Christmas Wrap-Up

We made it safely to and from Idaho for Christmas. It was a great week and we loved getting to spend time with our family. We forgot to take our camera out with us when we did a lot of stuff so we missed out on quite a few pictures. Grant was able to get a shift at work covered, so we were able to head home a little earlier than expected. It was a good thing we left early. We drove to and from Idaho on the only days that they didn't have huge winter storms in a two week period. We were also happy to come home early because we got to go to my family's white elephant party. It was a lot of fun, except for the fact that all the kids that are supposed to stay small are now driving, wearing makeup, and talking about boys! I guess they missed the memo about not being allowed to grow up.

My mom was the lucky one who opened the baby toilet. No one was interested in stealing that from her.

One of the many "gems" at the party. Grant was a nice uncle and stole this movie from Hannah so that she could pick something she liked.

It Snowed 60 inches in two weeks in Idaho. We decided you can't pass up snow like that and went sledding with Grant's dad and family. After we had burned all those calories hiking up the sledding hill we decided it was time for donuts.

We played Pictionary with Grant's brother Brady and his wife Lani. It was girls against boys, and the boys won. I am not a poor sport however, so I will not mention that Grant confessed to EXTREME cheating by the boys team!

This is the first of six puzzles that Grant did at my parent's house. He also helped out with one at his mom's for a total of seven! Does anyone else think he was maybe a little bored?

Opening gifts on Christmas morning.

My dad got a hand mixer for Christmas and I thought it was hilarious when he got it out of the box an started pretending to blend stuff. He was even making blender noise while he played with it. I couldn't help but think, "didn't I just see little Grayam doing the same thing with his toys the night before?" Boys and their toys, somethings bring out the kid in all of us.

Our beautiful new griddle. I have wanted one of these since we got married. We don't really know where to store it in our little apartment, but I'm still pretty excited about it.

We had a white elephant party with some of our friends the day before we headed home for Christmas in Idaho. It was tons of fun, thanks to everyone who came!

Everyone is showing off their loot, we had a packed house!

Eye-opening Weekend

We had an interesting weekend. It started off great on Friday. Grant had the day off of school to study for finals, and later that night we went to our friend's house and had dinner and made gingerbread houses. This was my first "eye-opener"- I am not crafty. No matter how much I would like to be, I will never be one of those people who can take a pile of random stuff and turn it into something beautiful. I always start crafts thinking that it will be easy and fun, and then about 10 minutes in I am bored with the project and give up (or do the bare minimum to get it finished). You can all rest easy, there will be no homemade Christmas presents this year! We used a kit to make our houses, so we couldn't mess it up too much, but at the end when ours was compared to our neighbor's it was pretty obvious who had more patience with the project :)

We Didn't get a good close up of Annie's house, but she did a lots of cool things with the icing, and painted the trees with green icing.
The end result. Our strategy ended being- just add candy anywhere you can fit it. Our house is the one in the front, Annie and Berkeley's is in the back.

Friday Night we went to bed at about 12:00 and I woke up at 3:00 a.m. I had that gross stomach churning feeling that can only mean one thing- you and your bathroom will be spending a lot of quality time for the next 24 hours. I started throwing-up and couldn't keep anything down the whole day. Eye-opener #2- we can't have kids. I am the biggest sissy ever when it comes to stomach pain. The whole day I kept thinking, 24 hour bug- that means that I have 15 hours left, 10 hours, 5 hours until I would start to feel better. I am pretty scared now about willingly signing on for 3 months of sickness. So we'll see what happens with that...

