Our Healthy and Busy Baby

This weekend was pretty stressful for me. Brad and I had a terrifying scares this weekend about baby, so we had an appointment on monday to make sure everything was ok. They checked for the heartbeat and the midwife found it no problem! it was beating at 150 bpm (alot slower than the last couple times... 179, 170, 165) and we could even hear him/her kicking away and having fun doing whatever babies do in the womb. But my midwife sent me to get an ultrasound just to make sure eveything was ok.
Baby is doing fantastic and our fears were for naught. Guess brad and I are just super-worried first time parents. Baby measured in at an even 50th%ile for his/her age really likes to move. Since I was 15 weeks, I asked the ultrasu0nd tech if they could tell if it was a boy or girl yet and they said they could try to check, but usually they can't tell until at least 17 weeks. Baby finally stopped moving long enough for them to get a clear image, but he or she was bashful and had his/her legs crossed. We moved it around a bit, and then we get a nice big baby foot where baby seemed to be kicking the ultrasound telling it to, "go away! stop trying to look at me while I'm not decent!."

Result: the two ultrsound techs couldn't tell, so we're gonna have to be patient and wait a few more weeks before we know if baby is a he or she. what's you're vote?

Thump...Thump...Thump

We got to hear little Baby Neeley's heartbeat on Monday last week!!! It was really fast, 165 beats per minute, and sounded like marching/drumming. Little Baby is getting big and strong as Marie begins week 13 of pregnancy, also the beginning of the second trimester! I've been told that's the best time in pregnancy and am defiantly looking forward to not feeling sick!

Family has been asking for pictures of a pregnant belly, but they don't exist yet. Brad and I will take a picture and see if anyone can see the beginnings of a baby bump? Brad says he can, but I just feel fat. Thanks little baby!Marie at 5 weeks 6days preggers (soon after we found out, we took a "beginning of pregnancy" photo for future comparison). I was always so proud of my flat tummy...


Marie is 13 weeks and 1 day preggers here. Look like a baby bump, or a fat lady attempting to look like she has a baby bump?

Baby Blob's First Picture!

We got to see our baby for the first time on Friday afternoon. Crazy stuff! There really is this little, vaguely person-shaped blob growing in my tummy. And he/she has a really REALLY big head. Aunt Sam says it's cuz baby will be really smart, or really full of him/herself. Mommy and Daddy agree that it's because baby is going to take after Daddy and just have a big noggin. Mommy isn't looking forward to that in 7 months.

Baby blob is just barely and inch big, and his/her head makes up about 1/3 to 1/2 the size of his/her entire body at this point. The heartbeat was an amazing 170 beats per minute (but sadly we didn't get to hear it this time). The ultrasound was fun to have, more so for brad than me. I had to drink two large bottle of water before my appointment and wasn't allowed to use the bathroom. The entire time I'm looking at our baby on the screen, in my head I'm thinking, "I really have to pee. I need to pee. If she pushes that thing into my stomach any harder, I might not be able to hold it!" Whereas, Brad is smiling like a little kid at the movies and staring at the screen in amazement thinking, "Woah, I made that! That's so cool!" But no matter how blobby our baby is right now, we are so excited to see him/her and to finally see that he/she is really in there-- growing and making Mommy feel fat and have to use the bathroom alot.

We love our little blob!

While We Were Out...

Sorry, this blog post has been long since coming. We've been busy this summer and haven't had all that much time to post on here. Let me give you an overview.

We had Marie's brother Steve come out and stay with us for about 6 weeks. He slept in our living room on the couch and seemed to survive. We had a fun time with him and miss him but he had to return home for school about 2 weeks ago.

