was picture perfect!  And then we went to Color Me Mine and painted a beautiful fruit bowl!  We painted it with a sail boat to remember our great one year anniversary celebration :).  It is quite adorable and looks pretty dang good too. It has been a great one year and we are so excited for the future!

Finally, we ended our summer with floating in the Great Salt Lake!  It was so fulfilling to finally after 4 years of living in Provo to do the famed floating in the Great Salt Lake.  And believe me, it is just as they say, you just float right up without even trying!!  It is wild and super cool!  It took a little while to get past the little shrimp and gnats everywhere, but it really was super cool and definitely something to remember!  Thanks Dan and Kristen for enjoying this wonderful experience with us :).

Now I started my last semester of school and Nate is just working.  We are one week in and we are trying to keep up with everything we have going on and so far so good.  I am mainly looking forward to being done with school in December and never having to say good-bye to summer again :)