Peter & Kortney

Eleanor's Baby Blessing

2012-02-21T15:30:00.002-08:00

Sunday (February 19th) was a wonderful day for our little family. First of all, it was Peter and I's two year anniversary! I can't believe it has already been two years. Secondly, we had Eleanor blessed at church. It was an amazing day filled with happiness, family, and friends! Peter gave Eleanor a beautiful blessing and it was so fun to celebrate with that blessing with the people we love.

Sometimes it is really hard to get a 2-month old to take a happy picture. Even though she is not smiling in any of these, she is still super cute!! =D

I promise, she really is a happy child!!

I LOVE the yawning picture! She is such a doll.

After the blessing we had a little lunch back at my apartment. Thank you to Ashley, Erika, Tyler and especially Kathie (Peter's mom) for all your help with the lunch! It turned out really cute and really yummy!! Thank you so much to everyone who took time to come to Eleanor's blessing, we really appreciate it. And to those who weren't able to make it (mainly my family) thanks so much for your thoughts and prayers, we missed you. We love you all!

YUM! =D

We had a table with sweets, pictures and little things related to Eleanor's life so far. That is her very first cast...I can't believe she has grown so much already!

Thank you Janssen for the cute garland idea!

Idea from: this blog via pinterest

We used her cast as the guestbook for everyone to sign. It makes it much more colorful and fun! =D

Eleanor is such a blessing in our lives. She has the sweetest little spirit and bring us so much joy. I can't imagine our lives without her and I am so glad we are blessed enough to raise such an amazing little girl. We love her so much and thank Heavenly Father for her every single day.

Happy Valentine's Day!

2012-02-14T11:03:00.000-08:00

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! I hope you all share this day with someone you love. Sadly, Peter has to work tonight, bummer. But at least I get to spend today with my little girl.

Eleanor and I had a blast taking pictures for Peter! I have the best daughter and husband in the world, I couldn't ask for anything more.

2 Months

2012-02-11T19:45:00.000-08:00

This month has been so fun! You are really starting to develop a personality and it is a blast to watch. You make a new noise every single day and have started babbling more and more. You love to gurgle and squeal. You also love to copy mommy and daddy when we stick our tongues out at you, it is so cute. This month you started sleeping between 7 and 10 (that has only happened once and it was wonderful) hours at night and we absolutely love you for it. You have also started to consciously smile at us, yay! You smile at daddy a lot more than you smile at mommy, especially when he speaks French to you. We think your first word will most likely be a French word, you seem to love it.

Sadly, you had to go get that darned cast back on your leg and this time you hated it so much. You cried harder and louder than you have ever cried before and made mommy want to cry right along with you. Fortunately, you got use to the cast within a few days and now you are enjoying your scooting powers again. We frequently go into your room to find you have scooted all the way into the corner of your crib and have gotten stuck there.

You spit up constantly, hence the spit up spot in the picture above, and your favorite times to spit up are right after I get you dressed for the day, and right after I finish giving you a bath. You eat between 4 and 6 ounces every 3 to 4 hours and you have the cutest cheeks and double chin to show for it. You love music and calm right down when I sing to you. You are starting to focus on our faces more and more and love looking at black and white pictures and shapes. You are so fun to cuddle with and frequently take naps in the lazy boy with mommy or daddy because we just don't want to go put you in your crib.

We are excited to get you blessed soon and love watching you grow more and more every day. We don't know what we would do without you, we love you so much!

Weight: 11 pounds 5 ounces - 53rd percentile
Height: 22.25 inches - 41st percentile
Head: 15.5 inches - 84th percentile

The Cast: Update

2012-02-03T19:36:00.000-08:00

In my last post about Eleanor's cast I was very excited because she was going to have to wear the cast for 3 weeks, but after 2 weeks the doctor said she didn't have to get a third cast. I was finally going to have a little baby with proportional limbs and I would stop getting looks from people that said "That woman let her newborn break her leg, what a terrible mother". Things were wonderful. The doctor said he wanted to see her back in one month to check her progress.

Well, one month was yesterday. Sadly, my little baby girl came home from that appointment with another cast. I was seriously so upset when the doctor said we needed to cast her for another 3 weeks. Part of me is really angry that the doctor didn't just put the 3rd cast on her to begin with...but I know he is just trying to do what is best for her. Last time I talked about what an angel Eleanor was while getting the cast on; there was nothing angelic about the second time around. It took everything in me not to cry while they were putting it on her, she just wailed and wailed, it was awful. Thankfully, she fell asleep on the car ride home. Then, I went to book club and left her with Peter. When she woke up she started right up where she left off, poor Peter, and just screamed and screamed and screamed.

It is so sad. Eleanor LOVES to kick her feet and she LOVES putting weight on her legs and standing up on our laps, she can't do that anymore, and it is so frustrating for her.

The worst part about all this is, the doctor said the risk with this 3 weeks is it might not change anything. He says she will most likely have problems with her foot in her adult life if we can't correct it more, and this casting is the last chance to correct it, and it might not do anything. That is my biggest fear, that she might be going through all this for no change at all. However, Peter keeps reminding me that we will really regret it if we didn't do everything possible to try and correct it now, so I think we are doing the right thing. It's just so hard to watch her go through this, but I know it will all work out. I just love her so much!

We waited like 2 and a half hours before the doctor came in to see us. This was before we found out the news, hence Peter's smile. Doesn't Eleanor look so tiny on that big table? :)

Before they casted her leg, they told me to undress her down to her diaper. So I did. Then, they made us wait like 25 minutes before they casted her, so she was freezing. Peter was nice enough to share his suit jacket.

And here it is. At least they let us do purple this time instead of boring white.

She is just so cute...cast and all!

Twins?

2012-01-28T12:00:00.000-08:00

Tyler holding Eleanor

Tyler (my brother) holding me

My grandma and me

Eleanor's Grannie and her

My daddy and me

Eleanor and her daddy

Me sleeping

Eleanor sleeping

What do you think? Do we look alike?

1 Month

2012-01-27T09:53:00.000-08:00

ONE MONTH already (January 11th...I know I am so late)!! You are growing up WAY too fast baby girl! This month has been so fun. You stay awake for longer and longer periods of time every day, but tend to go straight to sleep if we are around too many people (4 or more). I have finally been able to get you on a 3 hour schedule (Eat, Wake, Sleep) and you are doing really great. You absolutely love to eat; you are eating between 3 and 5 ounces at every feeding, which is a lot for how young you are (so I am told). You are already almost too big for your newborn clothes and diapers. You LOVE to pee all over the place when we are changing your diaper, we have to change your outfit at least 4 times a day. Daddy and I don't like that very much, but at least you are getting good use out of all your cute clothes. You are sleeping between 3 and 5 hours at night, and you go STRAIGHT back to bed after your middle of the night feeding, which is wonderful! You recently discovered your lips and your tongue and you love to explore them while you are eating, which results in you spitting milk all over the place (including mommy and daddy's faces).

Your neck is already SO strong, you can hold your head up so well. You like tummy time a lot and are actually starting to take naps on your tummy because sometimes you sleep much better that way. You are still so eager to move around, it is so cute to watch you try and scoot. You smile in your sleep so much and it just melts my heart every time. You learn something new every single day and it is so fun to watch. Daddy and I love you so much and you have brought so much joy into our lives. All the sleep deprivation, pee, and spit up is totally worth it! =D

Uggs!

2012-01-14T20:00:00.000-08:00

Oh my, I can't get over how cute these newborn uggs are!! I just love dressing her up! =D

What the $200?!

2012-01-09T01:05:00.003-08:00

I recently got a free baby magazine in the mail. I don't even remember signing up for anything like that, but whatever. Inside the magazine there was a coupon for a free photo session and 10x13 portrait from Sears. I didn't think much of it at first, but then I saw some pictures on facebook of someone who got their babies pictures done at Sears and they were pretty cute. What the heck? It was free. So, I decided to call and make an appointment.

Besides getting the free stuff, I wasn't planning on getting much else. However, I thought if I REALLY liked some of the pictures, I would just pay to get them on a disk and then I could print them out later.

The appointment was scheduled for Thursday at 6pm. I brought a few outfits for her and some bows and hats, I washed her hair and got her all ready in her car seat and we were off. One thing that I have learned since having a baby is it takes twice as long to get out the door as before, and it is twice as much of a hassle. So we get there and Eleanor is dead asleep and will not wake up for anything. Finally, I coax her awake with a bottle and we are ready to take the pictures...the camera breaks. Yes, the camera at Sears Portrait Studio just breaks. They tell me we will have to reschedule after they can buy a new camera.

That Saturday we do it all again, and this time the camera is working and Eleanor is actually wide awake and happy, which is great. We take the pictures and it was really fun. It takes them a total of 10 minutes to edit the pictures and then they call you over to look at them. Some of them were pretty cute, so I just ask "How much would it be to get some of these on a disk?" and her response "$200 for a disk of the pictures, or $25 each shot". I was shocked! How on earth can they charge that much just for a disk of pictures?

Needless to say, I did not buy any of the pictures besides the free one that I already got with the coupon and one other print. However, they put all the shots on their website so you can view them and order them later if you want. So, I decided to put my favorites on here, despite the "Sears Portrait Studio" written all over them. Enjoy! =D

One & Three

2012-01-09T01:05:00.001-08:00

You are one week old today (December 18th)! Your daddy and I have definitely had to adjust to life with a third person in the family, but we have loved it so much. Your first week of life has been pretty eventful. You have had 4 doctor's appointments. During two of them you had to get your heal poked (no fun), and during another one you had to get a cast on your right leg. That might sound traumatic, but you were so great and didn't even fuss. Your favorite things to do are sleep and eat, of course, and you are dang good at both of them. We actually have quite a tough time getting you to even wake up long enough to eat sometimes. Daddy and I's favorite things to do are hold you and look at you. You are so gorgeous and we can't believe we don't have to give you back. We love you so much baby girl, and we are so excited to get to know you better!

Weight: 6 pounds 7 ounces (including the cast) - 15th percentile

Height: 20 inches long - 68th percentile

Head: 13.25 inches - 28th percentile

Wow, this has been such a fun, and exhausting, three weeks! You had your first Christmas and you got to meet your grandma and grandpa Carter and all of your Carter aunts and uncles. You even got to meet Uncle Travis, who is on a mission, through Skype! It has been hard to get you on any kind of schedule yet because all we have been doing it driving around to be with family for the holidays. You have probably been in the car more than out of the car these last few weeks. Because of all this driving you have decided to sleep all day and stay awake all night. But who can blame you, the car is so soothing.

You are such a great baby though, and everyone who meets you falls in love immediately! I am very excited for all the excitement of the holidays to be over so we can get you on a schedule and you can get used to what life is really going to be like. You make such fun faces and have even started smiling already, though I don't think you actually know you are doing it. You got your cast off last week and your little foot looks so great! You like to try and scoot and roll over (because you could do those things when you had your cast) and you get so frustrated when you can't do it. You have changed so much since you were born and you change more and more every day. Daddy and I can't get enough of you and we feel so grateful to have been blessed with such an amazing daughter.

Weight: 7 pounds 13 ounces - 28th percentile

Height: 21 1/2 inches long - 91st percentile

Head: 14.2 inches - 66th percentile

The Cast

2012-01-04T18:33:00.000-08:00

This was at the doctor, that's why she has no clothes on. =D

When Eleanor was born one of the first things I noticed was he right foot; It was unusually flexible and shaped a little funny. As people came to visit and meet our baby girl I mentioned her foot to some of them, I just couldn't help but wonder about it. Most people just shrugged it off and said it was probably nothing. Then the pediatrician looked at her. He came into my recovery room after doing his examination and told me everything looks great and she seems very healthy...except her foot. He said she would need to go see a foot specialist as soon as possible to decide what to do about it. This news really upset me. No one wants to hear that their newborn baby is not absolutely perfect. I immediately called the doctor and scheduled an appointment for that Thursday (she would be 4 days old). Before the appointment my mom did some research on newborn foot conditions, and it turns out many babies have foot problems when they are born, and most problems can be completely corrected. That made me feel a little better, but I was still dreading the appointment and praying that my little girl would not have to have surgery or something like that.

Unfortunately, Peter had a final at the same time as the appointment, so he wasn't able to be there with me. Fortunately, my sister-in-law was SO kind to come and help out that day and she was able to go to the appointment with me, thank goodness! After waiting like an hour and 45 minutes (it was sooo busy), the doctor came in and looked at Eleanor. It took him an entire 2 minutes to look her over and then he said "alright, lets take her to the back and get her casted". Just like that, my 4 day old baby was going to get a cast...and he didn't even give me any time to process the news. Thankfully, I have the best baby in the entire world and she was an absolute angel while they were putting the cast on her. I think I would have been a wreck if she was upset by the casting, but she was great. The cast went from her upper thigh all the way down to past her toes. The doctor said she would need the cast for 3 weeks, but because babies grow so fast, each week she would need to come back and get the old cast cut off and get a new one put on. He also said this process should not hurt her at all, and she should be completely fixed with no lasting effects after the casting was done. That was a huge relief!

Honestly, I think Eleanor enjoyed having the cast on, it gave her the ability to scoot and roll over which she utilized frequently giving me a few heart attacks. Besides the fact that the first cast rubbed a blister into her thigh, it didn't seem to be painful for her. Though it did make dressing her and changing her diaper a bit challenging, and some of her cute outfits with little feet wouldn't fit over her huge cast. But overall it was a much better experience than expected.

Photo by Ashley Crosby

This face shows how Eleanor feels about her cast...HAHA!

We went to the doctor on week two to get her third and final cast. They cut her old one off and then the doctor came in to look at her foot. He said it looked great and she didn't need a third cast. That was completely unexpected and such a pleasant surprise!! I went home and put her in an outfit with feet right away! Then I laid her on the floor and watched her fuss as she came to the realization that she wasn't able to scoot or roll over any longer...she gets REALLY frustrated about it now.

Peter and I are so grateful for modern medicine! It is wonderful and amazing all the things they can do and all the problems that can be fixed easily. I'm so thankful that Eleanor will not have any problems walking or running in the future. We just love her SO much...including her little feet! =D

Eleanor's Story

2012-01-02T21:27:00.000-08:00

Eleanor Kathryn Kern

December 11, 2011 at 7:43am

6 lbs 11oz 20 in

I went into labor on Saturday December 10th, 2011 around 6:30pm. I had been having contractions since I was 32 weeks along, but these contractions were different.

