29 July 2009

happy birthday america (3ish weeks late)

we're still catching up...

this 4th of july was tons of fun for me! it's the first 4th i haven't spent with my family, but it was fun spending the day with dallin's extended family. lots of traditions that i got to be a part of and definitely some adventure thrown in too.

we started the day out by watching the murray parade. it comes right by our apartment, so we didn't have to get up early to get spots, all we did was put camping chairs out on the porch and watch!

next we went to jake and tyra's for a water fight. i'll admit, i was NOT excited for this. running around in a backyard just spraying each other in the face did not really sound like fun. but dallin promised me that it would be awesome, so we over. i was in for a HUGE surprise. this was no ordinary backyard waterfight. this was well organized guerilla warfare. there were two teams on different blocks. each team had a truck had all sorts of weapons. there were water buckets, water guns, balloons, a baby pool, garbage cans filled to the max, water sticks, and even an old fire extinguisher filled up with water! we attacked back and forth for a few rounds, and got a lot of the neighborhood involved before we called it quits. i think every single person was soaking wet. it was so much fun!

after the waterfight we just hung out at the hawkins for a while. we had pizza for lunch, talked about michael jackson, you know, the usual. the dallin and i went home to change into dry clothes and then we went to see kira at smart cookie. i had some frozen hot chocolate (frohocho- thanks katy b) and we ate some really great cookies.


after that we headed back to the hawkins. after some great food (especially the guac that dal & i made) and some more visiting with the cousins and aunts and uncles, we watched a great firework show. i'd say it was even better than the stadium of fire.

happy birthday america! i'm so grateful that i live in the U.S. and have the freedoms that i do. i am so blessed to live where i want, to worship the way i believe, to have men and women that are willing to fight for our country and so much more. thank you everyone!

24 July 2009

uinta adventure v1.0

well, we're way behind in blogging! the next few posts will be about our july adventures. we've had tons of fun! and we have more adventures planned.

for the 4th of july weekend, dal had work off, so i took friday off as well. i'm sure ya'll remember dallin's little featurette about the adventure tent. well, we decided that it was time to test it's strength and character. see if it really belonged in the barker family. on july 2nd, after work dallin and headed out, USGS maps in hand, to conquer the unknown wilderness! little did we know how our camping trip would turn out. it was really INTENSE! but seriously, it was IN TENTS! (or tent. one. singular. we only took one. laugh fades...)

we drove up above kamas in the uintas to the mirror lake recreation area. we parked the car a little ways from Washington Lake and packed in. we planned to hike until it got dark and set up camp in a flat spot off the trail. i'd forgotten about dallin's superhero powers (ask my mom about those) until he pushed a tree down to make room for a campspot! we set up the tent that night, blew up our thermarest mattresses, and boiled water for hot chocolate over a whisperlite stove.

the next morning, we woke up early (that's the only way you can wake up camping, since it gets light before 6 a.m.), made breakfast and headed out to go fishing. the night before as we were walking, we thought that we'd made it down to the end of washington lake and planned to hike further down to tail lake and some others to fish, but once we got to the trail by the lake, we realized that we'd actually camped by tail lake the night before. the weather was a little chilly, so we kept our jackets on as we fished for a few hours. dallin caught 2 fish, but i didn't have much luck.

(i know this is getting a little long, so if you can't take it anymore, just scroll down to the bottom for pictures... we know that's all you want anyway!)

after a while, we headed back to the tent for lunch when it looked like it was going to rain. we cooked lunch on the whisperlite again and made it inside just as it started to rain. of course sitting in the tent made me sleepy and so i took a little nap. dallin was bored after about 10 minutes of course, so he just went back out fishing. i woke up an hour or two later and walked down to the lake to fish with him. he'd found a really clear spot that was pretty shady and the fish were jumping like crazy. dal caught another fish without me and then caught fish #4 right after i got there. after a few casts and moving around a bit to find a better spot, i finally caught a fish! and i'm proud to say it was bigger than all of the fish he caught! it still wasn't really that big, only about 8 inches long, i think. well... maybe it was a little bigger, like 2 feet long. yeah, i'm pretty sure i caught a 15 pound, 2 foot long fish. and we named it theodore. and then theodora.

well, to cut the story short, after we fished, we sat in the tent for about 2 hours because we couldn't think of anything else to do. we hadn't brought cards, or books, and we couldn't't go outside because we would have gotten eaten alive by the worlds most vicious mosquitoes. seriously, the were vicious. they bit through our clothes and left our bodies riddled with their deadly mark. (it looked like the chicken pocks on my back.) we decided to pack up and go home that night so we could celebrate the 4th of july with friends and family.

we think our trip was a success! the tent handled the rain beautifully and it is excited for our next trip.

we'd like to give a special thanks our sponsor dad/David Ellis Barker for all the gear he let us borrow and making this adventure possible! (i'm pretty sure the only thing we took that actually belonged to us was the tent...) someday, we'll actually own all the gear it takes to go camping, but until then, we thank the dad/the dave.
















01 July 2009

2 months today!

i just wanted to say thanks to Dal for an awesome first 2 months! we've had tons of fun and we laugh all the time! baby, you're the best!
we're headed out this weekend to try our tent for the first time, so stay posted for pics.