Anniversary 2022

Shantel and I celebrated our 13th anniversary this year. I am so grateful for her and love to be with her and it really does not matter what we are doing if we are doing it together. 

We had a date on the 4th (the 5th was a Sunday). 

We decided to go and try to do the Stewart Falls hike. It would tight to get there and do the hike in three hours, but we decided to try. However, we pulled up the wrong start point for the hike on accident. You can access it from Sundace if you are staying there, but the normal trail head is further up the road. We did not realize this until we had been looking around and could not find the trail. So instead of doing the hike we walked around Sundance and it was really nice. 

On the way back home the undercarriage of my car came loose (again). It has some screws that came out so we had been holding it with zip ties, but those came undone. So we stopped at home depot for more zip ties to tie it back. Fortunately a few weeks later I got it fixed for good at the dealer. 

A few weeks later we were able to do a date weekend while Jenna watched our kids. It was such an awesome date weekend and I loved it. We packed it pretty full, but with a lot of different things. We got up early and went to the temple. 

We got tickets to parade of homes this year which is always really fun. Shantel and I decided to take one picture at every house of our favorite thing in the house. We love talking about the houses and looking at everything. One of our main things we were talking about was having a good home school room because we would really like that in our next house.

Below: An awesome would be home school room. Then a beautiful deck - I would love a covered deck with a table below it to be able to eat outside. 

A cute room under the stairs and nice basement counter area. 

Another homeschool room and a pool that raises up and turns into a splash pad (they have a private lake behind the house).

This might have been the very best thing we saw. This looked like a closet and was made to look exactly like the closet in the chronicles on Narnia. Behind it was a kids area (bunk beds, climbing wall etc.). It was so well done. 

A really fun nook area. The other was a nice pantry area. That is one of my favorite things is a really great pantry, I decided that I want two things in my next pantry. Room for a separate fridge in the pantry (we have a second freezer already, but it sits in the garage, so we might as well put it in the house) and a door straight from the garage into the pantry. 

A light and a mirror we liked. 

Two other very important things to me in a house. One, an awesome closet with drawers built in the closet (otherwise you need a dresser in your room and then you have some clothes in the closet and some in the room). Plus a tech center is also really important and we did not see many houses that had this in the main living area.

That night we went to a play (The Drowsy Chaperone) at the Hale Center Theater and had so much fun. 

We got up early in the morning and went to hike Stewart Falls (this time we knew where to start). It was really really enjoyable being outside and hiking just Shantel and I. 

After the hike we hit up some more houses. A fun nook area and a basement (yes - that means there was not really anything else memorable at that house and we thought this would make a good picture.) 

This house was very extravagant and this was a beautiful courtyard with the house wrapping around it. Then the other picture is my favorite, they had an indoor basketball court and then one of the panels opened up into a secret passageway that led to another part of the house. 

A ladder to a secret room above the room. This other house was built where there were a lot of trees and they were able to save a lot of the trees and build around it, so the backyard was beautiful. 

An indoor hot tub off of the master bathroom and then a breathtaking view of the valley from the master bedroom. 

This one had a beautiful deck on top of the house and then the last one we took a picture just outside of the house. 

It was such an amazing combination of things and I had so much time to talk to Shantel and spend time together, at the temple, parade of homes, Hale Center Theater and a hike in the mountains. I am so grateful to be married to Shantel and love getting to spend time with her.