Mt. Stuart

Last weekend Peter climbed Mt. Stuart with my uncle Darrell and a few other guys. For those of you who do not know, Mt. Stuart is the largest piece of exposed granite in the United States and is 9, 415 ft high! (Don't worry I didn't know that until I just looked it up on google)

Anyways Peter seriously had such a great time with these guys, even though twenty minutes into the hike he got some of the worst blisters I have ever seen. I'm glad I was completely clueless as to how crazy this climb was while they were gone or else I would have been worried sick the whole time. I hope this is the craziest thing Peter does with Darrell while we're here but you never really know what to expect sometimes when you're living with The Smarts. Really though I'm glad that Peter is enjoying his time here just as much as I am. We really love Washington and the adventures we are having here.

Here are some pictures from the trip:

Peter, Brad and Darrell

This picture shows the beginning of the two day, 18 mile climb.

After hearing all of the stories about sleeping on the ground, near death experiences, eating pre-made meals that you just add water to, blisters and much more I asked Peter, "So was it even fun at all?" His response was "Oh it was a blast! I had such a good time!" Somehow that didn't make very much sense to me, but I'm glad they all enjoyed it.

For the record the guys invited me to come with, but I'm pretty sure it would be more miserable for whoever went with me than anything. As I have said before in previous posts, I am not exactly what I would call a "wilderness girl". Needless to say while Peter was gone I went shopping and enjoyed sleeping in my nice warm bed.

Also I finally found a job here! Woo hoo! I'm working at a grocery store deli/ Subway. Another thing I really like about Washington is how high their minimum wage is! Is it sad that minimum wage makes me excited? Anyways I'm just happy I found a job so I can stay somewhat busy.We love it here!

Yay for our temporary home of WA!

Half Marathon!

On September 10th, Peter and I ran the Salmon Half Marathon. It was the first half marathon I have ever ran and I loved it! I loved doing it with my hubby too. I did a lot better than I thought I would and when it was over I just felt so proud of myself. I'm not going to lie, it was absolutely the hardest thing I have ever done. Although I felt like I was going to die on the last two miles the feeling of crossing the finish line was so fulfilling. Peter was the 13th one to finish the race which is great! I was so proud of him! I felt bad that I wasn't there for him at the finishline when he was done, but he was so supportive and was there right when I finished. Such a good bonding experience to do together! So happy we did this together and I can't wait for the next one!

Now we are enjoying our time in Washington for the semester. I am having the best time with my Grandparents hearing about all of their stories from their lives. Peter is busy with his internship and I just started a nanny job for the rest of the month. We are really enjoying this new adventure in our lives.

Work and Play

For the past two weeks we have been building a patio for Peter's parents. I must say it was quite the project and took a lot of manual labor. Luckily I have a super smart and handy husband who does very well with these kinds of things. I never knew how much work it took to build what seems like such a simple patio but it was a good learning experience and hard work just makes us stronger right? Well... at least after the soreness wears off.

Here is the finished Product! We are super proud of how it turned out and we are really excited to have a Labor day BBQ on it! I love reaping the benefits of hard work.

Also we babysat some of our super cute nieces and nephews for a week while Peter's brother and his wife went on an anniversary vacation together. They have the sweetest three kids and we had so much fun spending time with them. Especially since usually we are so far away and we hardly ever get to see them!

It was so cute to see Peter with them, he is definitely going to be a really good dad someday. They just adore their "Uncle Peter!"

Training for our half marathon is still very much in progress. Since before now I have not spent a whole lot of time in Charlotte I don't know my way around very well. Peter was on the Cross country team in High School so he knows lots of running trails. One day I was going running by myself so Peter drew a little map on my arm so I wouldn't get lost. I felt like such a little kid! But it was pretty funny and actually a pretty good idea, hey I didn't get lost! So it worked out pretty well!

These last few pictures are just some fun ones of what Hibbards do best, having fun!

Girls just wanna have fun!

Sister- in- law bonding! Gotta love it!

Update!