Marie found out that she is pregnant a few weeks ago. She is now in her 6th week I think. We are pretty sure it's a boy but won't know until early December. It is due the week that Marie graduates, April 19th or so. This provides tons of fun because she may not be able to walk at graduation, but her whole family is supposed to be out here to celebrate graduation and now they have even more motivation to get out here! We are very happy and excited. We weren't expecting a baby to come this soon as she just barely got off the pill. Marie hasn't had any morning sickness yet, but she gets nausea and just doesn't want to eat anything a lot of times. She also has developed a "super sniffer" as she calls it. It sometimes is good, but most of the time it overwhelms her and she feels sick again. I don't think the shock of being a father has quite hit me yet. I'm assuming that once she starts showing, it might hit me, otherwise, I'm sure holding the child will certainly knock me off my feet. ;-)

We also went camping recently with some friends at Diamond Fork Canyon. There are some hot springs there that have been made into primitive hot tubs. It smelled very strong of sulfur but we got used to it. We camped about 100 yards away from the parking lot and then had to hike 2 miles to the hot springs. We had an enjoyable time playing card games while at camp and eating good camp food. It's about a 30 minute drive from Provo. We thoroughly enjoyed the last free weekend before school started yesterday.

We've also been given the calling of Nursery Leaders in our church. We have had the calling for about a month or so now and take care of the 3 year olds. Our church has about 100 kids (literally!) and we got 12 in our class. Most of the time they are nice to each other but sometimes we look like heck after church because they wear us out. They are fun to be with and surprisingly smart for their age. We've been chastised a few times by one of the kids already for letting the kids run around. She says, "They shouldn't be running. This is Jesus's house!" However, whenever she is running and we quote her saying that to her, she just looks at us like, "You're crazy!" Kids!

Allergy Adventures

Just so you know, I have a tendency to put myself in situations where i hurt myself... a lot.

The most recent example: I dropped a fan on my leg and scrapped off a decent amout of skin to be moderatly painful and unpleasant.

The second most recent example: Brad and I have decided to participate in a allergy drug study. Tuesday morning we drove up to the study site for the first visit to determine is we were eligible to particpate. The qualification: you must be allergic to grass and or trees. They determine this by poking the skin with a needle and dropping a solution of different grass and tree pollens where they pricked you. Those of you who know me will already know that I am terribly allergic to grass-- so much so that i can't walk in it barefoot without getting hives, and mowing the lawn is almost a death sentance since it will make my nose and eyes swell to such lenghts as to render me blind and unable to breath. Well, it was obvious after only 5 minutes that I was allergic to the grass and tree pollen solutions by virtue of the swelling and gient red splotches on my arms. but that wasn't thje worst of it. oh no-- 6 hours later, half my forearm is red and swollen and tender and itchy beyond belief.

Thank you, Kaleigh, for the hydrocortizone cream! It quite possibly saved me from cutting off my arm to stop the itching.

It's now 3 days later and the swelling is gone but two beautiful greenish-yellow bruises now stand in place where i was pricked and received the grass solutions. At least i'm getting paid to torture myself! Just to satisfy my geekiness-- i'm practicing cognitve dissonance, reasoning my way into believeing that i'm getting paid enough to enjoy this! i wrote a paper on it for philosophy last year.

P.S. The board game Monopoly, Star Wars Edition, deserves a public apology from me. I recently must have offended it by saying it was not as good as the original Monopoly version, and since then it has spited me with the worst luck I have ever had in a Monopoly game and helped Brad kick my trash TWICE in less than a half hour each time. Anyone that has played me at Monopoly knows that I am the butt-kicker and am not accustomed to being the Kickee. SO for the record, to Monopolly Star Wars Edition, I am sorry and hope that you will forgive me let me return to my happy position at butt-kicker. Sincerly, Marie Neeley.

Iosepa Weekend Adventure

Memorial Day weekend we went to a place called Iosepa, near Tooele, UT. We had been invited several times to come to this place and camp out with some Polynesian families from my mission in the Utah Provo Mission, but I had never been able to get camping gear or the time to go in the past. We borrowed my Aunt June's camping equipment for the Southern Utah adventure and decided to keep it a bit longer so we could go on this campout.


Here's the basic background of the place. The people who settled here were mostly all of Polynesian decent, mostly from Hawaii. Anyways, they built a small city there and for several years, it was one of the best kept cities in Utah. They named the city Iosepa (Yo sepp a) which is Hawaii for "Joseph." The people endured several trials with the elements and such and then they left to Hawaii to help build the La'ie Temple in Hawaii. If you want more info than that, here's a little more history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iosepa.


