Aviary / 9th Anniversary

On our 9th wedding anniversary (back in May), we took Sara to the Tracy Aviary to see some exotic birds. We didn't take any photos of Rob and me while we were there, but we should have because it is a beautiful setting! In fact, there was a wedding going on at the Aviary that day; that's how beautiful it is there.

Most of the birds are enclosed at the aviary, but peacocks are allowed to roam free throughout the park. Here was our first peacock sighting:

We tried to get him to open his feathers for us, but no luck. 

There was a sand pit at the aviary that showed different things like how much a pelican can hold in its bill, for example. Sara could have spent all day there digging in the dirt. We were there to see some cool birds, but Sara was more interested in digging! Guess we need to find a hands-on archeology museum to visit next.

I believe these were black-necked swans? Or geese maybe? Not sure.

Sara loved the flamingos!

Another peacock sighting, this time with his feathers displayed!

Well I guess we did get a photo of all 3 of us after all. :)

Another thing Sara could have spent all day doing: playing on the big rocks! Why did we pay to see the birds when all we needed to do is go up the canyon and find some rocks for Sara to climb?!

It's kind of a long video, but Sara is pretty cute in it pretending to be a king in her castle, and also pretending to swim away from sharks. Here's how it all went down:

Me: Whatcha doin?

Sara: Swimming from the shark's pool!

Me: Swimming from the sharks?

{Sara pretending to swim}

Sara: Mommy you're the princess and I the King, k?

Me: K, "Hi King" -- are you the king or the queen?

Sara: The king, and you're the princess.

Me: "Hi King, I'm the princess" 

Sara: "Hi"

Me: Should we go look at more birds?

Sara: (As the King) "No, we should stay here, in our home, because this shark is not good for us, but let's ride on him so he can't see us, k?"

Me: OK

Sara: C'mon, let's ride on the shark.

{Sara moving over to the other rock, aka the shark}

Me: Is that the shark?

Sara: Yep! I used to swim on him all day, but I need to swim, and then I'll get on him. 

{Sara sits on shark rock -- unintelligible words}

Sara: Let's go home, k?

Me: K

Sara: 'cause swimming, fun swimming on that shark, huh. {responds to herself} It sure was!

-- Kudos to you if you actually watched that whole video. It's pretty cute, but maybe only if you're me. :)

Oh ya, and guess what else Sara loved at the aviary? You guessed it, jumping on the logs. 

So even though Sara loved exploring the wilderness more than she did actually seeing the birds (with the exception of the peacocks and flamingos, which she was way excited about), it was a fun afternoon at the aviary. 

That night to celebrate our 9th anniversary, we dropped Sara off at Rob's parent's house so we could go out to dinner. Rob chose a great restaurant called Pago (Artisan, Local, Farm Fresh) in the 9th and 9th district of Salt Lake. Appropriate location for a 9th anniversary dinner, don't you think?! We sat outside in their quaint little patio, and the food was delicious!

Here's the photo Sara took of us before we left for dinner. Quite the budding photographer, eh? 

Happy 9th Anniversary!

Success!

After eight years of marriage, I finally took a turn planning the anniversary celebrations! Way to go me. :)

So since we have been living out in Erda (near Tooele) in my Grandma's house for the past several months, I figured it would be fitting to find something local to do. I thought about what is unique to the Tooele valley. The Great Salt Lake came to mind, and instantly I had a plan!

I remembered my Grandma telling me about how she used to take trips with friends to the Black Rock while growing up. Back then the water in the lake was higher and Black Rock was a popular swimming and beach destination. Now the water has receded and nobody swims there anymore, but the rock is easy to climb and offers a great panoramic view of the Great Salt Lake.

So that's where we went!

First we stopped for some takeout from a local pizza parlor.

Then we had a little trouble actually getting to Black Rock. You can see it easily from the freeway, but it is not easy to see how to actually get there! But as we drove by we could see cars right by the rock, so we knew there must be a way!

{at the "View Area" we stopped at during our search for Black Rock}

Then we figured out how to get there and drove over to Black Rock to have a little picnic on the beach.

We shared a chicken alfredo calzone, ceasar salad, Italian sodas, and cheesecake with strawberry topping. Yum!

The weather was threatening to rain, and it did start to sprinkle a little while we were eating.

