Christmas Presents

Most of the Christmas presents we gave people were handmade be Chelan this year. Because of that not as much time lately has been spent on anything else. Even the 12 hour drive up to Utah was spent sewing. We were finally able to put my sewing machine away and get our dining room table back. The how-to books have finally been returned to the library and it was fun to give everyone their gifts.
I quilted a wall hanging for the parents. That means that I had to make two of these.

Here is a picture where you can see the back.

And a close up of the snowman.

These were a little harder than expected because I have sewn and pieced quilts but I have never done quilting. So I had to read up on how to do it properly. I also have not sewn on too many buttons, and between these two, I had to sew on 32 of them. It is lots of fun to see the finished product. Unfortunately I have not gotten the other presents to all of my sisters, so I should not post pictures of those until I get them.

Merry Christmas

This was taken before opening presents on Christmas morning. It has been fun to be with family during the holidays and to get a little bit of cold weather. We had a week of 55-60 degrees and rain right before coming up and decided if it was cold, we might as well have snow. We are also glad to have another break in school, and to finally be done making Christmas presents.

Snow!!

We are in Utah for Christmas. We made it through in between storms. Pretty lucky since even Las Vegas had 3 inches of snow and there were multiple road closures that could have made it difficult to drive up. We made it right before it started snowing and it has now snowed 15+ inches. The first day we were here we decided to go outside and play in the snow.
Here's Jeff all bundled up.
We made a huge giant snowball and then decided to turn it into a slide we could sled down. It was so much fun and so big. Here is Jeff getting ready to slide down, Caleb showing how tall it was, and Gabriel and Thomas so you can see the slide.

The slide was soo much fun. After building it, you still could not see the grass. We fought about who's turn it was, and this time I won.

We also built a giant snowman.

We had trouble keeping the arms in. Suzy kept wanting to take the sticks and play with them.

We have since gotten even more snow, making it difficult to get anywhere. Apparently no city has any money, so they are not plowing any of the streets. But at least we have gotten a very very white Christmas.

Christmas in Mesa

The Mesa Temple puts up lights every year. We went to see them the first Sunday in December and really enjoyed getting into the Christmas Spirit. They also have groups that come and perform every night at 7. It was lots of fun to hear a choir singing and to look at all the lights.

As you can tell by the way Jeff is dressed, it wasn't too cold. Although there were people who were wearing coats, hats, gloves, and scarves. A little overboard for 70 degrees.

They do lights a little differently here. They put lights on the palm trees.

And plant flower lights.

And add extra palm tree leaves to the palm trees. These look really cool in person. And water to the fountain.

All in all, the lights look really cool and make a fun night.

Christmas Party!

Two years ago, Jeff decided to grow a beard for the first time. He happened to do it right before Christmas. Our ward decided that because of the beard we would be the perfect couple to be Mary and Joseph in the Ward Christmas Party Program. I then told Jeff he was never allowed to grow a beard around Christmas again. Well this year he decided not to shave over his Thanksgiving vacation. When we got back from California, he had a beard. And we were promptly asked to be in the Ward Christmas Party Program. YEAH! Jeff was a shepherd and I was an angel. It was worse this time because we actually had to talk.Above is a picture of just us, and below is everyone who participated in the program.

And Jeff is really not allowed to grow a beard in the winter. Ever.

Even Worse!

I don't know how the swimming pool at the gym could get any worse but it did. Here's why:
1. No markings on the wall, so you can't tell where to turn. Normally you can go by the line on the bottom of the pool but...
2. No line to follow on the bottom of the pool. Only little 4 inch diamonds that are 3 ft. apart. You can swim straight, but no help being able to tell where the wall is.
3. No lane lines. They say they put in the lane lines but I still have not seem them in the pool.
4. There are three "lanes" but one corner has stairs and the whole wall has a built in bench. So no swimming in that "lane."
5. The pool is so short you think you have been swimming forever. You turn about 20 times and realize that only 2 minutes have passed since you got in the pool.
6. Because the pool is so short and there are no lane lines you are swimming the waves that you made. Add anyone else to the mix and the waves get so huge that you breathe in water. It's like swimming in a lake...but with a wall every 4 ft.
7. You only get 3 butterfly strokes, 4 breastroke strokes, 6 backstroke and 7 freestyle strokes before you have to turn around.
8. Remember how the guy told me that the pool is 14 yards long. That was a lie. It is actually 14 meters. You think they could get that straight.

