Birthday 2011

 

Last year for my birthday, Austin was on a business school trip, so I celebrated my 30th at home...alone...no, wait, Carson was there. I spent my 30th birthday at home, making cupcakes with a 2 year old. Fitting, I suppose. What did I expect? I'm a mom! I dont get to have wild, gallivanting parties anymore.  But this year I hoped for something a little less like what I do every other day of the week.

When I was a single undergrad at BYU,  I had some crazy dates.  Two I remember most vividly involved driving [seemingly] randomly thru the mountains behind Provo.  (The drive was vivid.  The dates were not.  I'm not entirely sure I remember who all I was with each time...)  I just knew that I had gone up Hobble Creek Canyon near Springville and popped out at Squaw Peak just north of Provo.  I didn't know how or what road to take, or whether said road was passable by a mere Subaru, but I knew that's what I wanted to do for my birthday. 

It took some digging (on the Internet), but I found the road and convinced Austin that we could do it.  He was skeptical.  He said he thought he'd driven that way before and had to ford streams and climb big rocks.  I wasn't easily dismayed.  I figured if we had to turn around, we'd turn around.  But we could at least try. 

There were a few dodgy spots (see picture of Austin hoisting large rocks above), but overall, the road was quite passable.  (We actually came across a woman driving a mini-van full of apparently terrified passengers coming from the other direction.  So apparently we didn't even need the Subaru to make the drive.) 

(Oh, the passengers were rightfully terrified. The woman was driving the van was WAAY closer to the edge of the road than was necessary to clear our car.  I think she had about 2 feet on our side, but her tires were literally hanging over the edge of the cliff on the other side.  I thought for sure they were going over and felt the conflicting urges to A) drive fast and get them as far behind us as possible so I didn't have to see it, and B) reach my arm out the window and grab onto something to hold them on the road.  We finally made it past each other safely, and in the post-adrenaline letdown, it all seemed terribly funny--I have this image of a squat, pig-faced woman, clinging to a steering wheel, grinning at us, car practically teetering over the edge, passengers gritting their teeth and leaning toward the road--but then I found myself nervous and praying that they would make it home safely and we wouldn't return home to hear news reports of a fatal crash on the Squaw Peak Road.  So far, so good.)

Anyway, we picked up some yummy sandwiches from a local deli (should've eaten them first--they weren't great cold--but still reasonably tasty), dropped the kids off with my friend Amanda, and wandered off into the wild mountainous yonder.  I gave her a rough estimate of how long we'd be gone, and just hoped we'd be close to that time.  She's a good sport.

The scenery was astonishing.  As mentioned in a previous post, the leaves in the Wasatch were remarkable this year.  And the sunset over the valley was really pretty too.  And isn't that man there handsome?  :)

We made it to what we thought was Rock Canyon by nightfall, but what turned out to actually probably be Slate Canyon.  We had to drive the rest in the dark, but that just meant that we arrived at the Squaw Peak overlook after dark.  This is a well-known as a make-out spot in the valley--one which I never availed myself of during my single days.  I won't say whether or not we made out that night, but just consider what a shame it would have been to waste such a perfect opportunity!

After picking up the kids and putting them to bed, we had Part 2 of my birthday celebration:  I had purchased the DVD of the Les Miserables 25th Annivesrsary concert and wanted to watch it with Austin--to pretend we were actually getting to go see it in a theatre.  Our computer screen in our living room isn't perhaps as nice as an actual theatre, but we made do. 

And it was as beautiful as it should have been.  Far and away, the musical is the best retelling of Victor Hugo's masterpiece.  No movie has ever come anywhere near the beauty, intensity, pain, spirituality, and depth of that book.  But the music and lyrics of this play are so phenomenal.  I get swallowed up every time I listen to or watch it all the way thru. 

And that is the story of how I turned 31.