Conference Weekend

Rand and I had a pretty enjoyable weekend. If started Friday when we attended the opening night of our friend Travis Lovell's photo exhibit at the Covey Center for the Arts in Provo. It will be there thru November 1st, so go see if you are around. Travis is an amazing lanscape photographer (and a pretty good photographer all around...he was our wedding photographer!) He had been working on a project for a while of photographs of Utah Lake.

Below are a couple of them:

If you would like to see more of Travis's Utah Lake photos, you can go to: http://www.travislovell.com/

You can also see more of his photos at his photo blog (he has some great and more recent stuff there): http://modernpostphoto.blogspot.com/

The picture below is one of a group of pictures that Travis took of Havasupi (in Arizona). Rand and I dream of camping there! We've had a few friends who have and it is always highly recommended. Looking at these pictures you can see why! These pictures are also on Travis's website (along with a lot of other great ones!)

We also attended a wedding reception for a freind of ours (one of Rand's co-workers) and then went to dinner at Iggy's with some other friends so that we could see the end of the BYU game. There were quite a few people there that I'm pretty sure were UofU fans and therefore didn't want BYU to win. They were pretty loud about it, so we made sure to make a little noise when BYU won (though they played horribly! Hopefully that is out of their system before the UofU game!)

Saturday we watched conference and got some things done around the apartment. It was SO nice not to go anywhere or do anything (besides my grocery store run). Rand headed up to Salt Lake to attend priesthood session with his dad while I cooked meals (see end of post) and chilled at home.

Rand was especially excited to see that his mission president, Elder Lawrence Corbridge, spoke in the Saturday afternoon session. It was a great talk (if you missed it, go listen to it!)

Sunday we woke up and had some crepes for breakfast and watch the morning session of conference. Between the morning and afternoon sessions we decided to take a drive thru Alpine Loop to see all the leaves changing (we missed it last year by a few days and most everything was yellow!) The path was packed with cars and with people getting out and taking pictures. We were some of them! We expected to see lots of changing leaves...but we saw some other beautiful sites as well thanks to some recent storms (snow on the mountain tops, the clouds hanging over, etc). It was awesome. Hopefully these pictues do it justice (we just snapped a few quick ones with our little powershot. Some people were sporting some serious cameras up there! Sigh...someday I'll have one too!)

(I love how the above picture turned out!)

(The sky in the picture below was amazing...more so in person!)

After the drive we decided to stop by my brothers to see them (since it's been over a month). We watched the afternoon session of conference with them. I love my niece and nephew, they are so stinkin' cute. They were playing these cute little games with Rand and it was so fun. During the playing though, Ellie ran to hide in the bathroom and fell and hit her head on the toilet. We didn't even know (she walked out quietly and showed her mom). She will have a nice shiner from it! She becomes more and more like me everyday!

Then we headed outside so Ellie could show us how well she swing a bat and rides a bike. She's crazy! She flies down the street on her bike now that she learned how to ride without training wheels. She also has a nice swing with the bat (makes nice contact too) and that girl has an arm! If she chooses to play softball, I'll be excited to go watch her play!

Ellie is such a little poser!

Then there is Trevor who is shy as can be and won't even look at me!
I can't believe how big they are getting! I gave that BYU sweatshirt to Ellie when it was still too big for her! Now Trevor is wearing it...Inconceivable!

When Rand and I returned home, he helped me to finish up one more meal so that we could completely PACK our freezer. Saturday I made three big meals (chili, chicken and rice casserole, and some crock pot stew), and today some burrito enchiladas. All of these freeze really well and I am able to put them in the freezer and not worry about lunches or some dinners (when we are so busy). We (mainly Rand) can just grab it out of the freezer and he is good to go! This weekend I successfully froze 30 single serve meals! And I have other meals ready to be made to take their spots as they are eaten (pasta, stir fry veggies with rice, etc). My sister-in-law Emily introduced me to the world of pre-made freezer ready meals and it has been a HUGE time saver (not to mention Rand loves these meals and how easily they are at his disposal.) I have girls in my ward who have pre-made meals like this before they deliver their baby. Then they don't have to worry about making meals for a few weeks following! VERY SMART...I WILL be doing this!

I'm shocked we were able to get it all to fit (it took some doing). Don't mind the bottom right corner. I have two bins in there that I keep our frozen veggies, ice 'sports ball' packs and other random things in.

And lastly, we ended the evening watching some of the Planet Earth videos. Some friends from our ward had them and let us borrow them (Rand has been dying to watch them). We figure they are Sunday worthy since we are learning about God's creations (that works, right?)

These videos are AMAZING! If you ever get the chance to see them, DO IT! *You will be in absolute awe of the things they capture on film. BREATH TAKING for sure! I think we will have to invest the money in buying them one day...they are definitely worth watching over and over again throughout the years. (There's my 'plug'...you are welcome Discovery Channel!)

Over-all it was a great weekend and I'm sad I have to go back to work and homework tomorrow. I love conference weekend and hearing all the speakers and the words of encouragement and hope that they give.

Hope you all had a wonderful Conference Weekend as well!