The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

August is always one of my favorite months, after December. It's the month of my birthday, a lot of my friends' birthdays, parent's anniversary, and now my own anniversary. And usually I looked forward to school (not necessarily true anymore) and the weather was always fantastic (also not true, it has felt more like October here the past couple of days). Anyways, here is was we've been up to this past and last month of summer. :)

One Sunday night we both had a hankering for something sweet--but our pantry and fridge were both extremely low. With the help of an egg from the neighbors we had a crepe night!!

We added some frozen raspberries and chocolate syrup and that did the trick!

On to our ONE YEAR anniversary! This year flew by--so much has happened and changed. I wouldn't mind getting all dressed up again in my wedding dress, but I suppose that time has past. Anyways, we decided to venture out into the wilds of American Fork Canyon to go camping to celebrate. On our way down to Utah we stopped at Lagoon and spent the day acting a lot younger than we really are and had a lot of fun. We both almost panicked in line for the ride Wicked, but it turned out to be one of our favorites! We then headed for our campsite. I do have something to say about camping in Idaho verses camping in Utah. I had never seen this campsite before I just picked it out online, so when we got there we were rather surprised. We were the only people in our nicely paved cul-de-sac without an RV and everyone was surprisingly close together. Kinda felt like we were intruding on someone else's party. It felt far too comfy and well-groomed to really be called camping. But we had a blast anyways.


I felt like our neighbors just got to sit back and watch an episode of "Newlyweds: First Time Camping". Apparently we had a giant sign on our foreheads that read: Clueless. Haha. I thought we were managing just fine, but all these really nice people kept coming over to offer us a hachet, firewood, advice, and eventually a bottle of lighter fluid that he liberally dumped all over our fire. I suppose I would be amused at us too. It was all in good fun.

S'mores. Best part of camping food.

Our giant camping castle. We could have fit six more people in there with us. And we did enjoy a movie on the iPad as we fell asleep--we weren't exactly "roughin' it".

I did find some nature near our site:

The view from our site

Daniel's cousin Jason and his wife Kayli came up that night and ate dinner and dessert with us. It was so fun! I think we all just needed a break from school and work and this was perfect.

After all that working in setting up camp, we tore it down first thing in the morning. We took a nice long drive through the rest of American Fork Canyon.

There happened to be a bike race that day so we drove 10 miles an hour the entire time, constantly in fear of squishing someone. They all had much more determination and strength that I think I will ever have. Props to them.

We took a slight detour out to a place called Cascade Springs. It was cool, but kinda out of the way. But I always love just wandering around in nature after being cooped up at work all the time.

Then we drove by Bridal Veil Falls. Also very cool. There were some crazy people hike up through the falls with all their children in tow and on their back.

Then we rafted down the Provo River with Jason and Kayli. I don't have pictures, but they do and someday I'll snatch them off their blog. But that was really fun. I think next time Daniel and I want to try something more challenging. After we all got cleaned up, we went out for dinner at the Macaroni Grill and saw the movie Inception. I hear it's a great movie, but I kinda slept through the entire thing. Hey- it was a busy weekend! Haha. Thanks again to Jason and Kayli for being such great hosts! Daniel fell in love with their little dog and is now very puppy hungry. Too bad no housing in Rexburg allows dogs. ;)

BIRTHDAY (Is it just me or is this post getting excessively long?)

I had a most excellent birthday. While I was getting ready that morning Daniel snuck out to buy everything to make me French Toast and bought me some gorgeous flowers! I love them. He made me the French Toast and then I opened presents.

Mon petit chef

Daniel got me some movies, perfume, and Julia Child's french cookbook!! I've got some serious cooking to do now! It is the most intense cookbook I've ever seen, but I'm really excited. I want to make homemade croissants very badly but guess what?? They take 12 hours!! Yikes. We'll see how that goes.

Then we made our way to Idaho Falls where we met up with all the fam for lunch at Carino's. Daniel's mom got me some darling dish towels and a super cute watch. My momma got me another cookbook and some much needed money for clothes shopping, which we did immediately after lunch! Our plan was to go to the drive-in movie, but we found out last minute that they were closed. So we went to an overpriced movie and saw Despicable Me- which was great.

And Daniel's mom made me a chocolate zucchini cake. Yum. :)

Sigh- and that's our month of August. And believe it or not school starts next week. We shall see how that goes. Haha. Tough schedules ahead for both of us.