Everyone in Arizona owns a pool. You would think that a 'high' class gym would build a pool larger than all the backyard pools around.

Bikes.

Jeff's parents and Becca were kind enough to bring our bikes to California where we got them and continued to Arizona with them. It has been perfect bike riding weather. Jeff now rides his bike to school and I ride my bike everywhere else. At least I did. Now my bike has a flat. I was riding it to them gym, got 1 1/2 miles away and then had to walk back home. With my bike and its flat tire. Luckily my bike weighs nothing so the walk wasn't too bad. I just called my Mom so that I wouldn't be bored. Too bad it was right past the construction, so I had to walk back past the construction workers where there is no road. The roads around here are a little hard to ride on because there is no shoulder. Literally. The white line that marks the edge of the lane is right next to the gutter. Oh well. Now I just need to fix the flat so I can take advantage of the great weather.

Soccer and the rest

Friday morning was a huge game of Soccer. It started out great with Jeff's dad kicking a soccer ball into the back of Chelan's head. She decided to play with the little kids after that. The field was kind of wet and muddy so there was a lot of slipping and sliding around. Jeff was so proud of himself when he made it through the game without falling. That lasted until he was walking off the field and his cousin tripped him. Jeff ended up just a little less muddy than everyone else.

It was colder in California so we were able to wear our jeans and jackets that really don't get pulled worn in Arizona. After spending two summers in cold Alaska, we have a lot of cold weather clothes, and not very many warm weather ones. So it was good to be able to wear something different.

We also spent a lot of time visiting with everyone around. We don't get to see everyone very often and now it will be even less with us here in Arizona. But we enjoyed our trip. We made it back in about 9 1/2 hours of driving. Which was pretty uneventful except for the gas station Jeff stopped at to let me go to the bathroom. They either never finished or are remodeling and so the bathroom had no lights. The options were to either leave the door open and chance someone walking by, or trying to find the toilet in the complete dark. It was quite an adventure.

Thanksgiving

Every Thanksgiving since we have been married has been spent in a different state. This year was California. Jeff has two brothers, an aunt, an uncle, cousins and all their families, and grandma that all live in Fresno so we headed out there. Jeff's parents and sister were also out there for the festivities.

We started out the day with a 5k turkey trot. Here is everyone before the race. I forgot pants to run in, and it was way to cold for my shorts, So I wore Jeff's. They were definitely longer, thicker, and warmer. The goals for the race: finish it, enjoy it, and stay warm.



Here is Jeff and his dad finishing the race. 27 minutes. Great for such old guys.
Here is Chelan and Moroni. 35 minutes.

Here is Becca and Brendan, and Jeff trying to encourage them? Brendan sure looks energetic for just finishing. 40 minutes.

Eric, Jacob, Jeff's mom and Judson were there but didn't run. Instead they chose to get some sleep, cheer us on, and take pictures.

We then had a great breakfast at Uncle Doug and Aunt Melissa's. We stayed with them all week and had a lot of fun.

Thanksgiving dinner was at Aunt Debbie and Uncle Mike's place. It was really good. It got a little crazy at the end with the siblings reminiscing about all the crazy things they did growing up. There was definitely a lot of laughter along with a lot of food. The tradition in Fresno, is to get together with everyone (49 people total) and have pie at the church. There were some great pies along with some rousing games of volleyball, basketball and peanuts.

By the time we got to sleep, we had endured a long and fun day.

Yosemite

While in Fresno, California we tried to find something to do. Fresno is apparently a geographical oddity because everything is 2 1/2 hours away. We decided to brave the driving and go to Yosemite National Park. It was fun to go hiking among all the giant sequoia trees. There were quite a few people there but we hiked far enough that we stopped running into other groups. We really enjoyed wandering around the place. Unfortunately we brought our camera, but someone forgot to get the battery that was charging. With no battery our camera did us no good. We would have gotten some great pictures if we had it. We also saw a few different groups of deer. They were only about 10 feet away and were a lot of fun to watch.

