August 2019 - Visitors part 2, parties & fun

We kicked off August with an unexpected fun evening @ our place with some colleagues from Belgium and Portugal who were here for some meetings.  

On August the 2nd, a new Belgium family arrived, who we welcomed at the airport as we do for all new Belgian (military) families.

Meet Natalie & Lionel, and their girls Maureen & Marion

The next day, Karen & co (ref. July 2019) were back at our place after their trip to Yellowstone. They would only stay for 2 more nights, and we just had 1 full day here to do something fun together. We chose to take them on one of our favourite hikes here in our neighbourhood, Adam's Canyon waterfall, followed by some "chilling" at Pineview Reservoir.

The end destination of this hike

Almost back at the car, enjoying the view of the valley

Chilling at Pineview

My willing model of the day ... a legend 😉

The first 2 weeks of August, there was a Flight Sim test event going on at Geert's work, which meant that there were colleagues here from Belgium. We have the tradition to invite them at least once per visit at our place for a dinner, to give them a break from the 'culinary' 😝 restaurant food here in Utah. Since we also had 3 Belgian families camping out (the 2 new families waiting for their furniture to arrive, and 1 'old' family who's furniture was already on its way back to Belgium) at that moment, we invited everybody. This meant that the day Karen & co left for Las Vegas to return back home, I had a dinner for 23 people at our place that evening 😱.

The next day, we went with a few of them to the movies since it was Gaëlle's (the most charming program manager of the Sim project by the way) last time here and she hadn't experienced the relaxing lounge chairs in the theatres here yet!

Her team of devoted men 😆 will definitely miss her!

The devoted men 

On her last evening here, we went to a new Italian place in our neighbourhood with the Belgian team who was still in town. It's called 'Sicilia Mia' and has some of the most delicious pasta's. One of them is their signature dish 'Pasta Carbonara', which is finalised at your table in a huge wheel of parmesan. 🤤

Since we've been here, there is this summit that has been 'calling' us 😏 each time we drive into Ogden. It's all we could see! 

It is called Ben Lomond, and the local legend suggests the peak was the inspiration for the Paramount Pictures logo, since the company founder (William Wadsworth Hodkinson) would have sketched the logo based on memories of the mountains of his youth in Ogden.

I think I understand why he ended up in Hollywood, because he clearly excels at imagination and exaggeration! 😆

Anyway, we got up early on a Sunday morning to beat the crowd and the heat. We parked one car at the North Ogden divide, at the trailhead of the 'Ben Lomond via North Skyline trail' where we would end the hike, and continued together with the other car to the trailhead of the 'Ben Lomond trail' from where we would start the hike.

The trail up, was the steepest one, and on hindsight maybe the less beautiful one, but I would still recommend to do both trails to have a more diverse hike.

Getting ready at the trailhead

Although it was already August, there were still beautiful fields of wild flower we crossed on our way up. Gorgeous, but if you're afraid of bees, maybe it's better to avoid this part of the hike, because it seems like the whole air was buzzing! There are just thousands of them, so no surprise that at least one of us got stung ... luckily Geert is the tasty one!😅

We didn't have breakfast before we left, and it took a while before we found a spot where we could sit and have something to eat, but the view we had there made up for it.

At the top

On the way down, with a gorgeous view on the valley

Throughout the whole hike we were on the lookout for Moose. It was only at the very end, across the street at the parking lot, that we got lucky! So you don't have to hike for 7 hours to see some wildlife here 🙄.

After such a relatively long hike, taking off your hiking shoes might not the prettiest view, nor the best smell, but it sure is the best feeling ever! 😏

The next day we were invited to the street BBQ of our previous neighbourhood. I'm suspecting that they keep on inviting us because I made quite the impression the 1st year we participated ... a storm was coming in and while I was cutting my cake and thinking that it was a really stupid idea to stand underneath this big tree during a storm, I heard a big crack, and the next thing I know I'm on the ground, with my huge knife still in my hand (luckily not somewhere in my body 😅). They still talk about that 1st meeting!

Our close neighbours

As you know, I organise weekly activities for the international community throughout the year, but not during the school summer holiday (beginning of June until mid august). On August 14th we started our new season off with a coffee @ our place.

2 Days later, Willem came back home ... without Hendrik, because he will be staying in Belgium until the beginning of January as I explained in my previous post.

Only a few days after he came back home, school started again. This meant going to a new school for Willem, as he's in his first 'sophomore' year of High School now. In Utah you have 3 years in Junior High School and 3 years in High School (sophomore, junior and senior year), and these are in separate schools. It's not like in Belgium were you can do your 6 years of 'humaniora' in 1 school. 

So when Hendrik is back, they will be in the same school, which is fun for them ánd for me because then I won't be the designated driver anymore 😜 ... Hendrik has his driver's license, remember. 

But back to the spouses' club now ... other activities organised that month were 'paddle boarding @ Pineview reservoir' and 'Tubing on the Weber River'.

Yoga on a paddle board ... we have some crazy fit ladies in our group! 

If possible, I always try to do some prospection of certain activities, so I can inform everybody properly. I knew that some ladies were 'worried' about how wild the river would be for the tubing, and Geert and Willem didn't mind at all to go and check that out with me a few days before I had this activity on the agenda.

The water was evaluated to be perfect by my prospection team: temperature-wise and wildness-wise ... so 2 days later I was on the water again, but this time with a bunch of screaming ladies 😆. I combined it with the activity that I organise once a month for the Energy Club which I lead for the American Spouses' Club, so we had a nice big group. 

On the shuttle bus bringing us upstream 

Quick group pic before jumping into the water

 Short 'beer' stop in the middle

In between these activities, we had a dinner party @ Thomas & Evelyne's (one of the new Belgian families here) place, and I also had a baby shower at my place for Evelyne, who's expecting her firstborn mid September.

The baby shower was a fun morning full of good food (potluck system, and with all these international ladies that is always a treat!), games and presents.

I let them taste and guess some baby food, they had to guess types of chocolate bars which I had melted melted to look like baby poop, there was a pamper throwing competition, guessing the size of the belly, ...

A few hours after the baby shower, we had some more visitors from Belgium arriving. This time it were friends from Molenstede (aka 'Meulsté'), the town where we live back in Belgium. We were the last stop for Katrien, Luc and their 3 teenage boys after a long road trip they made through Utah and some of our neighbouring states.

They stayed @ our place for 2 nights, and so we only had 1 full day to do something with them. While Geert was @ work I took them to Salt Lake City to do the usual stuff like the conference center and the capitol.

In the evening we went to Antelope Island to float in the Salt Lake. It would be my third and last dip in the lake this summer, and maybe even the last time ever because we will be going back to Belgium next year and without visitors there will be no reason anymore to brave the hot sand, smell and thousands of flies 😆

Zoom in to see the thousands of little flies

On Saturday morning they headed to Salt Lake international airport to return back home, and we started packing for a weekend camping @ Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado as it was the long Labor Day weekend. But more about that in my post of next month.