September

We went to the Ogden Temple open house with Dallen and Ann and it was so beautiful!! We had dinner at the Wheelwrights after and enjoyed seeing and catching up with everyone. Baby Aideen and baby Carter sure did get big over the summer! 

We went camping one weekend with our friends- the Ponds and Rasmussens. We haven't been camping since before we got married so it was fun! We went up Providence Canyon and rode our 4-wheeler, had tinfoil dinners, s'mores and just enjoyed each others company. 

Brad and I decided this summer that we wanted to take a vacation to the Northwest and/or Alaska. I have family in Washington (plus Brad had never been), and we have some friends that moved up to Alaska this summer that we wanted to go visit. When I found plane tickets to Alaska for really cheap leaving from Seattle, we decided to just do it all in one trip!   

VANCOUVER/PORTLAND
Thursday, Sept 11: We drove to Vancouver Washington and on the way, stopped at the Gorge to do the Multnomah Falls hike. Stacey and Brody met us there after and took us to this cool waterfall where you have to walk through a river to get there. It was so pretty, but the water was pretty dang cold! The Lakes were so nice to let us stay with them in their beautiful home for a few nights. 

Friday, Sept 12: 

We went on a beautiful bike ride with Stacey and laid out by their pool. That night we went on a date with Stacey and Todd to Portland where we walked around the rose garden, went to dinner and got ice cream. 

Saturday, Sept 13: 

We went to the Saturday market in Portland. It was fun to walk around, get elephant ears and people watch. We went to this awesome donut place called voodoo donuts and we had to wait in line for about 45 minutes but it was totally worth it! They have all sorts of donuts there, including ones with cereal, candy and even bacon on top! We watched Divergent with the Lake's that night.

CANNON BEACH

Sunday, Sept 14: 

We headed to Cannon Beach and on our way out, we stopped at the firestation to see Todd at work. The rest of the Lake's decided to come and spend the day with us. We had a picnic, went on a hike, hung out on the beach, fed the seagulls and ate dinner at Pizza Feta. After they left, Brad and I sat on the beach and watched the sunset. It was so awesome and such a beautiful, sunny day! 

Monday, Sept 15:
We went to Ecola State Park to this awesome look out spot, then went down on the beach while it was low-tide to walk on the rocks and find starfish. Then we went over to Hug Beach. It was an awesome (less crowded) place with some cool caves. We hung out there and had a picnic before it started to get really cold. We walked around the shops, ate dinner at Mo's and then had a fire and s'mores on the beach. 

Tuesday, Sept 16:
We spent the day in Seaside-which is 15 miles north of Cannon Beach. We walked along the beach during low tide and found a lot of sand dollars and a few jelly fish. One of them was so big, we couldn't believe it! We did a little shopping at the outlets, sat on the beach, then headed back to the Lake's to spend the night. 

SEATTLE
Wednesday, Sept 17:
We drove to a city called Bremerton so that we could ride the ferry into Seattle. It gave us an awesome view of the city! Then we headed to Bellevue (10 miles west of Seattle)- where my brother is currently serving his mission. My mom had sent us with a suitcase of stuff for Jake, so we dropped that off at the Mission office. Then, we may or may not have driven around in hopes of running into him, but had no luck. We went back to Seattle to catch our flight for Alaska. We got to Anchorage at 11pm and our friends, Sam and Karen picked us up. They live just 5 minutes away from the airport. They were so nice to let us stay with them in their 2 bedroom apartment. 

ALASKA
Thursday, Sept 18:
Karen and Sam had to work all day, so while they were gone we did the Flat Top hike. It was pretty dang hard, but it was awesome at the top! We showered and hung out until they got home, then we went to Moose's Tooth for dinner. Karen had young womens (she is the president!) so I decided to go with her. We watched Fox and the Hound. Sam and Brad went downtown to watch the Salmon swim upstream. 

Friday, Sept 19:
Brad and I went on a walk on the Campbell Creek trail. We really wanted to see a bear (don't worry, we were prepared with bear spray and a gun) and Karen had told us that she has seen a bear on that trail before. We had no luck though. We walked around downtown, went back to see the salmon, and went to the souvenir shops. We made enchiladas and cookies before Sam and Karen got home from work. We went on another walk (bear hunt) with Karen and Sam and saw 2 moose. Their friends came over that night to hang out.

Saturday and Sunday, Sept 20-21:
We went to Sam's mission presidents cabin that was about an hour and a half away. We rode the 4-wheelers, went on a walk, had dinner, and watched God's Not Dead. Sunday morning we went to Talkeetna to have breakfast and walk around the shops. Then we watched Hercules/took a nap, cleaned the cabin, and headed back to Anchorage. We had dinner and played a card game. 

Monday, Sept 22: 

Brad and I decided to do a day cruise called the '26 glacier cruise' that left from Whittier. The drive over was SOO beautiful!! We had to drive through a tunnel to get to Whittier that was just over 4 miles long, and it's a one way road. It was pretty cool. The cruise was 6 hrs long, they fed us lunch, took us to see a bunch of glaciers and we even saw some sea animals. It was awesome! 

This one is called Surprise Glacier and we got to drive up pretty close to it. It was so beautiful. 

Steller Sea Lions

Tuesday, Sept 23: 

We went to Byron Glacier and got to walk right up to it. It was so awesome and we had lots of fun and enjoyed the beautiful scenery. Then we headed to the animal conservation place since we weren't finding any bears in the wild. My favorite animals we saw were the baby moose, the fox, the eagle, and of course the bears! There were 3 brown bears and 2 black bears (but we only saw one). We got to see them feed the black bear which was cool since they were both hiding before that. We went to dinner with Sam and Karen to Bear's Tooth. It was cool, cause it was a restaurant and a movie theatre in one. We ordered our food, and then they brought it to us in the theatre! We went to the movie 'Planes'. We all went on a walk (another bear hunt), played games, then our flight back to Seattle left at 1245am.