Football...again.

We headed out to California for the week. We went out early enough to see Jeff's sister Cindy and her family. We drove out on Saturday and had to leave early enough to get there before the BYU-Utah football game. Plans to watch the game at Jeff's brother's friends house fell through and we were stuck trying to watch it at a sports restaraunt. We called to see if they would be showing the game and they told us they had the channel but it might be blocked, and they wouldn't know that until the start of the game. So we went down there and they gave us the run around about whether the game would be on there. Well they finally changed the channel and the game was on...SIX different TV's. We were able to watch the game with Jeff's brother Eric, and his son Jacob. It was actually quite fun, until BYU started making quite a few mistakes which led to an easy Utah win. Hopefully they can redeem themselves next time.

Hotel or Gym?

We've been working out either outside or in the little workout room that our apartment complex has. Jeff gets a free membership to one of the gyms around here (you have to sign up before Dec. 1) so we went to sign him up. As a spouse I would get the membership at a reduced rate, so we went to check it out for me. The first thing we noticed was the guy who was trying to get me to sign up was really really annoying. He drove both of us crazy. He was trying to make it the best gym ever, which it isn't. The two things I was wanting was a pool and a yoga class. They don't really have a yoga class, it's some weird body flow thing that is a combination of a bunch of other junk. And there pool. This is the real reason I am writing this. Get ready to be amazed. The pool is 14 yards. WOW! Please sign me up to swim laps in that. It is literally smaller than a hotel pool, and definately smaller than our apt. pool. Although it is a square. They have water aerobics classes, swim lessons, and family swim time in the morning, afternoons, and all day Saturday. In a pool that is 14 yards x 3 yards, where and when am I supposed to swim. He tried to convince me there would be room around all the little kids, but I am not buying it. There is just no room. But seriously who puts a pool in a gym thats only 14 yards long. At least make it a nice round number like 10, 12.5, or 15.

YEAH!!

Jeff hasn't been around much because he has had to study for finals. We really didn't see each other at all, but he has now finished finals. And he did really well on them. Jeff now has a two week break. Yeah!

New Foods

There is store by us called Superstition Ranch Market. It's not the fanciest store around, and they mostly sell produce. It is always crowded in there, but you can find the cheapest produce around. Lately we have been able to get strawberries and blackberries really cheap, so we have eaten a lot of those. They have also had other things very cheap, so we have bought and tried a lot of things I've never cooked before. These have included such things as egg plant, sweet anise, brussels sprouts, kale, and mini kiwis. The only ones I would probably not buy again is the sweet anise. The recipe I could find anywhere said to cook it with garlic. Well it just tasted like garlic black licorice....not necessarily the best combo.

Buffalo Wild Wings

We have spent many, many, many, many hours in this lovely place. 4 hours x 12 BYU Football games=way too many drink refills. We are very fortunate that Steve and Ashlie got directTV and have since invited us over to watch a few of the games with them. There are a few good things about watching the games at Buffalo Wild Wings:

1. It is worth the money to buy a drink. Normally we get water, but in four hours you can definately get your money's worth (especially when we share!)

2. We get to watch all the games that are on at the same time.

3. You get to know the waiter quite well and give them plenty of time to earn their tip.

4. We usually ask and get the game on the BIG tv.

There are also a few downsides:

1. Sitting on a bar stool for 4 hours is tiring.

2. You get to watch the BYU game, but have to listen to a different one.

3. You order when you get there, and then by the fourth quarter you are ready to eat again.

4. While watching the BYU game, we usually here the ASU game.

Amazing!

To celebrate Jeff's last day of class, he came home early and we went and played wiffle ball at the park today. Our playing was cute short by the fact that Chelan split the ball into two pieces. An amazing feat! Although, Jeff did break it first. And broke it a little more later on, he was kind of enough to let me take the last hits. And I successfully broke it apart. We tried to keep playing but two halves of a wiffle ball do not work as well and one whole wiffle ball.

Voting!

