The Secret Is Out

No we are not having a baby. Don't worry, we'll let you know when that happens too.
We're having a house! We have been looking for an apartment/townhouse/house off and on since last October when we got engaged. We put a few offers in, but nothing quite worked out. In February we put in an offer on a short sale we really liked in the north part of Orem. We were hoping for something further north with Darrell's office being in American Fork and me working in Draper, so we kept looking. In June our offer moved into first place and we started thinking more about that house. Eventually we decided to just wait around for the bank to actually move on it since we never found something we liked better. And they did.
It's a 4 bedroom, 2 bath brick rambler. We have some work to do on it so even though we are closing on it on Wednesday, we aren't expecting to be moved in until about the 22nd. It looks pretty dismal right now but we shall try to keep good track of before and after photos to put up.
We're stoked/stressed and probably won't be super social the next few weeks, so don't be offended. If you like to clean/paint/haul away old carpet/move furniture/bring us food so we eat something warm, let us know. Darrell and I both have a really hard time asking for help, but know we really are going to need some so we can hit our deadlines.
But if anyone needs tips on where to get appliances, paint, flooring, etc in Utah county, we are somewhat knowledgeable about good deals.
We're going to miss our ward and our neighborhood a lot, but glad we are going to finally be putting money towards a house instead of just rent every month. And it's going to be cool to have a place of our own. We just haven't told the cat yet... She should be okay though considering she gets  new yard and roof for her fluffy self to play on.
Hope everyone has a good week! Watch out for pictures soon. And we're going crazy in one of the rooms so if you have an opinion on whether we should do yellow or orange walls, let us know. And don't worry, it's going to look good. I promise. 

His & Hers

So this week (mostly making up for the lack of post last week) is a joint endeavor. Now two weekends ago, I went on our annual girls' trip with my mom, Brandaige, and Shaili in Branson. Darrell couldn't stand the thought of being home alone without me-understandably, so he went with on an overnight camping trip to Goblin Valley with some of the youth in our ward.
I shall go first. 
First of all, there were actually six of us on the trip because Brandaige brought Elsie and Shaili brought Gaia. Good thing they're girls. But really, they're adorable. Thankfully my mom was taking pictures the whole weekend because I only have pictures of the nieces.
We went to a show our first night in town. They claimed to be the oldest show in Branson, but a sign two blocks up the road said that another show was the first show in Branson. Yeah. The next day we spent at Silver Dollar City, an amusement park for those who have never sampled the goodness of Branson. We went on some rollercoasters by juggling babies and thankfully left the park just as it started raining. We unwisely went to a Golden Corral next door to our hotel. (Don't get it? Branson=the destination spot for the newly wed and nearly dead aka lots and lots of senior citizens who love buffets.) I actually took a picture of the line to send to Darrell, so there's that. We went on a train ride on Saturday. Yes, I have now been to Arkansas. Then we hit up a restaurant on the river we'd been to before, dropped by the Five & Ten store we loved when we were kids and visited, and then stopped by the outlet mall. We ended the night at a fudge shop for ice cream, where they sang for us surprisingly. And I got hit on by a sixteen year old and didn't realize it until after we left and Brandaige and Shaili caught me up. Guess I've transitioned to the whole marriage thing pretty well.
It was great trip and I came back more relaxed than I've been in a long time. Work and life has helped to get me back to my normal state in the last week, but I only have to make it to next year! I'm so glad my mom is an awesome planner and puts these trips together every year. I think this was our twelfth year?
Spiritual experience of the trip: we stopped by a sacrament meeting before we all had to head to the airport to fly home Sunday. I was finally almost over a bad headcold I'd had all week, so I decided to skip watching the primary program and spend our hour at church in the bathroom with food poisoning. Now, this presented a problem as you can imagine. Flying doesn't usually bother me at this point, but I did not want to spend two flights and a layover in that state. Didn't sound too doable in my mind. So we had a lady pull her husband and son out of the meeting to come give me a priesthood blessing. Ten minutes later I barely even could remember being sick. By the time we got to our layover in Denver I was eating Quizno's and peanut butter M&Ms. Guess what? The church is true.

