College Age Spring Break

It's amazing how when I'm busy I get so much done and I can pack so many things into my day, but when I don't really have much going on, it may take me days to get some little project done. Updating my blog has been one of those things. "Oh, I'll just do that this afternoon ...." then when I'm tired (for an unknown reason because I get to sleep in everyday) I decide to put off the blog writing so I can make time for a nap.

So, today I'm motivating. I'd been working at St. Mark's all winter and they've been really great about me leaving for the summer. I did have to quit but they said if there's a spot when I get back then it's all mine.

I did a trip to St. George with Kristina and Jess and we climbed, hiked and rode our bikes and was a great trip.

And I went to Red Rocks with Garrett and some of his friends and I'd never been there and it was so beautiful and great climbing. Here's a picture that Garrett took. It's on a 10.d and it's mostly trad and ends with a couple bolts.



Just because I'm not in college any more doesn't mean that I shouldn't get Spring Break, right? So I took the liberty to take a week off of work and go with Molly and Jess and their friend Katie on their Spring Break. Definitely worth it. We had a great time. We started out at Jess's family's super nice condo in Scottsdale, AZ. It's a super nice place and when we pull up in Harriett, my mom wagon, that incidentally is not a Lexus or a BMW, and go check in not wearing Gucci or... or.... can't even think of another brand, we look a little out of place. We spent tons of time hanging on deck chairs in the sun, and it was the first sun of spring and it felt great! We all enjoyed it for about a day and a half, then the "lay by the pool, shop in the afternoon, go out to dinner at night" lifestyle got a little old. So we were all ready to get on with the rest of our trip. Our next stop was Red Rocks, just outside of Vegas. Jess and Molly were leading a bunch and doing great. Then we went to Zion and did Spry Canyon. It was really cool.

I've wanted to do it forever and we were a little nervous because we hiked up around and we came down and there was tons of snow!
This is where the first rappel was supposed to be and we sat and took a minute to decide if we were going to do it or not. We decided to go for it and we were stoked about that decision. We 'skied' down the first rap and the canyon had about 12 rappels and they were great.

Some of them we came down onto snow and we were a little nervous because we knew there were several swims but we knew they were just a couple. We had dressed for it ... meaning we could undress for it.

This picture is rather revealing of Molly and Jess's missionary tans and my camo which always looks great when I'm cold.

We hiked Angle's Landing while we were there too and Jess and Molly hadn't done it before and it was beautiful and a great hike as always. It was cold and windy at the top and great to be back up there.


It was a great Spring Break! I'm so stoked that Jess and Molly are home! I love having them here and willing to go on trips and adventures with me!

Lucky, lucky, lucky!

A lot of times in my life I think about how much I value my health and my body and that it functions properly. Too often I think about if only I had legs like ____ or a stomach like ____ and I don't think about just how great it is that I have a body that works and does almost everything I ask of it. (Besides a little camo, which is annoying but it's what it is and it doesn't hurt. A girl just a little older than me came on the river with me last summer who had recently been diagnosed with retinal myopathy (or something like that) and she will be blind in about 3 or 4 years, and that made me realize that my camo is nothing.) I realize that with how much I like to play, I do all that I can to be safe and take care of myself, but even when you are being careful and you know what you're doing, stuff can still go wrong. I've had some adventures that have usually turned alright in the end. But one adventure that I was really lucky wasn't worse was when I broke my back.
My family was on a trip up in Oregon and we'd all been going off this big rope swing into a lake all day and of course, trying to keep up with my brothers, I tried doing a back flip and ended up slapping pretty hard, so the next time around I just dove in, but to prevent another slap, I held on a little longer than necessary and ended up diving into like 5 feet of water. Long story short I'm super lucky. Had I gone in at an angle or had my head bent any more I could be a quadriplegic or dead. I got a compression fracture on T-3 and cracked one of the pedicles, and had to wear this brace for 6 weeks (it was supposed to be 3 months but I got out a little early).

