The Wood Between the Worlds

Oh yes, we LOVE gelato. It is the perfect treat after a hike in Forest Park. The boys had orange chocolate. Brent dabbled in pistachio and I am preferential to the lemon-lime variety. Yum.

It is time to continue catching up on our summer adventures...so we got home from camping at the beach early Sunday morning and turned around to leave for Utah early Monday morning. Here's a rundown of the week:

July 7th: We drove ALL day.


July 8th: We were able to make it on time for my mom's birthday! She took the day off and we hung out with her all day and had dinner with my sisters at PF Changs.



July 9th: We went out to lunch at Barbacoa (our favorite Utah burrito) with Brent's parents in the afternoon.
In the evening, our friends the Sadlers had a pool party in our honor and invited as many of our old high school days friends who are still living in Utah. The kids had a great time swimming and playing with our friends' kids (which are now their friends). The adults spent the evening catching up and enjoying one another's company.


July 10th: Bountiful to Brighton:
We stopped to admire the view of the Great Salt Lake from the bench in Bountiful before we drove up to Brighton (one of my favorite places on earth). Brent's one goal for the Utah trip was to climb a mountain, so we took the boys and climbed Scott's Peak at Brighton. The boys did great! They hiked almost the whole way up by themselves. After the hike, we hit Brighton Camp (my old stomping ground). Every Thursday during the summer they have a devotional where former staff are invited to attend. We had the pleasure of eating dinner and catching up with old friends like Pika, Floss, Madison, Boo (everyone at Brighton chooses a made up camp name to go by at camp) & two of my old campers who spent the summer working at Brighton. Oh and we also bought a new car on this day. We got a better deal than we could have in Oregon.


July 11th: We took the family to Lagoon! Brent and I have not been to Lagoon in ages, and we hardly ever do stuff like this. The boys can actually ride most of the rides now, so that was a lot of fun to do as a family. Joshua gave each ride a check if he liked it and an X if he didn't like it. Most of the rides got checks. In the early evening, we took the boys back to my mom's house in Kaysville, ate dinner, and left the boys with my mom while Brent and I went back to Lagoon for a date. What a fun date! I think we rode Wicked, the new coaster 4 or 5 times. Highly recommend it, by the way.


July 12th: My mom had a lunch party at her house for my sisters and my aunt/counsin. It was fun to see everyone. My mom has turned her backyard into quite a fun place for the grandkids. In the evening, we went down to Draper to hang out with Brent's family. We got to spend time with Rebecca and her family before they headed out to Las Vegas to go house hunting. (They're moving down for dental school.)

July 13th: We went to church with Brent's parents (we had to assure our former ward members that, no we weren't moving back into Brent's parent's basement apartment), and then had dinner at Brent's sister's brand new house down in the far southern reaches of Utah County. It was a long drive, about an hour and a half south of Draper. But we love the Faber family and wanted to see their new baby and their new house, so we took the wonderful trip!

July 14th: Brent caught a plane in the morning and flew home so he could get back to work. After I took him to the airport, I met some old Brighton Camp friends at Sugar House Park. I am really glad that I have kept in touch with these girls over the years. I am so fond of the days we worked together and love everyone that I worked with. It was so awesome to see Kranzie, Risa, Ookie and Kit. (I sure hope that I didn't forget anyone). I missed everyone who couldn't make it. In the afternoon I had lunch at my cousin Jennifer's house in Cottonwood Heights also with my Aunt and Jennifer's three beautiful girls. It was nice to catch up with them and see their fun house.

July 15th: My mom took the day off work again and we spent time shopping, taking the kids to the Children's Museum at the Gateway and watching the kids play in the Olympic Fountain.

July 16th: My high school friends met again, during the day, this time with just the girls and kids. We went swimming again at the Sadler's pool. It was so nice to spend some quality time with Lesley and Steph.

