Camping Trip

Posted on August 29, 2016 by KristynL

When I was little my dad had a really cool tent- but we never really used it for camping. We only ever used it in our back yard for my birthday party, and watched movies, and stayed up late in there- but none of us could make it through the night haha.

When we realized that Sheldon had Saturday off of work this week SO, Sheldon took me on my first real camping trip. His cousin Kelsey and her husband Scott also came with us. First thing we did once we arrived in Bloomington was find a cute little place next to a quiet little stream and we set up our tiny tent. We didn’t have any trouble with that actually and we made it cozy with lots of blankets and sleeping bags inside.

I was in charge of food, so I cut up veggies and potatoes and hot dogs for tin foil dinners. AND I remembered a delicious 4- ingredient peach cobbler from girls camp that you can make over the fire, so I brought that too! And how can you have a fire without s’mores? You can’t! So we made sure those ingredients were available as well. Scott brought something that changed the color of the fire so we enjoyed a blue-green fire most of the night. Pretty cool.

4- Ingredient Peach cobbler: Add the ingredients in this order, but do not stir them together so it can crisp up a little on top. Bring it to a boil to cook off most of the liquid, this takes awhile to cook on the fire, so just keep checking on it. It is really good to eat with vanilla ice cream, but we ate ours with thick whipped cream. still yummy!

1 large can peaches (do not drain)
1 package yellow cake mix
1 can of soda
pinch of cinnamon

We really chose the best place to camp- the stream provided nice white noise and the views were beautiful! It was a little chilly at night and the ground was a little hard, but we actually slept pretty well.

The next morning we packed up camp and went to play in the lake! (Blomington Lake, not too far from Bear Lake.) The water was cold, so I only got my feet wet, but my crazy husband jumped in with the rope swing! He loves that.

Kelsey and Scott hadn’t been to Minnetonka caves, so we did that tour again. Our guide was very intelligent and though we just did the tour last month we learned a lot more this time around.

*Unrelated to the camping trip- We are sure playing hard these last few weeks of summer before school starts. Earlier this week we also did another razor ride up Mt. Baldy and we went skeet shooting. I was so impressed because I actually hit a clay pigeon! My grandpa would be proud.

BRIDALS

Posted on June 9, 2016 by KristynL

(Continuation from the previous wedding post, but this deserves its own post because of all the pretty pictures)

The day before the wedding (Thursday 21) we had our professional bridal pictures taken by Lavon at Luvography. We have already done several photoshoots together, so I knew the photos would turn out nicely. She is great to work with, and makes it so easy for us because of all her great ideas. Here are a few of my favorites she did for us:

I’m so happy with how they turned out! Thank goodness pictures last forever so I can always remember my excitement from our wedding weekend! My house is already full of wedding photos. This makes me so happy!

2.5 Years

Posted on November 22, 2015 by KristynL

We haven’t been able to celebrate a real anniversary because we have been apart for so long so we decided this one needed to be special to make up for it.

Sheldon had already made plans to come up for the weekend and had dentist appointments and work during the week so I just accepted the idea that we would have to celebrate a few days late….

Well much to my surprise Sheldon drove up directly after his appointment and got off work to suprise me after class. I was so happy!

He met me at my doorstep with 2 dozen of these beautiful roses.

Here are some pictures of fun memories and our happy adventures together over the last few years.

quickfeet7- Happy 2.5 years 💕

The thing is we don’t have an official day when we decided to “start dating” so we commemorate our first real date; which was to Applebee’s. I guess that first date went pretty well. 😉 So naturally we had to go back to Applebee’s for our anniversary dinner.

After we returned back to my place to enjoy some sparkling cider in cool glasses because that just makes things fancy.

Cheers to 2.5 years!

Yellowstone in October

Posted on October 26, 2015 by KristynL

So its been on our bucket-list for awhile, and we needed to make it happen before the park was closed for the season. We decided to make Yellowstone a group adventure. I had tried all week to coordinate rides and times and people with everything but it was just one impossible logic problem. It just couldn’t work for all of us to leave at the same time as a big group (like 18 of us) so we had a staggered schedule. My group left at 7:00 a.m. but we still had the goal to all meet up with everyone at Old Faithful at 3:00 p.m. as the last destination before leaving the park.

