A Day in the Life

There is really no good reason to mash two vacations together as closely as we did, especially with kids. This is why there are so few pictures from this trip. 2 adults + 2 little kids = no one to hold the camera. But Zac had a recruiting activity in Utah last Thursday, so we left the houseboat a little early and all flew up to visit some family and friends for the Labor Day weekend. We had about 16 hours between getting home from the houseboat on Wednesday and leaving for Utah on Thursday. We unpacked and repacked, slept a little, and were off the Utah on Thursday morning. After a 2 hour flight where both kids slept little but were pretty well-behaved, we drove the hour down to Provo, stopping to see Cami at work, Nicole so I could borrow her pack-n-play, and Juli to see her dorm and have some dinner on her Dining Plus:)

After dropping Zac at his recruiting activity, I drove down to Salem, where we were staying with Zac’s grandma. The kids were so exhausted, and Nolan screamed the whole 30 minutes drive, but we got there safely, and got everyone in bed about 2 hours late. Zac’s grandma commented, “Wow do your kids usually go to bed that easily?” Ha! No way, but when they are as tired as they were, they both fell asleep immediately. This was a tender mercy for me, because I was stressing over how the sleeping arrangements were going to work out. And sometimes when baby (or toddler) is overtired, they have a harder time calming down. But luckily it was easy, especially since Zac wasn’t there to help me.

The next day we went to BYU’s Bean Museum, where Addie loved seeing all sorts of animals and pointing out all the ones she knew, and giving them names. Then off to Zub’s for lunch (yum!), and back to Grandma’s to spend the rest of the afternoon/evening.

Saturday we had a playdate! We went to Rock Canyon Park with some friends and family and just played on the playground and talked. I’m sorry if you weren’t able to come or didn’t know about it. I literally sent out the email on our way to the airport, so if I missed you, I’m so sorry! I did very little planning ahead on this trip. Later on we hit Cafe Rio for lunch (of course), Cami and Juli came to visit us at grandma’s, and then Kami and Matt came down later that evening. Thank you for all making the trek down to Salem to see us!! We loved seeing you and wish we could have been there longer!

Sunday we spent some time at Salem Pond, feeding the ducks and playing on the playground. Addie LOVED Salem pond. The weather was gorgeous, so we spent a lot of time outdoors on Sunday. After a big fun family dinner that night, we were exhausted and had to get packed and ready to leave at 5:45am the next morning for our flight. I told you, we are crazy!!

It was a whirlwind trip, where 3/4 of us got colds, but we are home now, and are getting back on our schedules and trying to catch up on our sleep. Next up…..a new school year. We are starting a co-op preschool with Addie next week, where I will be helping with the teaching.

Spam Cartoon

My little brother is applying to BYU this year, and BYU has been communicating with their new applicants through email. Unlike years past, for whatever reason, acceptances have been significantly delayed. However, yesterday he received an email from BYU Admissions saying the acceptances will now be sent out Monday, February 9th. He was so excited! Then he noticed that there was an attachment at the bottom of the email, which contained EVERY email address of EVERY applicant to BYU this year. There were thousands of emails on this list. Are you kidding me?? Who was smart enough to attach the list of every applicant to an email that went out to thousands of 18 year olds? I have concluded that maybe this is the reason that acceptance letters have been so slow this year…technologically inferior employees.

Question: What would you do if your email address was on this list, sent out to thousands of people who could sell your email address to any and every spammer they could find. Over 183 billion emails are sent each day, and probably 180 billion of them are spam. Is your email box ready to accept this many messages every day? Even the most insecure person doesn’t want that many friends.

Has anyone ever heard of the acronyms DH and DW? Since when did these become normal everyday abbreviations? (Darling Husband and Darling Wife, if you didn’t know). We have come across these acronyms a lot lately as we have been researching vacations on the internet to decide where to go for our “graduation present.” Well, DH and I decided that a cruise would be in our best interests, since we have never been on one, and we will get to use our new camera to take pictures in Alaska like this one:

Beautiful huh?

Tonight for our family night we decided to go take a tour of the Gordon B. Hinckley Alumni building on campus. I don’t know if they were doing special tours to honor his life because of his passing, or if they do them all the time, but we loved it. It is a beautiful, welcoming building that houses artifacts and mementos of his life that were special to him and that he felt compelled to donate to “his” building on campus. It was so special to experience things that were important to him, including his family, the gospel, and the education that is offered at BYU. I recommend this activity to anyone who is going to be in Provo anytime soon. Isn’t it a beautiful building?

Also, DH and I have decided that we are master pizza makers. We tried a new pizza tonight with Chicken, Alfredo and pesto sauce, and green peppers. It was so good! We can’t wait to finish it for lunch tomorrow!

Well, this is my last fall semester, and in order to graduate from BYU on time I had to take a ton of classes that I should have taken my freshman year. These ridiculous classes were Biology 100, Physical Science 100, Music 202 and American Heritage. At the beginning of the semester I was not excited about these classes, but I have been pleasantly surprised by two of them. Music 202 has been amazing, and a great class, I would recommend it to anyone. In this post however, I want to talk about one of my favorite classes at BYU, American Heritage. I know this may be surprising because there are so many terrible stories about the same class but I disagree with this stereotype. I think this is because many of the students who take the class are freshman and college is simply different from High School and likely surprises many people.

I have loved the class and have learned tons about the history of America. Now American Heritage is not a typical American History class. It focuses less on dates, and more of the unique structure of the American political system. We talk constantly about the social contract, which is an unwritten agreement between the citizens and their government, and how it is constantly changing.

Today we talked about the Civil Rights Movement and how it was the last major reconstruction of the social contract. The lecture was great and the discussions of the details were moving. I am not going to go into the horrid situations which surrounded the country during these times, but we were shown a film that was moving. I know there are numerous details about the Civil Rights Movement that I do not understand, but this tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. really struck me and I wanted to share it with you. Although this was not the exact movie we were shown,it is a similar video.

People don’t come to work at BYU for the money. Frankly, there are many other places to work that would pay more for the same type of work. However, the PERKS at BYU make it worth while to work here. These are the perks I have enjoyed while being employed at BYU.

• Free stuff. I work for the School of Music, which means I get free tickets to many School of Music events and performances. We have not fully taken advantage of this perk, but once or twice it has been nice to get to attend something that I would otherwise have missed because of the cost (once again, the salaries here are not huge).
• The environment. I have never once had a complaint about the quality of people I work with here at BYU. There is very little gossip or office drama to deal with. People work hard and get things done, and if they don’t, at least they are nice to work with:)
• Parking pass (and gate card). After four years of attending BYU, not once did I ever park closer to campus than a 10 minute walk. Until I got a job here. My parking pass allows me (and my student husband) to park as close as we want to any building on campus. We have to share a car, but it has worked out great so far!
• Tickets to the Las Vegas Bowl Game! While students have to put their name into a hat for a lottery to maybe get the chance to attend, faculty and staff get to buy real tickets to the BYU bowl game just because we are employed here!

There are other bonuses, like getting to watch BYU devotionals, taking classes (like the Photoshop one I’m in), and free tuition, but I don’t want to get too carried away. I just wanted to let everyone know about the hidden perks that working for BYU offers.