 Golden Corral

 Elsie

 We get in trouble a lot when we spend time together.

 The girls loved each other.

Gaia smiles more than any baby I've ever met.

Now for Darrell's turn....

Two week catchup on blogging 

Happy Halloween everybody

Sorry for the two week delay.  Here is a catch me up blogging post, complete with pics, stories and other miscellaneous nonsense.  About two weeks ago, Anberlin was back in town and we went to the concert.  We met at their concert last April which put us down the path of marriage.  We love listening to their music and they put on a great show.  

I hope everyone enjoyed watching a traditional Halloween movie this weekend.  Ours was The Nightmare before Christmas.  For some reason neither Kaela nor I had ever seen all of it and it was playing on a giant outdoor screen at Sundance Resort which had set up Halloween theme lift ride.  Below the ski lift were various Halloween themed scenes, zombie crossing, witches hut, car accidents, ghosts floating in the air.  It was kind of cheesy and wasn’t very scary unless you were close to the ground where you would normally get off the lift.  You were close enough to let the volunteers have a chance to jump at you or invite you to have your face carved off or something like that.  Mostly it was just a nice chair lift ride in the cold mountain air.  If you decide to go and do something like that, take a blanket, we were glad we did.  Also make sure you secure all your belongings.  Once we got back to the car I reached into my pocket to pull out the passes that I had borrowed from Infotrax only to discover that they were missing!  I think I remember hearing them fall but didn’t think anything of it at the time.  I talked to the lifties and the ticket office and they said they would look but it might wait until Monday before they could really do a good looking.  But, the passes were reserved for the very next day!  I had to get them back.  Fortunately, the passes had one free reprinting in case of this very situation.  Hopefully, no one else will lose them this season, and thank goodness it was something easily solved.  When I was talking to the ticket office people there was another girl who had her cell phone drop out of her pocket!  #biggerproblems. 

That was a start to a good weekend for us.  Saturday, Kaela and I did a bunch of browsing for flooring options at some local stores to get an estimate for our house. 

For those of you who don’t know, we are about two weeks away from closing on our first home. We haven't done a good job publicizing it so far but details on a house warming parting will be coming. 

Anyway, it’s good to get a good estimate on the flooring so we know what other things we can do now and what will be a later project.  Hopefully we can get it nice for us to enjoy for the next few years. 

We also did some mountain biking and went to the temple for initiatories.  Perfect weather for mountain biking right now.  Too bad it gets dark so soon now. 

It’s been really nice to have a weekend with each other here locally.  We are always running around doing different things.  For example, last weekend Kaela left for Branson, Missouri for her annual girl’s trip with her mom and sisters.  I went with the scouts to Goblin Valley with the scouts.  I’m proud to say that my ward and leaders are not the idiots who made national news a week ago by knocking over an ancient goblin.  I think it’s so irresponsible that leaders, who are supposed to be examples of what to do for the youth, are the ones initiating a vandalous act at a state park and feel that they were justified in their actions.  I’ll stop my rant, it could go on for a few more paragraphs but I’ll spare everyone. 

We played kick the can and capture the flag in the goblins under a full moon that was so bright you didn’t need to use a flashlight.  The next morning we hiked a slot canyon called Ding and Dang.  The boys did great at climbing up and over the obstacles.    We got to turn the hike into a teaching opportunity for the kids to practice leadership principles by making the boys be responsible for getting everyone over the obstacle instead of relying on the leaders.  I’m amazed at what these kids can accomplish.  It’s been so much fun being in this ward’s youth program. 

On the way home, the car in front took a wrong turn on I-70.  For those you familiar with I-70 in central Utah, there is nothing out there and we got stuck going 100 miles out of the way across the state before getting to an exit that would take us home.  I was beautiful country, but an unnecessary detour.  I learned that it’s important to have a map in your car of the area you are going to be traveling in.  Sometimes you just can’t rely of having cell service when you need it the most.

  

Back to me for the finish.

