Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Our Anniversary
Posted by Logan and Sydney at 1:01 PM 0 More things to read
That's what I get for washing my windows
Posted by Logan and Sydney at 12:56 PM 0 More things to read
Monday, August 27, 2012
My Last Hoorah
I've been wanting to go on a small trip before I have this baby and don't ever get to go anywhere just me and Logan for a while. We decided to go on a little road trip to Cascade Falls up by Navajo Lake and then we drove back on some back road to East Zion.
Then we drove for a long time and planned all the cool hikes we are going to go on when I'm not pregnant anymore. We drove through Zion and talked about how it is one of our favorite places and how sad it is that there are so many hikes there we have never done.
Posted by Logan and Sydney at 8:40 AM 1 More things to read
Saturday, August 18, 2012
Pepsi Vs. Diet Pepsi. Can You Taste The NutraSweet?
The 1st Test.
Pepsi vs. Pepsi.
I knew that if we told her there was going to be one diet and one regular she would find one,whether it was there or not. You see, I think this "Burns the Throat" is all in her head. So we opened up both cans so as to let her hear the sound of two cans cracking open and poured two identical glasses, both were filled with good old fashioned high fructose corn syrup regular Pepsi. She didn't disappoint and actually she didn't like either of them particularly well. She even stuck her tongue out at one of the glasses, then she made her choice on the other glass as being the diet, it made no sense, but my theory was upheld. She found a gross one.
The 2nd Test.
Pepsi vs. Diet Pepsi.
I thought to myself that was kind of mean psyching her out like that so I did a real test. I think she must have thought I put diet in both this time around, because they were both still gross. She first tried the diet and said, "Oh! this one is terrible!" then she tried the regular and said, "Oh! this one is worse! This is the Diet." I told her that she was wrong and apparently likes diet more than regular and strangely finds them both objectionable. She didn't see the light from this test, because she still drinks her gross tasting regular Pepsi religiously.
The 3rd Test
Sydney vs. Pepsi
We gave Sydney the real test and she couldn't find the difference, and didn't like either one.
The 4th Test
Logan vs. Pepsi
Sydney gave me a taste test. You see, on occasion I will drink a soda, and one of my favorites is Dr. Pepper. There is a draw back though, when you don't drink sugary drinks they make my throat feel gross and coated. That is why I prefer the Diet Dr. Pepper. Same great taste, fewer calories and no gross throat. There is a slight bitter after taste, but the pros out way the cons. Knowing this about Dr. Pepper, I applied the same principles to the Pepsi. I found that one coated my throat and one did not, but had a slight bitter after taste. I told Sydney my choice for Diet and I was right.
The moral of this story is that Tastes Tests are a fun way to spend a lazy 24th of July afternoon, and all you heavy Pepsi drinkers out there, don't dis on the diet apparently if you drink a lot of soda you can't tell the difference.
P.s. I can't however tell the difference between real coke and cheap coke, my mother proved that to me years ago, but I think they're both gross.
Posted by Logan and Sydney at 9:59 PM 3 More things to read
Friday, August 17, 2012
#5
Now let's talk about how we have celebrated the last 4, shall we?
Wedding Day doesn't really count as an Anniversary, but we obviously celebrated that with a wedding and a trip to Las Vegas. Basically the two things that stand out to me the most about our wedding day is being really really happy, and extremely hungry. Nobody ever thinks about feeding the Bride and Groom:)
#1 was on a Sunday so we cooked dinner at home. We ate the top of our wedding cake and then went for a walk down by the Virgin River. Since our wedding we had accomplished a few things. Logan had graduated from SUU with an engineering degree. He got a job in St. George and we had moved from our 1 bedroom basement apartment to a very sunny and happy 2 bedroom on the East side of St. George. He'd taken me on my first rafting trip, I was working at Malibu cleaners and had just started school at Dixie. We were feeling pretty optimistic about the future.