Earlier in the week, at my 37 week appointment, I was dilated to a 4 and 100% effaced. The nurse told me if I got my membranes stripped I would go into labor that night. Unfortunately, Peter had two finals that week and we wanted to prolong labor until at least the weekend. I was sentenced to the couch. I knew our baby girl was not going to wait until Peter's second week of finals was over, so we decided the best time to have her would be between his two finals weeks After Peter's final on Thursday (his last final of his first finals week) I decided it was time to induce labor.

First, I went to my OB and had my membranes stripped. Then, it was three days of being very active. I ran up and down the stairs, I went on walks, I did jumping jacks, I tried everything I knew of to make labor happen. Finally, on Saturday my contractions started. They were moderately painful (more uncomfortable than painful) and 3-5 minutes apart. Then, my water started to leak and I knew it was game time. Peter was at work, so I texted him after 2 hours of contractions and told him it was time to go the hospital. He was happy to get off work without having to do his side work. Ha.

We arrived at labor and delivery around 9:45pm and got comfy in the delivery room. The nurse made sure my water was actually broken, started me on pitocin, and then we played the waiting game. Peter and I watched Tangled and ate snacks (well, I snuck snacks because I wasn't supposed to be eating...oops).

All I have to say is I am glad my water was broken and they couldn't send me home because I was stuck at 4cm for a LONG time. My contractions were all over the place; I would have no contractions for like 6 minutes and then all of a sudden I would have like 12 in a row, it was really strange. My goal was to wait until I was dilated to a 6 before I got my epidural because I was afraid it would slow down my progress. However, because I wasn't progressing on my own the nurse kept turning up the pitocin higher and higher, and my contractions were getting more and more painful. Finally, I decided I would just go ahead and get the epidural. Peter held my hand because I was a bit scared of the needle. However, at that point the contractions were so painful, I really didn't care about a few shots. Then I was numb and nauseous, but at least I couldn't feel the contractions.

About 15 minutes after I got my epidural the nurse checked me and I was dilated to an 8. 30 minutes later I was dilated to a 10 and about ready to push. The epidural did exactly the opposite of what I though it would do, it regulated my contractions and made me progress so quickly. I wish I would have known that sooner, I would have gotten in right away.

Unfortunately, right when the nurse said I was ready to push she also let me know that it was time for a shift change (6am). I was pretty disappointed because that nurse had been with me this whole time and I really liked her. She said she would let the new nurse know that I was ready to push. After my first nurse left a more elderly woman came slowly shuffling into the room. She seemed nice enough, but I think she might have completely ignored the first nurse because she made me wait an hour before she told me to start pushing. I have no idea why she made me wait and I was getting so impatient with her. Eventually, she came over and had me start to push (7am). The doctor came in after about 30 minutes of pushing and Eleanor was born at 7:43am on December 11, 2011.

Pushing was definitely hard but honestly I couldn't have asked for a smoother delivery. I didn't have to push all that long and Peter stood next to me and held my leg and talked me through every push, he was wonderful. Eleanor came out pretty quiet and took her time getting around to crying, but once she started crying...dang that baby could cry. Peter cut the umbilical cord and stayed with her as they weighed and measured her. Then, they wrapped her up and brought her over to me and laid her on my chest. She was screaming her little head off, but as soon as she snuggled up to me she stopped crying and I got to just lay there and hold my new perfect little girl. Peter and I couldn't wrap our minds around the fact that we were parents, and that the little baby inside of me for almost 9 months was now in our arms. As the minutes and hours passed by after her birth, I was shocked that my love for her just continued to grow and grow!

Eleanor has been such a blessing, and an amazing addition to our family. Peter and I can't stop staring at her. She is absolutely gorgeous in every way and we have never known love like we do now. Peter had two more finals to take, on top of having a new baby, which left him ridiculously sleep deprived, but that didn't stop him from helping out in any way he could. Peter is the best dad a little girl could ask for and Eleanor is the best daughter a mother could ask for. I can't thank Heavenly Father enough for my perfect little family, I feel so blessed.

Thank you to everyone who took time to visit and meet baby Eleanor. We are so grateful for all your love and support.

Craft Time!!

2011-11-30T22:37:00.001-08:00

I have been working on the nursery for quite a LONG time, and I am not even close to being done. It took me so long to choose bedding and I felt like I could not move forward with anything else until I had bedding. So, FINALLY I chose bedding (it arrived today =D) and now I am on my way to progressing in the nursery. Yay! Stay tuned for nursery pictures, probably after baby girl is born, if I am being honest, but I promise they will come eventually.

Even though there were many things about the nursery that I had a hard time deciding on, I knew that I wanted to make THIS as soon as I saw it. This was my first nursery craft, and I am really happy with how it turned out. I'm not as happy about how much is cost. I had NO idea ribbon was SO expensive, but it's cute so I guess it's alright. Here is the one I made:

Ultimately, these are the colors of my nursery as well: purple, green, and white. This wreath is on the outside of baby girl's door right now, but it might move inside the nursery once I am all finished, we'll just have to see.

The second craft I have recently done was for Peter's birthday yesterday. THIS is an idea I got off of Pinterest, when I saw it I knew Peter would like it because he LOVES dreaming about all the cool things that he wants to do and see in his lifetime. I also thought it would be a cute way to display some of the things we are interested in seeing and doing together. It's not quite done yet, but it's done enough to get the point across.

The idea is to display the things on your "Bucket List" inside the frame, then when you have completed one of them, you put it inside the bucket. I am still going to add a few things to it, but it's basically done. I think Peter really liked it! =D

Finally, I want to give a crafting shout out to Peter's mom. For Peter's birthday his mom made him a Humor U t-shirt quilt. This quilt includes all the t-shirts that Humor U has made and given out at their shows during the time Peter has been involved with the club. If you haven't heard Peter's comedy you should really search YouTube for his stuff, he is REALLY funny!! I think this quilt turned out SO great, and Peter's mom is very talented.

Thank you to everyone who was involved in making Peter's birthday special, he really appreciates all of you. I will have to post some pictures from his day some other time. HAPPY BIRTHDAY PETER!! I LOVE YOU!!

Halloween...Fun?

2011-11-08T21:59:00.000-08:00

I learned something this year...if you are not single or you don't have kids, Halloween is kind of lame. As I see it, there are only two types of things to do on Halloween: go to a Halloween party to dance and pick up on the opposite sex (for single people, of course), or go to your ward Halloween party to trunk-or-treat (for kids). I'm sure there are some really cool newly weds throwing fun parties out there, but I guess we missed all of those. So, Halloween rolled around and I was really excited to find a fun costume that utilized my HUGE belly...but then I realized, even if I found an awesome costume, I would have no where to wear it. To top it all off, I learned that Peter was scheduled to work on Halloween night and I knew for sure that this Halloween was going to be VERY uneventful.

But you know me, always making the best of things. Ha. My work was having a little Halloween themed treat day, so I decided I was going to take advantage of the situation and use this Halloween to try some of the fun Pinterest treat ideas I have found. Doing this made Halloween much more fun for me, even though it might have made me that much more of a loser, considering I had nothing better to do on Halloween then make pinterest treats. But they are just so dang cute!

First, I finally made the Owl Cupcakes I fell in love with at first site:

Then, I decided to give these creepy, cute Halloween Snakes a try:

These were both a HIT at work, and really fun to make. The snakes took a bit more time then I expected, but the Owls were really fast and easy. And it was good to finally complete some of the fun things I have found on Pinterest instead of just imagining myself being crafty. I actually made a ribbon wreath for baby girl's room, too...I will have to post pictures of that later. Ultimately, my Halloween wasn't awful after all, and it was all worth it to see Peter go off to work dressed like this:

Isn't he cute?? =D If you didn't know, Peter is now a HOTT waiter!! He recently got a job a Carrabba's and he is just doing GREAT!!

I hope everyone had a WONDERFUL Halloween!!

Baby Update!!

2011-11-06T19:49:00.000-08:00

I think it is about time for an update, what do you think? Things have been pretty good lately. Our lives are pretty consumed with getting ready for our baby girl to arrive, and we are extremely excited to meet her! I am almost 34 weeks along. I can't believe she could come in only a few short weeks and be completely healthy. Our lives are going to change forever and, even though I'm scared out of my mind, I can't wait. Here is my updated progress:

Ever since the morning sickness stopped (week 22), I have felt pretty great. Yes, I am big and it is not the most comfortable thing in the world. And yes, it is hard to sleep most nights. However, anything is better than puking every single day, so I count my blessings. A few weeks ago (week 32), my back started hurting really bad and few other things didn't seem right, so I called my doctor. I was told to go into Labor and Deliver to make sure I wasn't going into labor too early. Baby girl has always been sitting pretty far back and people have told me from the beginning that I will most likely have back labor. So, Peter and I went to the hospital and they did some tests to make sure everything was okay. It was kind of fun to get all hooked up and watch the baby's heartbeat. They told me that her heartbeat and brain activity were beautiful and that she looks like she is doing great. That made me REALLY happy! They also told me that I was having regular contractions, but they didn't seem to be dilating my cervix, so I should be fine to go home, but to come back if I feel any harder contractions. Since then I have been trying to take it easy, every time I feel contractions I go lay down and they stop after a little while. So, I am not too worried about it. Maybe this means that baby girl will be coming early (but not too early), I'm crossing my fingers for that.

In other baby-related news, I have been blessed to have some amazing people do some very generous things for me lately. I have had two baby showers, one thrown by my wonderful Aunt Cindy (with help from Peter's mom and sister) and that was so much fun!! There was wonderful food, fun games, and great company. My mom actually flew here from TN during that time so she was able to be there which was SO great. My mom got us the stroller you see in the above picture, and we are very, very grateful for that. We didn't get very many pictures of that first shower, but I did snag one of the food (shows what I care about most, ha).

Secondly, one of my besties Ashley and my cousin Merrick threw me a baby shower as well. Ashley hosted at her house and the decorations and food were fabulous. These girls know how to throw a party. It was so fun to see all my friends and family at these showers and we are so grateful for all the fun gifts we got. Baby girl already has way more clothes than I do. She is going to be SO cute and SO spoiled!! =D

Jordyn/Sarah/Destinee

Cristal/Andrea/Ally

Marni/Me/Merrick

Finally, as if she hadn't done enough already, Merrick took some maternity pictures for Peter and I. We went up the canyon, found a pretty field, and Merrick worked her magic. I initially wasn't going to do maternity pictures because I really didn't like the idea of taking pictures of myself when I weigh the most I have ever weighed and look the fattest I have ever looked in my life. However, people kept telling me that I would regret it in the future and that pregnancy is beautiful, so I caved. Luckily, we had a very talented photographer and I love the way they turned out. Thanks Merrick!! =D

I have the best family and friends ever, and I am so grateful for all the love and support we have had throughout my pregnancy. Even friends from TN have sent me gifts! I am so excited to welcome this baby into our home and learn all about being a parent. Peter and I are working on the nursery and I am excited to post pictures when it is all done. We just love this little girl more than I ever could imagine!!

OH BABY!!!

2011-09-07T19:44:00.000-07:00

First of all, you should all read the post before this one because Peter is amazing and I am so proud of him!!

Secondly, I feel like since Peter shared what he has been doing these last few months and the feat he has accomplished, I should probably share what I have been working on these past few months as well. That's right, GROWING A BABY!!! =D

I am 25 weeks pregnant today. And yes I have been shirking my first-time motherly duties by not posting a picture and an update every single week on my pregnancy progress and the changes my body is going through. But honestly, I don't really want to broadcast all the changes my body has been going through, for your sake and mine. However, I have decided to treat you with a few pictures and a brief pregnancy update.

The Due Date:

December 20th. I am hoping the baby comes about 1 or 2 weeks early (wishful thinking, I know) just so she doesn't have to be plagued with a "Christmas birthday" her whole life. However, by wishing for that I am setting myself up to go into labor while Peter is in one of his 3 hour law school finals. So, it's either potentially have the baby on Christmas, or not have my husband with me while I am in the hospital...

The Gender:

As you probably guessed by the "she" and "her" in the above section, we are having a little girl!! It seems like everyone knew it was a girl right from the beginning, even me. I have always had a feeling that is was a girl, so we were excited when we got that information confirmed. I think secretly Peter wanted our first to be a boy, but he refuses to confirm or deny it. Either way, I know he is VERY excited and he is going to be an amazing daddy!

Health:

The baby is doing great and that is the most important thing. Every time I go to the Doctor things seem to be exactly how they should be, so that is reassuring. However, I have not been as lucky. I have had morning sickness throughout my entire pregnancy so far. Everyone told me it should go away between 12 and 16 weeks, but mine decided to stay a bit longer. I had one ER visit because of dehydration. Other than that, I have just been taking a lot of Zofran and praying not to throw up in public places. I haven't had to rely so much on medication lately, so hopefully that supposedly beloved second trimester will start before the dreaded third trimester sneaks up on me.

Cravings:

For my first trimester I basically had to force feed myself. I hated the thought, smell, or look of food and threw up most things I ate anyways. However, once I hit my second trimester I started craving Pizza and YoZone (which I think went out of business...because it is completely empty now and we have no idea what happened =( ). Now, I just crave anything anyone mentions or anything I see on TV. If we pass by a doughnut store, I crave doughnuts. If I hear an add for a specific restaurant on the radio, I MUST eat at that restaurant. If I see a billboard with a picture of watermelon on it, I crave watermelon. It is really inconvenient and expensive.

Names:

Peter and I definitely have names in mind, however, we have decided not to broadcast our ideas just yet. Stay tuned and you will find out in due time what our little girl is going to be called.

Other:

Apparently, my placenta is right in the front of my belly creating a barrier between the baby and my skin. It is not in a dangerous place, thank goodness, but it is making it impossible for me to feel the baby inside of me. I have never felt her kick. I rarely feel anything at all. This means I am constantly worrying that something is wrong, and have mini breakdowns when people tell me I should have felt her weeks ago. Fortunately, my doctor visits help put me at ease for a few weeks and tell me everything seems to be okay.

Peter and I just moved from our small one bedroom apartment to a big two bedroom apartment in preparation for our addition. I am currently day dreaming about all the fun things I am going to do to the nursery and I am very excited to start decorating. We really like our new place and we are very excited to be parents, and terrified of course. However, I do love this little girl with all my heart and even if I don't feel ready to be a mom yet, I know she is meant to be in our family and I can't wait to meet her and welcome her into the world.