This was the closest we got to seeing a bear.. a bear print. The Tyler's let us use their little Toyota to drive around in all week. They are the best! We had a great time in Alaska and visiting our friends and we didn't want to go home! We are already planning our next trip there. 

SEATTLE
Wednesday, Sept 24:
Our plane landed at 5am so since we didn't get any sleep, we decided to park our car in a church parking lot and sleep for a few hours. Our GPS actually took us the the institute building in Seattle. When I woke up, I went inside to use the restroom and saw some missionaries. I started talking to them and come to find out, one of them was companions with my brother! I couldn't believe it! So it was fun talking to him for a little bit. We spent the day in Seattle- had lunch on the Space Needle (which was awesome), walked around Pike Place and saw the gum wall. We decided to stop in Bellevue again to see if we could maybe by chance run into Jake. He told me what street they are on a lot, so we drove up there and found a 7-11. We hung out in that parking lot for about 10-15 minutes watching for missionaries, then went inside and got slurpees and a donut. We realized that his church was right behind the 7-11 so we decided to go park in there while we ate our treats. Literally five minutes later, we saw two missionaries ride up on their bikes. And sure enough, it was Jake! We drove over to him and got to talk to him for about ten minutes. I really couldn't believe we ran into him- it was such a coincidence! It was for sure the highlight of our trip!

The top two pictures are Jake's apartment and his church. I was going to send them to him, thinking there was no way we would actually see him! And the bottom right is our first glance at him. :) The top right is our first time in Bellevue before Alaska when we dropped the suitcase off at the mission office. 

 We stayed with our friends, the Coys, who live in Redmond on Wednesday night. Then we headed back home on Thursday. It was such an awesome trip and one I will never forget. I'm so happy we were able to make it happen.


The day after we got home, we started babysitting the Hess' for a few days/nights. On Saturday I took them- joined by Jaken, Lydia and Emma to the fun park. I had 6 kids between the ages 5-8 by myself for over 4 hours!! It's a good thing they all play really well together and they were super easy. 

August

How did I get two months behind!!? Probably because so much was going on in those two months.  

Vivint's last competition for the wives was to go to a movie and dress up like it. Well.. we all wanted to see 'The Fault in our Stars' but we weren't sure how to dress up like it, so we painted stars on our fingers (I know you can't see them, but they are there!) They were only giving a prize to 5 teams, so we weren't too motivated to win.. but hey- we got to go to a movie for free! :) 

-I went to the temple with my friends one day and it was just as beautiful as ever! I love that we lived so close to the temple in Lubbock. 

-We went to dinner with the team one night at a steakhouse that had a beautiful pond and waterfall right by it. 

-We had lots of rainy days this summer and I loved every minute of those days! 

-I also loved every minute of laying out by the pool. ;) 

-Our poor car got wrecked this summer. One of Brad's friends was driving it and accidentally hit it into one of those cement poles at the gas station. Unfortunately it happened the week right before I left, so we didn't have time to get it fixed in Texas. The driver side door wouldn't even open at all, but that wasn't too big of a problem since I drove home by myself. 

Yes, you heard me right.. I drove home by myself! It really wasn't too bad, since I was driving to see this cute face! It took about 9 hours to get to Kylee and Brody's. Kylee had to go back to work for just a few days to help train the new people coming in, so I came to help out with Evan while she went to work. I absolutely loved getting to snuggle this cute guy everyday for one whole week! 

Other things I did while there (besides holding and snuggling Evan): I took Evan to Kylee's work so that all of her work friends could see him, we went on lots of walks (and saw the funniest looking duck with an afro), went to church for Evan's first time, went to get frozen yogurt and found out they had crepes there but we were very disappointed in them so we decided to go to an awesome crepe place the next morning for breakfast to make up for it. It was so sad when it came time to leaving that sweet baby after a week of being with him all day every day. 

But.. lucky for me, I only had to leave him for a little over a week and then I headed back to Colorado with my mom and Cam to spend a fun weekend over Labor Day. We stayed at an awesome little condo in Winter Park. Kylee, Brody, Evan and Brad met us there on Friday night. Brad was done selling in Texas just a few days before, so he drove to the Hatch's and stayed with them for a few nights to prevent so much driving.

On Saturday, the boys went rock climbing and us girls and Evan went on a beautiful walk. Then, the Bundy's and my dad joined us around 1:00. 

We went to the ski resort that was right across the street from our condo and walked around, went on the alpine slide and played some bean bag toss. We went to a yummy Mexican place for dinner that night and played games back at the condo. 

On Sunday, we all went on a walk/bike ride after lunch. We only brought 3 bikes down, so we just took turns on the bikes. We got stuck in a really bad hail storm that lasted about 3 minutes. I've never been outside during a hail storm and it was painful! We walked around the area a little and found a cool old cemetery. We also found a pretty lake and the boys had fun skipping rocks there. 

Just some more pictures of the cutest nephew and all of us playing games Sunday night. 

All the guys + my mom went on a really hard hike on Monday morning. They weren't prepared for it to be that hard or cold so they weren't too happy about that- but it did look like it was a beautiful hike. I'm glad I decided to stay home for that one! 

We left to go back home Monday afternoon and it was so hard to say goodbye to this happy smiley boy, and Kylee and Brody too of course! It was such a fun, short little trip and I loved everything about it!