Life Lately

It has been a long time since I posted anything! John and I have been so busy lately that it's been hard to find time. We have been out of town the last few weekends and have kept busy every night after work, so it's been tough to find free time. Anyway...I already posted about our camp trip, but we have also done a few other fun things since I last posted. Last weekend we went down to St. George to visit my family and friends. It was a lot of fun. We needed a mini-vacation (like we don't get enough of those...haha), and I really miss St. George so it was fun to go "home" for a few days.

Like usual on road trips, I didn't take many pictures...but I did get a few of this really cool rainbow that we got to see on our way home!

Also, a few weekends ago we had a football party at our house. John and his family are from Texas, and Texas and Texas Tech (the universities) were playing against each other, so we got together to watch the game.

We made a lot of snacks! I spent the whole night before preparing. It was a lot of fun to try out all these recipes...thank goodness I have two aunts who are great cooks and like to host parties, because pretty much everything I made was

from our family cookbook filled with their recipes!

Camping!

A couple of weekends ago John and I went on our first camping trip as a married couple...and it was a blast! We had a great time hanging around the camp site, eating lots of good food, hiking, and watching the wildlife. It was nice to get to go before it started to get too cold, even though it was still freezing at night! We can't wait until next year so we can camp a lot more. We went up to Big Cottonwood Canyon and stayed at the Spruces campground.

Our little chipmunk friend...he would come up and eat peanuts right out of our hand!


This bluejay was hanging around the campsite all day one day...waiting for us to drop food, haha.

John and I hiking up to Twin Lakes (a three mile hike...it was intense!)

Twin Lakes!

This is Silver Lake...we could see it about halfway up the mountain on our hike to Twin Lakes.

John and Silver Lake

Roasting hot dogs!

Home on the Range (in Wyoming)

Unfortunately I won't have any pictures for this post because for some reason I didn't use my camera once while we were on vacation! I don't know what I was thinking! But anyway, we decided that since John hadn't really been able to meet my grandparents who live in Wyoming until our wedding day, we'd go visit them for Labor Day weekend. We both took a day off work and headed out to the country!

We had a really great time. John got to hang out with Grandpa a lot and see all of his guns/fishing gear/tools/etc. I spent a lot of time with my Grandma working on my wedding scrapbook. She is an amazing scrapbooker and had most of it done when we got there, but we added in some more things having to do with the honeymoon, bridal showers, etc. It was so much fun and I am so glad I have an album that has everything in it from the time we got engaged until now.

We also visited some museums, went on some drives around the area, and John got to see all the antelope which really made him want to go hunting (too bad it's like $300 for an out of state hunting license!). Maybe we'll plan to do that next year!

My grandparents also gave us ALL of their camping gear, which was in great condition because it's been hardly used! We went through all of it this last weekend and now have everything we need to go camping. We're going in a couple of weekends and can't wait--it's our last chance before it starts to get too cold!

After our camp trip, we'll be heading down to St. George again for my cousin's birthday party and to visit family & friends. Our weekends are always busy and full of road trips these days but we love it and wouldn't have it any other way! We love being able to travel together all the time!

The Great Outdoors

Big Cottonwood Canyon

If you look really hard, you can see a little slice of the road way down below...

John and I went hiking a couple of weeks ago. We meant to hike to a waterfall up Big Cottonwood Canyon, but somehow just ended up on top of a mountain-- you know men (they never stop for directions or to look at a map!). Haha. But we ended up having a great time anyway and we plan on really finding the waterfall the next time we go hiking. It was nice to just get outside and see nature!

THE ZOO!

For my company's summer party they paid for everyone and their families to go to the zoo, which was awesome! John and I have been talking about going to the zoo all summer so it was reallly exciting when we found out that's where my company party would be. They rented out the whole zoo so it wasn't crowded at all and they had a delicious catered dinner for us. It was a great night!

John standing underneath a tiger!

We got super close to these giraffes...they were almost leaning over the fence!

Penguins!

Zuri's (the baby elephant) mom!

Zuri! She was super cute and entertaining to watch!

Family Game Night

Last weekend we had a game night with my brother and sister. It was their last free weekend before school started so we thought we'd try to do something fun to celebrate their last days of freedom. We had dinner (and I even made a vegetarian dish for my sister) and then we played Clue. That was a lot of fun, but things didn't get crazy until we started playing Guesstures, as you can see from the photos/videos!

Fried Plantains & Other News

Lately I have been experimenting A TON with new recipes, so when my grandma gave us some extra fruits and veggies she had and there was a plantain among them, I decided to look up some recipes and see what we could do with it! I found a really good/simple one for making a plantain into a sweet treat for dessert, and all you need is oil, sugar and cinnamon!

First you slice the plantain into small pieces

Then you fry them in oil for about 6-8 minutes, or until carmelized

After the plantains are done frying, put them on a plate with a paper towel. Next, sprinkle cinnamon and sugar on top of the plantains.

They should look like this!

Finally, enjoy!

When you're all done eating, your plate should look like this!

In other news, John and I have been super busy now that I'm working. I don't have all the free time I did before to clean, cook and run all the errands, so we've had to do a little adjusting but it's been very fun. We get to do everything together now which is way better anyway! We have made time to have a lot of fun too, though.

Last Thursday we went to the free concert in the park in Salt Lake with John's friends Cody & Taylor. It was a blast! The artist there was Matisyahu--a Jewish reggae/rap artist. I've only heard one of his songs, but it was a lot of fun! We plan to all go to the rest of the concerts this summer which I'm really excited for!

This last weekend was fun as well. We went to the Salt Lake County Fair with John's mom and got lots of freebies and had lunch. We hung out with John's friend from work and his wife who are both from Sri Lanka. It was so much fun to talk to them about their culture and see how much things differ! And we had Sunday dinner with my grandparents which is always fun because my grandma is a great cook.

We are finally starting to feel completely, 100 percent settled in. Life is good!