Hallo-weeeeeeeeen

On Sunday we met for our weekly family deener. Since our kitchen is being remod3eled we met at nancy and nathans house. Nancy cooked food and afterward we decorated sugar cookies(bats, frankenstein monster heads, tombstones and punkins). We also carved real life pumpkins. Mines is the best. Howl-oween is fun. ENJOY!!!
Did you do anything fun for Halloween?

-MiChAeL

It's crazy intense in here...

Sugar cookies are good. When I was a kid I used to be able to eat more...what happened?

Mine is the third from the left or third from the right. Take your pick.

Nathan is a gangster...kinda. 

Tails and Trails

A little history...

My mom and I were talking a few months ago about how we would both like to get back into shape. She ran a half marathon last year and has expressed how much she liked the feeling after she crossed the finish line after all her training. So I suggested that we sign up for a run and told her to invite the family also. We’ve been training ever since. I was sick all through the beginning of Oct and got off track of the training but Mike has been doing great.

 To get him excited to run our 8 miles we’re gonna run, Mike decided to sign up to run in a race that was a little shorter. He ran his 5k on Saturday that was hosted by the Denton Animal Shelter. He has been pretty busy so I’ll give the update. He ran the first mile and was doing great. This is the first time he has been able to run in many many years so this was a HUGE DEAL! He sped walked for the next two miles and when he was getting to the finish line started to run. Right as he was about to finish he heard a loud POP in his knee. Yup, right at the end he hurt himself. It’s been about a week and he’s healing crazy fast. He’s not able to run yet, but hopefully he’ll be able to continue training for the Turkey Trot next week.

~Jess

Mike's second biggest fan (leaving his biggest fan to yours truly) 

They had little shops and displays set up around the area

Sharon and her dogs dressed up in 80's costumes came and did the one mile

Finishing the race! He's so good looking! 

He did it! This may have been where he heard the loud POP.

A Leather snob

This by no means is a blog about fashion. In fact I think Mike would have a heart attack if I wanted it to be. Regardless of his feelings, I have been thinking lately about getting some cute boots like THESE or THESE or a leather jacket like THIS one, but I obviously can’t afford to purchase both or even one of these right now. I refuse to purchase something that is fake leather. I just can’t bring myself to do it. There is a certain feel and smell leather has that I’m not willing to sacrifice even if those other boots are cute. In fact Mike has a Scentsy travel tin that has the smell of leather even though the car he drives has absolutely no leather in it…ha ha.  I wonder how our 4 readers feel about pleather or fake leather. Am I the only leather snob?

Jess

Anniversary 2

We had our two year anniversary! We decided to go to some off the wall museums.

First we had a healthy breakfast at Mi Casita. We did this just to make sure we had salsa breath for the entire day. J

Second on our list was, of course the Boy Scouts of America museum. We did it as a joke but we were really impressed with the museum. I said if I ever worked with the boy scouts, I’d defiantly bring them there. (Guess who is the new Cub Scouts Master?? I guess I’ll learn to keep my mouth shutJ )

We were then off to the Frontiers of Flight Museum. Mike was super excited to see all of the planes and air crafts. I’ll admit it was pretty stinkin’ cool.

Mike loved this one "The Flying Tiger Moth" 

Yea, that's one of the Apollo Space Module and I'm touching it....so I've touched Outer Space 

"The Flying Pancake"

I loved her uniform...

The other places we were going to visit…including a porcelain doll museum (I wanted to be creeped out) and the AT&T phones of history…don’t exist anymore. I was kind of bummed so Mike surprised me and took us to a place where there are a ton of trampolines. It was awesome and a great way to end our day.

I’m really grateful for him and how much he takes care of me. It’s only been two years but it seems like we’ve been together forever…in a good way. I’m lucky he puts up with my crazy. I’m glad we have the opportunity to spend eternity together. 

The drive home

Home is like a nice warm pair of socks that are still 80% wet and 106 degrees.

