Where Did Summer Go?

If you don't like reading people's travel logs, you might not want to read this post.

Summer came and left too quickly for us this year. Carynn's last day of School was August 5th. After a short few days of relaxing we were off to Lake Tahoe for the first entire Groves Family Reunion in 10 years. We spent the week swimming, playing games, eating lots of good food, and enjoy the beautiful surroundings. Scott spent one morning out on the sandy bike trails while Carynn did some hiking with her cousins. Scott got to meet a lot of new family members (even though he's been part of the family for nearly 2 years now) and it was fun to have almost everyone together again. Scott spent his 26th birthday in a hot car driving through the Nevada desert.

After our week in Tahoe we came home to spend a few days relaxing and visiting with with friends and family. We went to the Banks Family picnic and this time it was Carynn's turn to meet new faces and make new friends. I thinks everyone from the entire Banks extended family was there except our brother-in-law Tyler who was still in Vegas.

Less than a week after returning from Tahoe it was time to pack up once more. This time we were heading north and looking forward to a much more scenic drive. Little did we know that this drive would include crawling up Logan Canyon at 20 mph behind a cattle drive! It was actually a lot of fun. We eventually made it to Jackson Hole where Carynn's sister is performing in the Jackson Hole Playhouse all summer. She plays Frenchie in "Grease" and did an excellent job!

After Jackson we finally met up with the rest of Scott's family in Island Park. We had a great time going hiking, floating down the Snake River, and visiting Yellowstone. The weather was perfect and we always love being surrounded by our family and the beautiful creations around us.

On Top of the World!

Well it wasn't really the top of the world, but it was the top of Salt Lake City!

Yesterday we decided to take on the challenge of hiking to the top of Mount Olympus, the highest peak in the Salt Lake Valley. Here is some information about the hike:

Salt Lake City sits comfortably at about 4,800 ft above sea-level.

The peak of Mount Olympus is 9,000 ft above sea-level.

Difference- 4,200 feet!!

Trail distance: 6.4 miles round-trip

Average hiking time: 6-7 hours

Butler hiking time: 7.5 hours

The hike started off pretty decent with some steep switch-backs, but nothing we couldn't handle. About halfway up the mountain we ran into some other hikers making their way down the mountain. One gentleman said to us, "enjoy this part while you can. It gets a whole lot harder form here on up!" And he wasn't kidding. Not long after, we found ourselves climbing steeper and steeper, grabbing onto rocks, and getting an excellent work-out on our thighs! But ever time we looked up, the peak was getting closer and closer.

After some tough rock scrambling and even getting a little lost, we finally made it to the top!! The view of the valley was incredible. It was hard finding a place to sit down for lunch because the top of the mountain is just a big pile of sharp, jagged rocks. (Well, they aren't called the "sandy" mountains now, are they?!) We finally found a spot and ate our lunch before getting ready for the Return Journey.

We wanted to take a nice picture of us at the very top of Mount Olympus, so we pulled out our camera. I had charged the camera the night before so we could take it on the hike with us, but in the frantic harry to put it in my bag before we left the house, I neglected to make sure that the camera was actually turned off. It had been sitting in my bag and turned on for about 4 hours. Hence, no pictures :(

The hike back was just as hard as the hike up, but we finally made it back to the car and safely home. Now we can look out at the Wasatch Mountain range with our heads held a little higher, knowing that we conquered the highest of them all!

P.S. Thanks to Tiff and Will for inspiring us to take on this challenge!

Take Me Out to the Ball Game!!

We are proud to say that we spent our 4th of July in an all-American way that even Uncle Sam would be proud of! It started off with a neighbor breakfast at our church (and really, can you get any more american than taking advantage of free food?!). It was definitely worth waking up at 8 a.m. for on a Saturday.

After breakfast we headed home and started getting ready for the rest of the adventures we had already planned for that day. We made some lunches, grabbed some blankets and the dog, and headed up the mountains for a beautiful summer picnic. It rained a little on our way up the mountain, but luckily the skies cleared up pretty quick and the rest of the day was perfect. We found our picnic site over-looking the breathtaking Little Dell Reservoir about halfway up Emigration Canyon. Since we had some time to kill, we even drove through different parts of the canyon we'd never seen before, but came out a little disappointed and learned that there was a good reason most of the travelers stay on the main road over-looking the water.

After our picnic we went and saw the movie UP. It is a very fun and very touching movie that we highly recommend to anyone who hasn't seen it yet. We both admit that there were times we felt tears coming to our eyes. It is an emotional story about relationships and friendships, but neither of us expected to get all choked up about it!

After the movie we stopped for some ice cream at Arctic Circle before heading out again to finish the night in the most patriotic way we could think of- BASEBALL!! We went to the Salt Lake Bees game with our friends Tim and Susan and their little girl Sophia. The game was a lot of fun and we had a good time eating our foot-long hotdogs, singing during the 7th inning stretch, and cheering on the Bees! They lost 7-5 in the 12th inning, but it was still a good game with a lot of action. Since we bought the tickets that put us on the grass behind left field, and that was also where they were shooting the fireworks from, they moved everyone in our section down onto the field for the fireworks show. (I think Scott and Tim were more excited about being on the field than about the fireworks).

We had a great 4th and are glad we got to spend it together and with good friends. This was the first 4th of July where one of us wasn't out of town or working and we got to be together all day! We love the country we live in and the freedoms we enjoy.

With Love From Me to You!

I've never done anything like this before, but I got the idea from my sister and it sounded pretty cool!

