The Chronicles of Jared & Allyson

Happy Valentines Day!

2011-02-14T13:58:00.006-07:00

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!

My brother, Mike, the MARINE!

2011-01-14T14:57:00.018-07:00

This is my brother, Michael. He spent September through December down in San Diego as a Recruit at basic training for the Marine Corps. I'm pretty confident that it was the hardest thing he's ever done, but he's said that he'd do it all over again. I mentioned Mike's graduation in my last post, but didn't expound further because I thought it deserved a post all it's own.

So, meet my brother, Mike, a United States Marine. We're so proud of him!

We were able to go on base the day before graduation for Family Day. It was so wonderful to see Mike again after all of these months away. He looked great! Unfortunately for us, we only saw him from a distance before they all had to head off for a run. We were able to see them come back and then we were taken in to learn more about what our loved ones had been doing all of these month during basic training. It was really neat to see all of that and learn more about their training, but I have to say that the wait seemed way too long since we were so eager to be reunited again.

This is my sister, Rachelle, & I while we waited to see Mike again.

And here is an eager father watching for his son.

(I wish I had more pictures of the others waiting. My Mom and Dad were there with my brother Jon, and Rachelle & hubby Ira and kids were there. I also had Jared and kids with me. We were all so eager to see Mike again. Mom was especially ready. I think she would have run out into the crowd of recruits to grab onto Mike if she could have.)

It was really awesome to see all of the recruits come out in uniform and to watch how they all responded to commands so precisely together. It was so exciting to spot Mike in the crowd (back row middle).

He looked so handsome and it was wonderful when they were given time with their families. Here are some of the shots that I got of his reunion with some of us. My only regret is that there wasn't anyone taking a shot when I got to hug him. Oh well - it still doesn't change the way it felt to finally hug my brother again. I felt so proud of him!

Mike with Mom - Mike with brother Jon - Mike with Dad

Here are some other pictures of us all together that afternoon. We went and had lunch with his LDS branch and enjoyed the afternoon's events together and touring the base (atleast the portion we were allowed to be on). ;) I loved hearing Michael recount some of his experiences and feelings about the whole thing. I really don't think I could have ever done what was required of him and I'm so thrilled that he was so determined and successful. He surely was blessed!

Here's Brig so excited to stand next to his Uncle Mike the soldier. :)

It was hard to leave him that evening on base, but it was okay because we knew that we would be able to go back the following morning and see him again. The traffic approaching the base was awful Friday morning and I was seriously concerned that we'd miss Mike's graduation. Fortunately, we made it in time and I'm so glad that we did too.

The music by the band was excellent - I love patriotic music - and it was so incredible to see Mike dressed up in uniform once again.

I'm not really sure how to explain the graduation ceremony except to say that it was AWESOME! My favorite part was the very end when the commanding officers gave their final command to the new Marines.

If I had realized how amazing it was going to be I would have recorded it. Thankfully I did get photos of it. This is Mike & his platoon responding to their final command. It was incredible to be there to witness!

So, now Michael is officially a Marine!

We're so proud of him!

He is such a great example to us of someone who wants to make a difference, loves his country, and is honorable. I loved spending those few days in California with him and this last month while he's been back at home before heading out for more training. The awesome guy Mike was before is still there, but I have to say that he came out of training as a gentleman.

We love you, Mike, and are so proud of you!

Update Time

2011-01-14T12:51:00.010-07:00

Here's what we've been up to lately, plus just a few super cute ones of the kids:

Jessa & Brig with our first ever pumpkin crop.

They were so excited about these pumpkins!

(and very patient waiting for them to turn orange before picking :))

Our darling little Lady Bug & Buzz Lightyear all dressed up for Halloween!

Jessa is definitely Daddy's little girl - she can't get enough of her dad!

We headed to CA early in December to support uncle Mike

and have stay for a few more days of family fun.

We attended Uncle Mike's graduation from Marine Corps basic training, visited the beach, Mormon Battalion site, Legoland, and Sea World.

We had a wonderful time together as a family.

The kids loved decorating Christmas Candy trains

with Grandma & Grandpa.

Thanks to Great Grandma & Grandpa we also got to have a nice visit with Santa.

Brigham loves him - Jessa cried! :)

Our darling little children participating in the family nativity.

Couldn't you just eat them up?

Of course, Christmas morning was amazing!

The kids were in heaven!

One of the snowmen that we built this year.

and super fun sledding with cousins!

It's been a great few months! We are so grateful for our many blessings and for the chance to be parents to such sweet, energetic, and fun-loving kids. We love you all, our dear family and friends!

Surprise getaway

2010-10-22T11:53:00.013-06:00

I am such a lucky woman!!!

A few weeks ago Jared shocked me with a surprised getaway. He gave me three days notice and then off we went to New York City.

Jared had a work conference that he had to attend during the day Monday and part of the day Tuesday and had decided to take me along. I thought it was so great that he planned the whole trip and even lined up sitters for the kids.

Monday while Jared was at his conference I headed out to go and see ground zero. It was a really neat experience for me and I really enjoyed walking the block and taking some time to ponder on the events of 9/11 and the lives lost and families affected. It was really touching and I was glad to have devoted some of my day to being down there. After that I spent quite a few hours wandering around the city and shopping. It was surprisingly fun to shop on my own, take my own pace, take no extra potty or snack breaks than needed, and have to deal with no tantrums. :) Monday evening we enjoyed delicious Indian food and spent time walking around Time Square and visiting the M&M & Hersheys stores - they're quite a sight to see.

Tuesday morning was spent with more city exploration. I really am amazed when I walk through cities where you can't see anything beyond the vast see of skyscrapers. It's pretty awe inspiring and also makes me grateful for our beautiful mountains here at home. Jared joined me that afternoon and we headed out to Liberty Island to visit the Statue of Liberty. What an inspiring site to see. I absolutely loved it and was touched as I thought about the experience that so many immigrants had coming to America and seeing Lady Liberty. So cool!

Later that afternoon we did a little shopping for the kiddos, and got ready for our incredible evening ahead. After freshening up we headed to dinner at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse - Yummy! - and then on to see Wicked on Broadway. I LOVED the show and was so touched by the music and message of the story. I highly recommend this show to anyone who hasn't yet seen it! We talked about it for days and bought the cd which we've listened to over and over again.

After the show we headed to the Empire State Building. We hadn't yet visited there because of cloud cover and storminess and were thrilled that it had cleared up. The view from the top of the building of all the city lights amazed me. It was totally worth staying up late to see that site!

Jared took Wednesday and Thursday off work so Wednesday morning we rented a car and took a drive up to Palmyra. We only had one afternoon to do Palmyra in so we started with what was most important to us - the Smith family homestead and Sacred Grove. We had such a spiritual experience together in the grove both individually and as a couple. I was so touched by my time there and will never forget the spirit that I felt there. I was also thrilled that we missed the summer crowds - it gave us a wonderful opportunity to experience the grove in total serenity and have time for meditation and prayer. The grove was also still all leafed out and thankfully dry from the previously rainy days. It was beautiful! After our time there we were also able to visit the printing press that printed the first copies of the Book of Mormon and also the Hill Cumorah. Our experiences in Palmyra, although short, made for a very precious part of our getaway.

Thursday morning after breakfast we jumped back in the car to drive on to Niagara Falls. We took the ride on the Maid of the Mist boat to get an up close view. I never realized that the falls were in a horseshoe shape - it really felt like we were in the center of an almost complete circle of falling water and was so awe inspiring. I loved it! I also loved doing the Tunnel of the Winds. After paying your fees you receive a rain poncho and the most utterly stylish sandles you've ever seen. ;) Then you take a ride down an elevator carved out of the cliff on the island between the American falls and Niagara Falls. Once at the bottom you can walk along platforms at the base of the side of the American falls. The water runs over portions of the platforms and presents an up close view of the falls which was awesome! Jared & I especially loved the "hurricane" platform. I've never felt so much force coming down from water falling - it was amazing and so much fun to do with Jared. I felt like we were back in high school just hanging out and being goofy! If you walk all the way forward to the railing on that platform, you pretty much end up under the edge of one of the falls. The force of the water was so strong that I couldn't even look up. We thought it was so much fun that we went back to that platform multiple times and braved it over and over. I was shocked at how many people opted to skip that platform. It was definitely a highlight for me. (Note: It's definitely a good idea to wear their fancy sandles and to roll up your pant legs. I still got soaked part way up my thighs even with my pants rolled up to my knees and a poncho on on top. :))

That afternoon we headed to Rochester and caught our flights home. It was a rush of a trip, but one I'll never forget. I love that Jared went to so much work to surprise me and take me somewhere I've never been before.

Thanks, Baby! I love you!

Quarterly update

2010-08-24T14:56:00.017-06:00

Well, it looks like it's time for a quarterly update again. It's been a fantastic summer and has kept us on our toes hopping from one event to another.

Here's a brief run-down of the goings on in our neck of the woods:

Our 10 year anniversary trip to Costa Rica

Jared & I spent just over a week in the beautiful country of Costa Rica to celebrate our anniversary this year. The first half was spent in an area called Arenal and the second in a beach town called Tamarindo. Both were fantastic in their own very different kind of ways.

The highlights were hiking, swimming at the base of waterfalls and in rivers, doing an awesome zipline tour, taking surfing lessons, and relaxing at the beach.

It was an incredibly relaxing vacation and some of the finest time I've ever spent with my sweetheart!

Brigham's 3rd birthday!

Brig begged for a dinosaur themed birthday party this year. He loved his dinosaur balloons and his dinosaur birthday cake and had so much fun with his cousins who came to celebrate with him that evening.

What a handsome three-year-old! We love you, Brig!

Island Park with my family

In June we headed up to Island Park for a good part of a week. It was fun to hang out together with the family. Brigham loved going on adventures with Nanny, seeing all of the animals in Yellowstone, running through some of the old towns nearby, and going fishing with Daddy.

Brigham was especially excited about this "gigantic" catch that he helped reel in. Love that look of excitement!

Badger Creek with Jared's family

We also had an awesome family reunion with Jared's family in July. We headed up to Idaho to a place called Badger Creek. We slept in cabins, did ropes courses and other activities during the day, and enjoyed games and a testimony meeting with the youth and adults.

This is Jared at the top of the "Power Pole" right before jumping off - thank heaven for good belay teams down below!

This is me at the beginning of the first fall on the "giant swing". Talk about taking your breath away.

Brigham also got in on a little of the fun up high. After TONS of begging and pleading to have a turn the counselors consented to strapping him up and having Jared swing him around for a few minutes. Brigham was in HEAVEN!

Jessa's 1st birthday!

It was amazing when Jessa's birthday came around. I can't believe that she's already one year old! She is such a doll and we loved celebrating with her. She loved her flower cake and went straight for it with her mouth - who cares about hands anyway?

Our beautiful little one year old princess!

and lots of other fun stuff like...

Camping trips and nail pounding at the ward campout,

Fourth of July fun and fireworks,

coloring in the car (this boy loves to draw!),

swimming at Nanny & Poppy's house,

flying paper airplanes with Dad,

and just hanging out in the yard.

We've had so much fun this last few months and are excited for fall, nicer temperatures, playgroup/preschool, and more good times.

Happy Anniversary!

2010-05-12T13:26:00.006-06:00

10 years!Today Jared & I celebrate ten years of marriage and I can't help
feeling like I'm the luckiest girl on the planet.

Thank you, Babe, for the best ten years and for the blessing you are in my life!

Just for fun...

Just a few of my favorite memories from the last ten years:
- Living simply the first few years of marriage
- Playing games together
- Finishing two bachelors and one masters degree
- Building our first home together
- Hiking slot canyons and bamboo forests
-Traveling through Europe together
- Learning to scuba dive and going Lobster hunting
- Becoming parents for the first time as Brig joined our family
- Camping trips, family reunions, and cabin trips
- Laughing together
- Laying out under the stars and chatting together
- Welcoming Jessa into our family
- Tickling our two little munchkins
- Traveling just the two of us to Costa Rica

I love you more than ever, Jared!
Thanks for sharing these ten years with me!
HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!

Jessa's big week!

2010-03-22T21:08:00.006-06:00

It's now been a month since I should have done this post, but I didn't want to completely neglect posting about Jessa's big week last month.

We are happy to announce that as of last month, Jessa is officially ours legally and eternally! Hooray!

We had a great experience last month finalizing Jessa's adoption. The judge was great and obviously happy to be taking a pleasant case. :) It's a very cool experience to be able to speak under oath about how you feel about your child. It was a wonderful experience and we were super happy to have the legal technicalities completely behind us.

The following weekend we were able to take both of the kids to the temple. The kids looked like angels and it was such a sweet and spiritual experience! It really is such a miracle and gigantic blessing that the Lord has provided a way for us to have families eternally. I'm so grateful that we've been able to have both of our little ones sealed to us for eternity!

The following day - Valentine's Day - Jared was able to bless Jessa. He gave her such a tender blessing. Jessa's a lucky girl to have such a wonderful daddy and we're all so happy to have Jessa as part of our family.

We love you, sweet Jessa Rose!