We'll try to keep up blogging the next couple weeks even though it will be crazy for awhile. We may have to settle with mostly pictures of what will be keeping us busy-cleaning, moving, painting, etc. Either next Sunday before the madness sets in or after we get settled we'll give a little more detail about the house. At this point it doesn't seem too real yet. Pretty sure that will be changing soon. Prayers are appreciated in the meantime to help us not go crazy. This is Darrell's busiest time of year, and as you can imagine I have already used my time off for the year with all of our trips. This is the kind of thing that makes me really grateful I've got my best friend by my side. Wouldn't have it any other way.

Back to Some Roots

Family Heritage is an amazing thing to me.  It’s an invisible bond that connects otherwise random groups of people together who might not share any commonalities, not even the same last name as each other. 

I’ve heard stories of people meeting on airplanes who have never met each other only to realize that they were cousin through some grandparent on their mother’s side, or something crazy like that.  I think the stereotype of a family reunion is at some random park with a lot of people who don’t really know each other eating potato salad.  I think everyone has been to this family reunion, myself included. 

So how is heritage developed within a family?  When you think about your family tree when do you see your family beginning? It is a moment in history that is so monumental that you count forward in time from there on.   I think that moment in history is where a family’s heritage begins.  Conference weekend brings up a lot of heritage stories from the pioneers who have created a special heritage for the members of the church. 

I bring up this topic because this weekend we celebrated my family’s heritage at the Whitney Pockets outside Mesquite, Nevada.  My grandmother was born in a small town named St. Thomas (St. Thomas is no longer there because it was flooded when the Overton Dam was built, flooding the town).  When she was little her father moved the family to a ranch in the mountains east of the lake.   She grew up in this area until the dam was built and the family moved to Hurricane, Utah.  While the family lived in the desert, life was hard and difficult.  Many times it took direct help from heaven to keep family member alive and safe to preserve the lives of the family.  These stories have been passed down from then to now. 

To celebrate the family’s time out in the desert, current family members head out to the same area once a year to camp for a week and tell stories.  We’ve grown far and wide since the time that my grandpa loaded his 10 kids in a station wagon and headed down old highway 91 through the night.  Now we have family that have traveled as far away as Washington and Oregon just to return to the family’s heritage site.  In years past our numbers have grown to as large as 120 people.  It’s gotten so big that we decided to buy a port-a-potty to handle the large number.  This year we had a smaller crowd than we have had in years past and only had 80 family members.  Still a really good number, but the ones that didn’t come were definitely missed. 

Kaela and I arrived at the desert late Thursday night/early Friday morning after driving late once Kaela got off work.  Thank goodness Bean is so easy to set up for car camping.  Throw the seats down, move all our stuff, unroll bedding and hit the hay.  Friday morning we got a chance to load the whole camp up on 4wheelers, side by sides, and trucks and headed out on a caravan trip to a place called Little Finland. On the way out we passed by Devil’s Throat, a large sinkhole that you wouldn’t want to stumble into during the middle of the night.  Little Finland is a rock formation that you can see different images in, faces, animals, etc.  That afternoon we rode up to the Nay ranch in the mountains.  This is the same ranch where my grandmother grew up.  Although we no longer have the ranch in the family we have stayed close to the owners.  They let us come out and fill up our water containers saving us an hour long round trip back to Mesquite.  Most importantly though is the pond.  A spring fed, cement lined, rope swing lined oasis where the water temperature is always the same: cold.  This cold water can feel really refreshing in the burning summer sun, but in October, at 7000 feet, it’s a little chilly.  Didn’t stop Kaela from jumping in though!  Although I don’t think she was as eager standing next to the edge of the pond as she was back at camp.  Best part of the pond its getting the grime off from riding behind in the dust cloud that gets kicked up from the 4 wheelers.  

Friday night we had our annual trick-or-treat for the kiddos. People decorate their RVs, dress up, and hand out candy to the kids. Our favorite picks were Indiana Jones and the Duck Dynasty crew.