{rainbow over Black Rock}

But it cleared up just in time for the sunset!

Rob is leaning his head so far forward because we took a photo before this one but his head was too far back, so in this photo he is overcompensating and leaning too far forward! We did get a third photo after this one with his head at a normal angle, but I like the playfulness of this photo better. :)

We are on top of Black Rock in this photo, but it is kind of hard to tell.

So there you have it! I finally planned an anniversary! Ok, so it was really simple and not anywhere as elaborate or thought out as some of the anniversary adventures Rob has planned, but it was still a great evening. Now I'm off the hook for another eight years, right Rob?!

- - - - - - - - - - 

p.s. ... If anybody feels the desire to duplicate this evening, it might be helpful to know how to get to Black Rock so you don't have to waste a half-hour searching like we did! It's really easy. You just take the Saltair exit from I-80 W, then follow the signs toward the Great Salt Lake Marina, but before making the final right turn to go into the marina, continue onto a gravel road that goes straight ahead toward Black Rock. There are no signs, so it's kinda tricky. Just follow the gravel path for a little ways until you reach Black Rock. Off-road vehicle not required. We made the drive in our little two-door coupe. Happy Sunsetting!

8 years

That's how long we've been married. Long time! And yet not really that long.

Wedding Day, May 17, 2003

We've had some fun anniversary celebrations over the years, but looking back, it seems we have only done fun stuff every other year. And the years we did do fun stuff, Rob planned it all. Perhaps he was waiting for me to plan something on the other years? Well, I didn't. Oops! 

Anyway, here's a rundown of how we have celebrated in years past.

1st Anniversary: weekend getaway in Park City.

There were moose statues everywhere in Park City at the time.

Oh, and just so you know, Park City is dead in May! Not much was going on, and most of the shops and restaurants were closed! But we had fun anyway.

 

2nd Anniversary.......we probably went out to dinner or something. Probably at Ottavio's in Provo (which apparently closed a few years ago. Sadness!). We were still students at the time. I do remember Rob gave me a cotton artist canvas (because I had taken a few oil-painting classes at BYU, and because the traditional second wedding anniversary gift is cotton, and Rob's all traditional like that.) I think I gave him a t-shirt. LAME!

3rd Anniversary: Awesome downtown mo-ped adventure, 

Hike to Ensign Peak at sunset,

And dinner at a great downtown sushi restaurant. Oh, and Rob gave me a leather necklace. I gave him a leather belt and wallet. Again, Rob wanted to do the whole traditional gift thing (although I think that was the last year we did "traditional" gifts).

4th Anniversary: Dinner at Takashi again. Other than that, I seriously don't remember.

5th Anniversary: Rob pulled out another play from his book of How To Be an Awesome Husband (he doesn't really have a book like that; it's all in his head!) and planned a surprise trip to NYC! 

We had a glorious time in the Big Apple.

{More on our NYC trip here and here.}

Oh, and I was experimenting with dark hair at the time and was so glad when my natural color finally returned!

6th Anniversary: Our firstborn (and so far only) child was 5 months old at the time, and we had recently relocated to a new residence. I'll have to ask Rob if he remembers how we celebrated! (p.s. ... he doesn't. That makes two of us!)

a photo of our family from a California trip two weeks before our anniversary.

7th Anniversary: Dinner at Market Street Broiler (I'm pretty sure a gift-card covered the tab!) 

We sat outside and admired the lovely wood bench that framed the seating area, saying we'd love to have something like that in the backyard of our hypothetical house someday.

And now it's time for our 8th Anniversary. I guess maybe I should plan something for once! Kinda late to be thinking of anniversary plans......how unromantic am I?! Well, I'll let you know how it goes. :)

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY ROB! Thanks for eight great years, and many more to come!

I Heart NY!

So here they are, the photos you've all been waiting for.... We returned from our trip to New York on Monday night, and we had so much fun!

This photo was taken during our flight out of Salt Lake City. We flew right over the mountains! I've never seen them from above like this before.

An appropriate title photo for this post! Rob liked this, so he took a photo. It was on the side of an electrical box on a street light.