The Aqua Triathlon-September 3rd, 2011

2011-09-04T17:22:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I ran, biked, and swam my first triathlon. It was my first organized race of any kind, never even having done a fun run in elementary or junior high (I was one of the eight kids who stayed inside and read). I had a good time training for and finally participating in the event, even though I was not a stand-out competitor by any stretch of the imagination. The following post is a description of my experience:

INSPIRATION
I always imagined that the event that would keep me from doing a triathlon would be the swimming. I'd had periods of time in my life where I ran a lot, and others when I biked a lot, but ever since graduating from level seven swimming lessons, I hadn't ever really swum again. So, back in March when I decided to start getting back into shape, I thought I might as well start swimming. Its good exercise and as a BYU student I have free access to an "Olympic-size" pool. I started swimming fairly regularly and eventually got up to swimming a mile at a time. First mile swim experience here.

I started thinking that I might as well do a triathlon someday since I now had the swimming under control. I was out running one afternoon when I saw a poster advertising the Aqua Triathlon at Seven Peaks Waterpark and the someday plans began to materialize. I went online and found the course map which was only a few blocks away from where we were living at the time. I could train for it by actually running and biking the real course. I informally decided to do it. I didn't formally register until the Thursday before the race.

TRAINING
Kortney and I got memberships at the Provo Rec Center since I wasn't an official BYU student over the summer. I swam an average of 4 times a week. I also began running the course which, although only being 3.16 miles, had quite a bit of climbing in the first half, leaving from the seven peaks parking lot and going as far as the Castle Ampitheater above the state hospital before looping back. At first I was doing it in about 50 minutes (this included a fair bit of walking).

As the race approached I became concerned that I wasn't doing enough. Since I didn't have my own bike, I switched the whole training to the rec center, where I would run 3.16 on the treadmill (with adjusted grade to simulate the real course) then hop on the bike and bike 12 miles (at level 13), and finally go jump in the pool and swim a mile (only the first seven laps were part of the triathlon). The first time I did this I was exhausted but at least I knew I could handle the distance. I did this whole sequence another 5 or 6 times before the race and got the run down to about 31 minutes, the bike to about 35 and the swim to about 12.

The week before the race I knew I needed to get on the bike I would use and actually go on the track. On the Thursday before the race I borrowed my brother-in-law's girlfriend's dad's bike and took it on the course. This was my worst work-out of the whole training. The bike, although a nice road bike, could not shift gears. It was stuck in an easy, but not the easiest gear. The course turned out to have a LOT of climbing. 5 climbs per lap, 4 of them being very substantial. The gear I was in was very challenging to get up the hills but horrible to go down because it was so high that it did almost nothing on the way down. On top of this, most of the streets we were to ride on were under construction, with the top ripped off and a very bumpy surface left exposed. It made riding quite miserable. When I finished the first lap, I hit a lip that separated the exposed surface and part of the road that had not been torn up. It was dark and I didn't see it coming. A mountain bike would have had no problem, but the road bike tossed me. I landed on my wrists, cutting the palm of one hand and getting road burn on the other as well as my right elbow and knee. The chain had also fallen off and gotten jammed and I was so close to just calling it a night. My wrists were not broken or sprained, but they were swelling and were extremely sensitive, and I couldn't get the chain back on and I actually started walking the bike back to my car. Thirty seconds into my dejected trudging I decided I needed to finish the course to prove to myself I could handle it. It was much harder than an exercise bike on 13, and I was now very nervous for the race. But at least I had finished it, and was mentally prepared for the challenge ahead.

PRE-RACE DAY
I woke up Friday with my wrists being in a serious amount of pain. I knew however that this would be the worst they would feel and it was all uphill (just like the race) from here. Instead of working out on Friday, Kortney and I went to Pizza Pie Cafe to load up on carbs. This was definitely the easiest and most enjoyable part of the training process. We also went to Seven Peaks to pick up my race bib and packet and they wrote my race number, 180, on each of my arms in permanent marker, and wrote my age, 24, on my calf. I thought this was very strange. But this was my first official race so I just went with it. Most of the people in line were talking about how this was their first triathlon and they were nervous/didn't understand how transitions were going to work/were convinced that they were going to finish in last place. This made me feel better.

RACE DAY *WARNING:THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS IMAGES OF GRATUITOUS CHEST HAIR*
We woke up Saturday morning and I suited up. I wasn't planning on it, but I decided to just go ahead and do the whole race in my swimming suit, to make the transitions easier. I also wore my awesome new aqua triathlon t-shirt, my BYU Math sweat band, and some new $13 walmart shoes. I definitely looked legit.

We showed up with about ten minutes to spare and people were milling all around. I put my bike into the transition area and got my little area ready, pinned my racing bib onto my shirt, and got my timing chip and velcroed it around my ankle. The race organizer announced that there were major changes to the course because of the construction and briefly explained them. I didn't hear them very good but he said cones would be placed to make sure we found our way. We then headed to the starting area.

The start was unbelievably unceremonious. We were sort of milling around waiting for someone to give us directions when all at once we heard a loud "GO!" That was it, our 3.16 miles of running began. I was surprised to find out that they allowed iPods on the run portion of the race but was happy since I listened to music most of the time while running. So I loaded up my go-to album, "Even If It Kills Me" by Motion City Soundtrack and headed off with the bunch.

There were over 300 people running and it was pretty crazy for a first-timer like me. We started all clumped up and keeping a pretty similar pace but slowly we spread out into something of a line. I made the first mile alright but I was pretty much done passing people by then and had settled into my pace. I knew there was going to be a big hill in about half a mile so I was really trying to savor the flatter areas. As we rounded a corner and towards the big hill, there were runners as far ahead of me as I could see, and when I looked behind me, there were runners as far behind me as I could see. It was just about what I had expected, right in the middle. We hit the hill and it was fun to see some people fall off their pace and start walking while I kept running past them. The run course was altered slightly and actually added even more climbing, but I managed to run the whole time, despite being pretty exhausted at the top of the hill. I knew however that there was only downhill from there, so I was ok. We started winding back down off the hill and around the state hospital and within another 10 minutes I was at the transition area feeling pretty good about the run, and excited that the first event was in the books. Kortney was there in the transition area to cheer me along as I grabbed my bike and headed off for the 12 mile ride.

The bike was the most disappointing event for me. The changes to the course actually made the ride extremely easy, and cut out almost all of the climbing. As we headed up 3rd south, almost as soon as the hill started getting steep, we turned onto a side street that was almost completely flat and made up most of the route. I know I shouldn't complain because I knew how hard the route was, but with a bike that didn't change gears, at least I knew that I would be forced to pass people since I would be going in a lower gear. As it was, I was passed quite a bit. I couldn't speed up very fast because I would get to a point where I would sort of max the bike out, and pedaling no longer affected my speed. Needless to say, I was passed quite a bit during the biking portion. I sort of just accepted the situation and the bike ended up being kind of relaxing for long portions of it. There was still one climb and there were some competitors who had to walk their bikes up and so I knew I had at least reached some level of fitness in being able to make it up with stopping, but I would have loved to have seen tons of people walking their bikes instead of just a couple. Since it wasn't a full Olympic triathlon, I at least thought the challenging bike course would offer some credibility and prestige to my accomplishment, but the bike course really wasn't very tough at all. When I finished the first lap and started the second, I was already congratulating myself that I had done it. I had completed a triathlon.

I rode into the transition area and stripped down to my swimming suit. I took a look at the pool, which is normally Seven Peaks' wave pool, and it was a madhouse. They had cordoned it off into lanes that you snaked through and it was just jam packed with people. Each lane was wide enough for two people and there were seven or eight lanes. That was not exactly spacious for 300 people to swim through.

I ran over to the edge, waited for my turn, and jumped in. I wasn't nearly as impressive as I had sort of imagined myself at the swimming portion, but I was able to get through it without stopping and even passed a few people. It was hard though, there were so many bodies everywhere, people hitting you, bottlenecks in certain areas. Kortney told me there were people in the water near me just sort of floating there. I didn't see any of that due to my myopic desire to finish, but it didn't surprise me. It was like sardines in there.

I was very breathless by the end and they made you run out of the shallow end of the pool to the finishing area where the timer would record your final time. They described it as a "Baywatch run". At first I was just walking through the water which was still hip deep but getting shallow fast. Then I realized that this was the end of the race and I might as well finish it strong so I ran through the water and ended the race.

RESULTS:

My final time was 1:26:29. I had been hoping to be under 1:20, but I figured as long as I was under 1:40 I would be satisfied. It was my first triathlon after all. So, this time was both expected and satisfactory. We stayed for the award ceremony which gave a plaque for the top three overall and medals for the top three in each age division. I didn't take home any awards. I was 34th in my age group (which was the most competitive to be fair, male 20-24), and 113th overall male. 46 women also logged faster times than me making me the 159th fastest participant at the 2011 Aqua Triathlon. Like I said, right in the middle.

I enjoyed the experience a lot and hope to do a full length triathlon in the not too distant future. Thank you to everyone who supported me in accomplishing this goal. Especially Kortney. I couldn't have done it without you.

Danish Design

2011-05-03T19:46:00.000-07:00

Last week the blog started getting a strangely high number of visits from Denmark. I didn't understand why but I wondered whether or not I could increase Danish readership by tackling the important issues facing Denmark today.

Apparently, all the action is in the Middle East because the Danish newspapers I looked up weren't really tackling big ticket issues. One major headline was about how big a disappointment the Henning Larsens Tegnestue Opera House ended up being. I guess when you're the happiest country in the world, there aren't many other things to complain about.

The most interesting article I read was about Danish furniture design. It is currently undergoing something of a Rennaiscance. I learned that Denmark used to be the most the world leader in innovative and futuristic interior design and in the 50s and 60s delivered some classic chairs. Here were my favorites.

The Ant

The Grasshopper

The 7

The Womb

The Egg

The Swan

The Tulip

I showed these to Kortney and I told her that I thought it would be awesome to have a dining table with tulip chairs and some egg chairs for our living room someday. Her favorite was the swan.

We looked online to see whether or not they would be easily available.

Guess how much one (1) new swan chair costs...

$3,677.00!!

An Egg Chair?

$5,933.00!!!

Kortney and I moved into an unfurnished apartment in August with no furniture. We spend a total of $130 to get all the furniture we needed. That includes a bed, two bookcases, a dresser, a Lazy boy recliner, a church pew, a couch, two desks, a home entertainment center, two lamps, three end tables, two chairs and a kitchen table. I don't think if we're ready to splurge on some authentic Danish furniture yet. But maybe someday.

To learn more about Danish design today, here is the article
http://www.denmark.dk/en/menu/Business-Lounge/Focus-Denmark/Articles/HatchedFromTheEgg.htm

Item #20

2011-05-02T21:38:00.000-07:00

I have never been much of a vandal. I've always seen acts of vandalism in a somewhat romantic light, as if they were rights of passage or little acts of public art, but I do not have a vast portfolio of which to boast. Even when I joined the notorious gang The Wellingtons freshman year, our acts of vandalism were of a mostly benign and whimsical nature.

So imagine my surprise when Kortney suggested that we toilet paper somebody's house. She was living in TN and I was in UT and when we would email back and forth, we would add an item to a growing list of things that we were going to do once we were reunited in Provo. She added #20 TP Somebody's House

Once she had moved back, we started chipping away at the list. We would have done more of the list if more of the items had been "make out" and "watch TV" but we did do about half of them before leaving Provo and as of today we have done about 2/3rds. Anyway, one day after we had been married about a month and a half, we got ambitious and decided to start tackling the list again. After checking off a simpler item, we turned our attention to #20.

"Who has a house?"

"My brother and sister-in-law do, but they live in Eagle Mountain, and there's only like one little tree in their front yard...it would be lame"

"Your parents have a house..."

"That's not happening"

Then we had a stroke of genius. Two of Kortney's former roommates had moved into a house on 9th East. It was loaded with trees in the backyard, and best of all, they would never suspect us because of one essential fact. Married couple do not go toilet papering.

We stayed up until about 2:30am and we headed out, dressed in black, adrenaline pumping, to live out the adolescent troublemaking we had missed out on. We parked across the street, carried our ammunition with us, and set to work. I believe we had 48 rolls of toilet paper with us. If you aren't familiar with toilet papering, rest assured that it is enough to do a good job.

We spent about 35 minutes in the backyard of the house, launching toilet paper rolls through the trees and having a grand old time. No wonder this was so popular I though to myself, this is a blast. I proved myself very adept at it and lamented that if only I had started earlier in life, I might have had a chance to go pro. Alas, it was too late now (there would be almost no way to hit the magic 10,000 hours that Malcolm Gladwell holds as the necessary time for expertise.)

I took on the tall trees and Kortney took on decorating the ground level objects like the car in the driveway and the posts of the porch overhang, and once we were done, we were very pleased with our work.

We drove home through the empty streets of Provo, seeing as it was four in the morning and we headed up to our apartment. Once inside we prepared for bed and I realized I did not have my phone with me. I had a bad habit of leaving it in the car and I was pretty sure it was there. Kortney was less sure and wanted to go back to the scene of the crime and make sure we hadn't left such an incriminating piece of evidence. I assured her that it was impossible.

About 70 minutes Nicola and Jamie woke up and looked out the window. Needless to say, they were shocked. They began to mentally line up all the boys who might have been responsible. They stepped outside to assess the damage, mentally calculate how long it would take to undo what was done. And right at that moment...

BOO BEEP BOO DEE BOO BOO DEEEEP BOO DEE

My phone's alarm went off! There it was nestled in a soft little bed of TP. It took them all of half a minute to figure out who the culprits were.

Two hours later we awoke to a text on Kortney's phone that said "When are you guys gonna come over here and clean this up?" After feigning ignorance for a few texts, they revealed their hand and told us they would be holding my phone hostage until we cleaned the whole yard up.

When we went back to the site of the crime, we realized that we might have done too good of a job. It was like the reverse of the parable of the young man who marries the daughter of a wealthy merchant who wishes to start his son-in-law's budding career as a contractor off to a great start and commissions a huge, beautiful house. The young man soon the old man does not care about the cost and quickly starts to cut corners, use sub-par materials, and hire underqualified workers so that he can pocket the change. When the house is done, the father-in-law announces that it is to be the newlywed's home. He then has to live with the drafty creaky house for the rest of his life as a reminder of his dishonesty.

We on the other hand, would have had the greatest home on the planet if we had been building a house instead of vandalizing one.

