poke it with a stick. image gallery: April 2010

road block

the hotel room at our unexpected stop in laramie, wyoming.

chinese food and candy bars- a feast fit for a king!

this sign was located in our shower. i'm not entirely sure what it means, but i thought it was quite funny!

when we first arrived in salt lake city there was too much fog to even be able to see the mountains, but finally the morning we left we were able to see the beautiful wasatch mountains in all their snow-covered glory! i was very happy about that, i had always told diana how amazing the mountains are in utah, and on our trip we almost didnt even get to see them!

another spot that is amazing up in the mountains is park city. its a little town surrounded by ski resorts and hosts the annual sundance film festival. its only about a half hour from salt lake city, and i really wanted to show diana just how cool the place is! we got to drive through it and check it out on our way home.

diana loved walking up this path and picking up random rocks and stuff!

an evening with the patricks

the outside of sean and rachael's beautiful home!

sean and rachael in the kitchen getting the feast ready!

random picture of me.

after dinner we chilled out in the living room and sean made a few cds for diana and i to enjoy on the ride home.

dr. volts

oh, i know these pictures arent really all that special, but they do bring a joy to my heart!

i have hardly even bought a comic book since i moved out of salt lake city, but being back at dr. volts makes me want to buy one of each!

the old haunts: school

ah, good old intermountain christian school! i worked here for two years as an art teacher straight out of college. it was a good time (bare in mind, of course, that the past is filtered through rose colored glasses...) and it was really cool to be able to stop in and see the old building and a couple of the teachers i used to work with.

looking down one of the halls of the school. the junior high and high school were on the second floor. my room was the first one on the left.

we visited right after school got out, so everyone was around and i even got to go into the old classroom and see what its like now. a bunch of things have changed! the current art teacher was even there so i got to chat with him for a few minutes and learn about what the art program is up to these days. the shelves on the wall by the window were built by chauncey and i! while we were there i almost became a little nostalgic and missing my years of teaching art. almost...

the old haunts: old apartments

when i first moved to salt lake city i didnt know anyone. at all. really, i had met people at the school i was going to work at once, and thats it. my mom and i flew out there a month or two before i was going to move there to scout out a place to live. the best we could find was a little one bedroom apartment that i could barely afford (if i wanted to go out and see a movie, i would have to donate plasma for extra money...). i lived here on the bottom floor for only about six months, but it worked well and i have some good memories of the place!

after meeting once, sean and i decided that we should be roommates (through the suggestion of his sister, whom i did actually know), and it was fantastic! we ended up living in this apartment complex for about a year and a half, having a great time!

it was really cool to be able to show diana the different places i had lived and the place where all those salt lake city stories happened!

we lived on the first floor, which meant that our 'back porch' was a bit underground... i remember many days of coming out that slider door and leaning against the ledge talking to family back home. (my crappy cell phone would always drop calls if i tried to answer it in side the apartment, so i got to spend a lot of time on this porch getting mad at the geese that were too loud while i was on the phone!)

the old haunts: coffee shop

one of the best parts of my two years living in salt lake city was the church i went to. it was called 'summit ministries' and we had a great pastor, clint roberts, and some amazing musicians like chauncey webb. i have such great memories of sunday morning worship and all the great songs and sermons i got to hear. almost all of my friends in salt lake city were church friends, so it was a highlight of the week to see everyone together! the church was an outreach ministry and actually was a coffee shop as well! it was located down town salt lake city, and i would volunteer a couple nights a week to work there. we would always invite anyone who came in to stop by on sunday mornings for free bagels and coffee along with worship. the best time at the coffee shop was during those two weeks that the olympics were there in 2002! the place was always crowded- lines out the door every single night! and we stayed open till two in the morning every day during the olympics. it felt like little ol' salt lake became new york city for those two weeks- everywhere you went downtown you would hear five or six different languages being spoken.
having all those great memories about church and the coffee shop it was a sad shock to see that it no longer exists. i had known that they closed the doors to the coffee shop about a year after i left, but to actually see it was quite disheartening. the once great 'main street coffee shop' has now become a sad little souvenir shop, and summit church is now converted into a second story apartment. truly sad to see.

sean's dog pound

sean and rachael's cute little dog (that looks a lot like an ewok) with its hair put up so it can actually see!

i totally loved their dogs! it made me miss poco, but i was enjoying the furriness of these two!

hotel cheyenne

our tasty continental breakfast.

as we were getting packed up in the morning i realized that the window of our room could be opened, and the screen could be slid over so that the window was completely opened up! i moved the car around the building and decided to park right at our room window, that way we wouldnt need to cart everything through the hotel and out to the parking lot, instead i could just pass it out the window!