Cooking Class

For Alicia's birthday I signed us up for a cooking class at Gygi to make French Macaroons! It was so much fun! I haven't taken a cooking class since I was in 7th grade. Even then we were making stuff like lumberjack casserole. Strange though that in that class I won first place for my bread and then failed miserably with my pie. It's been backwards ever since. Anyways, we made French Macaroons, possibly one of my most favorite cookies ever. They are so amazing. They change my life every time I bite into one. Partly because they cost somewhere around 2-3 dollars each from a fancy bakery and partly because they have the most incredibly crunchy crumbly texture with a mouth watering chewy center that you can't find in anything else no matter how hard to try. There's some mystique about making them and little tricks and such to make them turn out just right so the class was fantastic. We got to make the Strawberry Lemon flavored ones and I must say, I think ours were the best. It was fun being in that big kitchen too. I've been dreaming of that oven and Kitchen Aid mixer ever since. We all got to share the results and take them home. Macaroons are so expensive that I think the class paid for itself in the amount of cookies I came home with. Alicia took some better pictures of the finished product and put up the recipes on her food blog here. I devoured them all and left the next morning for a week in the Tetons.

A snowy spring hike to Donut Falls

Alicia and I hiked up to Donut Falls with her kids…the snow is really sticking around late this year as you can tell and Alicia and I didn't make the best choice in foot gear either. I baked some donut muffins to eat at the falls, Alicia made sandwiches, Zoe got put in the backpack and we headed up the trail with the boys. Navigating the unexpected snowbanks in our sandals and stopping to examine all the worms in the runoff slowed us down a bit, but it's not like we were trying to get anywhere fast. In the end me and the boys could just barely get close enough to see the falls in the distance. The snowmelt runoff was so high that it was going over the donut hole as well as through it. Still a fun hike and a day out in the mountains with friends. (and sorry Jake, but Alicia's better at this kind of (baby)backpacking that you were)

The buttermilk donut muffins!!!!!!

"See you on the other side Ray" (...Bobby)

Big Sigh....it's always sad to say goodbye to a really good climbing partner. There's lot of good climbers but once in awhile you find one that is just such a great fit. Style, ability, patience, knowledge, sense of humor... While I'm happy to see Bobby get married and move to Washington with April (who is one of the nicest girls I've ever met) I'm sad to see him leave Salt Lake. He has been a great climbing mentor to me and has helped me improve my climbing by leaps and bounds just by his confidence alone. We had a great road trip to Red Rocks together, some good gym sessions, a day out climbing with Andy, a few days of intensive trad leading lessons to prepare me for Squamish, as well as many other days climbing the local crags after work. And last of all, he managed to find the time for one last day of really great climbing in Little Cottonwood Canyon together just days before he left. We'd tried to go with April the week before but got rained out of the canyon. But not before he convinced me to do my first Little Cottonwood lead climb up Bushwhack Crack! (that was a huge climbing milestone for me in itself. Being the first climb I attempted in the canyon two years ago and having sat down crying at the bottom because I couldn't get my feet off the ground...I've come a long way to say the least) It felt odd to have Bobby clean that route for me instead of the usual way around...For our last day of climbing...it was similar to our first. We met around noon went up to Bushwhack which he lead one last time. We linked over to the base of The Hook which I got to lead...I love that climb.Then we went up the Hook Variation, just like so many times before, it didn't feel like an ending. We both had to get going but just couldn't resist the perfect weather and the solitude up at the top of the rock and convinced ourselves to do two more routes. We went up the second pitch of The Hook which is an odd wide crack, then top roped the slab climb Hook Direct. It didn't hit me till the last rappel down when I said to him his usual line, "See you on the other side Ray..." that it was the end. Such a bittersweet day of perfect climbing. (can you name the movie that quote comes from???)

Alicia's Birthday Desserts

For Alicia's birthday she wanted a berry themed dessert table. She made a delicious blackberry chocolate cake that had the most fantastic marshmallow chocolate frosting, and some really good mini strawberry shortcakes that we will definitely be putting on our list of wedding options at Sweet Lime. Then she modified our cake balls and instead of using normal cake and frosting in the middles she used fresh raspberries and pound cake (genius!) They were amazing. I brought some marshmallow surprise cookies and foraged around their yard for flowers to put on the table. It was a minimal spread but everything we especially fantastic. She made a cake for my birthday back in May and it was amazing too. I never wrote about it though. You can read about it here and if you want any of her recipes she used read her post here.

Climbing The Egg

Jake was in town for a few days and we got to spend a whole day climbing!!!! Just like the old days. We went up to a place in Little Cottonwood Canyon called The Egg and climbed all afternoon till dark. The weather was perfect sunny and cool, the climbs were challenging and unique, we had the place almost all to ourselves except for two really nice climbers who we shared a rope with to rappel, the squirrels didn't steal our snacks and I flicked the giant tick on me away before he bored into my skin. All in all, a pretty perfect day of climbing.

Racking up to climb...

Jake's up there somewhere, can you find him? My shadow giving an excellent belay... My turn. Looking up, getting ready to climb and clean the route... Almost to the top! Both of us safely at the top of the rock... Back at the bottom for a snack before going up another one...

This is Annie. We dodn't know her, but we shared her rope to come down. She was cool and while climbing next to us made a pretty cool climbing photo.

Adventures in Babysitting

While Jake was in town he agreed to babysit Alicia's kids for an entire weekend...and then asked me to help him out. It was actually pretty fun and I was glad to help out. Granted I hang out with these kids a lot so I was a little more ok with it than I might have been with someone else's kids. There wasn't any serious drama, just some fun field trips.

The first day we went to the coppermine. My grandfather worked at the mine on the trains (before the big yellow trucks) so I'd gone to the visitor center a few times as a kid. They'd recently redone it and it was really cool. For dinner we stopped at McDonald's. I'm not one to judge parents who take their kids to McDonald's, just as long as they don't go all the time. That place was actually pretty easy and fun when you have three kids with you.

Bedtime was uneventful as well as Saturday morning cartoons. Somehow Jake was able to recycle a bowl of cereal and feed it to both the boys. It was impressive. Then we spent the day hiking in Big Cottonwood Canyon along the river. I'd been sending pictures of the boys climbing up boulders to Jake at school and it was fun to show him in person what natural climbers his nephews are. I think he was impressed.

And Jake got to try out the new baby backpack too...

We found a small waterfall where there was a minor breakdown by Quinn. That was our fault though, I think we didn't keep him supplied with adequate snacks. What do I know, I don't have kids... Dinner, baths, and bedtime went off without a hitch the second night in a row and before we knew it the kids were asleep and Alicia and James were home from their relaxing weekend away. It was fun to tag along with Uncle Jake and give him a hand and do Alicia and James a favor too.