The Axis of Awesome

We did it!! We completed our first Tough Mudder in Colorado this June and it was nothing short of epic, challenging, and incredible. We enjoyed the challenge and camaraderie so much that we put together team "Axis of Awesome" for the Utah Tough Mudder this October.

Some serious bruising from the military walls.

Our amazing team

I'm looking surprisingly cheerful after 11 miles of obstacles!

A Tropical Celebration

Gabe and I are celebrating our 10 year anniversary this year and were lucky enough to take a trip to the Florida Keys to commemorate the occasion. We spent a lot of time reflecting all of the adventures, challenges, and sweet moments of the last decade.  We hotel hopped and scouted out kitschy diners on our way from Key Largo to Key West.

The trip highlight was scuba diving and snorkeling some of the shallow reefs.  Gabe is an avid diver. We went with a dive group out about 5 miles from shore and while Gabe went down with the divers I was snorkeling by myself and came face to face with a giant nurse shark!  We've done cage dives with sharks before, but nothing compares to the adrenaline rush of seeing one while you are floating in the middle of the ocean alone.  I also saw a sting ray and countless parrot fish.

Gorgeous tropical blossoms

Downtown Key West

Sunset tight rope walker in Key West

Laid-back Duck Key

Hemmingway is a favorite author, so we made a trip to his home in Key West.  We then drove back to Miami for our final two nights.  We went Latin dancing and ate divine food in fashionable South Beach.  I just love when we can have memorable moments like this together.  Here's to the next 10 years!

Time to Get Tough

In less than 3 months, Gabe and I are headed to Colorado for the toughest physical challenge of my life. We will run through fire, swim through ice, dodge live electrical wire, and test our outer limits of endurance. Time to get serious with the training!

Looking Like a Dork . . .

But who cares?

Triathlon training is coming along. I now have use of a bike and it is time to take this show on the road! (Literally!)

The Triathamom

`I've signed up for my first triathlon! Let's hope that 3 months of training can transform me from awkward athlete to hard core fitness chick. O.K., maybe hard core is too much to ask from a girl that doesn't currently own a bike and is a little nervous to put my face in the water while swimming! I think I'm in over my head, but I hope to have some fun with this new adventure. Thankfully I'm a long distance runner, so at least I have one of the disciplines covered. Wish me luck!

Istanbul

I am woefully behind in blogging, but I just had to post a few highlights from the trip that Gabe and I took to Istanbul last month. It was such a fascinating city. Istanbul is an interesting mix of East meets West, ancient meets modern, and secular meets religious. I studied some history of the Byzantine and Ottoman empires before the trip to make the experience even more meaningful.Our first night out we stumbled upon the Hagia Sophia without even trying. It was so breathtaking that I got a little emotional. I can't even imagine how awed a traveler would have been to see the site 1500 years ago!


It is impossible to feel the scope and enormity of this man-made wonder without walking inside and gazing up at the tall dome.


A little ramp for royalty that leads to the top floor of the Hagia Sophia.

Gabe in front of one of the ornate ablution fountains outside the Hagia Sophia

This picture was taken inside of the Topkapi Palace. I loved these gorgeous tiles from the Ottoman Empire.

A courtyard in the Harem portion of the Sultan's Palace

Outside the Topkapi Palace of the Ottoman Empire

More Istanbul Adventures

We spent a full afternoon wandering along the old Byzantine city walls. I really love this picture of Gabe. He looks like some Irish gentleman and I have to say he was just as charming to travel with. Being able to spend a full week together was like one really long romantic date.

"Do Not Dring the Tab Water," was only one of the funny English translations that we came across.

Our hotel was along this charming European street and was walking distance to most of the major sites. I loved the morning breakfasts of olives, thick Greek yogurt, spreadable cheeses and Turkish dates that were served.

The spice market smelled as marvelous as it looked.

The famous Grand Bazaar filled with thousands of shops. We left the main tourist scene and let ourselves get lost in the local markets just outside the Bazaar. There were huge masses of people and it was a delightful sensory overload.

The spooky underground cistern built by the Byzantines. This site was also made famous in one of the James Bond films.

This is the outside of the gorgeous blue tiled mosque. I loved hearing the call to prayer throughout the day as we explored the city. Istanbul was unseasonably cold during our visit, but it did mean that I always had a hoodie or scarf handy to cover my head for entering the Mosques.
We took a day cruise down the Bosphorus. We saw beautiful waterfront mansions and stopped at the ruins of a castle that overlooked the Black Sea. We also had lunch in a charming Asian fishing village where we munched on fried muscles and sticky sweets.


Just looking through all my pictures makes me want to return. I hope to visit again someday and to have the opportunity to see many of the other sites that Turkey has to offer. I also left very impressed with the friendly Turkish people.

Cecret Lake

Last week, we had a fun hike to Cecret Lake, up near Alta ski resort. Persy loved scampering across the rocks near the lake and watching the many chipmunks. She is my little adventure girl!

Sitting near her friend Ethan

The scenery was incredible and the trail was surrounded by summer wild flowers. This picture doesn't do it justice!