#2 we road tripped to Colorado (so Logan could shop for his upcoming rafting trip). We went to Arches National Park, Mesa Verde National Park, spent time in Durango and drove through some crazy mountain passes. I think our actual anniversary was in Grand Junction (probably the most boring day of our trip, haha). Since our first anniversary I had started the Elementary Education Program at Dixie. Logan was working hard at the St. George airport for insane hours. I'd been on another rafting trip, but this one resulted in what I consider a near death experience:) Good times!
#3 We celebrated with another large scale road trip. This time we went up and visited Lucas and Shellie in Rock Springs and then went up to spend a few days in Yellowstone National Park. This was before our actual anniversary since I was beginning to student teach in mid-August. Since our last anniversary, Logan had rafted the Grand Canyon and we hadn't seen each other for two weeks and only talked on the phone once. While he was gone my mom and I had went to Hawaii.
#4 This year we celebrated by going for a hike in Zion and eating a Cuban sandwich at The Flying Monkey in Springdale (sadly we don't have a picture with both of us in it). This had been a very eventful year for us. I'd started and finished student teaching and graduated. I'd wrecked my car while Logan was working out of town, and we had moved into this house. We'd spent the year painting and settling in here.
#5 is today. A lot has happened in the last year. We have still been slowly changing the house. We realized that everything doesn't always go according to our original "5 year plan" but usually ends up being better than the plan. Basically we did follow the plan, we're just not as wildly successful and rich as we had originally thought:) We're still together and happy, we have a house, 2 bachelor's degrees and a baby coming. I think we've got it pretty good. And as weird as it is that we have been married for 5 years (hello! We're so OLD!) I've never regretted it and I know that everything the future holds for us will be even better!
Posted by Logan and Sydney at 7:14 AM 1 More things to read
Saturday, July 28, 2012
Hey Logan, Are You Lost?
I think so was my reply to my old college chap Ryan Anderson. The Andersons are an institution in the little green valley of Monroe, UT. None the less my BE-EH-Utiful wife is a local and knows her way around. Every year that we've been together we've made our own little trek to Monroe to celebrate Pioneer Day (the largest local holiday). We awoke bright and early at 6:30am and drove straight there to get our spots on the correct side of the road (tsk tsk Kristy). Everybody was surprised that we came because we said we weren't on account of the both of us working the day before and after. Meghan was especially surprised when there was a creeper with a large camera taking unsolicited photographs of her marching in the parade.
The Parade was spectacular as usual. The two best floats are the old tractors which Sydney thinks my dad should get into it. and the pooper scooper though I'm not sure they are an official parade entry but they sure are entertaining for their rather long procession duration.
| This one captures the essence of the small town celebration. |
| John Deere was a True Patriot |
| Yeah, Monroe is classy like that. |
| This guy is a real farmer he drives a tractor in flip flops |
| He's doing so well. |
Posted by Logan and Sydney at 10:34 PM 0 More things to read
Girl's Camp
I headed up to Girl's Camp after the last day of teaching summer school on Thursday. Just one of my many interesting duties as a Beehives adviser. I'm not really much of a girl's camper and never really have been. I think I might have gone 3 years when I was in Young Women's, but I found that camp is much more enjoyable as a leader who can come and go as she pleases and pick and choose activities to attend:)
Proof that I went to Girl's Camp 7 months pregnant. My belly was somewhat of a novelty to girl's I have never met before.
I felt really really old signing them off on their certifications.
And these are the leader bunks, the girls' ones looked the same only their section was much larger and slept 27 girls instead of 6. The top bunks are seriously like 6 feet up there. They were kind to me and I slept on the bottom. Oh and the bathrooms were in one of these storage boxes too and they flushed and were SO NICE!
Aside from eating deep fried donuts at 10pm and puking in the night with Breauna it was really fun:) Yep, I only threw up twice with this pregnancy until girl's camp. Now my total is up to 4:) Oh the memories.
Posted by Logan and Sydney at 9:28 PM 1 More things to read
Sunday, July 15, 2012
What that Storm looked like at our House
Posted by Logan and Sydney at 9:03 PM 1 More things to read
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Home Economical
Since my sister and mother have been giving all my father's tomatoes away to strangers on Facebook, I thought I had better go over there while they were both gone and get some for Sydney and myself.
