iOnce Meses!

Steve and I have now been married for once meses!  (or in English eleven months).  It's been probably the best eleven months of my life :)
We started out with a great honeymoon to Los Cabos, Mexico.  We really didn't make many plans but still had quite the adventure and I really want to go back again sometime soon.  We stayed in this cute little hotel/resort that was very cheap and much more authentic Mexican than any of the surrounding resorts.  It was so hot while we were there, but that made the water even more inviting.

Oh yes and the water in the pool was either heated or just very warm from being in the hot sun all day.  It wasn't very refreshing but it was still very nice to be in for as long as you wanted, because you didn't ever get cold.
Our real adventure down in Los Cabos was in riding the public bus with all of the locals.  There really weren't any tourists on the bus and it was fun because it felt more like a real experience, not just the tourist experience, but at the same time I definitely felt out of place.  We took the bus to a snorkeling beach that was off the highway between San Jose Del Cabo and Cabo San Lucas.  The bus driver missed our exit and then realized a minute later and dropped us off on the edge of the freeway and apologized and pointed which way we needed to go to the beach.  So we got off, crossed the freeway, and walked down an abandoned road that used to be the freeway through the nice Mexican desert to the beach.  We were completely safe and nothing happened to us, but it felt really dangerous and stupid at the time.
Here's a picture of the old highway we walked on to get to the beach.

After we got back from Mexico we went back to work and trying to get our house put together.  It really was a mess at first and it was making us both crazy, but we were able to get it all put away and make it work.  Steve worked part time for Petzl on and off for quite a while and I worked nights on the weekends down in Salt Lake which wasn't so fun.  On our first anniversary I came home from work in the morning and found my wedding bouquet on our coffee table in a vase and pictures from our wedding hung up all over the walls and a sign that Steve had colored himself that said "Happy one month Anniversary!"  It was pretty awesome :)

Now we're coming up on our big one year anniversary.  I can't wait!  We're going to go camping and river rafting up in Jackson Hole with Steve's family at the end of July and it happens to fall on our anniversary.  I can't really think of anything funner to do for it.

Ojos Asi-Shakira

On Tuesday I spent a lot of the day watching a playlist on Youtube with Shakira's top music videos.  Some of them were pretty amazing, some were kind of funny or cheezy and some were pretty skanky.  I love her voice and how her ethnic background plays into her music.  She is from Columbia, but her father is Lebanese and her name is actually from the Islamic language.  Her song lyrics in Spanish are amazing, especially her older songs.  I've now picked out a few favorite songs to help me work on my accent and on practicing Spanish again.


This music video is Ojos Asi.  The song is gorgeous and you can hear the mix of Latin and Middle Eastern influence in the music.  I also think her belly dancing in this is pretty amazing.  Enjoy!

Keep on Dreamin'

This song is so inspiring to me.  I love the story in the song.  It's such a powerful message "keep on dreamin' even if it breaks your heart."  I also just love how the music is and his voice.  I love the advice to always follow your dreams no matter the risk :)

Summer, so far...It's been pretty great :)

 Dinosaur Park with all of us kids and no parents...it was a bit weird to realize how we're pretty much all grown up now.

 High Desert Museum in Bend with Steve and Natalie.  Natalie was kinda crazy the whole time, she helped us decide we're definitely not ready for kids yet. Ha ha :)

 Birthday cheesecake at Grammy and Grandpa's.  We had no candles, so I got to blow out a match.

 Steve and I hiking at Smith Rock.  There were tons of rock climbers to watch all along this trail.

 Steve decided to climb too, but without gear, he's hardcore like that.

 Petersen's Rock Garden.  I love this pond area, I always thought it would be cool to bring a significant other to these sweet bridges and I finally got to :)

 We decided to go camping in Southern Utah the night before the big eclipse...Unfortunately so did everyone else.  We ended up having to drive all the way to St. George to find somewhere to sleep and it ended up being a hotel room.

These last three are all in Kolob Canyon in Zion's National Park.

To Grandma's (and Grandpa's) House

The last few months have been tough on my grandparents health.  First Grandma got pneumonia and was hospitalized for almost a week, then Grandpa got really sick and was hospitalized for surgery and tests to rule out cancer.  Well the tests came back positive for carcinoid cancer, which really scared our family.  I felt really bad because I wanted to go up and visit them, but I really wanted Steve to be able to come too.  He's never been to their farm in Central Oregon and I really wanted him to come when I went up there this summer.  Because of Grandpa getting sick, we were each able to get some time off of work and were able to go up and see Grandma and Grandpa and Kathy for a quick visit.
Grandpa has lost some weight and some strength, but he is still himself and still ready to tell us all sorts of stories.  Grandma seemed to be fully recovered from her pneumonia.  She was so funny about her oxygen concentrator and little O2 sat monitor.  She would check her O2 sats a few times a day and seemed to be quite over the whole thing.  She would tell us "it's going to be at such and such percent and then I'll take a few breaths and it will go up to such and such percent."  The little thing kept reading higher than her guesses though which was good.  She never wore her oxygen the whole time we were there.  I was actually scared to see her wearing the oxygen, like it would make her seem sicker and more fragile than she would be without it.  She also did not have home health over the whole time that we were there.  I never found out if it was because she "got rid of them," or if it was because they weren't coming during that week.  She had called my mom last Tuesday and told mom how she just didn't have time for this home health nonsense.  It made us all laugh :)
While we were there we also got to go visit Aunt Kerma one night and the Wright family another night.  I'm so glad that my grandparents have such amazing family and friends up in Oregon.  Sometimes I think my siblings and I feel like they're all alone up there without us, but this trip especially reminded me of how many people there are up there that they spend time with.
I was also able to take Steve around to some of the cool things in Central Oregon.  We went to the Ogden Bridge, High Desert Museum, Petersen Rock Garden, and Smith Rock.  I really realized how much I love Central Oregon.  It really is a second home for me.  I don't make it up there nearly as often as I did when I was  a kid and I forget how much I miss it until I'm there.  It was good to go home but it was definitely sad to leave.