Alive and Well in Baltimore

Well, since Bryce is at school and I'm sitting in a hotel watching the Olympics, I decided I didn't have a really good excuse to not at least post something as a "we're still alive" note.

Despite all the warnings and horror stories we heard about cross-country travel, we cruised across the U.S. without too many problems. After all the hectic moving stuff in Utah, we really enjoyed a few days to relax in Colorado Springs, spend time with my dad, Susan, Grace, and also see some friends, Heather and Tyson and Dan and Julie. The three days went all too quickly and before we knew it we were picking up Marilyn (Bryce's mom) from the airport on Saturday night. Since I'm 11 weeks or so along now, I get pretty tired and I didn't want to use a lot of caffeine pills to help me stay awake so Marilyn offered to come out and help me drive. My mom is taking care of her father whose health is quite poor right now. (I guess I haven't officially announced my pregnancy so we'll see how many people read our blog that I haven't told I'm pregnant yet...this should be interesting).

We headed out with out two cars on Sunday morning towards Kansas City, MO. Marilyn and I took turns driving my car and Bryce, the stubborn, drove his car by himself. We gave up on all attempts to convince him to let someone at least ride with him for a while and instead enjoyed listening to Harry Potter 7 during the drive. We got halfway through the last chapter when we pulled into Baltimore. Pretty good. And it made the drive go faster. To whomever created the audio book, thank you.

Props go to Hotwire.com as well. It's a bit of a risk to pay for a hotel without knowing where you are going to stay, but considering we got four rooms (two in Kansas City and two in Columbus) for $240 and ended up at a newly renovated Sheraton, and a decent Best Western, it was completely worth it. We did it again out here and are in a very nice Hyatt Place for $70 a night (including breakfast and internet). I'm a fan.

So, now we're out in Baltimore, having arrived last Tuesday. We stayed with some friends of my sister, Josh and Nikki, for two days, then have been using some free hotel points we had, and Hotwire. Since our stuff arrived last week, we rented a truck and loaded it up to put in storage on Wednesday. Our awesome friends that told us about our complex, Amy and James, are letting us use their garage so we didn't have to put our stuff in storage and then reload it and unload it in a truck. Thank you guys! So, that saved us some more money and now we just have to drag everything from their garage, across the parking lot, and up the stairs to our apartment on Thursday. I'm anxious to get moved in.

We bought dinner for Amy and James for their help with the moving as well as another couple they recruited, Clark and Liesel. They informed us that another first year med student had moved into the ward. I thought that was great. All of the others out here are dental, law, or pharmacy. They told us his name was Andrew and that he was married, but other than that, we didn't know anything. Bryce found him during orientation and as they were talking they discovered that both of their wives had served their missions in Rome at roughly the same time. Yep. Of all chances, I already know Andrew's wife. Tara entered the MTC only six weeks before me and although we never served together, we did have quite the adventure on what I lovingly call "the boat ride from hell". So, another friend found. And, she lives about 5 minutes away from our apartment. They had us over for dinner last night and then we all went over to a 4th year med student in his 8th year (he did a PhD after his second year for four years, so he's finally in his last year of the medical school portion) for dessert. Bryce and Andrew were able to get some good insights in what to expect at UMB and I got some good information from his wife about local stuff.

Well, this is longer than I had expected so I'll let Bryce do a post sometime here to let you know how school is going in more detail than "fine". We're always up for visitors (well, maybe after we move in on Thursday), so feel free to come out sometime!

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.