Guys vs. Gals

2010-03-15T14:51:00.005-06:00

The other day Jared & I sat down with Brigham for a fun coloring with markers activity. We weren't planning on sharing our artistic talent with anyone so prepare yourselves for our lack thereof. These pictures just say something about the difference between a guy and a gal.

Brig's picture: (standard 2-year-old coloring)

Allyson's picture: (happy sunshiny day)

Jared's picture: (shoot 'em up by land & air scene)Hmmm? Should I be letting my husband draw stuff like this in front of our son?

I guess you've gotta appreciate yet another difference between guys and gals. :)

A few more cute ones...

2010-01-14T13:26:00.006-07:00

Probably my last blog post for awhile, but I just wanted to include a few more that I love!

Jessa turned 5 months a couple weeks ago! She is getting so big (has been wearing 9 mo. clothes for awhile now), gives darling smiles, loves her big brother, and rolled over just today for the first time. Yipee! We love our little Jessa Rose!About a month or two ago Brigham started asking to wear a tie like Daddy to church. We didn't have one for him at the time, but decided we'd jump on the opportunity since he was so enthusiastic about the idea. Here's a picture of my two handsome boys all ready for church and loving their ties!And a cute picture with sister after church. . .
We get told all the time that Brigham and Jessa look so much alike. We also agree that there are a lot of similarities. Before Christmas I did a photo shoot of the kids, so that we'd have some pictures of them to use for a gift we were making for Daddy. When I picked out my two favorites and had them printed and mounted side-by-side I was again reminded how much these two little ones really look like each other.It's just another testimony to me that these sweet spirits were meant to be in our family and with each other as siblings. What a wonderful tender mercy from the Lord.

Funnies...

2010-01-13T14:04:00.003-07:00

Hello, Flexi-girl!

Jessa hasn't figured out how to roll over yet, but she sure has a flexible little body and twists like crazy to try to reach whatever it is that she wants.

Hmmm. . . I wonder how that got there?!?!?!
We love the little mind of our two-year-old!

After being told that he needed his shoes and a jacket on because it was cold outside, we found him like this:
Brigham talks really well for his age (at least that's what everyone tells us). The other day he turned to me in the kitchen and here's the conversation that unfolded:

Brig: "You a princess, Mom?"
Mom: (after a short pause) "uh, yes!"
Brig: "Do a princess dance."

I happily pranced around for him while he and Jared laughed up a gut! I love this boy!

Life is GREAT with this little guy (and his sister too). He has such a fun personality and is so amazing when it comes to making people laugh.

Quarterly highlights:

2010-01-12T14:35:00.015-07:00

Since I generally blog about quarterly (though I aspire to do better, but seldom do), I thought I'd briefly review some of the highlights of the last few months.

Brigham's Club House: Mom and Dad made this surprise - and super extravagant ;- clubhouse one evening while the kids were asleep. The next morning Brigham was so excited to learn of this new play area and help paint and color it to his hearts content. It's amazing how exciting something as simple as a home-made cardboard play area can be! Love the simplicity of kids!

Halloween! We had two little indians hanging around for Halloween this year. Brigham was thrilled to dress up and totally understood the trick-or-treating part this year. It was fun to see how much he got into the holiday and all that it had to offer & Jessa was a good sport too.

Jessa getting bigger and interacting so much more - She's about 3 1/2 months here and looked so cute in her Sunday dress that Mom just couldn't resist taking a picture. :)

Festival of Trees! I was so thrilled to be able to help a dear friend with her Festival of Trees entry and then take my family to go and see how it turned out. The entry was in honor of my friends sweet baby girl, Bridget, who passed away a couple years ago. It turned out so beautiful and was a marvelous experience for me. I felt so blessed to have been included in the preparations and set up.

Arizona trip and family reunions. Our family headed down to Arizona for two family reunions. It was wonderful to see Grandpa and Grandma Jane again and to visit with extended family members!We stayed with Jared's cousin and his family. Brigham loved playing with his cousin, Gunner, and still talks about him often. We enjoyed hanging out with them at home, going to the zoo, and attending a Christmas party along with them.We also enjoyed following Jared's mom and dad on a walk down memory lane. They took us to visit various sites from their youth, courtship, and early marriage. We started at the Mesa temple and visited childhood homes and also their first few homes as a married couple. It was fun to hear the stories and a great experience as a family!

Christmas parties galore! We loved being together with both sides of our family, our friends, and our ward members while attending all the parties that the Christmas season had to offer. Of course, Santa was one of the many highlights!

Christmas morning was also a big hit! It's so much more fun now that we have little ones who get excited about everything. The best part was when we asked Brigham who he thought had come in the night. His response, "Jesus!" Good job, Brigham! That's the perfect response!

A few more highlights have included fort building with Dad, sledding with cousins, and going to Classic Fun Center to play on the bouncy toys with Grandma & Grandpa as a Christmas present to the kids.

There's the quick summary for ya'll. We'll try to post a couple other posts of funnies, etc. soon.

Jessa & girly things!

2009-10-13T21:33:00.003-06:00

Jessa's getting so big these days. She's about 2 1/2 months now and so much fun! We especially love when she smiles or coos for us - it makes having a baby even more enjoyable.
With summer pretty much over and Jessa rapidly growing out of anything labeled 0-3 months, I threw her in this outfit one more time the other day. I thought a little comparison showing how she's grown would be fun to share. Isn't she such a cutie?

One of my favorite things about having a little girl is all of the "girly" things that come along with it. We especially love headbands, bows, and flowers! I've been trying my hand in bow making (got a little carried away with the flowers so far) and have had a ton of fun. Thanks to my sister, Rachelle, for this great idea for storing hairbows - I've now made a home for all of these girly things. It coordinates with our bathroom fish theme and we love it. Hope you enjoy!
Gotta love the frills!

Another first . . .

2009-10-13T17:06:00.005-06:00

You'd think all of these "firsts" would be of Jessa, but amazingly here's another one about Brigham.

Our little guy loves to color pictures and is really good at drawing circles. Beyond circles, I really didn't know that he could draw anything else until the other day when he was coloring by my side I looked over to see the following:

He was pointing at his picture and saying "Brigham smiling - right there." I couldn't believe my eyes. What a good little artist. He has continued to draw similar pictures since then and identifies them as pumpkins or as of today "a happy".

I love this new stage and am so proud of this smart little guy!

Another first for Brigham . . .

2009-10-13T16:43:00.003-06:00

Anyone who knows me well, knows that I am a HUGE waterskiing addict. As a result, Brigham's new "first" has made me a very proud Mommy!

Brigham and I had the chance to go out boating on Poppy's boat on September 1st. When I asked Brigham if he wanted to go out on Poppy's boat his response was, "waterski?" (Back in mid July Brigham was introduced to the idea that he could try to water ski when our neighbor put him on their little skis on the backyard lawn and pulled him around the yard.)

Brigham has never really been afraid of the water and he was so excited that warm September afternoon when it was finally his turn to get in the water. I really wasn't sure what he'd do when we actually got in the water with the awkward skis on his feet, but I was thrilled to see what a courageous boy that he was.

I got in the water with Brig and helped to steady him and get him going.Brigham got up on his first try and stayed up (in a sitting fashion) long enough for my dad to make a big loop and bring him back to where I was. At that point they stopped the boat right where I could catch him.
Brigham only got up that one time that day, but I was so proud of my little two year old for getting up on waterskis. (Remember, he only turned two at the end of May so this was really cool for us.)

Thanks, Dad for the day out boating and for letting Brigham get in and give it a try! We love you!I'm so pleased with my little boy for being excited to try new things and for doing so well!

You're the BEST, Brig!

1 month

2009-08-29T13:37:00.003-06:00

Our sweet little Jessa Rose is now 1 month old. We can't believe how fast time flies and yet how it seems like she's always been a part of our family.

We feel so blessed to have two wonderful little ones and although every day isn't a cake walk we love them with all our hearts!

Jessa's second week

2009-08-11T14:38:00.004-06:00

Jessa is almost two weeks old now. She's a pretty predictable baby - she sleeps a lot, eats a lots, and . . . (well, you know). ;)

Brigham loves "baby Jessa" and is excited to help give her binkies and stroke her hair. He's been pretty gentle so far. Knock on wood!

Here are some of cute pics of Jessa from this last week. Isn't she a beauty?

We're so lucky to have two AWESOME kiddos in our home!

Baby Jessa's here!

2009-08-02T16:20:00.006-06:00

We're really excited to announce that we have a new addition to our family.

Baby Jessa Rose was born Wednesday night weighing in at 8 lbs 14 oz and being 21 inches long. She is a beauty and has tons of dark hair.

After three longs days, we were so relieved to have tonight come. Placement happened at LDS Family Services office and was a wonderful experience!
We're so grateful to Jessa's birth mother for her strength and determination. She is wonderful!

Welcome home, baby Jessa! We love you!

Brigham's Summer Fun So Far

2009-07-23T14:52:00.017-06:00

Brig's summer has been lots of fun so far. Here's just a few of the fun things he's been up to.

Boating at Lake Mead

First time knee-boarding at Lake Mead. Thanks for helping me, Daddy!

And fun swimming there with cousin, Bridger.

"Mom & Me" Swim Class - Brigham LOVES, LOVES, LOVES the water!

Hi There!Practicing on TummyJumping In!

Camping in the backyard. Well, at least the sleeping part!

Homemade sand box in the kitchen - using Cream of Wheat! :)

And there's still another month of summer left! Hooray!

Brigham's 2!

2009-06-05T13:35:00.003-06:00

Brigham just celebrated his second birthday! I can't believe how fast time flies and how much fun (and craziness) we enjoy with him in our family. What a sweet boy - we love you, Brig!

Brigham loved his turtle cake and enjoyed blowing out the candles multiple times. He talked about his cake all day long and would walk up to people telling them "two" while holding up both index fingers.

Brigham enjoyed having both sets of grandparents over for his party and some of his cousins too. He totally scored with presents and has loved playing with his new things.

Happy Birthday, handsome boy!

Akumal vacation - Ahhh, Relaxation!

2009-06-05T13:13:00.008-06:00

I know that I'm pathetically late to be doing this post, but better late than never, right?

We took a family vacation in April down to Akumal, Mexico. It's a small town about an hour south of Cancun and it was a wonderful trip!

We were thrilled to have Mom & Dad and Rachelle, Ira, Bridger, & Avery come with us. The water was so nice and the beaches were perfect! Brigham loved his time with Nanny & Poppi and cousin, Bridger!

Look at these two handsome men - Two of my favorites!
We stayed at an all-inclusive resort down there. It was such a nice place and we loved the variety of food that was available (especially traveling with little ones).

Look at my mom - doesn't she look great!

Jared was the best husband and sent us to get our toen ails painted before the trip. I love to have cute toe nails! I had mine painted blue to coordinate with one of my swimsuits - plus, doing something different sounded fun. We loved the special pampering! Thanks, Baby!
(Chelle's toes, Allyson's toes, Mom's toes)

We went and saw ruins at Coba and Tulum. We really enjoyed both sites, but did think that the visit to Coba was INCREDIBLY HOT! Still, it was a great site to see and a great time with family!

We spent a lot of time at the beaches and swimming pools. Brigham thought the sand was fun to throw, dig in, etc. Doesn't he look like a little muscle-man in his vest? What a handsome boy!

The resort had kayaks that we were able to take out. It was a lot of fun (besides my getting motion sick - surprise, surprise!). Look at Brighams smile - he's been squinting with a huge smile lately when we ask him to say "cheese". :)

We also did quite a bit of snorkeling. There were colorful fish, but my favorite part were the sea turtles. What amazing creatures and I love how tame they are and that you can swim along with them without bothering them.

We really had a wonderful time and feel so blessed that we were able to take such an awesome vacation with wonderful people. We love you guys!

Yikes!

2009-03-24T10:32:00.004-06:00

This morning I went outside for a couple of minutes to measure our window wells so that I could order covers for them. I left Brigham inside because it's super cold and I new that I'd only be a couple of minutes. Brigham seemed content to watch through the windows and I didn't see any harm in this idea. (Those of you who have been moms longer than I have are probably smiling right now knowing what can happen when you leave an almost two-year old alone even for just a couple of minutes.)

Anyway, I was really fast in my measuring and quickly returned to my back door. Unfortunately and to my dismay, when I turned the knob I found that I had been locked out of the house. (Didn't know Brig knew how to do that one yet.) I knew that all of the other doors were locked and wasn't sure that Brigham would know what to do when I started asking him to unlock the door. I saw three options at the time: Try to break in (this didn't sound like a good one to me); Call Daddy to come home from work with his house key; Plead and hope that Brig would be capable of unlocking the door - which he's never done before.

I decided that the third option was the best one to start with especially since Brigham was still right there at the door. Thankfully, after lots of gestures, pointing, and talking through the glass door Brigham started trying the lock again and after a few attempts the lock turned back open and I was able to open the door. Hooray!

I couldn't be mad seeing that Brig had know idea that what he had done was naughty, so I just applauded him for obeying Mommy and gave him a treat as a reward.

Phew! What an ordeal!

In the snow he melted...

