Bright spot in a gloomy sports weekend

Lucky?  Probably.  But still sorta neat.  Ryan is ranked #22 in the national leader board of college pick 'em... out of about 250,000 people!!  We saw his name on the leaderboard and thought we should capture the moment since it probably won't last for too long:

"Labor" Day

My younger sister, Lisa, had her own definition of Labor Day.  At 4:41 p.m., all 6 lbs. 15 oz. and 20 in. of cute little Ashlynn Susan Jastal graced our presence!  The baby was just fine, but Lisa had some complications for a few days.  She is doing much better now.

The proud new parents:

The new grandpa:

Anyway, we also hiked to the Timpanogos Caves in the morning, swam all afternoon, and had a BBQ dinner.  The hike to the caves was actually a decent workout!  I have no room to complain though, seeing as Marc and Michelle each carried a child the whole way and I only had my sweatshirt.

Bennett waving hi to us on the hike up (I know it's blurry, but it was too cute):

T-minus 12 days...

... or 96 football games, or 144 basketball games, or 864 half-times...

until we begin traveling 23.3 miles

... or 341.73 football fields, or 1,308.77 basketball courts...

to get to Provo for 6 home football games and 19 home basketball games

... not to mention the 6 away football games and 17 away basketball games that I'm sure we will be watching at home, among many other non-BYU games to be watched, as well.

And in approximately 8 months and 12 days (or 2,032 football games or 2, 904 basketball games) our lives will return to being counted by hours and days instead of quarters, halftimes, and seasons, and I will have my husband back.

In the meantime, Go Cougs!!

Warm River Camping

Wednesday night Ryan and I drove down to the Warm River campsite in Idaho to meet up with the rest of the Martin family for the annual camping trip.  This vacation included amazing food, a lot of fishing, fun games, and stories.  It was also my birthday on Thursday so a lot of Texas chocolate sheet cake was involved too!  

Ryan had it all planned out, of course, and snuck me away right when we got up to go fish while he had everyone else put up the decorations so I would be surprised when we got back:

Ryan gave me some fun little things like gum, card games, and my favorite cereal... but this beauty was by far the biggest surprise.  I can't wait to use this sucker:

We did a lot of fishing....

Ryan finally got to use his new fishing gear (fly fishing pole, vest/accessories, boots/socks):

Yeah, I know I look a bit awkward in this picture, but it was the first fish I have ever caught, so it definitely needed to be documented:

One of the highlights of the trip included all of the amazing food we ate.  We had the best french toast, sausage, and hash browns for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, and pork chops and foil dinners for dinner.  And of course camping wouldn't be camping without the s'mores, peach cobbler, and banana boats... not to mention a never-ending supply of candy, chips, juice/gatorade, and fruit.  Here we are, looking very "camp-ish" and making our foil dinners:

Here we are playing my new Scrabble Slam game... it was a good one.  It gets a little out of control at times.

We definitely enjoyed the time away from work, cell phones, internet, etc.  and just relaxing and having fun (but we sure were glad to have a nice long, WARM shower when we got home!)!!

A few random stories

Not gonna lie... our lives have been a bit simultaneously busy and boring these last few weeks and there hasn't been much to blog about.  However, here are a a few random stories that collectively make a semi blog-worthy post.

1) My little CTR-5 mystery children (mystery b/c I still can't seem to figure out how to entertain them.  They need something new every 5 minutes.  It takes me twice as long to prepare a lesson for them than it took me to prepare my Gospel Doctrine lessons) are hilarious sometimes.  I always take a few minutes at the beginning of class to have them tell us what they did that week.  A few weeks ago, one child in particular (we'll call him "Scott." His parents might call him that, too) said he didn't do anything but sit in his house and play X-Box all week.  So this last week when I asked him what he did and he said "nothing," I responded with: "Well, did you play X-Box?"  To which he replied: "No. We don't have X-Box."  Hmmm.....

2) While I was running laps at a track a few weeks ago, there was a young dad there with his son, about 2.5 years old.  They were on the side stretching and as I passed them, the little boy loudly says: "Daddy!  That girl runs SLOW!"  To which his dad said "Shhhhhhh..... don't say that out loud."  I looked around and realized I was the only girl there.  I wanted to yell at him and say "Oh YEAH?!?!?  I'd like to see YOU run 6 miles, little boy!"  But then I remembered he was only 2.  So I didn't.  

3) I always have an addiction to sweets, but it's always particularly strong in the early morning and late at night.  Growing up, if someone had a birthday and there was leftover cake in the morning, it was most definitely my breakfast.  That's probably what forced me to wake up at 5 a.m. while visiting Marc and Michelle in CA a few months ago just to eat a cupcake (now that I am publicly admitting it, you can't make fun of me for it anymore).  And what forced me to wake up at 5 a.m. to eat a piece of Texas Chocolate Sheet Cake a month ago.  And what forced me to wake up at 6:30 a.m. to eat a sugar cookie 3 days ago.  Forget the alarm... all I need is cake.

4) Last night while I was taking a nice, long shower, I was interrupted by a ginormous cooler of ice water dumped over my head.  It was so unexpected and shockingly cold that I couldn't help but scream bloody murder for a good 10 solid seconds.  And then the cops showed up at our door wondering what happened.  Not really.  But with the way I screamed, I wouldn't have been surprised.  Little does Ryan know that my old roommate Kristen and I were voted "best pranksters" in our freshman-year superlatives.  This means war.  

Happy Birthday Ryan!

Ryan likes to claim that he was born on the best day of the year, in the best month of the year. Not because he was born on July 9th, but because he was just lucky enough to be born on that day in July.  Whatever floats his boat. :)  Anyway, today he turns the big 2-9 and festivities include dinner at Texas Roadhouse, an amazing marzipan cake with homemade ice cream, and night swimming.  Happy Birthday, Ry!!  Oh, and a happy birthday to Ryan's brother, Craig, and nephew, Jackson, who both share the same birthday with Ryan!!

Ryan, Craig, & Jackson on their birthday last year.

Ryan with his birthday loot before he left for work this morning.

Happy Birthday, Ry!  (Sorry for the blurry pic... the camera was apparently on night vision).

Frosting

I have a strange (or maybe not so strange) addiction to frosting.  Not even homemade frosting, but particularly frosting from the can... you know, by Betty or Duncan.  My favorite thing to do with frosting is put it on saltine crackers. Mmmm.... the perfect mixture of salty and sweet!!  I developed this liking from my grandparents because it was always a familiar dessert around their house. I was finally caught once during a mid-afternoon indulgence a few years ago, and found out that my love of frosting wasn't as uncommon as I thought.  Sooner than later, there were a group of about 5 of us so devoted to this sweet treat that we would get together at least once a week for C.N.F. parties (Crackers-N-Frosting).  We even ventured out beyond saltines and tried anything from strawberries to apples to carrots.  I've decided that frosting can make pretty much anything taste good.

There's really no point to this post, other than I have 1/3 of a container of cream cheese frosting in my fridge right now and I really want to go the store to buy some saltines.  If you haven't tried this before, you should.  (And for those of you who say you do this same thing already but with graham crackers, you're missing out.  Saltines are way better with frosting).