Peru Day 4

We took our time that morning getting ready and then piled in the "bus" passing other groups hiking along the way. When we finally got to the pools we spent some time soaking in the water, took a shower, and then had lunch at that same spot.

The view from the pools was incredible. We got to try a traditional Peruvian dish called 'ceviche' for lunch. I couldn't stomach it and passed mine to Scott I think. After our relaxing "spa" day, we piled back into our "bus" and made our way to the train station. Our travel guide jumped on the train with our extra bags, while the rest of us hiked alongside the train tracks until we reached a little town tucked in the mountains known as Aguas Calientes. This town sits just outside of the entrance to Machu Picchu and is such a charming little city. Looking back on it, I wish we had had more time to spend in that little touristy town. It reminded us all of a little Park City and maybe that's why I loved it so much.

We checked into our hostel, called home to our Reesie girl (because we finally had internet--yay!), and then went out to dinner. It was such a relief to eat food not cooked by our traveling chefs and not left wondering if we would end up hugging the toilet by morning. After dinner we walked back to our hostel, but not before getting some gelato along the way. The next morning we had to be to the bus stop (actual "buses" this time) by 4:30 the next morning. It's possible it was more like 4:45 AM. My memory is fading, but I do know it was early. Nilton, our hiking guide, wanted to make sure we were at the front of the line, because those at the front would be the first let into the grounds at Machu Picchu.

Peru Day 3

I've had this blog post composed for a while now. But to be honest, sifting through photos and making sure they are all the correct size is so daunting and overwhelming that I've put it off. I'm really, really wanting to get into blogging again. I have taken maybe 10 photos on my real camera since the beginning of the year, and I really feel like blogging would encourage more photo taking, and in turn more documenting of our little family. And with a new baby set to make his big debut in just shy of two months, I think it's high time I start doing those things again.

So, onto day three of our Peru trip...

In the early morning hours of day three I heard my mom and brother's tent, who happened to be camping next to us, quickly open and soon after my brother began to spew. (How do you nicely say "throw up"? I'm not sure there is a way to put it eloquently.) After a little bit he crawled back into his tent and zipped it back up again. Maybe an hour or so later the same thing happened. Only this time Scott and his weak stomach couldn't handle hearing my brother out there by himself and Scott decided to join him. I later found out it wasn't just his weak stomach, but he was in fact sick too. The two joke to this day that they are throw-up brothers (like blood brothers) and are true family members now. I think they may have even high-fived each other while they were hunched over on their hands and knees sharing that experience together that night. We found out later that morning after waking up that our tour guide also had a case of the throw-ups in the middle of the night. I was feeling pretty lucky I had escaped the food poisoning as we had deemed it, until we began our hike early that morning and it hit me too.

That day of hiking was so hard. I can't remember how much elevation we gained, but the entire first half of the day was spent climbing straight up the mountain. Combine the intensity of that day with the looming fact that about half of us had been plagued with food poisoning, and it made for a pretty physically rough day. The landscape was beautiful, but because Scott and I were both sick we don't have a ton of photos to show for the first part of the hike. Most of the photos in this post (if not all) are borrowed from others.

When we reached the summit of our climb it was freezing and began snowing. I was so cold (and still not feeling great) and was so anxious to begin trekking down the mountain again. We finally reached our lunch spot where the cooks had food waiting for us, only none of us were ready to eat the food again after the experience we had with the meal the night before. I remember feeling so bad that they had prepared this big lunch for us (every meal was huge and had so many different components), but I just couldn't bring myself to eat much. None of us could. I think I maybe had a few bites of quinoa soup (so much quinoa soup on this trip that none of us wanted quinoa for awhile after we got home). As we left lunch it began raining and we began hiking down the mountain again. Not much longer the sun came out and we began quickly shedding our clothes. It was so interesting to me that we began the day freezing with gloves and hats, and then by the end of the day we were in short sleeve shirts and applying sunscreen to our bodies. The second part of our day consisted of hiking down the edge of the Amazon forest. It was all so beautiful.

Not only was this day the hardest physically, it was also the longest. We didn't arrive at our campsite until dark. Once again food was waiting for us, but all I really remember eating that night was popcorn and drinking hot chocolate. We decided that evening that we were going to modify the next day (day 3 of the hike, day 4 of our trip) a little bit. Day 3 was supposed to be another long day of hiking with our final destination being Aguas Calientes, where we would stay the night in a hostel before visiting Machu Picchu the next morning. However, we decided after such a hard day we would schedule a "bus" to pick us up in the morning and drive us part of the way to some natural pools. This was probably the best idea ever and none of us regretted cutting out a little bit of hiking that day.

