snow

it's snowing today. it started as rain last night, then sleet this morning, and now it's full-on snow. it's coming down hard and sticking to everything. i'd guess we have an accumulation of about an inch already. maybe we'll be able to make a snowman for fhe tonight.

tomorrow it's supposed to be sunny and 71.

hummingbirds

w and b gave me a hummingbird feeder for mother's day. it took us awhile, but we got it set up last week. this morning, though, was the first time that we've actually seen a hummingbird at the feeder--and boy this hummingbird really likes our feeder. it's a black-chinned hummingbird.

i caught a picture of it at the feeder. i love hummingbirds--so it's so fun to finally have a feeder and see them (or at least one very hungry black-chinned bird) all the time!

9 years and 1 day

yesterday was our 9th anniversary. much has changed since may of 2001, but many things are still the same too. brian and i are still best friends and love being together.

to commemorate our love we went out to a nearby canyon and hiked up in it to do some high-adventure trout fishing and hiking. it was a lot of fun. the weather was beautiful, the canyon was beautiful, and the trout we caught were beautiful too. we caught 8 fish and then cooked them up over a fire. then we hiked/fished some more. once we had 8 more we cooked those up over another fire and ate them.

eating 8 trout each sounds like a lot, but these aren't huge fish. honestly, it was just a nice, light lunch.

the high-adventure part of the fishing expedition was a lot of fun. we both ended the hike dirty (from sliding, falling, ect) with a lot of scratches, a little sunburnt, and wet.

two other cool things were (1st) brian found a wild morel that we ate with our fish. we looked around for more, but could only find the one today. second, we saw a male and female western tanager. if you don't know what they look like, look them up. they're beautiful--especially the male.

the morel brian found. we cooked this up with the second batch of fish--very delicious.

the scenery.

the adoption

yesterday was the big adoption day. we all woke up early and enjoyed a "special" breakfast of nutella on toast and then drove up to the court house. i figured we'd have to wait awhile there, and we did. william did a good job of waiting though. my mom and brother kyle came too.

the actual court proceeding was pretty easy and quick. brian and i both got to answer a few questions, and there were a few other testimonies, but that was it. it was all over very quickly. at the end, the judge welcomed william up to her seat. she gave him a present, let him sign his name on the official document, and let him bang her gavel. he loved it all. then, of course, we took quite a few pictures.

then there was paper work that needed to be sorted out. the paper work stuff is the un-fun part of all of this, but eventually it will be over with. eventually as in probably a few months from now.

once we were done at the court house we went and bought william a bike. the plan was to go out for lunch after he rode his bike around for awhile. but after realizing that all of his friends were at school (and wouldn't be out for 4 more hours), william came into the house and asked if he could go to school. we couldn't say no--so we took him to school.

later that afternoon, he rode his bike around a lot more and showed it off to many people. then we took him out for all you can eat shrimp with one of his good friends.

all-in-all it was a great day. william is a great kid, and brian and i are very lucky that he is our son.

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