It took me 30 years.

I've lived here for 30 years and never got around to hiking Angel's Landing in Zion. I've hiked the West rim trail twice now but after hiking 11 miles, was always to tired to venture out on the edge. The switch backs always seemed way to daunting. "It would be like hiking the Navajo loop in Bryce canyon only 10 times worse," I would tell myself. But it was on Sydney's bucket list so we took off with our new camera in tow. Come to find out it really wasn't that bad the trail is paved most of the way and the chain is not that scary, you just need to be patient and take your time. It was cool we got some cool pictures in the end and Sydney was even able to call her mom from up on top and induce a heart attack.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all of you from us and our new camera:)

Updating the Basement

I'll let the pictures tell the story.

Belated Birthday Post

I turned 24 almost two weeks ago. This one went a little less eventfully than last year when I found my first (and only) grey hair on my birthday.

All I asked for this year was a really good steak. And Logan delivered:) He also got me an awesome pink pouch to hold ammunition when we go skeet shooting. Fun stuff!

I also got lots of other fun stuff, like an immersion blender (been wanting one of those) and a hilarious joke played on my with Christmas stuff (Thanks Shellie). I also got money from the parents and I finally decided on a new kitchen faucet since the old one leaked terribly. So basically I got all I could ask for and more. Here are a few pictures to commemorate the day.

Ward Christmas Party

Last night was our ward Christmas party. The theme was Christmas around the World. Logan was asked to represent Australia since that is where he served his mission.

His job was to talk about Australia's Christmas traditions. Which basically consists of going to the beach and having barbecue's, hence the board shorts and surf board. He was one of the only one's wearing a costume which made it extra fun. He did great!

Oh, and the bishopric got invited onto the stage to hula. Just thought I'd throw that in there too:) Such good sports.

Petroglyphs in our own Backyard

There's this cool place along the Santa Clara River gorge just a few miles from our house that has some Ancestral Puebloan petroglyphs. We heard good things from some people, and we heard from others that it was a bust. We thought it was pretty great:)

Here are some pictures for you viewing pleasure:

New Skirt

I had this idea a long time ago, I don't even remember where I saw it, but I made a skirt out of an XL T-shirt from Walgreen's for $1. I just chopped it off at the armpits and made a casing for some elastic and sewed it up. It's really comfy, I just wish I had finished it before it got too cold to wear skirts to work.

I cropped my head out if it cuz all my makeup was gone and I had a funny look on my face and I didn't want to set the self timer again and feel stupid smiling at the camera for 10 seconds just to get another weird look on my face from wondering when it was going to take my picture:)

The Stair Transformation!

We finally scraped the asbestos popcorn ceiling off of our stairs, well, Logan did at least:)

First we taped an absurdly large amount of plastic to the stairs to prevent popcorn spillage.

Then we brought in a plank. This is why I did very little to help with this project.

Then we sprayed the popcorn with water since asbestos is dangerous in dusty airborne form, and scraped it off. No pictures of the texturing. Sorry, but it was a messy procedure too.

Then we painted, but it looked bare. So we decided we needed art. But art is expensive, and we couldn't agree on what to get. Logan wanted modern and colorful, all I wanted was simple and earthy. So we compromised and it was cheaper.

He got modern and colorful, I got simple. And the best part is that we made it ourselves. We bought canvases from Michael's with a 40% off coupon, and used masking tape and some paint testers from Home Depot.

Total: $24. Way cheaper than anything either of us wanted at the store.

Friendly Visitor

We have been finding these cute little guys around a little bit lately. But this is the only one we've caught to get a picture of. He is about as big around as a juicy night-crawler and maybe 6-7 inches long. This is the type of snake that my mother-in-law sawed in half with a plastic butter knife on our front porch just before we moved in. We did a little research and we found that he is a very good little snake to have around. He eats bug larva and the best, scorpion larva. Needless to say we will be keeping these little fellas around! I'd much rather have worm sized snakes than scorpions! He was really fun to watch for a while, but was then released back where we found him.

Logan's Birthday

Logan's birthday was a month ago. Yep, he turned 30! For his birthday, we invited all of our Sunday School teens over for a party. Only 5 came, but it was fun to get to know them better and to have people to party with:) I took balloons to his office, but I didn't get a picture of that. The pictures are of his party, opening presents, and of his favorite present: a fancy new hardhat.