A new year

As I sit here and reflect on the past year I'm amazed at how much actually happened and all that was accomplished. It isn't until I sit down and really think about it that I realize it wasn't just another year. 

In 2015:

Reese turned one year.

We visited the Omaha zoo, a lot. (Whenever I'm asked what I miss about that place I respond quickly and without hesitation, "the zoo!")

We made a quick weekend road trip to Kansas City, Missouri.

We moved back to Utah for the summer for Scott's internship at the Attorney General's office in downtown Salt Lake.

We left Reese with family for nine days while Scott and I, along with all of my siblings and my mom, traveled to Peru where we hiked to Machu Picchu.

We purchased a hiking pack and hiked as much as we could after returning to Utah with Reese in tow.

Scott found out he had been accepted into the S.J. Quinney College of Law program at the U of U as a transfer student for his second year of law school.

We left Reese, once again with family, while we trekked out to Nebraska once last time (along with Scott's parents who were so awesome and we are forever indebted to) to pack, clean, and move all of our belongings back to Utah.

We celebrated six years of marriage with sushi.

We spent lots of time with family.

We celebrated Reese's second Christmas. This one was so much more fun than last year's, and I'm already so excited for the next one when Reese will be a year older and we'll have another child to celebrate with.

Which means we also found out we are expecting another baby due May 30th!

Oh, and Scott completed another semester of law school. This event is at the top of my list every year because it makes us one step closer to being done with school. I think I may cry when that day finally comes. 

A little about Christmas this year...

We've known for an entire year what we wanted to get Reese for Christmas. That present being a play kitchen. I knew I wanted something made of wood and something I wouldn't hate having set up in my someday house (you know, the one I pin on Pinterest). I also knew I didn't want to spend a ton on it knowing that all of the extras (pots, pans, food, utensils, etc.) would add up in cost. So back in maybe October I started searching the KSL ads for a used, wooden kitchen. When I found the kitchen below for sale for $40 I jumped on it. I deconstructed the entire thing, sanded it (because I just couldn't do a pink kitchen), and painted the entire thing white. Scott helped me add contact paper to the counter surface of the kitchen that resembled marble, and then we put it all back together. It was probably more work than it was worth, but I'm pleased with it and I know Reese enjoys it too. The other night I asked her if she wanted to help me make cookies. She got really excited, let out a little, "yay", and then told me to, "come on!" She began heading downstairs where her play kitchen is set up ready to "make" play cookies with dad while I proceeded to the kitchen and made the real deal. 

Here's a little before and after:

Peru: Day 2

We went to Peru back in May, so seeing as we are now in December my mind is beginning to slip and the events are beginning to fade somewhat. I can remember while we were in Peru someone mentioned day 2 of our trip, which also happened to be the first day of our trek, and even then I had the hardest time remembering exactly what happened that day. I think it's because day 3 of our trip was so excruciatingly hard and the events of that day trumped anything and everything that may have happened on day 2.

What I do remember of day 2 is the "bus" picking us up at our hostel at 4:30AM and driving us up as far as the road would take us. I can remember the driver being a little scary on the road. He was driving a stick shift, and from what we could all tell it had to have been one of his first times doing so. It was still dark out and my eyes were still so tired, probably from lack of sleep since the trip began, but I remember my brother-in-law, who happens to speak spanish, leaning towards the front and telling the driver something. "More gas, more gas," he said. In spanish, not english, of course. At one point during the drive the sliding door flung open and one of the natives in the car with us jumped out to place a rock behind the back tire. We were stalled out on a steep hill at the time and there were cars trailing behind us, honking at us over and over again. The driver's rock trick worked and we were able to "safely" make it to the start of our trek.

The bus took us as far as it could go and then we got out and had breakfast at a little shop. After breakfast they crammed all of us (there were several other tour groups with our same tour company) into the bed of a truck and started up the dirt road. We hung onto a flimsy wooden pole that hung from the top of the truck as the vehicle climbed up a bumpy terrain for about 30 minutes.