2009-03-08T12:28:00.005-06:00

As noted in our last post, Brigham & I built a VERY HEALTHY -round & plump - snowman last month. Brigham was thrilled with it and checked it out multiple times each day. He would enthusiastically ask "no-me?" to inquire on his precious snowman.

To Brigham's dismay and mom's thrill the days have finally consistenly started to warm up and . . . well, we all know what that means for Mr. "No-Mee".

The initial building of our snowman - see how round he is!

Brigham re-inserting the snowman's buttons after some meltage - can you tell that the sun shines on the snowman's backside?

Hmmm?

(The meltage from picture #2 to picture #3 happened in 24 hours)

I'm thrilled that the majority of the snow in our yard has now melted. Brigham still asks about "No-Me" everytime we head outside. Immediately after comes singing of the snowman song and how he melts. Brigham seems content with that for the time being. I guess we'll be building another snowman if the snow falls and sticks to the ground again this year before spring and summer actually hit.

Gotta love it!

8 week review.....

2009-02-14T12:51:00.005-07:00

Crazy how time flies, isn't it? This last eight weeks has been a crazy, wonderful whirlwind. I don't post very regularly, as most of you have already gathered. If I try to force myself to do much more I may never end up getting these posted, so hopefully you don't mind the crazy synopsis. Here goes . . .

Christmas was wonderful this year! We love the holidays at our home and had a great season filled with tons of family and friends. Brigham loved Santa and was so excited to open his presents which made parties and especially Christmas morning memory making moments. Christmas really is SOOO much more fun with kids!

We were thrilled to go with Jared's family to the Draper Temple open house the evening of January 7th. The temple was beautiful and we loved taking Brigham along. He was so enthusiastic during our tour and loved seeing pictures of Jesus and seeing the "cows" in the baptistry. ;)

(Sorry that the picture is such low quality - our camera doesn't take very good night shots.)

Brigham and I had an AWESOME trip out to visit my best friend, Lexie, who lives in Virginia. Brigham did fairly well on the flights (at least that's what everyone else said - I was feeling the heat of the moments, so I was a little flustered off and on). We loved spending time with Todd, Lexie, Lydia, Kastyn, & Luke.

We took a few field trips while we were there including a ride on the Trolly and trip to the library . . .

Brigham LOVED the Merry-Go-Round!

. . . excursion to the Thomas Jefferson themed play place . . .
. . . and visit to Thomas Jefferson's home, Monticello! (Thanks Todd for watching the kids that day so Lex and I could go on our own - it was awesome!)

I loved seeing Lexie in her own environment. She is such a good mother, homemaker, and friend. I feel so blessed to be able to still be so close to her.

Grandma & Grandpa C took all of the grandchildren (and their parents) to the Classic Fun Center as a Christmas present. I wasn't sure how much Brigham would be able to do, but was very pleasantly surprised to find that he could participate in a lot of the things and especially loved the blow up slides. (I felt like I'd had a workout after hauling him up to the top over and over again, but it was definitely worth it.) Thanks, Mom & Dad!!!

Brigham and Andrew playing in the balls - we LOVE cousins!

And last but not least, the building of Brigham's FIRST snowman. We've intended to do this before now, but the snow has either been unpackable or we've waited too long and it's gotten crusty. Anyway, Brigham loves being outside and it was fun to work together on the snowman.

Good job, Buddy!Well, that's all for now. Until next time . . .

Brig's bed adjustments

2008-12-22T11:59:00.005-07:00

Last Tuesday Brigham surprised us with another one of his "firsts". I had put him in his bed for his morning nap and called my sister back when suddenly I realized that I was hearing something that I wasn't prepared for. Brigham was knocking on his bedroom door. Hmmm??? I went to investigate and found Brig standing at his door. This was his first - of now many - successful attempts at getting out of his crib.

After monitoring him and seeing that he could fairly safely manuveure his way out of the crib I decided it was time for documentation.

So... here he goes...

Up and over....

and safely back down the other side! Ta-Da!

Needless to say, this last six days has been full of lots of in-n-out of bed, lots of "stay in your bed", and lots of sleeplessness for both Brig and Mom/Dad.

Our little guy's much too smart for Mom and Dad. We've tried just about everything to keep Brigham in his bed - we even turned the crib around so that it'd be harder to get out of with the higher back in his way (not successful on our part).

This morning Brigham climbed out again in front of Mommy, so with approval from Dad we began transforming his room from Baby room to Toddler room.

Luckily, Brig's crib can be easily turned into a toddler bed. Brigham seemed pretty amused to watch me partially unassemble his bed, wipe everything down, make his bed with different bedding, and hang up his new (non-baby) quilt that Nanny made for him.

Here's the new "big boy" bed...
and Brigham showing off his new quilt!

Thanks mom for the quilt and blanket on his bed. Now he's got "big boy" colors in there too! :)

Brig was really excited about it all until I put him down for his morning nap later this morning. Hopefully he'll want to stay in his bed sometime in the near future.

Wish us luck!

Christmas Sugar Cookies!

2008-12-22T11:33:00.005-07:00

In our attempt to continue the "sugar cookie" making tradition this year we decided to invite over our friends and their kids last Thursday night. (More kids = more cookie making fun!)

It was awesome to have Josh & Elizabeth and their four kids over to join us. The kids had a great time rolling out the dough, using cookie cutters, & frosting the cookies once they'd been baked.

Brigham and Gracie also really enjoyed eating the dough and frosting. (Honestly, I'm surprised that Brigham wasn't sick in the night from all the sweets he consumed in such a short period of time.)

The evening was a success and tons of fun!

Omniture's Natal Carnavalesco 2008

2008-12-22T11:20:00.005-07:00

December 13th was Omniture's annual Christmas party. It followed a Brazilian theme and was a great night of socializing with Jared's co-workers.

They held the event at the Grand America hotel in Salt Lake. It was a lot of fun to go out on the town all dressed up with Jared by my side.

Thanks Omniture for the great time!

:)

2008-11-03T15:46:00.006-07:00

We hope you all had a very

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Brig loved the family party, visit to Dad's work & Mom's old office, and Trick-or-Treating through the neighborhood. He looked absolutely PERFECT - Isn't he the cutest!

Happy Halloween!

Sweet Reminder!

2008-09-30T09:07:00.004-06:00

So, yesterday morning when I headed into the bathroom I found a little surprise....

These little shoes don't normally belong on the bathroom floor and you can probably guess who left them there. I wish it wasn't true, but my normal reaction to seeing something like this out of place might be to sigh and feel slightly overwhelmed that there's yet one more thing to pick up and put back in it's place. Luckily, it was morning and I wasn't overwhelmed yet and instead was flooded by feelings of gratitude. Brigham had left me a sweet reminder of the blessing that he is in my life. I am so grateful to be blessed to have a little person roaming around my home and here to enrich my life!

Quarterly Update!

2008-09-19T10:00:00.000-06:00

I have to compliment all of my friends who are so awesome at blogging and posting on a regular basis. You guys are amazing! As for me... I seem to be on a quarterly update for the time being. Sorry!

Since I have three months to report on I'm going to be pretty vague - so here goes...

We have had an awesome summer this year! It included multiple camping trips complete with rock climbing, Manti Pageant, boating, and hiking.

I love the looks on both of their faces in this picture when we were hiking a slot canyon in August!

Brigham started walking at the end of June and now runs throughout our home and pretty much anywhere else that I put him down. He loves being a big boy and is very independent.

Jared traveled to London again for work this summer. This led to lots of Brig and Mommy time together including our first Mommy-Son date. I have to say that we got a few funny looks while we were out to dinner just the two of us, but it was still lots of fun. Plus, we had a great time playing at the park afterwards.

Of course, boating is always on the top of my summer fun list. We had so much fun out on the water this summer. Brigham even got used to wearing his life jacket and wouldn't cry when we put it on him. Jared learned to wakeboard this year! I'm excited for him to have something new to get excited about when we are out on the boat. Good job, Honey!

We also had a great week enjoying Thanksgiving Point - thanks to Omniture's company party! It was fun to take Brigham around to see the gardens, dinosaur museum, and farm country.

Our summer has also been filled with redecorating our upstairs family room. It's been quite the adventure since neither of us are good decision makers. Luckily, we have finally been able to figure out what style really appeals to us and get it all set up.

Brigham has had many firsts this summer: walking, running, new teeth, popcicle eating, camping/sleeping outside, using a spoon, etc.

He's also gotten incredibly good at getting into things. He knows how to climb up and onto the table to my chagrin and is proficient at pulling the vent covers out and hauling them around the house. He pretty much just loves everything that's not a child's toy. :)

Well, I think that about sums it all up for the time being. We love you all!

Brig's Birthday!

2008-06-01T18:23:00.004-06:00

Brig's 1st birthday was lots of fun....

We woke Brigham up early and gave him waffles for breakfast. He loves eating waffles - funny boy! Around noon we took him in for his 1 year pictures. He was so good and smiled almost every time they tried to take a shot. (This time was so much easier than the past times we've taken him for professional pictures. What a relief!)

Brigham had his birthday party in the afternoon. Some of his cousins came over for the party - thanks to all of you who came. We loved seeing you! Brigham got spoiled with TONS of presents – much more than he needs, we're sure. I guess he’s all stocked up for the coming year. We had cake and ice cream after we gave Brig a chance to enjoy his cake. (A 1-year old tradition.) Brigham loved his Cookie Monster cake and seemed to enjoy how tasty it was.

Brigham loved seeing his cousins, aunts & uncles, and grandparents. It really turned out to be a wonderful day.

Last Hoorah and coming home!

2008-04-29T22:03:00.011-06:00

Well, we've been home for over a week now and things have been crazy busy, so sorry for the delay in the Japan adventure log.

Jared was able to take a day off before we had to head home, so we decided to use it to take in a little bit more around Tokyo. (We wish we could have had more time to go and see some of the surrounding areas. Maybe next time, right?)

So... Thursday (April 17th) was a great day with Daddy! Our first stop was at the Fish Market. We were a little late getting there so we didn't see a lot of the craziness of business there, but it's probably a good thing since we had Brigham in tow. It was really fascinating to see all the kinds of fish they had: large, small, dead, alive, and oh so SMELLY!

After the fish market we decided to try to visit a traditional Japanese garden style park. The park we picked from our internet searches to visit was called Kiyosumi Teien. It was very pretty and I was glad that Jared got to see it. Plus it provided a nice and relaxing piece to our day. Brigham was such a good sport and really enjoyed looking at the ducks, fish, and park benches. Hmmm - Funny kid!
I know that this picture of Jared and Brig is pretty far away, but isn't the scenery awesome!

After our time at the park we headed to Akihabara, which is known for its electronics. I have to say that we weren't overly impressed. Maybe it's because we weren't looking for anything specifically - I don't know. The good part though was that we found a great Tepanyaki place there for lunch! (Sorry no pics of that one!)

The touring part of the day ended after lunch time (which was more like 2 or 3 pm). It had started to pour outside and we were all a little tired. It was nice though to relax a little that afternoon and stroll around Ebisu one last time that evening.

Our flights home the next day were really pretty good. Brigham did well again and was a hit with the flight attendants.

We're glad to be back and settled into this time zone again. We loved our time in Japan, but it's nice and comfortable back in our home. Plus it's so fun to see our yard start to blossom and be here and excited for another summer!

Last weekend!

2008-04-15T01:12:00.018-06:00

Last Saturday took us to a town called Kamakura. The train ride wasn't too long and it made for a fun day out and about seeing sites, tasting yummy foods, and just "experiencing" a little bit more of what Japan has to offer.

Our first stop was to visit the Great Buddha on the Kotokuin temple grounds. The statue is the second largest in Japan and was cast in 1252 - Wow that's a long time ago! It was really neat to see such a huge statue. Brigham just stared at it for the longest time.
After our first stop, one of Jared's co-workers, Yoigi, met up with us for lunch. We had a delicious tepanaki meal of a special Japanese beef. I think Jared would say that it was one of the very best meals here so far.

After lunch Yoigi took us to the Tsurugaoka hachimangu shrine. Our favorite part was having the chance to watch part of a traditional Japanese wedding ceremony. How cool?
Yoigi explained about how people pray and even told us about the fortunes that some people get and what they do with them. We each got a fortune - mine was for "excellent luck" and Brigham and Jared both got ones for "good luck." ;)

After spending time with Yoigi, he headed home and pointed us in the direction of north Kamakura (Kita Kamakura). We enjoyed the walk and headed to take a look at another temple there. We visited the Engakuji temple right by the train station. The grounds were really large and the temples were really cool to look at. Brigham was especially happy here - he had had a bottle and a nap and was feeling great!One of his favorite parts was watching the fish in the pond. What a cutie!
Our day ended with a train ride back to the Kamakura station and a walk down to the beach. It was Brigham's first time to see the ocean. He loved the sand in between his toes and the water running over his feet. He had so much fun!
We really feel so blessed to be able to see and do so many things! We've enjoyed Japan so much more than we could have expected to. Our time here has been great!

Sakura on Saturday!