We arrived Friday evening and met up with the Peck family, a family that I was able to help prepare their daughter for baptism. I used to play racquetball with them after my mission also. Anyways, we get there and it's this place in the middle of nowhere. Just farm land and cows. At the actual site, there was a pavilion and cemetery for the settlers of Iosepa that the children would clean up and decorate with flower leis every year. We set up our tent next to the Pecks' camper and just hung out for the night, making new acquaintances and renewing old ones. My wife had not been around many Polynesians before and felt completely as if she were surrounded by family right away, even though she had never met any of these people.

Saturday was the main festivities day. We volunteered to help out and ended up stationed at a booth were the kids could give up "Iosepa bucks" to buy things such as coloring books, candy leis, kukui nut bracelets and some kind of fuzzy leis. We also collected money for a few surrounding booths. At one, you could make flower headbands or wristbands. At another, you could make Ipus (something with gourds, I never did find out). At another, you could make your own bookmark with a piece of special wood and sandpaper. Most made them into surfboard shapes. I got creative and made an example of a wavy bookmark and put them together for a surfboard on the waves! It was lots of fun.

In the evening, the Imu was opened up. For those that don't know about Imus, it is a traditional way of Polynesian cooking, basically a huge steam cooker, but it's a hole the ground. It is started in the early morning and usually is ready to be buried after 3 hours. The hole is a couple feet deep, and rocks are placed in the fire to be the main heat source because they retain heat better than coals. We used steel girders because it works better. I was able to help bury and unearth the Imu. The favorite dish is kalua pork, basically cooking whole pigs to the point where the meat falls off the bone and is very tender and juicy. Ours was just slabs of the pig already cut up and wrapped in foil. If you want more details about the Imu, go here: http://www.primitiveways.com/Imu1.html.


The dinner included the kalua pork, chop suey, taro (kind of like a potato, but very dense), macaroni salad, a cole slaw dish that had crab in it, another kind of cole slaw with raw fish and peppers in it (it's actually one of my favorites), steamed rice, teriaki style chicken, and tons of other stuff that I can't really remember right now. It was DeLiCious! Marie loved it too. Polynesian food is one of our favorite kinds of food. There are a few restaurants out here that specialize in it, and Marie and I go to them when we feel a bit rich (not too often).

It rained pretty hard that evening and we found a pool of water in our tent. Luckily we had some towels and were able to soak it up and it didn't damage anything. I tried to adjust our tent fly so it would block the rain but it was so windy that rain was still coming in the tent. We decided to just leave it to the Lord and prayed that we wouldn't have any more rain in the tent somehow. Right after we said "Amen", Brother Peck shouted at our tent "Anybody home?" He was just checking on us and making sure we were doing alright. We mentioned we were a bit wet and couldn't seem to figure out how to keep the rain out and a few minutes later he was putting a tarp over our tent. Isn't it nice when God answers your prayers quickly through his servants? The rest of the evening was spent trying to sleep and drown out the loud music from the dance the youth were having under the pavilion all night.

Sunday morning, it was still raining but we had Sunday services under the pavilion. It was just a big testimony meeting with the Utah Polynesian Choir singing several hymns in the various Polynesian languages (Samoan, Tongan, Hawaiian, Tahitian, etc...). It was a great service and afterwards was another authentic Polynesian meal and then Marie and I took off since we had to get back to Provo and wanted to dry out our tent.

All in all, it was a great experience that neither of us will forget and we plan on doing it again next year. Marie loves the Polynesian people and we would like to visit the Islands someday to scout them out for possible retirement. :-)

Adventures Avoiding Scams and Fraud

This past two weeks or so has been puncuated by scam artists coming from many different directions, including job scams on craigslist and stupid men that work at car repair shops. As many of you may or may not know I (this is marie by the way) have been looking for a better job with better hours and such which is proving very difficult. being a "teaching social science major" is about as worthless as majoring in art history as far as having work experience and being able to get a job before i graduate. but i love it and am really looking forward to being a teacher after i graduate in april. but back to the story...

