Sunday Afternoon

Three cheers for Sunday afternoons! We didn't have anywhere to go today so we've just been chillin around the house. It's a beautiful hot sunny day outside. We just had a nice Sunday dinner and now we're just hanging out till our stomachs are comfortable enough to go for a walk. Becky is even playing the piano...something that she doesn't do nearly enough.

Becky and I taught the Sunbeams again today. They are probably the best class we've taught in this ward. We've been in primary for more than a year now. The first few months in the Valley View 4th ward and now in the Lehi 8th. We've enjoyed it most of the time and I think our ability to relate to and befriend kids under 8 has improved quite a bit. Admittedly that's a pretty tough thing to measure, but we hit a milestone today that is a small indication of our success.

There were 4 sunbeams in our class today and one of them is known as "The Runner." When the teacher called two weeks ago to ask if we could sub she said there would only be 4 kids in the class I responded, "Oh that will be easy compared to the classes we've been teaching." She kind of chuckled and said most of the kids are pretty easy but she has "The Runner" in her class so we may have our hands full. After several months in the primary I was still oblivious to who the little girl was, but when I mentioned the teacher's comment to Becky she knew exactly who she was talking about. She told me the little girl is known for standing up in the middle of sharing time or class and walking out. She may or may not give warning that she's leaving and then just darts away. Usually a member of the primary presidency tries to chase her down and bring her back because the Primary Teacher needs to stay with the rest of her class. Often times she just ends up hanging out with her mom for the rest of the meeting block. Not today though!!!!!

Today she joined us on the front row of the chapel during opening exercises and was hooked all the way through till quitin time! When church was over, "The Runner's" mom came to see how she'd done. She was surprised to find out that she'd stayed the whole time and said that she'd NEVER done that before. Maybe it was just a good week for her, or maybe the summer time made her hold still longer than usual, or maybe she was just tired. Maybe it's a combination of all of the above. If you want to know what I think...I think she was immediately entranced by Becky's beauty, then enthralled by our "Peacemakers" lesson that included rousing renditions of "Smiles," "If you're happy and you know it...," and a coloring project entitled "Blessed are the Peacemakers." We were ready for her and she didn't stand a chance!! It's a pretty good sign that our teaching skills are improving.

The rundown of the rest of the week is that it was pretty normal. We had a primary workers' social on Friday night, and I had my first GMAT prep class Saturday morning...and part of the afternoon too. We went and test drove a few cars (yep, still looking) and then went to a friend's birthday BBQ get-together.

My mom gave Becky a potted lily for mother's day, and we were happy to see that we have taken care of it well enough that it was in bloom this morning - it was kind of exciting to watch it grow the buds and finally open up. The flowers / bushes our HOA planted are struggling a little, so it's nice to have some pretty blossoming flowers. Thanks Mom!

Summer!!

After a long snowy winter and a rainy spring, it finally feels like summer! It's mostly a good thing. Part of me is afraid that it's going to get too hot too fast, which will not only decrease the temperature comfort level and increase our AC bill, but it will also speed up the browning of nature. I love springtime when everything is green! I've been keeping a close eye on the mountains, hills, fields, and trees lately, and so far they've hung in there pretty well.

This past Friday night, I stopped at Target on my way home from work and checked on a TV we had been eyeing, hoping it would go on sale, and it was on clearance. They were out of them at our Target, so I met up with Nate at a different one on his way home from work, and we finally replaced the little 13" TV (with 5ft rabbit ears) that we had been using ever since we got married. It's still definitely not a "big screen" but feels pretty fancy to us, and you can see it when you're sitting on the couch! We decided to try it out that night by renting a movie. We usually watched movies on a laptop screen because it was bigger than our old TV, and we could move it closer to us, so watching on a normal TV was pretty exciting.

