Hello everyone! It is Sunday and we are back on weekly posts. :D
On Monday, Mary and Derek came to visit us for about a week. They were awesome. They slept on the floor in our spare room (we had made plans to pick up a spare futon from a friend, but that ended up not working out in time for us to use it) and did fun things with us all week. They also bought us a bookshelf! I don't know if you noticed in the video from the last post, but we had all our books in boxes turned on their sides. Mary and Derek noticed that, and went out and bought us a bookcase!!! It looks lovely and fits all our books! We thank them profusely for that!
We also went camping - well, kind of. We prepared tin foil dinners, collected items for S'mores, and drove up to Utah Lake State Park. At the entrance you were supposed to put your money in an envelope and write your campsite number on it, and put it in the drop box. However, since we hadn't reserved a campsite yet (they say you can come and camp there if no one has reserved it) we decided to go look for a good one and then come back and put our money and campsite number in the drop box.
We found a good empty campsite. The guys went and collected dry firewood (somewhat scarce as it had rained that morning). Mary and I collected dry grass, smaller sticks, and other firestarters. We all came back, and with some trouble because it was quite windy, we were able to start a good fire. We were just getting out the tent and the tin foil dinners when... the SPRINKLERS came on, dousing us, our fire, and our leftover dry firewood. We hurried to salvage the dry firewood that was left, collected our gear and moved to the next closest empty campsite. We had to collect some more wood and firestarters, and after a bit of trouble again, we managed to start another fire. We began to get out the tent and the dinners, then... the sprinklers on THAT campsite came on, putting out our fire again, and drenching most of the rest of our firewood.
So this time we got smart and moved to an empty campsite that we had SEEN get watered already, so we knew it wouldn't get watered again. This time we decided to make our fire in the little grill box, but since most of our firewood was soaked and we couldn't find any more, we had a lot of trouble making it and it took us quite a while. By this time it was about 8:30 and we were starving. Eventually a guy who had seen our unfortunate series of events donated us some of his firewood, and we were able to start a weak fire. A few minutes later, guess what? Yep. The sprinklers. They came on AGAIN, even though we had SEEN them already come on just 20 minutes before.
At this point we figured the park managers probably had security cameras and a button that turned on the sprinklers, had seen our plight, and were having a good laugh at our expense. So we packed up our things, got in the car and drove off. We never put our money in the drop box - we didn't think they deserved it, and we'd only stayed a few miserable hours anyway. We called up my aunt Nicole and asked to cook our tin foil dinners in her oven and roast S'mores in her fireplace (as we didn't have a fireplace at our house). She agreed, and that's how we spent the rest of our night. We didn't end up eating until about 10:00, by which time Christian had already fallen asleep. We did roast some s'mores that night, but the next morning Derek also discovered that you can roast marshmallows quite nicely over the electric stove burner, so we had s'mores for breakfast as well.
The next day was much more fun. We "hiked the Y" - for those of you who don't know what that means, there is a big Y painted on the mountain near BYU, and there is a popular hiking trail that leads up to the Y. So me, Christian, Derek, Mary, and Sarah went along on the hike. It wasn't a very long hike, but it was pretty steep at some points, and we stopped a lot on the way so that people could rest. It took us about an hour to get to the top, but it was fun. Once we got to the top it was beautiful looking out at the night lights (we hiked in the evening) and the stars. We took pictures, but unfortunately can't find the camera we took them on, so we will post those when we find it. The hike back down was interestingly harder than you'd think, because it still takes muscles to keep you from tumbling down the mountain at horrific speeds. (Random side note: isn't it weird that "horrible" and "terrible" mean the same thing, but "horrific" and "terrific" are complete opposites?) Our quads started aching after a while, and we invented fun ways to walk to avoid the burn - doing the "grapevine" walk sideways, walking backwards, etc.
Mary and Derek went home Friday morning. It was very fun to have them around! They got back to Idaho safely and we hope they come again soon!
Saturday Christian and I decided we'd go on a date. We packed up a picnic and took it to the BYU duck pond (http://www.flickr.com/photos/35069521@N08/3644271744/), a popular date spot (and spot to take your kids to feed the ducks). We spread out blankets and ate our picnic in the shade under some trees, while watching several cute little kids trying to throw bread to the ducks (usually missing and landing the bread on the sidewalk right in front of them). It was quite relaxing and fun.
After that, we went to a French horn party that Christian had put together as section leader. We ate pizza, drank soda, played a bunch of games like Pit, Cranium, and Catch Phrase, and got to know everyone (most of the people who came were new freshmen). It was very fun.
I apologize, we have no recipe this week. We were concentrating more on cheap than new food this week, so we didn't actually make anything new. We love you all! Keep us posted on how you're doing!
Love,
Brittany and Christian
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