{Mike & Jess Reynolds}: .whirl-wind summer.

i feel bad, mike and i have had a ridiculously eventful summer... and i didn't blog any of it. i suppose the only option i have, without writing a novel, is to just list the events chronologically and then promise to do better. Here we go:

May - Peru humanitarian trip.

I was robbed 20 minutes after landing in lima. we were in a cab on the way to our hotel from the airport when someone punched through my window and stole my bag off of my lap. They got the following prizes: my passport, my wallet (containing $200 {the equivalent to 600 soles}, all of my debit and credit cards, cell phone, ipod, camera, a few pieces (valuable pieces) of make up and of course my bag. Jerks.
I was surprised that Lima was as gross and dirty as it was but it's ok because how often do you get to go to Lima, right? In my opinion, the thing that was the most interesting to observe about Peru is how like 50% of the people want to progress and update with the rest of the world but the other half is content with the old world ways. This can be both really charming and really frustrating at times.
Volunteering in Cuzco was great, I worked in a orphanage for handicapped children, here is one of my favorites, her name is Maricielo, she had sort of neurological disorder that caused seizures and autism. it's so heart breaking. the children at this orphanage deserve such better and it's just impossible because they (not just the orphanage but the Peru in general) just don't have the resources to provide the care and therapy for these children. i would have loved to bring her home, i miss her so much.
We went to Machu Piccu as well...

it was AMAZING!

June -

Mike and I celebrated our first full year of marriage on the twenty-fourth! I know that one year of marriage isn't a lot and i know that i'm about three months late writing this but i can say without any hesitation that the past year has been the best year of my life. I'm really not one to talk about my feelings in a public forum but i am so in love with my husband - words can't even begin to convey how much he means to me. I really don't know what i did to deserve having someone like him in my life. I can't wait for the years to come.
our anniversary was AWESOME. I took the day off of work and mike surprised me by taking me to the "penguin encounter" at the aquarium. it probably sounds lame to a lot of people but i absolutely love penguins and the "encounter" is a small group of people that get to go into the little penguin habitat and watch the penguins play and waddle around it. it was ADORABLE! after the penguin encounter, we went to the bombay house for dinner in provo (i know, there's one on foothilll but we had some time to kill) , it was amazing, as always. and then on our way home from provo and on our way to get our monthly massage, we were rear ended on the free-way. the picture of my car doesn't really look that bad so i included a picture of the other car so you can see how hard he really hit us.

My car....

ok, so it doesn't look that bad - even though my car just crumpled right up so...

here's the other car.

July -

we did the usual 4th of July stuff. fireworks. food. family. always fun. I also met my soon to be best friend in law - Dakota. I approve.
instead of the yearly (dreaded. literally ghastly) trip to beaver, utah (the birth place of butch cassidy for all you history fans like me), our family sojourned into the wilderness of island park idaho. Yellow stone was beautiful and smelly (as always), i always really enjoy the huge lines of traffic in the park because some animal (in our case a buffalo) just decides to do whatever it wants. way to go buffalo, keep the animal kingdom wild. maybe next time you could just do it sometime not around dinner because we were starving!

....i was going to keep writing but i'm boring myself so i'll spare you and just post some pictures.

August -

august was kind of a scary month, ok, not really scary but ...ya it was in a way. Mike took the MCAT August 12th. I have never seen someone devote so much time to studying in one summer. poor guy. but his hard work paid off and he got a 32! yay mike!

Mike walking in to take the MCAT!

i have to mention that mike and i love park city, it is home to some of the best restaurants and concerts (deer valley especially), my office helped sponsor the park city arts festival and i got a few free passes. so we spent a nice sunday afternoon up at the festival where we saw beautiful works of art such as this

last year, the weekend before school started mike and i stayed over night in park city, we had such a good time that we've decided (as long as we are going to school in utah) that we are going to do this every year - 1) it's one of our favorite places and 2) we can get some of his school shopping done. we stayed up at westgate at the canyons. it was AMAZING! the four star crap hole we stayed in, in lima had nothing on this. here are some pictures of our room...

the pictures really don't do it justice. there was a full kitchen, a steam shower, a two person tub, a washer and dryer (i was kind of sad, mike wouldn't let me bring our laundry.... FREE LAUNDRY), oh! and some mediocre quality bath robes that we made sure we wore THE ENTIRE TIME we were in the room.

September -

due to the impact of our car accident (pictured above) i had to have knee surgery for the second time. in my first surgery i had over half of meniscus removed and this time i had half of what was left removed. congratulations me - i now have an 80 year knee.

here it is looking GROSS!