Happy 4th of July

Since the 4th of July landed on a Sunday this year, the city of Provo held its annual Stadium of Fire celebration on Saturday night (the 3rd). Paul and I didn't want to brave the crowds at the Stadium of Fire, nor did we need to see Carrie Underwood perform, so we didn't go. Instead, I took Paul to the campus of my new work. (Oh yeah, I didn't let y'all know I took the full time position that starts in the fall.) Here's the building I'll be working in.

This is the building next to it - I like the architecture.
After showing Paul the campus we drove to Paul's work and went for a bike ride. There's a great trail outside his work that goes up into the Provo Canyon and all the way down to Utah Lake. We rode the trail for a couple miles toward the BYU stadium where the fireworks show would be. I was very distracted during our ride and wanted to take all sorts of pictures - like this one of the fighter jets that flew over the Stadium of Fire celebration.
I don't know how many times I stopped to take in the sunset. This picture is of the sun reflecting off the mountains across from the sunset. The mountains looked almost red from the reflection, but this is as best I could get.
And here is the sunset. With so many clouds in the sky I think every color could be seen, except green.

Once we got back to Paul's work we headed to the roof to watch the Provo fireworks.
This is how far we were from the stadium.
Thankfully my camera has a good zoom.
This last picture I edited on the computer to make it more colorful.
I realized yesterday that Paul and I have enjoyed the 4th of July the past 4 years in 4 different states. Fun!! This year Utah, last year Florida, the year before Georgia, and the year before that California. I wonder what we'll do and where we'll be next year.

Hope everyone has a Happy 4th of July!!

Oops, I forgot.

In my recap of June, I forgot one of the highlights from last weekend. We live about 20 minutes from Sundance Ski Resort. During the summer the resort offers trails for hiking and biking and what not. They also keep their ski-lift operational for visitors to ride and take in the views of the surrounding mountains and valleys. Last weekend was a full moon, so the resort stayed open longer for people to enjoy a moonlit ski-lift experience. Paul and I, along with two other couples from Paul's work, headed to Sundance last Friday. Other than the fact that I don't like heights and the lift had one huge, scary incline, it was awesome! The round trip took 45-50 minutes. We got on shortly after 9 and watched the moon rise through the clouds, then on the return portion we got to star gaze. What a great, relaxing evening.

Quick recap of June

Since July is now here, I thought I should post a little about June.

A couple weekends ago Paul and I drove up to Salt Lake to go to the downtown farmer's market and stroll through the Gateway outdoor shopping center that was having a sidewalk chalk contest to help raise money for the Utah foster care system. It was a beautiful day to be outside. Afterwards we headed to the Blue Plate Diner. If anyone watches Diners, Drive-ins and Dives on the Food Network (Paul and I watch just about every episode), it was featured on the show. We didn't see the episode, but we found out about the place online. I especially wanted to go because they have several vegetarian options - like chili. This is surprising to me because I don't think of Utah as the most vegetarian conscious state. Anyway, Paul had a cheese burger and I had the biscuits with vegetarian gravy! This was the first time in over 20 years of not eating meat that I could order biscuits and gravy from a restaurant - so I couldn't pass it up. My food was very good, and Paul's response was, "There's just something about a burger from a diner." Doesn't get much better.

The following week we celebrated my birthday.

Paul made me brownies (with vanilla ice cream) and decorated them with white chocolate. Yum!

And the other day, since we had so many white chocolate chips left over, I decided to make chocolate covered pretzels. They turned out just the way I remembered them.

Finally, I got a job for the summer. I'm teaching a trigonometry class at the local university. I've also applied for a full time position in the fall, with the same university, teaching developmental mathematics courses. I actually received a call this morning with an offer for the position, now I just have to decide if I'm going to accept. I'll keep you posted.

Happy July!

Saturday afternoon

Today Paul and I decided to go for a little hike close to home. I discovered that there is a 1.5 mile hike up to a waterfall here in Pleasant Grove. We opted for this instead of our usual weekend bike ride. It was a beautiful day, but the hike made me aware of just how out of shape I am.

Here we are at the start of the trail. We thought we'd take a picture before we got too tired.
There were surprisingly few bugs out, but I did almost get pegged in the head by a large butterfly. This is a smaller one that was hanging out on the rocks just waiting for me to take a picture.Paul about two-thirds the way up the trail. After crossing this stream the climb got much steeper - says the out of shape lady.

We made it to the water fall in just under 30 minutes. I'm not sure if you can see anyone in this picture, but there were several people playing in the water below.

Here's the view through the canyon looking out at Utah Lake.

We sat a while at the top of the waterfall before heading back down the canyon.

Pretty fun afternoon.

sNOw way

Here's what we woke up to today.



Happy May 24th to you too mother nature. It's still coming down hours later...looks like a great day to stay indoors.

Keeping busy

I (Stef) have had to find things to keep me busy since Paul's at work all day and I don't have a job yet. Besides continuing to scan and edit all my mom and grandma's pictures from the past 40 years, I started making baby quilts for a local woman's organization that helps single mothers and low income families. Here are the first two quilts I made this past week. They are rag quilts, so they are supposed to be raggedy on the edges.

Quilt 1

Up close

Quilt 2

Up close.

Pictures

So we moved out of the hotel and into a townhome a few weeks ago, and we finally got around to taking some pictures:

Downstairs

Office

Master Bedroom

There's a guest bedroom, too, and another bath and half bath.