Later in the afternoon I started to feel like maybe I could keep something down, but I was not brave enough to get off of the couch and go get anything. So I lay there and thought, "Grant is supposed to be home in a few hours from work, I'll ask him to pick up some popsicles". My impatience set in after waiting for about 2 hours, so I decided to call our neighbor Annie. She said it wouldn't be a problem and she would bring me some popsicles. That Is when I had eye-opener #3- I don't know how we are going to survive when we move, and don't have any close friends. Annie seriously was a life saver. I am pretty sure I was going to die if I didn't get those Popsicles;) She risked her life and came into our disease filled apartment, and she got us high- quality real fruit popsicles, rather than the cheap unhealthy alternative. Grant's throat started to hurt the next day, and so those popsicles were pretty much the only thing we ate this weekend. THANK YOU ANNIE AND BERKELEY- we love you guys and don't know what we'll do when you aren't our neighbors! This weekend has given us a lot to think about. We are excited for the next phase of our lives, but we sure do have it good right now.

I'm in LOVE !!!

I have a problem. I've finally decided to accept and admit this, but, I think most people would agree that given the situation you would have a problem as well. SO, Grant has accepted a job and now all we have to do is wait for our new "grownup life" to start. I love planning things, and just out of curiosity started looking at houses online in Cincinnati. I feel more secure when I have a plan, and know all I can about something, but now it is my new obsession. What kind of houses are available and what type of loan can we qualify for? I wouldn't say I was out of control until this last Sunday, but then I found it, the most beautiful house I've ever seen.

I finally admitted my problem to Grant. I told him that the night before I had a hard time sleeping, and every time I stirred the slightest bit I would bolt awake thinking about how excited I am about getting to buy a house soon. It is ridiculous I know, but I really can't think of any other comparison other than trying to sleep when you were a kid on Christmas Eve. You know that butterflyish/ anxious feeling? It wouldn't be a problem if I was still a kid, or even if we were a little bit closer to our actual house hunting trip... But, I'm not going to get to have my house for at least 5 more months, and that's a long time to not be able to sleep. On top of all of this, I am in love with one house in particular and feel that I need to check on it everyday to make sure it is still for sale. Grant has told me that in order to preserve my sanity, and fight off the insomnia, I am not allowed to look at houses and loan options any more. So I am trying to kick my habit, and in the mean time I am putting up this blog post so that I have an excuse to check on "my house", after all I had to go to the website so that I could get the picture for everyone to see;) Well, I won't be able to check on my house for a few months now, hopefully no one else falls in love with it, and buys it before we can.

Update

Today at 12:00 Grant accepted the job offer from Western and Southern. Hooray!!! He has a tentative start date of June 8th, as long as he passes the drug test ;) We will fly out in May to find a place to live. So that's about it, Summer of '09 is no longer the Summer of the "great unknown". We'll be in Ohio!

For your viewing pleasure- the acceptance call.

Who won?

Our turkey had osteoporosis we think. We broke the wishbone today and it split right down the middle. Does that mean we both get our wish?

Holiday Randomness

Grant pulled out all of our Christmas decor tonight and our apartment is officially decorated. We also went shopping today and have all of our presents wrapped and ready to go. All that is left is to sit back and enjoy, hopefully we've skipped the stressful part of Christmas :) Grant has one more crazy week left in the semester. I think he initiated the "decking of our halls" to put off writing a paper that's due next week. Either way I'm glad, I don't really like searching for our boxes of decorations (if you saw our closet you'd understand why :).

We bought Christmas lights three years ago at the Dollar Store. Each 4ft strand has a plug on only one end. This makes it a little tricky because you can't connect strands. It has made us come up with some pretty interesting techniques and strategy when trying to get them to circle the window. Next year we'll probably splurge and buy new lights at some fancy store like Walmart. I think we've got our moneys worth at this point.

This is our beautiful giant of a tree :) We will also probably upgrade on this next year as well. We're dreamin big, we want a tree next year that's at least 3ft tall. We will be a little sad to part with our little fiber optic beauty, but we are having a hard time fitting all 7 of our ornaments on it, it's just too little.