We spent the next two hours or so returning that yard to its former glory.

Believe it or not, this was our last time TPing.

Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Bible

2011-04-28T15:30:00.000-07:00

Today I finished listening to Uncle Tom's Cabin on Audiobook. It was a very interesting listen.

I don't consider it to be a great book, I think of it more as an important book, and I'm glad to have listened to it and know what it is all about. Admittedly it is not a very happy book, but I enjoyed the experience of listening to it, the style of 19th century literature is very different from our own and it was equal parts surprising and refreshing.

The biggest aspect of the writing that struck me was how transparent and obvious Harriet Beecher Stowe made her intentions throughout the novel (which by the way, is to condemn slavery in case you hadn't heard). Kortney and I are currently listening to State of Fear by Michael Crichton and even though he is obviously condemning the fear mongering that the threat of global warming has led to but still, the narrative never cuts to "at this point dear readers, we reflect upon the tragic nature of governments, that seek to perpetually keep their citizens in a state of fear..." Stowe pulls no punches and though the book is exploding with characters and feels a little manipulative as every possible variant of slavery (kind master who negligently fails to free his slaves, hard cruel master, passive master, etc. etc.) is juxtaposed one on top of the other, despite its flaws it led to a powerful conclusion.

What I enjoyed most was the window that it created. enabling the reader to get a glimpse of every day life back then. There were two things that I noticed more than others. One was that people played backgammon a lot back then. I've only played backgammon once and I daresay that I did not grasp the games possible nuances. It seems like you just roll the dice and hope to roll higher.

The second and more significant aspect of the 19th century mindset was the part the Bible played in people's discussions about slavery. I consider myself fairly familiar with the Bible and I was so surprised to hear people quoting certain passages that seem to support the idea of slavery, and other people quoting passages that condemn slavery. Not that that phenomenon is rare by any means, as someone who served as a Mormon missionary, I know very well how the Bible could be used to support what I taught to people, and to contradict it, and that virtually anyone who takes the time to acquaint themselves with the Bible's contents will be able to use it in some way to support their views. What was interesting to me was the fact that they were quoting the most arcane and esoteric passages as if they were the Bible's main points. Little stories that we completely overlook in our modern course of Biblical study. If you asked anyone today to give up a passage in the Bible to support slavery, no one could do it offhand. But in the book, people are casually comparing the passage where the angel tells Hagar to return to her master with other such dark and dusty passages in the most casual manner.

Today, people are able to do this with gay marriage, which is the hot social issue of our day. That's what I dealt with as a missionary. "Gay marriage is condemned in the Bible!" "What? Condemnation of gay marriage is condemned in the Bible." The issue of slavery has come and passed and the passages about Hagar and some servant girl who came to the apostles seeking freedom are now obscure and irrelevant. It is so interesting to me, that no matter when and no matter about what, the Bible will be used as a double-edged sword slicing on both sides of any issue.

Lendingclub Milestones

2011-04-27T13:00:00.000-07:00

We all learned about compound interest in elementary school, unfortunately they always got those future billions by using very high interest rates. Today our Chase bank savings account offers 0.01% and our U.S. Bank savings account weighs in at a whopping 0.05%, essentially $.11 a month. So yea, in this economy, traditional savings is no longer a get rich quick option.

So, I was very thrilled to find out about a new concept made possible by the internet called peer-to-peer lending. Essentially you can become the bank and fund the loans of various applicants through the website's platform.

You can make as small a contribution as $25 dollars and can choose notes with varying degrees of interest rates based on lender creditworthiness. Low is 7% high is 22%, either way, its better than savings. I was thrilled to learn about this new financial option because it allows you to be perfectly diversified and it doesn't cost any per transaction fee like eTrade and the likes do. It allows you to start small, try your hand at it a little bit, and learn some lessons without having to risk much. I endorse Lendingclub 100% and encourage you all to sign up for a free account and start lending.

Kortney and I are coming up on our 1 year anniversary with Lendingclub next month. Lendingclub is taking us out to a really nice restaurant and then we have reservations at this super cute bed and breakfast up in Cache County. We are excited!!

But this month, We hit some very important lendingclub milestones. First off, Kortney and I both have accounts because at the time we signed up, they were offering a $60 registration bonus and what can we say, we both wanted 60 free dollars. So, we have joint accounts and we have funded them gradually, month by month, putting in enough to invest in one new note every month. Every once in a while when we get a minor windfall, we have put in $100 or so. It has been very fun to watch our investment grow.

So, this month, we accomplished two very important goals.

1. Both our accounts reach $25 in interest earned. That's right, that means that one of our notes is pure interest. Our combined accounts as of today have brought in $58.76 in interest in less than a year with less than $1000 invested. You've got to admit, that is pretty good.

2. We both reached 15% interest earned. We both started out very conservatively with 11% notes and the like, but as we studied the success rates of the different notes, and saw our own results as we invested, we got bolder and more aggressive and have been watching our percentage continually rise. 15% is in the top 10% of all lendingclub investors so, Warren Buffet eat your heart out, we are hot on your tail.

If you have been looking for a good way to put your money to work in this lame economy, don't go to a bank, become a bank, with Lendingclub.

Compare Your Investment

Your Investment in Numbers

YouInvestors Like You

InvestmentNet Annualized ReturnNotes Invested InAverage Note Amount

$65015.29%32$34

> $1,0007.06%10$21

Your Investor Percentile

90%

Your Net Annualized Rate to date:

Higher than 90% and lower than 10% of all investors.

You 15.29%

Average 9.65%

Dave and Pete

2011-04-26T09:20:00.000-07:00

This is my buddy Dave. Dave Crosby. He has been my friend since the 8th grade, but he has been a top-tier friend (known as a pillar) since my freshman year. Dave has always been a perfect compliment to me, I feel very confident when I am with him. After our first semesters at BYU, he moved in with me in DT. I know that many of you will not fully understand what this meant at the time, but in our circles, this was considered to be nothing short of a shocking decision. This was like Jerry Sloan retiring mid-season, plus Deron Williams being traded without warning combined! That shocking. I was thrilled.

That semester was what dreams are made of and we still look back on those times as the glory days. After our missions Dave and I and our other two top-tier friends all moved in together. After one semester we realized that some friends are better friends when they have their own addresses and it seemed like everyone wanted to move out of the Riv except for me. At the last moment, Dave had a change of heart and decided to stay and keep living with me. This was like the ending to every wonderful chick-flick you've ever seen. And did we live happily ever after? You bet we did. That next semester was a revival of the freshman year days only this time we got to experience it while dating the girls we would both go on to marry.

After that semester we moved into Arcadia together for the summer and both went through long-distance relationships at the same time. Afterwards, he got married and so I forgave him for not wanting to live with me anymore. While I have several best friends, Dave is by far my most loyal friend.

Recently we have been talking about performing together as a unique duo. Dave has been a top-notch performer since Jr. High. Not only is he a great guitarist and singer but he belongs to rare class of songwriters that manage to explore new territory through song. I have often been downright amazed with Dave's lyrics (I consider myself a lyric snob). Some of my favorites are:

"Upon a shelf, I saw myself,
And I look myself in the eyes
You know I tried to start a conversation
But all I ever told myself were lies"

"I hear them saying, sometimes son you've got to let it go
And hear I sit,
I'm thinking maybe, it something I ought to let you know
That I'll never last, time moves too fast and we move to slow"

"You can stare me down, but you will never see
Just who I am, when noone's watching me
Cuz only virtue sees inside the culture of thieves"

For more on Dave check out his band page on facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dave-Crosby/45435154310?sk=app_2405167945
Or check out his former band's page to stream their full debut CD:
http://finallyfridayband.com/

Anyway, he is awesome. He's a great singer, great guitarist, and great performer. Always has been. And when I perform with him, I become an amazing performer, something about sharing the stage with Dave infuses with me with a sort of confidence that always results in something magical. Especially since joining Humor U in 2008, performing has become a regular part of my life, but two of my all-time favorite moments on stage were with Dave, once at a DT activity in the Morris Center where we played a guitar, recorder duet called "Dear Abby" that literally brought the house down and again when I was invited to share the stage at his farewell concert at the Rose Wagner Theater.

I have always wanted to somehow be a part of Dave's performances, and one of the major reasons I decided to learn to play drums in 2008 (other than it having been a life-long dream) was that if Dave ever formed another band, he would have the hardest time finding a drummer and I wanted to be poised and ready to go when that day came. Sadly, I sold my drumset when I got married and that moment came about a year later and I wasn't ready. There's a lesson in there for all you readers out there.

For a long time I was obsessed with music and I wrote a lot of lyrics and songs on the piano. However, I was never good enough (especially at singing) for that to go anywhere and so I managed Dave's band and tried to be a big supporter of all his efforts. When I decided to try my hand at stand-up (earnestly in July 2008) I found myself naturally succeeding at it. Almost immediately I was unable to write songs anymore, its strange but with a new outlet to express myself, I lost the ability to write songs. I joined Humor U and quickly became a solid and dependable cast member. Learning to write comedy and critique others really defined my undergraduate experience. Guess who became my biggest supporter, that's right, Dave Crosby. He came to all my shows, gave me great feedback and encouragement, and talked me up to those around him. More than anyone else, he made me feel like I could really be a great stand-up comedian.

Well, we have progressed a lot in our own mediums. Dave is heading into the studio this weekend to record a new batch of original songs and I recently recorded a stand-up DVD with The Left Field that will be distributed by Excel Films nationwide. It will be released in August. If you want to see a few samples of my stand-up, here are some examples. These are all over a year old and I don't feel the same connection to the material that I did then but regardless, I'm proud of my work:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvO-dQt6sz4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QOP1yolSkE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cYc5vgH6bU
And for more info on The Left Field go here:
http://leftfieldstandup.com/

OK, so here is the big news. Dave and I have decided to try out a new experiment this summer by performing shows together as a duo. A musician and a comic teaming up to bring to you an awesome, unique, memorable, and always entertaining show. We aren't exactly sure how the format will work exactly but we imagine that we will switch off twice over the course of a show and in the transition times, perform together, whether its one of our recorder/guitar duets, a freestyle battle, or any other thing we happen to come up with, I can guarantee you one thing. Dave + Pete = MAGIC!

We are really excited to start performing together, as I already mentioned, its always been a dream of mine, and as a musician I would have always felt like a second class citizen next to Dave, but as a comedian, I feel like we are going to be great partners and be able to really blow audiences away with the quality of the entertainment they are going to see.

Our first show will be this Saturday for a fundraiser for a cystic fibrosis foundation called Orion's Army. Here is the information for the event. There will be entertainment going on all day but we will be performing around 3 or 4.
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=197787256905676
If you'd like to come out, you will be supporting a really good cause and you might just be witnessing history in the making.

We are calling our duo, Dave and Pete.

If you are looking for entertainment for any event, corporate parties, family reunions, birthdays, FHE's, bachelorette parties, we are available for hire.

My issues with Glee

2011-04-25T22:16:00.000-07:00

Kortney and I have watched every episode of Glee together. I do not consider myself a Gleek however, and I would be willing to wager that she does not either...hold on ("KOOOOORTNEY???? ARE YOU A GLEEK???" "NOOOOOOOOOO") Yea, she definitely doesn't. But, for some reason, we keep on watching it. Obviously, the music is pretty good, sometimes, it is even amazing. Sometimes, I love it, and once, ONLY once, was I actually brought to tears by the show. For the most part however, I find Glee riddled with continuity problems, issues with their tone (its supposed to be a comedy right?), and really uncomfortable attempts at pushing the line. So, despite Glee's positive aspects, this post is all about my issues with Glee.

1. Are they losers or not?

This is seriously my biggest beef with this show. Half the time the Glee club is sitting around crying about how they are the joke of the school and are persecuted on every side by the jocks and the cheerleaders. Then, they turn right around and remind us that half of them are football players and cheerleaders, including the quaterback and the head cheerleader. Not exactly the typical outcasts.

Next, they talk constantly about how they are at the bottom of the high school pecking order and how even (insert interchangeable stereotypically nerdy club) looks down on them. And then we see them perform at assemblies/pep rallies/football games where they either receive raucous standing ovations, unite a fractured student body through song and dance, or deliver a message so profound and powerful that every student's life is forever changed. Lame clubs are clubs that lack exposure, The New Directions (name of the Glee club) has given us zero reasons to believe them when they complain about their loserdom except for the slushies that are constantly being thrown in their faces, which admittedly, is a comedic high-point of the show for me.

Furthermore, for a lame, loser-filled, ignored club, they seem to have a TON of clout around McKinley High School. First off, they have a band that is at their beck and call 100% of the time. Sure the band is there for their daily rehearsals, but anytime that Finn and Rachel want to go practice a duet, the band is there ready to accompany them, if a wistful Rachel wanders through the auditorium that ubiquitous piano player is there to play anything, and play it perfectly. So, apparently, the band doesn't think that TND is lame enough not to serve as their exclusive backing band. Apparently its not even a requirement for a glee club to have a band since not a single other club that has competed with TND has had a band in any of the regional or sectional competitions. Two more things that bother me about their permanent backing band that apparently has nothing else to do in the entire world than play music in the band room for the glee club: 1. Finn just has to play drums at the beginning of his songs. The actor who plays Finn, Cory Monteith, is a drummer, and apparently this is enough of a reason for him to start of his songs on the drums, singing and playing, and then, once the energetic chorus kicks up and he is needed to start circling around whichever girl is singing with him, he tosses the sticks to the official drummer of the band (strangely, the beat itself doesn't stop) and the drummer happily takes Finn's spot and carries on with this song. WHO IS THIS SELF-LOATHING, NO-CONFIDENCE, BACKSEAT-TAKING, PUSHOVER OF A DRUMMER??? Who would just be like "oh, so its not enough for you to sing you want to play on my drumset while you do it too? OK, here are my sticks" "yea, you know, I actually do have to practice this song with the band because I'm gonna be the one who plays the drums at the competition you so desperately want to win and this is in fact our designated practice time, and after all, don't you have choreography you should be working on instead of sitting on my stool and indulging your own sense of self-worth, oh just for the first verse? Fine." 2. This is the greatest band of all time!! They know every song, they can pick up on every cue, and most importantly, they have someone to play every single instrument on call. "Oh, does Mercedes need a harp for this number? No problem, I'll give Stacie a call, she's been chilling in the teacher's lounge all day just hoping for this to happen." "Oh did Mr. Schuester decide that this was big band week? Well, even though none of these songs are going to be in the competition and this is only serving to teach the twelve kids he is in charge of some very attenuated lesson about morals mixed with music history I better call in that favor with the brass section from the Ohio Philharmonic, now if only I had more than 60 seconds of notice beforehand, this would be so much easier." Think I am exaggerating? TND has not once, but TWICE, used an entire gospel choir to sing back-up vocals for Madonna and Aretha Franklin songs. Once to an auditorium with six people in it (which was admittedly a fund-raiser) and once to an EMPTY AUDITORIUM, after school, as part of "something I've been working on" according to Finn. This is all done as favors to a loser, do-nothing, ignored, and ridiculed club? Sorry Glee, but that makes absolutely no sense. Either be losers, or don't, but just remember that harpists have to lug their instruments around in big vans and are unlikely to do it for a bunch of whiny losers.

