Anniversary Weekend 2012

We didn't have a lot of money to spend this year, and we originally thought of just getting a room in park city and maybe doing the Alpine Slide. Well, after we thought about it more, we decided instead of getting a room for 80-100.00 why not just sleep at home (we moved our mattress into the family room so we at least felt like we werent sleeping in the same old place ;)) and spend that hotel money on doing a few things we've been wanting to do.

So my Aunt Candi and Uncle Cody adore our kids - they have five of their own ranging in age from 5 to 16, who also love them too - and they were gracious enough to take our girls for the weekend! Jay brought the girls up there on Thursday night and we picked them up Sunday.

Friday night when Jay got home from work, I made sure I was pretty much ready so he could shower and throw on some clothes and we could head out. We had a gift card to Applebees so we decided that's where we'd go that night. I LOVE getting dressed up - even though we didn't go anywhere real fancy, I still wanted to get dressed up to go out! So we got all fancy and headed out on the bike to Applebees - after that we went to a few stores to pass a couple hours until The Dark Knight Rises started. Jay has really been wanting to see it, so we decided this weekend was a good opportunity to do so. The movie didn't start until 10:20 and I knew it was almost 3 hours, and in a way I wasn't all that excited to see it especially since it wouldn't be over til 1:30 in the morning and we were getting up kind of early the next day for our hike. I am really glad we saw it though, I REALLY liked it and it didn't seem as long as it was. I recommend it for sure!

Saturday we woke up and while we were getting our things together for the hike, we realized we didn't have a backpack to put everything in, besides Brikayla's new princess backpack she got for school. So we headed to Family Dollar, which luckily opened a little early and we were able to pick one up for 3.00 :) We cruised on the bike down to Timponogos Cave. I was so excited that Jay brought this up when we were thinking of things to do! I have been wanting to go for at least 2 years, we just hadn't made the time for it and I figured since I hadn't been in at least 10 years, and Jay didn't know if he'd ever been, it would be perfect for us to do together. Our hike time was 9:50. We got there with a couple minutes to spare and headed up the mountain! We both knew it was going to be a good hike, we just didn't realize how much. HAHA. After like five minutes both of our calves were killing us. We haven't hiked in a few years so it definately took some getting used to. The views on the hike are amazing! I can't wait to take the girls next year. It is so pretty on your way up! I felt like we were going slow, even though we were passing a few people, but our tour time of the cave was 11:20, we made it to the cave entrance at 10:40 - I guess we were moving faster than I thought ;) So we sat back and relaxed for a minute and watched the squirrels and chipmunks. After a few minutes, Jay decided to ask one of the rangers if there was any way of going through any earlier. So we were lucky enough to go in on the 10:50 tour. *side note: everywhere we went this weekend there was always a crying/fussy/loud baby or young child. It was kind of funny, it didn't bother us because we've all been there, but in a weird way it made me miss my kids and made me happy we were alone all at the same time. Anyway, on our tour there was a family with four kids and then also another group of 7 people, then us. The family with the four kids had the crying baby, the mom was really sweet and stayed at the back of the group so that everyone else could hear the tour guide.

The caves were even more awesome than I remember! If you haven't been, or it's just been awhile, I highly recommend going! I know the girls will love it when we go! I love all the different colors and textures and think it's amazing that most of it is created by earth - water, wind, different things like nickel, iron etc can turn the formations different colors. The floors are all completely wet, each door to a new room has to be shut before you open the next to avoid wind howling through the cave. It really is amazing! So we were nearing the end of the tour, only about five minutes left and we were standing in one of the rooms looking at some of the formations that the ranger was telling us about. The next 60 seconds were slow motion/the fastest 60 seconds ever. We hear a flashlight hit the ground, the rangers eyes bug out of his head, a guy jump over the railing down about 6 feet and then a little girls cries/screams and then the woman with the now sleeping baby yelling to Jay to take her baby and she shoves the baby into Jays arms. Their little girl, who was about 2 or 3 had slipped off the edge down about 6 feet and was wedged between two rocks face down. My heart dropped! It was so scary to witness! A man from the other group of 7 had jumped over first, then the girls Dad and they were trying to get her up to safety. She was screaming and crying so loud. When the man touched the girls ribs, she screamed so loud. They got her unwedged and up to the cave floor, and the assistant ranger took the family out to meet some of the other rangers. The rest of us continued the tour, although I couldn't really concentrate after what just happened. We headed down the mountain after the tour and stopped to talk to some rangers about half way down, we asked if the girl was ok, and they had no idea what we were talking about. We told them what happened and one of the rangers said if it would have been really serious, they would have radioed them, so that gave us a little relief. After a couple more minutes on the trail, we ran into the Mom and the 3 other kids, and asked how she was. She told us she had a cut by her eye, she pinched her fingers and probably has bruised ribs. At the bottom, we found the Dad and the little girl and they were reading some books, and the little girl had some pretzels and was all smiles. I am so glad that she was ok! Definately a scary experience with a good outcome! Even though we had that scare, I'm really glad we went, it was a lot of fun and a great thing to experience with my babe! After the hike, we headed to Subway for some lunch then home to get showered and ready for the rest of our day. We headed up to Park City around 2 to go on the Alpine Slide. The line was kind of long, but it moved rather quick. We got put on the ski lift with a man and his probably 18 month/ 2 year old. (Enter crying child #2) The first half or so the kid was fine, he loved looking around at everything, but after that he was done. He was crying and saying that he wanted to get off and everything the Dad tried to distract him with, just didn't work. I felt bad for the guy! We made it up and once we were off the lift, the boy was all smiles :) We hadn't been on it since we were dating and I forgot how fun it is! It was a blast! Around 5 we headed to Baja Cantina - our FAVORITE place to eat. If you like mexican food, you need to try it! I love it! We have gone there for our last three anniversaries now :) This was where we encountered crying baby #3 haha. She wasn't too bad though, she was probably only 3 or 4 months old and was so cute! She just fussed a little bit, wasn't even really crying.

After dinner we headed to the outlet malls to look around, we each ended up getting a shirt and just having a good time shopping without worrying about any little ones ;) The ride back down the canyon was a little cold at first but by the time we were down to the valley, we were dying of heat. We ended up going to Leatherbys and sharing Amy's Hot Fudge Brownie. Definately a weakness of ours!

Sunday we got to sleep in with no interruptions! Woohoo! We headed to IHOP for brunch and right after we ordered, some people were seated at the table next to us and I wasn't really paying much attention, but then Jay typed in to his phone and slid it across the table to me so I could read it "It's the crying baby" at first I didn't know what he was talking about, but then I looked over and saw that there was a couple with a little boy about a year old sitting next to us. I thought it was quite funny, but the little boy was actually really good :) After brunch we hung out for awhile, went home and took a nap then headed to pick up our girls!