Ladies' Weekend

 I had a fun overnight getaway in April with my friends Amanda and Jen. Jen and I drove down to Ogden, picked up Amanda, and continued on to Salt Lake. We each paid for one part of the trip: Jen reserved the Air BnB house that we stayed in, Amanda paid for dinner at The Melting Pot, and I got our tickets for the play School of Rock at the Hale Centre Theatre. 

The house that Jen reserved was incredibly beautiful! We each had our own bedroom, and we felt so pampered! The whole house was decorated so colorful and modern, and we enjoyed our night at this place! 

My bedroom. The bed ended up being too soft
for my back, so I joined Amanda in her king bed
midway through the night!

I loved these frames of paint chips in the hallway!
What an easy, classy way to add color to the home!

We went to dinner the first night at The Melting Pot. I'd never been there before--it's a fancy restaurant with a 3-course dinner of fondue. I'd heard a lot about it, and I was excited at the prospect of trying a new restaurant. However, the instant I walked in the doors, the smell made me sick--it's hard to explain the smell: it was like cooking fish and raw chicken and bloody red meat combined. It was strong and overpowering and I felt nauseous and my eyes watered. I felt terrible because it seemed like I was the only one in the place who felt that way. After we got seated, I stuffed my nostrils with bits of the napkin, and it was slightly better. 

Our 3-course meal consisted of bread and vegetables in a melted cheese sauce as the first course, meats and vegetables with a variety of dipping sauces as the main course, and fruit and desserts in melted chocolate as the dessert course. It was a very interesting meal; I've never done fondue in my life! I loved the appetizer round and the dessert round, but the entree course took forever for all 3 of us to cook our different meats and vegetables on the pan, so I wasn't a huge fan of it. However, we had a fun evening together, and we had fun with our pleasant waiter, too. 

The next morning, we tried to find a good place to eat breakfast, but we struggled due to a marathon that apparently was routed through the streets of SLC, and so many roads were blocked off and the traffic patterns were bad, which made us struggle to reach the breakfast places we wanted to go to, and even when we did arrive, the lines were too long and we didn't have enough time to wait. We scrapped our plans and went to a McDonald's instead, and then headed to Trader Joe's to do some grocery shopping. 

Afterwards, we went to a matinee performance of School of Rock. It was a fun play, and I loved seeing all the talented children as they performed: singing, playing instruments, and acting. It was so cool! I love watching plays at the Hale's Theatre in the round, and it was wonderful to watch the show with two of my dearest friends, and knowing they enjoyed the show just as much as I did!

After the play, our fantastic ladies weekend sadly ended and we headed home. I so much enjoyed my time with my friends! I hope we make this an annual tradition!

24 Years Together

We didn't make big plans for our Anniversary this year, because we were both going to be busy on our actual Anniversary weekend, but then plans changed, and we ended up celebrating twice, which was magical! For our 24th Anniversary, I present 24 photos of how we casually celebrated quite contentedly!

The first weekend of April, the weekend prior to our actual Anniversary, we went camping down the Salmon River by Panther Creek. We took the trailer and camped right along the creek. It was absolutely beautiful weather, and we enjoyed our overnight trip tremendously! 

After we arrived on Saturday afternoon, we drove about 5 miles up the canyon, hillside, and over the ridge to reach Panther Creek Hot Springs. I read that the best time to go would be the springtime when the hot spring source would be mixed with the spring water runoff to make the water a more soakable temperature, which is why we decided it would be a good spot for our April Anniversary destination this year. Neither of us had been there before, and we were both happily surprised about how easy it was to access. There's a pullout for parking, and we walked about half a mile to find the hot water source that comes right out of the rocky hillside. The hot water trickles down the rocks and flows into a stream called "Big Creek". There used to be a hot pool right on the rocky hillside, but the wildfire there about 10 years ago washed it out. We walked downstream from the source for about another 3/4 of a mile and found a man-made small dam with a large soakable pool that we sat in for a long time. It was quite lovely!  

The hot water source as seen from the access road above. 