Lastly, when the Glee club is not bemoaning their loserdom, they are plotting on how to claw their way to the top of the social food chain. Apparently Finn and Quinn are up for prom king and queen. These aren't losers. Sam is constantly threatening Finn that it may be time for someone new at the top. Uh...the top of the bottom? or what? So, Finn is the most popular kid in school now? Wait, now if Sam and Quinn get together, they'll become the new power couple? These are not the machinations of regular losers. These are the kind of things that the popular kids plot about according to network television (I was never a popular kid but I don't remember seeing any rankings published in my high school newspaper telling me who I was supposed to bow down to either). Glee talks about popularity like its a Billboard music chart, and with a little bit of luck, they might move up a couple notches. Those are not your concerns if you really are losers, so, Glee, that is by far my biggest issue with you.

2. Does anybody remember what they were doing two episodes ago?

For me, continuity is a big must for a TV show, and Glee lacks this in abundance. Ever since it moved away from its efforts to have a story arc that lasted for more than two episodes (remember all that pregnancy drama?) and shifted into its new theme-of-the-week format, nothing anyone does seems to have any lasting effect.

In one episode we see an unlikely bond between Puck and Artie, the next episode, they don't share a single word, and two episodes later, Puck is making fun of him like the good old days. Rachel swears off boys to focus on her stardom, and...she wants Finn again. Emma is neurotic, now Carl has fixed her and she is fine doing a hands-on rendition of Toucha Toucha Toucha Me with Will, oh now she's neurotic again. These characters never grow. Its like the writers only created them with one attribute and if they ever learned to overcome that one defining flaw of theirs, the show would lose all relevance.

I don't know if this bothered anyone else, but I was so refreshed at Glee's boldness in shutting the door on the Will-Emma thing by marrying her off to Carl. It seems to me like every TV show with the exception of 30 Rock that established at one point a will-they-won't-they dynamic/tension between two characters could never, no matter how high the odds were stacked against them, keep them from getting together eventually. Jim and Pam (it wasn't so obvious back in Season 2), Michael Scott and Holly (they dragged that one out for a looooong time), Sidney Bristow and Michael Vaughn, April and Andy, etc. etc. So when Emma married Carl, I applauded Glee for finally doing something bold and different. Will would simply have to realize that his actions had caused him to lose Emma forever, which is what happens in REAL LIFE! Now, I'm expected to buy into the idea that Emma and Carl went four months without consummating the marriage, have now annulled the marriage, and Emma is back on the market for Will. Puh-lease. That is the worst story I have ever ever heard of. I though The Office was cold in the way they wrote AJ out of the picture to clear the way for Michael, but this just takes the cake.

The Warblers are the worst example of this ever, and until recently didn't even acknowledge it. How dare Blaine tell Kurt that the reason the Warblers all wear matching suits is because none of them are supposed to stand-out and then have the audacity to sing the only solos in every single performance. Even when Kurt pointed this out to him (finally) the solution was "Duet then? You and me?"

3. What happened to the music?

First off, enough with the single artist tribute episodes. I will admit, the power of Madonna episode was brilliant and is still my favorite episode to date. Glee had been on a mid-season hiatus and had just wrapped up the disastrous fake-pregnancy subplot and came back strong with memorable number after memorable number. But now, they are just grasping at straws trying to recreate that magic. I can just see creators sitting around "OK, I know we're all thinking it, I'm just gonna say it, when are we doing a Ke$ha episode?" (kill me now) There was a very lackluster Britney Spears episode, and an absolutely horrendous Lady Gaga tribute episode ("Its great to know you're my real mother Idina Menzel, and I understand that you feel like its too late for you to take an active part in my life, but before you go, would you just sing a mother-daughter duet with me? You will? Great. I was thinking Poker Face might be nice.")

Even when Glee doesn't limit its choices to a single artist's music catalogue, recently it has limited itself each week to a specific genre: Funk, neglected artists, guilty pleasures, etc. What this has done is made it so that the songs no longer forward the plot anymore. In the first few episodes, without any restraints on its song choice, the show could burst into song and dance at any moment, often just in the imaginations of the singer ("I bust the windows out your car" by Mercedes would be a good example). The words and tone of that song furthered the plot. Now, the song choices are all disjointed. The Warblers wanted to up their game in the episode "Sexy" and decided they needed to sing a decidedly sexy song to the girls of their sister school. Their choice? "Animal" by Neon Trees. A great song not universally known for being sexy. Was that meant to be ironic? Enter Holly Holiday to help two confused girls explore their sexual feelings through songs, what to sing? "Landslide" by Fleetwood Mac. Obvious choice right?

Furthermore, to serve their week-by-week theme, Glee has started performing songs that they obviously want to include in the episode's list of songs, but doesn't apparently want to commit to all the way. How about just a verse and a chorus? This, to me, is horrible. In the early Glee days, they picked a song and they sang the whole thing, and they made it work. "Now, Kurt wants to try and be manly, how about a low-voiced, slow performance of 'Little Pink Houses'? You're right this would take forever, make that one verse. Really Will? You're gonna try doing 'Ice Ice Baby'? Bet you $10 bucks you can't pull it off. Oh you didn't tell me you weren't going to do the last two verses. No girls wearing less than bikinis for you? Suit yourself." My feelings are, if you don't want to sing the whole song, leave it alone. Don't introduce it into the show and do a half-baked, wimpy job of it. In your misguided attempt to include more and more numbers, you are only going to dilute the power and appeal of your musical numbers.

While we're on this, at first, when Glee wanted to do some elaborate scene, it was mostly as a dream sequence or in the character's collective imaginations. Now, the excuses they come up with for these elaborate show stopping numbers are more and more far fetched and ludicrous. For good examples of these see "The Rocky Horror Glee Show" in which the Glee club, IN ONE WEEK, decides to put on the Rocky Horror Picture Show for the school, gets it banned for its inappropriate content, and then decides to perform it anyway, to themselves. Who in their right minds would agree to that. Probably the creators of a show that wants to see their characters dressed up as the iconic freaks of the original. Then we have the Glee clubbers volunteering to do remakes of classic music videos like Vogue and Physical? Really? Daily rehearsals and take home assignments isn't enough of a commitment to the club? You want to go and pointlessly create a "multimedia presentation" to honor Madonna. Ridiculous.

4. Tone down the messages.

With the start of Season 2 came a huge increase in the number of "message episodes" where the creators obviously had a point to get their viewers to see. Although these did exist in Season 1, they were no more overt than the average teen sitcom. But man, Season 2 has been rife with episodes dealing with religion, sexuality, homosexuality, and the like. Diana Argon once gave an interview where she said the show was great because it was able to talk about these sensitive issues without preaching. Well, you might want to look up the definition of preaching again. My goodness, "Grilled Cheesus" was the schlockiest, most awkward exploration of religion I have ever witnessed on TV. It was almost enough to stop watching Glee. And Kurt coming out of the closet and dealing with that is one thing (please keep that to a maximum of 25% of an episode from now on) but now this whole Britney/Santana nonsense is so unbelievable and far-fetched that I hope they never bring it up again. The show needs to be about the music first, the comedy second, and the "issues" third. It's really slimy to lure in young viewers with the promise of another High School Musical and then bombard them with a textbook liberal social agenda.

5. I shouldn't have to shake my head in disbelief 10 times per episode.

This is not as big a deal because I get that its a TV show, but come on, I did musical theater in high school and we were a very competitive school. And guess what, we did not switch gears week to week to learn lessons, we picked out what we were going to do for the competitions and we worked on them constantly. We did not abandon everything we had prepared backstage at the competition because "we're better on the fly anyway". Come on.

My friend watched the Glee episode after the Super Bowl and later wrote on Facebook "Glee, you had your chance to win me over last night, and you failed miserably." I never asked him about it but I imagine it is because he played football throughout high school and the episode centered around the tension between the Glee club and the football team escalating to the point where all the football players quit the team and the Glee club girls took their place until the amazing half-time musical number when the football players are so overcome with the music that they storm the field to dance with everyone else. I can imagine him watching that episode and feeling like the depiction of high school football was so warped that it was as good as offensive. ("They only have seven players on the field!! They couldn't even run a play if they wanted to!" admittedly I don't know enough about football to have found any concrete objections with the episode other than the ludicrous premise to begin with). That is how I feel as an entertainer every time I watch a competition episode ("Wait, they changed their set list minutes before going on stage, how are they all doing the same choreography? They're not even looking at each other. And the band? They know the songs to play? Do they have every song memorized or something?

6.That's it. Good job on the original songs. They were pretty good. You've got some good things going Glee, but no other show I regularly watch is even close to as frustrating.

Best Regards,
Peter Kern

End of Law School Year 1

2011-04-24T12:16:00.000-07:00

I finished my winter semester finals this week. Next time I go to class at the law school, it will be as a 2L. My last exam was for civil procedure and it was literally the hardest test I've ever taken in my entire life.

Law school in general is hard and it will be nice to have a break. I have an externship this summer working for a firm in Orem called Franchise Foundry, learning all about franchise law. I am actually really excited about it. I want to get some real world experience and see what it is like. People are always asking me whether or not I can see myself practicing law based on my law school experience. I have no idea.

What we do on a day-to-day basis is not what lawyers do on a day-to-day basis, and we are constantly reminded of this by the attorneys and guest speakers who come in to give us lectures. So, I am excited to move on to phase two of law school, where I can do something real and see what that is like, and then be able to make my own schedule and study things that I think are interesting.

I think that I would really enjoy learning about trusts and wills and estates, I also think disaster law sounds really interesting and I also plan on studying more about the Constitution, maybe 1st ammendment or 14th ammendment law.

The problem with the first year is that you don't get to choose your courses, and the courses you take are these huge broad subjects that you can barely get an overview of before the semester ends. Torts, Contracts, Criminal Law, etc. However, during both of the finals that I have now passed through I realized how much I really did learn and how I really do now have a certain global sense about how these things fit together. Overall, I feel like I am where I should be at the end of my first year, but I am no closer to knowing where I want to be at the end of my third year. I am just grateful for the chance to have access to such a quality education and I feel blessed to have a bright future.

"That's my dream too"

2011-04-17T14:54:00.000-07:00

Many people criticize Wikipedia as a source because its open source, but from my experience it has proven nothing but trusty. As Kortney and I have progressed through the movies in the Disney canon, we have visited Wikipedia to get some interesting background on the movies we are watching. Some articles are enlightening, some are interesting, and some are essential to understanding how the movie came to be. However, today, while reading the article on The AristoCats (number 20, making fine progress), we came across this sentence: "Snoop Dogg gave it a positive review as well.^[4]"

See that little four? That's a reference fools. Did we click on it to make sure that Snoop Dogg did in fact give this a positive review? Of course we did. And though Snoop Dogg may not be as analytical as Roger Ebert, Roger Ebert has never made me laugh as hard. Enjoy:

"I think The Aristocats is tha bomb. I'd lay back and watch it every day if I wasn't so busy makin' my own hits. I'd never dis this funky video about a downtown alley cat who smooth-talks a fine feline and ends up livin' large in the land of croissants. That's my dream, too.

O'Malley the alley cat is awright — he's no Dr. Dre, but hey, that homey's got a place in my dogg pound anytime. Ya gotta give him a big bowwow for getting his boys together to off that gangsta Edgar, the butler who's after the cats' big-bucks inheritance.

And ya gotta love mama kitty Duchess — she knows how to take care of her babies, and, meoww, she's cavvy. She's got that ooh-la-la accent and her nose is high in the air, but once she gets an earful of Scat Cat — voiced by the man, the great Scatman Crothers — she loosens up and shakes it out. Talk about cool jazz cats. Tha's right.

The tunes don't leave your head. I sho' have a bone to pick with the lyrics to ''Ev'rybody Wants to Be a Cat,'' but just try to stop hummin' it. Can't do it. I got my own ideas for doin' a Disney soundtrack — maybe the live-action 101 Dalmatians? I'd do it on the spot. Ha! Call my man and let's do lunch.

Ya don't like this movie, stay outta my tilt. Ya got the wrong attitude. The kids in the hood — who know French as the language of fries under the golden arches — will have as good a time watching this fine flick as those who can dig the meaning of, ahem, ''Scales and Arpeggios.'' And mamas and daddies, including yours truly, just may find themselves tuned in to this tape even when the pups are napping.

These cats sho' age well. My homeys don't look as good at 26 as this movie does. These cats got a lot more lives to live. A

Snoop Doggy Dogg, the father of one son, Corde, is currently working on his new album, Tha Doggfather."

In case you were wondering

2011-04-14T17:29:00.001-07:00

In relation to the previous post:

Over 75% of our visits come from the U.S. This makes sense. Here is the breakdown for everything else.

Brazil-7

Canada-6

United Kingdom-3

Vietnam-2

Norway-2

Australia-2

Belgium-2

France-2

Netherlands-1

Finland-1

Georgia-1

Singapore-1

Slovakia-1

Israel-1

Dominican Republic-1

Argentina-1

Netherlands-1

Lebanon-1

Ireland-1

Puerto Rico-1

Austria-1

Philippines-1

Italy-1

First country to get to double digits wins! Spread the wor(l)d.

I am a lucky man

2011-04-14T17:03:00.000-07:00

As I have looked over my Google analytics, I have been very interested by the fact that we have been visited from 24 different countries. That seemed like a lot to me for a blog that is not very internationally themed at all.

We have a suspicion that many of our oversea visitors are LDS missionaries who at some point were romantically interested in Kortney and obviously have not gotten over her. To the point of online stalking!

The rest of this post is for them.

I am a lucky man.

