D to the C

I can’t believe August is almost over. The kids in our neighborhood go back to school next week. Where did summer go? I’m back to share our annual trip. This year Shad and I went to Washington D.C. for vacation. Shad had never been so that alone I think was worth the trip. We spent 8 days in our nation’s capitol and had a splendid time. Here are the pictures to prove it.

The place we stayed was literally 1 block away from Capitol hill and the Library of Congress. Shad didn't believe me when I first pointed to the building across the street and told him it was the Library of Congress.

Here we are in front of the Library. I finally invested in a mini tripod for my camera so I was actually able to take a few pictures of us.

I think this was my favorite building we visited in DC. The mosaic tile work on the floor, the ornate ceilings. Just beautiful.

Here we are in the Library, I cut of Shad's head but was too lazy to try again.

Sunday morning while we were walking to the Smithsonian I made Shad walk past the capitol so I could take a few pictures without a million other tourists around.

See? It was just us.

Also while on the capitol grounds we found this weird Asian looking building with a fountain in the middle. I guessed it was build around a natural spring since there were all sorts of plants and stuff. Shad didn't believe me until I made him look on his map. Low and behold, it was a natural spring. I'm too smart for my own good.


Of course the Smithsonian was loads of fun. The Natural History Museum was first.

Then the air and space museum got boring after a bit. I do think I have what it takes to be a stewardess though.

This was in the Native American museum. I'm not sure why but that's where it was. Also as a side note, if you are eating at the Smithsonian, it's worth it to walk down to the Native American museum. The food there is delicious and way better than any of the other museums.

Here I am outside the Smithsonian waiting for Shad to bring me a drink. I'm just a little bit spoiled sometimes.

The view of DC from Arlington Cemetery. I'm really glad I suggested to Shad we visit here.

There's something about seeing all those head stones from so long ago and the recent ones as well that really put into perspective what people have sacrificed for our country.

While wandering around the Dupont Circle area, we visited Woodrow Wilson's house he moved into after he left office. I think this was one of our favorite stops. We even got to play his piano and the old man that gave us a tour was so ideal.

Here's the White House. Shad and I did get to do a tour but because our Congressman didn't warn us not to bring cameras, one of us had to wait outside with our cameras while the other went through and then switch places. Kind of dumb.

Here I am trying to entertain myself while waiting for Shad to do his tour of the White House. I was literally surrounded by 50 short Chinese people while I was taking this picture.

After the White House, it was time for the monuments.

Last time I was in DC, they were just building the WWII monument. It was nice to see the finished result.

Vietnam Memorial

Lincolin

Korean War

While sitting at the Korean War memorial, I found my dream job. So ideal. That guy gets to go play in fountains everyday and gets paid for it.

We even went back to see the monuments at night and we both got to see fireflies for the very first time. Why don't we have them in Utah? They are so cool!


At are restaurant in Chinatown. I ordered the Sweet and Sour Chicken instead.

And lastly, non-trip related picture. Before we went to DC we took the dog up to Causey Reservoir to swim. After he was done, he opted to sit on his towel instead of the rock. Is he my dog or what?!

Summer Hours

I guess I unofficially took a little blog break for the month of July. We’ve continued to have a splendid summer at the Bracken house.

For the 4th of July (okay really the third) we went to the demolition derby Ogden does every year. It wasn’t as good at the one last year but there was a truck demo derby again so that made it worth it. I hope that activity becomes a tradition because I really like it. Monday the 5th we went down and had dinner at my parents for the holiday. It was delicious as always.

After dinner we took Dublin across the street to the school to play for a bit. He was finally brave enough to go down the little slides on the play ground and we even convinced him once to go down the big slide. The school’s sprinklers were on while we were playing fetch so it was really hard for us to keep him focused. He kept on dropping his ball to go bite the water from the sprinklers. I may have created a monster by teaching him water is fun to play with.

I stayed down at my parent’s house that night because the next day I got to take my mom to the hospital for a minor surgery (she’s totally fine don’t worry). I think I might have done such a good job filling out her medical history for her I won’t get to do it again. I can’t help it if I think she falls down a lot and she thinks otherwise.

Last week was pretty uneventful except for a senior leadership visit at work. My manager and team leader had me all prepped to be seriously yelled at by our leadership for one of my projects that looks very bad on our scorecard when compared to the other plants. It’s not my fault it’s so bad, the report they look at has some serious flaws. Instead of being able to point out those flaws and all the things the report mis-represents I was told I was not allowed to argue and to listen. Luckily for me the leadership could see the progress and positive movements the plant has made in the area and gave us some really nice compliments. I also got a few comments in about the blasted reporting without getting fired too so I think it was a successful visit.