Well, at this point we’ve been home for a little over a week and life is back to normal unfortunately.  Jess is back at work and we’re getting ready for school to start back up on Monday, we even bought books today…that was fun. Our drive home was relatively uneventful but we had a blast and saw some really good friends on the trip.

When we left Yellowstone we headed south through the park so Jess could see the Tetons and Jackson Hole, Wyoming.  We didn’t really see a whole lot as we drove south through the park. As we drove up on the Tetons we saw some of the most beautiful mountains we have ever seen. We took a scenic drive through Grand Teton National Park and enjoyed the views.  If you’ve never been to the Tetons, I highly suggest it before you kick the proverbial bucket if you know what I’m saying. On our way out of the Tetons we hit a lovely little traffic jam because some genius decide to go all Dukes of Hazzard over a dried up creek bed…everybody looked like they were ok but I’m sure it was awesome to see. We made a quick trip through Jackson Hole taking in as many sights of the city as you can from a car. All I can say is that place was CROWDED!!! After we made it through the metropolitan city of Jackson’s Hole (that’s what the sign in front of the Methodist Church calls it…) we continued on our way to Orem, UT. The rest of the drive was pretty uneventful other than it rained on us pretty much most of the day. We didn’t end up arriving in Orem until 23:00 hours. It was a veeerrrrrrrryyyy long day.

While in Orem for the one night that we were there we stayed with our close family friends the Kurt and Mitzi. They made us a wonderful roast dinner for that night and we very promptly crashed in the basement (basements are fun). The next morning we woke up and took our time getting on the road, we only had a short drive that next day. That morning we picked fresh fruits and veggies in the backyard garden and had Danish apple pancakes (ebelskivers) for breakfast, they were amazing. We hung out for a little bit and had BLT’s for lunch. Then we hit the road to Cedar City, UT. We made it to Cedar around 18:30 and had a tasty dinner waiting on us. We stayed with some more family friends, the Garner’s, who used to live in Texas but unfortunately had to move to Utah a few years ago.

Upon our speedy arrival we were greeted with open arms and a wonderful taco dinner. It was a nice sensation to be back in the city the past two nights. Because we were in the throes of civilization Jess decided she wanted to watch a movie…so we did. We perused the extensive movie collection and chose the longest film in our world’s existence…The Lord of the Ring’s: The Fellowship of the Ring. Jess decided a while back that we needed to watch the trilogy so we can be sufficiently prepared for when The Hobbit comes out at the end of the year.  The next day it was stake conference so we went and enjoyed a lovely conference and a wonderful day with the Garner’s. Two of the Garner offspring came over for dinner and we had a great time and enjoyed catching up.

The next morning we hit the road around 10 and with a few detours we were finally on our way to Albuquerque via the Grand Canyon.  After a few hours we finally arrived at the turn off to the north rim of the canyon another hour after that we finally got there. We suffered through the oppressive heat and walked out to Bright-Angel Point and took in the view. It was beautiful. 

The next part of the drive was incredibly depressing. We were driving through the Navajo Native American reservation. This land, for the most part, was desolate and dry with little to no resources. This once proud tribe has been forced onto these reservations and been given these large tracts of land by the government. I really don’t want to go on a government fueled rant so I will stop there.  Our drive to Albuquerque was a long boring one.

 We finally arrived late that night and checked to our hotel with no issues. Luckily this place was remarkably nicer than the place we stayed while in Denver. The next morning we woke up and got on the road headed home. I will say this to summarize the drive, most of the time we were driving through west Texas. Fortunately we brought some rain back to Texas with us. Once we passed through Childress it rained on us almost the entire way home. That was definitely needed and welcomed rain as we found out. We arrived home safely and got back into the spin of normal life. It’s been a little weird being home. I keep walking outside thinking I’m going to see mountains and amazing wildlife when all I see is great expanses of flatness, squirrels, skunks and the occasional armadillo. We loved our time in Yellowstone and our great adventure that we went on this summer. It was a great experience for us as individuals and as a couple. We met some amazing people, got to reconnect with some old friends and saw some wonderful scenery. Overall I would for sure say that we had a successful summer, one we will never forget.

