Bridge Builders

Hmmmm...it's time for the weekly blog post...what to write about??? I'm trying to remember the highlights of the week. Uncle Ernie continues to treat us well. He took us to dinner again on Monday night. (Thanks Uncle Ernie!) We left the dinner a little early and headed over to the Utah Foodbank and stacked boxes. They looked at us and quickly decided that they better not let us near the food so we were the designated box stackers (or "packers" if you will).

Thursday night we went to the Catholic Community Services (an organization that helps the homeless population in SLC) dinner because they were highlighting Ivory Homes with an award. It was impressive to hear about all that CCS is doing in the community. It was also neat to get more exposure to the Catholic community here in SL. I think it's often overshadowed because of the predominant presence of the LDS culture. After the dinner we ran down the street to see this year's Warren Miller Ski Movie! The movie was awesome and made Becky really excited for the ski season. She even said she would try a backflip this year. Oh yeah, she also said not to try to talk her out of it.

The final event of the week was today when we went and watched some construction workers work on the 4500 South bridge across I-215. For those of you thinking we are really lame and need to get out more, it actually was much cooler than it sounds. For the past few months we've seen the new bridge being built on the side of the freeway. Apparently they are trying out a new construction technique that they use in Europe that is supposed to be much easier on traffic. Instead of putting up extra barriers to reduce the lanes while they work on sections of the bridge, they build the replacement on the side of the road so they don't have to work around traffic. They build the new bridge, then shut the whole freeway down for 2.5 days to take the old bridge out and move the new bridge into place, then open up traffic again while they finish the process. In total the freeway was only shut down for the weekend and they said that traffic should be able to cross the new bridge 10 days after they closed the old one. Pretty impressive if you ask me. I think I like this way better than the standard UT method. Some of you may be asking, "How do you move a bridge?" Well, I didn't think it could be done either but the new bridge is now in place. I wish we could have seen them actually move it. You can see in the pictures how big it is. It would be like watching a live version of "Mega Movers" on the Discovery Channel. We included a few pictures so you get an idea of what we were looking at. The first one shows you where they built the bridge on the side of the freeway. The second picture is of the new bridge already in place. You can see the red things holding up the bridge are the things they used to move it from where it was to where it is (notice the wheels on the bottom).

I've got to admit, when I heard they'd be moving the bridge this weekend I felt pretty dumb because I wanted to go sit on the hill near the freeway and watch them. What kind of person wants to sit and watch construction workers? I felt better about myself when I heard that several hundred people actually lined the sides of the freeway and watched when they moved the bridge. Then today when Becky was the one who said we should go see the bridge I felt completely justified in my curiousity.

My Nice Husband and family

I have to admit, I felt pretty spoiled last week on my birthday. Before the real day, I had already had a special birthday dinner at the Packers' and came home with some fun presents. The night before my birthday, Nate made me stay in my room, and when I went out into the living room the next morning he had decorated with balloons, a sign, and red roses. He bought me croissants and made me waffles for breakfast! We didn't have any wrapping paper, so he displayed his gifts for me wrapped in lovely ribbon :)

Yes, I know I look like a dork in the pictures. I'm not very good at posing by myself. After work, I found 27 notes (well, maybe I didn't find them all that day) left for me all over the house. I have to confess, Camille had to explain to me (I was on the phone with her when I got home) why there were 27 :) We went to dinner at the Garden on the top of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. Here are a couple of pictures, but they didn't turn out great - either we were blurry or the temple was dark - I'm attaching one of each.

On Friday night, we were down in Provo for a recruiting event at BYU with my work, and went over to get together with Jake and Stacey, Dave, Camille, and even Shane came out for my birthday (ok, the truth is he was in town for recruiting, but it was nice of him to come over :) We brought them pumpkins (thanks to the Packer family Pumpkin Patch!) and they brought a cake. Yum.

This was on top of multiple emails, phone calls, cards, and presents. I was definitely spoiled!! Thanks everyone!

Thanks Uncle Ernie!

Nate decided this week that he likes me being a manager at EY. We were lucky enough to enjoy some perks this week courtesy of "Uncle Ernie" (aka the Ernst of Ernst & Young).

