going to cville

so i'm going out to charlottesville in a little while, and i'm looking forward to it. it's been almost 2 years since we left--so it definitely feels like it's time to go back even if it is for work.

i'm planning on bringing my running stuff so i can get out on my own in the morning before i need to go to conferences/meetings. i always love running in the mornings, ans since it's supposed to be in the 80s (even around 90 one day) while i'm out there, an early morning run is about the only time i'd want to go out anyway.

one thing i'm looking forward to seeing while i'm there are the dogwoods. i love the dogwoods out there. they have become one of my favorite trees and seem to really represent the things i love about virginia. i love how scraggly and wild they often are.

oh virginia.

a goal!

william scored a goal at his game last night! oh man was it exciting. brian and i jumped off our chairs and whooped and hollered. perhaps luckily for w, he didn't notice our goofy display of parental pride. this is william's first goal ever (in a game) and his team's first goal of the season. his team still lost 4-1, but it was the best game (his team looked the best) by far. so maybe w's team will win a game before the end of the season...maybe.

a good outing

our trip down to capitol reef np last weekend was great—short, but great. it was so nice to get away for awhile. we saw lots of animals, neat plants, and the super cool redrock mountains that the park is known for. below are some pictures and some of the highlights.

here's a pic of brian at the arch we hiked to on saturday. how lovely to be in a t-shirt in early april.


this is the one lizard we actually caught. there were a lot of them around, but they're super fast. william liked to ask about everyone we saw on the trails if they had seen any lizards. and if so, if they'd caught them and/or how big they were. he was proud to tell people that his dad had seen one yea big. and yea was about a foot long.

we went just outside the park to look for cool rocks. two of our best finds were a really cool conglamerate crystal rock and a smokey the bear magnet. it was a lot of fun to look for rocks. even though the ocean wasn't around, it sure felt a lot like looking for shark's teeth in nc with b's family.

the cool type of gnarly trees they have down there. we love how wild and rugged the wood is. it makes you realize how tough it really would be to survive down there in the hot months.

this shows the mountains behind the fruita area, which is right by the campground. some early mormon settlers came down here and decided it would be a great place to grow some fruit. surprisingly it seems to have worked (you can see the trees are still here), but it's pretty wild to think of seeing this place and deciding to develop some orchards. as our next door neighbor in the campground said those early mormons were very optimistic.

this shows the heart-shaped opening we saw on our sunday hike. w's fingers represent me, b, and w.

other highlights of the trip (in no particular order):

seeing the bison (outside the park), the shaggy deer (inside the park), the yellow-bellied marmot (on the scenic drive inside the park)

trying our hand at fishing (with no success)

lying in the grass and looking at the stars saturday night. b thought we saw a satelite

w getting an arrow head at a shop outside the park

going to church on sunday and attending a different ward

cooking smores in our feeble fire saturday night

capitol, capitol

this week is william's spring break. it's difficult to really go anywhere since brian is still in the midst of teaching, but we have decided to take a quick trip down to capitol reef. brian and i went about 20 feet inside the park last spring when we went down to escalante, but will now get to see more of it. we'll only be down there a few days (or really more like 1.5 days), but that's ok. it's not very far away, it's a new place to explore, and it will get us out of town and camping and hiking. that's never a bad thing.

easter, conference, birding, and smoothies

we had a nice easter weekend. we did a little plastic-egg hide-and-seek in the yard on saturday morning (william ended up finding the sneakiest spot to hide an egg). and then we dyed eggs. brian and i have never dyed eggs together--so it was fun to try it out together and with william. my favorite egg was the one i did of the high uintas (mountains, alpine lake, the three of us fishing, hawks, a pika, our tent...). that's the first time i've ever hard-boiled eggs, and i have a little bit of learning to do on that front. but the dying was fun.

on sunday, we got up early because b scored us some general conference tickets. we got up to the conference center without any problems (even though we got a few inches of snow saturday night) and enjoyed conference. brian and i both really liked pres uchdorf's and pres monson's talks. and it was cool to take william there--it's very exciting to be in the same room/place as the prophet.

after the second session of conference on sunday, we went for a walk around campus and saw some birds. the neatest one we spotted (or william spotted) was a junco. william also caught a turtle. it's exciting that william likes birding so much. he wants to go out again today after i finish working.

then, to cap off the night, we went over to brian's sister's apartment for smoothies. a very good way to finish up a fine easter weekend.