sanctuary

last week kyle and i went to zion's. to camp, to hike, to connect with nature, to get a tan, some exercise, see the sights before we move, and to realize how much we'll miss when we leave utah.

zion's was great. we learned from the very informative bus speakers that zion (in some language that i can't remember) means sanctuary, and that's how the park got its name. we also learned that isaac behunin, one of the first mormon (and white) settlers of zion's is our bishop's (wendell behunin) great great grandfather. so that was pretty neat.

we also that learned that it gets very very hot there. 107 during the day was our average temperature that week. combined with the high altitude and burning sun, we got heat sick every day we were there. no matter how much water we tried to drink, or how much shade we tried to seek. we also both got sick to our stomachs at one point, i got car sick from the twisty roads in zions, i got badly sunburned on my back, and we both got pretty sore from hiking. so it was a little rough, but overall it was a good trip!

we camped at zion's ponderosa ranch, it was nice because there was a pool, restaurant, and real bathrooms that we could use. it was not so nice sharing the camp with 2 boys camps, one youth conference, and 2 girls camps who kept us up at night with their songs about sipping cider with cute boys.

our first hike was observation point. the views were awesome, and the hike was so fun! but the 8 miles, much of it steep steep steep! completely destroyed my out-of-shape legs. after recovering at the pool the next day, the third day we hiked the narrows. i'd hiked it before when i was 11, and it was just as fun as i remembered!

oh also we bought a new camera, so we have pictures! lots of pictures!

hike to emerald pools

our campsite

camper kyle

the view from observation point

our pano shot

the steep steep trail, that turned my legs to jello

we had fun playing with some of the features on our new camera

it was just such a cool trail through the canyons

relaxing at the pool

the narrows!

that cold water felt so good...

this is actually the boulder i jumped off of into the water when i was eleven and hit an underwater  rock, which is how i got the scars on my shins. while taking this picture several hikers told me to jump into the water, uh yah no thanks guys!

awwwww

he's a graduate!

kyle is officially a graduate now! he finished his internship on june 15, and he took his national certification test the next day. and with that he was ALL. DONE. he now has a B.S. in clinical lab sciences, and since BYU doesn't hold a graduation ceremony at the end of spring term, we had our own little celebration!

kyle's parents were in town for the weekend, and it was great to get to spend some time with them and with kyle's little brother scott who just got back from his mission to denmark. so, saturday after kyle finished his test we went to BYU and had a little photo session and then kyle's parents treated us to a yummy graduation dinner at our favorite place--pizzeria 712! the favorite pie of the night was a corn and goat cheese combo, so gooooood mmm....

congratulations baby!! i'm so proud of you and all your hard work!

good-bye BYU!

the proud parents!

my handsome graduate!

the next day we headed up to kaysville for a delicious brunch with aunt pat. it's always fun to see her, and she was extra thoughtful by telling me and kyle that she tried to make some food that we would eat. haha, which included a meatless quiche AND she even got the eggs from her next-door neighbor's chickens! not to mention the delicious sour-dough bread, fruit, and potatoes. it was all so so good!

later in the afternoon, after church and some digestion time i made a 3 salad dinner, potato salad, pasta salad, and green salad. along with some herbed foccacia and strawberry lemonade. then we all just lazed around with full bellies and chatted and half-watched soccer until i made some bittersweet chocolate and pear cake for dessert. afterwards we played clue, and i was even able to persuade kyle to play with us!

the next morning kyle's parents treated us to kneader's yummy french toast and then it was time to say our good-byes. but we're looking forward to seeing his parents more often after our move to texas!

brunch with aunt pat!
scott, aunt pat, me, kyle

saying good-bye

running dirty

well it's been a while since i've posted and a big reason why is that my camera has finally died. no matter how many pairs of new batteries we put in it, it just won't turn on. so we now have 3 non-working digital cameras in our apartment. grrrrr. but we need a new camera soon because exciting things are about to happen around the poulsen household! 

#1 - Kyle graduates THIS week! He has four days of his internship left and then he will officially be a college graduate!

#2 - Kyle's parents and little brother (who just got home from his mission in Denmark) are headed to Provo this weekend

#3 - Next week me and Kyle are headed to Zion's National Park for a week of camping and celebrating kyle's graduation

#4 - We're leaving Provo in just over 2 weeks!!

#5 - Once we leave we're headed to Montana for a family reunion over the fourth of july

#6 - And from Montana we're taking an epic road trip down to our new home of Katy, Texas!

i fell like these are all camera-worthy events so i'm not sure yet what we're gonna do but we need to figure it out in less than 4 days!

but i do have some stuff to catch up on. so since the last post we have:

-well after being sick over kyle's birthday, i had an infected tooth pulled, and then my car died, it was just a bad week all around

-we met up with danielle and stephen on their way through to denver, along with some other friends for dinner and sand volleyball

-we ran the dirty dash! it was a 5 mile course through mud and lots of obstacles. it totally kicked my butt, and it was a ton of fun! i do have 3 pictures of this because i bought them from the photographer they had on site

-we had a fun barbecue at jeff and allie's new place

-i hosted a baby shower for andrea this past weekend. i'm so sad i'm gonna miss the birth of her sweet baby but it was fun to celebrate together with cinnamon rolls, donuts, fruit, and friends!

