I'm Proud of My Aggies

I think anyone who knows anything about Utah State football could say that this has been a whirlwind of a year for the Aggies.  Coach Anderson has done some good things for the team and has turned the Aggies into something that I have never known, a team with a winning record that was invited to a bowl game.  It was a very emotional time for us because there were multiple games they should have won, but lost in the last few minutes.  Regardless, we had a lot of fun watching the games online.

There was one game, however, that we were able to attend, and that was the season opener in Auburn.  John's uncle lives in Auburn and has football season tickets.  He offered them to us, and we couldn't say no, so we made the 12-ish hour drive to Auburn, Alabama for the game over Labor Day weekend.  

Along the way I managed to keep things interesting by leaving my purse at a Wendy's in Conway, Arkansas on our way -- which we didn't discover until we were halfway through Mississippi.  Luckily they held on to it for the weekend for us.  

The game was amazing, and the few Utah State fans that were there (we were definitely the only ones in our section) were sure we were going to win.  We even started chanting "I believe that we will win!"  Unfortunately Auburn had had a lot of practice with onside kicks and our Special Teams just struggled, so we lost.  

John and I didn't leave empty handed though.  I manged to get one of the worst sunburns I've ever had, and a creepy clown at a local restaurant made a balloon version of Big Blue for us. 

This is before my sunburn really set in...

Who looks meaner?

We also made a quick trip to Peachtree City, Georgia to see John's old roommate Justin and his wife Erin.  They made us a delicious dinner and took us on a golf cart ride.  Yes, you read correctly, a golf cart ride.  Peachtree City has golf cart paths throughout the whole city!  You could get anywhere you needed to by golf cart.  The grocery stores even have special golf cart parking!  It was amazing!  Don't believe me?  Look it up!  

Unfortunately I was really bad at taking pictures on our trip, so that is all you get.  But we had a great time and are really grateful for the generosity of family and friends! 

R.I.P. Jo-Bertie

Apparently Jo-Bertie couldn't handle living with Hepatitis...  

We found Jo-Bertie on top of the lamp... the light bulb melted a hole in her plush stomach.

You will be missed!

 

Summer wrap up.... in November

First off, happy 11:11 on 11.11.11!  What a momentous occasion!  And what better way to celebrate than finishing up the documentation of our summer with hepatitis!

Now, I'm going to apologize in advance... I personally don't love really long blog posts (mostly because I don't like reading them, so I'm sure others don't either), but I feel like I just need to get at least caught up through the end of the summer.  Our lives have not been super exciting since school has started, so that will knock out a good chunk of documenting.  I'll try to keep it short and sweet.

After Lagoon we went up to Logan to visit some friends and spend time in the town that we both grew to love while in our undergrad.  We stayed with the Garcia's (except that Lucas wasn't there :( sad).  We went on a nice bike ride out to Mendon with Sarah to see the Cartees; drove up to Porcupine Reservoir to do some cliff jumping and kayaking; went to dinner with the Cartees at Indian Oven (even though we meant to go to Tandoori Oven... it's a funny story, but I'll spare you the details); and I got to see Hesse and Justin and KaDee, Nate, and Ryker.  We did a lot for only being there for a day. 

The water was really high for the time of year that we were there, just evidence
of how much rain/snow Utah got this year.  The reservoir was beautiful!

We love the Cartees!

Ryker and me

Breast friends!

After Logan we spent some time with John's family while Moma was in Mexico picking up Cody.  Kegan tagged along too.  We had a great family reunion with John's great grandparents' family (Harris Family Reunion), and Hep helped make wooden toys for children in need.  We also got in some good canoeing.

John, Kegan, Hep, and I got in some good R&R up at John's family's cabin - fishing, shooting, eating, and just enjoying nature and the mountains.  With the late snow that Utah had, there were still wildflowers out and they were gorgeous!

Some silly frames Kegan found.

This is how I found them one morning.

We used Hep for target practice... just kidding.

You can see all the purple wildflowers on the hill.  Beautiful!

 After the fun times at the cabin we went back to John's parents and got a little mountain biking and tie-dying in before we went to pick up Moma and Cody at the airport.

Kegan got some intense battle wounds.

It was muddy...

Very muddy...

Tie-dying

Awesome tie-dye shirts!

Anxiously waiting Cody and Moma

 

Not surprised that he came home with a HUGE sombrero on...

Unfortunately we didn't get to stay for his homecoming talk because John had to get back to start school.  We're really glad we got to be there when he came home though!  After we got back to Oklahoma things settled down a lot.  We've had more adventures with Hep, but that will be for another post.  