I know I have not been keeping up with my blog lately but it's because there has been so much going on! First of all we have moved out of our apartment in Rexburg and we are spending the summer in North Carolina with Peter's family. We have been having so much fun with them. Last week Peter's dad was deployed so there was a lot going on with that, most of the family was in town and we all made the best of the situation and had a great time together.

Last week Peter and I also house sat for a family while they went on vacation. This family lives in a neighborhood where everyone flies their own personal plane or helicopter to work everyday, crazy huh!? I have definitely been getting a whole new taste of culture living out here for a little and I love it! I'm just sitting here taking it all in! Peter has a full time job so he wakes up early everyday and goes to work. We are so grateful that he has been able to find work for the short amount of time we will be here.

After this summer we will be moving to Yakima, Washington where Peter will be doing an internship with my uncle. We are so excited for all of these great opportunities being thrown our way and can't wait to see where they take us!

Picture Perfect Designs

This semester Peter has been in a class called IBC, basically you take 4 classes all at the same time and those are supposed to be the only classes you take for the semester. The classes all work together for business majors and kind of make one collaborative class. At the beginning of the semester everyone is put into groups/ companies. They objective of the class is to build a successful business. Most of the businesses stay on campus and try to sell to students. Peter's company is called Picture Perfect Designs. This Picture is of their booth on campus, Peter is very proud of it because he designed it.

Their company chose to do Mod Podge pictures. You can choose to get your own personalized pictures or they had some of Temples and pictures of Christ that you could just buy right then. They were very successful, Peter is so excited to be done with it because he was always Mod Podging pictures for the company. It was good that they were so successful though because there are some companies that did really bad and didn't even break even with their fundings. I'm really proud of Peter and all of the hard work he put into his classes this semester.

Happy 4th of July!

To celebrate the fourth, we headed down to Utah to spend time with family. We had lunch at Blue Lemon with Jason, Shanna and the kids. Have I ever mentioned how much I love all of my nieces and nephews? We walked into Blue Lemon and Joshua yelled "Peter!" and Livi yelled "Tara!" and gave us big hugs. Nieces and nephews are the best! I also loved seeing Shanna and Jason. I can always use some girl talk and Peter loves talking to Jason about guy stuff, (water sports seems to be a popular topic this time of year). Now that they are living in Utah we see them so much more, we love it!

Seriously, I adore this little girl!

The rest of the weekend was spent with the Hibbards. We were excited because there is a good sized group of Hibbards that live in Utah and we had plans to get all together for the holiday. Peter was excited to see his extended family and I was excited to meet a few new faces. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures from the actual 4th of july, but we all had such a fun day! This included:

A water fight

Ultimate frisbee

Delicious food

Homemade rootbeer

Jet skiing

and of course watching fireworks

This weekend reminded us how grateful we are to live in this beautiful country and how blessed we are to have amazing families. 

Happy 4th of July everyone!

Kumbaya

Last weekend we went on our first camping trip together. The weather was amazing, the camp grounds were gorgeous and it was just so fun to spend time outside to kick off summer.

Look at our cute little tent! Can you believe we actually fit a queen sized air mattress in there!?

Our neighborhood for the weekend :)

We went on the prettiest hike with a river along the whole way.

Us girls

And the boys

It's been so long since the last I went camping, I forgot how much fun it is. There is something that is so relaxing about being away from homework and electricity. It was such a nice break.

 My favorite part of the whole weekend was when I came out of the very lady like porta potty and literally 15 feet away from me was a MOOSE! He was staring straight at me! Although I had just gone to the bathroom, I felt as though I was going to wet myself... my good friend Kelli was in the stall right next to me. I am still embarrassed about the way I reacted, but I began screaming my head off and pounding on her door to let me in. If this description doesn't show you my immense amount of bravery then I don't know what else will. Kelli then runs out of the stall and the situation get even better! We started chasing after the moose, (no I am not joking). Clearly I have not been around enough wild animals in my lifetime. Seriously now that the situation is over I realize how lucky (and dumb) we were that the moose didn't turn around and start charging us. I think he was pretty terrified after hearing the scream of death that came out of me just from seeing him...

It was such a good weekend! We loved spending time with friends and making memories together. 

Yay for camping!