Happy Halloween

In the spirit of Halloween, here are a couple of our favorite videos...

And...my coworkers are better than yours.

Autumn and Girl Time

It's fall and it's been a wonderful one so far! I have been loving the weather, the leaves, and even a little bit of football.




I went to the pumpkin walk with my family and it was adorable, as always.








Stephen has been in China for the past couple weeks for school and I have missed him a lot (and I'm SO excited he is coming home today!) but I decided to make the most of my time without him and have some really fun girl time.

Last weekend I went to Witchapalooza at Gardner Village with my wonderful teaching friends and had a shopping day with my mom and sisters.

This weekend I got to go to Time out for Women with my friend Robyn. I have never been to anything like that before and it was wonderful! There are some really talented and inspirational people out there and I got to spend the weekend listening to many of them.



My favorite presenter at the conference was Jenny Oaks Baker, the daughter of Elder Oaks. She is an incredibly talented violinist and was breathtaking to listen to live. Here are a couple of videos I found of her that I liked:

Champlin Family Pictures

We had some family pictures taken at the end of August with my family in Logan and they are finally back to us! I love the way they turned out, here are some of my favorites.

My Kind of Election Coverage

This video is from the last presidential election and I could not think it is any funnier now, with them bombardment of the current election, than I do.

(sorry if you're offended by the swear in the title or the content, but I have to hear things that offend me every time I turn on the news)

First Week of School

I was wandering pinterest (ok, ok, I was just looking at Adrienne's pinterest) and I saw (stole) this (from Adrienne's collection).

This is the perfect visual description of my first few weeks back at school. Here's to hoping that this year can only possibly get better. 

Wildflower Pedalfest

This weekend my friend Robyn and I rode in the all women's bike ride called the pedalfest. It was mostly in Morgan county and besides Trappers Loop, I haven't ever ridden in that area so it was great to have a change of scenery and some motivation to ride much farther and much harder than I would on my own. The ride was 75 miles with 3,000 feet of elevation gain.

Here we are bright and early (and freezing cold) at the starting line! These are all camera phone pictures so excuse the quality, we didn't want to carry more than we had to.

I've lived in Utah all of my life and I've never heard of or been to East Canyon, which is where a huge portion of this ride took place. It was beautiful. 

We could have gone back and done 50 miles but we went for the 75 plus a hill climb. That hill (canyon) climb was no joke. 

But we made it to the top! They took advantage of our exhausted delirium and slipped those silly leis around our necks. This is at the Morgan County/Salt Lake County boarder.

 We had a blast! Thanks to Des for cueing me in on this fun event!

July...and some of August

Warning, this blog post is massive. I have been slacking off so here are a bunch of things we have been doing in the past month...

The first weekend of July, my sister's baby (first niece) Lyla was blessed. My mom's entire extended family was in town at the same time so it was quite the party.

We just love this little angel. 

We celebrated the fourth of July with good food...

and by going to the Real Salt Lake game that night...

with fireworks after.

The next day was a sad and exciting day when we took Stephen's brother Jake to the MTC.

We got to go with our ward's youth conference to Zion National Park to hike part of the narrows. It was one of the most beautiful hikes I have ever done and I can't believe how many times I have been to Zion without doing it!

Our summer neighbor besties, the Moores

My friend/neighbor Jamie did the whole hike with us and she is six months pregnant. She is obviously hard core.

Robyn took this amazing picture, that's really what it looked like!

After many years of waiting, I finally got to see Wicked this month. It was just as amazing as I have always imagined it.

Spencer got cozy with some wannabes after the show. He was really diggin that blonde, for obvious reasons. 

I have been a complete Olympics junky the past couple of weeks. I am just loving every bit of it, especially gymnastics, track, swimming, diving, the marathon, and beach volleyball. 

  

  

And finally, I just got home from a wonderful weekend trip to the happiest place on earth with my oldest friend on earth. Cars Land is not overrated even a little bit, it was a dream land. 

Duke...More Info

I wanted to post quickly while we were in Europe and found out that Stephen got accepted to the Duke MBA, just to announce the news to all of our friends and family. Since then I have had a lot of questions, here is some more info.