I'd been thinking about this because my dad's friend who is a quadriplegic from a trampoline accident when he was 32 was over at our house the other day. I've never really heard him talk about it and it's so crazy. He'd been a diver and was totally comfortable in the air, but was trying to get as high as he could and just got a little off balance and landed on his neck on the edge of the tramp. He can move his hand enough to move his wheelchair, but his wife and a nurse dress him and feed him everyday. It was a big wake up call to me to me as cautious as I can, but at the same time that I need to make the most out of every day. I had one (probably more than that, but that was the major one) close call and I'm so lucky! So, the point is go play and love your body! and take advantage of this amazing piece of engineering that you have that can ski or climb or run or flip or whatever you want it to do!

Feb 7th already... really?

When I was a kid it always drove me nuts when "old people" would say things such as "back in my day..." or "you're too young to remember..." but I do catch myself saying those things and I wonder when did I get so old? That being said, where does the time go? I can't believe it's a week into Feb! 2010 is already ticking away.

One thing that I resolved to do .... (not a New Year's resolution, mind you. I'm over making those) is to write on here more often. I'm not sure if you read my entry a couple weeks ago, but my purse was stolen up in Canada and my passport was in there but that's a different story, and I really don't care about that, what I'll miss the most is my journal was in there. The one I've been keeping for that last year and a half or so. Granted I haven't been that great about writing in there either and I'm so glad I kept stuff on here from the last little while so at least I have that. I really hope whoever has it has at least read some of it. All the thoughts that bounce around in my head. And maybe they'll want to come on a river trip or go climbing or get something out of it. So, just in case I loose another journal, that'll be my motivation to keep up on this, but sorry you're not getting all the juicy details of my life :)



What's that? You don't really care about my journal, you're just dying to know how the Canada trip went? Fine, I'll tell you. It was great. I was really excited about going and it was better than I could have planned. Here's the story:



My friend Bri got married about 4 months ago and her husband, Lee is from Canada and his family came down for the wedding. Bri's always said that Lee's got 3 hot brothers so I was pretty excited to meet them. I did in fact hit it off with his next youngest brother, Craig and we had a really great time hanging out while he was here, which was really only 2 days after I'd met him. We hung out after the wedding and had great conversation and a really good time, but too short until he had to go back home. So luckily technology is amazing and we've figured out Skype and kept in touch that way. When Bri and Lee planned a trip to go up there I decided to tag along and get to see him again. He planned a great weekend in Jasper National Park. After I conveniently left my purse in a restaurant in Edmonton we headed up to the mountains. Craig had rented a cool little cabin 10 minutes from Marmot Basin resort. I love driving into a new place at night and waking up to new surroundings, and it was a great wake up there.
The Canadian Rockies are amazing! Really abrupt and jagged and beautiful. Got to be honest and say that I'm really spoiled by Snowbird and the resort was really fun and beautiful and it hadn't snowed in a while and I didn't explore too much, but Snowbird is still my fav. But the scenery was breath taking.

It was -15 degrees C and I was surprisingly not too frozen. That's what I worried about most about going up there. You know, sleeping in igloos and going everywhere on dog sleds like they do up there in the Arctic, it could be really rough, eh? But I did come home with all my fingers. It was fun too, because I used to only snowboard but except for a time or two every year I've really only skied for the last 7 or 8 years, but everyone else was boarding so I decided to join them and it was really fun to be back on a board (but don't tell my tram buddies up at the bird:)
After a couple days up there we went back to Edmonton and I was supposed to only be there for 2 more days, but then the whole lost / stolen / who - knows - what - the - hell happened to it passport situation happened (read a few entries down for details if you haven't heard the story) and I ended up staying for 3 extra days. I was pretty frustrated by the whole situation but not too much because I got to spend a couple more days up there. I got to see Calgary ('see' = a 10 minute drive through the city after visiting the US Consulate, getting a new emergency one luckily they made right then for me) then drove 3 1/2 hours back to Edmonton and I got to spend some more time up there with Craig so it was good (luckily we weren't too sick of each other by then)
Edmonton itself is about 4 hours away from Jasper and it is pretty flat but he lives a little bit outside of Edmonton and it's actually really beautiful (that is if you like that frosty, stay inside unless you have to go out, or unless you're adequately bundled kind of beauty) Bri and I went on a walk when it was -22 and it was frosty for sure. I've been told I've got to see it in the spring and summer when all the fields are blooming and so I may have to go up again just for that. That's a valid reason, right?

