This happened...again

Well, this happened over here at the Hill home:

Yes, Frank got himself another jeep. He missed his old one, oh, probably from the minute he sold it. Not long ago, he started looking on KSL and talking about jeeps so I knew it was only a matter of time. At first he only looked at white jeeps, like he was trying to get his old one back. But he did eventually branch out and when he found a great deal on this dark grey one, he pulled the trigger.

It isn't as tricked out as his old white jeep so he is having to do some work to get this one ready for serious 4 wheeling. (heaven help me)

This weekend, the first weekend he has had the jeep, we went to Moab. I know, what a shocker.

I did tell Frank that I don't want to go all crazy like he did last time. If he wants to do serious rock crawling, he needs to make some guy friends!

We did a couple of fairly easy trails this weekend along with a bit of hiking.  I got out of the jeep at one point and Frank laughed at my new plan...when in doubt, get out!  I took pictures though, so I was useful. And, honestly we didn't do any trails that were too scary.

It was a really nice weekend.

I got out at this hill. It wasn't that bad but it's been awhile so I was nervous. ha!

First stop was Dellenbaugh Tunnel. It's actually an arch that is low to the ground apparently.

You can't tell from the picture but that is tall enough that we could walk through it.

There was a walkway along the left side and all on the right side was TONS of rodent poop. I don't know what kind of rodent but there are lots of them. I was glad I didn't see any of them.

We hiked around after that for awhile. It was a pretty area on the other side of the tunnel and it overlooked a big canyon.

We made our way back and then to our second stop: Secret Spire

We came across some other people on our way back, the only ones we would see all day (totally surprising since Moab was actually quite busy that weekend but there was no one where we went). They were in a normal Jeep Grand Cherokee going on the trail we went on. It was definitely some 4 wheel driving and I'm sure they must have scraped bottom at some points. They appeared to only go part way and decide to turn around. When they went back up that hill (the one I got out for on the way out), they had a hard time with wheels spinning and up on 3 wheels several times. I was stressed for them. Frank's jeep went right up so yay for big tires and whatnot.

Here is the Secret Spire.

It requires a bit of a 4 wheel drive trip to get there but not too bad.

It was really beautiful and this big spire sits up on a rock.  It really looks crazy, like it could fall on you at any moment.

We decided that this would be a good spot for lunch.

I sat in the shade of the spire and Frank went to get the food.

Turns out, sitting on the top of a hill in the middle of nowhere is not really the best spot for lunch because it was quite windy there.

We ended up chasing wrappers,  napkins, a slice of cheese and even my sandwich at one point.

I really though the sandwich was heavy enough to not get blown away...

Frank's water tipped over and spilled all down the rock, into his sandwich and all over his backside. 

A more eventful lunch that we had planned on!

Here is the distant view of the plateau we sat on:

He had some trouble finding a place to stay down in Moab-at least for a price we were willing to pay- since it was the end of spring break. He ended up finding a place to rent that turned out to be a little group of tiny houses!  I've wanted to see one in person (after watching so much HGTV, HA!)  It was super cute and really nice compared to your average hotel room. We liked it a lot and will probably stay there again when we go to Moab.

The cute little house even had it's own fenced yard with grill and picnic table

Our cute front porch...we sat out here when it started to rain and it was so nice.

The inside. Quite roomy and nice!

I've had a bad migraine week and it continued all weekend long so I was grateful for the tiny house because I took a nap while Frank did a little more exploring.

On the way out of town, we tried out some simple dirt trails. We were trying to find some fun trails that aren't too scary so we can talk family members into coming with us next time. It was pretty fun! And we stopped occasionally for Frank to look at rocks and whatnot as he is prone to do.

I enjoyed some pretty flowers. I like to see flowers and trees that grow up out of the barren dirt or rocks. It's just amazing to me.

All in all, a fun weekend. We are determined to find some friends to go with us next time...

stay tuned.

The butter mishap

About a week ago, as I was cleaning up after a meal, I noticed one of our glass containers (the kind you put leftovers in) was sitting on the counter with a bunch of butter in it. The butter looked like it had been somewhat melted and then rehardened. I thought it was little odd that Frank had put the butter in this container because we have a couple of butter dishes that we use all the time but, hey, I'm willing to go with the flow.  I had a bit of butter left from the recipe I'd made so I plopped that bit into the dish and put it in the cupboard where we keep our butter.

