Summertime

I have always felt that summertime is more fun than any other time of year. Despite the joys of the Christmas season and snow, there's simply more to do in the summer. Not to mention, the days are warmer and longer, so outdoor activities are much more plausible than in the middle of the winter.

This summer has been trying hard to stifle our fun, but we're fighting back with determination.


June

For Christmas, Ryan and I got the "pass of all passes" [big deal here in Utah County] and so we can go to Seven Peaks for free. We learned that after 5pm we get free tubes, so we've been there twice so far and plan to go lots more. It's not as big and fun as we remembered it being when we were kids, but it's a refreshing way to cool down, especially when the tube spins around backward and dunks you in the pool at the end.

After my spring classes ended, we spent some time up at Bear Lake with Ryan's mom's family members. It was my first "family reunion." We watched Bruce and Rachel scuba dive, watched Hailey fall off the dock, visited with Michelle and Ben and other family members, snorkeled in the lake, went running, ate milkshakes... etc.

Bear Lake 2012

We got back from Bear Lake and jumped into softball season full swing. Our ward team has won two of our three games so far, and we've made lots of new friends.

Michelle and Ben visited for a few days - we enjoyed lunch at Tucano's and some exciting games of corn hole.

At the end of June, Ryan and I and Scott and Lisa headed up to Canada for a few days to visit Scott's family. We enjoyed the LONG drive (Ryan and I watched movies) and enjoyed spending time with Scott's parents. Especially fun was Waterton - where we hiked 30 minutes up a glacier creek and slid down a natural waterslide - twice. Ryan and I beat Scott and Lisa at horseshoes with a double ringer on the last throw and Grandpa Sommerfeldt taught Ryan and I both how to make wooden bowls. All in all it was a great trip and I enjoyed getting to know more of Ryan's family.

 

Scott, Lisa, Ryan, & Jen overlooking Waterton Lake

Ryan & Jen - Waterton Lake

Ryan & Grandpa Sommerfeldt - making the bowl

Partially completed bowl

At the Raymond Stampede (rodeo)

Once we got back from Canada, we started on a sprinkler system for my mom (credit to Ryan, Bruce, Rachel, and Scott - not me so much) and celebrated Independence Day and my mom's birthday. We also attended President and Sister Hinckley's mission homecoming and enjoyed visiting with so many missionaries from Ryan's mission. 

My mom's beach birthday cake - french vanilla cake, chocolate buttercream icing

Fourth of July cake - white cake, white icing

Flag on the inside - made with a large white cake, a large red cake, and a small blue cake, sliced and stacked.

Pre -sprinklers - working in the yard

"Supervising" :)

Sports Saga

So my first week in our ward, two different people make a joke about how I'm a Sommerfeldt - which means I love sports, right? Right... not. In reality, I'm terrible at sports. I even made a joke over the pulpit about it in my talk. People smiled and nodded and laughed and thought it was funny and then turned ward intramurals over to Ryan and I (probably thinking in their minds that I was being exceptionally modest...not suspecting that I was actually being truthful...)

Sports and I have a bit of a history together... and fortunately, Ryan's included - so it's blogworthy. Waaaaay back in the day when I used to go to high school, I had this friend named Jordan who invited me to go to play basketball on a Friday afternoon at a church with him and his friends. Long story short, it was NOT a good experience. I got the ball exactly once and panicked, forgot to dribble, and promptly passed the ball to the other team. I have this problem where my team and the other team all look alike whenever I'm in a pressured situation...

Anyway... we go off to summer break and then come back for senior year, and lo and behold, Ryan invites me to go play basketball. Same friends, same Friday games. I was scared spitless. However, I also really liked Ryan. Basketball = excuse to spend more time with him = higher chance that he might like me... (and we all know how that worked out :)

So I went to basketball, scared to death, but determined to a) not die, and b) not look like an idiot. Both of these were pretty lofty goals. However, basketball that day was a happy surprise. The game was less violent and stressful than I remembered, and afterward I spent an hour shooting with Ryan rebounding and talking to me. Just me. It was the best day ever of my short little seventeen-year old life.

The rest is history--history that includes watching Ryan's tennis matches, playing Spanish Club soccer, taking a BYU tennis class so that I could at least have a vague idea of how Ryan's serves should be returned (in theory, at least), playing golf for the first time, swimming, running, biking, rollerblading, volleyball... you get the picture. Ryan loves sports.

So it seems only natural that our first experience in a "real" married ward together (we sort of don't count the other one - we were there for such a short time...) includes playing ultimate frisbee--me for the first time--and organizing the ward coed softball team and playing on it--again, me for the first time.

Being married is all sorts of adventurous fun :)

Ultimate!