So, overall, even in spite of the whole passport issue it was a great trip and I'm really glad I went. First trip to Canada was a success and who knows, maybe when I go back up I'll run into someone with my passport who knows my life story and is trying to pass as me!

Update...

THE HOUSE: Last update on here it was still up in the air, but if you have wondered, it didn't happen. I am not a mortgage paying, responsible, house owning part of society. There were so many up and downs in the end trying to make it happen. We tried to go through several different companies and in the end they said that they'd do it in 30 days, but that was contingent on me working 40 hours a week, and at St. Mark's they're sending people home early a lot and I just didn't want everyone to have to wait around and have it not happen. And I was going to have to put down 5% and I could have made it work, but the fixing up would have ended up costing a lot more than I would have expected. So in the end, I was bummed that it didn't happen. I think that house would have been so great, and I was so stoked about fixing it up, and I could have made it work, but I'm feeling pretty relieved at the same time. Now that it didn't happen, I'm enjoying not having to be frugal. I was so stoked to settle myself somewhere and I looked at some other places with my friends, but in the end, decided since I'll be going to the river in just a few months, to just stay at my parent's house and 'practice' paying a mortgage. I know, I know what you're thinking... 'you're 30 and you're still living at home?' and some days I've got issues with it, but for the most part, I really like it. My parents are great and my mom spoils me. She and my dad are excited to have me around and there's always food here, and it's great and I get to hang out with my brother, Thayne who's the only brother still living there. Point is no house. Thoughts of nesting are still swimming around in my head, but I'm enjoying the non-mortgage life more than I did before also, so we'll see.

NEW YEARS: Went up to a friend's cabin up past Heber with a group of friends.


The cabin is really cool and everyone there was really cool, but to be honest, it was a little depressing. Everyone that was there was good looking, smart, fun LDS people that I enjoyed being around but there was a lot of talk of how depressing it is to be this age and be single. I don't think my life is sad. I do think that it would be cool to have someone to share it and I do hope that I'll find someone but I think it's really sad when people don't feel like their lives are complete without someone else, and they're just waiting for someone else to make them happy. This is a time in our lives that we don't have as many responsibilities and have the opportunity to do rad stuff that once you do get into something with another person, you can't do those things, so play and have fun now! Anyway, those were my thoughts right as we were ringing in the New Year.

But the next day redeemed the weekend and it was really fun.
Drew's got a few brand new, really fun snowmobiles and although we didn't have the 4 feet of new snow that we had last year when we were up there, it was still really fun. And I got to go out for a cross-country ski and contemplate how I didn't want to make New Year's resolutions. So, all in all it was a good weekend, and a good way to bring in 2010.

MOLLY AND JESS CAME HOME!! Two of my best friends have been on their missions to Toronto, Canada and Milan, Italy and they got home within two days of each other and it's been great to have them home. They've both jumped right back into school and life so we haven't been able to hang out too much, but it's been so great to have them around!

So, there's a cliff note update on the life of Grace. As I always say, I'll try to be better about more consistent posts, but who knows. Stay tuned!

Really people?

Someone please explain to me how this could happen ... I left my purse in a restaraunt on Friday, noticed an hour later when we were already on our way to Jasper National Park, and called they had it, set it aside with my name. When I called on Monday, it was nowhere to be found! Then I went in on Tues and my wallet (with $60 cash missing and my work ID that had been loose in my purse stuffed inside it) had been found that morning loose in the bathroom when they came in to open the restaurant! But no purse. Which had my journal, book, other stuff, and most importantly my passport zipped into a side pocket!!! I'm supposed to be flying out in an hour, but after tons of calls, looks like I've got to take a 3.5 hour each way trip to Calgary tomorrow to get an emergency passport that will hopefully get me home in the next couple days. Geez people! why would you leave my wallet with all my credit cards in it, but steal my $5 Guatemalan purse ?!?!?! And I'm getting the hugest run around from everyone trying to get home. Oh well, I'll enjoy some more time here in Edmonton. It's sunny but -22 degrees C!!

