A few fun things

We've done a few fun things that I've neglected to mention, so I thought I would do that!

While we were visiting my recently returned sister, we went to The Little Mermaid at the outdoor amphitheater near my parent's home. Both of my sisters were actually there, but one of them came later with her in-laws and I forgot to take another picture. It was really good, it just got a little hot during the show because they turned off the misters during the performance. Apparently they thought they were too loud, but I don't think any of the patrons thought that... lol. It was fun to have a night with the girls (my mom, sisters, and one cousin).

 The next week, my sweet husband hiked Mount Whitney again, he did last year with his dad, my dad, and one of our brother-in-laws. This year, he did it with two of our friends.

The start.... much too early for me, 4 or 5 am.

At the summit.. which reminds me of my favorite Jon Schmidt song, To the Summit

The next day my sweet husband's brother and sister-in-law came to visit and another of his brothers came too. So we went to his parent's home to spend the weekend with them.

We visited the beach. 

 And the Endeavor

 My sweet husband was in heaven.

 It inspired us to watch When We Left Earth on Netflix the next week.

It's a documentary mini series about all the space missions, it was actually really good. I even enjoyed it!

There is Beauty All Around

Two weekends ago we decided to go enjoy the beauty of the mountains.

I didn't have to work on Friday and my husband didn't either (one benefit of furloughs).

We left Friday morning and returned Saturday evening, a quick trip, but we enjoyed it,

and it was a nice and much needed time away.

Here we are at the beginning...

 Well, technically this is the beginning.

 This particular hike was beautiful, as most are, but we saw a bunch of lakes!

The hike started out next to this lake.

The first part of the trail is a bunch of switchbacks straight up, but the reward was this beautiful view!

We decided we should come up sometime and take a sailboat on that lake, although we are going to have to book about two years in advance, seeing as that lake's campground is already completely booked for next year!

 My sweet husband is such a sport and posed for pictures anytime I asked.

 One thing I love about hiking is seeing and enjoying the beauty of Heavenly Father's creations.

I started snapping pictures like crazy, of course the pictures never quite do them justice, but they are still beautiful.

 A little bit before this next picture we had to choose which lakes we wanted to camp by,

we went left and as we were hiking we heard water, which obviously is a good sign since we were hiking to a lake,

so we went to investigate the water a bit more, because we hadn't seen much on our hike (besides the lake at the beginning).

 It turns out it's a natural spring, or the water goes underground for a while, either way it was pretty neat.

 Sweet husband investigating a bit

 Here's a picture of the spring itself.

 These are the other two lakes we could have hiked to.... another day.

 Me with the lakes, please excuse the funky poncho connected  to my backpack, it was starting to rain, so we took them out for easy access.

 This is the lake we camped by.

 When we got to the lake it was raining pretty hard. 

So we set out to find the best camping spot possible.

Then it started hailing,

so we set out to find any camping spot possible.

We set up our tent in record time.

About this time the rain stopped, so we decided to fish for a bit before dinner.

My sweet husband forgot that you aren't supposed to throw your pole into the water, just the line...

It was still raining a bit and apparently the fish in this lake don't like to eat when it is raining, so we didn't catch anything, and decided to make dinner.

 We feasted on two different mountain house packets, they are yummy.

The first could have used a little more seasoning but the second one (the one my sweet husband is showing) was really good.

After that we were pretty beat and decided to read in the tent. We're reading the Work and the Glory series right now. We like to read on car trips, we've read a few other series already, and decided that we should read this one. I've read the entire series before, but my sweet husband had only read a few of them. So we started, we are on the third book of nine right now. They are really good and help us put perspective on our lives and we are learning a lot, but that's a story for another time.

We actually slept in the next morning, so we probably missed the best fishing, but while we were eating breakfast we saw fish jumping like crazy so we fished a bit more.

 The water was SO clear!

We could see the fish swimming near us... unfortunately that didn't help us catch any.