So this is old news...Swiss Days

As some of you know from the Swiss Eggs post, Logan is a descendant of the original Swiss settlers in Santa Clara. This year for Swiss Days (held in Santa Clara every September) was a celebration for the 150th year since the Swiss came to Santa Clara. Logan gave a speech about his Great-great-grandpa Gottlieb Blickenstorfer who was among those settlers. We also had a Swiss Days cow this year basically you can buy a cow and decorate it and put in downtown and people vote for the best one. This year was all about our connection to the Swiss settlers.

The Blickenstorfer name died out, but his daughter married a Blake.

Putting our cow downtown.

Logan giving his speech.

First Bulletin Board

I made this today. It's right outside my computer lab.

So about my new job. I'm the computer lab assistant (AKA Teacher) at Sunset Elementary. I started last Monday and the last three days have been fun! It's not really what I was expecting. It's a lot harder! I really like it though. I get to work with k-5 and everybody comes in at least once a week. The kindergarten and first graders are fun, and very challenging. But I love the fourth and fifth graders because I can do so much with them!

RIP Malibu Cleaners

Kind of ironic that I wrote a post from there on Saturday, because what we affectionately called "M1" is no more.

I received this picture from my very awesome manager, Rochelle, at 10:21 PM last night. I was flabbergasted. I was the last one to work there before the fire. The owners were there when I left, but I was the last one working. I couldn't believe my eyes. INSANE!

I also started a new job at Sunset Elementary this morning. How crazy is it that God provided a job that would sustain me through this short term unemployment at Malibu. This morning after I got ready for work I googled it and the pictures that came up from The Spectrum made me sick. (follow the link to see all the pictures).

These were especially troubling: (it won't let me upload them so my commentary will be by picture number). Image 8: The ball of fire looks to be directly where the cash register was located. Large orders were kept just behind the counter. Also, I suffered through washing all of those windows just the day before:( Image 13: The flames seem to be coming from the boiler room. Image 1: I can only assume the fire was being fed by the dry cleaning chemical in that area of the store. Unfortunately several thousand dollars worth of chemical were transferred from the Red Cliffs location to "M1" Saturday afternoon.

After I got off work at the school today I drove down to check it out. This is what I saw:

Heartbreaking. Though not nearly as sickening as the night photos with flames. The store is a total loss. Nothing I could see is salvageable. The eeriest thing I saw though (but couldn't get close enough to get a picture of) were the charred, empty hangers, whose clothes have been burned away.

Also this:

Which is the same washer which was featured in my "Things I love about Malibu Cleaners" post.

For now, all operations have been moved to the other location across town. There are plans to rebuild, and when I was there, the framers were already there checking it out. This just really seems surreal to me, but I am so grateful that no one was there when it started.

Saturday Musings at Malibu Cleaners

I am working today, and just like every Saturday I see "Just Married" couples washing their cars at the carwash next to the cleaners. It always makes me smile because, believe it or not, this is where we washed our car the morning after we were married. I can't believe it was four years ago and that I had no idea this dry cleaner even existed. It just makes me smile and wonder what the future holds for those couples.

Our Trip to the Strip (Arizona That is).

Just yesterday after Sydney's vigorous garage sale-ing with my sister Anisa we had it planned to drive out to Mt. Trumbull to see this plaque we heard about where the old Blake Family saw mill was and since we were going that far out we decided to see other sites while we were at it.

Some of the places we visited were Parashaunt where Dad ranched in the early 90s (a long ways out of the way from Trumbull, but I wanted to see places I remembered, not a nice as I remembered it, but nothing ever is). It was very dusty.Then we went to the Saw mill site not much there but the plaque was nice.

Afterward I had decided the day before to hike to the top of Vulcan's Throne. Which is a volcano on the rim of the Grand Canyon at Toroweap. Sydney has been wanting to hike to the top of a volcano, she was thinking the one by diamond valley, but there aren't to many volcanoes that have a cooler name and a cooler location than this one, so go big or go home right? The view hiking up the side was awesome and it was a pretty day.

Then we went to the typical look off to check things out before it became dark and ate peaches and cream.


Then we drove the 100+ miles home 60 of which is dirt were we slayed many small animals with the car (they're just dumb, Don't sleep in the road!).