OK! So this is how this works...The first 3 people to respond to this post will receive something made by me, just for you. Of course there are some restrictions and limitations:

1. I make no guarantees that you will like what I make! :)
2. What I create will be just for you.
3. It will be done some time within the next year.
4. You have no clue what it will be.
5. I will send it anywhere! It doesn't matter where you live!

The catch? The catch is that you must re-post this on your own blog and offer the same to the first 3 people who do the same on their blog. The first 3 people to do so and leave a comment telling me they did will win a FAB-U-LOUS homemade gift by me!!

(I was the second to sign up on my sister's blog, so now I'm doing my part...)

If you don't have a blog you can still comment and just make three things for whoever you'd like instead of waiting for them to sign up.

Be sure to post a picture of what you win when you get it!

On your marks, get set, GO!

Mystery Meat

About four or so weeks ago Carynn recieved a mysterious call. She was instructed that a company who decides not to release their name would like to bring us by several steaks for free if we listen to a sales pitch getting us to buy more meat. "Sure" she thought, if all I have to do is listen, no harm done.
An appointment is set and we casually forget. Not to worry though because we recieve a similar call about a week later wanting to set up another appointment. Carynn being the unforgetful person that she is, has her mind sparked by this conversation and says something to the affect "you were supposed to be here on such and such date and nobody showed up?" "Really"they replied, "well lets set up another appointment and we will get you all taken care of.
This exact experience happened once more to her leaving us both baffled by this call and wondering how they even got the phone number since it was the hard line to the my moms house where we live, and which we never give out to anyone!?
I intercepted the following call after several appointments have been made and we, having reached the point of not caring about free steak, insist we don't want to have anything to do with this. After explaining to the other end about all the appointments made and no steak to show for it, we didn't want to make another appointment. "Really? we don't show any appointments arranged at all to come visit, I can set that up right now for you." After explaining several times that I didn't want it, I became frustrated and just hung up.
Little did I know that hanging up on these mysterious steak dealers would result in ANOTHER call!! Today I answered the phone, and the following is what transpired:
"Hello, Mr. Butler. I am calling from the *phone fuzz* company to set up an appointment..." blah blah blah
"What company?"
"The *phone fuzz*company." I gave up at that point thinking they have a button to push when asked that question that causes phone fuzz.
"How did you get this phone number?"
"Off of one of our *really weird name* list"
"Oh...ok?"
"We want to bring free steaks to you!!"
I mustered up all the patience I could at this point and explained that we were not interested and about all of the set up appointments before.
"Really? I don't see you having any appointments set up, I just have your name circled and thought I would call."
"Well, its no matter anyway because we don't want them, if you would please remove me from your list and have my name UN circled I would be appreciate it."
"Well that is really weird that you had them set up and that I don't show anything set up, I can have someone there tomorrow..."
"NO!" I proceeded to explain several times that I wish to be removed and don't want STEAKS!!
She finally complied and I hung up.

If I hear from this Mystery Meat Corporation again, I think I may stick to Salad!

Future Olympian!

Since we don't have any children of our own to brag about, we get to use our nieces and nephews for now!

Last week I had the chance to see our niece Carlie participate in a gymnastics competition. Carlie is 8 years old and in level 5 Gymnastics.  Most of the girls on her team are 10 or older, making Carlie the youngest competitor from her gym!  She moved through level 4 quickly and is well on her way to moving up the other levels quickly too!  In her age group Carlie got 2nd place on the uneven bars and 3rd place over all.  We are so proud! Look out Shawn Johnson, Carlie Sandberg's on your tail!!  

Here are some pictures from last week:

A Fun Trip full of unexpected events!!

Well our trip finally came, it just was not the trip we were expecting at all! Our original plans were to backpack down to the havasupai reservation and do some excellent hiking to amazing waterfalls. If you read our last blog you realize that this was cancelled a week before we were to leave due to the Swine Flue...(stupid pigs). We decided to still have a vacation since we 

both had already worked our work schedules out to have it off. 

Our new plans were to head down to Arches National Park for a few days, head down to Arizona to hike "the wave" then head up towards our old stomping grounds in Zion NP and ending up in Escalante to finish off a we

ek of great hiking... The following is our story:

Our first memory of this trip happens within the first ten minutes of leaving the driveway. Just getting on to the freeway our jeep dies! It won't start and we are frustrated after having put over $700.00 into it so it wouldn't die! After playing "pretend Mechanic" and jiggling

 everything possible under the hood, nothing happens. After sitting there for fifteen minutes, the Jeep just decides to start, WOO HOO we are off again. Things are fine until we enter the city of Lehi and it decides to die again... we pull off to the side, it starts... we are off ag... it dies. No starting this time. Our trip begins with these views:

We transferred everything we had into Rachel's (Carynn's Cousin) Jeep and decided to continue on. We made it to Moab and found a great campsite called Big Bend. Surrounded by towering red rock cliffs and staying right on the Colorado river it was the perfect campsite. 

Over the next two days we knocked out Arches hiking pretty much every regular trail possible resulting in some great views and experiences. Here are just a couple of our favorites:

We both had a great time getting out like this since we hadn't been out since December. Our plans at this point however became really messy. Since our Jeep was in Lehi getting fixed, we tried to rent a car in Moab, there just weren't any cars to rent. Saving you from all the crazy details of that, we ended up not continuing on through AZ and did not get to hang out with our friends or make it to Escalante. So really, everything that we had originally planned, not one thing went through. We had fun in Arches though and now we have a great vacation planned for another time. 

By the way, the jeep is now running... ... ...