Saturday, I went and watched Jake and Stacey win their intramural championship tennis game. It was pretty exciting - they won in a tie-breaker. I was impressed with their tennis skills! That afternoon, Nate and I went a tried out the pool(s) in our community. Jake joined us for about 15 minutes, and I thought we were just going to stay until he had to leave, so I didn't bring sunscreen. Nate had other plans and needless to say, we both ended up sunburned - mainly on our shoulders. It was fun though - the water was warm but also cool enough that it felt refreshing, and after swimming for a while we headed over to the lounge chairs and I took a nap while Nate read a book. It was very relaxing.

On Sunday, we went up to Nate's parents' house for father's day and had a delicious dinner of pot roast with mashed potatoes, carrots, corn, and some yummy pastries with lots of fruit for dessert. It was a great way to celebrate Father's Day. We both have great dads who are wonderful examples, hard workers, very supportive, and always willing to help out (and much more). Happy Father's Day! Since I don't have any other pictures from the week, I'll include some pictures of us with our dads.

(we do have other pictures of our dads, these were just the easiest to find :)

FHE Creativity

When you're married with no kids, it's sometimes hard to come up with activities for FHE. The living room of our new house has a high vaulted ceiling (going up to the second floor) and a balcony from the loft above. This has provided Nate (and my little nephew Landon when he came to visit) numerous forms of entertainment, including both throwing things down (usually followed by hiding so I can't see him - as if I don't know where they came from) and throwing things up. This week for FHE, our activity was playing a game of drop-the-coins-in-the-jar. We stood up on top and dropped an assortment of coins into a jar sitting on the piano bench below. Whoever had the highest $ amount in the jar won (that was me :) It was actually pretty fun, and got a little competitive. Here are some pics of the setup.

This Friday night, we had a campout in Nate's parents' backyard. We had planned to do it Memorial Day weekend, but it was rainy so we postponed it - unfortunately to another somewhat rainy weekend. It still was a lot of fun though. We set up our tent when we first got up there on Friday night. It was a wedding present we were excited to get, but hadn't yet been able to use. We had yummy tin foil dinners that night, and then watched the kids jump around in the jump house Nate's parents had borrowed for them. They loved it. It was pretty cold that night, so after the kids went to bed, the grown-up kids went inside and made s'mores in the oven and watched a movie (well - some of them watched a movie. I was asleep before it even started). It started raining right before we went to bed, but fortunately we had a good tent that kept us dry (but not necessarily warm - it was pretty chilly) all night. Saturday morning was pretty relaxing - they set up the bounce house again for a while, and the men worked on chopping down a tree that was dead on one side. Nate was designated to be the ladder and tree climber. Notice the stylish glasses borrowed from his brother - I don't think Nate can quite pull them off.

Most of the rest of the time up there, we just relaxed and played with the kids. Saturday night, we went down to BYU Campus for Nate's friend Patrick's art show. Patrick's graduating in art from BYU and has an exhibit in the HFAC and had an artist's reception last night. His work was really impressive -he draws / paints in the photo realism style (I hope that's right, if not I probably sound really dumb) and when you first look at them, it is hard to tell that they aren't photos - they're amazing. We came home afterwards so I could cut Nate's hair. I usually try to put it off for a while because it's kind of stressful (mainly because I can't ever seem to get it to look quite right) but last night may be my best yet. At least better than the last one :)

Golf & Cafe Rio

Before I wrote about this past week & weekend, I figured I should catch up from last weekend. On Friday, we had our annual EY golf day at the Thanksgiving Point golf course. The last time I had been golfing was at the Palo Alto golf day at least 3 years ago, so I had pretty low expectations. Fortunately, we played best ball. Although I definitely wouldn't say I played well, I at least reached my goal by having a few of my shots be the "best ball" that we all played from.

That night, Nate had invited several co-workers and their spouses over for dinner. We made imitation Cafe Rio - including the chicken, rice, black beans, and cilantro-lime ranch dressing. Right before we ate, as I was looking at the rice that appeared to be stiky/mushy and the dressing that appeared to be too thick, I realized it probably wasn't the smartest idea to try something I had never made before with ingredients I don't normally cook with (cilantro, cumin, lime) when I had several guests over. It turned out to be pretty good though - everyone said they liked it, and I enjoyed eating the massive amounts of leftovers (also due to not having made it before, I wasn't sure how much the recipes would make) throughout the week. It was a fun night though, and it was nice to get to know some of them better.