i found a listing on craigslist for a tutoring position and emailed the poster about it. he told me that he needed a tutor for his daughter susan-- mostly because they were about to move to the US from the UK and wanted her to get accustomed to the school system her and know what she should expect from the schools. he told me he was also looking into two other canidates and needed my resume and a details about my work history-- mostly just what i had experience tutoring in and for how long. after a few emails, he told me that i had received the position (yay!) and we set up when, and where to meet, and what textbooks to use, and what my compensation would be ($690). he even called me and told me that he'd send me a picture of his daughter soon so i could recognize her. then brad and i left for our southern utah advanture and returned a week later to find a letter from the man... well, sort of. it wasn't a letter, but a check for $2,200. we were pretty confused and figured maybe he made a mistake in converting euros to dollars or something, or maybe it was to compensate for the textbooks she would need. we didn't know but figured maybe he wold send an email explaining why it was so much more.

but why was he paying me in advance??? this is where we got suspicious. we had an email from him telling us that the extra was actually going to be for his daugheter's driver and wanted me to give it to her because it would be esier and cheaper to only write out one check. then he sent another email telling us that the driver bailed on him and took a different job and he needed me to wire the extra money to his personal assistant so he could make flight arrangements for his daughter and that i needed to cash the check and wire the money back to him ASAP. this was wierd, but i went to the bank anyway.

when i handed hte check to the teller, she informed me of large checks like that being a fraud and told me that lately, scam artists will send a check for a larger amount than agreed upon for a service and ask you to wire the extra back to them. about 11 days later, the bank will find out that the check is a fraud and will require the perosn who cashed the check to pay them back for the whole check amount. (this was basicly the EXACT thing this guy was asking us to do!)

so, i called brad and he came to the bank with me and the teller got the phone number of the bank that issued the check. she told them the routing number, account number, and check number of the check she had and foudn out that it was a real account from that bank, but that that check had already been issued to another person for a different amount. it was a FRAUD! and now we knew it and had caught the scammer red handed. but because brad and i didn't want to be nice about it to the guy, we sent him an email say that we couldn't cash the check in time so we were just going to void it and that he could send the money to his PA himself and that he could write me a new check after i had rendered my tutoring services to his daughter. i got a very angry email back from him saying that i didn't have to open my mouth to tell him that i didn't trust his personality and that he wanted the check back immediatly. he also called my cell phone about 4 times while i was a work and left angry voicemails. never said a thing about not letting me have the job anymore or about his daughter-- he just wanted his money, and he wanted it ASAP.

i still wasn't satisfied. brad and i called the FBI and filed reports and complaints with the federal trade commission and internet crime center. i also called local news agencies and gave them a good story. then i sent my last email to the con-man, informing him that i had called his bank (located in arkansas... weird for a man from the UK) and knew he was a fraud and that the FTC, FBI, and intermational internet crime board had received all the contact information he had, including phone numbers, addresses, emails, the bad check, and voicemails. the bank that he useing bad checks from also had his information and was closing his account. needless to say, io haven't heard back from the scumbag.

and on a less exciting note, auto shop men can be real jerks. i took our car in to the shop for our annual safety and emissions testing. it passed the emisions test, but not the safety inspection. why? "bad tires." waht was so bad about the tires, i asked the man... "they're just bad. they're a safety hazard." um, ok... i decided i needed a bit mroe specifics, i'm not an idiot and i do know about cars-- i took and auto shop class in high schools and can do most basic repairs myself, including changing a tire, changing wiper blades, changing oil, checking and refilling fluids. and i know a few other things because i'm a science geek and have watched people work on the car and have an annoying habits of askiong lots of questions. i'm not an expert, but i do know enough to need a better answer than "you're tires are just bad."

me: so what's bad about the tires? are the treds worn down too much? are the rims bent or dented? are they not balenced? do they have a slow leak?

jerk car man: they're jsut bad and worn out on the inside.

me: the inside? how do you check the inside of a tire? what do you mean by that? like the center area of the treads?

jerk car man: well, if you know what you're doing, you just have to touch it on the inside. it's not on the outside. you have to kow what you're looking for.

