This week has been pretty fabulous - aside from work and school. So pretty much just Friday through Sunday have been fabulous, but that's good, too! Friday Dan and I headed out to the Virginia State Fair in Richmond.
Much to our excitement, there was a demolition derby that night! I had my eye on the Master of Disaster. In his heat, he came out victorious. Dan picked the car that ended up flipping over. What can I say, I've got an eye for winners (hence marrying Dan, right?). I guess that means that Dan doesn't... but only when it comes to demo. cars.

So we watched the demo derby for a while and then went to a lot of animal tents. I felt bad for the pigs (read the sign above them)

and was astonished to see a chicken with hairy feet. Who knew? This chicken is more like that huge one from Seinfeld that fights Little Jerry.

At the end of the night, I wanted to try either some fried oreos or a fried candy bar but the oreos were too expensive and the candy bars were sold out. Has anyone every tried them before? How are they? I think I'm going to have to look up a recipe online and give it a try. Most definitely. Let me know if you want an in on that.

Saturday, my dad and I took pictures of my sister and her fiance, Craig, for their announcements. Some of them turned out pretty cute. I love to take pictures and was excited to be able to help. In exchange, they brought me a huge tub of my favorite thing in the world (aside from Dan and Moosetracks ice cream) - Cox's creamed honey from Shelly, Idaho. It is amazing. I'd consider that a fair trade.

And lastly, I've loved spending time with Dan and watching General Conference. I do admit that I fell asleep briefly a few times, but I really loved the talks that were given and love the push that they give me to try and be a better person. Such a wonderful time every 6 months!

Yesterday Dan and I went on a hike off of Skyline Drive to Little Calf Mountain. It was really short and pretty easy - just a little steep on the way up. Unfortunately, our camera batteries died so we didn't get any pictures. But the good news is that we got into the park free because it was National Public Land Day! Who knew?

So since we don't have any pictures, here are some from when we drove up the Blue Ridge Parkway to watch the sunset a week or so ago.

And last weekend we went to the Farmer's Market so here's a shot of some peppers. There was a guy there selling pictures and he had a beautiful one of Delicate Arch at Arches National Park, but it was too expensive.

And here is one of only 3 pictures I shot while in Bowling Green, Kentucky. It's such a cute little town but the stoplights take forever and were driving me nuts!

Speaking of nuts, I once rode the bus in Utah to go to Wal-mart or something and the bus driver was hysterical. At first, I thought everything was normal. Then the driver turns to this guy who's sitting in the front row and says, "Excuse me, have you seen any squirrels around here?" The man tried his hardest to ignore the driver... "Have you seen any squirrels around here???" The man finally responded, "Uh... no. Why?" And then the bus driver, in this crazed maniacal voice says, "Because they're after me! They think I'm nuts!" I was laughing SO hard.

Anyway, that's about it from here. I'm supposed to take my sister's engagement pictures this week. I'm a little nervous about that. Hopefully they won't turn out as badly as these:

Boo. Boo airports. So I had to leave this morning for a business trip to Bowling Green, Kentucky. Only problem is the Bowling Green doesn't have a commercial airport. So I booked a flight from Charlottesville to Nashville through Charlotte. Then I was going to rent a car to drive up to Bowling Green. I was supposed to get in to Bowling Green around 3:30. It's now 4:30 and I'm stuck in Charlotte because my second flight got canceled after we sat on the tarmac for two hours. So now, the earliest flight I can get to Nashville leaves here at 7:45 and I won't get in to Bowling Green until around 11. Sweeeet. Boo airports. I'll write a more chipper post later.

WayneLanes - bring it on.Today is our fabulous friend Sarah's birthday so yesterday, a group of us went and got our bowl on down at WayneLanes in Waynesboro, Virginia. Dan and I had tried to go to WayneLanes before, but realized once we got there that there was a tournament going on and the alley was pretty much booked for the rest of the day. Not to mention, it was so smokey that you couldn't see from one end of the room to the other. But alas, it was Sarah's birthday so we thought we'd give it another try. When we got there, we noticed that they have been smoke-free since August! We were pretty excited.

Bowling was a lot of fun. I just wish I were good at it. Our camera batteries died right as the party was getting started, so here are some of the shots we got before our camera gave out...

The sweet smell of success. I think Dan got 105 or something.