Goals for 2011

2011-04-06T10:28:00.001-07:00

As I cleaned up the apartment on Conference weekend I came across the goals Kortney and I set for the year. I had been trying to find them to remember what goals we had set for ourselves and so I was very happy to find them. We decided for 2011 that we would set 11 goals. We found that we are well on our way to some and were happy to remember and rededicate ourselves to the rest.

1. Visit six capitols.

This is a bite-size chunk of our overall goal to visit all 50 state capitols eventually. We visited six last year (Jefferson City, MO; Springfield, IL; Topeka, KS; Denver, CO; Salt Lake City, UT; and Frankfort, KY) and figured that that was a pretty solid pace. So far this year we have been to two.

Boise, Idaho and Cheyenne, Wyoming. Thanks to the Moyers in Boise and the Thomas' in CO who helped make those trips possible!

2. End the year with absolutely no debt.

One of those grown-up goals. With Kortney's good job and the possibility I have of getting paid work after my externship with Franchise Foundry, this shouldn't be a problem.

3. Watch a season of 24 in 24 hours.

This is something I have always wanted to do. And with all the seasons of 24 coming to Netflix instant play, it is more possible than ever. At the beginning of the year there were only two seasons of 24 I hadn't seen. Season 6 and Season 7. Kortney had never seen an episode. We figured we could leisurely watch Season 6 together and then set a day when we would watch Season 7 in real time. The idea is that we would start the season at the same time the day starts (8am for season 7) and then end at the same time. Pausing during commercial breaks to let time catch up and starting again once the real time matched the time on the 24 clock. We have only two episodes left of season 6 so we only have 24:Redemption left to watch before our 24 day is upon us.

4. Visit a National Park

The only National Park I've ever been to is Yellowstone. I've lived in Utah for over a decade and haven't been to Zion's, Arches, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, OR Bryce's. I wanted to set the goal at three national parks so that we could really take a chunk out of that horrid underappreciation of Utah's natural beauty, but Kortney talked me down to one. We may see Hot Springs, AR, in May (America's first national Park), or Yellowstone this summer, or one of Utah's. Either way, this one is a must.

5. Start our State Scrapbook and finish at least three states.

Kortney comes from a long line of accomplished scrapbookers and has wanted to chronicle our adventures in that medium. We decided a fun way to tell our story would be to have a section for each state and so instead of seeing what we have done in chronological order, we would instead have a Chapter for each time we have been through a state, full of pictures, mementos, souvenirs, etc. But, it won't happen if we don't get started, so this year, we begin. So far we have been to 16 states, so, we've got work to do.

6. Read the Book of Mormon

Though we both have read this book of scripture, we have never read it together. That's on the docket for this year. So far, we are in Mosiah.

7. Go hanggliding

This is something we have talked about doing since we were dating and have never done. We were going to go as a graduation present to me last April but the weather didn't permit. The point of the mountain is world reknown for its wind conditions and we would be remiss not to take advantage of this while we live so close.

8. Run in some kind of a race

We originally registered for the Red Rock Relay last year but had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts with Humor U. This year, we would like to complete some kind of a race and see how that goes.

9. Improve Sundays

With our busy schedules it is easy to let certain important but non-urgent things slip between the cracks and this is most often the case with spiritual things. We figured we could start the process of improving ourselves by improving our use of Sundays as days of spiritual growth. This was a goal we had forgotten about until we found the list....so...we'll let you know how that goes from here.

10. Watch all the movies in the Disney Animated Canon.

There are 50. From Snow White to Tangled. We have a trip planned at the end of the year to go to DisneyWorld and we hope to finish this by then. The last one we watched was Sleeping Beauty (15) and the next will be 101 Dalmatians (16)

11.Throw an awesome President's Day Party.

Done and Done! See the post about it for pictures and a beautiful poem describing the event.

For the very first time today

2011-04-04T21:11:00.000-07:00

I swam an entire mile.

I started swimming semi-regularly about a month ago in an attempt to get into better shape. I figured swimming would be a good way to get a full body work-out and would come in handy if I ever fell overboard or competed on Wipeout.

My first time at the pool I swam 6 laps and was completely exhausted. I did two laps of front crawl and barely kept from drowning, then switched to two laps backstroke and then decided to do one more of each before retiring, completely draining.

I decided that swimming a mile would be a fine goal and looked up how many laps were in a mile. The internet told me that a mile in an Olympic-size swimming pool is 16 laps. That was encouraging news! I was already swimming a third of my goal on my first day out.

I held this belief because the RB (BYU's athletic facilities) 's website stated that their facilities included two Olympic-size swimming pools. I wish I had read this excerpt from Wikipedia before shouting for joy. "Pools claimed to be "Olympic pools" do not always meet [Olympic regulations], as FINA cannot police use of the term."

As it turns out, BYU is going around claiming they have Olympic pools when really their pools are HALF THE SIZE of official Olympic pools. I was shocked. And discouraged. A mile in a BYU pool was actually 33 laps. Shocking, I know.

That seemed like an impossible amount of laps. A lap is two lenghts. There and back. I had done six. And I had nearly died.

I kept going though. I swam 10, then 12, then 14.

Before I knew it, it was getting easier and I had swam 22 laps. Two thirds of a mile. The problem was that it was taking me longer and longer and I had trouble finding time since the pool only holds open swims in the early morning and in the evening.

Finally tonight, I did it. It took me nearly 70 minutes, and the last third took me nearly half of that time, but I swam a mile. I did it! And it feels great. I think I would like to complete a triathlon someday in the near future. Anyone out there done that and can share any pointers?

President's Day 2011

2011-02-23T23:58:00.000-08:00

The kitchen and the living room were separated by festive hats.

The coffee table held the name tags of Republicans and Democrats.

The ceiling was covered in stars and stripes balloons.

The kitchen cupboards were covered in political cartoons.

Pictures of each president were on the walls chronologically.

In preparation for the greatest President's Day Party!

Neither of us had ever felt so alive

As we waited for our invited guests to arrive.

(Winners for best dressed)

Many don't know what a President's Day Party is

Well it all begins with a President's Day Party quiz

Followed by a $100 money drop

That neither team that played proved able to stop

This was followed by a grown-up version of Memory

Matching the man to an event in his presidency.

"What more could there be?" is surely what you're thinkin'

How about an American Flag cake

and pin the hat on Abe Lincoln?

Thanks so much to all those who came to our first ever President's Day party and made my dream of 26 months become a reality! We had a blast and I hope you all did too!

It's Been an ENTIRE Year!!

2011-02-20T22:51:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was Peter and I's One Year Anniversary!! I have no idea how time has flown by this quickly. It feels like I was planning our wedding just a few weeks ago. This has definitely been the best year of my life! I don't know what I possibly did to deserve such an amazing husband. We have so much fun together and I wouldn't trade one second of this year for anything. Peter treats me like a Princess and I love him with all my heart!! I don't know what I would do without him, and I am so happy that I will never have to figure that out. I am so excited for the many, many wonderful years to come!

Sculptures Part 1 of 3

2010-09-23T14:02:00.001-07:00

Well, Kortney and I are back in Provo and are very busy indeed. Hence, blog neglect. We have tons of fun pictures from things we did this summer, and we are still trying to have adventures when time permits, but its harder to let all of our many followers about them. Little by little, I am hoping to recap some of our favorite St. Louis moments and then move on to our lives in Provo.

One thing that St. Louis was loaded with was art. There was a world class art museum (which we never went to) as well as many other smaller venues and tons of public gardens with lots of sculptures. We went and saw quite a few of them and got to be self-proclaimed sculture buffs. Three sculpture venues stood out as highlights of our artistic summer. This post is about the first, The Laumiere Sculpture Park:

We learned about this park from roadsideamerica which touted its giant eyeball as a must see attraction. Well, it definitely was:

According to roadsideamerica, the artist who made this eyeball has now made a second version of this same statue that is four times this size and sits in a public park in Chicago.

Kortney will probably not be pleased that I put this picture online, but oh well. This sculpture was pretty interesting to look at, however if you look carefully you'll see a bright red pillar sculpture in the back, we liked that one more, but I don't have any better pictures of it. This sculptor did a related sculpture in Citygarden that we liked more, so stay tuned for that one.

Some people who looked a lot like tibetan monks were sharing the Park with us. Kortney did not want me to take any pictures of them but I did this one from a distance so there was no awkward moment.

This was definitely one of our favorites. It was a very interesting visual. It seems effortlessly metaphorical (our lives are like a tangled knot that will never separate itself). We sat and talked on this sculpture for a nice while.

So much metaphor was going on on our walk around the park. Here we have the roots, just like the roots of our new family that we are trying to grow. This was an awesome sculpture to look at.

One of these was tiny, and one of them was huge. Thanks to Kortney's expert manipulation of perspective, they appear to be the same size. Are you tripping yet?

And that was our trip to Laumeier Sculpture Park. Oh the memories!

The Top 9 Things We Miss About Provo

2010-08-11T06:11:00.000-07:00

Peter and I have had a blast here in St. Louis. We have definitely made the most of it and have done almost everything there is to do here (everything free at least :). We have had such a great time going on dates and spending quality time together and we wouldn't trade that for the world. The opportunity to leave Provo, leave all the obligations of school, friends, and family, just to be able to focus on us, has been such a good start to our wonderful marriage. But everything must, at some point, come to an end. We leave St. Louis and head back to Provo in less than one week, and honestly, we are really excited about it. I have caught myself day dreaming about all the things I miss about Provo and I have caught Peter doing the same at times. So, we have come up with this list:

The top 9 things we miss about Provo:
(In no particular order)

#1 - The Mountains

St. Louis is definitely beautiful in it's own way, but there is nothing here that can even compare to the mountains in Provo. Peter and I miss hiking. Don't let the picture fool you though, I do not miss snow at all.

#2 - Yo Zone

We are so YoZone deprived!

# 3 - Our Amazing Friends

We have a few fellow salesman buddies here, but other than that there is absolutely no one our age. We miss our wonderful friends so much!

#4 - The RB

(This one is for Kortney) The Richards Building at BYU is where I have spent the last 4 semesters of my life. I have a full time job here in St. Louis (I have to be available basically 24 hours a day), so I wasn't able to take any dance classes at all this summer. I miss dancing SO much! I am so excited to dance again! =D

#5 - Lack of Humidity

The humidity is disgusting here. I grew up in Tennessee, so you would think I would be use to it. Lets just say, Provo has spoiled me rotten. Peter is not use to it at all. He would work 8 hour days knocking door out in the heat and humidity, he never complained, but I felt so bad for him and I know it was torture. We are so excited to get back to Provo so we can actually do things outside again.

#6 - Humor U

(This is mostly for Peter) Peter was the President of Humor U, BYU's stand-up comedy troop, back in Provo and intends to reclaim that title once we get back. Seriously, it has been killing him being away from Humor U. He is so excited to perform again. And I am so excited to watch him perform!

#7 - Cousin Dinners

Peter's cousins are amazing! About once a month Aunt Cindy and Uncle Rob invite all the cousins over to their house for cousin dinner. And let me tell you, Aunt Cindy is one of the most amazing cooks on the planet. We catch up, laugh, play games, and just have a great time. It seriously is a blast and we have missed it SO much while we have been away. (Congrats to Heidi and Chad who just got married August 7! We are so sad we missed it. We love you!)

#8 - Family

Having Pete's family close to us in Utah has been so wonderful. It is nice to be able to get together on a regular basis and stay close to his family. Also, having my brother Tyler right there in Provo with me has been great! My younger brother Travis will be at BYU this fall as well. I love having family close by. They are wonderful and we miss them so much.

#9 - Our Boardgames

I know this is really lame, but whatever. Peter and I decided we didn't have room in the car on the trip to St. Louis to bring many boardgames. So, we only chose three games to bring with us this summer. In the meantime we have ordered one more while we have been out here because we got kind of sick of the three we brought. Back in Provo we have 25-30 different boardgames. We are excited to get back to them. =D

*WE LEAVE ST. LOUIS IN 4 DAYS AND WE CAN'T WAIT!!! =D*

The Disney Canon

2010-08-09T22:03:00.000-07:00

When Kortney and I were long distance last summer, we made a list of things we were gonna do when we were back together. Some things were cute, like learn a new recipe together, some things were spiritual, like go to Conference together, and some things were adventurous, like climbing a mountain peak. Two items were a little ambitious. The first was to road trip to Mt. Rushmore (this was my suggestion), the second was go to Disneyworld (her suggestion). Well, we did about 20 of the 30 things on our list before leaving Provo for the summer. On our way out to St. Louis for the summer we made a 10 hour detour and went to see Mt. Rushmore. It was AMAZING. And now, as our summer draws to a close and we head back to Provo we are putting together our plans for making the second item, Disneyworld, a reality.

Our tentative plan right now is to go out in May, once the school year is over, and spend a couple days in Orlando doing all four of Disney's parks and both of the Universal parks. We are planning on going with Ali and Brent, our Tenessee couple friends who get done with classes the second week in May. Ali is a Disney expert as that is the regular family vacation for her. She will be our guide.

My only Disney experience is with Euro Disney which my family went to right before we moved back to the States. I was too short to go on any of the good rides and my inability to go on the Indiana Jones ride (my hero at the time) is what I most remember from that trip. It was very disappointing to me at that time. So I don't really know what to expect.

Kortney and I have season passes to Six Flags this summer and she was explaining to me not to base my expectations around an amusement park like that. Disneyworld is a theme park. The rides are not there to be thrill rides, they aren't roller coasters, etc. The whole Disney experience lies in seeing the Princesses and visiting the different lands and its all an excersice in nostalgia. Apparently.

Well, I suggested that in order to get the most out of our money we needed to go through a crash course in Disney. We looked up the list of all the Disney animated classics and there are currently 50, Princess and the Frog being the latest. We made a spreadsheet, looked up which are available on Netflix (all but 7) and decided that we would do it. We would watch the whole canon in chronological order.

This was today. We also hopped on YouTube and discovered that most Disney movies uploaded on there in 10 minute increments. We decided to get a jump on our goal and watched Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. I can't believe how much I enjoyed it. Her voice is rather shrilly I must say, but I laughed at the gags more in this movie than I've laughed in most comedies for a long time. It was great. If you haven't seen an old Disney movie in a while, I recommend going back and reliving those old memories. These movies really are timeless. Next up...Pinocchio!

We Are Family!

