Birthday Celebration

It's been raining and thundering pretty consistently the last 3 weeks.  But it makes for some pretty grand views with the mountains, clouds, and fog.  Here's a pic my Mom snapped with Seth's artistic supervision.

 Speaking of...Carlie and Seth came to Sojo!  I had fun with them on Sunday and Tuesday.  Had to have some Texas BBQ while they were here too!  Mmm!  Smoked chicken!

Tannin has found out there are other windows in our home....Here she is checking out the runway toward the bedroom window.  She knows she's not suppose to go in there, so she has to make sure she'll not be noticed and cut off by us.

Clear for take-off!

With all this cold weather, we had to cook some crock pot soup!  This is all the red potatoes, carrots, celery, almonds, and onions chopped up the night before to throw into the crockpot in the morning.

Saturday morning, we celebrated our birthdays by getting me (Kelsey) a yummy cupcake from Sweet Tooth Fairy, and going to Tails and Scales (Taylor's present).  It was Taylor's only off day before he takes the MCAT, so we combined our birthdays.

I got to touch this big tortoise.  He was too slow getting away from me!  Haha!

These baby tortoises were adorbs.  And so small.   They were fun to watch eat.

We gave their bigger relative some cantaloupe.

Luckily this wasn't a snapping turtle, so no fingers were snapped off.

Taylor held this cuddly black king snake.  And after some cajoling, I held it too.

They brought out the big 12 foot long Nanners.  All the little kids were uber excited, so I mean, I couldn't be a wimp when a two year old was stroking her scales..

Both hands!  Gasp!  It was cool to feel how muscular the snakes are and how soft, dry, and smooth they are.  They may look slimy and wet, but they aren't!  It's the keratin of their skin (like our fingernails.)

This ball python liked curling around our arms.

 This baby caiman looked all nice....

  

But it sure wasn't!

  

It kept leaping towards us and snapping it's jaws--without provocation.

After I conquered my fear, we went around Pets and Such where we bought Tannin (who we've now had for a little over a year!), then we walked around the mall looking at trinkets.  After we realized it was 2 pm, we went for lunch at Five Guys (because it's my favorite ever).  Then we stopped to look at some burners for camping, and I got some new white shoes and redvines.  We came home for dinner and my present was at the door.  A selfie stick!  

So let me take a selfie....

First pic!

Selfies call for duck lips. Haha!

 Stick or not, the sun didn't care. No good pics with the sun in our face.

I think these pictures are hilarious though.

BUT I WAS STILL EXCITED!!

PS I got the stick in the picture on purpose. ;)

Now I will have more pictures of us together...especially on our anniversaries!

It's great to be a quarter of a century!

Also, this song has been one of Taylor's and my favorites to listen to each day, plus the video makes me die of laughter.  It's like you're on an individual date with each 1D member.  I can see girls playing this over and over acting like they're the girlfriend.  It was right up my creepy alley of hilarious videos.

2 Year of Marriage

I can't believe we've been married for two years!  Time flies when you're having fun, right?  Well it's definitely been the best time of our lives and to celebrate we took a quick trip down to Bryce Canyon.

The rain was extremely bad on the way down, but luckily cleared up once we passed Provo.  I did most of the driving there so Taylor could study for the MCAT.  I had to keep myself occupied with my Oldies while I drove.  Taylor took a pic.

We passed through lots of snow and it made us glad we weren't camping, and had instead decided to get a hotel.

 We had to stop at a diner famous for Pickle Pie and Pinto Bean Pie...of course, something so odd Taylor has remembered it for 10 years.

Can you guess which one it is?

 It was surprisingly not bad.  Pretty tasty!

 We were so excited when we finally started to see the beautiful red rock!

 We stopped off at Capital Reef

 Taylor's muscles are as hard as rock!

Such weird geology.  And look at that overcast!  It made everything even more red and orange.  It was beautiful.

Taylor sneezing...also beautiful.

 
 Taylor thought this looked like a UFO had landed on top of the red rock mountain.

The truth is out there....

 The Capital Reef National Park from the distance.

The rift is SO big and oddly slanted!

Pretty overcast sky.

We went through a place in Capital Reef called the Great Wash that reminded me of boating through the Antelope Canyon of Lake Powell with my Dad and family.

Even looked like the walls in Antelope Canyon.

It started snowing in the distance as we were leaving.

Luckily, we as we traveled up the mountain toward Bryce the storm was still behind us, so we got to see this beautiful view.

Not of me wearing a Ute coat though..

But then the snow caught up to us.

It was seriously a white out on both sides.  I'm glad the roads were pretty clear and we were safe driving.

And we made it out of the snow just in time to reach Hell's Backbone!

That's a long way down...

We also got to stop at the Hole in the Rock Memorial site.

Because Church history is so cool!

I'm glad I didn't try to prevent this handcart from falling down a steep cliff with just myself and a horse.

We were so excited to make it to Bryce and stay at Ruby's Inn.

Here are the only pictures we got of us together from our Anniversary Trip. ;)

See the snow covered mountains in the distance?

 We went on the Queen's Garden Trail


I thought this looked like a family picture.

Mom, Dad, Taylor, and Long Neck Granny Goose

Baby Hoodoo!  So cute!

Taylor took these pictures of me running to the archway.

 Made it!

 Taylor in another archway

So tall.

My artsy picture.

The first thing we did on Sunday after we checked out of the hotel was look for prairie dogs.

WE FOUND THEM!

 

They were so interested in me.

Taylor was jealous.

 Here they are eating in their holes.

The were also super interested in our car...It was hilarious.

PS, out of all the things we saw, this was Taylor's favorite...Especially when they grabbed veggies out of our hands.

We hiked the Rim of Bryce Canyon Sunday morning.

Glad their was a railing on some of the spots!

Not gonna lie, it's a cool pic, but your heart is pounding when you're that close to the edge with no barrier to fall a straight 100 feet.

 Gotta have our jerky turkey sausage.

On our way out, we stopped at Red Canyon.

 It was an extremely steep hike, and I'm glad we had hiking boots!

It's so breathtaking to stand next to something so tall and mighty. 

Taylor found Superman's red sand stone fort.

Of course he went inside...

On the way home, we took a different route so we could stop by Big Rock Candy Mountain!

Chocolate ice cream scoop with caramel and green sprinkles.

 We got home Sunday night and Taylor continued to study for his MCAT like nothing had happened this weekend...Haha!
On Monday--our actual anniversary--it was an extremely busy day at work.  It was nice to come home to a cute card and lactose-free quiche that Taylor made for dinner!