Summer Memories w/ Erin's Family

As the Fourth of July weekend began to approach quickly, Erin and I had to figure out something fun to do. She had recently been offered at work an opportunity to take two vacation days and receive one personal day if used in the month of July. We felt it would be good to take advantage of this and hadn't seen the Erin's sister and her family, the Olson Family, in a long time; thus, we made a road trip. We left at 6 pm on Wednesday and traveled all night to South Dakota. We arrived at 5 am and ended up surprising Erin's sister. It was a great surprise and had a fun time spending the weekend in South Dakota. Below is a list of fun activities we did.

• Fireworks on the 3rd of July at Mount Rushmore
• These fireworks ended up being quite exceptional. We saw the fireworks in Washington, D.C. last year and got to see the fireworks this year at another grand national monument

• Lighting fireworks and throwing pop-its.

• Hiking in Black Hills Forest

• Eating @ Stamfords
• My custodial boss completely loved this place, so we thought we should at least try it out. It was quite good.
• Resting...don't we look comfy:

• Playing with Eden and Andrew (our niece and nephew)
• Playing at the park, in the pool, enjoying exciting kid games (hullabaloos sp?), having muscle flexing contests etc.

• Jacob's baby blessing (Scott & Lani's recently newborn son)

We had an enjoyable time with the Olson family and glad we took the opportunity to do so.

There is one more major event this summer Erin, Dan (her dad), and Logan participated in just a week ago; however, we will postpone the posting to allow you to catch up on this post and the last post I did today. Enjoy the updates!!!

Summer Memories w/ Ryan's Family

During the month of June, Erin and I had some fun experiences interacting with many different members of my family.

Immediate Family
Near the end of June, my family, except for Jason, came out to go to Lake Powell. We had a good time hanging out with them by doing the following activities:

• Nickelcade
• Bowling (Fred (a.k.a Cory) killed me)
• Eating @ Tucanos
• Showing them around BYU (Dad, Adam & Fred)
• Park City---Alpine Slide & Alpine Coaster (Adam & I went on this together and felt like we almost fall off (quite exhilarating)
• BBQ for my mom (she ended up not going to Lake Powell due to my Grandma's health issues)
  

Grandparents

• Grandma Daly recently had back surgery the week my family came out, so we went and visited with her at the hospital during her recovery.
• Grandpa & Grandma Glover - There was a Ford Family Reunion (my Grandma Glover's family) that we attended up at a Rec Center in Bountiful. Erin and I had a good time visiting with them and many of my dad's cousins. We also won an Olive Garden gift certificate during the family reunion raffle.

We will continue later to update the "Summer Memories w/ Erin's Family"

Garlic Knots and Puzzles

Way back when we decided to make our very own garlic knots (like we had in Dallas). We didn't have a real recipe, but this is what we came up with:

• pizza dough (either homemade, frozen/thawed, or from the can)
• melted butter, Italian seasoning, garlic, Parmesan cheese

Roll dough out, slice it into about 1x1inch squares w/ a pizza cutter. Bake in oven until dough is cooked (don't over bake). Tear squares apart and pour butter mixture over. Stir and eat. Yeah, they are not very healthy, but they taste way good. Yummy!We also did our first puzzle together one Sunday afternoon. We're a pretty good team. Here's the finished product:

Iron Chef Couple Style

As Erin and I contemplated what our next IronChef competition should be, we concluded to have one with another recently engaged couple that we knew very well, Kourtney and Brett. The secret ingredient was decided on Saturday morning (Side Note: this competition took place back on the 1st week of June). The ingredient turned out to be LIME!!!

Each couple was required to make one dessert and one main dish with the secret ingredient. We went over to Kourtney's place on Sunday to do the competition. She has two kitchens, one upstairs and one downstairs, where the cooking actually took place. The competition was tons of fun and both teams came out with a victory. The following is what everyone made:

Erin & Ryan
Cilantro Lime Steak - 4th Place Overall, 2nd Place Main Dish
(Side Note: This ended up being a very strong sauce we used for the steak; however, we learned how to cook steak without a grill. We ended up pan searing the steak on each side and then put it in the oven for approx. 8-10 minutes) The steak turned out very good!)

Key Lime Pie - 1st Place Overall, 1st Place Dessert
(Side Note: Surprisingly to Erin and I, Key Lime Pie is delicious and very easy to make. We were glad we chose this dish as our dessert.)

Kourtney & Brett
Lime Marinated Salmon with "Hint of Lime" in Rice - 2nd Place Overall, 1st Place Main Dish
(Side Note: They did an excellent job bringing out the lime in both the salmon and rice. I was very impressed and was excited b/c I love fish!)

