Paper Hat

We're busy packing and Audrey is a big help - with keeping our sanity, if nothing else. Here she is, modeling what is sure to be next year's latest style in headwear.

South Slope of the Uintas

We are in full-fledged "what should we do before we leave Utah?" mode. We previously took Audrey on her first camping trip and she experienced the hot deserty side of Utah. She wanted to use her fancy new tent somewhere else, so we decided to do a high Utah mountains camping trip.

We went to the Yellowstone Canyon recreation area on the south slope of the Uintahs. We had been there once before, a number of years ago, and it still is one of my favorite places in Utah. It is about a three hour drive from Salt Lake City which includes a good eight miles on severely washboarded and rocky dirt roads. Our little mazda navigated the rocks and ruts like a champ, embarrassing the big dodge truck that was inching along in front of us.

The three hour drive must be about a half hour too long for most people, because the road ends at 7000 feet above sea level with a beautiful mountain river winding through a secluded national forest. There were about 16 campsites at our campground and on a Saturday with perfect weather there was exactly one other person staying in the campground.

Audrey enjoyed the solitude, though we were joined by the free range cattle that roam the high elevations in Utah. She signed "dog" every time she heard them in the distance (distinguishing various animal sounds might take a while still). She also stayed up late enough to enjoy her first camp fire, though not quite late enough to enjoy any smores.

Night proved to be a little colder than we were expecting with the mercury dropping to about 40 degrees. Even though Audrey was bundled in four layers (a onesie and socks below flannel PJs, below a thick sleep sack, topped off by a jacket), it was much to cold for her to sleep alone in her port-a-crib. She eventually crawled into bed with Kelly and the three of us mostly just waited for the sun to come back up. Once the sun crested the mountain ridges and we got some warm food in us, we spent a bit more time exploring the river before heading home.

Our final rugged Utah outing was another success. Maybe we'll be back some day to revisit some of our favorite Utah locations.

Moving East

Let's rewind time a little bit. Six years to be precise. That puts me back in Los Angeles, packing up my truck and a small U-Haul trailer with everything I owned. I was about to set off on a relatively short ten hour drive to a place I knew nearly nothing about.

Everything I did between high school and my move to Utah had a temporary feel to it. Whatever continuity college offered was broken up by various summer jobs. My stint in Los Angeles was designed as a temporary reprieve from the start of the "real world". In fact, since I didn't know how to approach things any differently, my head was in the same place as I set off to graduate school. It's just another college experience, right? But as I have now said to many people, it is hard to argue that six years in one spot can be considered temporary.

In reality, it's not the time spent in Utah that has made it feel like home, but rather the collective events and milestones that have occurred here. Six years ago Kelly and I were living in separate states. Now we are married with a daughter that means the world to us. From mourning the loss of loved ones to growing our first tomato to bringing our daughter home from the hospital, the events that have transpired here, both momentous and mundane, make up a large percentage of our adult lives.

The fact that wacky wonderful Utah now feels like home made our decision to pack everything up and move to Maryland a tough one. A strange set of events led me to a job opportunity working at the Patuxent River Naval Air Station in Saint Mary's County, nested on a peninsula between the Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac River. It is much more rural than we are used to, but just as we learned the ins and outs of Salt Lake City, we are looking forward to all that this new area will offer. We definitely have our sights set on some sailing and taking plenty of trips to Washington DC (a little over an hour away).

This move is a little different than any we have done before. For one, our belongings no longer fit in the back of my truck. But more importantly, this is the first time we are moving somewhere without a preexisting notion of how long we will be there. While the thought of putting down roots so far from our family is scary, the idea of being somewhere long enough to buy our first house is equally exciting. Though, we are still giving ourselves a year of renting to make sure we didn't make a huge mistake.

Right now our plans are to start packing on the 1st of September, start driving on the 4th (Kelly is going to get a head start by flying to Louisville, KY), and arrive at our new home in Leonardtown, MD on the 7th.

Here's to our next big adventure.

Signs of the Times

Audrey's second tooth popped up and to celebrate, she decided to show us her newly learned signs. She takes artistic license with "dog", but we'll take it.

First Tooth

I had a chance to look through my baby book the last time I was in Washington. It was a fairly standard second child baby book (i.e., not very filled out), except when it came to the section on teeth. Being the son of a dentist, it read something like the following:

Age 6 months: Lower Right Central Incisor
Age 6.5 months: Lower Left Central Incisor
Age 7 months: Lower Left Lateral Incisor
Age 8 months: Lower Right Cuspid
etc.

Well, Audrey's primary lower right central incisor popped through a few days ago but her shyness for people looking in her mouth kept us from getting a picture until today. Here it is, between bites of grilled cheese, in all its super sharp glory: