While my sister took Josh his doctor's appointment I had my two nieces for the morning. I'm not sure if it's the fact that I'm about to turn 30, or just the fact that they give me an excuse to not care about anything, or just the fact that I have a hard time saying no to bakery treats, but I ate way too many of them on Monday...all before noon. We started out at 8:30 with
Branbury Cross Donuts downtown. Lots of them. Then since we were downtown all ready, we stopped by Les
Madeleines and got some
Kouing Aman for later (Mmmmm if you haven't ever had one of these you should.) But they just started serving
beignets too so I had to try some...
and I can't go in there without getting some lavender lemonade...
and the cupcakes looked so good that we decided to just get one and split it. It was small but weighed at least 9 pounds.
After we dropped off my car at the mechanics we walked home stopping at 3 parks along the way where Katrina was nice enough to push me and
Kjirsten on the swings.
We were hot from our walk so we had
rootbeer popsicles while feeding the horses out back. We were debating going to pick lilacs in the vacant lot when their parents called to see if we wanted to meet them for treats at Kneaders. Even the girls said no thanks we were done with sugar, so they got us all sandwiches... But then we came home and ate more donuts and pastries.
Bleeeech. I was sick. I must be getting old for sure because I swear I could handle twice this much sugar before.
I think a similar thing happened last time I spent the morning with them. Except that time we started out at Kneaders and worked our way over to Ben and Jerry's...
For my 30th birthday I flew my best friend Steysi out to visit me. She left her 4 kids at home and came out for 4 days! We celebrated the whole time by sleeping in, staying up late, watching tv, eating fancy sandwiches and pastries at little bakeries in town, shopping, eating cake and ice cream, reading in the hammock, rock climbing at the gym, seeing Flight of the Conchords, going to movies, hiking along Big Cottonwood Creek, driving around and getting lost, and taking a million pictures of us making faces. So basically we didn't act too much different than we did when we were 18, or 14, or 10, or 5. Which means it was a perfect way to celebrate getting old.
We couldn't even finish our cake...definitely getting old...
Then I looked at the date and realized I couldn't remember the past 2 months. I wasn't sure if I'd slept through them or I had amnesia and was kind of freaked out to have a chunk of my life missing. So when I went out to water this morning I was glad to not see fully growing plants although I did see this!
One of my most favorite things in the world, one of the things I enjoy most in life, what I would do if I could do anything for one afternoon, maybe even my last meal on Earth... would be standing out in the garden eating peas off the vine. For the past few years I've devoted 1/4 of my entire garden to peas and I can't think of one time that any peas have made it past the backdoor into my house. This year's crop looks to be starting out well and hopefully I'll get some peas before the summer heat sets in.
First taste of sunshine. I bet these will all be standing up by the time I get home from work.
I ended up leaving a nut on the rock and tore up my hands getting out a cam on the second one. I hated the second one and was grouchy as can be when I got to the top, but I did get to the top. I think because of this I got lowered to the bottom while Jake went and rappelled himself down the other side. That was fine with me. Once again, Jake is rapelling in this picture but I don't think you can see him cause he's so small. 
There he is...zoomed in.
After that Jake did a more difficult route as the sun set on another nearby rock. It was a pretty cool one called Scream Cheese since the rock had lots of little holes. The names of the routes always make me laugh. We had a really pretty hike back to the car along a little creek with some really cool views where we took some nice pictures. Some were artsy... 
...and some were a little on the cheesy side. 
The only water at the place was a hand pump from a well which I thought was pretty cool. (so months after I made this post Jake read it and told me I should change this part to say that the water pump was NOT the only place to get water. There was a faucet by the bathrooms...though we didn't know it was there till we were actually in the car leaving. The whole time we thought there was only the pump...so I think we're both right.)
No animals got our lunches either...
Saturday we went back to the same area and did 3 climbs on a different rock. I only did the first one but my nerves were back to normal and I enjoyed it at least. It was good thing I wasn't all jittery again because Jake took his first fall with me as his belayer. It was my first catch too and it all went smoothly. No one got hurt and it was nice to have that out of the way so I know what to expect and he can trust me a little more on the ropes. After that we headed up to another nearby area for some higher climbs. It was really late in the afternoon so we picked out a nice and easy 5.7 climb we would be able to go up pretty fast but that was still really long and high. It was so much fun! It was 5 pitches, but we did it in 4 since some were short, and we got up just above 400 feet. There were birds flying below us and we saw an old raptor nest near the top. The views were awesome and you could hear cows mooing from way far away and it was really calming. It got me singing Christmas songs about cattle lowing... This time we brought the camera along for the climb and took some really fun shots along the way.
This is the rock we climbed. This face is called red rib. We climbed up just to the right of the rib part. It's a lot bigger than it looks in the picture. There were a few people climbing when I took this picture and you can't even see them. In the next picture down Jake's on top of the little bump to the right of the rib and I'm below him at the base of that short vertical section. It can give a little perspective on the height. 
The views were fantastic from the top. This is at the end of the climb looking out towards the cows...
...another nice hike back to the car and then home. What a great weekend!
Here's a shot of her next to it for perspective. I'm surprised there's a cat left, the pile is as big as her.
She's just so fluffy. I was thinking about my new sleeping bag and its fancy "800 loft" and I was wondering what Lou's "loft" is and how warm a sleeping bag stuffed with her fur would be. It packs down almost as well as down does...