We started the day with big plans we gathered two grocery sacks full from the resting location on my fathers infamous wood burning stove and went to the store to purchase other supplies for the gallons of product we thought we would end up with. Little did we know three hours of time and 30 kilo-watt hours later we would end up with 3.5 quarts of juice and 3 pints of spaghetti sauce. Not the gallons we were imagining earlier.
Much of the time and electricity were used to heat up this massive water bath of my mother's.
The picture doesn't do it justice we have no idea how big it is, but it is way more than our ceramic stove top can handle. It seems silly to spend well over an hour heating the water up to boil the bottles for 20 minutes then dump the water out. We could have bathed a dog or a large toddler in that thing.
Then if that wasn't enough Sydney had this idea to make cantaloupe jelly, to save some of our delicious cantaloupe. It tastes good, but we would rather eat the three batches of apricot jam we made three weeks ago. I think the jelly would have been better if we had found the recipe on pinterest:).
Next weekend we'll probably attempt to make grape juice and some jelly any one that wants to come help is welcome.
Posted by Logan and Sydney at 8:23 PM 1 More things to read
Old Lady to New Baby
We have been slacking not posting about the most recent room make over that we have done. This was the office room of my mother's while she lived here. She had decorated during the phase of her life when she was watching several hours of home design shows on cable networks (i.e. Design on a Dime, Trading Spaces). Any who it was painted very thoroughly in two shades of "Old Lady" green.
The reason for changing this room is because as most of you know we will be having a baby boy in September and this room is the only other bedroom upstairs with us, and no son of mine is going to live in an "Old Lady" green room. The color I chose and Sydney consented to was orange, we picked this before we knew the gender thinking it was non-cliche gender neutral color. After we found out we were having a boy we still wanted the orange room and went with it.
It took us over a week to finish it because of the well glued on wall paper and the ceiling was painted green, and then all the molding was an off white shade of green. Many stages and coats later; the orange took 4 coats of paint/primer paint. Which by the way we tried the new Glidden duo paint/primer it worked fine for the white and grey colors, but the orange was runny. So if you're going bold, stick with the Behr it's the better paint anyway.
Posted by Logan and Sydney at 8:03 PM 4 More things to read
Friday, July 13, 2012
Still Getting Goodness From Our Garden
We planted a pretty big garden this year, and except for the beans and tomatoes and cucumbers we did pretty well.
We had a big haul of asparagus as usual, and a real bumper crop of summer squash and zucchini. We did okay on corn and bell peppers, and the cucumbers produced but weren't edible. Except to my mom, her taster must be broken:) We had bad luck with tomatoes as one 6-pack was mislabeled and was actually cherry tomatoes, and the other 6-pack all died except for two plants. And the beans died without ever producing anything.
Posted by Logan and Sydney at 5:22 PM 1 More things to read
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Family Camping Trip
I just realized that we never blogged about our family camping trip to Lower Bowns Reservoir. Logan has many fond childhood memories of this place and the old camper. This is the first year the Blake family has had a big camp out since the one we went on when we were engaged. So the Friday before Memorial day weekend we drove up to my Mom's house and spent the night. My sister had to have emergency hernia surgery late that night so that was interesting. The next morning we got up and had to shop all over for some maternity pants (because I'm an idiot and forgot to bring pants). We finally found some at Walmart which I actually like a lot. Anyway, we got up to Lower Bowns and everyone who was there so far (Ron and Anisa's family drove up the night before) were huddled in Ron's new fifth wheel since the weather was cold and windy. Ron was fishing because everyone knows that sucky weather is ideal fishing weather. A couple of funny things happened that day before everyone else got there. Apparently Ron has a "fish pan". It's the only pan you need on a camping trip (or so I've heard). Anisa was just getting lunch started and had a grilled cheese sandwich in the "fish pan" and Ron comes back from fishing and plops a fish in the pan right next to our grilled cheeses. We panicked (of course) but I got one of the first sandwiches so it wasn't fishy. I heard the other one's were questionable however:)
Since the weather was so bad we decided to go for a ride in the Escape. This poor Escape has really been put to the test by Logan time and time again. It's basically just a car with better clearance, but Logan forces it to be an SUV. As we were driving down this "Tantulas" road (Logan will have to correct me if I am wrong with that name) I was speculating what our car thinks of this. Does it like that we don't let it's limitation hold it back? Or does it feel abused by us making it do things it hasn't been designed to do? I'm weird I know:) But seriously, 2 trips down the Hole in the Rock road, 2 trips to Tuweap, one almost to the top of Utah Hill, and now this back road into Capital Reef National Park? That poor car!