Our apartment complex is one of the places people go to vote. They have it set up in the clubhouse which is one building away from ours. Our apartment is right by the 'public' parking, literally ten feet from the cars. Normally the little parking area is pretty empty. But while everyone was voting, it was full. It's not such a big deal, except all these voters have keyless locks. You know, the ones that beep when you lock or unlock your car. Since our apartment is so close to the parking lot, we were the lucky ones to here beeping, constantly, all day long.

Other than that it was good. Jeff wanted to watch the election results, so I made strawberry freezer jam. It turned out really good. And I figured out that it really was cheaper, and better, than buying it.

Daylight Savings

Arizona is not on daylight savings time. That means we do not have to switch our clocks. Enough said.

Halloween.

I got one little pumpkin when Bethany was here, but then Jeff wanted a bigger one. As it was Halloween, I thought that we might be a little late to get one. Our first Halloween we couldn't find a pumpkin to buy and if it wasn't for Warren and his garden we would not have had any pumpkins to carve. This year, I was at the store and they had pumpkins. And they were only 50 cents each. So I got a couple and Jeff carved them. We didn't have a candle to put in it, so we put the candy in the pumpkin (in a plastic bag so it wasn't all nasty). Jeff is dressed as a thug, the only costume we could come up with at the last minute. My dad's idea was to put on garbage sacks and gloves and go as marathon runners;) To bad it was too hot outside to want to wear a garbage sack.

Halloween Flashback!

Halloween 2005

If I remember correctly we boycotted Halloween this year. I think we went to the gym instead.

Halloween 2006

After our summer in Alaska, we couldn't find an apartment so we were still in Highland with the parents. Were lucked out with Warren giving us a bunch of pumpkins from their garden and we had a blast carving them up.



Well, maybe a little too much fun. And here is Jeff's masterpiece...GO BYU!




We (and Bethany) helped Caleb with his hair and costume. It turned out pretty cool, a Modern-day Nephite.



Halloween 2007

On a cruise ship. Yep, we got all ready (in other words thought ahead for once) with pumpkins and candy to celebrate and at the last minute got onto a cruise. So we skipped town. We gave our candy and pumpkins to Cindy and Bethany and enjoyed our vacation. They had decorations on the ship so we had to have pictures to prove it.



Yep, we really were on this ship.

Apparently it's no longer hot...

Yesterday, Jeff decided it was cool enough to wear a long sleeve shirt and jeans. We were going to the physical therapist, and then Jeff was going to study the rest of the day. The school is typically pretty cool inside, but Jeffs never complained, or dressed differently because of it. He must be getting used to the weather in Phoenix because the forcast for the day: Sunny with a high of 92 degrees.

Getting our teeth cleaned

We went to the Dental School to get our teeth cleaned. It takes a while, and you get someone who is a little less experienced, but they do a great job. Because it Jeff is student we both got our teeth cleaned, with x-rays and all that for Free! We couldn't believe that for a dental school they would normally charge $71.50 for this cleaning. In Utah, at UVU's dental clinic they charge $10 for kids and $20 for adults. You get the same thing at both places. Good thing it was free. For some reason I always get the slow person, and no it wasn't cause I needed more cleaning, she was just slower. She was really nice so it was okay. As most people know I do not like mint, even in toothpaste, and the one thing in this world I truely hate is chocolate mint. When they polished our teeth they didn't ask what flavor we wanted. I usually pick bubble gum or some other dumb flavor: this time I got mint. Luckily I didn't get the Jeff''s...he got chocolate mint. I didn't even know they had that flavor. He liked it. I would have died.

Nice...

I found this picture from when Bethany was here visiting. We went to the mall in Scottsdale that has all the really expensive stores. You know all the ones that you feel really out of place in. We'd walk over to the clearence racks and find a pair of jeans 70% off and still almost $200. Bethany got some make-up, and it's amazing what it can do. Doesn't she look like she could belong in all of those fancy stores now?

Beep Beep....Beep Beep...