I was able to bring my dad’s old camera to play around with. It was a fun place to practice photography, that’s for sure. So everything on this blog post (except for the map- thank you google) is taken from Dad’s Nikon, or Sheldon’s phone.

We drove in through West Yellowstone and followed the main red circle path (on the map where it says “Yellowstone” in green) up then around to finish up at Old Faithful. Fun fact is that there were 3 states involved in this trip (Idaho, Montana, Wyoming).

First Views of the park- through the West Entrance:

Not long after paying the entrance fee we saw a herd of elk off to the side of the road, one really big one with quite the impressive antlers, well of corse we parked and walked over to take a picture. While walking back to the car we realized that there was one elk right there in the parking lot! SO close! I knew it would be a good day!

Stop Number 1: Natural Hot Pools

Okay this place was a nice first destination. The lighting was perfect and there weren’t any other tourists there but us. I love the fact that we came in October, I was able to capture some beautiful muted natural tones.

Stop Number 2: Gibbon Falls

Okay this place was beautiful! It was just right off the road, there was a little walkway; but come on, people will hike for days to see this stuff. So good. This is nature at it’s finest. Also, selfies with a real camera are hard… But you can’t exactly take a bad picture of this place!

Stop Number 3: Norris Geyser Basin Hike

This is just the towards the parking lot, we did a good portion of this hike though to see the geyser basin.

Heavenly Father is the best artist, I mean look at His creations. Nature is so cool. I took some “Dad inspired pictures” of different paths around the park, and also paid close attention to the different textures.

We also found this pretty little lake off the beaten path.

Next Stop: Upper Falls

This is the place. I remember this beautiful sight very clearly from my family vacation back in 2007. Pictures really do NOT catch the awe factor. The sun is starting to shine pretty bright here though so some shadows are dramatic. Sheldon said that if he didn’t see a “yellowstone” he was going to sue… haha, good thing we made it this far. The park lived up to its name.

And the (partial) group photo:

Along the drive to the next spot we pulled over a few times for some classic Yellowstone photo-ops like these. We also saw a baby bear, but I didn’t get out of the car. Let’s remember this is October, it is getting pretty cold here.

Next stop: Snack break at the Bridge Bay pull off.

I loved seeing the variety here, all different landscapes in one park! Its really amazing. The sand here is made up different rocks, I personally like the black sand from volcanic rock. Also lets just appreciate the crackle texture on this old log. The friendly bird was workin’-it like he wanted to become famous.

Animal Sightings: Baby bear, elk, bison, squirrel, friendly fuzzy birds, and big ugly black birds….

Surreal landscape of Yellowstone Lake.

Last Stop: Castle Geyser and Old Faithful

We didn’t really plan ahead too well because we only brought snack foods expecting there to be a place to eat along the way… Well now we know that there are places, but they aren’t open for off-season. Upon arrival we saw the very end of the eruption of Old Faithful… we missed it. Well because it is SO iconic, and important to everyone to see, we waited another hour to be able to watch Old Faithful go off. So while waiting we walked through the gift shop, and the little museum, then decided to walk the loop to see other smaller geysers. Luckily we were able to watch Castle Geyser.

Old Faithful was a little late, not sure of that means he’s unfaithful or what…. but the miracle was that the timing worked out so that I could see everyone of our giant group at the Old Faithful Geyser at 4:00. We all met up for a few minutes, perfect!

We got back to Rexy around 7:00pm. It was a full day. We did it. Yellowstone did not let us down.

After starving all day we made sure to make dinner a good and filling one. Sheldon and I decided on Texas Roadhouse.

Successful day to say the least.

Wind Caves

Posted on September 21, 2015 by KristynL

So i just wanted to document our blog worthy adventure from this weekend. There were seven of us that embarked on the journey to the Darby Wind Caves in the Teton Valley.

Lets just say I was a little nervous because It had been raining all week and had been really cold, but Heavenly Father blessed us with beautiful weather it was just cold enough to keep us from sweating too much. It wasn’t too muddy either.

So Sheldon told us it was like a 3 mile hike….. well we quickly found out it was a 3 mile hike into the right mountainous place…. it turned out being 8 miles.