The first perk came on Wednesday, when we had 10th row half-court seats to the Jazz came against the Milwaukee Bucks. It was pretty cool to sit that close - we actually watched the players instead of the big screen overhead. We were even close enough that Nate went down and talked to the players, giving them a little pep talk and some advice before the game. Unfortunately, it didn't work so well as the Jazz lost. But it was a fun game.

The second perk of the week was a promotion dinner for new managers and their spouses at La Caille on Friday. The partners in the office and their spouses were there too. Neither of us had been there before. The atmosphere is pretty neat. We knew it was going to be fancy when we walked in the door and they offered us ostrich hors d'oeuvres. I'm putting a picture of it below for those of you who haven't seen it. We had a little room on the top floor and our own taverness and server boy (the servers dress up in a French tavern style. Nate called the women's costume something else, but I figured I'd edit for him). We even had a nice view of the balcony out the back, where the occasional turkey, peacock, and other unidentified birds wandered by. We almost brought the turkey home for our Thanksgiving dinner - he was pretty big. I wasn't sure we could sneak him to our car without the valet guys noticing though. The flapping wings would probably give it away. The food was good too - we even got crepes for dessert, and they lit Nate's on fire. It was a fun night.

Oh, and by the way, February is getting closer!! We're all framed except the stairs (who needs those anyway?) - at least from our un-construction-educated perspective. We hope we get to keep the scrap pile in front for future projects.

General Conference with the Morris Family

Last weekend my parents and Jessica and Shane and Landon drove out for General Conference. We were fortunate enough to get tickets to the Saturday morning session for all 10 of us, which was a really neat experience - to be there with all of my family and to be so close when we sustained President Eyring and Elder Cook.

We all went to Red Robin for lunch in between sessions, then went to mom and dad's hotel to watch the afternoon session. It was a pretty comical sight with all 11 of us sharing 2 queen beds and two chairs to watch Conference. As you'll notice from the picture, laying on a bed isn't the position most conducive to staying awake during an afternoon session of General Conference, but I caught almost all of it.

The girls all went shopping while the boys went to the Priesthood session, then we played games at the hotel afterward. It was a really fun day - it would have been nice to have more time together, but we definitely enjoyed it while it lasted! Here's a picture of me trying to get Landon to go to sleep - I definitely wasn't successful since he found it quite entertaining to have me puff up my cheeks with air, then he would poke them with his finger to get me to blow the air out. I can't wait for our new nephew, niece and unknown gender niece/nephew to be born!

It was a fun, relaxing weekend. Nate didn't even ever put real shoes on on Sunday - we did get out of the house, but he wore his slippers up to his parents' house, where we watched Conference, went on a walk (it was a gorgeous fall day!) and ate yummy food.

Oh - another highlight of the weekend was that my mom found my cookbooks / recipe books that I had been missing since I moved to Utah in January. I'm pretty sure I had blamed everyone I could think of for their loss - former roommates, Jake, mom, etc. They turned up in my box of Christmas decorations - why didn't I think to look there? Totally logical. Sadly, I'm pretty sure I put them there myself, so I would like to issue a sincere apology to everyone I at one point implied had stolen them :)

Snow in September!!!

Sorry we're a little late posting this week - it took us a few days to dig out from the massive September snow storm! Yes, that's right, it snowed in Salt Lake for several hours on Saturday, and it's been cold ever since. What happened to fall? ok, so we maybe didn't have to dig ourselves out, but if it had been massive, we could have taken shelter in our...brand new(ly framed) townhome!! We would have had to hang out in the basement or the half of the ground level that's covered, but we are just happy to have shelter. Nate's friend Joe was in town from Wisconsin for BYU's career fair, so we gave him the grand tour. It only took about two minutes, but that's two minutes longer than it used to take! The crossing-our-fingers estimated completion is still February.

Here are some pictures of the snow and our house. One shows the garage and entryway (to the left of the garage), and the other one is from the living room facing the dining room (on the right) and kitchen (on the left).

We've also been doing some building of our own. Our project this weekend was to assemble our bed - which sounds like a very simple project. Unfortunately, it wasn't so simple. There were complications with the sideboards and the metal frame we have holding up our bed. It took quite a bit of finagling and some wood blocks borrowed from Nate's parents, but we got it rigged so everything is the right height and being properly supported. We thought the end product looked pretty nice. Now if only we had room left in our bedroom to walk around :)