It has been a great trip so far, except for this. I'll post more about it soon, just had to put this out there!

I'm back!

Well, I've been a bit of a slacker and I have no excuse! I've been home from the river for about two months now and I don't have a job and I don't have my house yet to be working on, so I have no excuse for not writing more. I'm up in Jackson this weekend with my mom and my friend Kristina and it's been snowing up here and we've been spending a lot of time in the condo and it's been a great relaxing weekend. Some trips are all about fun and adventure and this hasn't and it's been so great. We've gone on some sweet hikes in between the lounging and it's been great being up here seeing the Tetons and getting ready for winter.

I, however am not quite ready for winter. I feel like I'm betraying all my friends and years at Snowbird by saying that I want to stave off winter for just a little longer! I am loving the canyons! I've been climbing a lot and I've got a pass at Momentum and I'm stoked to be climbing there, but there's nothing like climbing outside. I've actually gone with this guy Tobias McPhee a couple times and he's been trying to make it as a photographer and we've gone a couple times and these are a couple that turned out pretty cool. They were taken on Goodrose up at Storm Mountain in Big Cottonwood. It's a route I've wanted to lead for like 15 years and I finally had a chance to do it and it was cool to have Toby there to shoot it. So, we need some more good weather!



So, as I'm just hanging up here, I've been determined to catch up a little. So rather than trying to do one huge entry I'll break it up a little, so keep reading! Hope you're all doing well and I'll be trying to catch up on your blogs as well! Enjoy!

New Home!!! .... well, maybe

AGHHH!! I'm sooo frustrated! So, last winter I looked around for houses forever but it turned out that I couldn't get approved for a loan so I wasn't able to get one then. So the middle of the summer, when I had cash burning a hole in my pocket I started planning all these great trips to exotic places around the world, and thinking of moving to places such as Steamboat, Boston or Montana. Then as I starting feeling the pangs of responsibility and my forth decade breathing down the neck and decided to start thinking about looking for a house again. This time I got pre-approved first then I started looking for houses. I was in a little bit of a rush to get it all going because the offer of the Obama-bucks. If I close before Nov. 30 then I get $8000! However, I look really bad on paper. Since most of the money that I make during the summer is in tips that I don't report, I needed to have my dad co-sign with me and it took us forever to get our stuff together. So we looked at a bunch of houses and I found one in exactly the area that I want. It's just a few blocks away from where I lives last winter. It's right across the street and down a few houses from Liberty Park. It's red brick and has a big tree in front and back.


I walked in and instantly loved it. It's totally a grandma house. Every inch is covered in terrible wallpaper and even the bathroom has bad carpet in it. But it has tons of potential. It's got two rooms on the main floor and a mother-in-law in the basement with just one room that I'm going to make bigger by moving a wall (that'll be no problem right? Just move a wall?). I have been sooo frustrated though, because I got a job but I don't start until Nov. 23. (which is good news by itself! IMC wouldn't take me back if I'm thinking about going back to the river, which who really knows what I'm going to do, but I didn't want to not tell them, so I'll be working at St. Mark's as a surg tech, which is what I was doing last year, and I'll be making more than I did and I'll miss IMC, but I'll be stoked to go to a new place and check it out.) I've been climbing a lot and enjoying having time off, but it's driving me crazy, because there's so much to be done on the house and I'm just WAITING for the loan to go through. My parents have forbidden me to buy anything for the house, which is a good idea, but I just wake up earlier than I would usually thinking of color options and flooring, and making lists of what I need to do for the house. But there's been some ish with the loan. During the summer when I was making money I looked good, but now when I don't have a job, and my dad hasn't been working much since his surgery (which you'll read about if you keep reading) so we don't look that great all of the sudden, and my mortgage guy has been working to try to find different options and I had to get a statement from St. Mark's stating how much I'll be making and working and hopefully I'll be able to just get the mortgage myself, but I am freaking out! I'm so sick of waiting! My closing date should be the 17th and I'm really hoping it'll all happen in the next couple of days! I want to get in there so bad! That being said, there's still like 10% of me that wouldn't be too devastated if I couldn't get it and I'll just forget all this responsibility and go to Thailand! But keep your fingers crossed!