Most of Saturday morning was spent in search of a car to replace "Roxanne", Nate's car that's on its last leg. We saw one in the classifieds that morning that had been listed about an hour earlier, called the guy and said we would come see it, and drove up to Bountiful, only to get there and find out someone showed up before us and bought it - they were in the process of writing up the paperwork. Unfortunately, this (at least the selling very quickly part) seems to happen frequently with the kind of car we're looking for. We decided to try and find a car that runs on compressed natural gas, which currently sells for somewhere around $0.64-$0.68 / gas gallon equivalent in Utah. To make a long story short, we've run the numbers and decided that if we can get a decent one and use it for Nate's commuter car to work (and anytime we go somewhere together), we'll make up the purchase price premium in gas savings fairly quickly. Anyway - the search continues. We spent the rest of the morning up there - stopped by to say hi to Nate's friend who lives just up the street from where this car was, stopped by Nate's parents' house to say hi (and arrived just in time for lunch - it seems like whenever we stop by the first thing she does is offer us food - she's great!), and went to one more dealership that sells CNG cars.

That night was round 2 of golf - I talked to my brother Jake during the day and he invited Nate to play golf that night, and since they would have a threesome and I didn't have anything to do, I invited myself along :) It was a great night - it had been a hot day and was still pretty warm, so it felt good to be outside. I did do better than the day before - with a little coaching I improved enough that most of the time I could actually make contact with the ball on the first try - which, embarrassingly enough, didn't always happen the day before. We'll see if I get to practice again anytime soon.

Memorial Day

This post is a little behind, but I figured I should catch up on the rest of our Memorial Day weekend. That Sunday was my brother Jake's birthday, so we had Jake & Stacey & Kallie, and Stacey's sister & bro-in-law Lesley and Kyle (and their baby Ella) over for dinner. When I say we had them over for dinner, that's exaggerating our role a little bit - they actually brought most of the food. We had Santa Maria Tri-Tip, mashed potatoes, Suddenly Salad, and rolls, with cowboy cookies for dessert. Yum! The Santa Maria Tri-Tip originated in Santa Maria, CA, where Jake served his mission. During the summer, they would eat it all the time, and churches and other organizations would have fundraisers selling grilled steaks with potatoes and garlic bread on the streets. We were happy to get to partake of the tradition. After dinner, we went on a walk and then played some Sequence. Nate and I let Jake and Stacey win since it was his birthday :)(sorry for the lame picture, I didn't take any on my camera)

The other eventful thing that happened that day was that we got a back yard! Nate said it's not called a yard until there is grass, so even though the area had been fenced off for a couple weeks, it wasn't officially a yard until the sod was put in. They got it in just in time for the warm weather we've been having lately.

**Clarification: I and my wimpy arms are not strong enough to move those rocks into place. Fortunately, the HOA was in charge of putting in (and maintaining) our landscaping. However, the fancy-looking rock steps on the right side were our contribution - well, at least the idea for them. We originally just had a big rock wall across the whole middle of our yard (necessary because of a gimongous drainage pipe), which made the top pretty useless (very hard to climb up a 4 ft wall of boulders). The final result looks pretty good, and makes the whole yard accessible.

On Monday, it was raining in the morning so we headed to the gym, then went up to Gateway and met Nate's parents & brother & sister to see Iron Man. When it first came out, I heard a lot of positive things about it but still wasn't sure I would like it - it was good though. We went up to their house afterwards and had some fabulous grilled steaks for dinner. Yum!! We met Nate's brother-in-law and nephew at the park to attempt to fly kites, but getting them in the air required significant amounts of running (not that I actually contributed any of it...), so that didn't last too long. Nate and I think we should get a kite to fly at our house since it's always so windy - I had to try out my new earplugs the other night because it was really loud again. They actually worked pretty well (except when they fell out partway through the night).