When we moved into our apartment we noticed this little box on the wall. We didn't really pay much attention to it and never had any problems. That is no problems until early, early Saturday morning. Friday night we played some games with some friends and stayed up a little later than normal. Nothing too bad. But then in the middle of the night we started hearing some beeping. It would beep twice, and then a few seconds later beep again. It was horrible. Finally at about 4 in the morning Jeff got up to try to turn it off. He figured out it was this little box, but couldn't turn it off. I finally got up and pushed a lot of buttons...just to make it louder and an actual alarm and finally it turned off. Maintenance finally showed up to turn fix it. The guy ended up unhooking the battery. He left and the beeping began again. This time he came back, took the battery, and did what I had done before. He pushed a bunch of buttons before it turned off. But not before we were completely annoyed. 

Missionaries

Having grown up in Utah, we never really got to have the missionaries come over for dinner. In Arizona we are not so lucky. If you go to the library on Monday you see about 20 missionaries on the computers. Those ones aren't even 'our' missionaries. Each set of missionaries have to be fed every night, so it was our duty to feed them on Wednesday. It was quite exciting. I kept hoping that they might forget about dinner, but no such luck. They showed up right on time. Luckily they seemed to enjoy what I fixed and really liked the ice cream we made in our blender. They weren't the most talkative of people, but Jeff made up for that by telling them all the cool things our blender can blend. We were told not to try it at home, but for those who don't know we have a blendtec blender. Just go to willitblend.com to see how cool it really is.

LeeLee's Oriental Store

Jeff and I were supposed to go to the physical therapist today, but the physical therapist was stuck in traffic, so we went to Lee Lee's Oriental Store (or something like that). I had heard about this store and had looked up some reviews online. I thought I knew what I was expecting: bad smell and bad organization. It did smell bad, but you got used to it before you left, and the organization was way worse than bad. They organized some of the aisles by countries and some by certain items, and then mixed them all around so it was very difficult to find anything. After a long search we did find what we were looking for. Tapioca pearls, passion fruit drink syrup, and large straws. These items are used to make and drink Boba drinks (Bubble tea).  Boba originated in Taiwan and has since spread around the world. You can find Boba tea shops all around. The drinks are kind of expensive so we decided to get the stuff and try to make them ourselves. After dropping Jeff back at school, I attempted to make myself a boba slushy. You blend the syrup with ice and water, add cooked tapioca pearls, add a large straw and enjoy. And if I do say so myself, my first attempt was quite tasty!

Jalepeno Popcorn, Anyone?

After the chocolate tour, we found that they sell Jalepeno Popcorn. It was pretty cheap, so Bethany and I decided to get it. It actually is pretty good. It is just a little spicy. When Jeff got home from school, we decided to give him some. Only we told him it was Green Apple Popcorn. He grabbed a huge handful and tossed it in his mouth. Now remember, Jeff doesn't handle hot, spicy food too well. Needless to say, he thought it was the nastiest green apple popcorn ever.

Chocolate

Bethany is still here, so while Jeff was at school we decided to go visit the Cerreta Candy Co. It is a mostly chocolate company in Glendale that gives free tours. The tour was not as informative as we would have liked, and a little crowded, but they did give us two pieces of chocolate. Too bad one was a vanilla cream, and the their best selling french mint. We happened to be the only 'adults' there with no children. So when it came time to make a breakfast of "bacon and eggs" we expected to be left out. Fortunately the tourguide felt sorry for us and gave us a plate to share. Here's Chel pouring on the eggs.

And here's Bethany showing off the finished product. As you can tell we have four pieces of bacon (pretzels), and two eggs (white chocolate with 2 yellow m&m's). It is also the only kind of eggs we can handle eating if the eggwhites are still a little runny.

They then let us pour white chocolate into molds. This job was for the adults, but it was really slave labor as we didn't get to have any.

We just had to have a picture next to the chocolate cactus. You can't tell, but that cactus is actually quite a bit taller than us. We just couldn't get to close because of a barrier.

Jeff's Present

Thank you Mindy and Lance! Jeff got his birthday present in the mail, and I decided to install it. If you can't tell from the picture, it is a radio toilet paper holder. It works quite well, and we enjoy being able to listen to the radio in our bathroom. Actually, I put it up while Jeff was at school to see what his reaction would be. He laughed, and now we use it while getting ready in the morning. 

