Bryce Canyon

Another successful camping trip! We had so much fun in Bryce Canyon--it's an amazing place. We practically killed ourselves with all of the hiking in and out of the canyon, but it was worth it for the incredible views we got. There is also a great sense of satisfaction at counting up the number of miles hiked at the end of the day. Although, I have to admit that there were a couple of moments on this trip when I asked myself why anyone would hike for fun...but it was fun! And it's so cool to have discovered another great summer vacation that is affordable, close by, and equally fun for me and for Matt.

This first picture is one of the only ones we have together, thanks to two very kind French hikers, but it makes me laugh because we look so exhausted! The night before was very, very, verrrrry windy and between the flappy rain fly and  the street light glowing on our tent we didn't get much sleep. I was actually relieved when morning came.

Here are some pictures of the beautiful landscape

Switchbacks anyone? This section of the trail was called "Wall Street." Going down was hard enough. I don't know if I would have made it going up.

This one is called "Tower Bridge." Does it look familiar?

I just think that's crazy.

Ok so this one's not of scenery...but I think it's funny.

Next on the list: Goblin Valley! Woo hoo!

Celebration Day!

Today is a great day. A monumental day. A day for celebration! Why, you ask? In two hours I will be turning in the last scholarly paper of my college career. Wahoo!!! 11 pages of perfection.

One more ASL class and I'm done done done!

Some Summer Highlights

First noteworthy event, a trip to Arches National Park! We spent 3 days there and did every single trail except for one that needed reservations and was completely booked 2 weeks in advance. We'll hit the fiery furnace next time :) Some of you may remember my trip to Arches last year. I assure you that this trip was much more successful. Plus it was me and Matt's first trip together since we've been married! (Not counting our honeymoon). We were so excited to use all of our new camping stuff and have our own little adventure. Plus it was awesome to find such a cool place only 3 hours away from our home.

Our poor, smoky little fire. At one point we smoked out the people next to us! I apologized profusely...we felt so bad, but what are you going to do??

 Even though it never really got to be the kind of fire we wanted it to be (we blame the wood) we had plenty of fun with lighter fluid, poking sticks, and cardboard. Our fire on the second night was a success though so we still feel sort of hard core. 

Here's Matt near the beginning of our big, 10 mile hike. We took the "primitive trail" which basically means that in a lot of sections there is no trail. We were scrambling over giant rocks, sitting down and sliding down slippery rock faces, and weaving through these amazing canyons. This hike was definitely the highlight of our trip even though we had trouble walking the next day.

 I promise I didn't wear the backpack this way the entire time. But this little hydration pack deal is one of my new favorite things! Sucking water out of a little hose is just so much more exciting than drinking out of a boring old bottle.

Now that we know how much we enjoy the whole camping, hiking, national park thing we have a nice long list of all the places we want to visit this summer! Up next weekend is Bryce Canyon, end of July is Zion National Park, and we are hoping to squeeze in Canyonlands or Goblin Valley somewhere.

Here's what else we've been up to:

Our flowers are growing beautifully. These orange dahlias are my favorite. I've been trying to upload this pic horizontally for about 20 min and I can't so just tilt your head a little bit :)

 This is the cute little flower box that Matt built for me. Love those "little purple pansies!"



Matt and Janet drove all day long out to Arizona and back to pick up this dining room table from Matt's great aunt. This table belonged to his great grandmother and it is gorgeous. It's in perfect condition and it fits perfectly in our dining room. We're so lucky to have such generous family.

Last but not least, I thought I'd share my newest "most embarrassing moment" with you. A couple of weeks ago, Matt and I hiked up to Timpanogos Caves with Rick and Brittany (his dad and sister). Since they can only take 12-15 people through the cave at a time you have to sign up for a ranger led tour and can only go through in your designated time slot. We got up to the top an hour early and a nice ranger girl gave us all junior ranger workbooks to keep us occupied while we were waiting. I was the only one to completely finish the workbook, and I did a perfect job on everything except for the "interview a real ranger" part which I was too embarrassed to do. I amused myself making up stupid answers about what a ranger does all day--play bungalow, eat bananas, and sing to yourself--and put it out of my mind. I carried the thing all the way through the cave and all the way down the mountain thinking it would be funny to get the little patch or badge thing.