July 17th: I met my step-sister Mindi at the park for a morning play date. Then we met some of the Jefferies sisters and cousins for a play date at Murray Pool. It was so good to see Wendy, Virginia and 9 months pregnant-Emily and to see how much their kids have grown! In the evening I was planning on going back up to Brighton Camp for another devotional with some more friends, but those plans were sadly cancelled because Toby had a scary accident at the pool. I turned away from him for a few seconds to help Joshua and Toby had made his way to deeper water and couldn't get out. I rushed over to grab him and he was fine, but shaken up for the rest of the evening. All was fine, but I really missed seeing the friends and was sorry I had to cancel on the plans (I was really looking forward to serenade with Risa, Echo and Pika).

July 18th: We made the long drive home, with just the kids and I. It went great! The boys were reading their books and I stopped in Twin Falls, Idaho to buy a book on tape. We arrived home without any problems that night. The boys were angels.



It was a really nice, long, action-packed trip. We were glad that we got to do so much and see so many people!
If you got this far, thanks for reading my boring travel log!

My friend who we went camping with also happens to be an extremely talented photographer. She did our family pictures on the beach. It was so much fun! I highly recommend the experience. If you are in the Portland area and want hundreds of professional photos on a CD to do whatever you want with them, for only $200...then contact Tara. Her website is

I can't believe that we have already hit the 9 year mile stone! We had a nice date. We ate fresh NW salmon at the Multnomah Lodge in the Colombia River Gorge, we went trail running around Latourell Falls in the rain (fitting, isn't it? That it should be raining on our anniversary since our planned wedding reception was rained out). In commemoration, I thought it would be nice to record a little of our personal history.

How we met:
I first met Brent in 1993 when I was in 9th grade. My friend Channing and I went to a Blonde Eugene (a really neat band consisting of the older brothers of another friend) concert at the Daughters of Utah Pioneers Museum in the mouth of Parley's Canyon, Salt Lake City, Utah. Many of our friends were at this concert, including Derek, who lived in my neighborhood and attended the same church that I did. At one point during the evening, Derek bounded up to me and said "you'll never guess who I just met!" And pointing to this kid with a curly brown fro, and an Albertson's T-shirt with a sticker in the corner that said "fresh cantaloupe," Derek exclaimed with an air of shock "Mr. Jefferies' son!" Mr. Jefferies was probably our school's strictest teacher. He was known to mark kids tardy for sharpening their pencil after the bell rang. Derek and I both had the pleasure of taking French class from Mr. Jefferies. Lucky for me, I was a good student and I liked Mr. Jefferies. That still did not stop the shock and the curiosity that came from this new knowledge that our teacher actually was married and had kids. Mr. Jefferies' son ended up being very cool...and the concert evening continued with Brent, Derek, Channing and I having somersault races and dangling from the balcony over the slope of the canyon. It was a memorable evening.

Flash forward to 1995, my junior year of high school. I had not seen Brent again, although Derek went on to form a band with Brent and they became best friends. While Derek and I attended Brighton High, Brent enjoyed his years at our rival school Alta High. As I studied at Brighton, by chance I ended up sitting by a girl named Joanne in trigonometry. Joanne and I quickly became best friends and starting hanging out all the time. We discovered that we both knew Derek and we arranged to get together with several of our friends to hang out. It took several more months of meeting and hanging out with new friends from Alta (Ryan, Zach, Makail) before I finally met Brent. It was in the fall of my senior year that we planned to meet up with these friends at San Fransisco Sour Dough Pizza in Draper. After we were seated and had ordered, this new person showed up. He greeted his Alta friends and then came straight to me, held out his hand and said "hello! I don't believe we've met. I'm Brent Jefferies." At that point I remembered who he was and that we had, indeed met before.

We started to see each other more frequently as our circle of friends met often. Brent and I would talk a lot. I found that he had graduated the year before me and was now attending the University of Utah. We discovered that we had many things in common: we both liked to listen to and practice music; we were both interested in science, knowledge and other interesting pursuits; we both enjoyed the outdoors. We became chums. At friendly gatherings, people starting asking if Brent and I were an item, to which we would blush and say no. Brent was leaving on a mission soon and we really were just friends. But we starting doing stuff together like snowshoeing, trips to the art museum (where we would pick each others brains), and playing guitars. It was fun, but we were just friends.