Jeff is Officially Retired!!

Here we are before the St. George Marathon.  Becca, Dad, Erin, Chel, and Jeff. After a couple of hours of little sleep we had to wake up at 3:15 am (2:15 Az. time) to get to the race. This picture was taken right before we got onto the bus. We felt overdressed at this point because it was very warm. Unfortunately that was just the heat wave before the storm. After our 26.2 mile bus ride, we sat around the staging area. We had a couple of hours to wait for the start of the race. I don't know who's smart idea is was to be on the first busses to leave for the starting area, but it did give us plenty time to eat breakfast, go to the bathroom, drink hot chocolate, go to the bathroom, sit around the fires, go to the bathroom and get ready. There were huge lines for the bathrooms because people were sitting in there to stay warm. It was kind of chilly up the canyon, until the wind started blowing and then it started to rain, then it was freezing. As the rain started coming down heavier, we were given black trash bags to try to keep dry. At the start of the race it was still raining, and it was hard to see the other runners who were around you because everyone was still wearing black trash bags. I have never seen so many people running in plastic bags, it was kind of funny looking. The bags were good and bad. The good: they made great tents to cover us girls, so we didn't have to wait in the 1/2 hour lines for the port-a-potties. The bad: as soon as you started sweating you got wet anyway, and made it feel muggy. It wasn't as cold through the first part of the race, but we continually ran against 20 mph winds, in the rain. The prediction of freezing came true. Everyone was soaking wet and cold. I was freezing and soaking wet. In fact i had to put Icy Hot on my legs to try to stay warm...and it worked a little. THe first several miles everyone avoided puddles, the last half of the race your shoes were so wet it didn't matter. We never once saw the sun, and the race planners weren't very prepared for the cold and rain, we got ice cream at the finish line. They also had a cooling mist set up, which no one went through. We also would have loved some tin foil blankets or hot chocolate. Dad finished the race first, taking 28 in his division. Jeff and Chel finished in 4:02. Here we are at the finish line. At this point our clothes weighed 30 lbs. more than normal and we were able to squeeze water out of them. 

We were smarter than some people in our running attire. There were a few girls who wore white running bottoms. Not the best mix with rain and striped underwear. There were also tons of guys who had problems with bloody nipples. Luckily no one in our group. It was fun to see cousin Frank cringe when he saw them. These pictures was taken to show just how wet it was. Our shoes were puddles. Notice the wrinkly toes? Yes, it really did rain on us the whole time. We heard that it was the first time it has rained during the St. George Marathon since 1983. And we were lucky to get to run in this historic down pour.

You can see that there are also a couple of blisters along with wrinkles on those toes. We had the most amazing group, as we all finished the marathon, and Jeff, Erin and Becca finished their first marathon ever in horrible conditions. Way to go! It was also nice to have a cheering section.  We spent the weekend with my cousins Kim, Frank, and Marissa (Thank you for sharing your house and time with us! It was lots of fun.)  They cheered us on along with my Mom, Gabriel, Thomas, Erin's girl Cyprus, , Bethany, Jeff's Mom and Dad, and sister in law Kari. It was fun seeing everyone at the finish line after a long, wet 26.2 miles. Now we are just a little bit sore. I am so sore (I think from freezing and then shivering after the finish), that I tried to get Marissa to let me use her crutches. Apparently she thinks it is harder to walk with a broken ankle, than with sore calves. Jeff is now retired, and Chel has decided to take up 5k's. 

1 day, 20 hours, 32 minutes, and 46 seconds

Until we run our marathon. I haven't been nervous at all until I checked the weather report. There is a 40% chance of rain with a high of 65. The start of the race is supposed to be about 48 degrees. I thought it was kind of chilly out this morning...and it was 76 degrees. Now I am worried about what to wear. Especially if it is raining. I am gonna freeze!

And the number is...

After moving here, I (Chel) heard a lot about Stephanie Meyer and her books. Of course this was not the first time hearing about them, it was with the release of the last book in her series that really created the buzz. So we went to the library to try to borrow Twilight. The first in the series. After putting it on hold, we found out that it my was number...84. And today I got it. It only took two months, but for being number 84 that is actually pretty quick. Now the wait for the book that was just published, the last one in the series, is 162 people long.