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We had a great day with lots of food. My parents came to our house for Thanksgiving, and after lunch and naps we went to my sister's house for dessert. It was great getting to see some family, we missed everyone that we did not get to see. Our turkey was actually cooked this year, thanks to our new meat thermometer, and it tasted great. Grant took a special interest in the bird making sure it was basted and checked every hour. From the beginning, he went shopping to get groceries for dinner with me, our grocery store had a special where you could get a turkey for $8 that was 16-20lbs. Grant decided that if they were all the same price he was going to find the biggest turkey he could. It seemed like ten minutes of searching through the freezer case, but he finally popped back up with a 20 pounder. It turned out awesome, which is good because we have probably 10lbs of turkey left over. (Anyone have any good turkey recipes:) ?)

Gooooood Morning!

This morning Grant left for school and gave me a kiss while I caught a little more sleep in bed. It seemed like he had just left when my phone started ringing and ringing. I debated getting out of bed to answer my phone, but decided against it, I don't like being bothered before 9:00 :) Eventually curiosity got the best of me and I finally went to find my phone. When I found it, I had a missed call from Grant. I called him back, worried that something bad had happened, if anyone knows my 9:00 rule it's Grant, so in my head all kinds of bad things were running through my thoughts, after all that's the only reason he would call soooo early (8:45). I tried to call him back and kept getting a busy signal. Finally my phone was ringing again and it was Grant. He casually told me that Western and Southern Financial Group called and....
HE HAS A JOB OFFER!!!
It is a great company with lots of perks for their employees. We are both super excited, and we feel like the end really is in sight now. Grant flies out for two more interviews in the next couple weeks, and that might influence our decision, But for now we are so happy and relieved that there is a great job waiting for us in Cincinnati when he graduates.

Happy Anniversary To Us!

Today is our third anniversary. Yep, three years ago today we were gettin hitched. I can't imagine going through the ups and downs of the last three years without him by my side. He's my best bud, there's no one else that can even come close in my ranking of favorite people. We had to celebrate a little bit early because Grant is working tonight, so this past Saturday we set aside a little "us" time. We didn't do anything particularly special, but it was fun to just watch TV together and not worry about anything else. We love our friends, but I honestly couldn't remember the last time we went on a date with just the two of us, and we really needed to spend some time together. At the end of the night Grant even said " I had a lot of fun with you tonight", and I thought, "of course you did, I'm a pretty fun person!"

In honor of our Anniversary, and by popular request I am putting up a few pictures from our wedding day-

Grant also got me some beautiful flowers. They were supposed to be a mid-week surprise, but due to a few unplanned developments they are serving double duty as my anniversary flowers as well. Anniversary or mid-week surprise, I love them either way.

It's not easy lookin good...

I finally decided to change our blog template to something cute rather than the boring one you get when you start your blog. I had put it off because I was intimidated. I'm not the most technologically savvy person around, but I gathered my courage and set out in the wonderful world that is the web to find a new template, this was the easy part. I was even able to download it without too much trouble, at least that was what I thought. I wanted to check out the finished product and quickly realized that the "widget" that I had clicked delete on during the installation process was all of our links to family and friends. I really didn't think clicking delete would affect anything, after all, I didn't have one of those floating baby counter things. That was what I thought a widget was. Well, now I know that my list of family and friends is also a widget, and after an hour of re-entering all of our info (I had to do it twice, our computer glitched just as I was entering our last link and deleted them all again) our blog is back to normal. It does look super cute if I do say so myself, well worth the trouble ;)

40 Years!!!

Today is my parents' 40th wedding anniversary. I think it's pretty cool that they have been married this long. Statistically (being married to Grant, I have to refer to the stats) you are more likely to get divorced than you are to stay married and I am so happy that they are part of the rare few who make it to this milestone. I know that no one else really cares about this, but I figured it at least deserved a little attention. Happy anniversary Mom and Dad! Thanks for being my parents!

Thanks Dad!

