More of the Goods: Climbing Dromedary & Sunrise Peak

This spring it just keeps snowing and snowing in the mountains, so I've had to be patient and wait for a sunny Saturday to come along. Finally I got one so we headed out to climb a Wasatch classic: Tanners Gulch (the main chute in the middle of the photo).

Near the top of Tanners Gulch.

After traverse some steep terrain, we gained the west ridge of Dromedary Peak. If you look to the left of the climber's yellow helmet, you can see the highway below. That's our trailhead. It's nearly 4,000 feet down.

We climbed the west ridge with spectacular views of the Central Wasatch.

Reaching the first summit.

Yours truly.

Traversing back to the gulch to climb Sunrise Peak along the steep south face.

Climbing Sunrise.

Right off of the ridge it drops a long way.

Sunrise summit.

Going back down Sunrise to the top of Tanners Gulch.

3,500-foot slide straight down to the car at the trailhead. It's the only way to travel, and a heck of a good time! 

Great Pictures!

The AMAZINGLY talented Rebekah Westover took my babies pictures.  You can see some of them on her blog by clicking on this link:

http://rebekahwestover.blogspot.com/2008/05/tanner-and-kate.html

Thanks Becky.  I just LOVE them!

David Archuleta!!

My friend Paige and I are the BIGGEST David Archuleta fans (Let's be honest, who isn't right?). He is so talented and so cute, we just love him. 

On Friday we decided to go up to the Gateway to get his autograph. I thought for sure we'd get a chance to meet him since all the teens would be in school. Boy was I wrong, it was so packed. Girls everywhere!! It was still fun, brought the inner teenager out of me, and we did get to see him drive by in his limo. Tanner and Kate went with me, and Tanner still can't stop talking about "David Archuleta." I was even able to meet up with my friend Kim and her kids too (I forgot to get a picture with her, dang it!).  What a fun day!

All the girls, we could not believe how many girls were there!

Me and Paige waiting and hoping that David would drive by and that we'd get to see him.

He is so cute!!

Waving goodbye!

We thought it was so funny that they were chasing his limo. But who knows, I probably would have done the same thing when I was 13.

My friend Paige got video. It's a little shaky, but you can get an idea about how excited we (and everyone else) were to see him. Here's to the next American Idol!

I just LOVE this kid!!

A few weeks ago Matt's parents had a HUGE mound of dirt in their driveway for some garden boxes we were making. Tanner loved it and thought it was his very own mountain to play on (hmmm, is this Matt's boy...yea, definitely!)


K, I think it is so funny that he is using a lacrosse stick as a shovel. I guess it was all he could find over in Nana's backyard. It worked, so why not right?


Having fun up on the "mountain!"


Why is it that kids love dirt so much! He could have been entertained by this pile of dirt all summer long. Too bad Nana and Papa didn't want a big pile of dirt in their driveway all summer long.

Playing outside...

These pictures were taken 2 months ago. I just haven't gotten around to posting them yet. It was the first "warm" day after a very long and cold winter, so we played outside. We pulled out the sidewalk chalk, and it was a hug hit with Tanner and Kate.


Laying down to have Nana trace his body to make a "Tanner" drawing.


The finished product. I definitely see the resemblance!


I didn't get any pictures of Kate coloring with the chalk, but I guess that's okay, because realistically, the chalk colored her! Look at her pants, can you see how dirty these are? She had so much fun crawling over the pretty colors, and I learned that next time we do sidewalk chalk, not to let her wear black pants...=)




Here Tanner is having so much fun playing fetch with Nana. He better get a lot of good practice. We are getting a little puppy at the end of June and I'm sure the puppy will want to play fetch all the time.


Kate cracks me up. Her little mind is always going. I was drinking a glass of water and so of course, immediately she wanted some. I tried to let her drink out of the cup and she didn't quite get it. So she came up with her own solution. She would dip her hand in the water, and then suck the water off her fingers. Whatever works, right?


Tanner is ALWAYS so good about cleaning up his messes. I love how he thought he could sweep the "chalk art" up. Too cute!

Do you remember...

...wanting someone to spin you around like this until you were so dizzy you could barely walk.

Tanner loved this! I guess somethings never change.

I love that Kate loves...

BOOKS!!

And I hope she never grows out of it either.  (Side note...these pictures were taken just a few weeks ago, not at Christmas time even though she is wearing her Santa Claus P.J's, I just didn't have anything else clean).

Mommy's Little Helper...

Sorry about the blogging Hiatus. Matt's been traveling a bunch, so I haven't had time to do anything it seems like. But I promised my mom that I would update the blog for mother's day so that she could see pictures of her beautiful grandkids. Love you mom! Happy Mother's Day!!


A couple of weeks ago, I was cleaning up the kitchen and turned around to see Kate had climbed up on the dishwasher! She was so proud of herself.


I wanted to see if she would do it again, so I put her down on the ground, next to the dishwasher, and it took her about a second to climb right back up.



I LOVE her little smirk in this picture. It's almost like she knows she's doing something she shouldn't be doing, but she's so proud of herself that she can't contain her excitement. It has trouble written all over it!




So sweet and innocent...right??

She's WALKING!!!

These pictures were taken on conference weekend, just as she was getting the hang of her walker, but she is now cruising all over on her own. It's so much fun. But here are some pictures to remember her "walker" days...




She was so proud of herself walking around with the help of her little walker, here she is giving herself a round of applause.


Tanner helping Kate, but I had to quickly put the camera down as Tanner was leading her straight for a hill that I know she would not have been able to keep her balance on. I don't think it was intentional...??

More Mountains...Lone Peak.

This climb was a beast. Definitely the most physically demanding route I've done in a while. The sweet reward was a taking a nap on top of the Wasatch Mountains with the city 7,000 feet below.


Here are more pictures from the trip. As always, lots of photos on the ol' mountain album.