Camping at Lake Wellington

This past weekend we went with my family and Ian's cousins Allison and her two friends to Lake Wellington, CO to camp.  We had a great time enjoying the beautiful outdoors and catching up with Allison and her friends.  We roasted hot dogs for dinner.

 We sang songs around the campfire as my mom played the guitar which is also one of my favorite childhood memories.

 Ian especially loved the smores.

 In the morning, we tried out our new camp kitchen and cooked a yummy breakfast of pancakes, eggs, and bacon.  I have rarely been disappointed with an REI product and this one lived up to its expectations.

 The next day we went rafting in the lake.  This is my mom and niece Kate.

 Playing by the lakeshore.

A few of us tried to hike a nearby mountain.  We got pretty scraped up as we were making our own trail, but we made it to the top.

 

We jumped into the lake after the hike to cool off.  Ian has nice form in this picture:)

July 4th Family Reunion

On our way down to a family reunion, we stopped in Bryce Canyon for a day to hike around the park with my parents and Whitney and Nathan.  It was very hot, but pretty scenery.  

Over the 4th of July we had an Anderson family reunion in southern Utah at Zion Ponderosa Ranch and Resort.  Almost all of the 102 Anderson relatives were there.  Here is my family with my grandparents.  

A siblings shot.  It was great to have the whole family together including Jennie and Scott and their girls who live in China.  

We did many fun activities including swimming, 

going on the zipline (Ian was feeling patriotic on this run with an American flag)

trampoline jumping (I couldn't resist putting in this picture of my mom doing flips on the trampoline-  a two time cancer survivor and Grandma still flipping on a trampoline.)

Mini golfing with cousins.

Some of the girl cousins went paint balling. Girl power!

While we were playing capture the flag paint ball style, Lindsay and I relived our glory days when we captured the flag together and won the paint balling game for our team!

 One day we spent hiking the Subway in Zion National Park with some cousins.  

We spent another day in Zion National Park hiking the narrows with just my family.  Here is some of the group.

My family headed down to St. George, Utah where we spent the next couple of days playing and learning about family history.  We found the graves of some of our ancestors.  

 

We took a trip to the St. George Tabernacle.  One of my mom's cousins helps run the tabernacle and he took us to the top of the bell tower.  We got to see the old clock and a view from the very top of the tower.

Pardon the awkward photo.  We were trying to get a nice picture at the top of the clock tower, but I was afraid of falling down three stories and there wasn't much room to stand, so it just turned out awkward.

Inside we learned about the story of my two great great great great grandfathers working on the tabernacle and building this staircase.  

We also saw the St. George temple.

 We had a great time seeing our family in southern Utah.  

July Happenings

Well, I always mean to blog but then I start reading other people's blogs and run out of time to share what is happening in the Finlay family.  So, here are some of the fun things we have been doing this summer.  

We celebrated our one year anniversary in Colorado Springs.  We hiked through Garden of the Gods, ate at a really fun restaurant, and drove to the top of Pikes Peak.  I was very happy to be driving to the top instead of hiking this time:)

 At the top of Pikes Peak they sell world famous donuts which were quite disgusting.  

 It was so windy at the top of the peak we didn't get many good pictures, but this is at a lake on the way down with the mountain in the background.  How I love beautiful Colorado.

We also took a trip to California to work on our house a little bit.  Ian's sister Megan taught us how to tile the bathroom floor.  Here is the before picture after we had demolished the bathroom.  

 We don't have an after picture yet as we had to leave before it was all completed.  But, I hope it looks better than when we started.  

Ian's mom took us on a sanitation district boat tour off of the LA coast.  It was really interesting learning about how the sanitation is handled in LA and how different chemicals affect the ocean animals.  The boat crew dragged big nets along the ocean bottom and pulled up all kinds of creatures.  This is our nephew Ethan looking at a huge starfish.

We went with Ian's family to an Italian restaurant Miceli's where the waiters all take turns singing when they aren't serving food.  We were celebrating many anniversaries that night.

New Wheels

After a lot of looking and a lot of negotiation Annie and I finally sprung for new bikes. While we wanted the speed and ride of road bikes, we didn't want to give up the ability to take ride our bikes on an overnight trip or take them on the wonderful gravel trails throughout the Denver area. To fit our style of riding we selected the not-so-well-known cyclo-cross bike. What is a cyclo-cross bike you ask...

Cyclo-cross bikes roughly resemble the racing bikes used in road racing. The major differences between the two styles are the geometry of the frame and the wider clearances that cyclo-cross bikes have for their larger tires and mud and other debris that they accumulate.

