Sunday, June 26, 2011

The Honeymoon

I stumbled across some pictures from our Honeymoon back in 2009 and realized that I hadn't ever posted about them. Since I'm still dragging my feet on sorting through all the pictures from Egypt, Israel, and Jordan, I figure posting these might be a good stalling tactic for this week! :)

X and I were married on May 20th, 2009 in the Salt Lake Temple. We decided to do our reception the night before (at "The Point" at Huntsman Cancer Institute) which made things SO much easier - the day of our wedding was tons less hectic, and we were able to leave right after the ceremony and luncheon. Definitely the way to do it in my opinion! We decided to do a smaller honeymoon up in Park City for a week, and then for our first anniversary we'd do something bigger and better.


Since our reception was the night before, no one ended up decorating our car. Luckily my car was dirty enough for us to manage it ourselves!

We stayed our first night at the Stein Erikson Lodge, and had dinner at the Glitretind Restaurant. Since dinner was included in our Honeymoon package, we decided to be adventurous and try new and expensive things we wouldn't have tried otherwise. Our 3-course meals included raw elk (sliced paper-thin), foie gras (duck liver), quail, peanut butter and banana crème brûlée, and the most random flavors of chocolate truffles - including curry!

We spent one afternoon at the Utah Olympic Park. We found out they give free upgrades on ride passes if you are on your honeymoon! :)

X practices her form on the luge

I couldn't bear to watch

X enjoying a ride down the mountain

I'm not sure if I was enjoying this or not...

Before going down the zip-lines

Waiting for the gates to open

I smiled to trick X into thinking I was going to let her win in our race down the lines

Of course we couldn't leave out the "Alpine Slides". We'll never forget the little girl in front of us on our first run who rode the brakes the whole way down. We would literally wait a few minutes in hopes she'd be at the bottom by then, and then catch up to her in like 10 seconds! Fortunately they let us ride again for free.

I snapped this shot when we were waiting for the slow-poke

Monday, June 20, 2011

Wanna Come For a Visit?

We had our good friends Mike and Suzanne out from Utah for Memorial Day Weekend and we had a blast being good hosts for them. You can read about all we did in their very complimentary recap of the weekend. So if you've ever thought about coming out but didn't know if it would be worth it, see what you think after reading what they had to say!

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Preparing for X's Return

I had a lot of work to do before X got home last week. I had secretly turned the house into my own personal bachelor pad (I had lots to hide up in the attic and down in the crawlspace), and there was lots of yard- and house-work I wanted to take care of prior to her return so she wouldn't have much to worry about. Here's what I've been working on the last few months to spruce the place up a bit:


Weeding

Oh the joys of owning your own home! Part of our yard is just rocks, so I was sure that was going to be weed-free; oh how wrong I was!

Our weedy side-driveway

We had LOTS of these in the grass

Even since X has been home there has still been a lot to do for the both of us! Maybe we need to get busy on that having kids thing... Luckily I heard about this stuff called Casoron, which is an herbicide that prevents seeds from germinating. So I've applied a bunch of that this year and will do more next year before anything starts to grow and hopefully we'll see a dramatic reduction in weeds.


Sandbox and Grass Seed

The previous owners had a large sandbox with a huge playhouse build into it, but they dug it out and took it with them when they left! But they didn't dig out all the toys, garbage, and other crap that was left behind in the sand. So I had to dig out all the junk left behind and make it look nice again. I also tried my best to grade the sand also since it was really shallow in some places, but really deep back by the fence. The playhouse also had a slide that went right into the grass so there was a big dirt spot where the kids would slide into the grass, so I seeded in that spot and a few others. The grass is already filling in nicely!

You can see the missing grass in this picture, and also the dark line on the fence where the sand used to be

Sprinklers & Broken Pipes

This year when I turned on the water in the backyard, I was confused when suddenly ALL of the sprinklers turned on simultaneously. Turns out all of the sprinkler valves in the backyard were bad and I had to replace them all! We also have a pair of those old-timey water pumps in our backyard, and one of those had burst during the winter so I had to dig that out and cap off the pipe. Unfortunately for me that one was tied directly to the water main (so who knows how long that was leaking?) and there was no way to turn off the water completely unless I shut off the water to the house. No fun.

After digging the hole

Looking down into the abyss

Finished result

X is back home now and I am glad I have a lot of these big projects out of the way so I can enjoy the free time with her! :)