I don't think they liked what we had to offer, we needed some wet flies... next time.

My sweet husband started calling me the fishing assassin because I would wait until I saw a fish jump or saw one swim by and would cast right at it... or next to it.. or where I thought it was swimming next... lol!

 It was SO beautiful!

 Then, sadly, we had to head back home.

 We thought the hike back would be a lot faster than the hike out, it was pretty much the same,

so you can imagine how excited we were to see a glimpse of the lake through the trees!

 And then it got bigger

Lol, and then it disappeared for a while

 But then we made it to the trailhead! YAY!

 So I was being silly and flexed my "muscles" and then I wanted to take a picture of my sweet husband and joked that he should flex, he told me no a couple times and I just laughed and was just going to take his picture, but he ACTUALLY flexed! lol! He said, "the things I let you do to me.." lol! I sure love him!

 It was such a beautiful trip! I love to be in Heavenly Father's creations! And especially love to be in the mountains, I always feel so close to Him there! It was just what we needed after a rough week. I love to spend time with my sweet husband! It was a great weekend!

Three Years!

Three years ago at about this time (7:15 AM) I'm pretty sure I was completely ready to head to the temple.

Even though we didn't need to leave until like 9 or something like that... lol.

Three years ago today I married my best friend and the most wonderful man!

It was a beautiful day, a little windy, but other than that, 

it was the perfect day!

In honor of our anniversary,

we took a little trip.

We went to an island for three days!

We tried to go to these islands last year, but we weren't able to get a campsite reservation.

Here we are on the boat headed to the islands

Some sea lions

While on the island we did some snorkeling here:

We saw some beautiful fish, the biggest crabs I've ever seen, and other cool oceanic life!

We also did some hiking,

as you can see it was REALLY foggy most of the time we were there.

If you look closely in this picture you can see the cool sea caves!

My sweet husband took this picture..

And he took this picture of me

being afraid to go really close to the edge.

I don't like heights much...lol.

On the way up to where the next two pictures were taken you could see our little campsite.

That white dot is our tent.

Isn't that beautiful?!

I'm sure it would be even prettier without the fog,

but the fog looks cool too.

While we were up here we could hear so many sea lions! They were going crazy!

I think this is my favorite picture from our trip!

I wish I would have taken it without the flash... lol.

This is how he got into his sleeping bag all ready to sleep...

with the headlamp on... lol!

He cracks me up!

Our last hike that was about 7.5 miles.

We hiked to another part of the island to go snorkeling, 

but it turned out to be really rough, so we just enjoyed the view instead.

Ship wreck?

This picture is to show our make-shift spoon.

The first night that we were there it was really windy so we decided to go into our tent while our food was heating up.

After being in there for about a minute we heard something,

we looked out and couldn't see anything.

After the 5 minutes were up for our food we went out and our bag of matches was on the ground.

We figured the wind had knocked it off and that is what we heard.

Until we sat down to eat...

our bag of silverware was no where to be found!

Turns out the foxes on the island stole our bag of silverware!

Lol!

So for the rest of the trip we either: 

drank whatever we were eating,

used a wheat thin as a spoon,

or used this Pringle's lid as a spoon.

Hiking back from the beach

After that hike we got back on the boat and headed back to the mainland.

We had a great time being together!

It was a very restful trip.

We got a lot of sleep while we were on the island because when it was too cold to do anything we slept,

so the first day we had like a three hour nap,

the second day we had a one hour nap,

we didn't have to wake up to alarms in the morning so we slept in,

and every night we were asleep by like 8:30 or 9.. lol.

It was nice!

I'm so grateful to be married to such a wonderful man!

Through our three years we've learned a lot and are continually learning,

we've grown closer together through trials we've had and while they aren't always fun,

I'm so glad that I have him to help me through them!

I love that he always makes me laugh and can help me whenever I need him to!

He is so sweet to me,

I love him!

I'm one lucky girl!