Our Summer Fun

This summer has been filled with three things: Mike studying for the MCAT, me training for my marathon, and SEVEN PEAKS!!!! After the cold month of June, our friends convinced us to get season passes to Seven Peaks (the water park in Provo). We usually go a couple of times a week right after work. It has been a great way to escape the heat.


See that really steep, orange slide behind me? Our first trip here, Mike and his friends were going to go down it and I decided that I had to go down also, otherwise I would be to scared for the rest of the summer. After some hesitation, I was able to go down. However, our next trip to Seven Peaks, I tried going down again. I was so afraid, it took me four times of getting on the slide and then getting off the slide. Finally Mike just went down, standing there by myself gave me the courage to go again. I went three more times in a row to completely overcome my fear. I can do it with ease now.

This is Mike going down the scariest slide at Seven Peaks, "The Sky Breaker". I don't think you can tell that much with this shot, but when you go down this slide, you get some air coming out of the tube. I haven't tried this slide yet (too afraid) but my goal is to have it mastered by the end of summer. Sorry for the bad film job. I don't know want I was thinking about when I filmed it vertically.

One Year Anniversary

For our one year anniversary, we borrowed Josh's scooter and rode down to Mona. It was a long trip, taking all the back roads through Provo, Springville, Spanish Fork, Payson, Santiquin, Mona, and finally arriving at Burston pond. We were really looking forward to swing off this well-known rope swing, but I guess it got cut down earlier that week.
I tried taking a picture of us driving the scooter, but this is as far as my arm would reach.

As tradition goes in the Matthews family, when there is water, we must skip rocks. I think that Mike looks like a Greek statue or something like that in this picture.

Following the Prophet

After being inspired by the words of the prophet (so it may not have been the most recent prophet), Mike and I adventured off to Home Depot so start our first own garden. The lady was nice and pointed us to the things that we needed-soil and plant food.

It is too cold to plant our tomato or pepper (don't freak out family, the tomato is for Mike, I have not yet converted), so we are starting our lettuce and cilantro in the mean time.

This is day one of our plant experience. It is times like these that I hope I wasn't adopted and inherited Mom's green thumb.

Day seven-the lettuce is looking like alfafa sprouts and no hope yet for the cilantro. We'll keep you updated

The Luau

This year, I decided to get connected with my Heritage. Sorry Josh, my birth mom wasn't Hawaiian, but Tahitian!!! The multicultural center at BYU put together this luau and opened it up for anyone to join. We thought we would have a lot of fun doing it. I practiced every Saturday for two months to perform for a total of five minutes with both days.

These are the girls that I did the dance with (Left to right: me, Bri, Andrea, Karen, and Mandie)

Here is Mike coming down to congrats his new Tahitian wife.

This is the full costume. We had to make the hip band, but the huge shell was actually bought and shipped from Tahiti.

We have just finished the dance and are headed off the stage.

You can see my backside on the right for a bit before a turn around the circle.

Farewell to Spring

For those of you who didn't get the privilege to visit our little get away, we wanted to share with you what you were missing out on.

This is our kitchen/dinning room. We had a card table to the left where we host many important people, such as Kelli, Mom and Dad, and that's about it.
This was the living room/family room/bedroom. We had our bed by the window, our dresser in the closet, another card table in a corner you can't really see in this photo for our computer and stidying, and a bookcase and TV stand next to the bed. For furniture, we loved our one black banana chair. We actually really liked the place.

During Thanksgiving break, we went bowling with Mike's family. There was a sign that said if you bowl a turkey (three strikes in a row) you win a turkey. And you doesn't like turkey? There was also a competition going on between each couple. Go thing that Mike is good at bowling to carry my slack on the team. In the end, Mike won a turkey. That means Thanksgiving in February!

Honeymoon

There have been many people asking us how our amazing life has been (I wouldn't blame them, we are pretty cool). So, we decided to share a bit of our honeymoon. Don't worry, you won't have to kick the kids out of the room. Here are some pictures that we took at the beautiful Oregon Coast.

On one of the days, we went to look at the aquatic life. It's pretty amazing what those gray skies hide.
When we went on our nature hike out to the cape, we saw some interesting looking animals. Nothing out of the ordinary.

On our way home, we took a detour. You would never think that some of these areas are in Oregon.

Overall, we have a pretty fun honeymoon.