The Last Week of Yellowstone Bliss

Last week in Yellowstone

Our time in Yellowstone ended with a bang. On Sunday the branch had a taco potluck. I made my salsa. It was delicious, if I do say so myself. We said our goodbyes to some of the families that we wouldn’t see again before we left. It was pretty sad and delicious. I’m gonna miss that branch. I’ve never felt so welcome in a ward. We never had to prove ourselves. We didn’t have to do much to stand out (seeing as how there were only 3 other families in the branch). They just accepted us for who we are and never felt anyone was talking behind our back. They knew we were there to help and we were glad to do what we could. I’m gonna miss that. 

The next day we went to the Gilbert’s home to have a little FHE fun with badminton. Don’t worry, we never improved on our skills and still looked like complete morons while playing. It was wonderful. One day, we wanna be like the Gilberts. They were the most welcoming family I’ve met besides a few families I met while on my mission. They understood we were there for the summer and they were more than willing to be our surrogate family until we could return to our own. They were always so happy to have us over and play games and laugh with/at us. The kids were especially sweet as they told us multiple times how much they were going to miss us and didn’t want us to go. 

The next night, we thought we’d go to lamar valley just to see if we could find anything. Guess what we saw? Yup, a BLACK grizzly bear. It was pretty far off in the field and just walking along. We tried to get some good shots, but some are better than others. We heard someone saying something about wolves that were by Roosevelt (which we had passed on our way to see the grizzly. SHOOT! So we got in the car and drove back to see if the wolves were still hanging around. Apparently we just missed them as we drove up. One 16..yea 16 year old…kid whom we’ve seen every time we’ve been wolf watching told us that there was a bison carcass not too far off and they may be back tomorrow. I convinced Mike we needed to come back in the morning. Normally in the morning means around 8:00 or so, not so much when one is looking for wolves. Morning means 6:00 am. So we and our friend James woke up with the sun around 5:00am and left around 5:20 to be able to get out to Lamar by 6:00. James insisted that he was going to be angry if he didn’t see any wolves seeing as how he didn’t go to bed until around 1:00am. He was saying bye to a few friends and lost track of time. After we arrived, we were not disappointed. We saw a few wolves standing on the top of a hill and then walk down behind the ridge line. There was a heard of bison across the road and as mentioned in earlier blog posts, it’s rut. We saw the males slamming their heads together pushing each other back and forth. It was super cool. Mike missed it because he was crossing the road and saw the wolves hanging out in a field. We got lots of pictures and even got a video of them howling. One bison was crossing their path. One wolf started howling and then other’s joined in. The bison never stopped or faltered his steps. The wolves continued to howl and gathered together to look like one massive creature. Bison are known to have poor eye sight and I’m sure it looked like one HUGE wolf howling. The bison, however just continued on his path, as if to say, “ok, thanks for your howling.” The wolves continued to walk on keeping one eye on the wolf. One lone wolf stayed back and ran around the bison as if it was teasing it. The bison just did one big head movement and the wolf went flying in the air. Not really… but that would have been awesome. The bison did move its head like it was going to send the wolf flying, but the wolf was too fast and ran away. Don’t mess with these bison, especially during rut. 

Sun rise

That's the bear

Wolves from the "Molly Pack"

Howling at the pack

Same wolf still howling

The day before, we decided to go and see if we could go white water rafting. The problem was their last ride went out at 3:00 and we didn’t get off work until 5:00. Luckily we knew Kirby and Allison who were friends with the people at the Flying Pig. After we named dropped (never done that before) the worker said she’d go and see if anyone was going out the next night. The Lord really was looking out for us because one girl that happened to be there that day needed to get certified and was going that next night to do it. We set everything up for the next day. So after an awesome morning of watching wolves we went to work for a few hours and then went rafting for FREE. My favorite price. It’s ok to name drop every now and again. The girl that was getting certified was a crazy red head that before this summer had never had a tan. She was a blast and Mike and I, being the newbies, were required to ride in the front and get extra wet. Yellowstone river water, in case you didn’t know, is NEVER warm…EVER. It was fun despite the really cold water. I figured it being August; the water would be a little warm, nope. The water was low because it was late in the season, but I was grateful we even got to do it at all. I felt kinda hardcore rafting in the Yellowstone River with no helmet or water shoes.    