Where the hot water comes from

Part of the rubble on the hillside around the water source

It flows down the hillside to this stream "Big Creek"

The dammed creek created a bit of a waterfall

The dammed edge next to the rocky wall
created a nice soaking pool.

After we soaked, we drove back out, enjoying the views on the drive. We changed our clothes into dry ones when we got back to the trailer, and then we drove down along the Salmon River to eat dinner at the Ram's Head restaurant. 

On Sunday morning, we drove back up to the hot springs, and soaked in a few smaller pools that are much closer to the hot water source. We decided we liked the deeper pool further downstream that we'd soaked in the previous evening more, but this was a much shorter walk to reach! After soaking that morning, we relaxed back at the trailer for a while before heading back home. It was a wonderful first camping experience for this year.

The following weekend, our actual anniversary weekend, I took one of our boys to a Dr. appointment in Idaho Falls on Friday, and then Josh was scheduled to drive an all-day track meet in Montana on Saturday, and I was going to the track meet with my friend Whitney to watch Kanyon and her son Sean. However, after the track team left early that morning, they received word that the track meet in Hamilton was cancelled due to snow. Josh texted me after they reached the top of Lost Trail Pass that they were on their way back. Whitney and I hadn't even left yet, thankfully. Josh and I we decided we could make last-minute plans after all for our anniversary. I looked at several options that were all unavailable, and ended up renting a little AirBnB cabin near Darby, Montana. After Josh got home later that morning, we left for our spur-of-the-moment trip. 

We drove up to Hamilton for a late lunch at Nap's Grill, and walked around and shopped at some of the cute stores downtown, and then we drove back to Darby and checked into the super cute cabin!

We had both packed books, and we basically sat and laid around all that evening and the next morning reading. The cabin was in a quiet, remote neighborhood. All the views from the windows were gorgeous with the surrounding trees, and it started snowing that evening, which was so inviting. It felt so cozy inside, and it was truly a magical experience. Josh dreams of one day owning a mountain cabin, so he was especially happy. 

We woke up the next morning to a soft blanket of snow outside. We slept in, and lounged around all morning. We made our own breakfast in the cute, tiny kitchen and then stayed as long as possible before we needed to check out. 

For days, weeks, and months afterward, we both reflected on how much we enjoyed this anniversary tremendously--it was so good for both of us to have unstructured downtime in the middle of a busy spring. We realize that the older we get, the less we need in order to have a pleasant time away, and this weekend was truly the perfect getaway!

Easter 2022

Easter is the one time the Perkins family all gets together every year. It's been weird the past few years with the pandemic, either with not having it altogether or altering the annual traditions, but things finally felt back to normal this year at the Easter get-together!  We ate the traditional meal, opened the traditional scripture eggs, had our traditional Easter egg hunt, and played the traditional Saran Wrap game. I really liked the normalcy of it; I just love family traditions--can't you tell?! 

Highlights of this year's Easter:

1. Going out to dinner with my parents to Texas Roadhouse on Saturday. My dad ordered "Prime Rib" (which is what Josh got). My dad was thinking it was the best kind of ribs, and was so sad when he didn't get the meat on the ribs (which is what Kanyon got). It was funny!

2. We took my mom to an Escape Room in Logan on Saturday night. She absolutely loved it! However, the twins said it was the first and last time they wanted to go to an escape room with Josh and I! We were in a two separate jail cells but had to solve the problem together. It got a little stressful, but thankfully we figured it out with just 5 seconds to spare! 

3. We went to church with my parents. My mom was so happy to have us there with her in their new ward. 

4. I loved playing Dr. Mario on the wii with my sons and parents and siister!

5. Josh found a gold egg and I found a silver one at the Easter Egg Hunt!

6. Having my mom play the saran wrap game with the adults was hilarious! Especially when Bryce was going crazy with the saran wrap whipping it around right next to her. And Josh got the center prize of the saran wrap ball, which he was stoked about!

7. Mick gave my dad a birthday gift of a picture book of the song "'Bill Grogan's Goat": a song my dad taught us all when we were kids. It was so fun recounting the song and the childhood memories!