Eagles and the Great Salt Lake

First of all-I CAN SEE! I’m a new woman and I can actually see without glasses or contacts! I can’t believe how amazing and wonderful it is and everything went really well. I just have some dryness in my right eye and it’s a little more blurry than the left because of that. But I can still see really well and the dryness should go away. Being able to see is such a blessing and I’m so grateful that I could have Lasik! More on that later…

My little niece Emily got baptized a few weeks ago and it was the same day as my nephew Brigham. Emmy lives in South Jordan and Brig lives in Idaho so Dan went North and I went South. It was great and I got to speak at her baptism! I loved it and being part of it was awesome. Sarah is loving on her baby brother Matt (below).

We came across an amazing discovery in our very own neighborhood a few weeks ago. Dan was taking down the Christmas lights and saw an eagle fly right over our house! He watched it and came and got me and we followed it and realized that there is an “eagle tree” less than half a mile from our house where tons of eagles hang out!

The above pic is the best one we had with the most we have seen at one time in the tree (9 I believe). They just chill on the tree and then fly around our neighborhood and out over the Great Salt Lake! Apparently they come here during winter and you can see a lot of them around Farmington Bay. We’re not too far from there and apparently they like this tree! It is just across a corn field on the edge of our neighborhood where Dan and I spent many hours running. It’s pretty crazy to see these huge eagles in the wild and at our house and not Yellowstone!

Mike and Hailey came over on Saturday and we walked across the field to get a better look. Some of them flew away, but it was pretty awesome to watch them and get a few pictures. The weather was gorgeous too! I thought Dan was going to lost his mind because he was so excited. He loves animals…

After the eagle adventure, we decided to drive about 2 miles north-west of our house and hike out around the ponds surrounding the Great Salt Lake. I was a bit skeptical about an adventure, but I should have known that with Mike and Dan together, we would definitely find an adventure.

It was so beautiful and not too cold at all! There were huge cattails and the ponds were frozen and white and the sky was bright blue.

Dan was totally ready to find an adventure.

We discovered the cattails were awesome and exploded if you squeezed them or hit each other with them. We had tons of fun with them and of course the boys beat each other with them and got covered in the seeds.

You can see the seeds that explode from the cattails on the bottom right of the picture below. We had that stuff all over us.

We cautiously walked out on one of the frozen ponds and soon found that it was completely frozen several inches thick. It was amazing and I couldn’t believe how beautiful and remote it was just a few miles from our house (I guess I can-we live in the boonies!).

We made some snow angels.

Mike and Hailey made some backwards snow angels.

We managed to entertain ourselves out there for a long time.

We made a long slide and the more we ran and slid on the ice, the slicker it got! It was awesome how far we slid. Mike said they used to do this on the streets in Russia.

Amazingly, no one slipped although it was close a few times.

We had a blast and it ended up being a great adventure for sure! We even got some sunshine on our white, pasty faces! Hurray!

New Eyes

Well the time has finally come for me to get my eyes done! I’m getting Lasik on Thursday and I CANNOT WAIT! I did some obsessive research and talked it to death and I finally decided to go with Hoopes and get IntraLase. Hoopes costs more and I feel like you are paying for their advertising and hoop-la (no pun intended hahahaha) but I was able to get a Groupon to save a lot of money from Hoopes which made the price the same as other places I had looked at.  I feel like I made a good decision and we will know for sure after Thursday afternoon! I can’t even imagine what it will be like to wake up in the morning and SEE. I’m so totally blind that it will completely change my life. On top of that, I have been wearing these stupid glasses constantly for the past 8 months so that will be even more wonderful!I can’t wait to get this done and enjoy my new eyes! Our trip to Puerto Rico will be awesome for so many reasons and not worrying about contacts or glasses will make it even better!