August 6th

On August 6th, 2011, Taylor Ray got down on one knee and asked me a question I was so excited to say "yes" to.

The cute boy had me completely fooled.  I thought for sure, I would know when he was going to propose.  But he did such a good job at fooling me the entire day!

I'll have to have a blog post dedicated to that story.

See here for more details on our love story :)

Taylor proposed to me at the beautiful Stewart Falls.  We decided after we got engaged, that we would make it a tradition to hike Stewart Falls every year on August 6th.  No matter where we are in life, no matter what state we may be living in, I plan to take a trip to Utah to hike Stewart Falls on August 6th, until my limbs are too weak to make the memory-filled hike.

Here are pictures of Taylor and I celebrating our one year engagement anniversary at the top of Stewart Falls.  There was no one around to take a picture of us, so we struggled taking a good phone picture of the two of us together. But, here are our best attempts:

You know you spend too much time with someone when you make the exact same face, completely on accident, in a picture!

Hi, pretty ring!

Taylor's showing off his muscles...I'm just pointing to the waterfalls. Haha

Thanks, husband.

Don't really know what's happening here, but this one made me laugh.

Look closely... see that water bottle in the brush? Taylor and I joked that this was the same water bottle that I dropped from excitement after he proposed.  Ha...it very well might be! (see video at the end of this post and watch for the water bottle drop!)

As we were huffing while hiking, Taylor jokingly turned to me and said, "Why didn't I propose to you on a wave-runner?"

I could not stop laughing after that.

He told me that after years and years of hiking this, our future boys would ask him (in their best whining voices), "Dad, why did you have to propose to Mom at the top of a mountain?"

And Dad will reply, "So I could teach you how not to propose. I did it for you, boys."

Haha...even though he joked about it, we both loved every second of reliving such a beautiful memory. :)

Here is the video of that special day one year ago :)

Dear husband, Thank you so much for proposing to me. Thank you for giving me the most beautiful ring. Thank you for being my very best friend and eternal companion through this life. Thank you for making me want to be a better person every day. I love you.
"Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same." -Emily Bronte

Driving to Powell

Here are the few pictures I was able to take on my phone before it died.

Us driving to Lake Powell!

Husband listens to his audio book, while I work on my lesson plans.

We were so excited the whole drive down.

It felt like Christmas morning.

We miss it already. :(

In love with Lake Powell

Words cannot begin to describe the fun we had at Lake Powell.

A big thank you to the Preston family (who we love dearly) for inviting us.

Taylor and I got some nice sun and had such a relaxing time enjoying the water.

A few things I'll always remember from this trip:

Waverunners, wake-boarding, boating, swimming, bathing in a lake, cliff jumping, playing in the sand, playing board games, sleeping under the stars on the top of the houseboat, beautiful thunder and lightening storms over the lake, and laying in the hot hot sun.

Some memories in more detail:

I'll always remember being so scared to jump off of the cliff into the water.  It looked so scary from up on the top! Sweet Karlee Preston (who had already jumped once) told me she would jump and show me how easy it was.  So...she jumped.  But she came up sobbing.  She had smacked her tailbone right on the water.  That was great motivation for me. Haha  But then little eight-year-old Mark jumped like it was no big deal.  So I knew I had to go.  I took a deep breath, and just jumped.  It was so scary, so exhilarating, and so much FUN all compiled into one!  (minus the fact that my ear smacked the water, and I thought I had blown out my eardrum...ha).

I'll always remember sleeping under the stars and being shocked at how much the Preston littles knew about astronomy...they made fun of me for knowing so little.  ;)

I'll always remember sweet kisses and "I love yous" on the lake from my best friend and wonderful husband.

I'll always remember beating my husband at wake-boarding skills.  There are only two things that I can claim that I'm better at than him: wake-boarding and ultimate frisbee.  Although, he doesn't agree with the second one.  So I guess in his mind, up until this trip, he thought he was better at everything than me. ;)  At least I can claim wake-boarding now. I just wish he wasn't so dang good at everything.

I'll always remember tubing with little Brooke Preston.  We hit a pretty hard wave...and being as light as we were...we went flying.  I did a complete back flip into the water after being thrown into the air.  Poor Brooke had some small injuries, and wasn't so happy about that experience.  But after she got some Mom-loving, we laughed about how funny it really was.

As for pictures?  Well, I decided just to bring my phone for pictures.  But I didn't really think that through....because it died on the first night. Ha.

But I know there were lots of pictures taken from other people, so once those are up, I can steal some and post more about the trip :)

Here's the first stolen picture (taken by Kristen Preston):

Taylor and I made two decisions while we were in Lake Powell:

1. We will have a house-boat (our goal is in the next five years).

2. Our kids will learn to fall in love with Lake Powell just like we have.

A trip together :)

There is a houseboat in Lake Powell that is calling mine and Taylor's names.

So, off we go to answer that call!

We leave at 2pm today, and we could not be more excited!

Boating, jet-skis, water fun galore.

I am so ready to wake up to this for the next few days:

Taylor and I haven't had a vacation together this summer since our short one to Vegas/Arizona at the beginning of the summer.

Our other two "vacations" consisted of scouts camp/girls camp, in which we had to leave each other.

That being said, we are so excited to take this little adventure together. :)

Look forward to some awesome posts about our trip when we return on Saturday!

WE ARE SO EXCITED!!!

Manti

 Over the weekend, Taylor and I were able to go with my family to the Manti Temple.

The drive through the canyons was absolutely beautiful.

But still nothing compared to the beauty of the temple...both inside and out.

It was the 3rd temple built!  Built back in 1888.

We were even lucky enough to be able to go look at the spiral staircase inside.
There are only three staircases like it in the world. And two are inside this temple!
Engineers today can't figure out how the stairs were made (they are very intricate with hardly any support). They were absolutely breath-taking!

Man alive...look at this beautiful building!

We were trying to figure out how tall the doors were, so my dad made Tay go stand next to them ;)

The clouds were amazing! And the whole day was lovely.

We had such a fun time with my family this past week.

I wish I had taken more photos of the gang together...oh well.

Memories will have to suffice. :)

(to learn more about why we have temples, take a look at this video.)

Memorial Day Weekend!

Oh, how I love holiday weekends!  This particular memorial day weekend was spent with lots of family.  There was a lot of extended family visiting Utah this weekend to welcome Seth home, so the Gilbert's had a full house!  I'm bummed that we're back to the regular grind of things, but excited to relive our fun weekend through this post.  Here we go:

Evenings were spent around a fire-pit on the patio or swimming in the pool.
The weather was a little chilly...but the pool was heated.  Hence the choice between a fire and a pool.

The cousins enjoyed a few games of Ninja (a great game!)

Not surprising, each game usually came down to Seth and Taylor as the final two.

On Monday, the whole crew embarked on a hike along the Great Western Trail (which supposedly leads all of the way to Canada!).  We decided not to go to Canada though, because we had plans in store for the rest of the day. 

 Look at these views!  Utah is such a beautiful state!

On the hike!

My silly husband in his babushka...don't ask.

Showing off the beautiful landscape! 

You better believe there was also a girls shopping trip, lots of good food (even a few batches of yummy chocolate chip cookies...my favorite!!), a trip to the movie theater to see The Avengers (love it!), and of course lots of laughter!  We loved our memorial day weekend!

Oh, and guess what? Exactly one week until Taylor and I get to see Fun in concert! We are can hardly wait!