Our last full day we spent hiking Fairy falls. *Note to self: always wear HIKING shoes while HIKING* The hike wasn’t terrible, but the path was full of volcanic ash and therefor full of ash that would conceal the little rocks on the trail. Being clumsy and all, it’s always better to wear shoes that allow one to trip on rocks and not stub one’s toe….30 times. When we finally reached the falls, it was totally worth it. They were beautiful. Of course, I had to get in the water. Guess what? It was cold too…VERY COLD. Hence, the awkward poses in the photos:

This is Grand Prismatic. Notice the little yellow man in between the trees. That's Mike.

We ate lunch with our friends that night and said our goodbyes. We miss them terribly.

Until next post of our travels home.

a various cacophany of adventures and dehydration...

Timberrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr camp.

Lately we’ve been counting down the days until we go home. Not that we’re unhappy here or anything it’s just that we feel like we’ve accomplished almost everything we came up here to do. So, with that in mind we are attempting to polish off the last few things on our list of “to do’s.” One of those things was camping….not backpacking mind you but honest to goodness “car camping.” Our friends Amanda and Lori gently urged us to give the whole camping thing another shot so we did. We looked around for a good place to go. First we looked at locations inside the park but they’re all way too busy. Next we looked outside the park since the tourists generally only stay on the major roads and rarely camp inside the park the options outside the park are pretty much wide open and available. It didn’t take us long to find a place called Timber Camp outside the small town of Jardine which is outside the small town of Gardiner…it’s all about the series of small towns up here, but we love it. Anywho, last Sunday we (Jess, Amanda and myself ) went for a drive up to scope out the campsites that were available at this so called “Timber Camp.” It was basically a large forested area with an odd little meadow thrown in the middle. On one side of the meadow in the trees there was a small stream that ran through the camp. It was typical of what a mountain camp would look like. There were three campsites that we could choose from, one was closest to the stream and bathroom (it was really just a hole in the ground with some walls put around it), the second one was on a trail over to the horse corrals which were part of the camp but separated by some trees (with very few possible tent sites this one wasn’t really an option) and the third one was up by the road and was relatively small compared to the other two. We decided we would take the first one if it was available when we got there Friday night. On those in between days we (in this exact order) worked, worked, worked, climbed a mountain (Mount Washburn, 10,243 feet high to be exact, and worked. You read that right WE CLIMBED A MOUNTAIN!!! It was pretty awesome and difficult. It got really windy and pretty cold up on top of that mountain. When Friday finally came around we were ready for some more outdoor adventure. We had planned a gourmet meal of hot dogs and smores……..

Sorry to interrupt our regularly scheduled programming but we have a very important announcement to make. Uh hum…..we would like to announce…….we……went……swimming in the Firehole River and it was amazing. When you first climb into the river it’s frighteningly cold so you immediately begin to think the name is merely a clever coincidence that its name creates vivid pictures of a boiling tempest. It was actually somewhere around 70 degrees which wasn’t awful. As you can most likely guess it’s a river so there’s pretty strong current. If you decide to enjoy the Firehole river and all its wonders it should be a requirement that you have to at least push against the current to make it past the first set of cliffs and underwater barricades. Jess and I pushed our way all the way to the origin of the canyon where the current is the strongest and flung ourselves into the gaping jaws of the watery beast. It was pretty fun. The current pulled us under a couple times and threw me into a rock shelf but it was a blast. We both highly recommend it. Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled programming……

Showing the elevation. Jess wanted to be a part of the picture too....

Not much air pressure up here!

This is three panoramic pictures put into one huge panorama.