 

one year older, wiser, and sexier

my man turned 24 yesterday! with every year he just keeps getting better and better (since i've known him since he was 18 i feel like i can say that). he really is such a wonderful husband, friend, son, son-in-law, student, worker, teacher, priesthood holder, and man. i feel so blessed to be married to him and to share our lives together.

it was fun having his birthday on a sunday and being able to celebrate together all day, unfortunately the weekend didn't go exactly as planned...

saturday morning at 3am i woke up feeling extremely nauseous, hot, and sick and knew i was going to throw up. and i did. repeatedly. while kyle held my hair back and cleaned out the bowl. (still not sure if it was food poisoning or a stomach bug, but it was definitely a surprise attack of misery)
well, long story short, i ended up being way to sick to go to work that day (and came close to losing my job because of it--eek!) and i did not leave my bed, except to go to the bathroom, from friday evening until sunday morning. annnd i slept for an impressive 20 hours!

so my sweet husband cancelled his plans for saturday to hang out with his friends and then cancelled the reservation i had made for his birthday dinner that night at our favorite pizzeria 712. instead of celebrating that night, my poor husband spent his time taking care of his sick, smelly, wife.

sunday (kyle's actual birthday) i felt better enough to leave the bed! and i was determined to make my hubby's birthday a special day.
so to start the day off right i whipped up a quick birthday breakfast of french toast. well back-up, before i did anything yesterday, i took a much. needed. shower.
then breakfast, then i had to rest a little.

a few hours later i decided it was time for some birthday lunch. since we had to forgo pizza the night before, i cooked up our favorite homemade vegan pizza.



photo and recipe from ohsheglows.com http://ohsheglows.com/2010/10/17/project-food-blog-challenge-5-a-pizza-complex/  (notes: i usually make my own crust recipe, and i skip the olive oil+garlic spread on the dough, since the pesto you spread on the dough already contains both of those, also i usually add some red pepper to the roasted veggie mix)

fast forward a few more hours, i baked some birthday brownies, stirred up some hot fudge sauce and then threw together a birthday dinner of our favorite fajitas.



recipe and photo from 100daysofrealdfood.com
http://www.100daysofrealfood.com/2010/06/21/recipe-fajitas/
(notes: mmmm....)

then friends arrived, we chatted, sang happy birthday, and enjoyed the brownies topped with ice cream and hot fudge sauce. (kyle's favorite dessert)
the closer we get to leaving provo, the more we realize how much we'll miss it and our good friends here. thanks for the great night everyone!

(notes: i purposely avoided having my picture taken yesterday, because even though i felt a little better i was still pretty sick and looked it too)

the happy almost-engaged couple

kyle, andrew, sarah, zak

birthday boy!

jeffrey, allie, chels, david

devil's garden

a couple weeks ago kyle and i took a short weekend trip to arches national park. it was so nice to get away for a couple days and spend time outdoors.

our first day there we hiked devil's garden. ok first of all this hike was already the longest hike in the park at 7.2 miles and we had to park 0.4 miles away from the trail head because it was so busy (it was national parks week which meant free entrance-yay!, but lots of people-boo)  AND we chose to take the primitive loop on the way up which made the hike even looonger.

ok so we walked the 0.4 miles to the trail, hiked for a bit and then veered off the main trail and started on the primitive loop. at first the primitive loop was really nice, there were hardly any people on that section of the trail so we finally got to enjoy some peace and nature.
but the trail was essentially 3.5 miles of deep sand. and hiking on deep sand, in direct sunlight, tires you out pretty fast.
and the trail just wasn't that interesting. we did take some breaks and drank water and snacked on the grapes, strawberries, crackers, cookies that we'd packed. but after the first mile or so i was ready to get on some rocks!

so what felt like hours later we finally left the sandy trail for some red rock! and eventually we made it up to double-o arch! it was fun to climb around and even ON TOP of the arch, so so cool!
alright, so this is where the primitive loop was supposed to meet up with the main trail so we could head back to the car. we saw a trail marker (trail markers here are rock cairns, or basically rocks stacked on top each other, so there was no sign) and headed on the trail aaaaand after about 25 mins of hiking on the new trail we realized that we were definitely going in the wrong direction (we later realized that we somehow ended up on the trail for dark angel), so then we had to turn around and hike back to double-o arch.

