The first weekend of August we had an awesome time. On Friday, August 4th, it was Christina's 23rd birthday, and then that weekend we went backpacking for the first time together. It had been years since either of us had gone backpacking.

We went to the Uinta mountains, and hiked up to Clyde Lake. We went with our friends Bryan and Tracy. The girls had never really been backpacking before, so it was a "fun" experience for them. Sadly, Tracy's bag was about 15 pounds too heavy, so our 3 mile up-hill bush-whacking hike wasn't the easiest on her, but she was a trooper.

The area was so beautiful and pristine! We camped next to Clyde Lake and spent most of our time fishing. Mike went out and got his first fishing pole and license just for this weekend. Christina even had a good time fishing. She caught 2 fish and Mike caught quite a few, but we didn't keep them all. The lake was just filled with small Brook Trout. On Friday we caught and fried up fish for lunch. They actually didn't taste too bad, but there wasn't much to them.

That was the best weekend! It was just so nice to be out there away from all the cares of the world and just enjoy the beauty of God's creations.

This post is a little late, but we had to tell you that we went to the Nickelback concert at the Delta Center on Friday, August 11th. It was a totally awesome concert! The only bad thing is that they had 3 opening bands so Nickelback didn't come on until late, but it was worth the wait! The opening bands that played were Hinder, Chavelle, and Three Days Grace. Hinder was okay, but the lead singer was hard to look at because of his mannerisms. Chavelle was terrible...they were just too loud so it was more like 45 minutes of noise instead of music. Three Days Grace was really, really, really good!

It would have been a perfect concert to have Three Days Grace and then a lot more Nickelback. Nickelback definitely gave a good show with fire and fireworks throughout their show. We were so glad that we got to go!

For Memorial weekend we took off with Mike's Dad and brothers, Dan and Andy, down to Moab. This was our first camping trip together, and Christina's first real time in Moab.

We did some gorgeous hikes in Dead Horse Point Canyon, but the highlight of the weekend was Mike 4-wheeling up Elephant Hill. This is a 5-star on the 4-wheeling scale, and it truly was intense. Christina sat in the driver's side for most of the ride and hung on.

Mike was a really good driver, and he only popped off his back tire flaps, and bent his side step boards. His truck truly is made for 4-wheeling. The wind was pretty ridiculous, and make it hard to see and hike, but it was a totally awesome weekend!!

The only bad part was a ranger decided to exercise his "authority" and give us a couple of tickets for illegal camping and off-roading by our campsite. He said that he was being nice by not charging us for "ruining" the vegetation, which was actually just a flattened, not dead, bush. They are restricting the camp areas way too much, and are trying to make us "enjoy" the outdoors with other campers that are placed closer than houses are in the city. Oh well, we still had an amazing weekend in Southern Utah.

The main thing that we have done this summer is rebuild his family's cabin. At the beginning of the summer Mike's uncle finally got fed up with all the noise from the mice scurrying around in the walls so he started pulling things apart and looking real closely at the condition of the cabin. Needless to say the cabin was falling apart and overrun with mice and ants since it was built completely out of wood 40 years ago. Mike's family took on the responsibility and cost of rebuilding the cabin and that has been our weekends for the past few months. We have put in many hours, but all the hard work is paying off and it's exciting to see the cabin become more stable so that it can last another 40 years.