Calculus

Birthday Party!

Tonight we had my dad's birthday party at our house. It was our first "family dinner" at the new house. Actually, it was our first family dinner we've hosted ever. Period. I think it went really well!
And the baby didn't destroy anything! THANK GOODNESS!
Nick, Lorena, and Kirsten got here early so we could wrap my dad's HUGE present in old engineering plans from my work which Kirsten helped Aaron color on. -Hey I am just trying to do my part Reduce Reuse and Recycle.-
Kirsten also helped me cut the potatoes. Or is it potatos. Nope, it's definitely potatoes.
All in all it was pretty great. I love my dad SOOOO much and I really don't know what I would do without him. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

In completely unrelated news, I decorated my front porch for Halloween on Friday.
We have never lived anywhere that we could decorate before so I was really in the dark on how to go about this.
Adding to my decorative awkwardness was the fact that I am an engineer. We don't DO creative. We do math. That explains why everything is geometric and my spider webs look like equilateral triangles.

To Each His Own

Anyone who even remotely knows me knows there are two things that I definitely DON'T do...
Read
&
Exercise
The thought of sweating makes me irate.
It's not that I am a lazy non-mobile person either. I get my share of activity through alternate means such as waterskiing, snowmobiling, skiing, riding horses, working on the ranch, etc. But to go to a gym and intentionally sweat... no thank you.
But let me tell you about a breakthrough I recently had. For reasons unbeknownst to even myself I stumbled upon a Jazzercise class that happened to be at 5:30 am. And I LOVE it. Maybe it's the music (Justin Timberlake- yes, Sexy Back-, Leona Lewis, Beyonce, Cheryl Crow, just to name drop a few) or the "older generation" of ladies I groove with, but it is actually awesome. Weird.
And the dogs... well they get their exercise swimming through the current of the Provo River.
I panic every time Aaron throws the stick WAAAAY across the rapids thinking my dogs are going to float away, but they always manage to come back. Er Somehow.

And Aaron. Well, let's be honest. He needs the anti-exercise plan. Mr. Skinny. But hey, did you notice we are FINALLY mowing our lawn?!?!? Oh yay for grass.

"Movin' to the Country. Gonna Eat a Lotta Peaches"

PEACHES COME FROM A CAN. THEY WERE PUT THERE BY A MAN
Sorry, I just couldn't help it.
Ahhhh I love the fall. The best part is canning and bottling so much awesome food from the garden. (No, not my own yet. Maybe next year.) Most people may think this is a boring lackluster chore, but those people obviously haven't ever canned with me and my mom.
So after day of picking FOUR RUBBERMAID BINS FULL of peaches up in Ogden, and one itchy rash-covered drive home, we went crazy.
By the way, a car full of peaches and two yellow labs smells strangely similar to Pizza Hut.

And thanks to Aaron for the awesome apron which was one of my anniversary gifts this year. I think I pretty much wear it every day.



I think the grand total was 62 quarts of peaches. It only stopped there due to lack of jars and we ended up sharing almost half the peaches with friends. Good thing I have an awesome food storage room in the basement. Too bad our food storage only consists of peaches. Oh, and a few potatoes. Do you win anything at the State Fair for stuff like this? I mean besides a ribbon? Nothing against ribbons or anything...

Legend of the BIG "O"

So I am still stuck in Colorado finishing up the never ending Burger King. Hopefully I'll be done and driving home this week. Today Lindzi's dad, Orion, decided that his hip wasn't keeping up with his activities and needed a new one. Imagine that a 70 year old who is more active than most of our friends and also snowmobiles better than them too I'm sure. He is at the hospital as I write this undergoing a full hip replacement surgery and should be "back in the saddle" or snowmobile before the snow flies. Anyone that knows him automatically loves him, if you would like to wish him well, call Lindzi or me and we'll pass on his phone number, he loves to hear from people.

Fishing, Fishing, and MORE Fishing!

Well we decided that now since we live so close to the Provo River (walking distance) we should definately dust off the fly fishing gear. So basically that is what we have been doing the past two weekends. The first weekend the weather was GORGEOUS as you can see in the pics. And let me just say how these pictures DON'T do the swift current justice. Shortly after Aaron and I parted and he had ventured up the river, I decided to move up river to this hole that I was sure had some fish. But first I had to wade through a pass of rapids. Now Aaron seems to think this feat is no big deal, but for whatever reason (hello, skateboarding incident) I am not skilled at walking through a moving river. Surprise, right? I don't know if it's just me... or if it's a girl thing... or most people in general... and Aaron is just some sort of half swamp sloth/half man... but I am HORRIBLE at it! Well long story short I got too deep and the fast river swept my feet out from under me and I got washed down river. I was POSITIVE I was a goner and they would have to come fish me out of Deer Creek. All I could think about was not letting go of my rod. I finally got footing a ways down the river, but I was still stuck in the middle of a fast part and was completely stuck because if I tried to take any weight off of either foot the river tried to sweep me away again, so I couldn't walk to shore. And there I sat. Waders full to my chest of water, completely wet, just wimpering Aaron's name hoping he would hear and come save me. Of course the wimpers grew louder and finally Aaron came all excited thinking I must have a monster fish or something. He laughed really hard. Thinking back now I probably would have laughed too had I been in his situation. But he literally dragged my sorry pathetic butt back to shore and after re-grouping I went back into the river (shallower, this time) with waders still full of water. No pictures of that since Aaron doesn't allow me to carry the camera when I am on the river (and for good reason).


The fishing has been pretty good. Although it's been far better for my parents who outfished us completely in the 45 min. they were there. Maybe it has something to do with my splashing around? Or maybe it's just because quite simply Orion and Sue are amazing at everything. But we are having fun and it is SO beautiful. Last Monday we went out during the storm while it was raining/hailing and it was AWESOME!
As you can see I am a lot better from shore!
Also for Memorial Day the family went boating and fishing at Rockport. Your's truely caught the only fish. (Okay, we will call it a "team effort" with Orion.) And we played on the shore with Kirsten who we found is really fond of uncle Aaron as long as he is holding Goldfish and not wearing the Monster sweatshirt. I will have to post a pic of his new sweatshirt that scared the crap out of the poor girl.

OooH the Garage...

Yeah Yeah this is delayed quite a bit. But my pictures get delayed since Aaron has the camera and all its equipment in Colorado with him.

Aaannnnnyyyway, a few weeks ago Aaron and I went up to North Ogden to help his parents build a garage.... In two days... Which was a lofty goal considering the size of this building.

It was the last weekend of July and also I am pretty sure it was the HOTTEST weekend of the year. I don't think I have sweat THAT much maybe ever. Well that's probably not true, but it was HOT. So thanks to 12 hour days and Aaron's AMAZING stamina (I swear he is a WORK HORSE) we actually maganed to bang out this thing in that weekend. I was literally in AWE of Aaron. And I was a big fan of the dirty sweaty thing too.

Did I mention how sore I was? I was really sore! But we like to work and we love to be of service, heaven knows we have been the recipients of MUCH generous service this summer so I am glad we could reciprocate.