So, I go into the visitors center and take my workbook to a nice looking ranger lady at the desk, thinking that she would glance over it, laugh at me a little bit, then give me a patch and I could go. Oh no. This woman was insane. First I had to raise my right hand and make the junior ranger pledge (inside the visitors center that is full of people). Then she went through every single page and checked every single answer. I was doing ok until she got to my forged interview...this is where I learn the importance of being 100% honest. She was visibly upset at my answered and started interrogating me about who I had interviewed. Unbeknownst to me, there are certain answers that the ranger's have to give for this interview and whoever had given me my answers had just incurred her wrath. I was too scared to tell her that I had totally made it up so I just said it was the guy with the beard (they all had beards). She speculated with another ranger lady and when they had both decided who it had to have been, she marched over to the copy machine to scan my workbook! Like she was going to use it as incriminating evidence against this poor kid! I finally admitted that I had just been observing the "guy with the beard" and that he hadn't actually given me those answers, but now all of her wrath was directed towards me (does this woman need a life or what??) After berating me for not conducting a real interview, she made me interview her which took about 10 minutes. Finally that was over, she wrote my name on the certificate in careful calligraphy and then grabbed me by the arm and dragged me to the center of the room. I had been hoping to make a quick getaway, but no. In her loudest, most official ranger voice, and still gripping my arm so that I couldn't leave, she announced "Everybody! This is Sarah, our newest JUNIOR RANGER!!!" Matt, Rick, and Brittany were hysterical with laughter, I was near tears from trying to hold my laughter in for so long, and I don't think I have ever been that red in my entire life. She even perched a little ranger hat on my head asked if anyone had a camera...I honestly thought I would die.

Was it worth it? No. But it's a good story to tell, and the patch does look pretty cool.

California Trip

Last week Matt and I had the opportunity to go to California to see my family! We had such a fun, relaxing, amazing time. Mom and Dad were out of town until Saturday night (we got there on Thursday) which was kind of a bummer--we would have loved to have had more time with them. But we had so much fun hanging out with just the kids for a couple of days. Matt especially enjoyed some quality bonding time with his "in-laws." It's so fun for me to see how well he fits in with my family. It's like he's always been part of things over there!
We played a lot of Wii Olympics, Matt and David bonded over Lego Star Wars, we made exploding Calzones, watched Michael in his track meet, watched Michael and Stephen win their semi-finals church basketball game, played some basketball of our own, played Sorry (one game was plenty), jumped on the trampoline, and watched a lot of Chopped (which we're now obsessed with).

My biggest regret is that we only took three pictures...but hey, we'll do better next time. And thanks to the internet, you can still get a visual of our trip :)

On Friday morning Matt and I took an adventurous trip to LA while the kids were in school. I found an awesome interactive map on the USC website and was able to put together a little walking tour of a little piece of LA. I grew up less than an hour away from this city, but have never really been a tourist there. So it was fun to explore it together! We started in Pershing Square, then made our way to Grand Central Market. The market was probably our favorite place. Crazy food and tons of different cultures all mashed together--it was definitely our scene.

We had so much fun wandering around and looking at all of the different types of food and things they had for sale. We bought some mole at a Mexican market (which we had for dinner last night...AMAZING), and shared the most delicious pupusa ever.

From Grand Central we took a ride on Angels Flight, and ended up in the California Plaza up at the top.

Our last stop was the Los Angeles Public Library. This is one of the most beautiful buildings I've ever seen, and you all know how much I love libraries :) The children's section was the best. You can't really tell in this picture but the ceiling was all painted and the walls were covered with murals. Combined with the beautiful wood, lamps, and the original glass windows, it was a sight to see!

