Thank Heaven...

...for little girls!!

Not the best pictures in the world, but here's the little cutie (and all of us who were waiting for her to be cleaned up and presented to the world).

Click here...

Hooray for Hayleigh!

Summerfest!!

I have sadly neglected to pay homage to Summerfest, Orem City's annual summer celebration.


This year my visit to Summerfest was short-lived, but it was still a great time. I got some great earrings from her, and I had a good time trying to get some fun pictures. Some worked, some didn't. The second one looks super fake... not quite sure why.

Coming Soon to a Blog Near You...

Baby Hayleigh is almost here!!!

Heather is going to be induced today, so stay tuned for updates on the pretty, pretty princess!

Fiesta Days!!

Some of you may not know that I really love rodeos. I discovered how much I enjoy them just a few years ago at the Utah State Fair, and I think watching bull fighting in Southern France when I was in high school might have contributed to my increase in interest.

Plus there are some really attractive cowboys out there. (Please note: I do not consider cowboy-ogling a good enough reason to go to a rodeo... it's just an added bonus, like any other sport -- notably baseball).

This Tuesday some friends and I went to the Spanish Fork Rodeo. It was a blast!! Here are some of my favorite pictures.



Bucking Horses
I didn't know horses were this flexible!

My favorite :: Mutton Busting!! (too bad the sheep look possessed)

The Clown did a Motorcycle trick jumping over a truck and horse trailer.

And, of course... it's not complete without bull riding!

There's always a certain level of anxiety at the rodeo. Maybe not for everyone. But I find myself constantly holding my breath, waiting for someone to have their neck broken or get rolled over by an enormous bucking bull with sharp horns. Does anyone else feel that way at the rodeo? Do any of you even go to rodeos??

By the end of the rodeo we were all sore from sitting on the horrible bleachers, we had dirt everywhere (crunchy teeth...yuck), and I had lost the lens cap to my camera... but it was worth it.

Now I just need to know when the next rodeo is so I can make someone take a picture of me in my new awesome cowboy hat. :)

Flood

On Tuesday the 15th, I came home to an inch of water all over the main floor of my townhouse.

At first I though it was my water heater, but there was excess water everywhere except by the water heater.

So instead of going to take pictures of my work Intramural Softball game, I spent two lovely hours with this handy contraption.

As it turns out, the line into my neighbor's upstairs toilet had burst while she was at work and had flooded her house all day. When her house was saturated on the main floor, it spilled over into mine.

Once I heard my neighbor was paying to get everything cleaned up, I gave up on the ShopVac (although, I did get about 20 gallons of water off the floor and out of the carpet with it) and let ServiceMasters take over -- once they got there at 10:00 pm.

I spent most of last week with my parents while the house dried and the animicrobial treatment settled in. And this week I've just been waiting for the carpet guys to come replace the padding. They were supposed to come "Monday or Tuesday." Uh-huh.

Sandwash... and the Knight Reunion!

Sandwash Reservoir is the location of a newly built home away from home of my aunt and uncle. They invited the whole fam up for a weekend this month. It was a blast.

We played Rock Band...

jumped into this...

and ate yummy food while enjoying each other's company.

It was an awesome weekend. Thanks for letting us come play!!

Mehndi...

I love Mehndi-inspired floral designs. They are so intricate and beautiful.
I'm actually surprised that I like them at all, since I usually tend towards very sparse, modern design... but I think they're just amazing.

I found these on this page of istockphoto.com.

Family Reunion, Roberts-Style!!

Saturday the 28th of June my mom's side of the family go together at a nearby Park to play, swim, eat, and just enjoy each other's company.




Oh, and to take pictures, right? That's what my family does. :)

Anchorage

After we disembarked from the ship and collected our luggage, the guys went into Whittier and brought back the rental car.

We left right away for the Anchorage side of the mountain. To get there, though, you have to go through the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel that they dug right through the mountain. It's so narrow they can only let one lane of traffic from each side go through at a time, plus it's also the tunnel for trains to come through, so we sat there and waited for quite a while. It was kind of creepy because it was so narrow, low, and long.

But we made it through to the other side of the mountain (of course!) where we explored areas around the Sterling Highway and Skilak Lake for most of the day and I got to take some pictures of gorgeous scenery and a cute little bear!

Cruising Day 2 - College Fjord!

Our last full day on the ship was spent cruising around more gorgeous scenery, and right about dinner time we entered College Fjord. It was incredible... There were glaciers everywhere!

The female college glaciers run along the northwest side of the fjord.

Harvard Glacier is the biggest. You can see all of the streaks in the glacier--that is were boulders that were either frozen in the glacier or trapped under it were slowly ground into dirt by the constant shifting and moving of the glacier towards the water.


Harvard and Yale Glaciers at the top of College Fjord.

I don't know which glacier this is, but it shows how rough and rugged they really are. I always thought of glaciers as really smooth and pure white. Yeah, not so much the case with these ones.


I took this picture just to show how the landscape looks after a glacier retreats. You can see all of the dirt that the glacier has deposited as it has melted and retreated up the side of the mountain.

There were also hundreds of icebergs floating around, so I tried to capture a picture that demonstrates the 90% below/10% above concept of icebergs. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, but I thought it looked cool either way. Isn't it amazing how blue the glacier run-off water is? There are even better examples of that coming in my next post on Anchorage...

Sitka

Sitka would have been much more interesting to me if I was interested in Russian history... but I'm not, so I was in and out pretty quickly. After about an hour of wandering, I went back to the ship for a facial and spa treatment.


But here are some of the highlight pictures from Sitka.
The first two are from a clan house. The top picture is more representative of the real colors. The second one looked wierd with a flash, so I turned it off. It was really cool, though... the entire wall was covered with these oar-like things.

And, of course, there was a statue (big, fake bear... close enough), so I had to pose with it... it's all a part of being my father's daughter. :) I can't help myself.

Skagway

The next stop on our cruise was Skagway, a VERY small town that looks like it's straight out of the movie Silverado - wide wooden slat sidewalks and all. I didn't take many pictures here because we just walked through town to get to church and then went straight back to the cruise ship--hiking all over the surrounding mountains didn't sound too appealing when we were all in Sunday clothes.

On the way to church we passed this random old bus that I thought looked kind of cool.

This train took people up to the top of the mountain nearby so they could bike down or go on tours of mines, etc.


Once we got back to the ship, Hap and I watched the guys play chess--for about two minutes. That got boring really fast, so I took some pictures and called it good. I've never learned the rules of chess, and I'm not strategic enough to be good, so it really doesn't hold any interest for me. But the huge chessboard looked kind of cool.

And this was the view when we started cruising for Sitka.

Juneau!!

Our next port was Juneau -- and even after that amazing day in Ketchikan, Juneau wasn't at all a letdown.

We wandered around town for a while and dropped in on one of Hap's friends who was working there for the summer.

Then we went whale watching!! It was incredible--definitely better than I had hoped for, and I got a bunch of cool pictures. I will limit myself, however, to just a few.

After we finished our whale watching adventure, we went up to the Mendenhall Glacier and hiked around for about an hour. It was incredible--rugged, unexpected, and breathtakingly beautiful.

I even found myself a nice, icy perch in the middle of the glacial lake! EXTREMELY cold, but a couple of fun pictures, and I still have all of my toes and a fun memory to go with them.