2010-07-23T07:42:00.000-07:00

Two weekends ago my mom came to visit me in St. Louis!! I seriously was SO excited to see her. Even better, my Aunt Fish (Janet) came to visit as well. And since my Aunt Ali and her family already live in St. Louis it just turned into a mini-family reunion. It was wonderful.

Since being here in St. Louis, I have had A LOT of alone time. I grew up with 6 brothers and sisters, then I went college and lived with 5 other girls. I have never really had the chance to be alone before I got married. Because of this, I thought it would be awesome to finally get some time to myself this summer. I was totally wrong! I am so BORED when Peter is at work. I never realized how important girl-time is and how empty I feel without it. I actually miss having roommates and I actually miss the craziness of a big family (If my high school self could hear me saying this...she would be shocked and appalled). That being said, you can imagine how exciting and much-needed this mini-family reunion was for me.

The weekend was spent doing fun things in St. Louis, helping my Aunt Ali move (her new house is gorgeous), playing with 4 awesome cousins, boardgames, squirting water at each other, and just catching up. It really was such a great break from the monotonous days I have when Peter has to work all day. I loved it!

We went out to eat at Chilis (Yum)

Cousin Kaden, Aunt Ali, Uncle Jerry, Cousin Logan

Mom, Aunt Janet, Cousin Nathan

Me and cousin baby Carson (he is so precious)

Girls day at Forest Park!

Sisters!

My mom rocks! =D

12th Annual World's Largest Catsup Bottle Festival!!

2010-07-16T14:00:00.000-07:00

As you have probably noticed, Peter and I recently developed a, sort of, obsession for going out of our way to see random/big/pointless/monumental type things. One day Peter was surfing the web and he came across some information for this festival coming up on July 11, 2010. He immediately set his heart on going, he was so excited. At first, I was a little skeptical, but I quickly warmed up to the idea and I too became very excited to experience this unique annual festival.

This is no ordinary festival, it is basically a birthday party for the World's Largest Catsup Bottle. I kid you not, they sing happy birthday to the giant catsup bottle and everything! There were actually quite a few events planned for the day of celebration. The days events looked something like this:

7:30am - Trailnet's Big Bottle Bike ride

10:00am - Car, Truck, and Motorcycle Show Registration

11:00am - Opening Ceremony

11:00am - Little Princess Tomato and Sir Catsup Contest

11:45am - Hot Dog (Smothered in Catsup) Eating Contest

12:15pm - Singing of Happy Birthday and Cutting of the Cake

12:30pm - Ronald McDonald Magic Show

1:00pm - Old-fashioned Birthday Party Games

2:00pm - Hula Hoop Contest

2:30pm - Water Balloon Toss

4:30pm - Awards

5:00pm - Saying Goodbye

Looks like a blast huh?? =D

So, Peter and I drove 45 minutes away to Collinsville, Illinois to join in on the famous (in Collinsville at least) celebration. We pulled up to the site of the festival excited to see the World's Largest Catsup Bottle for the first time. However, we couldn't see it anywhere. We saw tons of nice cars getting ready for the car show. We saw a stage and heard music. We saw tons of vendors and kids activities. But no Catsup Bottle, which was the reason we were there. We found out that the festival was not actually at the site of the Catsup Bottle (which is actually the towns water tower in the shape of and painted like a catsup bottle), it was 5 minutes away. Instead of parking and joining the festivities we went to go see the Birthday Bottle. We drove for awhile down some twisty, hilly roads, trees all around us blocking our view for most of the way. We finally curved around one last turn and BAM right in front of us, the huge Brook's Catsup Bottle. Let me tell you, it really is big!

After we marveled at the bottle we drove back to the festival. We got there just in time to see the Hot Dog (smothered in Catsup) Eating Contest. This is the contest Peter wanted to enter, so he ran over to the booth to put his name in the drawing. Sadly, they had already chosen their 8 contestants. Peter was a bit disappointed, but we enjoyed watching anyways. They did two age groups: Kids (up to age 13) and Adults (14 and up). The kids were first, they were given two minutes to eat as many hot dogs as they could. There were two huge plates of hot dogs in front of them and Hooters Girls waiting with bottles of catsup to smother each hot dog before they ate them. These kids were very amusing to watch.

The reigning champion ended up winning for the second year in a row, eating 4 hot dogs in 2 minutes. YAY!! The adults were much more boring to watch. The guy that won drank water while eating his hot dogs, he completely cheated! We were a little bitter about that.

After the contest we sang happy birthday to the Catsup Bottle and got to eat free cupcakes, Yum! Then we walked around to see some of the different activities and gawk at the awesome cars in the car show.

We came across a booth where you take a Catsup taste test. See, Collinsville is where Brooks Catsup originated from. So, there were 4 containers with different brands of catsup and you had to taste each one and guess which one is the Brooks brand. Peter went first and guessed the Hunts brand. I went second, so I had a bit of an advantage, but I won!!

By this point we had done mostly all there was to do and we were getting pretty hot, sweaty, and tired. However, we had to make one more stop. Every year at this Festival Erika Nelson comes and brings her Traveling Art Museum. This museum is The Worlds Largest Collection of the Worlds Smallest Versions of the World's Largest Things. Basically, this woman travels around the world and visits all the Worlds Largest Things in her special truck where she actually documents her journeys. After she sees these things she goes back home and creates very small replicas of all the World's Largest Things that she has seen.

Peter and I checked off all the things in her museum that we have already seen and talked about the ways we could plan on seeing all the others. After we finished looking at the museum we headed back to the car. With one more look at the fun Catsup Festival we were on our way home feeling very satisfied with our fun day and unique experience.

My first day off in a while!

2010-07-15T13:41:00.000-07:00

Its been a little bit since we've updated on here. Our lives have changed quite a bit since June and our schedules haven't permitted much of this. I am no longer doing door to door sales, I am working on the installation side of Linx, the assistant to the head tech. The work is more gratifying (and air-conditioned), the pay is more stable and predictable, but the hours are pretty brutal. We are on the road by seven a.m. and thirteen hour days are the norm. So...when July 5th rolled around and the installers got the whole day off, I was ecstatic. Kortney and I debated over all the things we had left on our list of things to do. We knew we might not get a lot more opportunities like this one, to just go for a whole day wherever we wanted. We agreed that we wanted to go outside of St. Louis to something relatively nearby that we might never get the chance to see again. Nauvoo? Hannibal (birthplace of Mark Twain)? Springfield (birthplace of Lincoln)? Bonne Terre? We looked into all of them and decided that the one that would work the best would be Jefferson City, the capital of Missouri.

First off, I have a thing for capitals. I once walked from Sandy to the Utah State Capitol Building in Salt Lake in the middle of the night for no good reason than to do it. When I first visited Kortney in TN, the very first thing we did was to go to the TN Capitol Building in Nashville. I think a great bucket list item is to go to each of the 50 capitol buildings in the US. In my mind, they are our equivalent to castles. Definitely worth visiting. Kortney is only now realizing that going to all 50 capitals is something that I am 75% serious about and after today I think she is definitely down. It was really amazing. Jefferson City seems like a pretty low profile capital, it isn't Boston, Nashville, Sacramento, or Phoenix, so you wouldn't think it would pack much of a punch. Wrong. And that's what I love about capitals.

We live about two hours from both Jefferson City and Springfield, IL, and we hope to see both before we leave. Since the beginning of the summer we have become kind of suckers for tourist attractions that are advertised from the freeways so we try and give ourselves some time when we take trips to be able to stop and check out the kitchy, oddball sites that litter our world. Our first stop along the way was a store called Nostalgia-ville. It was surprisingly awesome.

Filled to the point of bursting with old-timey metal signs, figurines, and Humphrey Bogart posters. Though we were sorely tempted by quite a few of the items there, we managed to reserve our spending to a Route 66 magnet and continued on.

Our next stop was at the National Churchill Memorial and Museum. We didn't want to pay to see the museum although it looked pretty impressive (we didn't have all day). But there was still quite a few things to see. The first was a memorial to freedom made out of eight real sections of the Berlin Wall.

The second was this handsome statue of Winston himself (I also have a special place in my heart for this man because my Jr. High was named after him. My years spent at Churchill were some of my favorites). I believe the main character from despicable me was inspired by Churchill.

There was a statue of him hunched over where he looks the exact same.

And lastly, this beauty, a 12th century church that exhibited the shift from Romanesque to Gothic architecture that that period of time is known for. We went around the inside and checked everything out. Very well restored. The girl at the desk told us that this building was the oldest building in the country...well...I'm not sure about that. But it was still fun to see.

With those little detours behind us we finally drove on into Jefferson City to check out the capital. As soon as we entered the city we saw that the capital building dominated the skyline. A beautiful thing.

Since it was still the 4th of July holiday, the building was operating under its weekend schedule. It took us a while to find the only door in operation but it gave us a good chance to check out the grounds. There was a statue of Jefferson signing the Louisiana Purchase (Jefferson is everything to Missouri, hence the name of the capital city). There were mythologically huge statues of a man and woman on either side of the main entrance that represented the Father of Waters (AKA the Mississippi River) and the Mother of Waters (AKA the Missouri River) which meet in Missouri and water the rest of the country.

Once inside we jumped onto a tour group just leaving. The capital building is much bigger than the Tennessee capital building. Four stories with a lot to see. These are its claims to fame.

1. The longest indoor-outdoor staircase in the world

2. The world's largest single canvas painting

3. Some seriously awesome 3-point perspective paintings.

4. A hall of famous Missourians with bronze busts added each year.

We spent about two and a half hours wandering around and appreciating everything. We couldn't appreciate number 1 because the big doors that separate the inside and outside parts of the staircase wasn't open on the weekend schedule. Number two was breathtaking though. It was in the room where their legislative body meets. It was painted in a hangar in France commemorating the U.S. involvement in WWI. Specifically, the painting is about the regiment of soldiers that Harry S. Truman belonged to. He is Missouri's only president, and that is why the Missouri capital got it in the first place. It is huge, and not a seam anywhere.

The whole room is majestic. A tribute to how proud we are of democracy.

This representative looks pretty behind on his paperwork.

The whole capitol was filled with amazing artwork like this. As for the three-point perspective paintings, I've never seen anything like it. No picture can do it justice. Basically, you stand on the left of a painting and look at it. It all extends away from you, you have a certain perspective on it. And then, as you walk, way the painting looks actually shifts as if, instead of it being a painting you were walking in front of, it was the actual scene that it depicts. By the time reach the other side, you are looking at the same thing from an entirely new perspective. It shifts. There was a hall full of these. A steamboat that starts off near the shore and ends up in the middle of the river with a wide wake, a bridge that seems to extend away from you no matter which side of it you are standing on, an overlook over a bluff where on one side you are looking up at the hill and from the other side you are on top of the hill looking down, and a farmyard with roads that shift to correspond to your viewpoint. It was a trip, and it made the trip worth it.

Ever since visiting the TN capitol I occasionally quiz Kortney on which three presidents are from TN (Jackson, Polk, and Johnson) now we'll have to add Truman onto the list of presidents who are from states whose capitals we've visited. 48 more capitals, 39 more presidents.

The last thing we saw on our tour was seriously breathtaking. It was the "Senate Lounge" which used to be the actual Senate. It was a room covered floor to ceiling with murals detailing Missouri's history. It was incredible. Our tour guide slowly went around the room and described what everything was and funny stories associated with the mural itself. I know I'm indulging myself but I just want to put all the pictures of it up.

The most interesting part of it all was this little vignette in the corner of the first wall. It depicts the eviction of the Mormons from Missouri.

The short version told to us by the tour guide was that Mormons were a devoutly religious people who were opposed to slavery, believing that no man should own another man, and this caused a stur among the locals eventually leading the governor to sign the extermination order. She admitted that she had never heard of this until she started working as a tour guide five years ago despite living in Missouri her whole life. The painting shows the friendliness towards blacks as cause and tar and feathering as effect. Very interesting.

Once we were done at the capitol, we wanted to make sure we weren't missing out on anything else Jefferson City had to offer since the chances of us coming back anytime soon were low. The only other thing we found was this beauty.

A giant pacifier made out of, wait for it, cigarette butts!

At first I was sort of repulsed by the concept. A pacifier of all things! But then the message kind of dawned on me, and I think that the artist's intention is to cause that jarring sensation. After seeing it and reading a little about it I found it to be a really amazing piece of work. His point is that we toss cigarette butts on the ground like its nothing and our we almost don't even register them visually as they litter our entire world. His point was that we mistakenly believe that they will easily decompose but they are in fact made out of material that will take centuries to fully decompose and therefore his monument to this fact will stand a long time, proving his point.

Wow, this is getting long, I know. But we just don't get out like we used to you know? We were on the way home and it was only 5:00pm so we were discussing whether or not we wanted to do anything else with our day and I knew that if we went home now, we wouldn't go back out, so I proposed that we head south and check out some caverns that were highly advertised along the road when we were first coming into St. Louis back in May. The Meramac Caverns. We did, and we were glad we did.

That's right. Two Jesse James sights in one day (he was included on the mural in Jefferson City). They counted their loot in this cave and escaped out an unknown undergroud river. Pretty sweet.

The tour was divided into two main parts. The first half led down to the heart of the cave. Different rooms had different stories. There was the Jesse James area of course. Then there was the Hollywood room where a scene from Lassie was filmed and also a scene in the adventures of Tom Sawyer. For the most part these were small formations but we had a lot of fun looking at them. Also, there was a token Asian tourist family in our group which made the experience that much better.

Then we headed up to the upper parts of the cave where the largest formations were. Including the world's third largest stalagmite. Jealous? The coolest formation was what was called a wine table. Only two exist in the world and this one is the larger of the two. It only forms underwater and kind of looks like a dinosaur. Check it out.

The tour ended at this huge wall of stalagtites which took longer to form then the grand canyon. It was pretty incredible to see. We got a light show and everything. This was a good place to end it because it was seriously breathtaking. We learned here that Missouri is also called the Cave State. I had no idea but apparently there are over 20 public caverns across the state. Sadly, this is probably the only one we'll be going to this summer.

When we were done with the tour we bought a magnet (our tradition for things like this) and headed for home. It was a long day, but if you only get a precious few days off, you can't go wasting them. And we certainly didn't waste this one.

Hair Conclusion!