My dad let us use one of his condo timeshare things this weekend and it was really fun. It was just a quick weekend trip, but it was just what we needed. We played games, ate lots of food, and just relaxed with some of our friends. I was especially happy that Bethany, one of our friends, just kind of took over cooking. I like cooking, but it is nice to have a break, not to mention that food tastes way better when you don't have to cook it. Grant has been asking me to play Monopoly with him lately, so we played at the condo. I was the first one out, good thing I'm not competitive. The game was taking so long that we decided to call it a wash, but Berkeley would have won if we wanted to play for 5 more hours :)

We also went for a drive and a little walk around the reservoir. Annie tried to teach me how to skip rocks but I still can't do it. Eden was surprisingly really pretty. Grant really enjoyed getting to see all that the town had to offer which included a man riding his lawn mower down the road and a sheep dog pooping on the road.

Grant forgot his clubs, but he still got his golfing in thanks to the wii. We had a great weekend, and can't wait to do it again! Thanks Dad!!!

Unexpected Visitor

So this is Grants first post on the blog, amazing right. Well any way I will start out by saying that I love Friday mornings. It is the only morning where I am able to sleep in because I do not have class until one. So this morning i was enjoying my sleep when someone started to knock on the door. So i woke up and had to find some clothes to put on so i could go and see who it was. Then when i got to the door i looked through the peep hole and saw something pretty interesting. What i saw was so weird that i even had to take a second look to see if i wanted to answer the door or not. Then when i finally did answer the door i had no idea who was standing there. just so you know what i am talking about, here is what was standing in front of me.

sorry about it being sideways but i do not know how to fix that. Anyway this is my neighbor Berkley who is dressed up for a costume contest at work. I did not know it was him until he started to talk to me. The reason he came over is because he could not tie his shoes with all the stuff he has on. So i tied up warf's boots and then went back to sleep. I hope he wins the contest. Happy Halloween.

Feeling Nostalgic

I don't know what it is about fall that always make me wish I was a little kid again. Whenever the air starts to get it's chill, and the leafs are turning colors I get a little jealous of little kids who get to spend their days coloring pictures, learning about the Christopher Columbus/ Thanksgiving, and playing their hearts out at recess until snot runs down their face from the cold weather. Oh the good ole days :) I think I am reverting, when I was a kid all I wanted to do was be a "grownup", well now I would like to be a kid again. To say that life has been a little crazy lately for Grant and me would be an understatement. I think we all could agree that sometime when it feels like life is going too fast for us to keep up you also become a little envious of the little kids you come in contact with. What would it be like to know that Mom will have dinner ready at 5:30? Your laundry is going to miraculously be folded on your bed when you get home? Or better yet, Full House or Growing Pains will be on TV and that is the only thing you have to do? Yep, I'll go back. If any one comes across a Dolorian and a crazy old scientist who turned it into a time machine let me know. (who wouldn't want to go back to this? You can only get away with thinking stripes and flowers match until you're about 8.)

I might not be the next food network star...

I had a brilliant Idea for dinner tonight. I was watching some cooking show this week and they made deep dish pizzas. My Creative wheels were turning and I was thinking up ways to use my new knowledge of the "deep dish". Grant has been on pizza overload lately, it is the food of choice for all of the different companies recruiting at BYU, so my remedy to this was to make "breakfast pizza". It was an experiment that I was sure would turn out well, and my brain running with all the possibilities. This is the result...

I think I might have underestimated my leavening agent. Our pizza's crust was probably 2.5 inches thick. I still believe in breakfast pizza, I will change my technique but I just can't give up on an idea that is so cheap and also easy to hide vegetables in. I really like crust, it's probably my favorite part of the pizza, but this was crust overload. Hopefully I'll have better luck next time.