2008-04-06T03:29:00.007-06:00

Well, we can't believe that we've been here already for an entire week. We've been told that we came at the best time of year and easily believe it because of all the beauty around.
We had to stop in the Yebiso Garden Place to take a photo as we headed out on Saturday morning. We walk through this plaza every day. They keep it so nice and clean and the trees and flowers are beautiful! (Jared's not bad too, if I do say so myself!)

We jumped on the train and headed up to Shibuya where we transfered onto the subway to head over to the north-east side of town. Our first stop was in Ueno to take a stroll through Ueno park which we've been told is famous for it's Cherry Blossom (Sakura) trees. It really was quite the site to see. People were everywhere and the trees were in full bloom. We really are lucky to have come right at the peak bloom season!

Doesn't Brigham look so happy here? He is such a good sport and does really well site-seeing. He's also the star of every show. You wouldn't believe how many people stop to gawk at him and try to make him smile. (Which you all know isn't very hard to do.) The people love him here!
Jared and Brigham were actually smiling at on of the Japanese ladies when I took this picture. See - I told you they love Brig! Can you believe that tree in the background?

After Ueno park we headed on to Asakusa. We've been told this is the largest temple in Tokyo. There was shopping all around it; Good food - at least the stuff we tried; and TONS of people! We really enjoyed wandering around and visiting the site. By the time we were ready to leave we still had a few hours of daylight left so we stopped by the Imperial Palace grounds to take another stroll. The scenery really is amazing. We loved this view with the wild flowers, Sakura tree, and palace moat.
Saturday really was a great day!

Japan!

2008-03-29T16:31:00.015-06:00

We're in JAPAN!!! How did that happen?

Well, about 2 weeks ago Jared was offered the opportunity to come to Japan to do some training. We jumped on the opportunity knowing that it would only be for a few weeks and may not come up again. So...after crazy packing and last minute preparations we boarded a flight on Thursday around 11 am to head on over. We had a short layover in San Francisco and then continued on to Tokyo. The flights, layovers, and commute to our apartment afterward came in around a 20 hour adventure. Lucikly Brigham did amazingly well through it all.

On the flight he even sat still to watch Baby Einstein, complete with headset and all!

It was so wonderful to finally make it to our new apartment Friday night. Jared's co-worker, Ikue, helped get us in and showed us all around and had even stocked our fridge with milk, juice, and muffins for breakfast in the morning. She showed what we're finding to be the epitome of Japanese hospitality. They are all so incredibly kind and willing to go out of their way to help. We'd also been warned before about how much Brigham would be fussed over. That is already becoming very apparent. Even Ikue offered to stay and play with Brigham while we unpacked that first night. Unfortunately we were so tired that we declined her offer and decided to turn in for the night instead.

Yesterday was our first full day in Japan. We decided that our goals for the day were to find the international grocery store for some shopping and to get a look around and some experience on their train system. Well, after many, many hours we can finally say that we accomplished all three. Unfortunately, it really shouldn't have taken that long.

We were told that we could "walk" to the area where the store was through the "subway." After a few hours we finally realized that their "subway" is different than England's "subway" and that you really couldn't walk through the subway. Luckily, by the time we were getting tired, we got on the Japanese subway (which is an underground metro) and made it to the part of town we had been directed to for shopping. As we continued to wander through this part of town the most amazing thing happened...We walked around the corner and saw the Angel Moroni in the distance! Aaah, suddenly everything became so much better. We wandered through a park on the way to see the temple. It was a truly magnificent site and really smoothed our whole day over.

Notice the beautiful Cherry Blossoms! What a site to behold!

After the temple we felt so much better and headed on our way to the international grocery store to pick up the food we needed. Can you say expensive?! We thought England was bad...

Here is the food we bought for a grand total of 95 big ones! Can you believe it?

We took a taxi back to the apartment because Brigham was getting tired. He was asleep before we could even get in the taxi. The best part is that he didn't even get grumpy. He just snuggled in and fell asleep. What an angel!

For those of you who are interested in what our apartment looks like we've included this slideshow. Enjoy!

Also, take a look at this piece of porcelain in our apartment. We aren't exactly sure what all of the buttons do yet.

Well, that's about all for now. Hope you enjoyed the craziness of our life as much as we are.

Love you all!

Nine Months and feeling great!

2008-03-17T21:12:00.008-06:00

Well, all I can say is that it has been a very eventful 3 months in Brigham's life. He's learned so much and become so incredibly mobile. He continues to be one of the most content kids around and we love it!

Brigham started eating baby food the last week of December. Let's just say that he didn't like the green beans very much.

Eating time was a fight for a couple of weeks until he finally realized that it wasn't that bad afterall. Now he loves eating again and gobbles down almost anything we give him (especially if it's table food). :)

Brigham also finally mastered sitting on his own around his seven month mark. Yeah!

We went with our friends the Hubbards down to their cabin outside of Zions at the end of January. Brigham loved following around and watching their little boy Calvin. They were instant friends and got along so well all weekend long. Thanks so much, Eric & Tiff! We had a great time with you guys and loved seeing your cabin! Brigham started army crawling that weekend at the cabin and has quickly progressed to hands and knees crawling. He loves moving around and is very proficient at getting pretty much wherever he wants.A couple of weeks ago we stopped to visit Great Grandma and Grandpa Rose. Brigham loved seeing them and playing with their toys. Visiting with them was wonderful! We really should be better at doing it more often.Grandpa did "Doodely-Doo" with Brigham for the first time while we were there with them. He loved it and I got the sweetest picture of it. That brings back GREAT memories. I even remember when Grandpa did it with me when I was little. We love you, Grandma and Grandpa!

Brigham sure is fun to watch. He now knows how to pull himself up to standing and can open drawers and some cabinets. (Now a lot of these belong to him and his things - or at least things that he can safely play with.)

He really is getting into EVERYTHING! Soda anyone?
One of Brigham's favorite drawers!We love you all! Thanks for being so patient with our blog and the lack of posts.

Brigham's BIG days!

2007-12-23T20:18:00.004-07:00

The week of December 10th - 16th was a really BIG one for Brigham!

We went to the court for finalization of Brigham's adoption on the 10th. What a cool experience!

Saturday, December 15th landed us at the temple. He was so good and looked like an angel!

The following day, Sunday, Dec. 16th Jared blessed Brigham. Again, what a sweet experience and a great end to a busy and wonderful week!

Cook Family Cruise!!!

2007-12-23T19:34:00.002-07:00

December started off with a WONDERFUL cruise adventure with the adult versions of the Cook Family members. It was such a great opportunity to have uninterrupted time with Mom and Dad and all of the siblings. We miss the daily contact with you already!

We cruised on the Norweigan Spirit and left port in New Orlean.

Day One: At Sea

Day Two: Roatan, Honduras

Jared gave me my birthday wish and took me windsufing. It was so much fun even as amateurs! Jason, Sally, Travis, & Ashlee also came along on our excursion!

Day Three: Santo Tomas De Castilla, Guatamala

We had so much fun biking in Guatamala. We headed to a waterfall to swim, had fresh fruit smoothies, got pastries from the local panaderia, and then headed to a local beach (if that's what you can call it - no sand and cement louge chairs). The best part were our little Guatamalan tour guides. What awesome boys!Day Four: Belize City, Belize

Scuba Diving and coconut eating filled our day. That is, once Jared was able to pry the coconut open!

Day Five: Cozumel, Mexico

This was the laziest of our port days. Consisting of souvenir shopping and snorkeling / hanging out one of the local beaches.

Day Six: At Sea

Day Seven: Fly home as fast as we possibly can.

We missed Brigham so much and were so thrilled to see how cute he was!

Well, there's the abbreviated details. Hope you enjoyed them.

Thanks again, Mom and Dad, for an awesome trip!

Basement Construction Completed - Yeah!!!

2007-12-23T19:23:00.001-07:00

We are THRILLED to announce that after 9 dusty weeks of construction. Our basement is now complete. Minus most of the furnishings as decorations. Although you can see that Jared's got the most important part already set up! :)

At the beginning:

At the end:

Brigham LOVES Daddy!

2007-12-23T19:20:00.000-07:00

Aren't they the cutest boys you've ever seen?

Yum Yum!

2007-12-23T19:14:00.000-07:00

Brigham had his first try at cereal the first week of November. Surprisingly, he really has liked it from the beginning.

He now eats rice and oatmeal cereals and will probably start veggies very soon! Yipee!

Happy Halloween

2007-11-09T09:35:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween, I wish you!!!

(Says our little Master Yoda)

Halloween was so much fun this year! We really had a blast carving pumpkins and Brigham really enjoyed sucking on his pumpkin and playing with the newspaper underneath them.

Allyson's, Brigham's, & Jared's pumpkins!
We had a super fun Halloween party with the Rose family! Always full of food, fun, games, and prizes. Thanks, Mom! We also really enjoyed taking Brigham around Omniture for their Trick-Or-Treat. I've never seen a business more decked out than this one! So much fun and everyone loved seeing Brig!
We hope you all had a fabulous holiday! We love you!

Lobster Hunting with my brothers!

2007-10-19T10:49:00.001-06:00

This last week I took off with a couple of my brothers on a "manly bonding" adventure of lobster hunting! Take a look at the first post from last year to see the First Annual Lobster Hunting Extravaganza (LHE). So, here's what went down on the Second Annual LHE...

Last Sunday afternoon we took off from Lehi and met up with Travis and his spacious RV in St. George. We arrived in Long Beach California late that night and boarded the boat (hereafter referred to as "the ship" ;) ).

That first night we were lulled to sleep by the continuous, yet often violent, vibrations of the ship caused the bear-like snoring of one our ship mates. Ok, maybe "lulled to sleep" is not quite accurate. I guess it was more like lulled to madness. Fortunately, Travis's work partner, Jason, was bold enough to convince our snoring ship mate to move his quarters to the rear of the ship so the other nights were blissful in comparison.

The lobster diving this year was AWESOME! I've never seen so many bugs in caves and crevices. The first night dive I bagged 4 bugs!

See, look how tired Jason is after not sleeping that first night. He couldn't even keep his eyes open for the picture!Our ship captain was an old Scottish/Irish sailor (and believe me, he played the part). Each day he played his bagpipes to "bring down a blessing on the hunting for the day."
Each day was about the same routine. Eat, dive, drink hot chocolate, dive, eat, dive, nap, dive, eat, dive, dive. Now, for Holly and Dad's sake, let me try that with "a little more feeling."

(Read with feeling) Each day was about the same routine. Eat, dive, drink hot chocolate, dive, eat, dive, nap, dive, eat, dive, dive. Much better. :)

After 5 days of being away, coming home was THE BEST!

INVITATION TO ALL: Start preparing now for the Third Annual LHE.

4 months and counting!

2007-10-14T18:08:00.000-06:00

Well, apparently we've been blog slackers lately! Sorry about the major lull.

It's been a busy summer and fall. Life with Brigham couldn't be better! He is such an angel baby and has now been sleeping through the nights since around mid-august (at about 2 1/2 months old). We feel so lucky to have him as part of our family and in our home.

I'll try to make a quick synopsis of the best things of the last few months so you don't have to read forever.

Mid-August we went down to Lake Powell. We were a little worried about how Brigham would do down there, but we were pleasantly surprised when he continued sleeping through the night while we were there. We were also happy to see that he wasn't completely miserable in the life jacket that he had to wear while on the boat. Don't get me wrong, he didn't love it, but he dealt with it surprisingly well.
Brig looked like such a stud in his sunglasses! What a cutie pie!

He also didn't seem to mind swimming in the lake with Daddy. Thank goodness for baby sunblock!

On Labor Day we got to spend the day with Jared's brother and sister-in-law, Jason & Sally, and their one-year-old. We had a great time at the Hogel Zoo.

The latest big developemental step for Brigham has been that he's started rolling over. (Although he's only done it a handful of times so far.) His first roll was from his back to his tummy and was on September 16th. We were so shocked and thrilled to see it!

This picture was taken right after he rolled over for the second time that first day! He was so proud of himself! Isn't he handsome!

We've also taken the leap and have hired out a company to come in and finish our basement for us. Construction started the last week or two of September and should be done by Thanksgiving. We are so excited to see how it all turns out and to have it all finished!

As of this week it is now sheet-rocked. Yipee!

Well, that's about all for now. We are really excited for Halloween to come along and to dress Brigham up for the first time. What a huge smile and a happy, happy kid! Stay tuned to see what he'll be for Halloween!

We love you all!

Two Months Old!

2007-08-03T14:40:00.000-06:00

Wow - Another month has come and gone. We just can't believe it!

Obviously, the main attraction at our home this last few months is our little Brig! He is still as cute as ever and has the sweetest smile as you can tell. It has been so much fun to see him learn and grow so fast!

This last month he has become so much more aware of everything around him. His eyes are always so wide and full of curiosity! He has also starting smiling and is discovering a plethora of new noises that he happily tries out during his wakeful times.

Here's our little guy "all tuckered out" after playing hard with his little gym.

He has recently slept through the night! (That was such a blessing!) Obviously it hasn't continued, but he continues to sleep longer and longer hours at night.

Brigham LOVES his Daddy! He smiles so readily for him and gets so excited when he sees him. We can't wait for the day that he can sing "I'm so glad when Daddy comes home." Mommy practices it with him, but we think we're probably still a few years out on that one. :)

Here's Brigham and Daddy at a picnic on Jared's lunch hour on Pioneer day. Brigham loves being outside!