 

Saturday, we made another quick trip on the 4 wheelers to the Ice caves.  The caves don’t actually have ice, nor are they actually caves.  It’s a slot canyon in a set of rocks down the road from the ranch that stay shaded pretty much all day long.  It allows a cool break from the heat of the day.  On the way back, my cousin Chad Meeks and I went off on a side trail that I wanted to explore.  We had a great time riding back into a narrow canyon and finding an overlook that is above the campsite that I had never been to before.  We went a little longer than planned and had a mix up as to what time zone we were in, because when we got back people were more than annoyed we had gone past what time we were going to be back.  Sorry to everyone who was worried, especially to my wife. 

At this point most of the camp was packed and headed for home.  Kaela and I stayed awhile chatting with the Meeks family before heading to St. George to meet up at my grandma and grandpa Smith’s for dinner.  Then headed up the state on Sunday to get home.  

Another year down in the books for the family desert trip.  One day, the responsibility of organizing and running this trip is going to be passed down to myself and a few of my other cousins.  It’s a thought that I’ve had for a while.  I’ll be happy when that day comes to continue passing the heritage of the Whitney pockets down to my kids and their kids, like my parents and grandparents did for me. 

Let’s just hope the democrats in Clark County, NV don’t close everything off out there claiming they need to protect a tortoise that has never been seen…

In other news, we are moving forward on the purchase of the house in Orem.  We found out there are renters living there now. They just moved in last Saturday so if things go according to plan/our timetable with the bank, they will be forced to move out 3 weeks later.  I don’t think they were told by the owners that the sale of the home would happen this fast.  I feel really bad for them because they’ve spent all their money turning the lights back on and cleaning the place only to find out that they have to get out ASAP!  I feel a bit like scrooge from Christmas Carol, but there’s not much I can do to help the situation.  I guess I can tell them thanks for turning on the lights for us, but I don’t think they would feel my sincerity. 

We now own two cars outright!  We paid off my car, named Bean, this week!  Thanks to my lovely wife for helping make this possible. 

This was also going on this week.  But my wife said I couldn’t give it a try.  Maybe one day

http://youtu.be/qozOxGT7Mtc

Then again, maybe not. 

Words are worth a thousand pictures

We completely forgot to take any pictures this week, but books without pictures are good so a blog post without pictures can be good too, right?
Here's our week:
Monday we went to the original J-Dawgs to go see some friends who were in town, along with some other Omaha friends/previous missionaries. For those of you who don't know, J-Dawgs is a hot dog joint. They've got sauerkraut, jalapenos, their special sauce, and awesomeness galore.
Tuesday we went to watch RSL play in the Open Cup. It sucked. They lost and they really shouldn't have. I realized it's good that I don't usually get attached to sports teams because I get a little worked up when they lose. It's not super flattering.
Wednesday we watched the final episode of "Breaking Bad" with Darrell's old roommate Craig. Darrell was really sad that the show is over. I'm okay with it. :) But he was happy with how it ended. Now we'll get back to "Downton Abbey"!
Thursday was my last day of work for the week, which was nice timing because it was my birthday on Friday!!! I didn't have to work, I got to wear jeans all day (a really big deal for me!), and I got to hang out with my babeface! We signed some papers for our short sale, ran around to a few different work appointments for Darrell, and then I got to go get an hour massage that Darrell had scheduled for me! We were planning to go to a Mexican place named Diegos in Provo that we've wanted to try for awhile, but it was closed for 30 days...aka we're pretty sure the health department shut them down. Too bad, too. That meant they were probably pretty good. Instead we went to Mountain West Burrito and then home to watch the Aggie game. Since that also didn't have a happy ending, or middle, we finished off the night with tapioca to soothe our sadness. All in all, it was  a good birthday. I got calls, texts, email, etc from a lot of wonderful people and got to spend the day with the one I love the most!
Saturday I had to work but then got to spend the rest of the weekend with Erika visiting us! It was good getting to have her around and most importantly, she got to meet our cat. They've been destined to be friends for a long time apparently.
In other news, Darrell is great. He fixed my car door for me this weekend, replaced my bald tires, and tonight he even did dishes! Sorry for the sap, but that guy is good. He also came and met me after work today with our bikes and gear so we could go for a ride before dark-something that isn't very possible lately with my work hours and that sun setting so early. Basically, I won.
We also paid off Darrell's car as of yesterday! Paying off debt=happiness. Tithing blessings, anyone?
Until next week!