Our first major ride of the bikes took place in Grand Junction, CO. All of the reviews of rides in Grand Junction indicated that we should attempt to ride The Monument (Colorado Monument National Park). The first four miles of the ride consist of a 2000 foot climb with no downhill or flat sections, so Annie and I were a bit apprehensive. We put out heads down and decided to give it a go...

What a beautiful ride. Once on top of the plateau we cruised along Rim Rock Road for a few miles before a speedy descent down the other side of The Monument - we cruised down through hairpin turns faster than most of the cars on the road!

The last 15 miles proved to be the most treacherous to both our bikes and our muscles. Besides being completely winded from the first four miles of the ride, all four of our tires became flat during the last mile. Overall, riding The Monument was a great experience. Definitely a repeat ride.

A Thought

I read this quote today by James Barrie, a Scottish poet.  

"God gave us memories, that we might have June roses in the December of our lives."  

It has been so rainy and cold here in Colorado this last week.  This quote reminded me of warmer, sunnier days of the past.  

Especially this one...

Since it was this time last year.

Hoping to create as many fun memories this next year as we did our first year of marriage.

China Continued

There were so many pictures to wade through from this trip and so hard to choose which ones to share.  Therefore, I have posted some highlights of the trip.  We flew from Xi'an to Guilin and met up with my sister and her family(a more rural village in Southern China).

The famous rice terraces.

As you can see in this picture, they were just starting to flood the rice paddies.

We visited a minority group in a small village where the women never cut their hair.  The way they wear their hair shows their marital and child status.  They were a very friendly people.

 

Here are the ladies combing their hair before carefully pinning it up in a bun during a show.

 For lunch we ordered a "whole chicken." It was brought to our table like this, steamed in bamboo.  Very tasty!

Next, we traveled by boat with the Lintons to another city called Yangshuo.  This area is known for the karst formations.  

 Postcard pretty.

We took a very beautiful bike ride through the karst mountains and the farm fields. 

 I couldn't resist not adding this one.  On our bike ride, we stopped to take a picture in one of the small villages.  The photographer was laughing at Ian because none of the clothes fit him because of his height.  A group of about 20 Chinese people were taking pictures of us as well as we posed.    

While on our bike ride, we soon discovered that the maps in China aren't always accurate.  After an hour or so we found our way into a very small, very rural town with no visible trail.  Thankfully we found a man who spoke a little English.  We hired his son to show us the way back to the main road.  Things were going well until my bike got a flat tire.  Since there was no help for miles, I was trying to balance on the back of Ian's bike while he peddled and I steered my bike with the flat tire with my other hand.  This wasn't working too well as you can imagine.  A very kind man drove by on his motorcycle and after laughing at our plight, offered me a ride back to town.  We mainly communicated through gestures because neither of us spoke the other's language.  But, true to his word, he got me home safely.

Along with my sister Jennie, we decided to take a Chinese cooking class.  Our instructor took us first to a traditional Chinese food market.  

 Lots of seafood to choose from- snails, snakes, frogs, eels, etc.

We decided on a more familiar option of Kung Pao chicken and a vegetable and noodle dish. 

Our second week in China was spent touring Beijing.  Here we are seeing the pandas at the Beijing zoo with nieces Kate and Caroline.  

 The Forbidden City

 Wandering around the Hutongs (old Chinese neighborhoods) with very poor homes and very interesting shops to explore.  

 We couldn't resist a foot and leg massage.

 Touring the olympic sites.

 Obviously very excited about seeing the olympic sites.

 One of our favorite shopping destinations in China was the store HEC.  It is a restaurant supply store and has every kitchen tool and accessory you could dream of.  Jennie and I were stocking up on chopsticks and rice bowls....

...while Ian was exploring bigger possibilities for our kitchen.

 The Temple of Heaven.

A yummy dinner of Peking Duck. A server came to our table and carved the duck in front of us.  Eaten in a crepe with plum sauce, it was delish.

 On the topic of food, I was a little skeptical at first of these crepes made in the street (as you can see from the picture), but one taste and I was sold.

 There are people all over China selling these pineapples on the street.  We thought they were so fun. After buying fruit from this man, he let us video him peeling the pineapple and then kindly showed off the fruit for this picture.  We bought one of the tools from another man on the street for about $1.50 one day so we can do this at home too!

 We enjoyed watching an acrobatics show.  The stunts were so incredible.  Think of 15 women on one bike pedaling in a circle, men jumping through tall hoops, and amazing balancing acts.  I think my fingernails caused permanent damage in Ian's arm from fear that these acrobats would fall during their stunts.

Hiking the Great Wall.

We got to hike much of it with the Lintons.

Enjoying a yummy Chinese dinner on our last night in China with Jennie and Scott.  The dumplings were delicious.

If you have made it this far through the post, way to go.  That about sums up our trip in China.  We had a wonderful time and are thinking about our next big adventure...