Here we are in Central Park in the area called Sheep Meadow. What I think is cool about Central Park is what you see in this photo is only a tiny portion of it. The rest is so wooded that when you're walking around, you can't even see or hear the city. It's like you've gone off into the mountains or something and you're far far away from Manhattan, but really, you're right in the middle of it! There are just a few places like this one where the buildings of the city peak through the tops of the trees.

Bethesda Fountain in Central Park.

Central Park is AMAZING! Especially right now because it is green and springtime. It was raining a little, so there weren't tons of people there which was nice.

Time Square. This is the first place we went. Our hotel was out near the airport, so we took a subway train into the city. We got up to the street and gazed at all the huge buildings with massive advertisements with big flashing lights. We were mesmerized! And also very disoriented!! We had no idea which way anything was, and had no desire to stare at our maps all day long to try and figure out how to get anywhere else, so we decided to do the open-air tour bus. It was a beautiful sunny day (which was nice since the forecast called for rain!) so the buses were perfect. AND you can hop off and hop on these buses, so we were able to get off at the stops that interested us, and then get back on another bus to take us to the next stop. The buses came around about every 10-15 minutes, so it was very convenient, and a great way to see the city. After we finished the downtown loop, we felt much more equipped to navigate the city on our own. The tour gave us a better feel for where everything was, and we hit up all the touristy spots as well!

View of the Empire State Building from below.

and the view from the top!

That's the Financial District behind us.

I like this photo because the camera focused on the bars and the city is out of focus. Kind of an artistic shot.

This is how close we were to the street lights while on our tour bus! If we stood up, it would have hit us on the head.

Grand Central Station.

One of my friends and her husband (Kaytee & John) live in Connecticut right now, and they were able to meet us in the city! We met them here at Grand Central Station. This building has really cool architecture which is somewhat captured in these photos.

America's first pizza parlor! Mr. Lombardi came over from Italy and opened his pizza place in New York. We had lunch there on Saturday.

Yes, it WAS as delicious as it looks!

We decided to take the Staten Island Ferry (which is free) to try and get a better view of the Statue of Liberty. This photo was taken on the ride back toward the city (which is behind us).

This is the closest shot we could get with one of us in the photo.

This is the closest shot we could get WITHOUT someone in the photo!

A fun shot of us riding the subway. We were pretty successful navigating the subway, except for one time on Sunday when we accidentally got on an express train, which means it doesn’t make all the stops. It passed right over the stop we wanted to get off on! So we jumped off at the next stop to get on a train going back the other direction. There was one there when we got off, so we hurried on got on it, but it kept going North, the same direction the other train we had just gotten off was going!! Long story short, we ended up in Harlem!! But we never got off the train. A local woman was kind enough to tell us that the next stop was the last stop, and the train would head back the other direction. So we just stayed on it until we finally got to the stop we were looking for in the first place!!

One of these is the Cash Cab, I just know it!

Another photo from Central Park. This was on the day when my friend and her husband came to see us, and he refused to let Rob hold our camera. He held onto it and kept taking pictures for us! It was very nice of him. It almost felt like we were getting engagement pictures or something because he was taking so many photos!

We had a GREAT trip to NYC! Some other highlights of the trip:

• Seeing Phantom of the Opera
• Rushing through the MET during the last half-hour before closing and then getting forced out by security!
• Meeting up with one of Rob's old college roommates (and still a best friend of ours) during our layover in Dallas.
• Rob getting his souvenir: a bootleg copy of Iron Man from Chinatown! (don't tell on us!)
• Finding the most perfect little pastry shop on Sunday night to get hot chocolate and dessert. It was just what we were looking for!

One of the funniest things that happened was on Sunday night on the subway as we rode back to our hotel. A black man in his 50's or 60's got on the train and immediately began to sing. He started singing about eating chicken, and going to KFC, and about how much he loves chicken because he is a “chicken head.” Then, after verse one, he decided to sing the song again in Spanish, then in Italian, then in Indian, then in Chinese, then in Japanese! By the time he got to Japanese, he was just singing words like “Mitsubishi, Suzuki, Toyota, Sushi.” … the funniest part came at the very end. When he was finished with the Japanese verse, he stopped and said, “So many languages…” – Then he walked around with a paper cup asking for money.

It was such a great trip! Thanks again Rob for being such a great husband and surprising me with such an awesome Anniversary gift!