HIking the Y with NieNie and my new adventures of cooking!

Yesterday, I am the amazing opportunity to hike the Y mountain for the second time ever with Stephanie Nielson "NieNie" and her family and a lot of her other followers. She was hiking it for the first time since her plane accident with her husband and one other who did not survive like they did. It is the one year anniversary of her accident today. Anyway me, my sister, and my fiancee drove to the Y at a bout 6:30 because she knew that the parking lot would be full. So we got there about 6:45 and waited with tons of people for NieNie to show up. She finally did right at 7:00 pm and she started greeting people. Then she and her dad made their way through the crowd and got everyones attention. Her dad had to speak because she was crying a little. I think she was a little shocked to see all the people. Her dad wanted to thank us all for supporting Stephanie and her family. He then said that Stephanie wanted to personally thank all of us and so they wanted us to get in a line and she would thank us. Also, he said that we should just start the hike after we talked to her and go our own pace. We were one of the first to greet her. She gave us each a hug and we said our own little things to her. Jessica was first she told her that she looked good. She said "No I don't" and Jessica told her again that she did. Then it was my turn and told Congratulations, then Andrew with my and said Congratulations as well. I didn't really want to talk to her long because she had a lot of people to go through. She just seemed really amazed through the whole thing that so many people that she had never met were there. So we started up to the Y and were one of the first up there. So we only probably sat for about 15 minutes until she was up there with us. Everyone cheered when they saw her and I heard her tell someone that it really wasn't that hard for her to get up there. Which I will tell you, I am not in the greatest shaped, but I am not in the worst either and it was definitely strenuous. So a lot of people started taking pictures. She didn't seem to mind, although I think a lot of people that were taking the pictures actually knew her. We sat up there with her for about 10-15 minutes, but the sun started setting so we headed down and waited at the bottom for about 30 minutes till someone told us all that she was halfway down because she had started back up when she saw her mom going up. So we left because we were FREEZING!!! It was pretty amazing to actually meet her and hug her though. Her kids are so cute!

In other news, I forgot to say yesterday in my post how I have started to cook. I now have 4 Rachael Ray cookbooks from my bridal shower and early wedding presents! So I am cooking from those. I have now cooked I think 5 meals. One had to be thrown away and I tried it again a week later and it turned out really well. Me and Andrew were really surprised at how good it was. Yesterday I cooked hamburgers because I got a George Foreman a couple of days ago so I had to try it out. It was so good. I think I might start a blog of all the recipes that I try. I will let you know. I wish I knew actually how many people were reading this blog, maybe you can all start following me so I know?!?! Please?!?!