The rest of the library was very ornately decorated as well with mosaics and large murals. You can just stick your head in for a second, or spend an hour wandering around. It's a free, must-see for anyone who's in the area!

 On Saturday we packed everyone up and headed out to the beach! We spend a long day at Huntington and had so much fun playing games in the sand, building sand castles, and braving the freezing cold water. Mom and Dad came straight from LAX and met us for a bonfire which lasted long into the night. We roasted hot dogs and made s'mores, told corny jokes, and had the biggest fire ever. It felt like old times, only better, because now I was sitting next to my husband!

Easter Sunday had three major highlights. A delicious turkey dinner with my favorite neighbors, the Jacobsons, and a crazy Easter egg hunt. Matt and I hid the eggs and I have never been more entertained watching the kids search for them. There were a couple of "magic money" eggs that provided great motivation and even the too-cool-for-school 15 year old was running around like a little kid.
But the most important part of the day was remembering our Savior and the sacrifice he made for us. It's easy for this holiday to be overshadowed by the chocolate and Robin's Eggs, but we watched an amazing video in Relief Society that really stuck with me. Watch it if you have time. Happy Easter!

Dinner on Fast Sunday. One of life's little pleasures :) The Cheddar Herb Biscuits really stole the show...hint hint. (Don't be scared of all the butter, just have these on a day when you can rationalize. . . like "oh, I went to the gym today" or "It's fast sunday, I need some calories and butter is one of those essential fats right?")

The Scott Family Gardeners

Ok we're not gardeners yet. But we want to be! Matt and I have both got spring fever and we've decided that we want gardening to be on of our "things." We've already made at least five trips to Home Depot in the past couple of weeks just looking at the flowers and gardening stuff. We like to walk around and act like we know all about potting soil, bat guano, and steer manure. It's almost as fun as wandering around Costco. One of our trips was to get supplies for a flower box. . . that we made! Oh fine there was no "we" there. It was all Matt. But I picked out the flowers and he did a spectacular job (I'll post a picture later when it's not all cold and dark outside). To top it all off, Janet, my amazing mother-in-law, loaded us up with tulip bulbs this weekend so we get to watch those grow too! As of now our little flower garden consists of tulips, pansies, mums, and primroses, and I'm confident that we'll be experts in no time :) Life doesn't get much better than this.

This is what I want our garden to look like some day.

This is just funny:

Ahem.

Ok friends. We have not posted in quite awhile so I'm going to give you all a quick rundown of what's been going on over here the last month or so.

Valentines Day (we're really behind ok?)
Valentines Day was perfectly wonderful. I got 3 bouquets of flowers (one from Matt, one from Rick--my father in law, and one "from Matt" that I bought for myself because it was pretty), Matt got me a book that I've been wanting for awhile, and we had a delicious dinner followed by our delectable wedding cake. There was some slight disappointment when I realized that I had forgotten to buy food coloring and wouldn't be able to dye our mashed potatoes pink, but I got over it pretty quick.

The other Valentines Day highlight? Matt's valentine from Hannah. She had a kindergarten project where they had to bring in an address of the person they wanted to send their valentine too. She asked Mom for "Sarah's address," but the envelope came addressed to "Matt Scott," with every letter of his name carefully outlined in a different color. Adorable!

Cooking
Our favorite discovery--Soft Wrap Bread. Random, I know, but you guys have no idea how delicious it is and how easy it is to make! We've had it twice now. The first time we sliced little pockets into them and stuffed them with all the random salad-y, wrap-y things we could find in the fridge. But that was nothing compared to the second time when we had them as chicken gyros with tzatziki. Holy cow. It was good.

I started this "catch up" post a couple of weeks ago so now I'm feeling realllly behind. Rather than just play the catch up game I think I'll just start from here. It's spring and time for new beginnings right? Right. Well we have just enjoyed a wonderful conference weekend with the Scott family and now we're just enjoying our Sunday night and gearing up for another week!