Big News!

Mike and I are in the process of perpetuating our genes into a little human coming in August! We'll have a mini us!!!! That's kinda crazy to think about. I had great intentions to post a cute announcement but the soul-sucking-fatigue of pregnancy has made me lazy...or...er.....focus on just clothing and feeding myself. Early ultrasound courtesy of being of "advanced maternity age." It has it's perks. Ha ha! :) 

Needed Sun in St George

After several weeks of feeling pretty crummy, I needed to get out of dodge and do something that made me feel like me again. So Mike packed up the car with all our biking and camping stuff, and we drove down to sunny and warm St George for some mountain biking and camping. We biked for 3 hours as soon as we arrived Saturday morning, which was really quite surprising to me since I hadn't exercised one minute for several weeks. But it was glorious!! The weather was warm and perfect. The trails super fun and not too hairy. And the company the best around. 

We camped up on Gooseberry Mesa in our massive car-camping tent, and that night, Mike discovered a hole in his sleeping pad - his nice backpacking one! Thankfully we had packed some extra pads to make ourselves some princess beds so he didn't have to sleep on the hard, cold ground. But this trip made us resolve to buy some car-camping sleeping pads - nice big, comfy ones. 

The next morning, Mike made us some scrambled egg and sausage burritos on our coleman stove in the back of our car. Super yummy! Then we biked once more at Bear Claw Poppy before heading home. 

The warm temperatures and the sun was just what the doctor ordered! 

Sisters Winter Weekend Getaway - Revamped!

Robyn and I continued our tradition that we've been doing for 10 years, but with a break last year and a major revamping! This year, instead of skiing in Utah and staying at my place, we went to Robyn's cabin in Cascade, Idaho and walked around the McCall Winter Carnival. And Mom and Jen joined us!!

There were some nerves about getting into Robyn's cabin as there is a slight hill that always has snow on it, so we took Jill's 4WD Suburban and my AWD Subaru Outback - we had zero problems! Hence the pic that I took of our vehicles in the driveway - to show that we made it in with no problems.

We had fun chatting and laughing and eating yummy food. And it was fun and charming to walk around the McCall Winter Carnival - picking up candy and mardi gras beads thrown at us during the parade, which seemed to consist mostly of local businesses and schools.

I'll let the pics speak for themselves from here. :)

A Concert Getaway

Mike loves the band, Muse. He does. So with about a week's notice, when he saw Muse was going to put on a concert in Las Vegas over a weekend in January, we bought some tickets and made plans to drive down there.

On the way we stopped in Zion National Park and hiked around a little - to the base of Angel's Landing. It was so beautiful in the winter time!

Then we continued our journey on to Las Vegas and stayed in the Excaliber - you know, the big casino/hotel that looks like a castle. Ha ha! It was actually pretty cheap to stay there.

The concert was awesome. Mike loved it. I . . . slept through a good chunk of it. Mike will tell you that I slept through more than half of it, but I didn't. I was tired! What can I say? But I enjoyed what I heard and was awake for.

Maybe some day we'll go to a concert in our own state and I'll actually stay awake for it. ;)

Christmas 2015

This year for Christmas, Mike and I went to his dad's house in Denver where his sister and her family and his sister-in-law also joined us. We had a great time!! Christmas Eve was a big party of family and friends, beans and green chile, seven-layer dip, and a bunch of other fun stuff - Marty knows how to throw a party! Christmas day was wonderful, opening gifts with the family, scanning Mike's family photos for hours, another killer dinner of turkey and all the trimmings with the family, and a rousing gift exchange.

Sadly, the only pic we took of the whole holiday is this one: which depicts our drive from Utah to Denver. What is normally a 7.5-hour drive turned into a 13-hour drive due to the conditions you see in this pic.

Lastly, here is our end of year video - you know, the one I've been doing in place of the newsletter. :)

Lately

Lately, Mike and I have laid pretty low. I guess fall weather will do that to you. Here's a quick recap of some of our less-adventurous goings-on that we've been doing the past two months.

• We did a little more mountain biking (surprise, surprise) up Nebo Loop on the Bennie Creek trail.
• Mike went camping with the young men at the sand dunes.
• I finally got a calling in my ward: Young Women Personal Progress Advisor. I'm kind of loving it. :) 
• For General Conference weekend when we had my nieces and nephews that live in town over for breakfast, I made my first attempt at making cinnamon rolls with my beautiful Bosch... and almost botched them when I put them in oven for the allotted time without checking them part way through to see if my oven is hotter than expected (which it is) so they turned out a little brown.... but still really yummy! 
• I signed up for Chatbooks and became immediately obsessed with it. Now I'm taking several more Instagram photos in order to fill up my chatbooks - 60 photos in a 6 inch by 6 inch book for $8! You'll notice all the pics below have been Instagrammed and filtered. :) 
• Mike went to Moab for his annual, fall Moab trip with his dad, Marty, and best friend from Denver, Josh, and Josh's dad - they romped around on razors and had a blast. Plus Mike and Josh rode the Whole Enchilada: a 25-mile - nearly all downhill - doozy of a mountain bike ride. 
• While Mike was in Moab, I stayed home and freaked everyone out on Facebook when a friend posted a picture of me "being rescued by search and rescue" as a volunteer and pretend victim.... ha ha! .... and I went for a mountain bike ride with Katie and Lloyd and then I went shopping. :) 
• Mike and I installed new bathroom faucets!! So dang exciting. And went for another mountain bike ride with Katie and Lloyd. 
• Some girlfriends and I squeezed in a few more after-work road rides.
• The night before Halloween, we went on a group date with some of our friends (Katie and Lloyd, Lindsey and Rob, Lane and Hillary) to an escape room type place - it was an old airstream trailer with a bunch of clues leading you to the combinations/keys to the four locks that hold the key out of the airstream hostage. We had a blast! And just barely got it figured out, with extra time that we had to pay extra for. 
• Went to Moab on Halloween day to meet up with Steve and Tess to go mountain biking. We had a blast! We loved the Gemini Bridges area most of all, and Klonzo South was pretty fun too. 
• I've been falling in love with having a yard wherein the trees turn their colors in the autumn - and I had to document our house for posterity's and descendant's sakes.... with.... you got it.... an Instagram photo so it will make it into my chatbook.
• Mike logged 18 hours of work on Election Day keeping all the technologies behind the voting machines in working order - which is apparently normal. 
• And to wrap it up, this past weekend, we drove up to Blackfoot, Idaho, to visit my dad, Guy, and his wife, Joan, and then to Logan, Utah, to visit my sister, Teri, and her husband, Kelly. We helped them out with some work around their homes since both couples are recovering from health issues - my dad recently had multiple surgeries and pneumonia, and Kelly had multiple surgeries as well. We spiced the weekend up with an overnight stay in Lava Hot Springs, Idaho, in a quaint but quite chilly hotel but a very nice and long soak in the 108* mineral hot springs kept us warm.

And here are some pics to provide proof for some of what I just blogged about. :)

Mike on his bike, riding the Bennie Creek trail

Me, Marci, and Katie mountain biking Corner Canyon

My last road ride of the season - Provo River Trail

Escaping the airstream

Autumn colors hit the Kniephof home

Some Fall Riding in Park City

Mike and I went for a mountain bike ride up in Park City today. We decided to try some new trails that we've never done before. All the ones we climbed up were pretty good. Nearly all the ones we came down were fails. So all of our hard climbing had no pay off! And I was fighting some feelings of nausea and light-headedness at the beginning of the ride - that kind of stunk. But at least the Aspen stands were pretty.