Visitors

Dave and Janelle, Grant's dad and step mom, were able to come down for a quick visit this week. It was great spending a little time with them. We had dinner together and then played "Ticket to ride". I would just like it on the record that I would have won if Grant and Scott hadn't plotted to stop me. It was a fun night. We love having visitors, but hope they don't all have to experience the obstacles Grant's family experienced on their journey to Utah. They had a small delay due to a blizzard and ended up sleeping in a gym in Montana while the waited for the freeway to reopen. We are so grateful for their effort to visit us, we love getting to see family whenever possible.

We weren't able to get too many pictures, that's Janelle's job :) This is the best we could get using the timer/ run to get in your place method.

Out with the old...

This is old news to some, but I felt that it was blog worthy simply because I am a sentimental person. We have decided to have my engagement/wedding ring reset. I love my ring the way it is, and love the fact that Grant picked it and chose exactly what I would have if I'd been there... BUT, in the last year the diamond has nearly fallen out of the setting twice and we were just lucky enough both times to notice that it was coming out of the setting before we lost the diamond forever. My ring is currently sitting on my dresser, back in its' box for safe keeping until we have the money and a new setting picked out. In the mean time there have been a few intersting instances that have come as result of my naked ring finger. It's nice to know that I still have "it", and while I don't mind being hit on, I would pefer to have my ring back on my finger, minus worrying about loosing the diamond. Hopefully soon I'll be bloging about my new and improved wedding ring.

Two Years Later...

Two years ago today we were driving from Coeur d'Alene to our new place in Provo. In honor of this momentous day I have compiled a list of our first memories and impressions of our new, now old home.
-We got into Provo at about 8:00 pm and went straight to our new place to check it out. We had only seen it for about 5 minutes on our walk-through the first time and we were anxious to see it again. This was when our first problem occurred. We walked in our front door and tried to turn the lights on in our dark apartment, nothing happened. We knew that we had called the power company but we were worried they had forgotten or something because we had no electricity. Grant felt his way around the dark apartment and found the breaker box. It turned out that all of the breakers had been switched off. We flipped them all and had light. Small victory #1!
-Once we had light we decided to check out the apartment. We quickly realized that maybe we should have kept the lights turned off. When we signed our lease we had asked for fresh paint and cleaned carpets. Neither of these had been done, we quickly realized that our landlord might be a slacker. We were becoming very depressed very quickly. Grant went straight for the fridge out of habit and came right back saying that we should get out of this place FAST! The fridge had rotten food due to not being cleaned out and then having the power turned off. We needed to leave, get some dinner, buy some cleaning supplies and gear up for a night of cleaning.
-We went to Mimi's, a restaurant in town and tried to relax over dinner. Grant was so upset he couldn't even eat his food. We left the restaurant and went to the store to buy cleaning supplies, why postpone the inevitable?
-And the cleaning began, or continued. We had already cleaned our old apartment for 2 days straight, then drove 12 hours , ate dinner, and then started cleaning some more. Grant got to work on the fridge and I started on the bathroom.
- We then got a little ray of hope, one of our neighbors stopped by to say hello. We were so happy that at least if our new place was a dump we had nice neighbors to maybe even things out. He asked us how the move was going, told us if we need help when our stuff got here to let him know, and then quickly left and didn't talk to us for another 6 months. We hadn't realized when we were talking to him that he lived in our apartment before us and we made a few comments when he stopped by about how bummed we were that our apartment was disgusting. They were embarrassed that we thought they left the apartment a mess, and we were embarrassed that we had told them this. It took a while to get past the awkwardness, but we did and now consider them some of our best friends
-My parents showed up the same night as us and helped with the cleaning. The next day we bought a washer and dryer, cleaned some more, and ran errands. After all of this I decided it was time to take a shower and quickly realized we had no hot water. The hot water heater had been set to vacation mode and we had to wait a few hours for it to heat up. It was the best shower of my life once I finally did get to take it.
- Matt and Sue in the mean time were on the road driving our furniture to us at a the rapid speed of 55 mph. We are still so grateful they did that for us, I think it took them something like 15/16 hours to get down here.
- They arrived late the night after us, and helped us unload. We also had a set of neighbors come out and helped us unload everything in the truck until it was empty. I am still amazed at their generosity and kindness to complete strangers.