Well, this will be a more serious blog than normal, and I've been meaning to write this for a while, but as with all my other blogs, it's been on the back burner. The bottom line is that my dad has (or more hopefully had) cancer. During the summer he noticed a lump on his neck right by where it meets his shoulder and he didn't think much of it. It got a little bigger and then he finally started realizing that it might not just be nothing. So he asked my cousin, Teresa who is a general surgeon to look at it and she was like "um... hello! You need to have this taken out like yesterday!" so he went in a few days later and she took it out and had thought it was just a fatty tumor but when she looked at it it was black and the pathology came back as melanoma. And the weird thing was that they still have never found the primary site. With all melanoma it starts on the surface with a weird mole or something, then goes internal, but they still haven't found a site that looks like the primary. Something else that is also a worry is that once it goes into the body it can get into the organs, usually first the lungs and the brain. But the good thing about my dad's is that a few days after his first surgery, they did all the scans and didn't find it anywhere else in his is body, which is great news. Especially since he was just about to come on the Grand Canyon with me. They said another week wasn't going to do any harm, so it was so great to have him be able to come and although I'm sure he thought about it a ton, as did I, but he was able to be in a beautiful place meeting new people and be in nature to think about it.
After the trip, he went had another surgery from a different doctor, Dr. Noyse who is a melanoma specialist. The plan was to put in some dye that would affect the cancer ridden lymph nodes that were all around where the tumor originally was. My dad had heard stories about the spinal accessory nerve being cut and he was really concerned about it, and he's played Squash with Dr. Noyse and expressed his concern to him. But the doctor spent 45 mins trying to get a lymph node off that was surrounding the nerve, but when he got down to it, the nerve didn't look very healthy either, so he had to cut that nerve and take out some of his Sternoclidomastoid (SCM) muscle. The nerve gives function to the trapezoid muscles, which shrugs your shoulders and raises your arm above your shoulders. He ended up taking 32 lymph nodes out and 23 of them were dyed and infected. They turned everything in to pathology and it turned out they all showed up looking not like melanoma but melanosis. Which apparently Dr. Noyse has never really seen before, but it's really good news. What they think it is is those lymph nodes and all the other effected cells did have melanoma but his body had started attacking it and the cells actually change so they're not metastasizing anymore and are not melanoma. So, that is really good news.

Now he's doing his best to not obey the guidelines he as a physical therapist would give someone else to take it easy. It's been a little bit of an issue trying to get used to not having that muscle. He can't do things over his head. Some of his other muscles will compensate for it, but as for serving in tennis or playing squash, he may have to learn how to do it left handed, bc he just doesn't have power overhead. Also cutting from the nerve being cut, it feels like it's always kinda burning I guess and he's hoping that will subside once it heals a little. He was able to go on a bike trip on the White Rim trail in Canyonlands that he had been planning with some friends. His plan was to drive the support vehicle, but he ended up riding almost the whole way. He was pretty sore after, but he was really happy to be able to do it.

So, now he's debating taking Interferon, which is a chemo type drug that with melanoma there's not that much proof that it actually makes that big of a difference in the long run. And he's trying to learn how to use his arm differently.

It's been a big wake up call for all of us. I'm pretty good at wearing sun screen during the summer but I have recommitted myself to that and to really checking out all my moles and staying on top of that. And it made us all realize how much we love him and each other, and how we always take advantage of having people we love around us. It made me so glad that my dad was able to come on the river with me and that I was able to have that time with him and that I still have more time with him. Hopefully they did get it all taken out and he is cancer free. Melanoma is a really hard thing to scan or test for so it'll be hard to detect, but he's also determined to stay on top of it and we'll get to have him around for quite a while longer! I love you dad!