Brigham's two month appointment landed him weighing in at 11# 6 oz and he's grown to a glorious 23 1/2 inches long! What a big and healthy boy.

Brigham didn't like getting his shots at the doctors office. Luckily, he only cried while they were poking him and stopped when they handed him off to Mommy. Aren't those bandaids sure were cute on those little legs?!?!

Brigham has really started to enjoy getting hauled around in the Baby Bjorn. He get's lots accomplished with Mommy when he's in it. He's already been exposed to cleaning toilets, working in the garden, and making zucchini bread. Look at that funny little smirk - do you think he's going to give us a run for our money?

We love our little guy and just can't believe how much he's already changed. What a blessing he is in our lives!

We love you all!

One Month

2007-07-06T11:21:00.000-06:00

Well, we can't believe that a month has already passed since Brigham joined our family. We have loved having him around. (Even with his fussy moments and all! :)

He really has been a joy! We feel so blessed!

Here he is: 4 weeks old!

We also had to include the picture from the 4th of July. Brigham had two outfits for the holiday. This one and a darling overall outfit. What a lucky guy!

(By the end of the day, he had spit up on both of them - oops!)

The Next (& BEST) Adventure of Our Lives!

2007-06-08T10:28:00.000-06:00

As promised in our last post, the next adventure of our lives has officially begun, and boy are we excited! On May 31st at 10:33am our little baby boy was born! Many of you know Allyson and I have been going through the adoption process with LDS Family Services for quite a while. Our second weekend in the UK our case worker emailed us saying she wanted to talk to both of us as soon as possible. We saw the email at about 7am UK time so we had to wait until that evening before we could call and talk. (One of our first posts on this blog was our trip into downtown London. That was our attempt at distracting ourselves for the day so we wouldn't think too much about what the call with our case worker would bring.)

Needless to say, we were absolutely thrilled (that is to say, ecstatic, elated, excited, gladdened, joyous, jubilant, overjoyed) when we found out that a birth mom had picked us to be the parents of her little baby boy! The birth mom, Katie, dropped off a Tonka truck filled with clothes and a teddy bear to our case worker (Kris) to announce that she had selected us.
Then the waiting began...

Kris told us to email Katie about once a week, which we did religiously. The only problem was the weeks went by and we didn't hear back from her. We didn't feel like we could announce to our family until we were sure it was for real. After about 3 weeks we finally called Kris and asked her if she had heard from Katie. Kris was kind enough to call Katie's case worker so she should encourage Katie to write us. We were so relieved when we finally heard from Katie!

We could hardly wait to tell our families, so we quickly put together a slide show of The Top 10 Things We'll Remember Most About England. (Of course, the announcement was number one.)We waited until we were on a call with as many as we could before emailing the slide show so that we could hear reactions. (Unfortunately, we missed many of your reactions - sorry!) We wish we could have caught all of the reactions on tape!

Then, of course, the waiting continued. But this time many of you joined in!

We continued to write to Katie throughout our stay in the UK and when we returned to the US we met with them in person several times before the baby was born. We've really felt blessed to have Katie come into our lives. She and her family are wonderful and we feel so privileged that she chose us!

Now, onto the real reason you've come looking on the blog...baby pictures!

Little Brigham Jared Cook was born on May 31st weighing 6 pounds, 9 ounces and measuring 19 inches long. We know he is the handsomest baby alive! :)

Katie and the baby stayed in the hospital on Thursday and Friday and were discharged on Saturday. They stayed in a hotel Saturday night to have a little extra time with the baby away from the doctors and nurses. The placement took place Sunday at noon at LDS Family Services in Centerville. What an incredible experience! At the time of the actual placement the case workers asked Katie if she was ready. Katie held the baby so close and kissed him on the head. Tears fell from her eyes onto the baby's head. She stood and carefully placed the baby into Allyson's arms and told him how much she loved him. She kissed him on the head once more and then, with her parents, had to leave. We felt so much for Katie and her parents. We know this was not an easy thing for them and continue to pray for them. On the other hand, we are absolutely thrilled to have Brigham in our home! We have felt an instant love for him and just can't get enough!

The last week has flown by. Every moment has been so precious, and man, is this baby loved!

Brigham is an absolute angel! He wakes up once or twice a night, takes a bottle and goes back to sleep. He hardly fusses at all when we change him, burp him, or even bathe him. Allyson and I have been on cloud nine! Can life get better than this? What a blessing!

Grand Finale Trip!

2007-05-27T13:14:00.000-06:00

We've been such slackers with out blog lately! Sorry about that to any of you who are looking at it and not seeing anything new!

Considering that we've now been home in the Good Ol' USA for over a month now, we'll just quickly sum up what we termed our "Grand Finale Trip" in Europe.

We took the last 5 days we had to see a little more of Germany and Switzerland. We started out by flying in to Frankfurt Friday night (April 13th). Saturday morning Jared took me to Bad Vilbel to show me where he lived when his family moved out there in high school. It was great to see the area that I've heard so many stories about and was a wonderful chance for Jared to reminisce some more.

In the town of Bad Vilbel they have a natural spring. Jared took a sip and pretended it was really good. I was so surprised when I took my turn because it was a natural MINERAL spring--YUCK!No trip to Germany is complete without a cruise on the Autoban! No speedlimits lots of the time! Can you say zoom, zoom!
That afternoon we drove to a town called Rottenberg. This is a fun little town surrounded by a big wall with tons of shops inside. We looked all afternoon for a souvenir that we'd actually use and ended up purchasing a nutcracker doll. We were very excited! It was a really enjoyable day!
That night we drove on to Munich and stayed there on Sunday. We found a ward that afternoon, but it was a german ward so I can't say that we understood a lot. But, it was nice to feel of the Spirit in their meetings. That afternoon we went to a concentration camp called Dachau. It was really sobering, but very interesting to see. We both left feeling kind of depressed so we had to sing hymns to cheer us up. :)
Monday landed us in a town called Schwangua. Just down the hill from the Neuschwanstien castle. This is the castle that Disney based their logo on. We enjoyed hiking to the castle and back and just enjoying the beautiful scenery of the area.
Later that afternoon we started toward Switzerland purposely driving on the back roads so that we could experience more of Germany. It was really beautiful and we even found a little town to stop at where we enjoyed more authentic bratwurst (which I'm still shocked that I like now) and some more Italian Gelato. YUM!
We spent Tuesday and Wednesday in Interlaken, Switzerland. The landscape was incredible! We really enjoyed the area (besides the fact that it was so incredibly expensive)! It was so beautiful and we took the days to relax a bit more.

The first day we mainly spent visiting waterfalls. They were really spectacular and there were plenty to see

The second day was partially spent biking between the small surrounding towns along the lake Thun. We had a great time and really enjoyed being out on our own exploring!

The rest of the time both of those days was spent shopping, relaxing, and eating REALLY GOOD food! Our favorite thing to eat in Switzerland was the fondue! We had the cheese fondue for two different meals and even splurged some more for some chocolate fondue for dessert the last night that we were there.
We flew back to England early Thursday morning and spent the day closing cell phone and bank accounts and getting all packed up and ready to fly home the following day (April 20th).

We had such a marvelous adventure living in the UK. We learned so much and had a wonderful time! We're now so happy to be home and have really enjoyed being back near our families and friends!

Most of you know that our next adventure in life started really soon after we got home. So stay tuned for our next post (within the next week).

Easter in Copenhagen!

2007-04-11T16:39:00.000-06:00

We flew out to Copenhagen early Sunday morning because Jared had some training to do there on Tuesday. This time I got to come along so we decided to go out a day earlier than he would have gone on his own, so I could see the city. Unfortunately the weather was really cold and really wet so it was more R&R for me than site-seeing.

Aside from missing our families for the Easter holiday, we really enjoyed being in Denmark for Easter Sunday! We found the ward and chapel there without any problems and luckily they had headsets, so we were able to understand the speakers. They had such a nice spirit in their meeting - we were really glad that we made it!

After the meeting the Temple president took us down the road to the Copenhagen Temple. It is one of the mini temples, but still very beautiful. Unfortunately, we weren't able to attend because of Jared's crazy work schedule and the limited hours of operation, but we were so glad that we were able to see it!

Jared also prepared an Easter devotional for us that evening, so we really had a nice day!

I was able to steal Jared away for a very short time on Monday. We went and saw Den Lil Havrue aka The Little Mermaid statue, walked through the nearby Kastellet - A Copenhagen Fortress, and went to Vor Frue Kirke - a church which houses the original Christus statue.

This picture was taken at the Kastellet! It was nice to have a little bit of time with Jared!

The rest of our time in Copenhagen was TONS of working for Jared and some city walks, exercising, and relaxing time for me.

I liked the view from out hotel - this is a picture from the bridge near the hotel. I'm amazed at all the water in other areas of the world! I guess that's what you get when you come from a desert, right?

Well, that's about it for Copenhagen - Not too exciting, I know - but that's what you get when you travel for business purposes instead of for play, right?

The next one will be more exciting! ;)

Our last England weekend!

2007-04-08T16:07:00.000-06:00

Well, we're officially on the home-stretch now. This last week has been a great one! We took the chance to go and see Mary Poppins in theatre on Tuesday, April 3rd. We absolutely loved the show and left there on cloud nine!

One word says it all, "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!"

This last weekend was our last Saturday in England - We can't believe how fast the time has passed! Amazingly, we couldn't think of anything we'd rather do than hang around Staines and it's surrounding areas to soak in just a little more of all that we've loved out here.

We started the day out with a walk/jog down the Thames river. We've loved the tranquility of the river and it's so nice now that the weather has been getting warmer, the trees are leafing out, and the flowers are blooming!

We are always so amazed at how comfortable the birds are around people. These swans weren't even phased that Jared & I were coming up to them and hanging around for a while. (...and we didn't even have any bread or anything to feed them.)
We've also been very interested in the Locks out here, but have never seen one in use. We were thrilled (I know that sounds silly) when we got to see it used twice on Saturday while we were walking up and down the river. It must be that the weather is warming up and the boats are being taken out more now. Either that or we've always had really bad timing! j/k
After heading home and cleaning up, we headed over to the Hampton Court area (about a 10-15 minute drive). We didn't go inside this time, but enjoyed walking around the grounds, visiting a shop or two, and just relaxing again by the river Thames.
One of the most random parts of the day occured on our way home that afternoon. We were driving past Kempton Park Race Course when we saw that they had free parking. So we drove in and watched a race from the parking lot. (Of course we didn't see who won, but it was pretty cool to see how incredibly fast the horses and jockies could run a mile.)
We really enjoyed taking it easy and just enjoying the beauty that's been around us for these last few months! Our time out here really has been "lovely!"

Biking the Isle of Wight

2007-04-01T11:09:00.000-06:00

We can hardly believe that another week has come and gone. Three more weeks and counting! But don't think that we are getting trunky, there is still a lot of "work" to be done before we come home. This weekend Allyson and I headed South to a place called the Isle of Wight (just off the southern coast of England).

Saturday morning we woke up around 6:00 and drove about 1.5 hours to Lymington. From there we took a 30-minute ferry ride to Yarmouth and quickly found a shop where we could hire two bikes for the day and started off on our journey. We biked along a beautiful coastal trail that wove between the ocean and farm land. Here's Allyson carrying her bike up a long stair case from the ocean to the upper trail. I tried to get her to carry mine too but she said I had to work off my gut!
Our destination was a placed called "The Needles" which is a series of rock formations on the tip of the island. It was kind of hazy, but it turned out to be a really nice day.
The trail eventually lead us into a small town where we saw this old thatched-roof church. We also found an authentic beer fest--crazy music and all--but decided to push on.

My favorite part was meeting my life-long hero, Cookie Monster. He and I shared a few rounds of "C is for Cookie".
On the ferry ride back the wind was pretty strong so we saw a bunch of sail boats that looked like they were going to tip over.

Question: Where else in the world can you start with 190 pounds, burn 28 on a bike, burn another 20 on a meal and end up with 195?
Answer: Two words, Ask Norm.

Cheers!

Loch Ness Monster...Here we come!

2007-03-25T15:09:00.000-06:00

Sunday (March 18th) took me with the family up to Scotland. (Jared headed off to Copenhagen the same day to work there for a few days.) We flew into Inverness and headed down past Loch Ness to a town called Invergarry where we stayed at the Glengarry Castle Hotel B&B. This was the view from our B&B. It was right on Loch Oich. I thought it was so beautiful! I'm sure you can also tell that it was VERY, VERY cold up in Scotland while we were there!
On Monday we travelled up to the Kilravock Castle (pronounced Kil-rock). It is the home of the Clan Rose, so we were excited to see it. We can't be sure that our ancestors were a part of this clan, but it makes sense that they may have been. The ancestor that we've been stuck on (Daniel Rose) left his family when he was young. We believe he left one of the surrounding areas near the castle, but we don't know who his parents were so we can only guess that they were related. Regardless, it was really neat to see the castle and learn about the Clan Rose. I especially liked their family motto, "Constant and True."
I wish I had a better picture of the castle. I'll have to get one from Mike who was able to take a picture from a better view point with his wide-angle lens. After touring the castle we went out into the snowy gardens. They have an amazing arboretum. I haven't seen trees like some of these before. They were so beautiful!
. . . and cold :)

Tuesday took us to the Isle of Skye. An island on the west side of Scotland. We spent the day driving around to see the sites, stopping for a short hike, visiting castle ruins, and one of my favorite parts was the waterfalls. This one was particularly interesting. I think it is called Kilt Falls. It came right out of the cliffs and fell into the ocean. It was really spectacular! . . . and very cold, once again!

