Emerald Pools at Zions

To understand this post, you'll first have to have read Cathi's post about our trip to St. George and Zion National Park. She claims that because I was in charge of the camera that no pictures were taken of the pools, but we instead have a picture of a squirrel. As rebuttal, the picture of the squirrel was taken earlier during the day. Second, we both forgot to take pictures up at the pools. We were exhausted. Besides, any pictures we would have taken wouldn't have looked any different from these:

http://www.zionnational-park.com/images/albums/index16.htm

So, just pretend we actually took pictures and that they looked like these.

St. George and Zion National Park

This past weekend Bryce and I went to visit his sister, Erin, her husband, Chris, and their 2 month old boy, Max. We had a great time.

We took Friday off and drove down to St. George so that we could have all of Saturday to spend with them. After dinner on Friday night we decided to be daring and see if we were skinny enough to make it through a slot canyon. Well, with some determination, we made it up this very narrow bit of rock, but not without a few holes in the clothes. Oops.

Erin stayed back with Max and found a way up the hillside to come take pictures at the top.












On Saturday we got up super early (we left St. George at 6am) to go to Zion National Park. After passing through the foreign territory of La Verkin (a crazy little town in southern Utah that has a sign that states, Voted out of: the UN 2001, the USA 2006), we then made our way through Springdale (a city that only survives because of the park) and parked the van to go by shuttle into the park. The weather was beautiful, mid 70s and still shady. First, we went to see Weeping Rock, a large rock that drips 10,000 year old water. In this picture we are facing the rock so you can only see the park behind us. It was gorgeous, though Max preferred to sleep for almost the entire day.



We hiked another trail, then went back to the car to eat peanut butter and honey sandwiches before returning to the park to hike up to the Emerald Pools. Sorry, we didn't take any pictures. Wait, correction, we didn't take any pictures of the pools, but here's a lovely one of a large squirrel (Bryce was in charge of the camera). Pretty brave squirrel though. Somehow I think that spiel they made about not feeding the wildlife was lost on this little fellow.

By the end of the hike it was superhot so we hopped back on the shuttle, got the car, and headed for home. By 3:30 we had showered and were napping. It was awesome. After some In-N-Out for dinner, Wii Mario Kart, and a movie, we had sufficiently worn ourselves out again and went to sleep. Max decided to give a gift to his parents and even slept in until 7:30am. They were ecstatic.

We spent more time just hanging out on Sunday and were sad to leave that evening, but were glad to get to see Erin, Chris, and Max one more time before we move. We hope everything continues to go well for them down in St. George and will hopefully see them out in North Carolina for Labor Day. Thanks guys for letting us come down and play for a few days.

Moving Logistics

Well, needless to say, things have been busy around here. We've been very busy getting everything planned to move out to Maryland. Thank goodness for small miracles. Everything has really worked out, despite some scary moments. We feel pretty blessed.

So here's the timeline for everything we're doing in the next couple of weeks (forgive us if during these said weeks we don't keep in contact very much).

Thursday, July 24: a.k.a. Pioneer Day in Utah (it's a state holiday so we don't have to work). This also means that we are packing and our ABF trailer gets delivered for us to load. Mind you, this was the last ABF trailer available in the month of July. Good thing we didn't wait another day to call.

Friday, July 25: Our official last day of work (we'll probably end up going in for an hour or two on Monday to wrap things up). Bryce is also taking me up to Midway for some time to ourselves before things get crazy.

Saturday, July 26: Bryce has a BYU softball tournament game and my mom comes down for the night to see us (she's taking care of her father out here).

Sunday, July 27: Mom leaves, Church, and dinner with some of Bryce's sisters and their families.

Monday, July 28: Real last day of work. More packing and cleaning.

Tuesday, July 29: ABF takes our trailer away and drives it out to Maryland for us (for a small fee of course). We're going to stay through the day to say bye to some friends and hopefully see Tiff and Kyle, some of my best friends that are arriving back from a year in China tomorrow! Welcome home guys!! We're very excited to see you.

Wednesday, July 30: Drive two cars out to Colorado Springs.

Thursday, July 31st-Saturday, August 2: Stay with my dad in CS for a few days. We'll probably visit some friends, see a movie, and then on the 2nd Bryce's mom comes out so that she can help us drive to Maryland.

Sunday, August 3: Start the long drive out to Maryland. We'll probably stop in Kansas City that night.

Monday, August 4: Continue the drive. We're going to stop in Columbus for the night and meet up with some friends from BYU that are doing medical school at Ohio State.

Tuesday, August 5: Finish our trek after 4 glorious days of lengthy driving. In total we'll drive about 2100 miles.

Wednesday, August 6: Bryce goes into Baltimore to get everything done that he needs to for school.

Thursday, August 7: Orientation for med school starts.

Friday, August 14: Move into our apartment at Winterset (yes, to our friends James and Amy that live in the same complex, we seem to have gotten an apartment, final approval pending. It's looking like we have it though--yeah!)

So some of you may have noticed that week between when we get to Maryland and when we move into our place. Yes, we noticed that too. We'll be hanging out wherever we can find a room until we can get in, but we really like the apartment and are glad that there are some other med and dental school couples that live in the complex/area. We are just glad that Bryce is in and are more than happy to cope with any temporary inconveniences that come with it.