Is our house too hot?

We realized that we might keep our apartment a little too warm when we left some butter out on the counter and came back to find it liket this...
A little melted. The kitchen seems to be the warmest room so we try to keep food in the fridge. In fact, while we were in Alaska, we kept most food that didn't absolutely need to be refrigerated in our room. Here most everything we can put in the fridge is.

Our "Gated" Community

We are supposed to live in a gated community. We have codes and such that are supposed to allow us to get into the complex, and keep unwanted cars out. People can walk in and out at their leisure, but cars are supposed to be monitored. Well, we're coming up on two months of living in beautiful Lakeview at Superstition Springs and have yet to see the gates closed. Oh wait, there was the one day we almost got locked out about a month ago. But then someone broke the gate, and it has yet to be fixed. So in the 55 days that we have lived here, the gate was closed for only 1 of them. 1 out of 55...I guess thats not so bad.

First day of Autumn

Its fall, and we get to celebrate with 100 degree weather. Great.



Although we are a little more used to it, and when it cools down just a little more we will certainly enjoy it. Especially when everyone else is freezing.

An interesting letter

Jeff received this letter in the mail today. IIf you look closely, you will notice it is from A.T. Still University (the school Jeff has been attending for almost a month now.) It states "Congratulations on your full acceptance to the Physical Therapy program." What!? Would we have been notified if he hadn't been accepted? How many quizes and tests have to be taken before they tell him he is officially accepted? What would we have done with the thousands and thousands of dollars spent on tuition and books? Luckily everything is going well and all the money and studying has gone to a good cause, because Jeff has been accepted to the PT program...YEAH

It's coming up...

Only two weeks and we will be running our marathon. Today we were running, and we actually enjoyed a nice short 9.5 mile run. It was exciting to run almost ten miles and think of it as a short run. It really is all a matter of perspective. It was also exciting to get to leave the flashlight at home. We got up about two hours later than normal at 5:30 am. So we ran as the sun was coming up. Although it was later, and the sun was up, we still heard quite a few roosters. Apparently they haven't quite figured out that it is light outside so they should be quiet. We should have known that when we live even further west of the Lewis' that we would be living in the middle of farm country. (Those who have seen where we live can attest that we don't really live in the middle of nowhere. In fact we live right next to US 60 and a mall, and a whole lot of restaurants and other stuff. We just run west to a bunch of animals about 3 miles away.)

Problems

This blog thing is a little harder to keep up on than originally thought. The problems arise with our computer. We had to buy a new computer for Jeff's schooling.  With the amount of studying done, the computer is always in use...with schooling. And schooling comes before updating blogs, checking email, looking up news, and finding deals on craigslist. These computer problems are really starting to make life a little more difficult. 

Ants

We are proud to announce that we have finally got rid of our ants. We had ants that were in the bathroom but before they could come spray we had gotten rid of them (thats what happens when they say you have to wait a week before they can come out and spray.)  Then ants started coming in the sliding glass door in the living room. It was pretty gross but there weren't really too many. We never got them in the kitchen or in our bedroom. But we couldn't get rid of them. Finally when we couldn't handle seeing ants everywhere (it really was just a few here and their but pretty constant.) we called maintenance.  It went great until the guy was getting ready to leave and said that he would see us in 30 days. What? Are you telling us your product doesn't work well? Apparently the apartment complex will only pay them to come out and spray your apartment once every 30 days. And we apparently will have so many problems with insects (he said it's usually crickets, ants and other critters) that we will be on a first name basis with the pest control guy. 

Door knobs

Jeff and to a lesser degree Chel, like to think that we are observant people we recently learned that we really aren't. In fact we had lived in this apartment for over a month before we realized that the bathroom door knob is actually different on either side of the door. On the inside it is silver, and on the outside it is slightly smaller and gold. We know that it's not often that you look at both sides of the door at both times, but we kind of thought that we would maybe have picked up on this just a little bit sooner. In fact, once we realized it, we had to look at all of our doorknobs to see if any of the others were different. 

