Goodbye Bodie

Last August, I drove up to Salt Lake area with my brother to look at a dog, because he wanted to get one since he had his own house. He was a happy, energetic puppy that needed a good place to stay. He came to live at our house, and he spent his time half upstairs and half downstairs. It took him awhile to get used to everything, but he always made everyone happy and was good company. He loved to play with tennis balls, sticks and anything else he could find (like socks).

Bodie was full of love and always had plenty of puppy kisses to go around. He loved being around other people and was only loud if he was left alone by himself. He loved to cuddle on the couch with anyone who would let him, and was really obedient and loyal.

On Friday when I got home from work, I went into the backyard and found him lying in the middle of the yard, dead. We're not really sure what happened. A friend who is a vet looked at his body and said that heart conditions usually run in beagles, and so that might have been it. (Signsof heart disease in beagles ) He was going to turn 2 in January.

I don't know exactly what happened, all I know is that I miss him a lot.

Goodbye, Bodie. I love you.

Cedar Mesa and Pueblos

This weekend we went out and hiked down in the four corners area of Utah, where we were at was probably about 100 miles from the closest town. We drove down and camped late Friday night, then woke up on Saturday and did 18 miles round trip. Nate's friend knew of a couple ruins, petroglyphs and rock art panels, so we got to look at a lot of really neat Pueblo ruins.

Nate's friend volunteers with an archaeological society, so he's been to a lot of different sites in the area. Apparently when the Pueblos left this region, they left behind pots and all sorts of other things planning to come back some day.

The swirls on this are supposed to represent migration. I'm not too sure what everything else represents.

 Elk.

 Check out the hand prints above the doorway.

Bigger picture.

 Pottery shards with some arrowheads. There were also corn cobs all over the place.

Nate inside one of the ruins. 

 Here I am having fun exploring.

 Nate's friends. The guy on the right brought his camera and took a lot of pictures.

This is from the large rock panel that we went to see, the moving man is pretty unusual for puebloan art.

Quail.

 

This one is called owl face. Creepy.

 

 This was our end goal, a really neat 2-story ruin on a rock ledge. If Nate's friend didn't know where it was, then we probably would have walked by on the canyon floor without even knowing!

 

  Cactus flowers.

 

We saw a lot of lizards.

 

This morning we drove to the end of the mesa top. It felt like we were at the end of the earth with the big cliffs and deep canyons.

All in all we had a really fun time exploring southern Utah!

National Park Week

We decided to go down and do a 3 day backpacking trip in Canyonlands during National Park Week. 

It was really nice because we got in for free! The weather was kind of crazy, really intense wind and then it changed from 80 degrees one day to 30-40 degrees the next day. That's the desert for you.

Alcove Springs - on our hike down into the canyon.

We found a fish in the desert! 

Big Cliffs.

Nathan really loves breakfast.

The spires behind me are called Moses and Zeus. We hiked up to the base of them.

Ready to hike!

Nathan found me the perfect seat. :)

After the 3 day trip, we took a break and hung out in Moab for a day. It was pretty crazy there because it was also the annual Jeep Safari, don't think we had ever seen so many jeeps. We planned on going out and doing one more 1 night hike, but the temperature was still about 30-40 degrees with rain. So instead we drove through arches and did a couple little hikes before heading home.

Double arch!

Hockey!!!

I had my last hockey tournament for the season this weekend and it was a blast! Even though we had several late games and I'm a little sore, it was definitely a lot of fun.

The game was about an hour and a half away, but luckily Nathan's grandparents let us stay at their house :)

Our first game was Friday night and I scored our first goal on a breakaway. In the game on Saturday afternoon, I got a penalty for tripping a girl (Nathan was really excited because he's wanted me to get a penalty all season). Saturday night I scored another goal on a breakaway.

In our championship game Sunday morning I knocked in a goal assisted by one of my team member's to win the game.

All in all I had 3 goals, 1 penalty, 4/4 wins and a gold medal!

This is a picture of our team from a different tournament, I don't have pictures from this tournament yet :)

Cruising the Caribbean

Nathan and I took a cruise ship to the Bahamas for 4 nights the week after we were married. We had a lot of fun snorkeling and going to all of the different events on the ship, as well as sight seeing some of the different forts in Nassau.

Our cruise ship.

Nathan is ready to go snorkeling!

Nathan wins the prize for best underwater photo. We had a lot of fun taking pictures and videos underwater.

Some more fish.

Formal night on the boat. Did I mention that Nathan ordered two meals every night at dinner? Free food all the time makes him very happy. 

We also stopped at St. Augustine on the way back. They shot off a cannon. It was really neat.

Married!

Nathan and I were sealed in the Columbia, SC temple July 17, 2010. We had a wonderful party at the Inn at Middleton Place the same night. A lot of our family came to celebrate with us and we had a wonderful time! I'm so glad that I decided to give him another chance, I really love Nathan a lot and I am happy that I have the chance to spend my life with him. :)

Silver Creek Falls

On Memorial Day, we went to Silver Creek Falls and hiked at least 5 miles. The neat thing about this beautiful state park though is that there are over 10 waterfalls in the park. Just about every mile we saw a different water fall. It was beautiful. The brush was all very green and there were tons of beautiful floowers along the roadside. It was a great day and a great hike! We got a little muddy, but that made it all the more fun!