salt lake city!

Spencer and I got back from a long weekend in Salt Lake on Tuesday morning. We were there Friday to Monday for Spencer's Nana's 85th Birthday, Emerson's 2yr. birthday, and an American Le Man series race. We stayed at Nana's on S. Temple with M and D Marshall, and took advantage of the downtown location with morning and evening walks through the Avenues and Federal Heights. Dreamy! Everything was blooming and green. The houses were to die for, and the weather was perfect! I love summer! We saw Ty and Kumari's new house at Thanksgiving Pt. and made a day of exploring the gardens and the other attractions there. We were able to get Cafe Rio salads (a favorite Utah pastime) and we also dropped in at Ikea. We met up with some good friends while we were there. Aubry and I stayed up until 2am one night watching old Shanty videos. And I was also able to meet up with Jen and Mishelle and their husbands at the race, and to take Jen's bridal pictures. Our flight was delayed 2 hours on the way home, so Aubry entertained us with Market Street desserts and a tour of Temple Square. We finally climbed into bed at 2am Tuesday morning, and had a harsh wake up to reality when work rolled around. We had a great time and it was so fun to see family and friends.

feeling a bit refined...

Spencer and I spent 2 nights in a row at the Denver Performing Arts Center last week. The complex itself is pretty amazing and the events were great.
Thursday night we attended a charity dinner and auction for the Rocky Mountain Children's Law Center, which is the organization that
Spencer's cycling team is raising money for. The meal was amazing, the auction items were to die for and the speaker was great. Way better than the Greek Toga Party we attended the week before. One of the best
auction items was a trip sailing around the globe, and porting in places like Bermuda, and Dubai. It has definitely been added to my list of things to do before I die...and once I get rich of course.
On Friday night our friend offered us free tickets to attend the Colorado Symphony performance. Kevin is an internationally renowned french horn player that plays in the symphony here. He graduated from Julliard and is leaving tomorrow to tour with the Philadelphia Symphony in Asia. The orchestra was playing with a french/salsa type band called Pink Martini. Sounds a little odd, but they were really pretty great.
On Saturday night we rented "La Vien Rose" and after all this French
music I'm thinking I'd like to learn the language. Maybe I'll stop at that Rosetta Stone kiosk in the mall this week.

random marshall recap

It's been a couple of weeks since I last posted, so here is a quick recap of the Marshall "doings." Nate and Julie came to Denver the middle of April to sign a lease on an apartment prior to the big move in June. We got to hang out while they were here, eating out, movie watching and hot tubing mostly. We've already talked about summer camping, fishing, and exploring...I love SUMMER, and we're so excited for them to get here!

Speaking of summer, the weather here has been teasing us lately, 75 degree days intermixed with occasional snow, but Spencer and I were able to go out last weekend exploring. We hiked around at Red Rocks, and I'm dying to see a concert there now. It's AMAZING! My camera died so we only got away with one picture,which isn't the greatest, but we're definitely going back soon. We drove up Bear Creek Canyon and looped around to Deer Creek Canyon and explored the "backwoods" of Denver. It was a lot of fun to finally be out and about in nice weather.

This last weekend Spencer and I put together another ward activity and then skipped over to a work event downtown. It was a charity event themed "Toga party" and I've never seen more goofy looking rich people dressed up in Greek garb. There was a silent auction, an incredible dinner and a short program. It was fun to hang out with some of Spencer's co-workers, and it was a good excuse to dress up for a night on the town.