In case you were wondering, our bathroom door is the only one that is different.

Interesting Stuff

In filling out online forms we've come across a slight problem.  Our address doesn't always fit in the address box provided. The road we live on is called Superstition Springs Boulevard.  Even with abbreviating boulevard it doesn't always fit. In fact, Chel was filling out information for a job interview and all that she was able to fit was the house number and Superstition Spr.  So what happened. We now have to use the second address line for the rest of our street name and apartment number. It makes it quite interesting. So far we have received no mail with our address split between two lines.  Hopefully someday we will.

Also we successfully completed our longest training run for the marathon. We are now onto what is officially called our taper. Hopefully our legs will start to feel better just in time to make them hurt again. It was fun to walk outside at 4 am and think it felt nice. For the first time ever, outside was actually cooler then inside our apartment. Interesting that we think 75-80 degrees actually feel cool. It was a lot nicer to finish our run at those temperatures compared to the 90+ degrees it has been. 

BYU Football

Jeff is really hating the fact that he doesn't get to go to BYU football games this year. Last week, for the first game of the season, Jeff got to listen to the game over the internet. This week, we decided to go the local sports bar and watch it there. We got there before the game started, and while the place was fairly empty, and were able to convince them to show the game on one of their big screen t.v.'s. It was great to watch the game on a bigscreen t.v., but unfortunately we had to listen to another game. We ordered a meal and split it, and Jeff got a rootbeer with multiple refills. Over the course of the 4 hours we were there we got to know the server and manager quite well. Our server kept bringing Jeff refills on his soda, and finally brought our check...right before we ordered a second meal. BYU won after blocking Washington's point after attempt. It was very exciting because that meant the game ended without going into overtime and we didn't have to sit on those barstools any longer.

On another note, we went to a ward party last night. They had a 'mechanical' bull there. It was one of those bulls that actually was powered by four people pulling on ropes. It was an awful lot of fun. Amazingly enough Chelan was able to stay on it longer than Jeff!

Happy Birthdays!!

We both celebrated our birthdays this past weekend. Chel's on Sunday and Jeff's on Monday. It kind of stinks that Jeff's birthday falls on Labor Day every once in a while, and Chel's never will. We had nice weather over the weekend. It was in the high 90's most of the weekend. That means it was bearable to be outside. All in all it was a weekend full of birthdays.

Monsoon

We got a pretty good monsoon here yesterday.  It was a little disappointing when this video was taken because the temperature was still 100+.  As the monsoon got closer and moved over our area the weather actually cooled down. You could see lightning flashing constantly in different areas of the sky for many hours. In fact when we finally went to sleep, you could see lightning and the thunder kept us awake for a while. We didn't really have any problems where we live from the storm, but it did rip the roof off of ASU's new practice facility. It also blew over trees and power poles. The video we got shows the lightning but this wasn't even the best portion of the storm. Its funny because we have gotten a lot of rain lately which causes flooding in certain areas. It will actually flood on  some of the roads and there have been lots of cases of people driving through flooded areas and then their car getting washed off the road, down the wash and forcing a rescue situation. This caused them to enact the "stupid motorist law." Its funny because that is what it is actually called and they have commercials on t.v. telling everyone not to be the stupid motorist. What it is is that if you drive onto a flooded road and end up in a rescue situation, you then have to pay for the rescue. 

First Day of School

Today was officially Jeff's first day of school. It was pretty exciting to finally be started with this grad school thing. He had two days of orientation on Monday and Tuesday.  This picture was taken on Monday before orientation. He looks real awake, doesn't he. Jeff has already met a group of guys that he is getting to know and so far seems to enjoy going to school. Although this may in fact be because he has not had much to study yet. 

Yesterday Chel went to the little fitness room and got their before the old guy who steals the remote. The t.v.'s were on when the the old guy showed up, and he still walked around until he found the remote. He then proceeded to hide the remote in his clothing. Chel was on the bike about to get up, get the remote and change the channel when he walked in. She was kind of upset, except in his defense she was listening to her ipod and reading her book. But there was another guy in there who she thinks really was watching the t.v.