me: ok. well, can you show me where? i like to know these thigns so i can notice when the car needs repairs and fix it myself.

jerk car man: we don't let customer into the shop area.

me: but my car's in the parking lot, i just saw the technicion bring it out. can he show me?

jerk car man: well, we're really busy, but i'll see if he can. but you're tires are just bad and you need two new front tires. that's all you really need to know.

the man was very condescending and irritated me. the techniticion showed me that the treads on the rear passenger tire were worn down too much and that the outside of the front passenger tire was bald on the right outside part. i asked about the "bad inside of the tire" and he said he didn't know what the guy inside was talking about. the guy inside was also going to change almost $300 for 2 new tires, and the technition told me where i could find some good junk yard tires for about $20 and that i could prolly change them myself. thanks.
well, brad and i found a place to get 4 brand new tires put on and balenced for us for only $250. when brad returned to the original place with the brand new tires, they tried to tell him we had leaking antifreeze, but the technition discovered it wa just because it was too full from when we had filled up our fluids earlier when getting an oil change. i'm NEVER going back to "CERTIFIED AUTO-CARE" agian, and you shouldn't either. I recommend Big O or "All Tune & Lube"-- they workers there will take you to the shop when looking at your car and tutor you on how cars work and what's wrong with yours is there is something wrong.

all in all, brad and i came out of it pretty well. we caught the tutor scammer before we learned an expensive lesson, and learned that if i want to get anything intelligent out of some auto shop guys, i have to bring a man along, regardless of his knowledge about cars.

Freecycle.org Rules!!!

Well, in case you don't know, my wife and I love www.freecycle.org. It's an internet based community where you can post messages about stuff you would like to offer or want to have for FREE. It's a great way to give away that piece of furniture, old clothes, appliances, pets, etc... to people that either can't afford to pay anything or would just like to not have to pay for such things. The items are generally in good shape and the descriptions don't hold anything back since they are being offered for free. Also, if you need a particular item, you can make a post with WANTED in the subject and usually at least one person has what you want and will give it to you for free.

There are groups all over the U.S. for the individual cities you live in or near. You sign up for free and can choose to either check the site regularly for new items listed or sign up to receive emails on all new posts. There are a few rules, like you can't ask for compensation at all, so no money exchanges or trades. It's a really good idea and it has proven to reduce waste in landfills by a significant amount from what I've heard.

We really like it and have received many items as well as giving away things we wouldn't use. Just today we picked up a Queen Size box spring for our new mattress and two 6 ft. floor lamps. In the past we have gotten an extension cord, mini fridge, couches, set of encyclopedias, and several other things. We have given away shower curtains, a full size bed and boxspring, and a garbage bucket full of random items. If you haven't checked it out yet, I suggest you do. It's a great site for saving money, perfect for college students. You know the saying, one person's junk is another person's treasure.

Our Southern Utah Adventure

Well, we're back safe and sound from our week long camping trip. We camped with borrowed camping equipment from Aunt June Neeley. We really appreciated it by the way. Anyways, we were gone from Monday May 11th to Sunday May 17th. We decided to spend about 2 days each in Arches National Park, Zion Canyon National Park, and Bryce Canyon National Park.


Monday we left Provo around 5 am and, due to my lack of sleep, ended up taking the really long way to Arches. Instead of going in the diagonal line that mapquest told me to do, I completely forgot and ended up going down I-15 until I hit Scipio and took Route 50 to get to I-70. We ended up losing about an hour because of that mistake. Oh well. We arrived at the park and drove to the Landscape Arch hike and hiked further on to Double O Arches. It was a 4.4 mile hike and we weren't quite prepared for it. We brought enough water and food, but we should have taken a warm up hike first. We were wiped out by the time we got back. I learned several things on this hike, most importantly that Marie is deathly afraid of heights and jumping over cracks between rocks. This is understandable, and she got through it all well, I just had to help calm her down and hold her at certain points in the hike. I also learned that Marie really loves animals more than earthly features such as arches. She liked to stop and look at and point out the many lizards and squirrels we encountered on our many hikes. She even fed a few squirrels some honey nut Cheerios. She did really like the arches too. On this hike we saw Landscape Arch, Navajo Arch, Partition Arch and Double O Arches. After this hike we figured we should get to the campsite and set up for the night. The campsite was 13 miles south of Monticello (where Arches is just north of Moab and Monticello is about 55 miles south of Moab) and was pretty nice. We only had problems at night when we wanted to use the bathroom or the water pump to clean dishes. We would hear rattles as we approached, warning us of rattlesnakes nearby. Other than that we were safe. I think we had Spaghetti O's that night for dinner.


