As of yesterday, we finally established an internet connection to our new apartment, so we are finally updating our blog. Our move to a new apartment turned out to be much more adventurous than we ever thought it would be. We spent a Friday afternoon moving most of our stuff to our new location a couple weeks ago. However, we didn't try to actually turn on any lights until that evening. Unfortunately, as soon as we did, we discovered that we didn't have electricity. The electric company informed us that they would not be able to do anything for us until the following Monday since they had already closed for the day. Although we were able to use an extension cord running to a neighbor's apartment to turn on our fridge, our weekend was interesting without hot water, air conditioning, or any means to cook food.
With all our other activities, we have not had the time we need to finish organizing our apartment. Instead, we have been busy going to the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival, celebrating Nate's birthday, working, and, in Nate's case, starting school again. Nate's birthday happened to be on Labor day this year, and we decided to go tubing down the Provo River. Unfortunately, we had difficulty finding anyone available to go with in during the afternoon, so we ended up going in the morning instead with Rebecca's brothers. However, as things turned out, only we went tubbing while Allan and Ben waited for us at the end. We had bought two inner tubes that were advertised as being large enough for two people each, but in reality, they were larger than ideal for one, and smaller than ideal for two, especially in cold water on a cool morning. It was fun. Or, at least Nate had fun. Rebecca did too until she hit a pier on a bridge and tumbled into the water. She ended up with some minor scratches and a couple mouthfuls of river water. She remained sore, wary, and very cold for the rest of the ride.
This last weekend, we spent Saturday running errands, buying clothes with Nate's birthday money, and making peach jam. It was a pretty hectic day. We ran from one activity to the next, barely making it on time. We also went to see Pirates of the Caribbean III that evening at the Varsity Theater on campus. The movie ended at about 11:48. We spent a minute and a half running to our car and pulling out of the parking lot after the movie. Between 11:49:30 and 11:55, we drove to Macey's. We ran into the store, grabbed a gallon of milk to get us through the next day, and joined the mob of other last minute shoppers to check out all before 12:00. Rarely have we seen such long lines at the grocery store as we saw at Midnight on Saturday night at Macey's. If you are thinking of taking a quick trip to the grocery store in Provo, UT, that is definitely not the best time to go.
Penguins
Red Pandas
Graffias
Ostrich and Zebra
Chimpanzee
Lemur
Rebecca going down the slide in a park across the street from the zoo with our neice McKenzie.
We also visited the Jelly Belly Factory and In-n-Out Burger. We took a turn making dinner for the whole family and made some gingerbread cookies as well. My favorite holiday dessert though, was the Peppermint Dazzler. With a name like that, it's hard not to like. It's a frozen dessert with a graham cracker crust, followed by a layer of creamy chocolate, then a layer of whipped cream with marshmallows and finally a topping of crushed peppermint candies. Hmmm-mmmm!
Another fun part of Christmas this year was our gift giving trickery. We got my brother Timothy a computer game called Peggle that we really like. We wanted to get him excited about it and at least familiar with the game before Christmas day so he would understand what it was we were getting him. So, before Christmas day, we showed him the trial version of the game. He really liked it and even started hinting to us that it would be a good Christmas present. We pretended to be disappointed saying we had already gotten him a Christmas present. It worked better than we could have imagined. It was the most popular present that anyone got!