We eventually got things unpacked, life settled down, and we made awesome friends. ( as I am typing this Grant just informed us that our "awesome friends" have stolen our dinner, BBQ and all.) We are now preparing for the next chapter in our lives and are actually a little depressed about leaving the great people we've met. Two years ago we could not wait to be done with the Utah chapter of our lives. I now feel like this will be the time and place in our lives that we always look back on and smile, carefree years, our heap of an apartment that has become home, and friend that have been our family when we didn't have family near by.

This guy is going to TWO pizza parties !!!

You read right, Grant has been invited to 2, count'em, 2 pizza parties this upcoming week! Why is this important you're wondering, well I'll tell you. Two of the companies that are coming to BYU this week for interviews sent out an emails letting all of the potential applicants know that they were hosting pizza parties a the Brickoven Pizzeria, (get to know the applicants in a less stressful environment) however, due to tight space at the pizzeria they only want you there if they invite you. BIG surprise Grant was invited to both company's parties ( a little sarcasm there, anyone who knows Grant knows that if Grant wants to go to a party he will get himself invited one way or another). We spent last night looking for a new kinda casual/kinda dressed up outfit and found him some nice things that should work, and now he is ready to steam roll anyone who might get in his way of schmoozing it up with the "big guys". He also has a few interviews already set up this week. One interview is for a company that is in Cincinnati, we are really interested in this one because of the amazingly cheap houses in that area. Grant is pretty excited about this one, wonder why;) ? Keep him in your prayers this week, hopefully we'll have more news soon.

Random September

Well, not much has happened in our lives that is blog worthy these days. School, work, sleep, and some food in between those activities. Shout out to Nik, I finally got Grant to agree to let me buy a Rachel Ray cookbook. It is awesome! There are a few contingencies that I had to agree to before the book was purchased. The one he is most persistent about is that the book must always remain cover-side down, this way he'll never have to see Rachel Ray's face. I think overall, however, that he is enjoying the new recipes. We've also tried to spend time with friends in our spare time. I was able to get this "candid" picture of Grant and our friend Berkley the other day. I just think it is hilarious, this is not the first time I've caught them on the couch together " snuggling". They have no shame, maybe I should be worried but for now it's just a good laugh.

Grant called me on his way home from work the other night and said that he had a "non-food surprise" when he got home he gave me this balloon animal. Very cute, but we've had an on going argument all week over whether or not it's a penguin or a duck. I would set up a poll but I'm not that advanced when it comes to blogging.

Well, that's about it. Grant has started applying for jobs and might even have interviews as soon as next week. We're keeping our fingers crossed and will keep you updated when we know more.

GROSS!!!

I found this today when my phone fell under my seat in the car. It might be the grossest thing I've seen in quite some time, and my faith in Trident gum is a little shaken. So, you might be thinking 'yeah, it's a little gross, but most gum thats been chewed and then doesn't make it's way to a garbage is usually gross'. And you are right, but this gum has never been chewed, that's why I feel it's blog worthy. It some how made it's way out of the pack and under my seat for an unknown amount of time. During this time it doubled in size and transformed into the crusty bubbled mass that you see ( I couldn't get the camera to focus so the picture doesn't quite do it justice). This is not really helping me with my irrational fear of all things bubbly, crusty, or spotted. YUCK!!!

