Mega Update! Senior Recital to the Ranch

First we had our senior recital on May 2. This is a quick picture of us after it was all over. What a GREAT feeling! It went pretty well. We are still waiting for the DVD, but we have a CD of it and I think overall it was good. It was an interesting experience we had together; all the hours upon hours of rehearsing together and getting all the details to come together. Glad it's over, glad we did it, and glad to have done it with Scotty.
We came to Utah on May 12th to spend time with Scott's Grandpa before he passed away on May 16th, 2009. He had a stroke at the end of April and died from complications relating to it. What a sacred experience to be near someone near death and to feel the strength that family has on one another. We have been able to be near loved ones and help where we can with the odds and ends after his passing. Above is a picture of Scotty fishing. Surprised? We got him a Utah fishing license and have been all over the Layton area searching for the best fishing spot. The picture is taken at Middle Fork. No luck. We also had no luck at Silver Lake in Mountain Green, Farmington Pond, Company's Pond, Kaysville Ponds, and Causey Resevoir, but luckily after a long day of canoeing and fishing and after we had already taken showers for the night, Scott said lets try one more spot up in the town of Peterson, UT in the Weber River. We went up in our pajamas and he caught one that got him all dirty and wet again. It an 18 inch Brown Trout. We kept it and Scott's Dad, Craig cooked it him for us to eat. Yummy!
We've been spending quite a bit of time with Jamie who is living down in Provo right now. She just finished up the Spring Term at BYU and is working super hard at her new job in Orem. She made us these amazing brownies one night and then another time we drove around Utah County admiring the homes in the Parade of Homes. We've also had lunch with her a couple times, both at the Olive Garden. She is so much fun to hang out with!!!!!! Scott has friend's up in Logan, UT and so we went up there for a bike ride and dinner. Their names are Chuck and Melissa and they took us on a beautiful bike ride up the Canyon Road. Logan is another fun University Town like Laie or Provo (sarcasm intended!) They love it up there and it does have an old school atmosphere! We like spending the evening with them.
So this past weekend we had a huge adventure!! We drove down to St. George to hang out with Scott's extremely fun brother, Jon. He taught us how to rapell and then got a permit for us to hike a slot canyon in Zion National park called Das Boot. It's about 1.5 miles of slot canyon right above the Subway. I was extremely excited and woke up Saturday morning feeling like a little kid on Christmas morning. We had a ton of fun! We began the hike on the Subway trail and then branched off once we dropped off into the canyon. Finding Das Boot was a little sketchy, but when we found it it was worth every second of being lost! It rained a little and that worried us, but the sun came out and we were grateful for that! Here are some more pictures of the hike. I didn't actually get pictures of the slot canyon because we were swimming in freezing cold water the majority of the time and had the camera in the packs.

I think the above picture is super cool!!!!! This is when Scott and I were first learning to rappel the night before we went on the big hike. Jon took us up to the big white DIXIE sign painted on the red rock in St. George and taught us the basics and then said okay let's go from the top. It was SOOOOOOOO freaking scary. Scott is hanging out over the edge, over the entire city of St. George. I didn't do it! We went to this really awesome canyon later that night called Snake Alley where the rappels were a lot more doable and we did every one of them and wanted to turn around and do the entire thing all over again. It was so much fun!!

After staying with Jon through Sunday, we drove to Panguitch, UT to visit my Grandparents at their Ranch. We arrived at their beautiful log cabin Sunday afternoon and spent the day with them hearing about our geneology and stories about how long the ranch has been in the family. Yesterday we took a grand tour of the ranch on Grandpa's 4X4. We just went exploring and found tons of neat places to fish and we saw two deer, rock chucks, an otter, grouse, turkey's, cows, horses, a bunny, a tiny snake and I kept expecting a bobcat to jump on top of me! There is also a bear around and we kept our eye open for that, but we had a lot of fun driving on every dirt road we could find. We found some really pretty areas near the top of the ranch and also at the bottom of the ranch. Panguitch Creek was by far the best fishing, Scott got lucky and caught a few, but I didn't catch a single one! I kept trying really hard, but I had no luck! We got really wet from walking in the river and scratched up from bush wacking our way through the brush on either side of the river, but we had fun and Grandma and Grandpa were happy we enjoyed ourselves!