This week is my friend Cheri's 50th birthday. (Not sure if she wants that publicly known -but hey, I'll be there soon too!) We celebrated with a girls lunch at a new gourmet pizza place called Pizza 419 in Provo.
Today was our 7th wedding anniversary (we've known each other for 12 years), and yes, we're still smiling! We celebrated with dinner at our favorite seafood restaurant - Market Street Grill.
Mark's Dad is amazing. At the age of 74 he regularly goes cross-country skiing (in the winter), mountain biking (in the summer) and biking, hiking and swimming all year round to keep himself fit and active. This year he decided to take on a local triathlon for a bit of a personal challenge. People of all ages, sizes and fitness levels showed up for the 300m swim, 12km bike and 5km run.
As Dan crossed the finish line the race caller announced he was the oldest person in the race. He didn't place first in his age group (60+) but he beat several other, younger competitors over the line! Well done Dan, you are an inspiration.
Today we headed to Red Butte Gardens (in the foothills above the university & city) to take a look at the emerging spring flowers. The trees were still bare but the early bulbs - crocus, daffodils and iris were starting to put on their Spring display. So nice to see after the long, white winter.
Mark's brother Ben is working full-time while finishing his degree, so Spring Break was the first chance we had to do a snowboarding day with him since Christmas. We met up early and headed to The Canyons in Park City. Unfortunately the recent spring-like weather made the snow less than ideal. At the start of the day the below-freezing overnight temperatures had set yesterday's snow melt to ice. As the day wore on and the temperature rose the snow became soft and mushy ("peanut butter" was how one resort employee described it!) Oh well, at least we had a nice lunch with some good company. Here's Heather & Ben on the chairlift.
After a couple of weeks of warmer weather we headed out with Mark's Dad and step-mom for a hike on the Bonneville Shoreline Trail in the foothills above the university. The BST runs along the Wasatch Range marking the shoreline of the ancient Lake Bonneville - a huge lake formed during the last ice age that covered 19,700 square miles (51,000 sq km). There were still pockets of snow along the trail and we picked up a bit of mud on our shoes, but the views over the Salt Lake Valley and surrounding mountains are hard to beat!
After nearly 2 years in our house here in Utah we decided it was time add a bit of color to the "neutral" color scheme we inherited. Since we were (finally) about to buy a bed for the master bedroom we decided this was a good place to start. After a trip to Lowes to buy the prerequisite painters tape, rollers, brushes, drop cloth, paint etc we eagerly started on our feature wall. Here's Mark "cutting-in" around the edges...
...and Heather doing some "rolling".
And here's the finished product. After 2 years of sleeping on a mattress on the floor we now have a real king-size bed and some color to wake up to!
Mark & I both enjoy live theater and shows. Two weeks ago we saw a Ballet West performance of Madame Butterfly and this evening we took in a production of Phantom of the Opera at the Hale Center Theater. We were pleasantly surprised at the quality of the show and performers - not quite Broadway, but very good for a local theater group. The theater itself was interesting too - it is a "theater-in the-round" with raised stadium seating fanning out in a circle from a central stage - so everyone has a close seat. The performers did a good job using the small circular stage ensuring they addressed all directions. The sets were also well done with things popping up through trap doors in the floor and disappearing up towards the ceiling! (Sorry I don't have a "real" picture to display - no photos allowed inside. The best I could do was a copy of the Playbill cover).
