anne of awesomeness

Have you ever had a book you loved? Like love loved? I must have read Anne of Green Gables 12 times in sixth grade alone. I felt so grown up for reading a book that contained words like "capricious" and "providential". Every time I read it I agonize over Anne's stubbornness towards the dashing Gilbert (!) and almost cry when Matthew secretively buys Anne a dress with puffed sleeves. Inevitably, each time I finish reading it I am wholly convinced that Prince Edward Island is the most beautiful place on earth and then curse the day I wasn't born a Canadian orphan at the turn of the century. I remember once when I was ten I told my mother that when I grew up I wanted to name my first daughter "Maud" after the author. Can you imagine? Needless to say, she laughed and assured me I would most likely change my mind (don't worry, I did).

Sadly, after twenty years of abuse I think my first copy has earned a retirement.


I am almost finished reading it for the millionth time and while doing so I literally have to hold the book together so it doesn't fall apart in my hands. I have a hair band wrapped around it to prevent the book from loosing its pages in between reading. My hard cover copy just isn't the same so I'm sad to see this get put forever in my cedar chest... it's like the end of era.

happy birthday

Congratulations to my favorite husband for joining the quarter century club today! Love you!

Hike #4

SILVER LAKE




Once again guest hiker Ellie accompanied us on a fantastic outdoor adventure. We decided we were ready for a lengthier hike so we packed up our fishing gear and hiked to Silver Lake in American Fork Canyon. The hike takes about 2 hours and is moderately difficult. The hardest part about getting to Silver Lake is the drive to the trail head, we were lucky enough to borrow an SUV from Bridget’s aunt so we could maneuver the winding dirt road full of boulders and dips (the Civic was not happy the last time we took her up that road). We caught five fish total, but unfortunately they were all tiny and we had to put them back. So instead of having another fish fry, we went to Burger Supreme. Good times! The rookie mistake we made was not wearing sunscreen; we won’t forget next time. On the trip down we had quite a suprise when we literally almost ran straight into a 6 1/2 foot moose. We stood about 5 feet away from it for about .3 seconds until we quickly turned around and ran back up the trail. Fortunately he was as startled to see us as we were to see him and he ran off into the woods. We feel really lucky because moose can be more dangerous than bears. They will charge and kill a person if it feels their calf is being threatened. It was a cool experience, and I am really glad we survived it!

There was still tons of snow up there, part of the lake was actually still frozen.

My too-little-too-late attempt at trying to stop from getting a sunburn, lesson learned.

Hike #3

BRIDAL VEIL FALLS

We only had a few hours to spare so we wanted to do a hike that was close and short. We chose to hike Bridal Veil Falls because neither of us had done it. Since we weren’t familiar with where the trail head started, we were a little confused by the seemingly random mini trails all over the place. We coincidentally choice unwisely, because for most of the “hike” we were forced to climb on all fours up steep sliding gravel. The real trail must have been damaged by the extreme amount of snow this winter because every other hiker took a different trail, and nothing looked distinguished. No matter which trail you choose it’s a short 20 minute hike (at most) and the water fall really is beautiful up close. At the base of the fall it was still iced over, but you could go under the water into an ice cave, which was really fun. We convinced a little boy scout to take our picture; I’m sure he was prepared that day because the picture didn’t turn out half bad.

one whole year

Well kids, we made it . On june 12th, 2008 Brad and I made it through 1 year of marriage almost completely unscathed. Go us.

Engagement Pictures taken by our wonderful

sister-in-law Angie Carn

at the Salt Flats around April 2007:

Brad's wisest decision, marrying me:

Bridget's recent observations

OBSERVATION #1: Do not dice up a jalepeno pepper while preparing a delicious meal for your husband and then proceed to touch the tip of your nose or corner of your eye. I did that a few days ago and the entire left side of my face puffed up, turned bright red, and felt like I had a third degree burn. Those suckers are powerful little guys! I haven't given birth or broken a bone but that was hands down the most painful 45 minutes of my life. After flushing it with water, then milk, then Visine it seemed to wash it out enough to stop me from thinking I was permentaly blind. HORRIBLE!

