Lake Powell!

Well my first trip to Lake Powell was a success. I didn't really know what to expect, since I've heard people talk about how awesome this place is for about 10 years, and it seems like everyone but me has vacationed on a houseboat. But lots of other people also think Twilight and Avatar are awesome, and I'd beg to differ. ANYWAYS, houseboats ARE awesome, and Lake Powell was a ton of fun. Paul and Mary (Matt's aunt and uncle) were incredibly nice to invite us and feed us and play with us there! They are such cool people. Even though it was just a 4 day trip, it feels like it was much longer. We rode jet skiis (all day every day) read in the sunshine, played in the red sand, swam (and bathed) in the lake, napped on rafts, looked at the unbelievable stars and planets, hiked to see indian ruins, and other lake activities.

And we also went spelunking in that cool cave!

Another neat thing I witnessed for the first time was cooking a turkey in the ground! We (Matt and his cousin) dug a deep hole in the sand, lined it with big rocks, burned a lot of wood down to ashes and coals until the rocks were glowing hot, then placed the foil covered turkey in there, covered it with rocks and sand, and let it bake for 6 hours. It was delicious!  

This is the turkey being raised from the hole!

I love vacations. Taking vacations is more important than... not taking vacations.

October is looking good so far.

Okay so I have come to the terms with the fact that fall has arrived, especially because it stayed warm and sunny for SO LONG. Our last day of sunshine was on Saturday, so we wanted to get out and do a morning hike before the first session of conference. We ended up taking a different trail than what we had planned on and we had no idea how long it would take or where it would lead us.

The mountains are so beautiful right now! And speaking of beautiful mountains, I got a pretty cool mountain of a spider bite right in the middle of my forehead!

Conference weekend was great. Aside from the talks, we also enjoyed not getting dressed for 2 days, relaxing on the couch, eating bacon, rice krispies treats, chips, no bake cookies, and lots of other healthy foods. Seriously disgusting. To make up for that we've had salad for the last 3 days. But sometimes the salad has bacon. It's hard to get full on spinach.

 But one more note about the junk food. We got these super delicious "rice and bean" chips from Costco (made by Boulder Canyon) and I am addicted. In fact, I am going to grab a handful right now. Good thing I remembered where I hid them from myself!


We are getting ready to leave for Lake Powell tonight! We're going with some of Matt's extended family and I can't wait! I've never been. We're leaving just in time to escape the rain and thunderstorms. So, even though I don't normally like October and the coldness and scary holiday it brings with it, I am so excited for our trip this weekend and another one coming up in a couple weeks!