Well, hello everyone! No, I haven't fallen into the river in my sleep and gone on downstream (which by the way, if you don't know me too well, is a pretty good possibility). I am still alive and done with the summer, and about to resume life as I knew it and be able to come back into blogosphere; at least a little more anyway.

The summer has been a really good one. I did 10 trips in Grand Canyon and I am pretty ready to be done. My mom was able to come on the second to last one with me and my dad was able to come on the last one and I was so stoked to have them see what I do and be able to see the canyon. I don't think they do it too bad, but I think it's hard not to think that a summer on the river is a relaxing, all fun summer job, which, in fact it is, but it's also pretty hard work and sometimes not the most engaging groups of people are a little hard to spend a week at a time with. My mom was able to come on Cat with me a few times, but my dad hasn't been able to and this time I was able to give him some notice so he could plan for it and it was great to have him there. I've been able to drive a lot and it's been really fun. I've done pretty well except for one rapid that is my nemesis, Grapevine, but it's all been really fun to drive. Here's a bunch of pics in no particular order from all during the summer.

This is from the red wall cavern. A stitched together panorama. One of the passengers sent this to me.

It started raining one day after we had rigged the boats and it was so amazing!! This water fall started after it had only been raining for 10 minutes. It was so cool.

I wasn't able to be around when my brother Jesse left on his mission because I was on a trip, but we got to go climbing just the two of us the day before I left. It was great. He's now in Paraguay after 9 weeks in the MTC and I'm so glad I was able to spend that time with him. He's such a great kid.

On our way to Lee's Ferry we saw this RV totally in flames. The people who owned it were all just hanging out in their camp chairs just watching it burn. It started in the breaks and ended up engulfing the whole thing. It was crazy!

This is one of my favorite pics of the summer. It's at the place in the canyon called Granite Narrows, it's the narrowest place in the canyon, it's 76 feet wide.

This was on a tip in June.
And this was the first week of June, and I was freezing. This summer was weird. It was pretty cold for the middle of the summer. Then the next trip:

It was so hot that I burned my arm on some coolers. When we were loading all the stuff into the truck, I got my arm caught between two aluminum coolers and you can see the little circle where there was a screw and it didn't burn. I think it was 115 degrees at South Cove and this picture was taken a few days after when the blisters had popped. This summer really wasn't too hot, but it stayed hot for a while. We were spoiled in June and July with cloudy trips.

My friend Garrett and my brother, Eric and I went to the Great Salt Lake, out to Antelope Island on a break a little while ago. It was really cool. I hadn't been swimming in the lake for like 16 years and it is amazing. I was more buoyant than when I swim with my life jacket on. If any of you haven't been in a while, you should go for sure. Garrett took a bunch of really cool pictures and this one is my favorite.

It was great having my mom come on the trip. Everyone loved her.

This is at Havasu and I love how dramatic my mom is plugging her nose for that huge 5 foot jump. But this next one is my favorite two pictures of her from the trip

We had a lot of wild life on the trip. That's a ring tail cat that we usually leave out the dessert for so that hopefully we'll see them. They're just so cute!
I got a black light and scorpions show up so great under that light and at one camp, my mom's little nook of trees had 5 scorpions just around her! It was crazy. There was like 25 at that camp.
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Here I am blabbin away about the geology of the canyon.

There was a pretty cool guy, Mike that came on the trip with my mom and he's really great, but unfortunately he lives in South Carolina.
The trip my dad came on, there was some amazing scenery!
That's the Vishnu Temple in the background. This is a pretty typical camp scene.

My dad got to come on the 7 day trip so we got to stop at some other places that we didn't get to do on my mom's 6 day trip. This is called Stone Creek waterfall.
The others in our group got my dad all dressed up for the toga party.

This is from the Lava Chuar camp on night 2. It's one of my favorite camps.

I really do love showing people the canyon and being able to be down there all summer is amazing, but this is a great bonus as well :)

Anyway, congratulations if you've stuck around this long to read all of these. This is how I feel at the end of this summer. It was a great year and I had a great season, but I'm ready for it to be over! And hopefully you'll see more of me on here. I'm back into life! Thanks for reading!