OBSERVATION #2: When I leave my desk for even 30 seconds my boss somehow has this sixth sense to come and tell me something at that exact moment. When she gets to my desk and finds I'm not there she sits in my chair to wait for my return. Then when I do return she proceeds to sit in my chair and give me the "vital" information. The entire time I'm annoyed that she's sitting in my chair and I'm not listening to a word she says. To me it feels like the ultimate superiorty complex. I signed a million papers when I started this job that said they can snoop through all my emails and my online activity, but I did not sign any paperwork that allows my boss to sit at my desk for 20 minutes while she tells me something that could have been explained in a one sentence email. All you bosses out there, don't ever do this, I may be crazy but it feels insanely disrespectful.

OBSERVATION #3: Our bathrooms have an automatic light switch that turns on when you enter the bathroom. It then turns off after it senses a certain period of inactivity. So yesterday I entered the bathroom to have the light switch turn on, but as soon as it did I noticed that some poor woman was sitting in one of the stalls. I don't want to think about this too much. Because first of all I don't want to know how long she sat there before the light turned off. Second I don't want to know how long she sat there without realizing that she could have probably waved her arm or something and it would have turned back on. And third I really don't want to know what position she holds in our fortune 500 company, since this bathroom is located on the executive floor. Yikes.

1st Annual Carn Fish Fry 2008

Brad loves to fish. However, we hardly ever go because we honestly don’t know that much about fishing in Utah. Cue Brad’s brother Chris! He is our guru for all things outdoors in Utah (the only exception is that he’s not a fan of back-packing). So Brad nagged Chris enough to convince him to organize a finishing trip to Scofield Reservoir. All I can say is that we weren’t the only suckers who believed that Memorial Day means sun screen and flip flops. For almost four hours we stood in the rain/sleet/snow/wind/freezing conditions in hopes of catching a delicious dinner for our 1st Annual Carn Fish Fry 2008. Brad caught a wimpy little guy that we had to let go and I didn’t catch any. Angie and Chris caught enough to make dinner for the four us (Angie made the catch of the day!). Throw in some French fries and onion rings and you’ve got yourself a good time. It was a great, but very cold day! Thank you Chris, I still blame Brad for picking the day with the worst possible weather! The above picture shows me forcing a smile because I honestly couldn' t feel my face.

Brothers that fish together, stay together

(plus it's a really cool picture of how awful the weather was)

This is happy me, before the cold set in and I retreated to the 80 degree truck.


This is happy Brad, he really loves fishing

Missy, we love you!

So I had a girl’s night out with Kristin and Jenny a few weeks ago. We went up to Salt Lake to see Missy Higgins in concert. If you haven’t heard of her, she’s amazing. She’s a singer-songwriter from Australia and puts on an incredible live show. I discovered her about three years ago when she opened for Howie Day and it didn’t take K and Jenny too long to believe in her awesomeness. I’m still surprised about how much she hasn’t caught on in the US yet since she’s quite famous in Australia. Anyway, we arrived at the show about 30 minutes early and coincidentally ran in to K and Jenny’s cousin who not only allowed us to come to front of the line with him but also agreed to be our sponsor into the club (they served alcohol inside and per Utah law you have to have a “member of the club” sponsor you). Because of this we were almost the first inside and stood literally 10 inches from Missy Higgins face while she performed. We were so close that before she took the stage Kristin wrote a little note that said “Missy, We love you! Please play Nightminds and Wrong Girl!” and we put in on her key board. She ended up playing “Nightminds” and even gave us a shout out about our request. After her performance we were totally unashamed and took the set lists off of the stage. The only downer of the night is this random girl in front of us got a text from her friend and said to us “Hey guess what? David Cook just won American Idol”. Thanks random girl! We were planning on watching it on TIVO later that night. Luckily we were about to watch Missy Higgins so we couldn’t be too bummed out. Luckily.

Missy rockin out on both the keyboard AND the guitar, that's how she rolls

This is the set list we "stole" and the drummer who gave it to me

Summer hike #2

SQUAW PEAK
So for our second day hike of the summer we trekked up the back side of squaw peak with guest hiker Ellie Roberts. Although the climb was harder than we anticipated, we had a great time and the view at the top is well worth it. We couldn’t believe that the trailhead was about five minutes from our house. Have I mentioned we are really going to miss Utah? We went the day after a huge rain storm and since the trail was extremely muddy we lost our way a few times. Good thing two women were in the group to out-vote Brad’s often misinformed male intuition. :)

These are some shots of Brad and I enjoying the view overUtah Valley.

This is an awesome picture Brad took of guest hiker Ellie relaxing on the cliff.