back at the arch we were ready to be done with this hike, we'd already been hiking for about 5 miles over sand and rock, and although once we had gotten to the rock part it was really fun, we were getting, tired, sore, and sunburnt.

so once again we were looking for the main trail that would lead back to the parking lot. we ended up just sort of following a group of people ahead of us, 2 guys with 2 little boys. at one point the group in front of us stopped for a water break and we passed them and tried to make our way along the thing that looked most like a trail.
well about 20 mins later we ended up at the edge of a cliff, with definitely no trail in sight. yep we were totally lost. and pretty soon the group that we had originally followed caught up with us, and then told us they had been following us and thought that we knew where we were going.

that was it. that was the point where i knew we were gonna end up on the news or discovery channel for one of those i'm alive shows where we'd have to cut our arms off to survive. or we'd just die. i wasn't sure which.

from our cliff view-point i could see for miles and i could not see ANY people, or trails, or cars and i knew the main trail was crowded. which meant we weren't anywhere near where we were supposed to be.

so we teamed up with the dads and little kids and tried to find our way back to the trail. we had to turn around three more times, but about a half hour later we ended up--where else--but back at double-o arch.
at this point i was beginning to hate double-o arch.

ok so back at the arch we ran into some more people who were able to point us in the right direction and a few minutes later we were finalllly on the main trail. and you know what? the main trail was a blast! i just wished we had hiked up that way instead of taking the primitive loop so we could actually enjoy it when we still had energy.
annnd just a mere 3.6 miles later we made it back to the trail head. hallelujah!! oh wait but it wasn't over yet. we still had to hike the 0.4 miles back to our car. but eventually we made it.

ok i know i made this hike sound miserable and at a few points it was, but overall it was still pretty fun and i would even do that hike again in the future just next time i would stick. to. the. main. trail.

after the hike from hell (ironic that it was called devil's garden, no?) we checked into our hotel, showered, changed, and then headed into moab from some grub. we ate at a fun little joint called the peace tree cafe where i pretty much fell asleep at the table.

after dinner we had planned on using the hotel's hot tub and relaxing for a while, but pretty much the second we got back to our room i conked out on the bed and that was the end of day 1.

day 2 we slept in. and tried to recover a little from the never ending journey the day before. then around noon we embarked on one more hike in arches. delicate arch.

and did we ever make the right decision! this hike was so fun! i completely understand why it's the most popular hike in arches. it was a blast. and we didn't get lost, bonus!

and the view at the top was breath-taking! of course i completely forgot my camera back in provo so i have no pictures of our trip. i'll google some stock photos of the trail so you can see what i'm talking about but if you ever have the chance to hike delicate arch, do it!

and then it was over and we were headed back to provo. but at least we lived to tell the tale!

epilogue: it took about a week for my legs, back, and arms (why my arms?) to stop aching form all the hiking, and my nose was so sun burnt that i looked like rudolph for about 3 days.

our nemesis: devil's garden

double-o arch
its really pretty i'm so glad we got to hike to it.
THREE times 

another view of devil's garden

ahhh the primitive loop. see the sand?
it gets old pretty quick.

delicate arch!

gorgeous

the sun is out and so am i

i love the sun, and i love warm weather, and for the past few days we've had both!

this past week has included:

babysitting for a friend

walks outside

highlights in my hair

taking dinner to a new mom

having good friends over for homemade pizza, caramel popcorn, 

the basketball game, and we bought a zoo

soccer at the park

a dinner date to black sheep cafe for navajo tacos

enjoying the weather at the park and running into old friends

being grateful for my mom

playing tennis outside

a dinner picnic at the park

my delicious navajo taco

and my delicious man;)

our pleasant picnic
sprouted blue corn tortilla chips, mango salsa, oriental cabbage salad,
french bread, brie, and grapes

jazz and fondue

lately we've been having a lot of fun around here, so the tuesday after the wedding we went to the jazz vs suns game. and whoever won the game was headed to the play-offs, which meant the place was PACKED, sold-out, and full of energy!! it was so fun to be there, and the jazz pulled it off and the victory streamers and confetti exploded out the celing! we were at the very top but we were still part of the action and we even got to hang out with lil' bear for a while when he popped out of the curtain behind us.

the next night a couple of kyle's aunts were in town for women's conference so we met up with them and a few cousins for dinner at brick oven. no pictures that night, but it was sure fun to catch up with them!

thursday night we met up with jeff and allie at the bowling lanes, where i started things off right with two gutter balls, haha. but i was able to catch up and tie w/kyle for the win! then we headed back to our place for some chocolate fondue mmm...complete w/ strawberries, bananas, pretzels, and angel food cake. i love hanging out with these 2, they're such a fun (and cute) couple!

the arena.
 i took this during warm-up, but believe me by the time the game started this place was packed!

 hanging with lil' bear

allie, jeff, me, kyle, andrew

fun-do!