We flew back to England on Wednesday so we just spent the morning driving through the scenic countryside. We also stopped for a short while at Fort George, but opted not to go in past the gift shop.

Note: No Loch Ness monster sited on this visit to Scotland. Too bad!

We've really enjoyed having family visit us! Thanks for coming all the way out here, guys! We love you all and will see you back home in less than a month!

p.s. This last weekend Jared & I finally took it easy. We spent a few hours shopping near Windsor and then just hung out and relaxed the rest of the day. A very welcome break from the pace we've been keeping! :)

Family, Family, We Love Family!

2007-03-25T15:05:00.000-06:00

Hey All! Sorry that we've taken so long to post to the blog lately. So...we'll go quick and a little more sparse on details in our attempts to catch back up.

A few weeks ago (on March 13th) my mom, brother, Mike, and Grandma & Grandpa came into town. We were so excited to see more family!

The first day they were here we visited Windsor Castle (below). We loved watching the guards march around the grounds and change shifts periodically. (It wasn't the official procession, but still really cool to watch.) The afternoon was spent resting up (for Mike this meant HOURS of resting) and walking around Staines with Grandma & Mom. (We also had fun feeding the swans!)
The following two days were spent in London. Mike took the tube for the first time and was a natural! He was so good at getting around on it - I was really impressed!

Between the two days we visited the Tower of London, Tower Bridge, St. Pauls Cathedral, Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Trafalgar Square, and the Imperial War Museum. (Talk about a packed couple of days, huh?)

I had seen a lot of London before, so my favorite part was probably the Tower of London. We followed their complementary guided tour. The guide was AMAZING and so much fun to listen to. We really enjoyed our time there!

It was fantastic to have Dad come and join us on Friday! Once we got him to the apartment and settled in we were all off (except for poor Jared who had to stay home and work, work, work) to Hampton Court Palace. We toured part of the palace and the gardens and went through the maze too. (Although the maze wasn't that difficult . . . a little anti-climatic if you ask me.)

My favorite part were the gardens. They were all starting to bloom and the flowers were so brilliant!

Finally Saturday came along and Jared was able to join us in our adventures! We headed up to Warwick Castles and immediately got Jared & I in the stocks for pictures!

Warwick Castle has probably been my favorite of the castles so far. I really liked their Kingmaker exhibit. It was really life-like and very interesting to look at.

I think Jared's favorite part might have been torturing Michael. What do you think?
We had a great time together at Warwick Castle! Here's a shot of all of us together - How cute! ;)
After Warwick we headed off to try to give the family a taste of a couple of the Cotswold towns. Mom & Dad had been there before, but it was new to the others. We stopped in Stow-on-the-wold, drove through Bourton-on-the-water, and stopped again in Bibury.

Here's a picture of Grandma, Grandpa, Mom and Dad on Arlington Row in Bibury. Isn't it beautiful?

We had a great time having the family stay with us here in Staines! They were such great sports! We were all packed in like sardines, but it was great to see them up until bedtime and again at the crack of dawn! :)

Betws-y-Coed

2007-03-12T03:21:00.000-06:00

Wales, Wales, we love Wales!

Well, we enjoyed Wales so much last time that we decided to go there again this last weekend. This time we went to North Wales -- into the Snowdonia National Park area. It was around a four hour drive so we left after work Friday night and stayed in a Bed and Breakfast in the small town of Betws-y-Coed (which means 'Sanctuary in the Wood'). We were so surprised when we woke up in the morning to see what we had driven through in the dark the night before. Tons of green fields, mountains (if you can believe it or not), forests, a river running through it all, and sheep all around!

We had a great time that morning just wandering around the small town, visiting the local church and graveyard, climbing a tree, crossing a suspension bridge and admiring the sheep with their baby lambs. It was so much fun to just watch the baby lambs run around. (Their bounding kind of reminded us of the lamb in the "Bound and Re-Bound" clip that you see at the beginning of the movie The Incredibles.) :)
After that we headed off to a local waterfall - Swallow Falls. They were really amazing and we enjoyed walking to the different levels of the falls. This part was my favorite - plus, doesn't Jared look so handsome! ;)
After that we decided to take a hike in their mountains. The hike was a pretty good one, but the wind was blowing so hard that we didn't get to enjoy it as much as we would have liked to. Oh, well! The view was still very pretty!
On our way home we stopped in a town called Froncysyllte to see their famous aqueduct: The Pontcysyllte Aqueduct! This aqueduct is the longest and highest one in Britain. Beyond the fact that small boats can travel across it there is also a walking path on it, so of course we had to walk across it. Although I have to say that it even made me question whether I was afraid of heights or not. I gathered that I was okay because there was a railing, but if there hadn't been I don't think I could have crossed it. It was a great stop and we're really glad that we got to see it in the day light!

We had another great weekend! It's so much fun to go out and see what you can find. It makes me think that we need to do it a lot more at home.

We also have to add the funny two things we came across whilst driving between Wales and back home in Staines.

First, amidst the fields of sheep we came across a "karting" course. Pretty much a race course for kart racing. We stopped to watch the racing. Pretty funny amidst all of the green fields of sheep to find a race course like that.

Second, was the Indoor Snow Ski resort that we came across when we stopped for dinner. It was the strangest thing to find man-made snow indoors along with a lift, slopes, and snow skiers decked out just like they would be back at home for a day on the real (outdoor) slopes. Pretty ingenuitive!

Well, that's all folks! Blog ya later! ;)

Florence & Venice

2007-03-06T06:19:00.000-07:00

We arrived in Florence Friday afternoon. It had been a crazy drive there and we were glad to finally be parked and on our feet. (I've decided that driving in Florence makes Utah drivers look REALLY good!)

We didn't have very much daylight left when we got to Florence so we don't have many pictures to share. We stopped by the Ponte Veccio. (A famous bridge there with shops all along the top of it.) We enjoyed walking along the river and across the bridge and then up the the Piazzale Michelangelo a terrace above the city that gave a wonderful view of the town and also had a replica of the David statue in it. We enjoyed more pizza in Florence, but the gelato shops were all closed by the time we finished dinner so we had to pass on that for the rest of the night! Too bad! :(

We drove on to Bologna for the night. What a bunch of Bologna! We had a hard time finding our way around and finding a hotel to stay in. (We'd recommend booking your hotels in advance!) We finally found one for a pretty penny and got a short night sleep before waking up Saturday morning to drive the rest of the way to Venice.

We were so happy to finally get to Venice, drop off the rental car, and get onto the island! It was so pretty! (Hey, have you noticed that we haven't been in coats for any of these pictures? The weather in Italy was lovely and the coldest it got was jacket weather when we were in the shade or in the evenings.)

Of course, we had pizza there too! YUMMY!
We spent a lot of time just walking around the streets (that are mainly pedestrian streets) and exploring the town. The buildings here were also so amazing. They were just like what I've seen in so many movies - how magical!We had to stop by the Piazza San Marco. It was filled with more beautiful buildings, but Jared and Ira enjoyed the pidgeons the most! (For me, I just lived in fright that I was going to get pooped on again! But, I was lucky enough that it didn't happen.) The boys had so much fun feeding the birds and letting them land on them.
I'm guessing that one of their favorite parts was the scaring the birds part! It was so funny!
We spent a while shopping for souvenirs too. Rachelle, Ira and I got sweatshirts and Jared got a t-shirt. (The sweatshirts were too small and didn't have long enough sleeves for him - poor guy!)

I was amazed at how much water their was everywhere on the island. I should have expected that, but was still shocked by it all. We crossed too many bridges to count and saw so much water. We even got to take a Water Bus a couple of times to get from place to place. One of my favorite parts was our gondola ride. It was a nice relaxing end to our afternoon in Venice. Our guide did a great job and pointed out a lot of historic buildings throughout the ride. He was even decked out in the stiped shirt and all.

We had a great time and enjoyed more gelato in Venice. For dinner Saturday night some of us were "pizza'd-out" so we tried some not so wonderful lasagna. The sad part is that the best part of that meal were the french fries that Rachelle ordered and shared with everyone. They tasted just like the best American french fries you've ever had. Now I can't stop craving them! :)

We stayed in a hotel in Mestre (on the mainland) that night and were able to walk around for a couple more hours on Sunday, before we had to head to the airport to fly back to England.

We really enjoyed our time in Italy! It was lots of fun and great company! We love you all and miss you a ton! We can't wait to see you. (Six more weeks!)

Pizza in Pisa!

2007-03-06T02:56:00.000-07:00

We have had a great time with Rachelle & Ira in town. Jared took a couple of days off of work so that we could go and be with them in Italy.

Day 1 started off with an incredibly early morning, again. (We are getting really good at waking up at 3 am to try to catch the flights we want.) After flying into Pisa we picked up our rental car equipped with a navigation system which we later learned only spoke in Italian - Oh, My! We made do though and after stalling the car a few times and making a few wrong turns we made it to the train station where we were meeting Rachelle & Ira (who had spent the previous day and a half in Rome). Our first point of business was to go and see the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It was pretty amazing to look at and surrounded by other marvelous buildings and a ton of street vendors who tried selling us just about everything you can imagine possible. We had a lot of fun walking around the area, taking pictures, and then off down a nearby street to find some authentic Italian food!

It didn't take long at all to find a great pizzeria where we all ate pizza or calzones and then a gelateria across the street for a taste of the famous Italian Ice Cream! And boy is it as good as everyone says it is. (I think we had pizza and gelato every day we were in Italy!)

After spending a few hours in Pisa it was time to head off to Cinque Terre. An area about an hour north of Pisa where there are five small towns along the Italian coastline. The drive was amazing and we enjoyed stopping along the way to look at the views and take some pictures. We even found a little train on a track that they have in a lot of the towns. I'm quessing they are used to transport the people and their harvests (maybe of grapes) up and down the steep terrain of the area. We stopped to get some information in the first of the five towns (heading from south to north), Riomaggiore. It looked like a pretty neat place, but we didn't stay long because we wanted to get a hike in to another town before dark. We drove on past the next town, Manarola, without stopping. The drive was nice and we were so excited. We stopped in the third town Corniglia where a fabulous gentleman gave us instructions on where to park and where to start hiking. Because we would be spending the night in the next town we all packed our own backpacks with clean clothes (or at least clean underwear and a shirt) for the next day, and headed out.

The hike from Corniglia to Vernazza was amazing! It was a lot of fun to walk along the coast and see the greenery, cliffs, and sea down below. It took us about an hour and a half including stops for picture breaks (which also served the purpose of giving us a chance to catch our breath)! We were so excited to get to Vernazza. It was amazing. Most of the streets weren't even car accessible and most of the buildings were attached to each other and built into the landscape! We loved that the town was down at sea level and stopped for pictures. We got a few before one HUGE wave came and got us. Rachelle, Ira, and Jared all got away in time to only get minimally wet, but I got completely soaked! (I guess it didn't help that I ran cross-country and track in high school, huh?) :)

Hope you enjoy the Before and After photos below!

BEFOREAFTER
(Believe me, I was even wetter than I look in this picture!)

We hadn't booked a place to stay while there so we walked around and finally knocked on a man's door that had a sign for rooms posted by it. He took us to a small room that had two twin beds pushed together and two cots that we could use too. We took it gratefully and all shared a cozy night together!

The next morning we were up and at 'em again. We hiked from Vernazza to Monterosso. The hike was about the same length and lots of stairs up and down. We were exhausted by the time we made it to the town. But again, the hiking was amazing!

We loved the beauty of the towns in Cinque Terre. It was fun to get a more untouched view of what old Italy is like. We especially loved the colors and architecture of their buildings! We ended our adventures in Cinque Terra half way through the day on Friday. We loved our time there and would have enjoyed spending more except that we had other things on the agenda for the weekend.

Bed Bath & Beyond

2007-02-25T13:06:00.000-07:00

Yeah, we have visitors! Rachelle and Ira arrived early Friday morning and boy have we had loads of fun. Because our car doesn't have very much leg room, Ira sat in the front passenger side--which gave him a front row seat to the crazy UK driving! Hoping to get them over jetlag as quickly as possible they decided they wanted to keep moving the whole day.