Stephen has accepted admissions and he is officially starting school at the beginning of August!

We are not moving to North Carolina. I am sure we would love it there but this program is the executive cross-continent program which means Stephen will keep his current job and be working throughout the program. His classes will be online and every couple of months he will travel for two weeks at a time to somewhere in the world for what they call "residencies" where he will have class in person. The destinations are the Duke campus in North Carolina, Dubai, Shanghai, St. Petersburg, and New Delhi. I probably won't be traveling with him to most of the places because I will be working but we might see if it can work that I could go sometime.

The program is 16 months long so he will start this August and finish classes in December 2013. His official graduation will be in May of 2014 with all of the other Duke MBA groups.

We are excited for this opportunity and even though the next year and a half might be stressful, we think it will be worth it! If you want to know more about the program, here is a link to their website. Thanks to all for the congratulations and support!

The Vatican

On our last day in Italy we went on an in depth tour of the Vatican. It was very interesting and informative. There was (and still is) a lot that I didn't know about the history of the Catholic church and even though I am not Catholic it was cool to be in the place where so much Christian history has actually happened. This picture is of Saint Peter's Basilica. It's one of the largest domes in the world and it is built over the spot where Peter was supposed to have been crucified. 

Saint Peter's square is the entrance to the church and this part of the Vatican.

It's hard to believe (especially from this picture) how massive that dome is. Our favorite thing inside the church is that all of the designs and paintings and writing on the walls is mosaic. Those black letters you can see in the gold above me are all mosaic and each letter is a meter and a half tall.

This is a of the front of the basilica.

It was a long journey home and we were ready. Our friends picked us up from the airport complete with congratulations balloons for Stephen getting in to an MBA program! I am excited for the relaxing part of my summer to begin and glad that we have a few weeks before the craziness of Stephen's school starts!

Duke

We just got back to our hotel to wind down for the night and got the email we've been waiting for....

Stephen has been accepted to the Duke MBA program starting THIS August! We are so excited and proud. This has all been a little bit last minute so we're going to need let it soak in. Congrats to my brilliant and wonderful husband. 

La Dolce Vita

The past two days have been busy and we'll be the fist to admit that we're getting a little burnt out. You aren't in Europe every day though so we've been pushing through. We went to the Pantheon, one of the oldest most well preserved buildings in Rome. That dome is just amazing, what a feat of architecture. 

The Castle Saint Angelo has a beautiful bridge leading up to it with Bernini statues lining the way. We walked there to take a look. Stephen has decided he's Bernini's new number one fan.

We made sure to stay out late last night to see some of the sights all lit up. We got some gelato...of course. We might be having a gelato a day but hey, we're on vacation.

It was hard to get a good night shot of the Colosseum but you can just google that, this is proof we were here! It was stunning at night.

The Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps are two very crowded tourist sites and we have heard they are great if you can make it there at a deserted time of day/night. We went during the day...



And then we went during the night! We got a 3:00 am wake up call, put on our running gear, and went for a middle of the night jog to these two sites hoping for a serene and unique experience. It was pretty deserted but we weren't the only ones up that late..or early.

If you look close (not too close please) we have some friends in this picture. This couple got to the Spanish Steps at the same time as us and just as we settled in to take a picture, they settled in to...well...you can see what they settled in to do. We tried to wait them out and although it was great weather and so quiet and peaceful with (almost) no one else around, they didn't seem like they were going anywhere soon so they just got to be in our picture.

We went back to bed for a long time after our early morning run. When we finally got up and about we took a stroll in the Borghese gardens and hit up the Galeria Borghese (for Stephen to get his daily Bernini fix).

The gardens were beautiful and we went rowing on this little lake. This picture isn't of us but you get the idea of the lake and the little row boats.

It was a romantic and relaxing afternoon. 

We hit up a delicious pizzaria for dinner and while we have been loving all of the food here, this meal was special for me because I finally got some crushed red pepper to add to my Italian food! This is big for me, word to the wise (Chris) they do have crushed red pepper as a pizza condiment here, it's not just American and don't eat several pizzas in Italy before you ask for it.