More Pictures, Less Talk

Kate just hinted that I might write a little too much and post too few pictures. So Here are a bunch of pictures of New York. There is one more story from the trip that I want to tell, but I will save that until later. So here is the rest of the trip in visual format.


Waiting in line at the Empire State building


Some cute girl I met on top of the Empire State Building


Rockefeller Center, bumped into that cute girl again


Cool balloon thing near ground zero


Hangin' out with a wicked priest from the pageant. He was pretty nice.


Smallest fish in Lake Ontario


At the Canadian border. Who wouldn't brake for butterflies?


Ice cream at Niagara, Allie really enjoyed it


So did Arden, until she didn't get anymore


The falls are pretty amazing


The only picture of the whole family


Aboard the Maid of the Mist


Arie, all suited up


The Sacred Grove

That was a wicked-fun trip. Thanks Mom and Dad!

Mewzik

We just added music to the bottom of the blog. We borrowed the idea from the Boco's Brother. We got some killer tunes so check it out!

New York - Part 2

After our morning fiasco at the airport, we got to the airport extra early and flew into JFK somewhere around midnight. We spent the next day doing the usual touristy things, Empire State Building, Ground Zero, Rockefeller Center, etc. We had dinner at a pretty good steak house called sparks. The steaks were deeeeelicious but I got the feeling that we were a little out of our element there. The dinner menu consisted of one page of food and 3 pages of wine.

After dinner we were graced by a visit from Uncle Randolph, Liz, and Bamboo. Later on, Ralph took Andy, Fergi, Kate, and I to Cafe Lalo, pictured above, for some pastries. This particular cafe was featured in the movie You've got mail, which was particularly exciting for Kate since that is her favorite movie of all time.

After dessert, Kate and I hung out in times square. To Kate's great disappointment, the Ann Taylor Loft was not open at 1:00 am. It was fun enough that I've decided that we are moving there once I am done with school.

New York - Part 1

We got back from our family trip to New York last week. Since there are way too many things to talk about in one post, I am going to do a series of posts. Part 1 was probably the most exciting of the whole trip- the airport. Now, I realize that sounds pretty lame and boring, but here you will see that it was quite the opposite.


Our day of traveling was to begin Wednesday morning. Tracy, Jon, Kate and I were to fly from Salt Lake to Las Vegas where we would meet up with the whole family for the rest of our flights to New York. Our flight out of Salt Lake left at 8:30 am so Kate and I stayed with Tracy and Jon the night before- they live 10 minutes from the airport. We headed out Wednesday morning and after a few delays, made it to the check-in area with only 50 minutes before departure. After spending a while trying to figure out how to print out our own boarding passes, we talked to an airline agent who informed us that you have to check your baggage at least one hour before departure. An executive decision was made and we flung open our luggage and began furiously shoving the most necessary items into our carry ons.
Now, what to do with the half-empty luggage? Take it back to the car of course! So Tracy and Kate took our carry on bags and headed to the security line while Jon and I sprinted to the parking lot with our luggage. We found an escalator that would take us up to our parking level and made our way up it.


I made it about 3/4 of the way up the escalator when I glanced back at my luggage and noticed that it was open and empty. The contents were very evenly distributed along the entire length of the escalator. About to go into shock, I handed Jon the other bag I was carrying and collected my soiled clothes as quickly as possible, shoved them back into my luggage, and closed the latches- or so I thought. Only a few seconds later, in the middle of the parking lot crosswalk, in front of a car and several other people calmly making their way to the check-in area, my luggage opened again. Since I was running as fast as I could, the distribution of my clothing was again fairly even along the crosswalk. Sweating and gasping for breath, I again collected my clothing, stuffed them into my luggage- this time picking it up and holding it closed. Sprinting to the car we shoved our luggage in the trunk and I almost gagged. I was breathing so hard and the air quality-with the wildfires going-was so poor, that I started to dry heave. Not very fun.

All this time, Kate was calling my phone. She must have called 4 or 5 times in the space of a few minutes trying to tell me that the security line was so backed up that we would never get through it in time. We now had 20 minutes until departure and the line almost reached the parking lot. We resigned ourselves to the fate of murder at the hand of our mother/mother-in-law when she found out that we missed our flight. We did eventually make it to New York.

Memories of Lake Powell

We just got back from Lake Powell with Kate's extended family this week and, as always, it was a blast. For me this trip was a bit more nostalgic than past trips. So this post is all about some of the things I remember best about Lake Powell.

I downloaded "The Very Best of Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons" just for the trip down. This is one of my most vivid memories from my childhood trips to the lake. Our family would make the annual pilgrimage to Lake Powell and, without fail, we would listen to Frankie and the boys on our way there.


Another staple of our trips to Lake Powell were sunburns. I burn pretty easily, and I hate putting lotion on, so I was pretty familiar with sunburns as a kid. However, I have learned to endure the oily application of sunscreen recently. I would prefer to have a tan, but since my Grandpa suffers from skin cancer, I don't want to take any chances.


Last is a pretty recent tradition: The Slide. As the picture below clearly illustrates, "The Slide" is a pretty gnarly homemade ride down the beach, assisted by a large water pump to lubricate the plastic surface. At the end of the slide, we build a ramp to throw the passenger a decent distance into the lake. It usually takes most of the day to complete construction, but the hours of entertainment are well worth the time. We even have random strangers come over to try it out.


Here we have a timely picture of Kate making her graceful jump from the slide into an inflatable ball with a small hole, not an easy task.

We go back to the lake with my family next month, so I will do another post of more memories after that trip.

Ravenous Beasts

So this weekend I went mountain biking with a couple of friends up south fork canyon. As the picture clearly demonstrates, it was pretty much awesome. There is something appealing about the possibility of running into a bear or cougar or something while in the mountains. It makes me wonder if I could take care of an attacking animal if I had to. The first time I went on this trail, I did it alone at around 6:00pm. It was pretty spooky riding alone in the woods. I kept thinking that at any moment a hungry bear would come running down the hill at me. Naturally, I noticed every rock in the trail and wondered if it was big enough to knock a bear senseless or scared. I wondered if I could just swing my bike around and hit it enough to scare it away, or if the beast would be too clever for that. I was also anticipating letting out a warrior cry to scare the wits out of it. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I did not have a chance to find out if my tactics would have worked.