Allyson took them into downtown London Friday to see all the major sites. They started out at Buckingham Palace to see the Queen (and of course, the guards changing...shifts, not clothes ;) ).
The palace grounds are also starting to bloom. Can you believe it? Blooms in Feburary!
They then headed off to see Big Ben, Westmister Abbey, and Parliament Square. I was able to join them in the afternoon at the open air market where we all enjoyed some authentic fish and chips! (Chelle even liked them!) After that we swung by St. Paul's Cathedral and then on to the Tower Bridge where we finished our afternoon of touring.
Ira & I enjoyed messing around with the hands-on demos in the engine room of Tower Bridge.
By this point, Rachelle & Ira were beyond themselves with exhaustion. They finally fell asleep on the train ride back to Staines. (This is the "bed" part of Bath & Beyond--nighty-night!)
Saturday was another great day together! We headed out to Stonehenge which was much better than we thought it would be. We had a lot of fun goofing off there and listening to the audio tours they had there - or the abbreviated version of the audio tour that Jared summarized for those of us with a shorter attention span.
Stonehenge really raised a lot of questions: "What were these stones used for?" "How long have they been here?" "How did they get here?"
Jared & Ira pondered on these questions far too long!

After that we headed on to the town of Bath. We were surprised how large the town was. We swung by the river Avon and snapped a picture there and then we headed off to catch a glimpse of the Roman Baths.
Aren't the scarf and hats that Rachelle made for us so cute! Thanks, Chelle!

We didn't quite make it to the baths before we decided to stop and see a street performer. He was great and so much fun to watch! We're starting to wonder what it is about the way that Jared looks. This is because he got pulled out of the crowd to help out again. (That's twice in one week.) Check out the video I took of him helping out the performer with one of his acts!

After the show and snatching a bite to eat at a local pub we finally stopped by the Roman Baths. Unfortunately, without paying for the full fledged tour, you could only get a little view of the Baths. I guess you get what you pay for, right?
We thought about swinging by one of the little Cotswold towns on our way home, but decided not to for the sake of time. It's a good thing too, because we still got home pretty late.

We've really enjoyed having Rachelle and Ira around! Now they are in Paris for a couple of days and then down to Italy for a day or two before we go down to join them!

Stay tuned . . .

Deutschland Ist Wunderbar!

2007-02-25T12:50:00.000-07:00

In the words of Chris Farley, for those of you who don't "spreken sie deutsch", "Deutschland Ist Wunderbar" is German for..."Deutschland is Wunderbar!" :)

Sorry that we are a little late on our blog for the last two weekends! So, here's our quick attempt to catch up!

Two weekends ago (Feb. 17th) we took the chance to go and see Germany. This was a first time for me and I thought it was GREAT! Jared got a call the day before to let him know that he would be working in Hamburg the following week. So, we hurriedly put together flights, hotels, and things to see--all in less than 24 hours.

We flew to Berlin Saturday morning and spent Saturday and Sunday there. We had a great time and saw a lot of neat sites. We loved seeing Brandenburg Gate. While we were there we watched some street performers and Jared got called out of the crowd to assist in the show!
He did a great job! I loved watching him perform! ;)

Later we walked to the Tower of Victory. AKA: Angel Moroni's wife -- At least that's what the missionaries in Berlin called it when Jared did splits with them back in the day! We hiked up to the top and both made guesses on how many stairs we would end up climbing. Jared guessed 847 and I guessed 543. We were both miserably off - we only had to climb 282 stairs. Luckily, it lead to a nice view and some really cool tiled walls on the tower.
Probably one of my favorite parts was Check Point Charlie. They had a whole wall of pictures and snippets of history that were easy to read through and easy to understand. It was nice to have a reminder of the history of the area since it's been so long since learning about it in history class.
We also enjoyed walking through town, eating bratwurst (if you can believe it or not) and doner kebabs, seeing part of the Berlin wall, and going to a German speaking ward (although I think we only understand a sentance or two of the entire meeting). We didn't really enjoy the freezing cold temperatures or the "sparkling mineral wasser" though. :)

Sunday night we took the train and headed up to Hamburg where Jared would be working for the week. I enjoyed going out for a couple of hours each day to see some of the sites. One of my favorites was the Hamburg city hall. It was a beautiful building! Jared worked really hard and very long hours this week so he didn't really see much more than the train station and hotel. (Too Bad.)
We flew back to London on Thursday and were glad to return to a more regular routine.

Night at the OPERA!

2007-02-16T02:11:00.000-07:00

We've been hoping to go to the theatre sometime while here in London, but up until now we hadn't made it to a show.

Lucky we were in London last weekend, so while we were in London for the day we decided to take the plunge and swing by a ticket office to purchase tickets to Her Majestys Theatre.
Well, Thursday night has come and gone now, and can I say boy were we excited by the time it arrived. Actually we've been excited about it all week long!

So, last night after Jared was finished with work, we got all fixed up, jumped on the train, and headed downtown with our tickets to the Opera . . . .

. . . that is The Phantom of the Opera, to be exact!

Jared hadn't seen the show before, so it was really fun to watch him get excited to see something he knew so little about. We loved the show and the cast did a great job! It made for a great Valentines gift to each other and a great night out enjoying the arts!

Eastern Hemisphere . . . Here we come!!!

2007-02-11T13:53:00.000-07:00

Well, we decided that we needed a break from our BIG weekend get-aways . . . so, we decided to just go and visit the "Eastern Hemisphere" for the morning!

...So, we headed out for Greenwich park in London. What a HUGE and beautiful park it was too!
Crossing over the Greenwich meridian line into the eastern hemisphere was a very monumental moment. At least Jared thought so until we realized that we had already crossed over the line (without knowing it) while walking through the park to get into the museum. Oops!!!
We REALLY enjoyed the Royal Observatory museum! It was really cool to learn how they figured out how to work out the "longitude problem." We also enjoyed seeing and learning about the amazing clocks they had there.

Later in the afternoon we went and visited the Natural History museum. Maybe we do come from monkeys after all - Can't you see the resemblance?
We were pretty tired so we only spent an hour or two there before heading next door to the Science museum. It was pretty cool to see how technology has changed and developed as the years have gone by. I especially liked seeing the progression from horse and buggy to the modern day automobile!Their flight exhibit was also really neat to look through!
We enjoyed our day in London again and this time had a much better dinner experience there! By the way, Brian - guess what Jared had for lunch? Bratwurst and saurkraut! Yum!

We also purchased theatre tickets for later in the week, so stayed tuned . . . .

Love you all!

Traditional English Meal (blood not included)

2007-02-04T12:01:00.000-07:00

(FYI. If this blog loads slow or doesn't load all the images, try it with the "www" as in http://www.jaredandallyson.blogspot.com)

A few weeks ago, after only two weeks of being in England, we were invited to a ward member's house for dinner. We were excited to get to know this older couple, but we were also kind of nervous because we didn't know what to expect for dinner. Before we left Utah everyone warned us about the English cooking and told us to steer clear of anything with "blood" or "pudding" in the name.

As we drove to this couple's house, we tried to prepare ourselves to be grateful and polite. I made up my mind that I would eat whatever they served...no matter what. For those with a weak stomach, read on at your own risk :) (j/k)

While we waited for dinner to cook, the couple's granddaughter brought out a list of what was on the menu for dinner. Most everything on the list sounded great--baked chicken, roasted potatoes, carrots, cauliflower, roasted parsnips. One thing on the list though made me a little anxious--Yorkshire pudding. There it was...pudding. Immediately, my imagination kicked in. What was this pudding, and where is Yorkshire anyway? Does it have anything to do with strange animal body parts?

Well, anyone who knows what a Yorkshire pudding is knows I shouldn't have been worried at all. A Yorkshire pudding is like roll, but tastes more like the pastry part of an eclair. In all honesty, the meal was DELICIOUS! So good, in fact, we've made the same meal at home twice since. So anyone planning on coming to visit, pack your bags and come hungry!

Biking Brecon Beacons - Try to say that 5 times fast!

2007-02-04T11:45:00.000-07:00

So, you're back for more of the Chronicles of Jared & Allyson, eh? This weekend's adventure was thrown together at the last minute, but Allyson did an awesome job!

Jared & I decided last week that we needed something a little more "active" this weekend. We had no idea what we were really getting ourselves into. (But then again, do we ever?)

We drove early Saturday morning about three hours over into South Wales. We had found a National Park there call the Brecon Beacons National Park and had called to reserve bikes for the day on Saturday.

We were really excited to get going, but immediately found that it was really cold (and foggy) when we started in the morning. I actually wondered if my fingers, toes, nose, and ears were going to freeze off - Luckily no body parts were lost in the making of our weekend adventures!

It was so amazing because we just road along small roads and paths through the countryside. There were canals and rivers along a lot of the paths and beautiful flields of sheep and cottages along the way too. Jared even enjoyed our journey even though it was all very "quaint" (especially because a bike was involved)!

Our turn around point was at Talybont Reservoir, but we didn't leave right away. It was so beautiful and the temperature had risen to a piping 50 degrees so we had to stay and relax and enjoy the scenery!

We also really enjoyed seeing all the sheep! I don't really think that they say "baa baa" after all. (At least the Welsh ones don't.) I think it's more like "maa maa." At one point Jared wanted to pet them and we stopped and tried to lure the sheep to come over. You should have heard him! He even tried to call them with the chant from the movie "Babe." (Baa Ram Ewe, Baa Ram, Ewe . . . ) When that didn't work he asked them to "Come Follow Me" but that didn't work either. He was disappointed that he didn't get to touch one, but hopefully he'll get an opportunity another time. (I think I made him feel jealous, because one of the sheep did let me touch him.)

On our way back to Brecon we stopped in another village at the local pub. I ate fish and chips and Jared had sausage and chips. I have never even heard of that option on a menu, but it was really good!

All in all, we were gone biking from about 10:30 - 5:00. (So while most of you were sleeping on the other side of the world we were biking like crazy - You snooze, you lose! J/K)
Anyway, it was a beautiful, more relaxing day than some of the others. The only crazy part was that we still returned home exhausted and with sore backsides!

Love you all!

Cheers!

The Cotswolds - Weekend in the Country

2007-01-28T12:22:00.000-07:00

This week we decided to get away from the busy cities and head to the country side. My boss, Mick, is away on vacation for a couple of weeks and, as they say, "When the cat's away..."

Actually, he offered to let us stay in his "little" cottage in the country. Up above is an ariel view from Google Maps. This place was surrounded by thick trees and beautiful hills. Like everything else in England, the house was built a long time ago, but it was very nice. Friday morning we went for a jog through the fields and up Beacon Hill. In medieval times Beacon Hill was used to light a huge fire and send messages from one city to another (just like in Lord of the Rings!).

Friday, I worked from Mick's home office and that night Allyson and I played in his "games" room and watched a movie.
Saturday morning we drove an hour north-west of Mick's home into the region called the Cotswold. Men beware! Cotswold is just another name for a 90-mile radius of what Allyson would call, "little quaint villages dotted with antique shops and other cute stuff." In spite of this, I still managed to have a good time.

Our first stop was in a little town called Chipping Campden. They had awesome buildings and tons of shops to walk through. They also had a very cool church complete with grave yard, ruins, and sheep grazing throughout and in near by fields. (Eat your heart out Mum!)

Our next stop was to a town called Stow-on-the-Wold. Supposedly it's the coldest and highest of the Cotswold towns placing itself on top of a very lofty plateau at 700 feet above sea level. (Doesn't sound very high to those in Utah does it?!?!)

They had even more shops than the first town, a beautiful church with stained glass windows (and a super cool north porch door as seen below) and . . .

. . . best of all was the "tea and crumpets!" (or Hot Chocolate and scones - that counts, right?)

For sake of time we just drove through the villages of Upper and Lower Slaughter. They had amazing buildings though and were very "quaint!"

One of our favorite parts was the parking lot that we found in Lower Slaughter. In a lot of probably about 40 parking places there were 16 Porsche cars. Jared was in heaven (and believe it or not, so was I)!

The procession continued with us heading to the town of Bourton-on-the-Water. This town is know for having a whole bunch of bridges across the River Windrush - It was very cool!

We should also say that this town is also now know to us as the land of bird poop! (Sorry for the language!) All Allyson can say is "Aargh, YUCK!!!" But, once we got that cleaned up, we still really got to enjoy the 1/9th scale model of the village and walking the beautiful streets!

The last of the villages that we were able to see before dark hit was Bibury. It was sure beautiful!

We were amazed at the beauty found in the church yard and bet that the rose bush trees are fabulous in bloom. Sadly, we didn't see them that way, but amazingly we could still smell some of the fragrance. Peculiar, huh?

We also appreciated the signs written to the dogs that said "DOGS PLEASE DO NOT FOUL THE CHURCHYARD." We wonder if that really works?!?!

They had beautiful trails and water all around!

What a nice quaint, quiet town!

We also stopped by one more town called Tetbury, but we didn't really see any sights, we mainly just went for our first dinner in a pub! Yeah, crazy huh? We had pork loin and pizza - guess who had what.

We love you all and miss you tons!

How do you say, "Sorry, you're too late" in French?

2007-01-21T12:01:00.000-07:00

Well, our one day trip into Paris actually worked out to be 1.5 days. Read on...

