Mesa Verde Thanksgiving

We spent Thanksgiving with Adam's extended family in St. George. Adam's aunt Shell and her husband have developed the best system for cooking a turkey. They wrapped the turkey in bacon and cooked it underground. It was so good people were picking off pieces as soon as it came out. The taste was worth burning fingers.

The turkey coming out of the pit where it was cooked.

Here's an example of what it looked like. The bacon off ours was eaten too quickly for any photos.

Friday morning we headed off to camp in Mesa Verde, Colorado with Sam and his girlfriend Carina. It was a 6 hour drive, but the scenery was beautiful. We stopped at Four Corners to be able to stand in New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona at the same time. It was cool to see the monument, though we felt robbed when they charged 5 dollars a person just to see the plaque.

Just one example of the beautiful scenery.

Adam and I have been wanting to go camping for a while. Since we have spent the last two summers out of the country we haven't ever been camping together. It's been over two years for both of us. It was fun to make hobo dinners and roast marshmallows. The downside was how cold it got at night.

On Saturday morning, we toured Mesa Verde National Park with the Anasazi cave dwellings. Most of the sites we went to were 90 percent original with very mild restoration work. There are over 600 cliff dwellings in the park, as well the remains of Mesa Top dwellings that pre-date the cave dwellings.

The Spruce Tree House: they believe it was a home site for 60 to 90 individuals. 

The Cliff Palace--home for the royalty

The Sunset House

The Spruce Tree House allows for self-guided tours while others are more restricted.

This is an entrance to a religious kiva. The wood and stone are original. They are still used by the Hopi Indians as religious site.

The inside of a kiva. The pit is used to house a fire.

How We Met

Adam and I met at a party in a cabin in Sundance two years ago this month. That's what I normally tell people while Adam enjoys telling the following details of how we met:

I was at the cabin party with my friend Brooke. The owner of the cabin, Brother Clive, was Adam's Seminary teacher. He came up and told Brooke that she should marry Adam because he was the best guy she would ever meet. He then turned to me and asked "are we cool?" because he thought I was jealous. I responded with "yes why wouldn't we be?" Brother Clive then said "you seemed jealous because I offered Adam to Brooke and not to you, but hey this is America you can fight each other for him." To which, I replied sarcastically "I would love to wrestle for him." We all laughed and Brother Clive walked away.

We continued talking, little did we know that Brother Clive was in the next room making space for a wrestling match. We were deciding to leave, when Brother Clive announced that we would be having a wrestling match. He then dragged me and Brooke into the center of the room and we had to wrestle for Adam.

Here's a picture sense I can't seem to get the video off Facebook.

Favorite Holiday

A friend recently reminded me that Halloween  and Day of the Dead used to be my favorite holidays. I do love how you can celebrate Halloween all month long. We have been pretty busy this month and didn't do anything to celebrate until this last week. We went to a costume party with Adam's cousins the day before Halloween and another with some of our friends on Halloween.

Since I already had a blue dress from our costume last year, I just made some ruby slippers from shoes we found at DI to be Dorthy. Adam loved how little he had to do to be the Cowardly Lion. Maybe I can use the dress again to be Alice in Wonderland next year haha.

Dorthy and the Cowardly Lion for this year.

Last year's costume, Belle and Gaston since Beast was much harder to pull off.

.

We also have been working on changing our Room of Requirement into an office. For those you have seen our second bedroom, it was full of any and everything you could ever need hence the name Room of Requirement.