For the summer my company has introduced a thing called “summer hours.” It’s ideal. Basically how it works is if you are a salary person (like myself) and you get your 40 hours in before noon of Friday, you can go home. Now this might not sound like such a treat to some of you but when you work at a company that says your core hours are from 7:30 to 4:00 and you have to be there at 6:30 every morning and you get in trouble for leaving at 4:00 every day and not staying later because you must not be contributing enough if you aren’t forced to work lots of extra hours the whole summer hours concept is revolutionary. When we first found out about it, after every meeting the engineers sounded like kids getting ready for summer vacation. We all had so many plans for our now free Friday afternoons. I’ve taken advantage of it as much as I could (getting hours in with my 9 hour minimum days has been a snap) and it’s been delightful.

Last Friday Jen and I ventured up to Logan Friday afternoon to buy milk. Now you may be thinking to yourself, why would Ally drive all the way up to Logan to buy Milk. I will tell you why. One of our fellow engineers told us about this magical place up in Logan that sells shelf stable boxes of milk (ie. Milk that doesn’t need to be refrigerated and this can be added to your food storage) that come in delicious flavors (root beer, orange, banana, strawberry, chocolate – yum). We’ve been talking about taking a milk trip to Logan for a good year and summer hours finally made it happen.

Friday night after milk trip, Shad, Jen and I went up to Weber State to see the youth spectacular. It’s basically this big show our poor youth have been forced to attend a ridiculous number of practices for in lieu of youth conference and some activities this year. I’m going to be honest, after seeing the show, I’m not sure it was worth the time that went into it. The kids did a great job with what they were given and I know everyone worked hard but there was so much chaos and confusing parts and it was really long.

Saturday we went to the drive in to see Toy Story 3 finally. We checked the schedule earlier in the week but apparently by Saturday, it wasn’t a main feature anymore. That meant we had to sit through another movie (The Sorcerer’s Apprentice) to see Toy Story and we didn’t get home until 2 AM. I really liked Toy Story and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice was okay.

Sunday I had the wonderful opportunity to sing in sacrament meeting after one of the older gentlemen listed all the terrible things that happened to ALL the signers of the Declaration of Independence. I think you can imagine how many passed out people I got to sing to which was a nice change of pace. And if I could just offer one suggestion to anyone that gets to sit in sacrament and listen to a musical number, if the person singing makes eye contact with you, think about smiling at them. It won’t kill you, I promise. At the very least please don’t make a face that looks like the sounds coming out of my mouth are hurting you – even if they are a neutral expression would be appreciated. I almost laughed out loud in the middle of my song when I came across a sister in our ward that made eye contact with me and seriously looked like I was jabbing an ice pick into her side. Just a thought for next time.

I hope that was a long enough update for you! I know it was for me.

Arts Festival

This last week was another crazy week for us. I thought that it finally being summer meant other things would slow down. I guess not.

Monday was just a bit crazy for me – I had a training to teach at work so I worked 14hours on Monday. Not fun.

Tuesday, Shad’s little brother Seth met us for dinner after work. He just barely started a new job up in Ogden so we wanted to celebrate with him. Plus I hadn’t see him since Christmas so I was excited to catch up on what was going on in his life.

Wednesday I went down to SLC to get my beloved iphone looked at. I may have accidentally dropped it in the fire at girls camp. It actually is working just fine, there’s just a bunch of white spots that have started appearing since it almost died in a fire. Because I was smart when I got the phone, I paid the extra $60 for the apple care. I already knew I’m a little irresponsible with ipods (I think the one I have now is my 4th – yikes!) so getting a protection plan for a phone I will be using way more than an ipod just made sense.

Thursday was my last company softball game. Or it was supposed to be except I guess we have to make up the games that got cancelled due to rain. I even caught the ball this game which is way more athleticism than I ever show so props to me.

Friday night Jake and I got to play the Utah Arts Festival. I don’t think I can express how excited we were for the opportunity. We’ve tried out to play the Arts Festival for the past 3 years and this is the first time we got in. Now add to that getting a pretty awesome time at a really good stage and we couldn’t have been more pleased. The show went really well for us despite me forgetting my guitar strap, having no monitors and no one being able to hear Jake’s guitar. Here’s a picture of us (okay really you can just see me) talking to our friend Porcia (the person who was responsible for us making it into the festival) before we started playing.


Saturday afternoon Jake and I also got to play for about an hour at my work’s 25th anniversary party. It was a lot of fun and much less pressure which is always nice. Plus we could actually hear ourselves in the monitors which is always nice. Shad didn’t get to go to this show because he had a wedding down in SLC that he had to go to.

5 Tracks

Check out my list of my five favorite songs right now over on The Sweater Friends blog.

Hail Campy

I don’t really know how else to sum up our ward’s Girl’s Camp except by saying I survived it. That’s all I’m really asked to do, right? The camp started off great. I came up Tuesday night after work to find the girls doing crafts before dinner. They had gotten up to our campsite (one of our leader’s parents backyard – camping on grass is heaven!) set up camp and gone on their hike without any disasters. Fabulous. We made dinner without issue and then settled in around the campfire to do smores. Just as we got the smores out of the bags, it started pouring rain leaving all of us to dash into our tents and go to bed.

Day two started off without a hitch. We got the girls up to make breakfast and then tried to figure out a plan for the day. We were supposed to have the girls go horseback riding and play at the beach at pineview. The initial plan was to split the girls up into two groups and have them rotate from riding and beaching. Because we had a few less horses than we initially thought (okay a lot) and since it was cloudy and a bit cold we knew having the girls go to the lake then horseback ride would be miserable we had to come up with a backup. We ended up keeping most of the girls at camp while the first set went riding. Then dropped off the rest of the girls with the horses and took the first group to the beach. It still was cold and windy outside when we got there and by the time the second group of girls got to the beach, it was downright miserable to back to camp we went.

We had a bit more free time to bum around camp then we started dinner to get the girls fed before our speaker for the evening, Elder Marlin Jensen came to talk to us. As usual the plan didn’t exactly happen that way so we had to delay our speaker for about an hour. By that time it was raining a bit and windy so our wonderful hosts allowed us to sit in the living room to hear our speaker. After that we went back out to have our testimony meeting. It was wonderful up until the end. The second after our last leader sat down, it started hailing like you have never seen it hail before. Most of us ran for the house or our tents. I ran for our tent but unfortunately the leader before me managed to jam the zipper while trying to get into the door. She ran around to the other side to get in but me knowing that it was stuck open 3 feet and since I was the one that would get to sleep next to the puddle, I opted to untangle it and get in the tent the shut it properly. Once all of the leaders returned to our tent, there was about 2 inches of hail up against all of our tents (including the girls’ tents). Luckily our tent was build like a tank, or so we thought until I stepped on my sleeping pad to find it was soaking. A quick look around our tent with flashlights revealed several drips from above and a bunch of puddles all over our stuff.

Once again our hosts were so kind and let the girls and some of our leaders sleep inside on the floor. I opted to sleep in my car which wasn’t so bad once I got warmed up again and somewhat dry. The next morning I got up and hoped the other leaders would agree to just taking down camp and going home (yes that meant no breakfast but seriously I just wanted a warm shower). They were okay with that plan until they realized all the food would go to waste. Somehow breakfast was made and taking down camp took a good hour and a half longer than it should have. I finally made it home by 11 Thursday and I don’t think a shower has ever felt so good. Oh Girls Camp why are you always so terrible? Why? I used to think I hated camping until I experienced it outside of Girls Camp.

On to other news, Thursday afternoon Jen came over and we made hopefully our last coworker goodbye cake for the next while. We made Patrick a chocolate/yellow marble cake with chocolate ganosh in the middle and chocolate buttercream outside. Delicious.

Saturday I went down and practiced with Jake in preparation for the Arts Festival this week. So anyone looking for a fabulous date night on Friday come see Jake and I play at the Utah Arts Festival at 5:00. Seriously you won’t be disappointed. Even the trib suggested we are one of the bands you should try and see at the festival and they have to report the truth, they’re a newspaper.

Then Saturday night Jen had a little get together at her house to give her tether ball pole a party before she removes it. I’ll miss that tether ball pole.

Also Saturday night my parents and brother came up for dinner to celebrate Father’s Day. It was really nice of them to come up to us instead of us going down to SLC.

Yesterday was a pretty relaxed day, we just bummed around the house and watched movies. Ideal.

Pillow Chewer

Where does the time go? Just yesterday I swear we were coming home from Capitol Reef. Oh well. We’ve done a lot since getting home from our trip.

Awhile ago my friend Jen and I started randomly talking about sleepovers from when we were kids. All the things we used to do, the food we would eat and the games we would play. Surprisingly enough slumber parties Utah and Ohio are very similar. After talking about them, we decided it would be a blast if we had one. Fast forward a few weekends and it was slumber party night. A couple of our other co workers Gina and Danielle came too to partake in the slumber party fun.
We started off the night with lots of pizza, candy necklaces and homemade cake batter ice cream (so good!). Played a game of Pictionary and then watched Wayne’s World. Because we’re still adults and kind of lame Gina and Danielle couldn’t stay the night but Jen did although I went to bed at midnight and she stayed up and watched Ellen without us. So much fun.

