The Long-Awaited Sleepover

A few weekends ago was the long-awaited Hadlee sleepover.  She turned 5 and figured she was plenty old enough to have a sleepover at Whitlie and Dallin's for her birthday, just like her older sister Shalee had.  I'm so glad that we are such a reward.  It was super fun to have her over and we did lots of fun things like...being doctored, having our hair done, playing ponies, and shopping for a new baby doll (she named him Bumpy...). She wanted to sleep in the cedar chest because she fit just perfectly, I told her she couldn't since I was worried that the lid would fall on her in the middle of the night.  She laid in there for quite a while though and it did look pretty comfy.  

She is such a funny girl and says outrageous things all the time.  I love hanging out with her just so I can hear what she has to say next. It was so fun to have little people at our house.  I hope that me, Hadlee and Shalee will always be best friends.

A Little Bit of Paradise...along with a few blisters

As soon as we finished finals we headed down to Havasupai.  I had been anticipating this trip for months and using it as a motivator to get me through those last few tough weeks of finals.  The trip really was amazing, a beautiful place with lots of my favorite people.  Sam and Reagan planned the trip and invited Dal and I.  Sam's brother Fred, Reagan's sister Bryan and my sister McKell came as well.  In order to truly have a siblings trip we were only missing Taylor.  Clint and Caden were part of the party too.  We got a little lost and had to drive around about a third of the Grand Canyon, but when we finally arrived at 1:30 in the morning, after an 11 hour drive, we were ready to start hiking in :).
After hiking for a couple hours we were pretty tired so we camped on the trail under a big rock overhang.  It was a little cold...ok really cold...and I woke up to every hiker that passed but I was so glad to be out of the suburban and lying down that it didn't even matter.

The next morning we got into the Indian village.  I couldn't wait to take my pack off :) But, after registering we still had another two miles to hike down into the campground.  But from there we could see the river and we got our first view of this: 

We spent the next two days at the bottom of the grand canyon, swimming and playing in the beautiful blue green water, relaxing and playing games.  Oh, and eating dehydrated food (that part actually wasn't even that bad).  On the second day we went on an awesome hike down the river where we played in smaller waterfalls all along the way.  I loved every minute.  

Dallin fell in love with all of the frogs and the card game "scum" (which we played with princess cards). We also had fun exploring some of the smaller canyons and caves up in the rock walls of the canyons.  We didn't want to leave, especially because that meant an 11 mile hike back up out of the canyon with some pretty mean switchbacks.  After getting to the top we collectively decided it was one of the hardest things we had ever done.  And that's why we came home with blisters.

Finished.

I know it's been a while since Dal and I finished the school year, and I feel like I've been taking a break from everything ever since, but I decided it definitely deserves a post.  This school year was definitely tough, for both of us.  I'd say that our crazy school schedules has been the only really hard thing about our first year of marriage.  We both made it though!  Hopefully my schooling will never be as difficult again, and, while I can't say the same for Dallin, he is that much closer to graduating :).  He's not even taking a break this summer though, he's got three classes right now and will take another later in the summer.  He amazes me with all he can accomplish while working so much.  Even though Dal still has classes, summer has already proven to be so great.

Goodbye you cruel, intimidating first year of law school--I never want to see you again!