A few days later, when we had a bunch of guests at our house, Frank pulls this container out of the cupboard and just sets it on the countertop.   He says to me "what in the world is that?"
I look and the entire container is just disgusting and covered in mold.

I say, "It's the butter that you put in there. What's wrong with it?"  Because I have never in my life seen moldy butter.

He says, "I never put butter in that"

And suddenly I remember that Frank had made whipped cream some time ago and put the leftovers in the fridge (in the leftover container).  He must have seen it in there and realized it was getting a bit old and set it on the counter. Because it was a bit old, it had a more yellow cast...and I thought it was butter.

I put a container of whipped cream in my cupboard for a few days there and never even looked at it again!  So, yeah, it got moldy.

Pretty gross.  You should thank me that I didn't take any pictures for this blog post.

But I blame Frank for the mishap because if he had just taken care of the old whipped cream himself instead of setting it on the counter for the kitchen fairies to take care of, I never would have mistaken it for butter in the first place!

I'm so glad I never spread that on my toast. Although if I had done that, we would have discovered it before it became a science experiment.

The closet project

I decided to start another project on the long weekend which was to upgrade my closet a bit and add some drawers and shelves.  Frank had no idea that I even had this in my mind until I mentioned it while we were on a home depot trip for another reason.  (There are so many projects in my mind that he has no idea about, poor man)

 In my mind it was a quick project, of course.  But the reality was that it took 3 days of work, almost none of which was done by me.

I did do all of the assembly of the various parts for the shelves and drawers so that counts, right?

Here is the before:

A shelf, a long rod and a shoe shelf that I bought at Walmart

Frank did the demo of the shelving that was in there which was installed quite well and then painted, so it was a bit of a job getting it all out.  He then spackled all of the damaged areas and I painted it.

During:

Everything is ripped out, including the carpet and the spackling is done.

He also cut out part of the baseboard to make room for the new center tower with drawers/shelves.

It was not very hard to paint and I only did one coat since it'll be full of clothes anyway.

I meant to take a picture of the finished closet before I put my clothes in, but I forgot. 

I was in a rush to get all of my stuff out of Carter's room because he came home for the weekend and my crap was ALL OVER the place so he wouldn't have had anywhere to sleep.

Now that it's all hung up, I'm not going to unload it just to get a picture so here is the finished product (sort of):

Turns out I took the picture and then realized that I had more shelves to install so I did that afterwards.

My old closet didn't really have a good situation for shoe storage and neither does my new one, to be honest.

It's actually smaller than your average reach in closet so it's pretty tight.  Luckily we each have our own or we'd be in a heap of trouble.

I do really like having some drawers though since I used to keep things in plastic bins up on the shelf that I can now keep in a drawer.  I like that much better.

The highest shelf is really high... I need a step stool to reach up there.  I haven't put anything up there yet but I'm sure I'll think of something that needs to be in here but that I don't need that often.

Overall, a simple and fairly inexpensive project.

Well, simple for me.  Frank might not agree since he spent a fair number of hours in there putting it all together.

I just have to make sure to mention, on a regular basis, how much I like it and then he will feel that it was all worth it!

Project Mode

We are in the middle of a 3 day weekend!  

We had originally planned to go on a little hiking vacation but that fell through so we found ourselves at home, wondering what we should do with ourselves.  

We decided it was the perfect opportunity for a few projects:

Frank organized the storage room while I worked on cleaning the grout in the bathroom (removing haze that was left from the installation of the floor that I just never get around to doing). I didn't quite finish my project but I am promising myself to keep at it until it is done...hopefully soon!

Halfway through the day, I realized that there was a project that we'd been meaning to do and totally forgot about: putting a plug in my kitchen island.

Let me just say right now that being married to someone handy is so awesome!  If I want a plug changed on my island, I know that my hubby can do it.

Anyway, once I reminded him, Frank said that was indeed a good project for the day and he got right on it...examining the space and how it would need to be done.

I've complained about the island in the past I know.  One of the things that is pretty dumb about it is that it only has 2 plugs and they are both on the far side of the island by the stools.  So in order to plug in my mixer or some other kitchen appliance, I have to plug in an extension cord and drag it across the island to my appliance.  Frank said he could put one closer to the front of the island where I work.  I am ridiculously excited about this idea! ha!

