Anyone want to save $2000? I dare you to.

So in all honesty, this blog is to enter a giveaway for $100 towards cloth diapers. You might think me crazy... I thought so too. But after reading Weeds to Wishes I completely changed my mindset. Head over there and see what you think!

Upper and Lower Palisades

Lacey and I had been planning for a long time to go camping. While we enjoy camping, it is one of those events that would always take the back seat when some other event came along. We resolutely decided to reserve August 20 and 27 to camp.

I had gone on a brief day trip, so I got home later than expected. It was already 6 p.m. when we decided to start packing. The plan was we would pack, then go to the Teryaki shack for dinner (also to be our lunch for the next day beacuse they dish out servings so large), buy some wood and additional camping supplies, then head off. By the time that we finished all of these errands and took off, it was already 7:45.

We arrived at the campground after dark, and all of the camp sites were full, but we found the very last site on the whole ground. Under the light of the car, we set up the tent and set up our things inside. We ate our dinner, and prepared for the campfire desert. (Oh right here I give a shout out to Boy Scouts, because I was thus able to make a fire and set up the tent.)

Lacey doesn't like marshmallows a lot, so we bought one of those stove top popcorns things that blows up the aluminum bag, and then watched the Chronicles of Narnia (I know that's really rugged-like isn't, taking a laptop).

Part of the purpose of going to the palisade lakes was so we could hike up to the actual lakes. The trail follows the Palisades creek all the way up. It is about 6 miles to the lower lake, and then another 3 miles to the upper lake. We got to the lower lake and definitely wanted to go on. Did you know that the upper lake is called upper because it is higher, by like 600 feet. That was quite a switch back trail to take to get up there.

Now the other slightly stupid thing that I did, was I forgot to take my water filter. There water taps at the campground, and I thought for some reason that between our two 1 L water bottles, it'd be enough for the 18 mile hike. Bad idea. We ran out of water before we even made it to the upper lake. We got back to the camp and were parched every muscle and bone ached. We packed up went home, and after refreshing showers and baths, we both popped an 800 mg ibuprofen and went to bed. It was a great weekend.

One of those starts

Have you ever gone to a lesson where they talked about journal writing or keeping your personal history, so you went home and made an entry with a zealous entry like this: "Wow, it's been a long time since I have written in here. I'm going to try and write everyday from now on." Then sadly, you see a near identical entry several months later. Well, this may be like that.

As we approach our year anniversary, we have learned a little about our families' distinctive ways of communicating. In the Allen family we call and spend thae majority of conversation updating one another on what has happened since we last talked. Lacey has dubbed this, "Allen Updating." What I'm' going to try and do is use this blog as our Allen Update center. Let's hope the zeal doesn't die off quickly.

Lito & Lace?

Some of you may wonder where the title "Lito & Lace" came from. When growing up, the branch we attended had a part hispanic sister and she had given me the nickname 'Miguelito' which literally translated means, 'Little Michael'. Well, I went on my mission to Argentina and when I came back to college afterwards, I had friends that I would converse with in spanish. It came up at one point that I liked the nickname Miguelito, so my friend Julie Brown, extracted 'Lito' from that. Lo and behold, it stuck. Every time Lacey sends me an email, she address me as Lito, and my dear friend Jared Smart calls me Lito all the time.

As for Lace... well Lacey may have something more to say about it, but one of the reasons is that from a semantic perspective it makes sense. I mean, how would it look if the title was, "Lito & the-most-amazing-woman-ever"? While just, it's slightly off-balanced. Lace it is.

The Parable of the Fern

We don't have many plants at our house, but on the kitchen table there is a fern. The other day, Lacey notices that the soil was getting a little bit moldy, though we had not watered it lately. So today when I was in the kitchen, Lacey mentioned that the fern looked sad. I looked over and about 3/4 of it had been trimmed off! Lacey had a slightly sad look on her face and said, "I hope that my trimming it turns into one of the good conference stories, where we trim of the unnecessary and the plant then flourishes." I thought it was hilarious, and thought to myself, "How many stories came close to being conference-worthy, but then failed. We don't hear those often."