This is the part that is a little hazy for me for some reason. We hiked. That's all I really remember. I don't remember what the landscape looked like during that time. I mean, I know it was beautiful, but all I remember are what the photos have to show for it. We reached our camp around 3 in the afternoon. Our tents had all been set up and our cooks were finishing making our lunch. Yes, we had cooks to make all of our meals. And yes, we had people to put up and take down our camping gear. It was my kind of camping. But honestly, I don't think any of us would have had the energy to do all of that on top of all of the hiking we were doing. After eating we were told we had to climb up a super steep mountain just behind our campsite. It wasn't technically part of our "hike" to Machu Picchu, but we were told by our hiking guide it was more of a test to see how we would fair the next day, because the next day would be hard. That was a scary thought because that "little" hike was really, really hard. At the very top of our mini hike that afternoon was a little lake. We took a few photos there before returning back to camp where our cooks were making dinner for us. After dinner we were all so tired. I can't remember what time it was when we all went to bed, but I know it was early.

The man in the middle in black was our tour guide. His name is Nilton and we all loved him. I think he was telling us about mint here and how it helps with altitude sickness.

 Not the best capture of Scott, but this shows there were stray dogs everywhere, even up on the trail! This photo also clearly shows how hard this hike was by the sweat-stained back of my sister's shirt. 

 All of us at the top of our "mini" hike by the lake. It was beautiful. We heard and saw a little avalanche in the mountains seen just above us in this picture.

The middle of that night is when the fun began. However, since it was technically morning I'll include those events in day 3.

Peru Day One

This trip posted below was one of the highlights of our summer. It's probably one of the highlights of my life. Traveling the world and seeing how others live fascinates me. My one hope in this life is to travel the world with my children and help them open their eyes' to the world around them.

.....

It was the last flight of our journey and my eyes were so tired, but I couldn't shut them for fear of missing out. Just outside the window to my left were the most beautiful and majestic mountains towering over the ground below them. Maybe it's the fact that for the past eight months my eyes had been longing to see something a little less flat like they were accustomed to in the state of Nebraska, but those mountains were for lack of a better saying, "a sight for sore eyes". I remember silently thinking to myself, "how can there not be a God?" over and over in my mind as I looked out the window at the beautiful mountains just below me. I found myself silently asking myself that same question time and time again during our trip to Peru.

When we finally returned from our nine day trip and everyone asked us how it was, we all replied with the same answer: hard. Everyone seemed to be caught a little off guard and somewhat confused by our answer. Honestly, I'm not sure any of us had really anticipated how physically demanding this trip was going to be. We went to Peru to see Machu Picchu. But, we went to Peru to hike to Machu Picchu. We hiked close to 40 miles in three days before finally arriving at our end destination. And honestly, those three days of strenuous hiking made visiting Machu Picchu a little sweeter for all of us.

Day one quickly opened my eyes to how the rest of our trip would play out. After landing in Cusco and grabbing our bags, our travel agent picked us up at the airport and took us straight to our hostel where we dropped our bags and walked down the street to a little LDS church in the middle of a busy town. We spent the next hour there before heading back to the hostel. We grabbed some authentic street pork tamales on the way back and literally only had time to eat and maybe take a potty break before we headed back out again. We then walked to a local market to do some souvenir shopping. A poncho and hat for my baby back home were the only things on my list.

This photo below was taken just outside of the church. The guy on the right end was our travel agent.

These first few photos were taken in the Plaza de Armas, the center of Cusco, on our way to the Mercado where we did our shopping.

After spending some time there, we walked back to our hostel where we met up with Maria Christina who took us on a walking tour of the city of Cusco. We visited a couple local churches and then took a "bus" as they called it, but really it was more of a van, to some local Incan ruins called Sacsayhuaman (pronounced "sexy woman", or at least that's how we kept jokingly referring to it as).

Maria Christina is the cute girl in the middle. This photo was taken in the Plaza de Armas.

I totally chickened out after seeing how much speed Scott and my brother gained going down these natural slides at Sacsayhuaman. 

(Guinea Pig. This is a popular dish down in Peru. I didn't have any. I couldn't even look at it, so I made my family move it to the other side of the table while I ate my stuffed pepper that night for dinner.)

After returning back to our hostel, we went to dinner and then called it a night seeing as we had to be up and out the door by 4:30AM the next morning. That next morning was the beginning of our trek, the real reason we went to Peru.