Mind the Gap

Sometimes my wife just makes some delicious food, this weekend it was fondue!  We cut up a lot of fruit and veggies and made two batches.  One for Sunday night, the other for Monday night and invited a few friends over to share.  What's funny about living in Utah, is that not a lot of people have ever tried fondue.  Usually because it’s made with wine and in Utah that might require a trip to the liquor store.  Thanks to our friends in Omaha who gave us our fondue set for our wedding, we have a great recipe that substitutes apple juice for wine.  Our friends are blown away by it because in most cases it’s a treat that they’ve never had before (again the whole wine thing) and we get to show off how cultured we are.  #pattingmyselfontheback

Speaking of #hashtags, watch this clip:  http://youtu.be/57dzaMaouXA  #funny

Big adventure this week was making our trip to Zion National Park and hiking the Subway.  We’ve been talking about this for weeks and leaving the followers of this blog (all six of you) on pins and needles every week! 

BTW, big shout out to all of you who do read this blog.  We hope you find it fun and enjoyable. 

Wednesday night after work, we loaded up the car and headed to Zion.  We decided to run the canyon mid-week because it was a lot easier to get passes for the canyon. The weekend always seemed to get booked really quick. So since Kaela worked last Saturday, she had a day to take off this week.

Two years ago I decided to sell my Subaru Outback.  It was a beautiful car, leather interior, turbo engine, stick shift.  This car was a dream except for the fact that it kept having engine trouble that would cost $2000 + to fix.  The summer before I sold it, I did a lot of car camping.  Instead of setting up a tent or laying down on the lumpy ground I would lay down my back seat and stretch out comfortably with a sun roof above my head to watch the stars through.  When I was looking for a car to replace the Subaru I had a list in my head of a few features that it had to have.  The ability to car camp was one of them. 

Say hello to car camping with Bean!!!  Pulling off onto a dirt road sure beats paying for a crappy hotel.  And when there is a Maverick gas station just down the road with toilets and rotating shift times, it’s really easy to get away with not paying for a camp site.  

The Subway is a fun challenging hike that requires you to have a 60 foot rope to rappel down a few obstacles.  When I did the hike a few years ago, my friends and I used the rope more as something to hold on to as we scrambled down logs and rocks to get to the bottom.  This year, the canyon had completely changed.  Logs that had been there before that we had scrambled down or crossed to get to easier sections to scramble down were gone.  Logs had been washed into sections of the canyon that made other sections more difficult to get through.  I hadn’t expected this change in the canyon to be so different from last time.  Fortunately, we came prepared with a harness and rappelling gear.  Last time we hadn’t needed them, so I almost didn’t bring them.  As we descended the 30 foot cliff to get to the bottom of our last rappel I felt very grateful to have included the gear we needed to get down safely. 

Jim and Karen Wright came with us on the hike too and did it like champs!  I think I sugar coated some of the obstacles we were going to come across to convince them to come.  One thing we didn’t expect was the cold weather.  We went on the one day that the temps dropped 10 degrees cooler than normal.  It made for some tricky hiking but thanks to dry bags we were able to cross the water obstacles then put dry clothes back on.  

We didn’t run into many other groups while hiking, probably because of the cooler temps but we did see two guys from Israel a few times hiking down the canyon.  I don’t know what they do in Israel to make these guys so tough but they were hiking in t shirts, bummy running shorts, and duck taped Tevas.  Most of the hike they did in their bare feet.  Minimalists, eat your hearts out. 

We drove home the same night to get back in time for work the next day.   

Saturday Kaela went with Alyssa and Shana to the conference center for the Relief Society General Session after she got off work while I tore apart my four wheeler to replace a stripped out bolt to prepare for our upcoming desert trip!!!

#cliffhanger!

#our6followersbecome5duetoannoyingcliffhangers

#nexttime!