Mat & Amie Levine

We spent a wonderful 5 days near Phoenix, Arizona visiting with my family as we prepared for Rachel’s wedding day. Once again, we rented a large house so must of us could stay together. Honestly, it is an awesome way to get together. Much better than all of us having separate hotel rooms and trying to meet up and overwhelming the dear family members who actually live there. (We are a big family when we all get together!)

About 3 adults and 3 kids jumped in the pool.  It was cold, so there wasn’t a lot of swimming going on.  Oscar was one who was willing to jump in.  Shaelea and Abbie did as well.  But then Shaelea was sick for rest of the weekend. 

Me and my three beautiful sisters.

It was a wonderful trip to see family.  Thanks Rachel and Zac for providing us with an event for us to all attend!

Zac and Rachel’s wedding turned out beautiful.  We were worried while setting up that it might have to be held indoors because it was raining.  But luckily it cleared up for a few hours for their wedding pictures and the ceremony!

The little nieces were in love in with Rachel!  To see more pictures of the beautiful day and all the wonderful people who came to help celebrate, click here.

We spent about 10 days in Florida exploring the Everglades and The Keys.  Five days of our trip was spent taking a fire training course, which was a lot of fun.  When I get some photos from a crew mate I will post them.  But when we weren’t in training, we were out taking advantage of all the ranger-led programs, such as this canoe ride through a mangrove.

It was a great time of year to see lots of birds, as well as alligators, crocodiles, and manatees.  (We didn’t get a photo of the manatee, it was an unexpected sighting!)

Double Crested Cormorant

Anhinga (this bird is awesome, because it will dive under water to get fish and will stay under for quite awhile.)

Tri-Colored Heron

Night Heron (not seen very frequently)

Wood Stork (endangered species, luckily the Everglades has quite a few of them)

Baby Alligators (We saw them on a ranger-led night walk, there were about 10 of them.  So cute!)

Hanging out at the John Pennekampe State Park.  It was a bit chilly and choppy that day, so the snorkeling was not that great.  But it was beautiful to see the ocean.

Blue Heron with some dinner

We saw LOTS of alligators.

It was an amazing trip with lots of really cool sightings.  I’ve put a lot of pictures up here, but you can see more at http://www.flickr.com/photos/amie/sets/72157623323172097/.

We had Gram over for a salmon chowder and freshly baked bread dinner the other night.  She was the first guest to sit at our new dinner table.  Thus the historic photo.  The salt and pepper shakers are really taking over the photo, but it was nice of Gram and Mat to let me take a photo.

We were driving the last stretch home to Asheville when it started sleeting in Knoxville.  We had heard from Mat’s family that there was a winter storm advisory going on that day, but we weren’t worried as we’d done lots of winter driving out West.  As we got about 10 or so miles from the turn-off for Johnson City traffic slowed to a crawl and then stopped.  We forgot about the “other driver aspect”.  So we spent 4 hours going 7 miles to get off at an exit.  We passed by many cars that had slid off the road and weaved through jack-knifed trailers to make it at least to a gas station to get an update on the road conditions and found that they had closed I-26.  (We were only 1 and half hours or less from Asheville.)

So we went to some hotels and found out the ones that allowed for pets were full.  We went to the only restaurant at that exit, had some dinner and then slept in the parking lot with a nice street light in our window.  Luckily, we had our down sleeping bags to cozy up in while sitting up in our seats.  We were packed so full that we couldn’t recline.  Maddy was a trooper though and just slept.  We woke up in the morning and headed to Mat’s parents house because most of Asheville was without power.  We spent the night there enjoying the heat from the fireplace and then went to check on our house the next day.  And lo and behold, the power had just come back on.  Yay!  So we were able to unpack and be home finally.

Going for a walk in the snow out at Mat’s parents house.  They were without power for over a week!

Home sweet home.  Now we have to wait for it to warm up and melt all the snow off in the mountains to go ride.

We headed from California back to Ogden, UT to spend an evening of sushi and comedy with our friends. The next day we headed to Utah Valley and spent a couple of days visiting with Phil’s family and mom for a bit on Saturday. We also stopped in and saw my Aunt Carol and Uncle Dennis to thank her for the beautiful quilt she and my mom had made for us.

Then we visited some friends in Salt Lake City.  We were lucky enough to get a tour of the beautifully renovated Marriott Library where I worked for many years.

We also spent a day snowboarding at Snowbird.  We had a beautiful, bluebird day to enjoy some turns on the mountain.

After that we started working our way back home to Asheville.  We were able to meet up with some friends for dinner in Boulder on our way through Colorado.

As always, traveling and seeing new places and old friends is amazing.  But we sure were happy when we got home to our little farmhouse!

While in the Pacific Northwest, we had amazingly beautiful cool weather. Our friends were kind enough to show us around the Olympic Peninsula. We went mountain biking in the mountains, hiking along the Hoh River Valley and along the coast.  It was awesome.  In the picture above you can see how green it is even at the beginning of winter!

After spending a week there, we went to Portland, Oregon.  Malia’s sister and husband live there.  We rode our bikes down to the speedway for the light festival in 20 degree weather.  The ride itself was a lot of fun, the lights were so-so.  Malia’s sister and husband bundled their young daughter up and loaded her into their cargo bike…he owns the company metrofiets.  The bikes are sweet.  We checked out the neighborhood’s old school that was closed back in the 50s or early 60s and it has since been remodeled into a hotel that had a public bath and restaurants that was open to the neighborhood residents.  I thought it was such an awesome concept!  (Instead of tearing down an old building to build a new one!)

The next day we headed down to Crescent City, CA to check out northern California and the famed Redwood trees.  We took Maddy for a walk in the Prairie Creek State Park.  It was so amazing to walk in the forest with such massive trees.

We also took Maddy to an awesome beach, where they allowed the dogs to roam and play with each other.  It was a great way to stretch Maddy’s legs after hanging out in the backseat of the car for SO many miles!

When we began our trip, we didn’t quite realize how many miles we would cover, but in the end we figured it was over 7,500 miles. We thought it might be Roja’s third and last cross-country trip, but she proved to be quite the champion car and is still rallying around!

We made it to Richfield in time for a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner with my family.  The next day we went for a hike with everyone who wanted to go up a canyon behind Spencer’s house.

We also spent some time playing Rock Band with the kids and Mat really honed his rockstar personality!

Then we headed back to Ogden to pick up Maddy from our friends who were willing to watch her.  We all hopped in the car for a leg of the trip took us to Seattle, WA.  We camped in a small state park in Oregon where we were the only people staying for the night!

I’m going to Florida for probably the shortest trip ever. I am flying into the Orlando airport on Friday afternoon in order to hop in a car the next day to drive back to Asheville! Mat’s co-worker is coming back early for a job interview which means he would have been driving back the 12 hours by himself. So, thanks to Allegiant Air and their $50 tickets I am gonna go on a road trip with Mat before our big road trip out west! And when I say before, I mean one day before!

Hard to believe, but it’s been over 4 weeks since Mat headed down to Florida for some extra work. I’ve been staying busy up here and can hardly believe that we have 2 weeks until we are heading out to Utah. Yay! We are looking forward to the travels. Check out flickr, if you haven’t been there for awhile as Mat has been taking some amazing pictures down in Florida. Twelve more days until Mat comes home. It’s almost like the countdown for Christmas!