So we were driving along this road that was pretty rough. We go for a couple miles and we get to this really awesome place (presumably this is Tantulas?) where the road goes down into this stream bed that is green and beautiful.
And we keep going because the goal is to make it into Capital Reef the back way and then take the highway around back to the camp site. Then we get to this big hill that we have to back over. I'm thinking, "Hmm. The more obstacles we get past the more we have to get back over when we finally have to turn around when we get so something we CAN'T get over." But we persevere. Then we meet that obstacle. And we pop a tire. Yep, it's windy, freezing, blowing sand and in BFE and we pop a tire.
So we back down to a level-ish place. We get out of the car and change a tire. But we have to change 2 because we popped a front tire and we really need good front tires if we are going to get out of this place. We're not worried by this point. We have water, a tent and all our camping gear. Ron knows where we are and we're not going to starve if we can't get out. But with faith and a little elbow grease Logan changes the tires (I assisted, I promise). We pray to get out of here and we are off. It was a fairly uneventful ride back to camp. But then the fun of trying to find a tire in Wayne County on Saturday of Memorial Day weekend begins. We really don't want to drive 50 MPH all the way back to St. George on Monday. Anywho, long story a bit shorter we finally found one in Loa. Then we freeze to death in our tent that night, and a little less the next night. And we hike to Lower Calf Creek Falls on Monday and nearly roast to death:)
And drive home through Escalante and Zion. What an eventful weekend. We seem to have bad car luck on Memorial Day (as we were stranded in Beaver with the Saturn a couple years back). But that's how you make memories I guess:)
Posted by Logan and Sydney at 10:57 AM 1 More things to read
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Rim 2 Rim
We did it! Craig Degen, his son Jahmal Degen, Cash Williams and I hiked from the North Rim to the South Rim via the North Kaibab and the Bright Angel Trails. We left St. George at 5:00am* and drove to the North Rim and arrived about 8:00am. Walked over to the Lodge and looked
This stretch of the trail is heavily used by mules so it is very dusty and covered in manure. It was like walking in one of Dad's corrals for a mile and a half, yuck! After that the trail was mostly foot traffic and very nice. We walked to Roaring Springs and took the .5 mile misleading side trail to Roaring Springs. I thought you could actually hike to the bottom of the big spring, but it only went to a potty and a water spigot.
Kept on going down, stopped at the Pump House Residence for lunch then we saw the section of trail that was washed out from the water line break. This could have ruined our trip apparently, but it didn't so off we went. Passed the cotton wood campground, where most people stop for the day, but we were doing it in two. This campground is not bad, but some spots have no shade. Then we hit the .5 mile round trip side hike to Ribbon Falls, this is one of the highlights of this trip very cool makes the trip worth it.
We got to the falls about 12:30pm* and hung out there about an hour. I left my bag next to Craig's and walked up around the falls. I got back and a squirrel had chewed through my camelbak hose right where it comes out of the bag. Very annoying! I had to move the mouth piece to the new end and leave it inside my bag and take my bag clear off to drink. On a good note my new Marmot pack I got on clearance kept my water cold the whole 1st day. I got brain freezes while hiking in "The Box" at 4:00*. After Ribbon falls we hiked the last 6 miles starting about 1:30* and got to Phantom Ranch at 4:30*. So without counting stops it took us 7 hours of hiking to make to the bottom. We hung out at the camp ground and put our feet in the creek, had dinner, then Craig and I walked back to the ranch to call our wives.