ode to my rock

Tonight is the second Friday since school started, and the "school year" routine is back in full swing. Fridays are my longest day of the week because Grant is at work from 4pm-1am, and by about 6 pm I run out of thing to keep me busy. I am so grateful that Grant has been given the opportunities and advances at work that have made it possible for him to only have to work two nights a week. Did you ever think you would hear a Mormon saying it was a blessing that her husband was promoted to bartender? Well it really is a blessing, a huge one when I think about it. Grant was able to get a full ride scholarship for school this year. I am so proud of him, and while Grant would say that BYU just decided to take notice of the genius that he is, I know that he has worked very hard to be sure that we have enough money to pay the bills and at the same time keep his grades up. It is such a blessing that he is going to graduate without any student loans. The first year that we lived in Utah money got pretty tight at times, and I was a little frustrated that he wouldn't even consider taking out loans to at least pay tuition. Now, however, I am grateful that we/he were able to figure out our budget and make things work. I need to remind myself occasionally that we have been taken care of so far, and problems will work themselves out eventually. I feel like I continually make mountains out of mole hills, but I luckily married my perfectly laid back compliment. He is always patient in reminding me that "this too shall pass" and in the end the solution to the problem will leave us with a great result, and in a better place than we could have ever imagined on our own. This week's "mountains" have included car problems, and scheduling issues at my work, but alas we are already seeing these problems resolve themselves and in the mean time Grant kept us calm and collected. Moral of the story-I think I might be the lucky one.

No bugs welcome

I decided that I would just do a quick post about something that is making me very happy at the moment. I tend to get a little negative a lot of the time, so I decided it would be a good idea to keep track of the things that make me happy. So here it is, I love Raid. A few weeks ago we noticed that we were starting to get a few bugs in the house so I decided to pull out the can of Raid we had left from last summer and spray our windows and front door. I know it is a little gross or morbid to say that it makes me happy to see piles of dead bugs, but it really does. Every time I see a dead bug on our door step I think 'hey, that's one less creepy crawly hanging out in our house', and it just makes my day. Today I saw a spider hanging out around our house and decided it was time for another spray, so I sprayed, and now I have peace of mind for the next month, at least when it comes to keeping bugs out of our house. Yay Raid!!!

I Think I might be getting fat

Is it just me or does this shirt look a little too small. I really hope it is not because i am getting fat or something like that. I think that my sister was supposed to send me one that fits because it is my favorite shirt. I do not think that this is that shirt, but it might be because this sister who said she would send the shirt is pretty responsible and does what she says she will. Now this shirt has shrunk so small that i have to give it away and am without my favorite shirt in the whole world. If only someone knew what happened to its replacement.

your mama's so fat she doesn't even have to fly south in the winter

It is sad but summer is coming to an end and school is just days away for Grant. We are ready for fall, or at least ready for it to cool down. I am a little sad however, we had so many things that we said we were going to see and do... And our summer was fun, even with a few curve balls thrown in, but over all fun. So today, the last day we both had off work together before school starts we decided to make the most of it. I wish there was enough time to do a quick trip to Moab, go camping, and then stop by Vegas for a night. Then we really could say that we did everything we had planned this summer, but it just wont fit in the three days left before school start. So we decided to honor my family's tradition of "saying goodbye to summer". In Idaho during the first weeks of school we would go to the beach, eat dinner, swim, and feed the birds one last time. We only have a smelly lake down here, and the smell would probably kill most people's appetites, so dinner and swimming at the lake were out. Instead we went mini golfing and then went for a bike ride to the duck pond on campus to feed the ducks. This is one of those situations where it is the thought that counts. The ducks are fed so frequently at the duck pond that they don't even fly south for the winter, so it's not like we won't be able to visit again until spring time. Today they were pretty lively and would eat the bread right out of our hands. There have been a few times that we have tried to feed them and they were so over fed they would only eat you bread if it landed close enough for them to reach it without walking.

Here's a picture of Grant hanging out with the ducks. They will stay through the winter, but we are not brave enough to go out in the cold to feed them so today is our goodbye until next spring.
Mini golf was also really fun. They had an outdoor and indoor course, we opted for the indoor course. Hooray for air conditioning!, it is just too hot to really enjoy anything outdoors. Good bye summer, let's bring on the fall!