This and That

I pulled out our camera to see if there were any new pictures taken from the last couple of weeks....there weren't any :(   So instead of blogging about nothing these were my thoughts as I looked through the old pictures.

"This was a fun night"

{Jordan and I had a Chinese night and this picture was our only evidence. Jordan made sweet and sour chicken from scratch! Isn't he so talented? We put pillows on the floor and ate Japanese style all while watching our special movie: Kung Fu Panda. So fun....and delicious!!}

"I can't believe I didn't blog about this already!"

{I made my newest niece Leslie (as if you couldn't tell what her name was) a baby name collage. I absolutely loved how it turned out. I hope everything is still intacted and nothing has fallen down - if so Silvia, just blame the glue ;) }


"What tha!? This looks scary! When was this taken? Why wasn't I there?"

{I think this was from a rock climbing trip Jordan took with his sister Riley. I don't know any details, I guess everything went ok?}

One Rockin' Day

Thursday afternoon Jordan bought me my first harness, ATC, and carabiner. The rock climbing store we went to had the harness on sale for a screaming deal. I only own rock climbing shoes and have been borrowing Jordan's sister's harness everytime we went out rock climbing. I was pretty excited to get my own equipment.



Today Jordan and I took an all day adventure up through Rock Canyon. We packed each of our camel backs with water and a lunch and hiked with all the rock climbing gear a few miles in. We rock climbed for hours.





Jordan is slowly teaching me more and more every time we go. Today he taught me how to clean a route. What this basically means is to take down the carabiners from the anchors that are attached to the rock at the top. Sounds easy to just take something off, but there is a lot more to it that makes it more complicated.

We were also able to hike down the stream which was a lot of fun. It was off the normal hiking trail that goes through the canyon so we were able to be away from everyone. The canyon was a little busy because of Pioneer Day. We found a huge rock that sat by a tiny tiny waterfall that had a big puddle of water (up to my knees) and we played around for a few minutes.







We had so much fun spending our entire day hiking and climbing.

Waterfalls

Yesterday Jordan and I with some of his family went to repel between two waterfalls. Jordan has told me that he has always wanted to rock climb next to a waterfall and a week before our trip to Colorado we took a hike and found these waterfalls. He hasn't climbed next to them yet, but we both have repelled down.

Jordan got a little crazy running on the rocks going from one waterfall to the other, but it looked awesome! I'm a little more cautious and not as trained in the fearless area as he is, but I was able to run a little bit back and forth on the rocks.

Colorado Springs

Last Friday Jordan and I drove down to Colorado Springs. Jordan's parents live in Colorado and his grandparents were going to be there for the week so we decided to drive down.

Saturday I finished up a scrapbook for my mother-in-law Heidi. She wanted a little scrapbook of her new grandchild and I offered to make her one if she bought all the supplies. Here is a few samples of the many pages.







Monday morning at 4am Jordan and I woke up to go hiking with his sister and brother-in-law. We drove for 30 minutes to start hiking Pikes Peak which is about 14,100ft. We started hiking the "Incline" at 5am. The incline is basically old railroad which look like steps going straight up the mountain. It was a mile of pretty much walking up stairs.



After the incline we headed towards Pike's Peak with about 10.5 miles left. It was a long hike. With about 3 miles to go Jordan got altitude sickness. So the last 2 miles we took a lot of breaks and made it to the top around 1pm.



Overall the hike was just long (13 miles), however, it was really cool at parts.



Wednesday Jordan and I went to the park with his dad and sister. Jordan started teaching me how to play tennis then he played a soccer game with his sister Riley while I practiced with his dad.





After playing tennis the whole family went out to eat at Texas Roadhouse to celebrate Jordan's Birthday. His birthday is the 10th but we decided to celebrate it on Wednesday. I made sure to tell his dad Randy to tell the waiter that it's Jordan's birthday because they bring out a saddle and make you sit on it. We got a picture, but I currently don't have a copy. Later that evening we ate the cake I made for Jordan. I bought a few of the cake supplies that I have been wanting and decided to use them to bake Jordan's cake. I didn't have any of my other decorating tools with me so I did my best with a ziplock bag.



We had originally planned to drive back Thursday, but we decided to stay a few extra days. Thursday I spent a lot of time learning how to sew. Heidi had cut out squares of Jordan's old t-shirts and blankets from when he was a child all the way up to college. I then took the t-shirt squares and sewed them together and made my first sewing project...a t-shirt quilt. I learned how to straight stitch, back stitch, and aplicae (spelling?) items onto other materials. After all the squares were sewn together, Heidi taught me how to put badding and the back of the quilt on. It was a great teaching project.



Today I spent most of the day on another project. Riley asked if I could make a shadow box of a picture of Braeyln and her. Again she bought the paper and I did the project. I think it turned out great, but the picture doesn't show the depth. There are a lot of things popping out.



Later in the afternoon we all went rock climbing at The Garden of the Gods. We were only able to do two routes until it started raining. The picture of Jordan below is from a few days earlier and we had it blown up and framed. We are going to climb again tomorrow and hopefully I can get a similar picture of myself to frame along side his.

Rock Climbing

A few days ago, Jordan and I ventured out to provo canyon to go rock climbing. It has become his newest hobby. He got (as an early birthday gift) climbing shoes and a harness from his family. It's good for me that I can where both. Jordan impressed me by lead climbing the routes. Considering that it was my first time ever to climb on real rocks, I think I did pretty good and became real comfortable the more I climbed. I have gone before with him, but I would only repell. It was really fun and I'm eager for us to go back.