The new plug, while much closer to where I work, does have to be a bit lower because of the drawer there.  Still, I won't have to use an extension cord to access it.

And here it is all put back together!

(Frank even cleaned off the counter, so yahoo for that as well!)

I decided that I wanted to redo my closet, add some shelving and maybe a drawer or two.

I only got as far as emptying the closet but this will be just inconvenient enough that it will probably (hopefully) spur me into action and into finishing the project even after I have to go back to work on Tuesday.

I couldn't talk Frank into going to Home Depot tonight to buy the shelving though.

He was quite surprised to see that I had started this project actually.  He was probably hoping that the plug was enough to satisfy me.

Hiking adventures

We skipped town for a day and went down to Canyonlands National park for some hiking on Saturday.  The weather was AMAZING.  Nearly 60 degrees and sunny.

We've done a few hikes down there so we decided to venture to one we had seen but never felt quite up to doing.  We did the "Confluence Overlook" trail which is a 10 mile hike that is described as "strenuous".   We only did 6 miles though because, well, have you seen us?  We aren't exactly in peak physical condition.  But we've been exercising and trying to improve so why not give it a go.

I do have a knee that gets kind of mad after too much hiking so I was the one who told Frank that I thought 6 miles would be plenty this time. He probably would have done the whole thing, crazy guy.

It was a really fun hike with lots of different kinds of terrain.  The beginning included a fair amount of scrambling up rocks which made us a bit nervous, not gonna lie.  But there were also some flat spots, thankfully!

We did manage to get lost a couple of times.  The first time added a good 1/2 mile to the trek and we were thankful we had brought Frank's new binoculars (birthday gift!) because we had to use them to find the rock cairns we had apparently missed.

Here we are climbing up to what looks like it might be a cool overlook.

This was the 1 mile mark.

Here's a little info about Frank:  he isn't that good at noticing things like, say, road signs and ahem...rock cairns.  He just walks along on the path that appears to be the right one.  Well, on this particular hike, you can go off in the totally wrong direction if you aren't watching.  After our first detour we started being more careful but I realized several times that we had either stepped right over a log or rock grouping that was supposed to show us where NOT to go or we had walked right past a rock cairn showing us a turn. ha! Oh man. We are lucky we made it back, I swear.  It became a bit of a joke whenever Frank was in front.

so pretty!

We actually came across an old ladder that is attached to the side of the canyon so that you can get up this slick rock area.

There were tons of pretty over looks.

And we reached one area where we were excited to look back and see the car!

We knew we could probably find out way back at least.

And it also made us feel like we had accomplished something since our car was just a speck in the distance.

I love this combo of the red rocks with the mountains behind.

This stuff below is called Biological Soil Crust.  It is found in the desert and helps to control erosion, holds moisture and is alive with life.  It's important to never step on it and ruin it.  There was lots of it on this hike, although it's hard to capture in pictures, especially with just a phone.

We stopped for lunch at the halfway point and enjoyed this lovely view.

Although it was nice and warm, there were occasionally shady spots with snow.

Here is the overlook from the beginning and the view on the way back through.

And check out these cool formations that look like a pair of boots!

Here we are at the end of the hike.  I'm looking a bit red, a sign that I actually exercised!

We came back to the car and a big crow who had been hanging around as we got ready to hike, came right back and hung out, hoping for some hand outs I'm sure.

We got in the car and started eating a little bit and I heard a loud noise only to look up and see this:

I opted to keep the window closed to get the picture since it seemed like he might enjoy biting my face off.

We only came across on other person as we hiked and he was headed back as we were going outbound.  One thing we like about hiking in southern Utah is the lack of crowds.

I made a joke after he hiked away, that maybe he had come out here with a friend and then murdered said friend.  Then he came across us!  And so, fearing we might give away his secret, our lives were now in danger.  It was just a joke, but of course after that, I kept looking over my shoulder to make sure he wasn't coming back! 

Frank started making jokes about "the murderer" and even when we got back to the car we saw a truck waiting nearby and he said,"What if that's the murderer's truck? He's been waiting for us to come back!"

We never found a body and the guy didn't murder us so all is well, except in my imagination apparently.