The agony of defeat. (She actually did really well. I just thought this picture was good.)

Thank you, WayneLanes. Thank you.

WHITE ROCK FALLS TRAIL

Well, despite the fact that no one publicly said they wanted to accompany us on our next outdoor excursion, we got three brave souls to join us on today's adventure - White Rock Falls Trail. The falls were described in our brochure as "40 foot White Rock Falls set in a spectacular hemlock shaded rock grotto." Well, we were pretty excited about that 40-foot waterfall... until we saw it!

But wait, you ask... where's the water? Let's take a closer look.
Oh, yeah. So needless to say, we (we mostly meaning Dan) were pretty bummed that there wasn't enough water to go playing around in, not to mention jumping in. So we climbed around on the rocks a bit, ate grapes, and Katy painted a beautiful watercolor. Although the "falls" weren't what we expected, I thought the hike was really pretty. On the drive up we also saw plenty of deer and squirrels. It was nice to get out and enjoy the great weather! Thanks to Katy and the Menssens for keeping us company. It was a lot of fun.

Katy climbing.

Dan the whitey between Kimber and Mike.

My little sister and her boyfriend are officially engaged! Yay!

Kristen and I are planning on going on a hike this Saturday morning. Right now, we're looking at leaving around 7: 30 or 8 a.m. and going on the White Rock Falls Trail. It looks like it's probably a 45 minute drive from C'ville, and it's a 1.7 mile hike, each way (3.4 miles total). The information we have says that it goes by (maybe through?) a couple stream valleys to a couple groups of falls, one of which is 40 feet. Nothing says there are good swimming holes, but if there are, I'll probably stop at them for a little while. This brochure does say it's "great for kids, but there are several dangerous drop-offs." Let us know if you're interested in going this Saturday morning!

So Kristen and I have decided that we're going to go on hikes more frequently this year. Thanks to a tip from Katy (this is where I'd insert a link to Aaron and Katy's blog, if I knew what the heck I was doing), we picked up a brochure on 15 cool hikes within a short drive of Charlottesville from that outdoor store in Barracks.

Today, we hiked the St. Mary's River trail. It's about an hour hike each way, 2.5 miles, to the waterfall.

So we got there, and above the falls, we ran into some local kids who said you could jump off a ledge into a pool by the waterfall. These kids were diving head first off another rock, probably 8 feet down, into a gap about 4 feet wide. They were crazy, but it did look fun. So here's a picture of the place by the waterfall that they recommended we go check out.

It didn't look too bad from down below in the water.

But it looked pretty bad once I got to the top. It was hard to see where the edges were, it was only about 8 feet deep in the deepest spot, and it felt pretty high when I started looking down. After 15 tense minutes of contemplation, with onlookers saying things like "do it," "don't do it," and "I'm not stupid enough to do it," and with Kristen looking at me like it might be our last moment together, the situation ended anticlimactically with me going back down. The long way. I missed having Kristen's brother, Kirk, there to jump first, just to convince me that I probably wouldn't seriously hurt myself.

So if anyone else wants to go jump first sometime, hopefully it would help me work up the guts to go too. Or, if you're just interested in going on one of our future hikes with us, let us know.

Dan's California Picture Tour, Continued

Yours truly jumping off of party rock with hat in hand, and, which can't be detected in just a photograph, shrieking like a little girl.

This is Kristen on our hike up to Mist Falls. We had heard from a group coming back down that we should be careful because a bear was at the top of the falls when they were there. So, naturally, I was really hoping to get there in time to see the bear.

Unfortunately, the bear was gone by the time we got there. So Kristen's brother and sister-in-law and I swam around at the falls. It was one of my favorite parts of the trip. The scenery was awesome, and the water was cold enough that you numbed up quickly and could then just enjoy the swim. It was nice because nobody else showed up for a long time.

This is me doing my "I pity the fool who don't eat my smores" pose. I was trying to devise a way to not only toast my marshmallow, but to also melt my chocolate. I tried just heating up a whole smore over the fire, but it just burned my graham cracker and turned it all mushy. Ultimately, I just had to heat the whole smore over the propane lantern, which worked pretty well. Does anybody else have any good smore making tips that get the chocolate melted? By the way, we put peanut butter on the smores, and they tasted really good.