Doughnut Falls

My awesome 11 year old niece has been visiting from Texas this month. She spent a couple of days at our house and then we hung out again in St. George. Texas sounds like a great place, but it does lack mountains so we had to get out for a little hike together. (Actually the hike was a littler longer than planned because as the fearless leader I got us lost and we ended up turning a one hour hike into 3 1/2 hours. Whoops!) I'd love to do more hiking before it gets cold again. What are your favorite Utah hikes to do with children?
Dang, she hasn't even left for home yet and I'm already missing her. She was so helpful with Persy too!

Persy Playing Underneath Doughnut Falls

Holi: Festival of Colors

When I was a freshman in college I had a boyfriend from India that would charm me with exotic tales about festivals and wedding celebrations in his country. I could listen to him talk for hours as we gobbled up egg curry and ate it with our fingers. (His fingers always had the lingering delicious smell of spice.) He told me about the Holi festival where people would run around throwing powdered dyes at each other. It sounded like so much fun. I was thrilled to find out that Utah has its own Holi festival at the Hare Krishna temple in Spanish Fork. I went to the festival with my adventurous friend, Megan and we joined thousands of young college kids to throw dyes into the air and at each other. My pictures don't do the event justice, since I was reluctant to take my camera into a multi-colored war zone. My best recommendation is to google the event or check out a video on YouTube.

BEFORE: Wendy and Megan



AFTER: Even my boogers had turned magenta.

Expedition

Gabe left in the wee hours this morning for a trip to Peru. He will be visiting Machu Pichu with my father and two brothers. I hope he has an incredible time!

I Love the Mountains, I Love the Rolling Hills!

I am often surprised by the fact that I have lived in Utah nearly all of my life and I still feel like there thousands of places in the state left to discover. Here are some pictures from a lovely little Mommy-Daughter hike to Doughnut Falls that I took with Persy and my friend Megan. The fall leaves were just beginning to change and the drive up the canyon was quite stunning.

Megan and her cuties- I'm lucky to have an adventurous friend that will do such fun things with me. This is one of the same friends that traveled throughout Europe with me before we both got married. We are constantly planning excursions and expeditions that we want to go on when we are little old ladies.

The kids all loved tossing rocks into the water!

I love my Kelty backpack! I also use it around the city to do errands.

Fist Fights, Franck's, and Other Fun

We've had an eventful and fun few days. Here's what we've been up to:

Thursday
Gabe and I celebrated our 7 year anniversary last week. I know it's such a cliche, but it really is hard to imagine my life without him. I'm looking forward to the day when we will have known each other longer than we were single. To celebrate, we watched our wedding video and went to a scrumptious French restaurant called Franck's. The menu was drool worthy and I savored smoked strawberry soup,scallops with a white chocolate wasabi sauce, and apricot jasmin rice. I know the flavors may sound strange, but they are positively brilliant my friend! We also got adventurous and sampled the fois gras trio. (I think fois gras must be an acquired taste.)

Friday
I visited my folks so my mother and I could enjoy a "Spa Day." We were rewarding ourselves for some health and weight loss goals. (After becoming a mother I gained a frumpy 15 pounds. What's the deal? I don't have hormones to blame for this. I am slowly taking off the weight and getting back to a regular running routine. Woot! Woot!) We had a relaxing time getting pedicures, a massage, and going to lunch. I'm so happy my mom and I can enjoy spending time together.

Saturday
Our car overheated and broke down. Although I'm concerned about the cost, I found myself feeling strangely nostalgic as Gabe and I lounged in a grassy area beside the road. When we were newlyweds, we had a series of lemon vehicles and found ourselves having many adventures as a result. "This reminds me of when we were dating," I said wistfully as Gabe looked under the hood. (He just grunted and tried not to swear. I'm glad I have a guy who knows a bit about cars. He's so handy!)

As a result of the car mishap, our plans to attend a Bees game were canceled. Gabe was sweet though and offered to watch Persy while I went to the "Living Traditions" folk and ethnic arts festival. I got to hear an awesome Brass band from New Orleans. Several people in the audience were dancing and jumping up and down in front of me. Since I couldn't really see the musicians over their bodies, I decided to just join
them. I was really enjoying myself when I nearly got decked by two women that started fighting and swearing at each other. It was kind of a wild night.

Monday
Now it's back to "real" life. I have a full day of laundry, weeding, storytelling, and snuggling to do. I guess my "real" life is pretty good too!

Shark Encounters

One of the most exciting things we did on our Hawaii vacation was to dive with sharks. We went to the North Shore and took a small little boat out to "shark infested waters." We jumped into a little cage with snorkel masks and watched intensely as raw meat was tossed into the water for the sharks to gobble up. The longer we were in the water, the more curious the sharks seemed to be and they would swim right up to the cage and look at us. It was a pretty thrilling experience to have sharks swimming under and around us!

We saw about 4 of these sandbar sharks. These sharks are about 7 feet in length. (This is a picture from the dive website.)

We saw a couple of galapagos sharks. They are described as aggresive and dangerous. They can grow to be 10 feet long.

The pictures we took above the water just don't do these animals justice! If I went again, I would buy an underwater camera.

Side Note: Gabe also got to scuba diving during our trip. He loved it! He went to two separate dive sites and got his Nitrox certificaiton.