I wanted a T-shirt but the ranch had funny hours and the store was closed from 4-8pm** and we were there at 5:30**. So we had to kill time till 9:00*. Craig and I decided to walk the 1.5 mile river loop over the 2 bridges. It was cool we got to see the river in the day light and watch a life flight helicopter land,
and see the left over medical supplies where a person collapsed after hiking down the South Kaibab Trail in late after noon. It was rumored the person died, but I'm not sure. It was awhile before the helicopter took off, but we got to see that too. We made it back to camp and still had to wait a little but I got my T-shirt, Craig got his cold lemon-aide, and Cash and I sent post cards by mule. The next morning after a horrible nights sleep Craig woke us up at 4:00am* and we got on the trail about 4:45*. We hiked by head lamp along the river and half way up the devils cork screw.
We made it out of the inner gorge and to Indian Garden camp ground 7:30* which is half way on the Bright Angel Trail. Ate a good breakfast of freeze dried eggs and sausage and left just after 8:00*. We spent the next 3 hours climbing out of that hole. Stopped for water and breaks at the 2 rest houses and passed lots of people and 2 mule trains walking down the trail.
We made it to the top about 11:30am* so in approximatley 6 hours we hiked 9.5 miles and ascended 4380 feet.
We found a nice shady spot on some grass at the Bright Angel Lodge and layed there. Sydney walked through the lodge about the same time we did.
It was a great trip sore knees, sore muscles, blisters and all I would do it again. Craig and I with side hikes ended up with 27 miles in 2 days below the rim of the Canyon.
(*Utah Time)
(**Arizona Time)
Posted by Logan and Sydney at 10:50 AM 2 More things to read
Friday, June 1, 2012
NO WOLVES IN UTAH!!!!
Girl 1: NO WOLVES IN UTAH!!!!! They said they moved out of Utah when the settlers came in and the wolves moved out and they don’t expect any more to come in, in the near future!!! Yay, I did my research!!! They have seen a grey wolf a long time ago on May 6th they said they spotted 4 wolfs... they said they didn’t know if they were wolves for sure they could have been dog-wolf breed or something so NO WOLVES YAY!!!!!
Girl 2: Grey wolf, timber wolf I don’t know, and go and check how recent that research is.
Girl 1: “The gray wolf, Canis lupus, once inhabited much of the Northern Hemisphere, including North America, Asia, and Europe. The species has been driven from much of its former range by humans, but populations still exist in some areas of Alaska, Canada, northern Mexico, the northern United States, and Asia. The gray wolf was once common in Utah, but it was extirpated (exterminated) from the state by early settlers. Recent reintroductions of the gray wolf have occurred in Idaho and Yellowstone National Park, but reintroductions are not currently planned for Utah. Recent reports, however, suggest that gray wolves may move to Utah from surrounding states in the near future.” They may but they haven’t yet.
Girl 2: “Over the weekend USDA Wildlife Service agents, while out flying around killing coyotes, observed what they think were four wolves or wolf dog hybrids near Springville, Utah. There have been reports of wolves there for the past year and a half. The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources plans to attempt to capture them in the next few days to take DNA samples so that they can determine for sure if they are wolves or not. If they are wolves then they are subject to full protection under the Endangered Species Act because they are outside of the Northern Rocky Mountain DPS.”
Girl 2: It says there have been wolf reports in Utah for the past year and a half.
Girl 2: No. They have been spotted for a year and a half. They have to be living there or they would only be spotted coming in for like a week or something.
Girl 2: They have been here since 2008 they keep coming back, it’s obviously going to happen.
Girl 2: Eventually as in pretty soon like one possibly two years.
Girl 2: LOL slight chance Ha ha. “Sightings like these have been happening over the last several years and a pack of 7 ‘possible wolves’ have been spotted in the Strawberry and Heber area.” That's up north so, maybe they will stay up there for a while I hope.
Girl 2: Yeah if not... I'm moving to Hawaii !:)
Posted by Logan and Sydney at 5:18 PM 1 More things to read
Monday, May 21, 2012
Letting the Cat out of the Bag
Posted by Logan and Sydney at 8:56 PM 7 More things to read