Tuesday morning I woke up to find that my rear driver side tire had gone flat. This is when I found out even more about Marie and she found out even more about me. I have never changed a flat before, but I had seen it done and knew the basics. Marie assumed I knew what I was doing and just watched. I started out by jacking the car up and taking the wheel cover off. Good so far. Then I tried to unscrew the bolts unsuccessfully because the tire kept spinning when I tried to wrench them off. I couldn't for the life of me figure it out and got pretty frustrated. I'm sure Marie was glad there was no one watching her poor dumb husband attempt such a feat. Anyways, it finally dawned on me to put the e-brake on and I continued on my way. Marie had learned how to change a flat in Young Women's as a requirement for something I can't remember. I think we might have been better off with her changing it. Oh well. The rest was ok from there as we had a full size spare left over from a previous accident so we went out in search of a shower so we could do some temple work at the Monticello Temple. It costs a lot to take a shower I guess, as we paid $5 to do so for 1 hour. We acted as proxy for sealings that day and then went to Arches again to see the visitor's center and hike 3.5 miles to Delicate Arch. It was another tough hike but fun. That night we roasted hot dogs on the fire and later had roasted marshmallows.

Wednesday we broke camp pretty early so we could get to the Monticello Temple again so we could act as the witness couple in an endowment session at 10 am. After that we drove to Zion Canyon National Park to camp within the park. As we set up camp, several mule deer came down in the middle of the camp site. They didn't seem to mind people all that much as I came within arms reach of them a few times. There were a lot of annoying things about this site though. 1.)There were tons of bugs (caterpillars falling from over hanging trees, gnats, mosquitoes, flies, etc.). 2.)There were some people who decided to bring their baby camping and it decided to cry all night long. 3.)We were camped in a grove of cottonwood trees and both Marie and my allergies flared up severely, causing sleep problems and breathing problems.


Thursday morning, we hiked the 1 mile Canyonview trail in Zion. We ate lunch as we sat on some rocks overlooking the valley several thousand feet below. Marie is not as deathly afraid of heights as my father is. When I took him on this same hike, he inched up to the railing where the cliff is, all the time leaning backwards away from the cliff. When his hand finally touched the rail, he looked briefly over, still leaning backwards, and then scampered away from the edge. Marie was very cool about it but still didn't go as far as me, leaning over the rail to see the cliff drop off better. After that, we went to the St. George Temple, hoping to shower in the church building across from it for free because it was a stake center, but we found that there were no showers to be found there. We didn't want to go into the temple smelly and dirty so I tried to call a few of the people I know in the area but didn't find anyone home. Finally, Marie remembers that I had another friend down there that we were trying to stay with but things fell through. I called him up and we had our shower hookup for the next 2 days! After serving as the witness couple yet again, we went to our favorite restaurant, Mongolian BBQ. We took the friend with us to repay him for letting us use his showers. After dinner, I found out that a very good friend that I served my mission with was living in the area. We visited with him for several hours and enjoyed catching up on each other's lives.

Friday, we broke camp and took the shuttle around Zion and saw most of the peaks and did a few short hikes such as Weeping Rock and the 3 Patriarchs. We also went to the visitor center and saw a short film on the creation of the park. After that, we again went to the St. George Temple and performed sealings. After the temple, we went to our camp site out side of Bryce Canyon National Park. It was fun trying to find the camp site-- it was 5.5 miles down a gravel road and the signs with the name of our campground suddenly disappeared once we reached the campground and were replaced by other campground names. Luckily the campsite host was found and kindly pointed us in the right direction. I must say that this campsite had the cleanest camp bathrooms I've ever seen. They looked new and were not infested with rattlesnakes. We had eaten dinner at Iceberg in St. George before we came to camp and read until nightfall.