At one point, my girlfriends were organizing a group to attend the January girl's choice "Theme Dance" at Brighton. I was not planning on attending. They were discussing the plans in the car as we drove with several of our friends. They urged me for the 100th time to find someone to ask so that I could come too. I once again told them that I didn't have anyone in mind that I wanted to ask. That was when Brent turned around and said "you can take me!" And so I thought about it, and I did end up taking him. It was once again, only as friends though. The theme was "Under the Sea" so most of us girls spent hours making fish cutouts for the guys and the corresponding can o' fish for us girls. Brent and I spent the night polka-ing away on the dance floor. Brent says that this was our first date, but I disagree. I think that he asked me to the Springville Art Museum before we went to this dance.



Anyway, after the dance we were still friends. Brent asked me out a couple of weeks later on Valentine's Day (still as friends? supposedly). We went to the good old Hanson Planetarium and to eat at Picadelly Fish N' Chips in Sugar House. At the end of the night I took a huge chance and gave him a gift (I wasn't sure if he got me anything...but I went ahead anyway). I gave him the Cat Steven's CD "Footsteps in the Dark," (which by the way, is one of the best albums of all time) and I gave him a little note that told him to go listen to track number 11. I was so embarrassed...track number 11 was the song "How Can I tell you [that I love you]." What was I doing?!?! We were just friends! Silly me.

So I didn't hear from him for a few days. I assumed that meant that he rejected my advance. Then out of the blue, he showed up at my house on my sister's birthday. My mom invited him to dinner with us (at a restaurant). At one point he excused himself from the table and moments later he popped through the potted plants with an accordion and was playing "happy birthday" for my sister. I was still at a loss to what he was thinking, until after we got home. He cornered me alone and told me that we needed to talk. I braced for it...I knew it was coming: the "we're just friends" talk. I was at least grateful that I hadn't made things too awkward between us that he felt he could tell me, and we could continue being friends. But then he surprised me. He looked at me and said "I Love You." I was shocked, but also elated. My best friend loved me too.

We drove up the canyon to Brighton in his truck with all of our musical instruments in the back, with the sincere intention of having a winters night moonlit jam fest at the ski resort. But we ended up going for a moon-lit hike in the snow instead. It was under the shadows of some pine trees, with soft flakes starting to fall that Brent finally kissed me for the first time.

Brent only had 7 months until he turned 19 and would subsequently serve a 2 year LDS mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, so we still insisted on only being friends. We tried to hang out with our friends and not date, but we still did get plenty of alone time and more kissing in. When Brent left on his mission to Brazil (January of 1997) I was set on the plan that I would not wait for him. I was not "that girl" that waited for a missionary. I tried to date other guys while he was gone, but those experiences were all disasters. I consigned myself to work out my summers at Brighton Girls Camp (which I had always wanted to do anyway), away from boys, and lost myself in the service. Brent and I wrote, only occasionally at first, but quite regularly in the end. We knew we were still in love, even though we didn't talk openly about it.

In January of 1999, when I was spending my final year as a very detached BYU co-ed, Brent returned from Brazil and we were together again. We got engaged in March and were married on August 20, 1999 in the Salt Lake LDS Temple.

We spent the lovely 4th of July weekend camping on the coast with our friends the Mansius Family. We spent 3 cold, rainy days trying to stay warm and dry...and we still had a great time!

A great little blog entry on Oswald West State Park and the Oregon Coast.
This is the State Park Web Page for Oswald West.

My husband is a genius. He has this knack for finding the coolest places to visit. Does he have extra-ordinary mental abilities? Does he have incredible internet research skills? This question remains. However, I will never doubt his adventure seeking radar. He took us camping to the best little secret on the Oregon Coast: Oswald West State Park. The campground is not accessible by car but by wheelbarrow! Read: ultimate seclusion! The sites are tucked down in the forest, a short trail away to the most beautiful sheltered beach cove, an awesome suspension bridge, and hiking galore. We were in heaven. We also found that this campground is a surfers haven. We have made up our minds that the next time around we will have to pick up surfing.