Ryan convinced me to sign up for the ward intramural Ultimate Frisbee team this term. It was my first time playing intramural sports - or any kind of sport as a part of a team. Needless to say, I was terrified. However, frisbee turned out to be a good choice because a) it's easier to catch and doesn't hurt as bad to get hit with and b) there's not very many rules. Basically you just run around and try to keep the other team from catching it, and if you catch it, you just can't move your feet while you throw.

*Note: You can develop a better strategy than this. That's probably why the teams we played generally tended to score so much...*

In any case I managed to break both those rules as well as fail to stop the opposing team from passing their game-winning point, but hey, it was a good season anyway. It was a fun way to get some exercise and make some friends in our new ward.

After the game, Ryan and I consoled ourselves (and cool off!) with slurpees from 7-eleven. New favorite summer treat! (Cherry-mango-pina colada is the best.)

Long Weekend

So Ryan and I got really excited last Thursday about the weekend. We decided to go up to Salt Lake City on Saturday and go to the temple, Liberty Park, Gateway - the works - just to be off together somewhere. That is, until we saw the weather forecast - rain all day Saturday. So we had to make other plans. Friday night we went out to SubZero with Bruce, Rachel, Hailey, McKayla, Scott, and Lisa. There were some salespeople outside trying to get people to sign up for Wing Cash - some smartphone "cash" payment app. So even though we don't have smartphones, we all signed up and got our ice cream for free.

 Saturday was the first day Ryan and I spent all day together, just the two of us, working at our apartment. We spent some time cleaning and organizing and then went shopping for curtains and soap dishes and picture hangers. We finally are almost all moved in and unpacked in our new apartment - and it's starting to look like a home.

Our kitchen - I'm planning to make a green valance for the window.

Our bathroom - I love our shower curtain and the fact that we have enough space for both of us to use the mirror at once :)

Our entertainment center - it used to be Bruce and Rachel's, but they let us have it when they moved. Our TV just BARELY fits - literally a sixteenth of an inch on either side. The TV, picture of Christ, and plaque were all wedding gifts.

On Sunday, I was sustained to my new calling - compassionate service committee. Then we headed out for Sunday dinner at Scott and Lisa's to celebrate my birthday and Jerry's birthday. It was fun spending time with Tana and Jerry and their kids, and Ryan and I got our thank you cards delivered, too. We played Rollick, a really fun backwards charades game in which I performed a one-time non-repeatable role as a scottish dancer, and we learned that Tana is unfamiliar with the term "jelly."

Monday morning Ryan had to work - but we pushed it off as long as possible by watching the Wizards of Waverly Place movie on the love sack with pineapple smoothies (see the recipe tab for ingredients!) Then he went to work and I visited my mom until three, when we met up at Scott and Lisa's again for a barbeque. We ate, visited with Lisa's parents, lost horrendously at Corn Hole, and set up Scott and Lisa's pool in their backyard.

Ryan and I are lucky to have our family so close while we're going to school. At the end of July, Bruce and Rachel will head off to Texas for Bruce's new job with E&Y, but we'll still have our parents, some of our grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and in October, Ryan's younger brother will be back from his mission. We love getting to spend time with our family, but also love putting down our own roots and spending time together establishing our own traditions. We really are blessed to have the best of both worlds for our first few years of marriage!

April Adventures

Ryan and I dyed Easter eggs one night for family home evening in April.

On the weekend of BYU graduation, after finals, we went on an "Arches Anniversary" trip. Our freshman year, we went to Arches for a day trip. It was a really fun and memorable occasion. This year, we spent two nights camping along the Colorado River and we made a detour to Goblin Valley on our last day before coming home. We had lots of fun hiking, climbing things, getting lost, chasing lizards with waterguns, building fires, roasting marshmallows, singing Beatles songs with the guitar around the campfire, and playing catch and almost losing the baseball in the river.

After our adventuring, we came home and packed like crazy for our move to Bruce and Rachel's old apartment south of campus. We're spending all our spare time unpacking and organizing - in between homework, work at BYU, lawn work, and dates :)

Wedding Photo Book!

I finally finished making a photo book from our wedding...which was almost five months ago... haha :) It's posted online here if you want to check it out!

March Madness

More like March Illness. Not so much madness going on over here. March was lots of fun, in between Jen being sick again and again. I finally went to the doctor and found out I had pneumonia. Lots of antibiotics and soup from caring parents and in-laws, I'm finally back in the game - just in time for finals. Hooray!

In between being sick and trying to stay on top of school, Ryan and I made time for some fun things - including seeing the new Hunger Games movie, attending some folk dance events, including my semester concert, Festival of Nations, going to Men's Chorus at BYU, making green shamrocks to decorate our apartment, having open juice bar at Scott & Lisa's house with Bruce and Rachel, and planning our summer.

 Our St. Patrick's Day window decorations

 Ryan and I after Festival of Nations

 With my mom

 And dad

My traditional Serbian costume for Festival of Nations