And...photography is officially back in full swing. I've got a full week of appointments starting tomorrow and the following weeks are filling in nicely. Thank goodness! I'm more than ready to say goodbye to this winter temp job.

family fun: week 2

Well, Mom and Dad made the long drive home on Friday, but the Peterson's hung around for a whole other week. My sister is the greatest, and it was so fun to have her come to visit. She really is my best friend and her kids are so fun. We loved having kids in our home to play with and laugh at all the silly things they do and say. Some of the week 2 adventures included: Alvin and the Chipmunks, Horton Hears a Who and 27 Dresses that Alisa and I snuck away to while Spencer supervised the sleeping kiddos. We spent an evening at the Children's Museum where Ella had a love/hate relationship with her armadillo...we think...costume. We enrolled the kids in a playgroup/gym class, we shopped a little, hung out at the park, made sugar cookies, paper airplanes, forts, and lots of pirate and dragon coloring pages. Alisa and I went to the Hotel Cafe Tour Friday night which was overall pretty great minus some Jim Bianco guy that I wanted to throw tomatoes at, and the fact that I wore heals and then found out that it was a standing concert that lasted 3 1/2 hours, but Ingrid Michaelson was well worth it. Spencer had a nightly wrestling match with Owen, and Ella contributed a pretty good body slam a time or two as well. We hit up Chucky Cheese's of course, which the kids loved and Alisa and I took headaches away from, and the cupcake cafe stop was pretty yummy. It was so fun to have them, and always sad to watch them leave but we're excited to meet up again at the Oregon Coast in June. Love you guys.
p.s. looking back at the post I should have probably made a slideshow...sorry for the million pictures.

family fun: week 1

My parents and little brother Tanner drove in from Boise on Saturday March 22nd for spring break, and my sister and her 2 kids took the train from Chicago and got into Denver the following Tuesday. It was so fun to have family around, and the 2 weeks of family adventures went by way too fast.
Some of my favorite highlights from the first week were: Playing guitar with Dad, having kids around to wrestle with, bowling of course...such nerds, Hammond's candy factory tour, mini golf...nerds again, but so fun, taking advantage of Nana and Papa's hotel hot tub, eating out on Dad...another tradition I love, movies and ice cream and Mom's home cooking and key lime pie. As I've gotten older and my visits with Mom and Dad have become fewer, I realize more and more how lucky I am to have such great parents. I have never questioned their love for me nor their focus in life to do the right things. They are great examples to me of faith and love and patience, not to mention good humor. Thanks for coming you guys.

Spencer's Cycling Team

As some of you know, Spencer has recently joined a local cycling team "Champions for Children." He has been training for the Triple Bypass race this summer, which is the team’s signature ride. It takes place on July 12th, and is considered one of the most difficult single-day rides in North America. It takes cyclists from Avon to Evergreen over Squaw, Loveland & Vail passes, covering 120 miles and 10,000 feet of elevation gain.

It's a pretty incredible race and even more than the benefit of the personal feat, the race raises money for the Rocky Mountain Children's Law Center, a 501(c) 3 nonprofit organization that supports Colorado's abused and neglected children. This is the 3rd year of the race, and the 50 member team is hoping to raise $75,000.

If you are interested in sponsoring Spencer, you can visit the website at http://www.cfccycling.com. It's a tax-deductible donation, and it's easy to do. From the website, click on Donate and select Spencer Marshall from the list of cyclists. You can also mail a check made out to Rocky Mountain Children's Law Center with Spencer's name in the memo line:
Rocky Mountain Children's Law Center
1325 S. Colorado Blvd., #308
Denver, CO 80222

Any contribution is appreciated and we're excited to be a part of such a great program and event this year.

...additional fun fact: Spencer also designed the team jersey set for the 2008 race.

Old Friends

The SPE photography conference was last weekend here in Denver. My old photo professors and a few students from my class were in town and we met up with them for dinner on Friday night. I hadn't seen any of them since I drove away from Rexburg in December of 2004, so needless to say there was a lot of catching up to do.
It was so fun to see everyone, and I even conned a couple of them into getting me some of their prints. Bro. Clark brought me a series of prints of snowy Rexburg that are amazing, and even more special because of the memories I have of that place.
We had fun catching up, and gorging ourselves on food at the Cheesecake Factory, and the reunion bug has me even more excited for the "Shanty" reunion this summer.