Fruit Smoothie - 3rd Place Overall, 2nd Place Dessert (no standalone photo b/c it came out too dark...sorry)
(Side Note: This was a great drink; however, the lime taste was mixed very well with all the other fruits added into the drink.)

We had a great time doing this competition with Kourtney and Brett. We hope to continue such traditions with them and other couples. Please let us know if you would like to compete in an Iron Chef competition and we will see what we can do.

Utah's Valley Amazing Race - 2nd Stage

While I know it has been awhile since the last blog, I hopefully have built up the suspense to see what happened on the 2nd stage of our Amazing Race (from 5 am to 2 pm).

Due to our good time on the 1st stage, we were able to leave earlier than most groups. We received our new clues at 5 am and ran to our car to start the next days adventures. Overall, the activities were very fun; however, we learned our team wasn't very good at the water events. I would have to say this was our downfall. Anyways, here are the things we were able to do.

(1) Canoe to a Beaver Dam---We went to the CLAS Ropes Courses and had to get in a canoe and go to a beaver dam where we placed a colored clothespin on it so our teammates could find it after we got back. I'm not a big canoe expert or beaver expert; thus, this took a lot longer than expected. We probably should have done this one later in the day instead of being the first one.

(2) Frisbee Golf---We went to a park in Provo that has an 18 hole Frisbee Golf Course. Every member of our team did two of the holes

(3) Big Red Barn---We went down to Santaquin and ate some ice cream at the Big Red Barn. It was good despite being around 7 am (very healthy breakfast)

(4) Lavender Farms---This is a farm in Mona that has tons of flowers. We first had to figure out what scented bottle was lavender. Afterwards the girls did a paddle boat activity and the guys climbed a rock wall

(5) Fishing in Payson---We went to a stocked trout farm and had to bait a hook with some very active worms and then catch a fish.

(6) Garage Sale Find---On our travels to Spanish Fork, we stopped at a garage sale to pick up a toy Nascar as our mascot. The car number was 1. The place we were hoping to get.

(7) Krishna Temple---We went to this temple and had to walk two llamas on an obstacle course. Llamas are very interesting characters and we were forced to stop for one of the llamas to do "his/her" duty. The llama definitely wasn't worried about this being a race.

(8) Rafting the Provo River---We made it to the Provo River just before it closed to raft down it. Without a river guide, the idea of being in unison wasn't quite there and the river was very shallow. It was a great trip but our boat was a "special" one and our feet got soaking wet.

***Besides the water, this was a time where we somewhat fell apart. We were heading to go learn a Civil War dance; however, the location of where they do it from their website happened to be in the wrong location. They had moved from Orem to Provo just for the day. Additionally, we tried a text messaging contest; however, none of our team text message very frequently and realized it wasn't worth doing after trying for 10 minutes on the challenge.

(9) We did find the Civil War era dancing studio (just in time---we were the last ones there). It was interesting to learn such a formal style of dancing for thirty minutes. Luckily, they approved our dancing skills and didn't have to stay to learn more.

(10) Springville Art Museum---At the art museum we looked at numerous paintings for specific objects. It was kinda like the I Spy books.

(11) Provo Library---Last, we went to the library and took a short quiz online about the history of Utah Valley

We made it back with thirty minutes to spare and felt like we did well but definitely not as good as the 1st stage. We ended up getting 17th place; however, we were only 300 points behind winning it all, which would have been doing 2 or 3 more activities. This would have been definitely achievable, taking away our few setbacks.

All in all we had a great time participating in this activity. We enjoyed learning more about Utah Valley and getting involved in this fun-filled, competitive activity. Maybe our next Amazing Race will be the real thing. Will see :)

Utah Valley's Amazing Race---1st Stage

To conclude our May updates, we ended the month participating in the 1st Utah Valley Amazing Race (held May 30-31). We participated with another couple, the Bronson family, and traveled from Alpine to Mona for 24 hours doing a variety of different events. The winning team won a trip to Cancun, Mexico. To forewarn you, this blog and the next might be long; however, I wanted to give a run down of everything we did and how it went.

It began around 4:00pm on Friday, May 30th, where our team met up at the Scera Shell Outdoor Theater to check in. Our team was called "The Glover Gang". During the check-in process we received T-shirts (to be worn throughout the event), a hat (from one of the sponsors), and an Amber Alert GPS system. The GPS system would be placed in our car and track how fast we were going throughout the race. I was designated the driver because of the least likely to speed, I guess.