This is for you, James

…….Thanks for that important news bulletin! We will now resume with our riveting tale of the Timber Camp experience. We painstakingly prepared our exquisite meal of hot dogs, brats and chips over the fire. It was a delicious gourmet experience that prompted our taste buds to explode with enthusiasm. After dinner we sat and talked around the campfire. Once we got too cold to stand it we all crawled into our respective tents and attempted to sleep in the freezing cold mountain air. It got down to something around 34 degrees that night which was not something I was expecting. The next morning we slowly got up and cooked breakfast, sausage and eggs. It was superb. Once we got moving we cleaned up camp and went for a short walk around our campsite just to see what else was out there. We didn’t miss much.  On our way back into town we stopped at an old mountain cemetery. It was pretty cool to see this little cemetery stuck on the only flat spot for 2 miles on the side of a mountain. That was our camping trip. No more, no less. In short, car camping is for us…backpacking , not so much.

This is the manged fox that pretty much came up to us as we were enjoying our delicious smores.

  

The Lord's Hands

Posing a question

On my mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter DaySaints, at some points, it would have been easy to complain about the situations I was in. One day I heard someone talking about seeing how the Lord had had a hand in their life. I decided to put it to the test. Every day I would write down how the Lord’s hand had played a part in my life that day. Guess what. I became optimistic about my mission and the people we were teaching. It’s been several years, but that same feeling has returned that I need to start writing down how I’ve seen the Lord’s hand in my day to day life. I also felt I should pose the question to our 3 readers out there. I will not pose this question every week, but I may pose it when I’ve had a hard week, or a GREAT week, or a week like this week…just a good regular week. I do it to help myself see (and you 3 readers out there) how much the Lord really does have His hand in our everyday life. 

I’ll go first. I saw the Lord’s hand this week when on my birthday, I saw a TON of animals that I wanted to see, family came to visit Mike and I, and when I was preparing a talk on Sunday, He helped me with inspiration to know what to say. 

Now it’s your turn...if you wanna.

How have you seen the Lord’s hand in your life this week?

Family Visit and Jess's birthday..and the MOOOOOSE

We LOVE Risk...yes we're nerds. Amanda whipped our trash...this time.

This past couple of weeks has mostly consisted of preparing for the much anticipated arrival of Michael’s family (and playing risk) minus Nancy and Nathan. Unfortunately they couldn’t make it up which totally stinks. But such is life. They’ll have to come visit us for sure once we graduate and move somewhere hopefully with mountains and cooler weather. We, the attending parties of the Wilson family, were joined by Kurt and Mitzi Cox. They are our close family friends that moved to Orem, Utah from Denton several years ago. It has been a staple to visit them whenever we are in the great white north. This time they decided to join us for a few days on their way back from Seattle. 

Saturday consisted of us working and getting off super early because it was super slow. We then met up with Mike’s family and gave them a tour of the Mammoth Hot Springs area including the hot spring terraces and the hoodoos. That night once everyone was in town we went to dinner at the Ironhorse Bar and Grill. Despite the insanity that took place the food was amazing and we all had a great time. We were joined that night by Tommy and Patsy Smith, our friends from Sopchoppee, Florida (yes, that’s a real town). After dinner we went back and crashed pretty hard.

 

