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.

Early Mornings

Once again we woke up at 3:45 this morning so that we could go on our training run. It's hard to run on the streets out here because they have no shoulders, so we did some scouting around so that we could find out where we can run with out running on the sidewalks by our apartment. We found that we live about 3.4 miles away from the canals so we ran there and then ran alongside the canal.  We realized that running so early in the morning means that we need to take flashlights. Its funny, we wanted the sun to come up so that we could see, but we did not want the added heat that would come along with it. We ran south towards Gilbert and apparently went through some rural areas. We saw horses, cows, llamas, and heard lots of chickens on our run. It was really nice running along the canal, it was all shaded and the water helped it feel a little cooler, although at times it just felt muggy. The last 3.4 miles run along the road felt really hot. We checked the weather when we got back, just past 7 am, and the temperature was at 90 degrees. 

Hiking

One of the missionaries Jeff knew while on his mission, Tyler,  invited us to go hiking. So we went with him, his friend, and us. We hiked up Camelback Mountain. We got up at five in the morning. met up with the other guys, and drove on over to the trailhead. We saw lots of people already coming down. We soon realized that we started a little late, the sun was out and it was hot. There was no shade on the trail and no dirt so we hiked in the sun on rocks. It was fine until the trail gets really steep so some sections were hiked with hands on the rocks to keep you steady. On the way down the rocks had been in the sun long enough that they were kind of hot to the touch. It was very hot and everyone was sweating quite a bit. In fact most people were sweating so much it was quite gross...you literally could see puddles on some of the rocks:) The view from the top was pretty which made it worth the heat. It was fun to be able to reach the top of the mountain in only 1.5 miles. It was also about 1500 ft elevation climb to reach a total elevation of about 2200 ft. 

Our little gym

There is a fitness room at our complex that we have used quite a bit. It has a set of weight machines, four treadmills, two ellipticals, and two bikes.  It also has two t.v.'s which is turned on to ESPN whenever Jeff goes in.  We haven't had any problems with people in there or getting to use the things we want, but we have had a couple of interesting experiences.  On Saturday, there was a girl running on the treadmill. Somehow, something went wrong and she flew off the back of the treadmill. That's pretty funny, but imagine the treadmills are set up so that the backs are against some large windows. You can't walk behind the treadmill there isn't that much space. So when the girl flew off the treadmill she smacked into the window. She wasn't hurt so it turned out to be pretty hilarious.  There is also this interesting old guy who comes in. The first time he came in we were already there and he walked in wearing his big old hat, wife-beater with old button up shirt on top, and short shorts. We jump on the treadmill and start walking. Much to our surprise and dismay, he stripped all the way down to wearing only his short shorts before getting n the treadmill. Thats not too bad, but if he gets into the room before you he turns off the t.v.  Jeff looked all over for the remote so that he could turn them on, but the guy hides it in his pile of clothes he took off. We didn't know this the first time until he left. But what do you do? Rifle through his discarded clothing until you find the remote?

Craigslist...once again

We keep looking on craigslist for furniture, particularly a desk and entertainment center. Well we finally found a desk. It is actually in great condition, it was only two miles from our apartment, and we saw it right after it was posted (did I mention it was on the free section?).  So we hurried and drove over to pick up the desk. Luckily we were the first ones there so we were able to get ourselves a desk.  When we went to pick it up the owner was outside measuring it for someone else, but we got there first so we got it. The owner noticed that we had Utah license plates and asked where about in Utah we were from, if we were LDS, why were were down here, etc. She was very talkative. It was interesting to talk to her, and we were very excited to get a desk. Although we did have to take off the top so it would fit in our car. 

Craigslist

We needed a bit of furniture when we moved here so we picked up these couches from craigslist.  There were no pictures online but we needed a couch and these were free so we went and picked them up. Much to my surprise they aren't too bad. We had to fix them up (it had a broken board in the back) although that didn't take to much effort and we now have a fairly nice couch and loveseat. This picture is of the loveseat  and as you can see they aren't the slimmest set around. If you can believe it we actually fit the loveseat in the back of our subaru, kind of a tight fit, but we got it back to our apartment. For the couch (and table and chairs we picked up from Miners) we used Donavon's truck. Thankfully Brandon and Sean and their friend Michael pitched in to help move things. 

On another note Jeff got a job. He walked into his school to find out if his student loans information had come in and with the little bit of work study he gets he walked out with the most coveted job on campus. No interview, no nothing. He will start work on Monday in the Library. One of the few jobs they have that tell you their will be plenty of time to study. Too bad all jobs aren't that easy to get. 

Packing Peanuts and the Olympics

We ordered all the books Jeff needs for school off the internet. They have started arriving in the mail, and today we received one in some odd packaging. Normally books ordered off of half.com or amazon.com arrive in envelopes. The ones I sent were usually wrapped in brown paper grocery sacks. If your really lucky you receive a book in a padded envelope. But todays arrive in a large box. The box could have fit at least 4-5 books in it, although it only had one. It was even more exciting when we opened the box and realized the book was amongst a bunch of packing peanuts. Surprisingly, the book arrived in very good condition. 