This is the rattlesnake we saw on our hike back from Mist Falls. The whole week long I was hoping to see a bear. A bear came during the night at least two nights during the week and made a ruckus in neighboring campsites, but it never came to our campsite. I stayed up late and alone one night, smeared with honey, hoping to catch the bear on the prowl, but it didn't come, and I ended up just going to bed. So I didn't get to see a bear. Thus, the coolest picture of fauna from Kings Canyon that I can post is of this rattlesnake. But Kristen did a see a bear on her way to the restroom in the middle of the night, so you can ask her about that. Just kidding about the honey.

Dan's Picture Tour of the rest of our summer trip

Kristen forgot to mention that while in Utah, I went mountain biking for the first time with her brother Kirk. He was nice to not get mad at me for slowing him down. I hadn't ridden a bike for about 10 years. I think it's fair to say that we pretty much owned that mountain, as you can see from our intrepid expressions above.

CALIFORNIA Pictures

This is the river, and my soap-and-shampoo-free bath tub, behind our campsite in King's Canyon.
This is Kristen next to a big tree. It had pine cones (or sequoia cones?) bigger than her head. But not bigger than mine.
This is a nice view from Morrow Rock/Peak/I can't remember. That's Kristen's brother in the background, not some random stranger.
Kristen and her sister Candice jumping off of Party Rock in King's Canyon. Kristen is fearlessly leading the way. I'll post more pictures later.

SUMMER'S END

Contrary to popular belief (or maybe just one person's belief, Katy) , I am not dead. So here is my post. Dan and I just got back to Charlottesville yesterday after spending 2 weeks with various branches of my family in various parts of the country. Here's the rough breakdown:

First, I spent a few days staying w/ my sister in Provo before Dan could fly out. This way, I could have girl time with my old roomies without feeling like I was neglecting Dan. It was a blast! I got to see three of my old roommates. We went to dinner, went swimming, and just hung out. I wish I could have seen them more! My stay there was entirely too short. They are the best!

While I was still husband-less, I also got to walk around BYU's campus (and south of campus) and take some pictures of places and things that mean something special to me and Dan. The empty lot used to be an elementary school where Dan and I had our first kiss (awww...). Sorry to all of the kids that were at recess when that happened... I think I saw a few lose their lunches. Just kidding! It was after school hours. The second is of our first apartment. So exciting. The third is of my fav type of flowers at the Terraced Garden at the south end of campus where we would often go walking. I love you, Dan!

This shot has no significance to me or Dan, but I've always liked it so I thought I'd take a close-up of it. The first person who can guess what it is wins. You don't win anything, but you win knowing that you won. So deep. After all of that, Dan came in to town so what did we do? We got donuts from Sugar 'n' Spice. They are so good. So much better than nasty Krispy Kremes. We also happened upon a sign from the Quill and the Sword club at BYU. Some of you may not know this, but Dan was the president of the Quill and the Sword club for four years in a row. He changed his major 3 times in order to keep his dictatorship, I mean presidency, going. He always wore a helmet so that people wouldn't know his true identity. And all members of the club had to refer to him as "Dungeon Master." So needless to say, he was very excited to see a poster about the Q&tS (that's what insiders call it) and felt the need to strike an all-too-familiar pose. Get it, Dungeon Master, get it. If any of you who went to BYU had ever seen those guys dressed in head-to-toe red fighting with wooden swords outside of the Wilk on a Saturday morning, you've probably seen Dan. He'd be the last one standing. But back to our adventures...
Those other two are of the spot where Dan proposed to me. He was probably looking something like that. And I was probably looking something like that.

After all of this, my family had its annual reunion at a cabin in Heber, Utah. It was so great to see my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. We hung out the first day, went to a lake for two days, and went to Park City the last day. Dan had never been jetskiing before and he loved it. I am so grateful for such a wonderful family. My dad, his sister, and three brothers were all separately adopted by my grandparents. They've raised them all in the gospel and it's awesome to see how that act of love has had such an amazing impact on so many lives! They are all so fun and loving and kind. As all of the cousins get older, I don't know how often everyone will get to be together so it was really nice. I love them so much!

Well, that sums up the first half of the trip. Sorry this is so long! Maybe I'll save the second half of the adventure for Dan to post. But here's one last picture for good measure.
This was the bandit we saw on our way from Utah to California.