In other news our garden is doing super well. I’m so excited. We have one strawberry that will be red soon and a ton coming. I can’t wait! We also finally got the rest of the flower beds planted in our back yard so I can’t wait for those to start growing too. Even our roses are starting to bloom.

Last weekend was also super fun for me. I got to go up to Logan/Bear Lake to hang out with my girlfriends for the entire weekend. We had an absolute blast. I seriously love those girls so much. They have all grown up to be such amazing women. They are some of the best wives and mothers I have ever seen. There was much talking, laughing, shopping, eating and an awkward moment with a weird carved tree. Here are a few pictures I stole off of Ashlee’s blog because I’m not good at taking pictures.








When I came home yesterday both my hubby and puppy told me how much they missed me. Though since Shad then showed me a pillow Dublin managed to destroy while not being watched so I’m guessing Dublin had a very fun weekend.
This week I’m off to our ward’s girl’s camp so wish me luck. I can’t be as bad as last year was, right?

The Reef

Over Memorial day weekend Shad and I headed down to Capitol Reef with our friends Jen and Jared. I'd like to think vacation explains the one real post you got last month. Really work has just been crazy. In typical vacation fashion, the rest of this post will be mostly pictures.

Here's me infront of a mountain looking really excited to be there. It's probably just the eupohira of not being at work.

 

Here's Shad and Jared looking not so excited to be infront of Chimney Rock in the park. They get a half star for effort.

 

Some pretty cactus flowers on the hike up to Hickman's Bridge. I was surprised by how many wildflowers were blooming in the park. I guess I've never been in this part of Utah in the spring time.

 

On our way up to Hickman's bridge.

 

It was just a little windy for the first few days we were there. Jen and I just figured we could pay for mircodermabrasion or go for a walk in the sand storms.

 

We were pretty lazy on this trip which isn't a good thing when Jared is with us - he's really high energy. While we were laying underneath the bridge he wandered off and scaled a few cliffs, using a dead tree to climb up at one point (not smart). Jared took this picture from the cliff just as we were starting to wonder why Jared had "been around the corner for an hour." Jen and I then made the executive decision to send Shad alone (because everyone knows when one member of your party is missing in the wilderness - you send another person alone to meet his fate at well) to track down Jared so we could hike down and go on another hike. After that we instituted the buddy system. Shad kept track of Jared and Jen and I kept track of each other.

 

Jen likes to take candid pictures of us hiking and always yells at me for waving in her pictures. I was so close to getting in a quick waving candid. Better luck next time.

 

See those holes in the rock behind us? The boys just had to see if they could climb out of them.

 

Here's Jen and I waiting for the boys to finsh attempting to get out of the holes.

 

These pictures aren't in order. After just getting them grouped into the sameish days, I was too lazy to reorder them. On our third day, we went out to Goblin Valley which was so much fun. So many people had their dogs which made me miss our puppy. Jen made friends with a Labrodoodle. She's so friendly.

 

After bumming around Goblin Valley for a few hours we decided to go hike the wild horse canyon trail just down the road.

 

Of course after hiking for a bit Jen and I found a nice ledge to take a nap on while the boys contiuned on to the end.

 

There were a few points where we had to think skinny but we all made it out okay.

 

Jen really likes to take pictures of the group where my face is really close to the camera and everyone else is a reasonable distance away...

 

 

Here I am getting yelled at for trying to wave in the picture.

 

 

Jen, Jared and Shad were all climbing the walls in Goblin Valley like little monkeys. I don't really have the upper arm strength to do those things. Jen helped by picking me up and placing me on a ledge awkwardly. I was lauging so hard I almost rolled right off.

 

 

Jared took this picture at our campsite and promptly said afterwards, "that was the worst picture ever, Jen looks like she's stripping and Allyson looks angry." So there you go. Worst picture ever.

 

On day two of our trip we went and hiked up to a lake in the mountains outside of the park. Once we got to the lake, jen and I found an ideal rock for a nap (I wasn't kidding when I said we were being lazy this trip.)

 

Shad and Jared joined us on the rock for a bit after they tried to catch trout in the stream with their bare hands. That was pretty entertaining to watch.

 

 

Then when we came home on Monday, Jen, Danielle and I made Danielle's goodbye cake. I talked her into letting us make her a Unicorn cake. I'm pretty impressed with the results, it actually looked like a unicorn.