Sorry again for the long post.  If you made it this far, I commend you, and you deserve a cookie.  Let me know, and maybe I'll send you one; don't worry, it will be hepatitis-free!

Tour de Hepatitis

Okay, so I made up that name, but this past summer John and I biked a lot, and we loved it!  As I've mentioned here before, we recently picked up cycling (due to the lack of mountain biking in OKC), and we've had some good rides, one of which was a huge accomplishment for me. 

Saturday, July 9, 2011: John and I rode 50 miles!

We had a great ride that morning.  We rode to Lake Hefner, around the lake once, then to the path that connects Lake Hefner to Lake Overholser.  We took that path to Overholser, went around Overholser, back to Hefner, around Hefner, and then home. 

It was such an amazing feeling to know that my body had the endurance to ride for that long.  It makes me excited to reach my goal of riding a century someday.  

On a more recent note, we have sadly been unable to keep up our long bike rides.  School really gets in the way of spending 3 - 4 hours biking...  But it's definitely something we want to keep up.  

Hep's just along for the ride...

Welp, to continue the saga of the happenings of the Framptons + Hep, once we left Moab, we spent some time in Salem with John's family.  It was really nice to just relax a bit where it was clean, cooler and dry, aka not sleeping in a tent on the sand flats...

Whilst in Salem/Spanish Fork we hit up the famous Spanish Fork Fiesta Days Rodeo!  

Hep tagged along in Liz's pocket.

We had a kickin' good time.  My favorite is always the Mutton Busting (which I didn't get a picture of... sorry).  Those kiddos are amazing!  Or crazy....  or maybe both...

Enjoying the show!

Hepatitis cone anyone?

At the end they were throwing out t-shirts and such and I caught a wad of something.  I unwrapped it to discover it was a lovely Larry H. Miller bandanna!  

Hep-dito

That weekend we also went on a long bike ride with Liz and their cousin Robert.  It was a really fun ride (until my derailer became all sorts of messed up...), and absolutely beautiful!  I didn't take my camera with me on the ride, but here are some pictures from Google of the area we rode around.

See that white area next to where it says "West Mountain?" 
Yeah, that's a mountain.  We rode around a MOUNTAIN!  42.12 miles

That is the mountain we rode around - West Mountain (Source: Michael Burton)

This is a view from West Mountain looking back to Utah County (Source: Cameron Porcaro)

Later we headed up to spend the 24th of July with my family at Lagoon.  Again, I didn't have my camera with my (I know, I'm a slacker), but we had a lot of fun!  We kept Hep in the car.  We didn't feel the need to bring him along because we figured many of the people there had their own hepatitis, and if not, they could pick it up there....

 

It'll getcha...

I guess just hadn't really thought about it, the altitude difference that is, until we were biking in Moab and running in Salem.  Before we left we had been exercising a lot, and I felt like we were in pretty good shape.  And we were... in Oklahoma City.  In Utah we were huffin' and puffin' and I kept feeling like I couldn't breathe deep enough to catch my breath. 

I guess now I know... 

Has anyone else experienced this?  Or am I just ridiculous?

Melting in Moab

Yes, we are still alive and well.  Our blog has been a bit neglected this summer, but we are doing great and still kickin' it with Hep.  I thought that rather than write a HUGE post covering all the goings-on of the Framptons over the past few months, I'll just do mini posts of our adventures.  That way I can give them the credit they deserve.  So check back regularly to see what we've been up to!

I think I'll start with the beginning of our trip to Utah.  We drove from OKC to Moab in the middle of July and spent a few days there before making our way up to see our families.  

We stayed up on the Sand Flats by Slickrock where there was NO SHADE, so we spent a lot of our time down in town at the Rotary Park.  It has a creek (not a "crick!") that runs through it which served as our wading pool to cool us off.  We would cool off in the water and then take naps in the park under the trees.  We were such bums!  A bunch of teenage hotties even tried to subtly make fun of us by loudly asking each other why people take naps in parks.  Whatever.

The park had a bunch of percussion instruments.  We definitely had some fun with that! 

We did the full loop at Slickrock instead of just the practice loop.  It was super intense, and thanks to my poor observational skills we took the harder way, but that just makes us more hard core, right?

While we were in Moab there were rain and thunderstorms every night.  One afternoon while we were at the Rotary Park it started to sprinkle.  We got up and went under the pavilion to wait out the rain.  Only, it POURED for a good 20 minutes or so.  I thought for sure there was going to be flooding. 

 Despite the heat up on the Sand Flats, the three of us had a lot of fun in Moab!