Old Xmas and a new PR

New posts take too long to come about, and I am sorry. This is a bit of a conglomerate of posts as I didn't post after our Christmas, and I also wanted to post about Adri's recent achievement.

First and foremost, a VERY belated Merry Christmas. I hope everyone had as great a time as we did. We were at Adri's parents, and enjoyed spending time with her and her siblings. It was a great way to spend our first Christmas. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures of any of the festivities, sorry.
We also spent some time at Temple Square in Salt Lake City enjoying the lights and scenes there... but not so much the crowds. Oh well, it's typical there at Christmas time.


Lastly, I have to give Adri props for a wonderful achievement of hers yesterday. As some of you may or may not know, Adri runs marathons. As part of her training for the upcoming one here in Salt Lake in April, she runs a number of other races. She signed up for the winter running series, which is a series of 3 races. It starts with a 5k, then a 10k, then a 15k. Yesterday she ran the 5k and ran a personal best. She finished the race in 27 minutes and 10 seconds!! I am so very proud of her!!
Hard to see in this picture, but she was running so hard that she practically started running our of her pants. If you look closely you will notice that they look as though they are riding a little low and bunching around the knees. We may need to go back to the store and find some new ones. Also, she ran the race with 2 of her training buddies, Wendi and Rob.
Lastly, what am I doing during all of her training? Well, as exhibited here, finding things to stick on my face, wrap around my head, or whatever you want to call it. In fact Adri recently asked me, "what is it with you and sticking things on your face?" I don't know, but hey, it is what it is.

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Traditions? What traditions?

Christmas is a time for love, joy and happiness, and of course... traditions. Problem is, when you are newly weds you don't exactly have any of those yet. So, we have gone about trying to figure this whole thing out. Thus far, it has been quite the adventure. We steal traditions from others, we decorate what little space we have in an already overcrowded apartment, and we try to figure out what it is really that we want to do this year. What do we get for each other without giving it all away? And when we get something, how do we hide it in a place with zero hiding places? Regardless, we are excited to have our first, and so we wanted to give you some pictures of just the beginning.We went and bought our first tree at Home Depot for $32.00. What a deal for a real tree. Adri keeps saying she thinks it is fake because there are 0 bald spots and it looks perfect from basically every angle. We tied it to the top of my Subaru (thank goodness for a ski rack) and drove it home, needles flying through the wind.



We put it into the small corner we have available, and moved the TV over a bit to be sure there was enough room. Put the lights on, and hung the ornaments.
I'm not sure if Adri is trying to be creepy or serious here. Or maybe she is just excited but not sure how to express it. Either way, this is a great face for Christmas.




Of course a tree is not complete without presents, so we put everything we have for each other, for others and anything else that would look good under the tree. Our own first Christmas. Adri also made a wreath (with the help of her mom) that looks great on the wall instead of a clock.
We hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season and we look forward to the new year ahead. Of course, in the hustle and bustle of it all, we hope you all remember and cherish the true meaning of Christmas! Merry Christmas to all! Love Mark and Adri!

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The game changed... Jazz style!

Through hard work and effort, and a little luck, I was blessed to be given tickets to a Jazz game and sit 4th row behind the Jazz bench. I was even more blessed to be able to take my wonderful wife, Adri.

It was quite a fun game to be at, and very enjoyable to be there and listen to what the players were even saying to each other on the court. Granted, something like this may never happen again, but having at least one opportunity to experience a game this way, that's fine with me.

Anyway, just thought I would share some of the pictures I was able to take from such an awesome location.

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Halloween and trips

Ok, so I have missed Halloween by almost 2 weeks now... but I wanted to show off our pumpkins anyway. We had one that was not carved (still going to so we can bake the seeds), then a goofy pumpkin, and lastly a Jack Skellington face. We had a lot of fun doing these, and then dressed up as dead rock climbers (I don't have any pictures of this) and went to see a movie.
Adri and I like to go on Sunday drives up the canyon, exploring the mountains, and really anywhere we think may be interesting. It is nice to just relax, a chance for me to take pictures, and time for Adri to just watch and laugh at me as I run around with my camera.

Lastly, we went to Colorado to see Adri's sister Tara and her husband Jeff, and their family (Aidan, Jessie, Cambrey and Avery)... who got a puppy (Tinder). Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of them or the dog, and Adri said she is going to train me to start paying more attention to those types of things. Sorry. But, we did get to do some exploring of some abandoned places... oh how I love those places. Here are some of my favorites!

I almost forgot. We went to this place called Bishops Castle. Apparently this guy is just building this all by hand from stones, cement and metal... well, with some wood as well for floors. Anyway, I didn't get any good angles of the entire thing, but look it up and you will see what it looks like. This guy must hate the government because there were signs all over the place talking about how they were trying to shut him down, make money off of his tourist attraction (it is free to go wherever you want), and all this other random stuff. I kinda wish more places would allow you to go anywhere and kinda explore on your own. Sadly, I understand why they don't... but still.Anyway, we ended up climbing all of the towers, and even meditating in a big ball at the top of one. It looked like he was going to make it be able to rotate around you when you are standing in it. Maybe one day we'll have to make a trip back over there and see what more he has done.

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A little more interesting...

You know, one of the benefits of being married is that life just gets more interesting. As a direct result, maybe that means that this blog does too! And, with the wedding being over, Adri and I get to spend more time doing things we wanted to do before and even more time goofing off.

Recently we started hiking again and have had some enjoyable ones so far. We also went camping for the first time as a couple. That was a blast because we got to use some of the things people got us for our reception (for which we are very grateful) and we got to start a list of things that we really need. The entire time we were out there, Adrienne kept saying how much she was loving it and that we have to do it again (even though she was pretty cold at night). Needless to say, you will see that we enjoyed ourselves quite a bit, and we are getting more creative with my camera.

Adrienne wasn't sure which star she liked most, so she just got confused and scared.

I just plain freaked out while we were there and yelled at everything.

Dan copes by stuffing his face with marshmallows the size of your fist and plays "chubby bunny." Sadly, he played alone because he was the only one to be able to fit an entire one of those things in his mouth.

We were settled for a short time, but that consisted of playing in the fire and trying to make it spark as much as possible. In fact, we even resorted to a fire dance.


After enough play and dance, the stars aligned and told the truth. If you look closely enough you will see that they are right on when they say "Mark (insert heart here) Adrienne."

In our hiking times, we have seen some beautiful scenery and it makes us wonder how some people can not enjoy going out and seeing these places. Some of them may be a little harder to reach than others, but regardless they are worth every step it takes.



My in-laws (well, part of them) join in all the fun with us as well. They must have been jealous of the people that rode horses up the hike, as they moved much faster than this log.




Like I said, we get more goofy as life goes on, and we hope these faces don't get passed down to our children.

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