Whew!

I do realize that I haven't posted in a very long time, what can I say? It got moved to the bottom of the "To-Do" list. I thought I might as well catch up with some pictures etc. Aaron and I have been to two family reunions since I last posted. The first with my side of the family was the last weekend of June. We just returned from Aaron's family reunion last Saturday. I don't have any pictures from my family reunion at Lake Powell but I did take some while at Aaron's family reunion. The first set is of a bike ride I went on around Park City, UT with one of my sister-in-laws, Stephanie, and one of my brother-in-laws, Jared. Aaron decided to go golfing with his father and grandfather that day so he didn't come along.
What a great view of the city, huh?
My two companions for this marvelous ride.

(Stephanie didn't know I was taking a picture.)
It was gorgeous with a lot of wildflowers and picturesque sections of trail.

This was one of my favorite flowers we saw along the way.
Ah, yes. Near the condos we were staying at was the Shoe Tree or should I say several trees, all filled with shoes like this one. My personal favorite was the bright pink pair of Nike women's shoes I would have climbed up and taken them down but they looked pretty dirty...
Saturday, the 17th of July, we were able to attend one of Aaron's cousin's weddings, Steve and Ariel were both quite happy to be married after dating for around two years.
This is definitely not the best picture of us but it's the only one I have of us on that day.
The temple always has such beautiful flowers.
Many of you have been following our ongoing fish saga, well here's the latest. Elmo died shortly after my post. He had this thing about burying himself under the rocks in his bowl, how odd... Anyway Elmo's replacement is just called Mo and fortunately he seems to have zero tendencies towards burying himself under rocks or jumping out of his bowl.

It's Over!

Well I took my final for Chem 105 yesterday and I feel as if I have finally rejoined the world of normal people. A few things of note have taken place since my last post. One of them is that Aaron and I rescued a baby quail about a week ago. The quail live in the bushes surrounding our parking lot and we found this one after it snuck into our neighbor's apartment. After his mother hadn't come for an hour we decided to take him in. Luckily Aaron has had experience raising birds because I didn't have the foggiest idea of what to do. He stayed with us for almost an entire 24 hours before something inside him burst. At least that's what we assume because he suddenly had a big growth on his neck. We decided that if he was to die he should be happy so we let him go in the bushes around the parking lot. However, when we came back to check on him he was nowhere to be found. So he either survived or was carried away by something. Anyway, I took this picture of him (I called him Squeaker) probably about 2 hours before we set him free.

















The other thing that happened to us recently that I thought I should note is that our pet fish Burt died yesterday. Aaron took it quite hard, he mourned for a whole 10 seconds. I did some searching online and found that PetSmart was having a sale on betta fish. So I went and found a new friend, Elmo. Not that anyone really cares but I have already noticed quite a few differences in personality between Burt and Elmo which surprised me. I didn't think that fish were so personable.

Catch-Up

I realize that I haven't posted for quite a while and I do apologize but since starting my spring class free time has decreased to zero. Since my last post a number of notable things have occurred including my sister's oldest son, Brayden, getting baptized on the morning of my 21st birthday, which was May 1st. I celebrated my birthday by promptly buying a whole lot of alcohol and getting completely wasted...no, wait that wasn't me...what really did happen is Aaron and I spent the entire day up at my sister Cassidee's house with family including my parents who drove over from CO for the baptism. Unfortunately on the night of my birthday I started feeling quite ill with a bad headache and ended up throwing up, and no it wasn't due to alcohol consumption, the upside is upon waking up the next morning I felt completely normal and healthy. I've gotten a lot of questions about how my class is going so let me give you a brief run through of one of my days. I get up and go to class, after class I normally have 1-2 hours before heading off to work until around 10pm. Once home I have around 50 pages of reading that I need to accomplish to be prepared for tomorrow's class and, depending on the day, 3-4 hours of homework due at midnight. The other frustrating part is that I also have a lab that I have to accomplish before Friday at 5pm each week. The problem is that the lab is only open certain hours and those hours normally coincide with the exact hours I'll be spending at work. Perhaps now my family and friends can forgive me for not keeping in contact very well with class, reading, homework, a lab, and work sometimes all in the same day. Luckily this class with be over near the end of June and I am eagerly awaiting it.

Hip-Hip-Hooray!

Our top news story this week is that the semester is finally over! (This statement is normally followed by cheering and dancing around the room.) Aaron took his last final Wednesday afternoon and that is when we learned that Aaron has managed to get straight A's this semester! Prior to final's week Aaron and I had made a deal that if he got straight A's this semester we would go out to eat at Olive Garden, which is fairly expensive but also my favorite restaurant. However, if he did not receive straight A's then we would go out to eat at Chili's which is much less expensive and, consequently, Aaron's favorite restaurant. So following his final on Wednesday afternoon we went to Olive Garden and were able to enjoy a lovely meal. We decided we would share the experience with Taber & Rebecca who immediately cleared their schedules when given the opportunity to share our excellent company. But seriously, it was a very good meal and we did enjoy spending a portion of the evening with Taber & Rebecca. Other highlights of this week include Aaron and I going to The Referral Center at The MTC this evening because we are ward missionaries and, in Provo, that means going to the TRC seeing as inactive ward members are far and few between.

Stealing Thunder

Seeing as Rebecca stole my thunder this week with her post about our tandem bike ride I shall refer you all to her blog for this week's adventure. We really should get better at taking our own pictures...

Sdrawkcab Gnippohs

Last night Aaron and I were mooching hot tub privileges from Aaron's old roommate Eric when Eric mentioned that he had a paper to write for one of his classes. To write this paper he was required to break a "social norm" and record the reactions of those around him. We decided that one person breaking a social norm was good but 3 people was better. After some discussion we decided that we would go to the grocery store wearing our clothes backwards and walking backwards the entire time. I was chosen to wear my clothes backwards but walk normally so that I could keep track of the reactions people had when seeing a couple of people walking backwards toward them. (Ha, I was the lucky one!) It turned out to be hilarious and I had trouble not laughing the entire time. Besides drawing every eye in the store, sometimes even for some triple takes, we got a lot of laughs. Some people would try to move up behind us as we stopped so they could follow us away and then be surprised when we began moving the opposite direction. We also learned that carts can be difficult to steer when going backwards...However, the most memorable reaction would have to be one gentleman who walked up to us, asked why we were walking & dressed backwards. We simply said it was backwards day to which he replied, "Ok, but you're really freaking me out." He proceeded to pound our fists and tell us to be ourselves and "Fight the power, man." My second favorite was in the checkout line the folks one lane over kept asking their cashier why we were backwards, they were Hispanic, this was then followed by a conversation all around us speculating as to why we were acting strangely. Aaron told our cashier it was because his birthday was yesterday and he was trying to take off some years...

Festival of Colors

Aaron and I attended the Festival of Colors at a Buddhist Temple in Spanish Fork, UT yesterday. The point of this festival is to stand in an enormous crowd and throw colored powders at each other. The powder is non-toxic but let's just say it took us at least 2 hours of showering etc. before we were completely clean again. We did have fun and I particularly enjoyed showering Aaron in purple powder. Especially the pink on my face is thanks to him.