Anyways, on to the actual race. Right before 5 o'clock four different people took everyone's clues and went and hide in the University Mall Food Court. When 5 o'clock hit, we raced to the mall in hunt for our clue master. Our clue master was hidden in the corner of the Food Court, but we found him fairly quickly. We decided from there to figure out all the clues on where we need to go and then actually go. Here is how the 1st stage of the race went (from 5:00pm-2:00am) and what we ended up doing at each clue location.

(1) Seven Peaks (Provo)- All four participants went down the 100' Free Fall slide

(2) Lindon's Utah Auto Sales - Drove a car to the Purple Turtle and Discovery Park and had someone take a picture of us in these locations

(3) Bajio (American Fork) - Ate a shrimp taco with beans/rice (as fast as possible)

(4) Hutchings Museum (Lehi) - Solved a bunch of clues found on the display cases with black lights and then talked with some weaponry men who gave us a dead cricket to eat

(5) Parade of Homes (Alpine) - Toured a newly built Parade of Homes and hunted for clue sheets hidden throughout the house

(6) The Music School (American Fork) - Each participant played a different instrument (Chris-guitar, Megan-piano, Erin - bongo, and Ryan - drums) and we played "Smoke on the Water"

(7) Cold Stone (in Spanish Fork) - We had to down a quart size ice container of Cake Batter w/ Chocolate Cookie Dough (the girls could handle this flavor a lot better than the guys)

(8) Bowling in Payson - We had to get a total of 360 points before leaving---luckily, it only took us one complete game

(9) Orem Owlz Stadium - Had to find a point card in the dark baseball stadium at UVU.
Unfortunately we didn't do this during the day when you could see better; however, we found 50 points (the lowest card of three) and took

(10) Trafalga (Orem) - had to win a certain number of arcade tickets with minimal amounts of tokens; Erin won us enough on the first try so we gave the rest to some kids and hurried to the next event

(11) Sundance (up the Canyon) - Erin rode up to the amphitheatre on a bike while the rest of us ran the trail where we ended up writing a limerick about the event

(12) Noah's Center (Pleasant Grove) - Played at this Rec Center wallyball against the volunteer helpers. We had to score 21 points before leaving

(13) BYU - We had to start at the WILK and then go run to the Bell Tower by the Marriott Center and the Maeser Building and take a picture of our group at each (the actual event was to ride tandem bikes to these two places and take a picture but they didn't have enough bikes for everyone)

(14) Finally, we went to downtown Provo and looked at the statues on Center Street to
decipher a word

We ended up finishing around 1:30 and headed back to the SCERA Shell to check in. It was quite an exhausting day; however, we only ended up giving up 100 points possible (50 points from the Orem Owlz Center for not finding another card in the dark and 50 points for not being able to play a game of pool at the Noah's Center). This put us tied with seven other people for 3rd. So, after the 1st leg of the race we were in the top ten of 31 teams. It was off to sleep in the car, or attempt to sleep in the car, for a few hours before arising for the next leg of the race. I'll post about that either later today or tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Belated Mother's Day Blog

Erin and I are trying to catch up with all the major events that happened during the month of May, and of course, I forgot to blog about our Mother's Day. So, here is a little bit of what happened Mother's Day Weekend.

My mom and her sister decided to come out to Utah and celebrate Mother's Day with their mom, or my grandma. As I guess tradition would have it, we all decided to sign up and run Race for the Cure in SLC (we ran this 5k last year for Mother's Day).

Here is how the race went. As a surprise to my mom, my older brother, Jason, flew out and ran in the race for Mother's Day as well. Jason, Erin and I had a little competition to see who could lower their time (by %) from last year the most. The competitive spirit was high, but Erin prevailed by beating out Jason by less than a second and killing me. We want to congratulate both of them for doing incredible. Jason was the first to finish for the family and Erin cut the most off her time. I guess my accomplishment would be running the whole race and not throwing up at the end (unlike last year). The winner (Erin) won a Jamba Juice from the loser (Ryan), which is overdue.

Anyways, back to my Mother's Day themed blog. It was great to have my mom out here for Mother's Day. We had a fun time celebrating at my grandma's house and enjoyed her company while during her short stay. By the way, we also got to taste some amazing Tucanos while she was out here. Very good!!!

As a conclusion to this entry, Erin and I wanted to send a tribute to both of our moms. We appreciate your dedication and righteous examples you set in raising both of us to who we are today. We love you both a lot and thank you for everything you have done and continue to do for us.

We love you Mom Dixon and Mom Glover!!!