Saturday morning we drove to the end of Bryce (Rainbow Point) and proceeded to stop at all the lookout points along the way to the visitor's center. We neglected to put on sunscreen that day and regretted it. I got the worst of it, with Marie taunting me by saying how she didn't have to wear blush the following sunday because she had just the right amount of sunburn for it to look natural. Grrr.... I on the other hand turned into a well-done lobster. That evening we found to my immense dismay that another tire was leaking-- this one had a hole and we could hear it going flat. So I used the wisdom gained from my first tire-changing experience only a few days earlier to change this tire also while Marie heated up some yummy chicken and sausage gumbo soup. We were so glad to have listened to the Spirit and filled our other tire before reaching our campsite that night.


Sunday morning we checked the tires and to our delight, they were all filled. We had been saying several prayers the entire week that our car would function completely and well and specifically included the tires the last few days with the impending danger of the gravel road. We checked the tires again after we made it past the gravel road and listened to each one to make sure they weren't leaking. Again, nothing. We made it to Provo about an hour and a half before church and cleaned up and enjoyed church, well, my neck didn't like the collared shirt and tie, but I endured.

Memorable Marie Quotes from the Week:

"I love the feel of photosynthesis in the morning!"

"HORSIES!!!! THEY'RE NOT COWS!"

New Apartment Adventures

well, i've joined the bandwagon and gotten a blog. i figured it would be a nice way for family and friends to keep up with brad and i's crazy life so far from home. we just moved into a cozy little basement apartment and are SO happy about it. NO MORE MOLD!!! our last apartment was ravaged with mold in nearly every corner. there was even a MUSHROOM growing out of our living room carpet-- no joke. after months of dealing with an apathetic management, losing my shoes, winter coat, and my husband's baseball glove, constantly smelling bleach from cleaning the mold and fearing to put anything next to a wall... we finally escaped and have a cozy little place that has already been an adventure.

Friday: our first night here there was a mighty utah rain storm in the middle of the night. our bed was tiny and felt like sleeping on an air mattress full of wet sand. at 5am after getting no sleep at all, we decided that the couches would be more comfortable. that's when brad discovered our leaking window that had drenched the brand new carpet. later that day, once it was at a respectable hour to call someone, we called the landlord and notified him of the problem. the next 36 hours we had fans on to help dry the carpet the had to be pulled up and a placstic tarp was put over the window. we discovered that the culprit was a rotted weatherstripping in the window seal and water was bouncing off the ground and through the screen of the window (we're in a basement and the windows are at ground level). fun stuff.

Monday: just when we thought we had weathered the storm of our first days in our new home, the power went out, only to find out that it was because the electric company had shut it off because the previous owners had asked them to turn it off since they were moving. no biggie, so we called the electric company to get it turned on, but they inform us that policy states they can't turn the power on until the next day. meanwhile, we live in a dark basement, our freezer foods begin melting and our milk starts getting warm, our phones and laptops are dead, and the flashlights are dying. plus, we have no way to cook dinner-- no microwave or stove and no non-cook meals in our house. then i devise and ingenious plan! the electricity in the laundry room still works because we share it with the upstairs apartment and studio apartment next to us. it has a spare electrical outlet, so we unplug our microwave and take it to the laundry room and use it to defrost our ground turkey. then we take it back to our kitchen and bring in my KitchenAid to mix the ground meat with an egg and bread crumbs and cheese to make hamburgers. once that is finished we take it back to the kitchen and bring in our George Foreman grill to cook the homemade hamburgers-- all this done on top or the washer and dryer while we are doing laundry! it tasted great and we made a fun memory.

now we are preparing for our trip to southern Utah to visit Arches, Bryce, and Zions National Parks. i've never been and brad knows the area well because he served part of his mission down there. and the best part will be-- mongolian BBQ in st. george!!! feel free to be totally jealous.