On another note did everyone else see the mens 4x100 freestyle relay. That was just amazing. Very, very exciting to watch. Jeff won't look up the results before he watches the race, but Chel will. Even knowing the results the race was still exciting. And have you heard that there is a 33 year old woman gymnast. Dara Torres is considered old which she is, but 33 for a gymnast is ancient. One last thing, when watching beach volleyball be sure to listen to the music being played in the background. We were watching the first match when it started raining and in the background you could hear "Raindrops keep falling on my head..." Throughout each match you hear mostly American music. We were reminded of Gabriel and Thomas when they started playing the song from the movie 'Madagascar,' which goes "I like to move it move it, I like to move it move it, I like to MOVE IT."

Early Mornings

Right now we are training for the St. George Marathon which is held on Oct. 4. We have been running a lot on the treadmill but when you are going to run 10+ miles, treadmills get real boring. The problem around here is it is soooo hot. The night time low temps are in the high 80's. It is often over 100 degrees by 8:30-9:00 am.  We've been told that if you are going to go running outside you need to be done no later than 7:00 am. Our first long run was last week.  We started at about 5:15 and quickly learned how hot it was.  We about died (in fact I think Jeff did die).  We started a little to late in the morning.  So yesterday we were a little smarter. We spent the night at Parkers so that we could go running in the morning and still be there by 7:00 am to help Brandon with his eagle project. Unfortunately Jeff  we didn't go to be until after midnight and then we woke up at 4:00 and headed out on our run. It was way to early. It is still hard to believe that we actually woke up that early so that we could go running. Even though it was so early it was still very hot and a bit humid. We even had to stop at the gas station so that we could fill up our camelback again. It was a slower run but we finished and were able to get back in time to shower and eat before helping Brandon. After our run the last thing we wanted to do was walk door to door handing out garbage bags for donations, but I think it really helped us to stretch out our sore legs. The rest of the day was spent catching up on sleep and watching the Olympics. Jeff told Chel that swimming was coming on, so we watched volleyball, fencing, skull, beach volleyball and then gave up and went to the library. When we got back they were just starting the swimming. It was exciting to see all the events and once again Jeff knows everything thats going on related to any sport. 

Our Apartment

We had a little trouble upon first moving into our apartment such as being told to go to the wrong place, contract being wrong, a/c broken, things being dirty, and it smelling pretty bad. Now that we've been here a little while it hasn't been too bad. The apartment has a "cares" team who hold activities throughout the month. They just happened to have a dessert social the Tuesday after we moved in.  Of course we attended and were fortunate to be there at the same time as several other young couples. They all happen to attend A.T. Still but they are dental students so have already started school.  It was fun to get to know them and to find out that they are also LDS. Come to find out, our new ward has quite a few 'younger' couples in this apartment complex. Its been fun to get to know everyone. It is nice because the people who live above us are usually quiet (I don't think that they are home very often) so its working out great.  This complex is on 33 acres with several small lakes (I think they are more the size of ponds but everyone calls them lakes). We lucked out as we are close to the fitness room, pool and clubhouse. The clubhouse has free internet and we are close enough to get it in our apartment. The fitness room is nice and there are often others in there, but not enough to cause any problems. We were excited about the pool but its not all its cracked up to be. The pool is nice, but not cooled off at all so it feels almost like a hot tub. I tried to swim laps the other day as the pool is large enough that you don't get dizzy, but I quickly got out when I swam right past a dead bird.  It really was quite gross. We know it hadn't been in there long because the keep the pool clean, but still I don't want to swim with that.

Our Move

After a change of plans, (where we decided to not go up to Alaska again, but to instead move down to Arizona) we hurried to find an apartment. We weren't prepared for how long it would take us to find and lease an apartment. Luckily Chel's second cousin Tanya was nice enough to go look at a couple of apartments and let us know if they were decent. They were, and we then waited while the apartment complex completed credit checks, criminal checks and all other sorts of background checks. We finally were told we could move in on July 25.  There was a family reunion in Vernon, Arizona so Chel's mom graciously offered to take a truckload of our stuff down to Mesa on her way to the reunion. So we packed up our stuff in the back of the truck and we also filled up our subaru. And then we headed out. It took us about 16 looooong hours to drive from Highland, Utah to Arizona.  Thanks to fully loaded vehicles, tarp problems and driving at lower speeds for optimal fuel usage.  

and to kids. Thomas and Gabriel (Chel's cousins kids who are currently staying with her parents). Thomas was often asking to stop for bathroom breaks.

Here is Thomas after yet another stop, unfortunately this was an unplanned stop due to his throwing up lunch. Thankfully we were able to clean it up to the point that throw up was only smelled occasionally.

We made it to Parker's at about midnight. Jeff was dismayed to find out that it was still over 100 degrees outside. He quickly realized that the warm temperatures 24/7 was going to make our marathon training harder than ever. It's true. Instead of running outside during the summer we either wake up insanely early to run in the coolest part of the day (88 degrees), or we run on treadmills. We successfully moved into our apartment only to leave immediately for Vernon, Arizona for a family reunion. Here we are by the Salt River on our way out to Vernon.

It was an interesting trip as it rained over 5 inches in under 2 hours our first afternoon there. It blew our tent upside down and flooded all the others. Unfortunately just three miles away received absolutely no rain. We didn't get any pictures of it because the camera was in the truck, and we waited out the storm in the Parker's trailer. We have now lived in our apartment for about one and a half weeks and are getting a little more used to the heat