The Inferno

So there Tara and I were, visiting my cousin in Pleasant Grove when we saw a huge plume of smoke rising a few miles away. Being the adventurers that we are, we hopped in the car and went to the source of the smoke: a house engulfed in flames.

It was difficult to get close because of the traffic in the area as everyone else wanted to see the show too. When we arrived, the house was just beginning to take off but it became a large flaming box in no time. We were eventually asked to back away and stand on the opposite side of the street but you could still feel the heat and the rumble of destruction. If you've never seen a building/house fire in person, there's nothing like it.

It turned out that the house fire was staged by the fire department so that they could practice. I can't imagine larger departments having the downtime or lacking the experience to need something like this. It kind of made me want to be a fireman but since Tara has seen Ladder 49 thats a no.

Below are some short video clips for your enjoyment. You can hear how much the neighborhood kids enjoyed it.

Misadventures in camping

This past weekend we had plans to go camping with our upstairs neighbors...unfortunately they had to leave town for a funeral, so Marc and I decided we would just go on our own. Marcus actually didn't have to work Friday night, which was exciting, so we headed up into the mountains around 5:30. We found a great camping spot, after a little bit of hiking, and set up our tarp and sleeping bags. We didn't have a tent, but we didn't really think we would need one...Anyway, we had a really fun evening building a fire and cooking dinner outside and enjoying the sunny weather. We'd both had a really long week, so we were glad to just be able to relax. Since I've never been camping in the mountains before, I totally didn't think we would even need our sleeping bags, since the weather was so nice and warm. Then it got dark. And ridiculously cold. Needless to say, we were WAY under prepared for how cold it got. We didn't wear or bring warm clothes, and only one of our sleeping bags was warm enough. Well, it was warm enough until you fell asleep and shifted enough to let the freezing air in...We both ended up awake for most of the night, I think we got about two hours of sleep all together. We finally gave up around 5:30 in the morning and hiked back out to our car, to go home to sleep on our much more comfortable bed. Next time we will definitely bring a tent. Cots don't sound too bad either, as the ground was less than comfortable...

Move over Target...

So, Marcus and I just returned from my new favorite store, and I thought I should share it on here, so that others can enjoy its wonderful-ness. They only have the actual stores in Utah, but they have a great website for everyone else. They have tons of cute decorating stuff and picture frames, etc AND they aren't super expensive either. Even us poor college students can afford to buy stuff from there. Anyway...their website is: www.rodworks.com (I don't know how to make it so you can just click on it to get there, I guess you'll just have to type it in yourselves) So, you should check it out!

La Fogata

Last night I decided we needed to make better use of our not-so-big backyard by making a firepit in the backyard with bricks that fell off of our roof from the chimney. I made a circle with what bricks there were and got some firewood from our neighborhood 7-11 (yes, they're more than just slurpees).

Our landlord recently trimmed some of the trees in our yard leaving a nice pile of kindling which made quick work of getting the bigger wood burning. I laid the wood in a log cabin formation for optimal heat and we were chatting with our upstairs neighbors, Bret and Mican, in no time.

We quickly realized that we were lacking hot dogs, marshmallows, starbursts, or anything else worth cooking on an open fire. We decided that we're going to make the backyard bonfire a regular event and have remedied our hot dog shortage. We also plan to dig the pit deeper so as to keep from setting any of our neighbor's lawns ablaze.

Dry Clean Only?

One night while Marcus was at work, he rescued a poor cold, stray kitty from the snow, and brought him home, even though I told him not to because he is allergic and our landlords had just specifically told us that we couldn't have a cat...anyway, we fed and watered the cat for a while before he disappeared, hopefully to a home where he was actually allowed to go inside (we quit letting him inside after he started giving Marcus a rash every time he touched him...). He was a really cute white kitty when he first came to live with us. He apparently really liked to get dirty though. We would see him rolling in the ditches outside our house, and he would always come home with big black grease marks on his back. Eventually, it was kind of gross to pet him, since he was all gritty and dirty all the time. So...we decided he could probably use a bath. The poor guy was not very happy about it, but at least we got most of the dirt and grease off. Well, he still had one grease patch on his rear that apparently needed some extra hard scrubbing, but we didn't want to keep him wet for too long...here are some pictures, he looks very sad and pathetic...



I was a little worried his fur would stay all mussed up and spiky after it dried, but luckily he went back to being normal looking, and practically white again.




Hmm...maybe that's the reason he disappeared about a week later...

also, I just noticed the dates on our camera are waaaaaaaaay off, so I guess I should fix that...these pics are actually from April of this year, not 2005.

Saturday is a special day...

Finally Saturday! We went out shooting at the lake, and then went and saw Iron Man...the shooting was fun, and the movie was actually really good, definitely not as cheesy as I had thought it would be, and surprisingly clean. Anyway, Marcus had found some targets he wanted to try out, so we thought today would be a good day to do so. Luckily the lake was not too crowded with fishermen, as it sometimes is, and we had lots of fun.




Marcus is a slightly better shot than me (okay, he's a lot better...)



But it was fun to finally be rid of the snow, and be able to play at the lake!

So, this is our blog...

We thought we'd get on the blog train and make one. SO...I know you're all excited to read our blog daily and find out all the exciting things we are doing...(although I doubt there will be daily updates, we don't really do THAT much exciting stuff.)