Sunday was much like a regular old Sunday, we went to church and then enjoyed our regular Sunday drive in and around Yellowstone. The talks at church were really good as well as the lessons that were presented in the various classes. The spirit was definitely in attendance on Sunday. After church we got ready for our drive that we had ahead of us and we all piled into Patti and Sharon’s rental car that wasn’t big enough…but we squeezed in anyway. All 7 of us were crammed in and we drove to Red Lodge, Montana on the Bear Tooth Highway. The road passed the 12,000 foot mark in elevation and the scenery was beautiful. The entire drive was amazing including the waterfalls and the blonde colored black bear we saw just off the side of the road. We didn’t get back to Gardiner until after 11:00 but it was a great day with some amazing scenery. It was totally worth it. Kurt was hilarious cracking jokes left and right while his sweet wife constantly said, “Kurt!! Not on Sunday!” I have since adopted this phrase but I use it every day. Kurt was telling a story and said the word “underwear” and Mitzi promptly said (everyone with me now) “Kurt!! Not on Sunday!” She was joking, of course. But she has just the right voice for one to wonder if she really is a little embarrassed by Kurt’s jokes. Mike said the word fart and she asked me, “Jess are you so embarrassed right now?” I explained that of course I was because it was Sunday after all. Later Mike showed him the app called Google Sky Map (pretty cool). Kurt was mesmerized and pointed the phone down and said “Hey! There’s Uranus down there on the floor!”  The funniest part was his look after he said the sentence, realizing what he just said. Those two are some of my favorite people. 

Patti took this shot...but I thought it was pretty cool.

 

 

Monday we drove to Bozeman to drop our car off to get fixed. Here is the story, if you didn’t read about how it got damaged. Kurt and Mitzi joined us in a city named West Yellowstone. This city consists of a bunch of shops about Yellowstone while not actually being in Yellowstone. We hung around town for a while and said our goodbyes to Kurt and Mitzi. We were then off to West thumb Geyser. Fishing cone was pretty cool and so was black pool. We then went to Old Faithful to see some geysers. It was pretty fun watching Old Faithful go off and even more fun watching Sharon watch it go off. I could tell she was totally in awe (but who wouldn’t be) of the geyser and the height of the gushing water. 

 

Tuesday was pretty eventless for us because we worked until 6:00 while they went on the tour called Yellowstone in a day and saw FOUR stinkin bear. J We did have dinner with the fam and Kirby and Allison at the Cowboy Café…the one with the cowboy out front. That was some good barbeque! Brisket sammich was delicious. We tried to go animal watching as we drove around Lamar Valley, but didn’t see much…except bison…lots of bison. 

Wednesday we had to drive to Bozeman to get the car and drop off Robin at the airport so that took most of the day. We did have dinner at the Mammoth dining room that was pretty good and they sang happy birthday to me.

Thursday was the best day EVER!! After we left to go to the lake we were driving along minding our own business when on the side of the road was a GRIZZLY! The first one I’ve seen here in Yellowstone. It was super cute just digging for food in a log. Every time I’ve seen a bear I’ve, forgotten my camera, got a blurry picture or was being hunted by a bear I trying to take a picture of, but Thursday was the day I finally got a good shot of a bear. I knew it was gonna be a good day. We decided to go to my favorite place, Artists’ Point and it was just as breathtaking as it was the first time I saw it.  We got to the lake and took a Scenic Cruse around the lake and got some cool history of the lake and some amazing views. On our way to Tower Fall we got caught in a bison jam (spread it on your bread…that one’s for you Robin). Apparently it’s rut so the males are pretty aggressive. We didn’t see any of them fighting but they were huffing and puffing while standing in the middle of the road. We FINALLY got to Tower Fall and it was super pretty (and crowded). Our next destination was to Roosevelt to ride on a horse drawn covered wagon to eat some yummy steak. Sharon (sneaky girl) told the man that was singing cowboy songs to us that it was my birthday without my knowledge. He sang me a personalized birthday song that we didn’t record…shoot…that was pretty funny in front of 200 strangers. When we got back to the car, we decided to drive up to petrified tree to see if there were any animals up there. Guess what we saw??? YUP a MOOOOOSE!! It was love at first sight. He was so beautiful! My first moose, ON MY BIRTHDAY! I felt so blessed. When we got back, I thought “man this was a good day”…Until my favorite girls yelled from outside, “hey birthday bear, come outside”. I walk outside and there they were with a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and sprinkles on top with candles formed into a “J” lit singing me happy birthday. It was the perfect end to a perfect day. 

I took this shot. :)
This is the first Grizzly I've seen here. 

 

What Truman Everts ate while being stranded for 37 days...looks tasty...

 

My birthday Mooose!