The plan was to get going at the crack of dawn...ok, 3 hours before the crack of dawn. We woke up at 4am, packed a single backpack of just the bare necessities for the day. Leaving at 4:30am we walked the 15 minutes to the nearest train station and caught the first train to the London Waterloo station. We were excited for the day, but feeling pretty tired because we were up until midnight the night before.
We only had to wait about 20 minutes between getting off the local train and onto the Eurostar train. The Eurostar is that train in Mission Impossible that goes over 200 miles per hour! Unfortunately, we didn't see too much of the country side because we both slept the first 2 hours :) The last half hour before arriving in Paris was beautiful though. The green rolling hills (surprising for Jan!), tiny towns with old church steeples, and trains flying by in the opposite direction.

The first order of business when we arrived at the Gare du Nord train station was to get a map and buy an all-day pass for the metro. That part was easy enough. We found another tourist couple who knew the metro better than we did and they showed us the best way to the Eiffel Tower.

The Eiffel Tower was by far the BEST part of Paris. We took the elevator clear to the tippy top. The views were awesome and despite the cold, high winds we had an absolute blast!
After the Tower, we took the metro to Notre Dame to find Quasi Moto. We didn't find him, but we did find a yummy Donor Kebab in the nearby Latin Quarter. That's right, DONOR KEBAB. Jason, Travis, Brian -- Wipe the drool off your keyboard! :) Not quite as good as the German version, but still pretty tasty!
By this time it started to rain so we picked up a cheap umbrella--our only real souvenir from Paris :( We were determined to not let it get us down though, so we headed off to get some real French culture at the Louvre. The good news was...at least it wasn't closed. The bad news was that we had only 1 hour before it did! Oh well, we ran to check out the Mona Lisa and then wandered around for the rest of the time. Can you say, "naked statues?" :) But, for the sake of the children, here's the edited version.
When we left the Louvre we had 2 1/2 hours before we had to be back to the train station
so we figured we could get some dinner then jet back to the Eiffel Tower for a few night-time pictures. We went back to the Latin Quarter for dinner and found one of the many "authentic" French restaurants serving cheese fondue. At first we were pretty apprehensive, given our, shall we say, "less than scrumptious" meal at China Town the weekend before. We couldn't understand a thing on the menu (it was all in French, if you can believe that!) Finally, we just asked the waiter (who didn't speak much English) to give us something good :)

I thought the cheese fondue was delicious, and Allyson liked it too. They gave us bread, potatoes and various meats to dip in the melted cheese. Yum!
We left the restaurant and picked up a scrum-diddily-umptious Nutella and banana crepe.
After that, we felt like we had plenty of time to get back to the Eiffel Tower and still make it to the train station in time. Our train didn't leave until 8:45 and it was only 7:30. We jumped on the first train back to the Tower and made it just in time for the 8:00 light show. We took a couple of pictures then jumped on a train in the opposite direction to head back to the Gare du Nord station.
Let's just say it took us longer to get back to the train station than we planned. By the time we got off the local train it was 8:30 so we broke into a dead run for the Eurostar. The station was so confusing though we had to keep stopping people and asking (frantically) "Which way to the Eurostar?!"

We came to a skidding halt at the entrance to the Eurostar terminal where they had about 10 security people blocking the way. They were all holding up their hands saying "sorry, too late!" We begged and argued but they wouldn't budge! We still had about 13 minutes before the train left, but they wouldn't let us into the terminal. They said you had to be there 30 minutes before departure and there was NO way we were getting on this train tonight. They handed us a list of local hotels and told us to come back in the morning for the 8:07 train.

We were completely bummed!
But, looking on the bright side...at least we got to stay the night in Paris. Here's a picture looking out our hotel window onto the "dodgey" part of town :)
Well, we made it back home this morning safe and sound. What an awesome adventure!

Cookie Making

2007-01-19T02:44:00.000-07:00

We were thrilled to find chocolate chips at the store yesterday! So, last night we braved our first cookie making experience. It was a pretty funny because the only measuring cup we have is a large measuring cup that measures fluid ounces, but that didn't hold us back.

The cookies turned out pretty well, but definitely had a different flavor to them. We ate them anyway, and found that they tasted better dipped in milk! :)

Check out how TINY the bags of chocolate chips are!

Day in London!

2007-01-13T13:26:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we decided to be real tourists so we spent the entire day going from one site to another in downtown London. We started off by catching the train in Staines to the Waterloo station. From there we took the underground subway (tube) to our first stop--Tower Bridge. Only, we got off on the wrong station so we ended up having to catch a double-decker bus.

From the picture below you can see a typical sunny London day. If you can't see the sun, let me direct your attention to the lower, right-hand corner of the picture ;)

(More boring dialog here. We know you're here just for the pictures anyway!)

You can see so far in both directions when looking out of the footbridge windows - it's amazing!

Here's Jared scoping out the view from the elevated footpath (which is the higher bridge in the picture above). The lower bridge is built to open up so taller ships can go under the bridge. Not only did we get to walk across the very top of the bridge, but we also got to go deep down into the engine room to learn how the bridge lifts and lowers.

Jared just can't get off the phone - can he?

Allyson couldn't believe that the actual tools they used on the bridge were actually almost as big as she is.

After touring through the bridge we went and walked around the outside of the Tower of London. We didn't go inside because we chose the bridge tour instead of the Tower tour. Maybe next time.

This is what we had for lunch. Just kidding, we actually had fish and chips. But we did find this "lovely" game in the same open air market place. Scary huh?

After lunch we found St. Paul's Cathedral. We're amazed at how gargantuous the buildings out here are. It was really pretty. We went inside and saw a tomb and the chapel. We opted not to take the full tour because it was a little more than just a pretty penny. (We promise - we are planning on going inside of some of the sights we visit! :)

Later on we took the tube over to another part of London where we found Westmister Abbey. . .

and Big Ben! Wowzers!
By this point of the day we were incredibly tired, but we still made a quick stop by to say hello to the queen. Unfortunately, she didn't respond. Actually we don't even think she knew we were there. But, her's our proof that at least Jared was.

We swang by China town for dinner - Bad choice! We don't recommend this! Let's just say that we've never had worse. Oh well, chalk it up to experience, right?

Visit to Windsor

2007-01-06T12:57:00.000-07:00

Yesterday (Jan 6) Allyson and I decided to go on a driving adventure! We're still trying to get used to being on the left side and we've had only one or two near-death experiences :) (j/k...probably a lot more).

We started off from Staines and went North about 15 minutes to Windsor to see the famous Windsor castle. Unfortunately, we got there pretty late and it was starting to get dark. The castle was already closed, but we had a great time looking around the grounds and going through the little shops.

Allyson and I were both super surprised at how large the castle is! It seemed to go on forever!

We went into one of the local pastry shops and tried out a strawberry tart--hmmm, delicious! Unfortunately, we didn't get the picture where Allyson smeared pudding on my face :)

We're Here!

2007-01-04T11:31:00.000-07:00

Here we are at SL International Airport – Leaving Home Sweet Home! We know we are in for a HUGE adventure!

The flight to Chicago was no big deal, but our flight from Chicago to London was really tight and uncomfortable. We were really envious of the people in first class - their chairs actually laid down into beds, can you believe it?

Here's one of the amazing views out of our airplane over London. (If you look above the wing – over the river – you'll see the "Tower Bridge of London." We can't wait to see this in person!

A minute or so later we could also see "Big Ben."

We were shocked at how big London is and also surprised that Staines (the town where we are staying) is more like a suburb than a little quaint town. In all actuality, we feel like we're living in a busy city. We've never thought of ourselves as city types, so this should be quite the experience!

We've been pleasantly surprised out how clean (and modern) our apartment is. These are pictures of the "lounge" from two differnent angles.

This is our "state of the art" kitchen. Believe it or not, there is a dishwasher in one of the cabinets and washer/dryer in another one. Wow! They sure do use their space well here!

We'll spare you the picture of the nook area. (We have a fridge and freezer, and a table and four chairs all shoved in an 8x12 ? area - it's really tight over there!)

The BEST part of the apartment is the incredible view. This picture was taken out our window. We're right on the Thames river!

Lobster Huntin'

2006-10-29T12:17:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

We just thought we'd share a few pics from the scuba trip that we went on with Travis this last weekend. It was a ton of fun and lots and lots of scuba diving. (And a VERY long ride in both directions!)

Day 1 - Wednesday

We left at 11 am and drove all the way to Santa Barbara, CA by 10 or 11 pm. This all happened in an 11 seater van filled with 10 people and all of their scuba gear. Let's just say that we got very friendly!

Day 2 - Thursday

The boat took us out to the first of the dive sites. I was sick as a dog for the first half of the day until the second dose of Dramamine kicked in. Jared did about five dives and I did two that first day. We both had the opportunity to try night diving for the first time and decided that it's pretty cool. (This night dive was also Jared's first Lobster catch!!! - We were sooo excited!)

Day 3 - Friday

I felt much better. Thurday night I put on a motion sickness patch that Jason Thelin gave me, so Friday was miraculously sickness free - Yeah!!!

We both did five dives. Jared caught Lobster numbers 2 and 3 this day. Jared's great at spotting the lobster and not afraid to go in after them. I didn't catch any lobster the whole trip, but I figure I was Jared's moral support so his success is my success.

Day 4 - Saturday

We were able to dive just for the first half of the day. I was able to get in two more dives before deciding that I had officially worn myself out. Jared got in three dives and caught Lobster number 4. The boat took a while to get back to the docks and then we still had to unload the boat and pack up the van. We left CA around 6:30 (UT time) and made a couple of stops along the way. We also got stuck in traffic somewhere in NV because of an accident ahead of us - which added about an hour more drive time. We drove through the night - those of us that felt alert enough rotated until we arrived home at about 8:30 am this morning. Talk about a hard night!

Throughout our dives of the few days we were there we also saw seals, manta rays, star fish, sea urchins, octopus, and of course a whole bunch of different types of fish.

Anyway, we really enjoyed ourselves! Thanks to Travis for the invite and for putting up with us - we really enjoyed having a little more time to spend with you!

Take a look at our latest pics!

love,

Allyson & Jared

Burnin' in the Grand Canyon

2006-10-09T09:13:00.000-06:00

Well, we finally did it! With lots of Jared's encouragement, we hiked the Grand Canyon last Saturday. It was REALLY hard but still lots of fun!

So here's a quick rundown of our trip:

We pulled out of Utah county on Friday at about 1 pm and drove the eight hours to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. We pitched our tent in the dark and crashed at about 11 pm. Boy was it cold that night!!! The temperature dropped to about 36 degrees - luckily we are the snuggly type, so we were okay. The next morning we broke camp in the dark (before dawn) and threw everything into the car, drove to the parking lot where the hike would end and quickly assembled our snacks and lunch (mmm - yummy PB&H).

We took a shuttle bus to the trail head and began our hike at about 7:30 (Arizona time). We hiked down the South Kaibab trail. The temperature was still super cold at the beginning of the hike, but after trotting for about half an hour we were warm enough that we could shed our sweatshirts. We made it to the bottom of the canyon in about 2 1/2 hours. It was so pretty and a really nice clear day. We enjoyed resting at the bottom for about an hour and had a super early lunch while there. At this point in time we thought that this hike was a pretty easy one - little did we know what hiking back up the Bright Angel trail was going to be like.

It took us four grueling, painful, sweaty, aching hours to hike back up to the top. Boy are we feeling muscle soreness and tightness still two days later. Talk about BURNIN' BUNS! All told it was 17 miles round trip. We hung around for about another hour and then started our journey back home.

At first we hoped we could make it home Saturday night, but by the time we made it to Kanab we were EXHAUSTED. Kanab didn't have any vacancies at their hotel/motels, so we had to drive on to Panguich were we found a hotel and after a quick shower fell into bed. (It was much warmer than sleeping in the tent the night before.) We finished our drive home early Sunday morning in time to get ready and be at church for Allyson's sharing time in primary.

Overall it was a fun trip, but Allyson's not sure she wants to ever do it again. (We'll see!)

Jared & Allyson Hiking Mt. Timp

2006-09-10T19:44:00.000-06:00

Last weekend Allyson and I got a crazy desire to hike Mt. Timp so we decided to do it after work on Friday. We left at about 4:15pm and started hiking up the trail that leaves from Aspen Grove. The first part of the hike was a snap and we felt good.

As the hike went on though our leg muscles started burning. It was amazing to see the spectacular views as we climbed higher and higher. From that East side we could look down on Deer Creek resevoir and into Heber.

The sun was going down and being on the backside of the mountain left us in the shade for the hike up--which was a nice relief. By about 7:00 we had hiked to Emerald Lake and the glacier. Things really started to cool off once the sun had set and we started to see our breath.

We continued on and reached the summit at about 9:00pm. By then it was completly dark and was probably about 40 degrees (brrr!). Because of the cold we only stayed on top for about 15 minutes.

In my opinion, the decent was much harder than climbing up. It was hard on the knees and hard to see where we were going. Fortunately we had headlamps, but even then we stumbled as our legs grew more and more tired.

The last part of the hike down we both were so anxious to get back. Our legs felt like jello and every step was a chore. The goal of the hike was to gauge how well we think we would do hiking to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and back in one day.

Researching the hike online we've found that it is twice as long as Timp and the same change in elevation (which means that it will be half as steep). I'm pretty sure we can do it, so we're thinking of heading down at the beginning of October.