Camp trip...

This past weekend we headed down to Arches with some friends, Todd and Roo. We spent a few days there and had a blast!

 We spent two nights camping. When we woke up Friday morning we had breakfast then it started to rain and hail! We hung out inside at the visitors center until it passed.

 Todd is in the MBA program with Patrick and they're in our ward too.

 Balanced rock.

 Eating a sandwich as we start our hike.

 Landscape Arch is Patrick's favorite. It's the length of a football field.

 The views were amazing!

 Double O Arch.

 In the bottom arch.

 Saturday we hiked to Delicate Arch. This is the most photographed arch in the park.

 Patrick with the petroglyphs.

 Walking around my favorite, Double Arch.

 It's pretty big.

We had such a fun time! We ate tin foil dinners, s'mores, and enjoyed sleeping in our big tent for the first time outside.

FHE fail...

I had the best intentions of an awesome winter FHE. My plan was to take Patrick to the Ice Castles in Midway one day in February. This is the description from the website of Ice Castles:

   "Made by hand and made from more than 20,000,000 pounds of ice, the Ice Castles are READY  to be explored! Carved walking paths will lead visitors through towering glacial formations, caverns, archways, and maze-like tunnels.Come experience glacial hues by day and nightly displays of millions of tons of illuminated ice."

 It sounds pretty sweet, right? I was really excited and had been thinking about it for weeks. So we got there and were a little under dressed for the cold. The line was monstrous and the wait to get in was at least 1 1/2 hours. It turned out with the warm winter we've been having that this was the last day it was open. We decided instead of waiting in the freezing cold we would keep our money and walk around it outside and then head home. On the bright side, it sure was nice to have a long drive with Patrick on a weeknight. And nice he didn't mind driving so far to walk around in the cold for 15 minutes.

Salt Lake afternoon...

A while back Patrick and I headed up to Salt Lake to meet up with our friends Hernan and Carolyn. This was our first time doing something the four of us. We ate Chinese food at a restaurant Hernan introduced Patrick to. We ordered off of the Dim Sum menu and everything was tasty. A little greasy in some cases but delicious overall. I was definitely glad I happened to have a spare napkin in my pocket. It was fun to be able to order tons of stuff and split it all. After our bellies were happy we headed to the Natural History Museum. I wasn't sure what to expect but knew there was a chocolate exhibit going on. The museum did not disappoint. We learned all about chocolate, held a tarantula, and saw dinosaurs. What more could we want?

Pong...

As some of you may know Patrick is a ping pong addict. The MBA lounge has a table in it and so he played a lot last year. Then Intel had a table so he played with coworkers in the summer. And he joined a Portland ping pong group for people who work in tech. So he played a little with them. At one point we he had two of his own paddles. If you pull up you tube on his computer you see a lot of ping pong clips. The other day he was in a tournament at school with some friends. While he did not win he had fun and made it pretty far. He is playing in a MBA tournament right now.

Vegas anyone?

Back in the summertime Patrick signed himself and Chad up to go to the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas. BYU has things set up for MBA students to go for free. So we finagled our schedules a bit so we could head down in January. I worked four days in a row and got sick. This actually worked out ok. While Danielle was busy at work and the boys were in Vegas for Wednesday and Thursday I got to relax and watch all of the current season of Downton Abbey (thanks for getting that Chad). When Danielle would get home we would go eat tasty food. Then when the boys got home we would eat some more :) I introduced her to Del Taco chili cheese fries and she took me to Swig. The sugar cookies there are pretty delicious. Friday the four of us headed to Vegas were we walked, ate, shopped! We shared a hotel room and headed back Saturday.