2010-07-03T08:58:00.001-07:00

Thanks to everyone who gave me advice and encouragement, I decided to make another appointment with Vince to have him cut my hair the way I wanted it cut in the first place. I was really nervous at first to call back into the Salon. For one, I was worried they might charge me again and for two I was worried Vince would be angry that I didn't like the hair cut he gave me. Turns out I am very silly and neither of those things happened. The Salon and Vince were both happy to fix my hair for free. I showed him a picture (a different one from before) of exactly what I wanted, he looked at it once and then began cutting. I didn't see much of a difference at first and it didn't seem like he was going to cut it any shorter either. I was pretty nervous...this whole hair cut thing really turned into a situation that I was not anticipating. However, I decided to take a deep breath and just let him do what he was going to do. Finally, I began to see the change and I started liking it more and more as he chopped more and more hair off my head. The finished product really did look a lot like the picture and I walked out of there feeling very satisfied and happy. =D This spontaneous thing might actually work well for me after all.

It's not a huge difference, but it's enough. I really like it!

What do you think? Did I make the right decision...or are you ready to take back the advice you gave before? =D

Time For a Change...Or is it??

2010-06-30T11:10:00.001-07:00

I do not consider myself a very spontaneous person, and I am almost positive most people would agree with that. Every time I go to a restaurant I order the exact same thing. Trying to get me to try something new is like pulling teeth (ask Pete, he knows all about it). I figure out what I like and I stick with that...forever. I always wear my hair the exact same way. My makeup has looked the same since I started wearing makeup, when I was 14. I want to be on Broadway when I grow up, the same exact dream I have had since I was 2 years old. That's just how I have always been, there is comfort in repetition for me.

That being said, I have always admired spontaneous people. I often times try and pretend I am spontaneous only to fail miserably and fall right back into my normal habits. I think girls that change clothing styles once a month seem like they are having so much fun. I admire those who have 3 or 4 different majors during college, because they get to try so many different things and learn so much. And I imagine what it would feel like to be one of those girls that wake up one morning and decide its time for a change and before you know it they have cut off half of their hair and dye it blue. What would it be like...?

Well, today I became that girl...

I woke up this morning and I decided it was time for a change. I have had long hair my entire life and have never been bold enough to do anything about it. There have been many times I have gone to a salon with the intentions of walking out with short hair, but I always seem to chicken out at the last minute and just get it trimmed. But not this time. This time I was going to print off a picture of a girl with SHORT hair, take it into the salon, and close my eyes until it was over and done with. And that is exactly what I did. (See picture below):

That is what I wanted my hair to look like, but that is not what it looks like. It's definitely shorter, however, the guy cutting my hair (Vince was his name) told me he would not cut it as short as I wanted because since I was making such a drastic change I should test the waters first. He said once he cuts my hair, if I want it shorter, then I can come back next week and get it shorter, but for now he would not cut it as short as I wanted. Ok, I understand where he is coming from...but I want to be spontaneous! Though he had good intentions he completely stomped out all of my spontaneous fire. Sigh. It's not like I hate my hair or anything...it is alright...but its not what I wanted. I wanted more spunky, more short layers, more flippy (this is a terrible description) and what I got was just...shorter and kind of boring. I'm debating whether or not to go back and get it cut exactly the way I want or if spontaneity is just not ever going to be for me.

What do you think I should do?

The Tallest Monument in America--The Arch

2010-06-24T11:06:00.000-07:00

After nearly a month and a half of living in St. Louis, Kortney and I finally managed to get around to doing that extremely iconic St. Louis-y must, we rode to the top of the Arch. It was awesome, and I mean awesome.

This was a special Saturday for me because Kortney actually drove out to Illinois to pick me up once I was done selling and so not only did I not have to wait around to be picked up by my manager, or wait for everyone else to be picked up too, but I also didn't have to wait an hour to drive home before getting to see my wonderful wife. Definitely the hardest part about selling is the ridiculous hours that we have to spend apart. We've definitely gotten better at making the most of our time together, but that doesn't make the time apart any easier. Today, it was less, and that was good.

So from Alton, IL, where I had spent the morning and early afternoon, we drove along the Mississippi, cutting through Granite City on our way to downtown St. Louis. As we crossed the bridge over to Missouri, the rain was just pouring down on us. It got so out of control that we decided to pull over and wait for it to cool down, I can handle driving in snow (I've spent every winter of my driving life in either Utah or Quebec) but driving in this rain is unreal! There were times when it would be coming down so hard that even with the windshield wipers going at full steam, the rain created an immediate, impenetrable curtain of water that made driving an unsettling experience, and that's not even mentioning the standing water.

We chilled at the side of the road for a while and were rewarded by not only arriving at our destination in safety, but also by this amazing rainbow. It seemed very artistic for God to give us this view right before we rode to the top of the Gateway Arch.

So we finally got into the parking garage and we braved the weather, which at this point had picked up again, and ran to the north base of the arch and underground into the Museum of Westward Expansion. It's a full service museum on the expansion of America into its Western frontier covering the years 1800 to 1900, suffice it to say, there is a lot of information. There are also two videos that they show and of course, the tram ride to the top of the Arch. At places like these, I am always all about having the complete experience, so we bought tickets to both movies and the tram, and just like that, the rest of our day was booked.

The first movie was about Lewis and Clark's Pacific Expedition. It was on their super screen and it was really amazing. I find their story so inspiring. The number of times that they were serendipitously saved is amazing. The movie was modern and very high quality. I am of the mind that Lewis and Clark definitely earned their place in US History and deserve to be considered heroes. Early on in our time in St. Louis we went to St. Charles which was their departure point for the journey. There was a reenactment society there that were in full Lewis and Clark garb and one of them talked to us at length about his experience as part of the 200 year commemoration where they reenacted their famous voyage. Since then, I have really appreciated what it is that they went through and did.

The second movie was about the actual making of the Arch. It was called A Monument to the Dream. The Dream being the dream of Westward Expansion and establishing a waterway that would cut through the continent. The Monument being the Arch. This movie was very fascinating. It showed some incredible footage of the building of the Arch. It was under construction for about 5 years and they simultaneously built both legs and then connected them at the top. That means that for years there were just these two huge columns of steel growing out of the ground over the Mississippi. It was so cool to see. The day that they put the last piece into the arch was seriously inspiring. The Arch is a feat. Looking at it is impressive, but seeing the engineering genius it took to get it actually built, one triangular piece at a time was even more inspiring. I think seeing the making of it made the experience of riding the tram to the top that much cooler. That said, it was really cool.

You can ride to the top from either leg of the arch in a train of eight cars that are shaped and colored like eggs. They periodically rotate as you travel up the leg so that you are always upright.

The Arch is awesome. A St. Louis MUST-see. You get an amazing view of the city to the west a bird's-eye view of the Mississippi River to the east. The pictures weren't that great since it was at night, but the view was amazing. Take our word for it.

No One Mourns the WICKED!

2010-06-23T15:40:00.000-07:00

Let me begin by saying, once again, my husband is AMAZING!! =D Secondly, if you have not seen this show...it really is time to fix that.

This is the billboard I longingly looked at every time we drove by on the freeway. However, this time we were in stand still traffic as we passed it, on our way to the show! I didn't realize we were going the opening week, so the roads were packed and the show was sold out. When we finally snagged a parking place we shuffled along to the theatre surrounded by hundreds of other Wicked lovers with anticipated smiles plastered on their faces. Peter decided to try and run across the street when it wasn't his turn and almost got taken out by a car. Luckily he has cat-like reflexes and managed to jump out of the way, apparently he was little more excited than I thought.

A random woman outside the theater offered to take our picture. Ironically, the theatre I saw Wicked at, in Atlanta, was also called Fox Theatre. However, this theatre was unlike any theatre I have ever seen. It was absolutely gorgeous! As we walked in to take our seats we couldn't take our eyes off the walls and the ceilings, they were amazing. I wish I had some more pictures of the actual theatre. I took one (the one underneath this text) and forgot to turn off the flash. Immediately, a Nazi theatre woman came tromping up the stairs searching for the person who belonged to the flash she just saw. I quickly hid my camera. After her search failed miserably, I put away my camera just in case she came back. But if you look at the carving above the stage, this is what every inch of the theatre looked like. It might not look all that great here, but it was the most beautiful theatre I have ever seen, it made the experience that much more magical just because we were in that brilliant theatre!

The show was amazing, as to be expected, and Peter seemed to think it lived up to all the hoopla that comes along with it. The two other times I have seen the show there have been certain things or members of the cast that ended up disappointing me. For example, in the first show Glinda spoke almost all of her songs. It was quite obvious that she didn't have the voice for that part, even though her acting was phenomenal it was a bit disappointing. The second time I saw it Fiyero completely stole the show, and you might be asking why that would be a bad thing, but the rest of the leads seemed so untalented when compared to him. Don't get me wrong, both of those shows were amazing and I am definitely not complaining, but for you to understand just how satisfied I was with this performance, I have to bring out the little things I disliked about the others.

This cast was perfect. Every lead was absolutely amazing in their own way. The woman who played Glinda sounded almost exactly like Kristin Chenoweth and Elphaba was a power house. The dancers were gorgeous and the acting was flawless. The third time truly is the charm and I am so glad Peter decided to surprise me with such an amazing night. We had a blast and it was a wonderful 4 month anniversary. I think I will quit while I am ahead and make this the last time I pay money to see Wicked on stage. Maybe next time I will actually be in it... =D

UFO Sighting--in no way am I kidding

2010-06-22T19:47:00.000-07:00

So, as it turns out, UFOs are real. I passionately wish I had a picture to include with this post.

We're down to five reps in our office so we all ride in the same car each day. Each day we vote on who had the coolest experience of the day, the winner receives recognition in the form of "Shark Points". Well today we had to resort to a tie-breaker because we all shared the coolest exorience of the summer. We spotted a UFO on the way home from selling.

Stop shaking your heads! I am not joking! I have four witnesses that will corroborate my story (that is, if the aliens haven't gotten to them already.)

So there we were, on the road between Nashville, IL (yes, IL) to St. Louis, MO, and right near Collinsville, the guys in the backseat start saying things like "what is that?" "is it a helicopter?" "it doesn't look like any helicopter I've ever seen." I turned around (I was in shotgun) and I was seriously SHOCKED.

The ship was above a field about 80 feet in the air. At this point we had passed it and I was looking at it from behind as we were driving away. It was iike a circular disc with four protrusions, each of them with exterior lights, each protrusion a different color. It was hovering, moving slowly, and rotating.
We quickly lost sight of it since we were on the freeway but before long it had crossed to the other side of the freeway and was once again visible to our left. Maintaining the same altitude, still rotating. We rounded a bend and it was out of view for good.

I'll always be sad that we didn't turn around and go investigate.

For the record, this thing was not big. It was thin looking and about as big around as an average backyard swimming pool. So now I, and you, will forever have to wonder, what was that?

4 Months and Still Going Strong!! =D

2010-06-19T08:35:00.000-07:00

Peter and I have been married for 4 months today. I know, four months doesn't sound like very long, and honestly, it doesn't feel like very long either. I mean, sometimes I feel like I can't remember a time in my life where I wasn't married to him...or maybe I have just tried to forget those times. Most of the time, though, I am shocked we have been married as long as we have; time just flies.

WARNING: I am about to be a bit cheesy and mooshy. If you are not interested in this section of my post, feel free to skip down to the next paragraph.

These 4 months have seriously been heaven for me. I have always been the girl who vowed I would never get married until after I had performed on Broadway for 20 years. I always put a career before marriage in my mind and I promised myself that, that was never going to change. I was young and stupid then, because if I knew how wonderful marriage would be I would have made that my top priority. I definitely did not plan for Pete...even after we started dating it took me a long time before I let myself fall in love with him. Even after I fell in love there were so many times where I almost ran. Marriage terrified me and I wanted nothing to do with it. Thankfully, my heart conquered and overtook my head and here I am. I get to spend the rest of my life with my best friend and I am so grateful for that. Peter is amazing to me and I love him more than I could ever express. I am so happy! =D

All week Peter has been telling me to keep today completely open because he wanted to plan something special. I have thought about it a little and tried to guess what he was planning. Maybe dinner for two on one of the riverboat cruise ships. Maybe dinner and a movie or the drive in. Maybe we would just stay home and he would cook for me. I knew whatever it was I was going to love it. I am usually terrible when it comes to surprises because I don't like to be surprised. I like to know what is going on so I can plan and dress accordingly. However, this time I was going to let him have his surprise, I didn't mention it or try to get it out of him, not once. Well, it turns out he is just as terrible about surprises as I am. Last night, I was finishing up my work and Pete comes into the living room with an impatient smirk on his face. "Do you want to know what we are doing tomorrow?" he was almost giddy with excitement. I hesitated...but of course ended up saying yes. And let me tell you it was much more than I expected and one of the best surprises ever. Peter and I are going to see WICKED tonight!!

I have been talking about WICKED since the beginning of the summer. It is one of my favorite musicals and the touring Broadway cast is here in St. Louis through June and July. I have seen the show twice before, once in Atlanta and once in Chicago, but I really want to see it again. Plus, Peter has never seen it so I wanted him to experience this amazing musical with me. However, I decided it was just going to be too much money to spend on a show that I have already seen. So, I tried my best to dismiss the idea and stopped mentioning it. However, deep down I have still been longing to see it and every time we pass the huge WICKED billboards on the interstate my heart breaks a little. I guess Peter could sense my longing and decided to make all my dreams come true. Oh man, I am so excited and I know he is going to love it too! This is going to be the best 4 month anniversary ever.

I love him!

Rice Krispies Treats Cereal Treats

2010-06-15T09:26:00.001-07:00

As some of you know, I perform stand-up comedy. The thing I miss most about being away this summer is Humor U. They recently performed their spring show and it was the first Humor U show that I wasn't in in nearly two years. I was in 12 straight shows.

So anyway, to keep me sane I've been writing some jokes for a glorious return in the fall. One has to do with cereal. When I told it to Kortney it took on a life of its own, and on Sunday, we reaped the rewards.

So it has to do with the wierd ideas for cereal that continually pop up on the supermarket shelves (muffin tops, cookie crisp, french toast crunch) and the wierdest idea of all, Rice Krispies Treats Cereal. Come again? A cereal based on a popular recipe that mainly uses a different cereal? Can it even work?

To me, the idea is preposterous, and I was first introduced to the cereal at Kortney's family home when I first visited them last July. I was surprised but I gave it a chance. I did not like it. I mean, just think about what it is. It basically tastes like regular rice krispies except you do not need to sweeten them at all. They are also a bit more chewy. But then, every once in a while you come across this hardened chunk that seriously feels like biting into a rock. It makes for an unpleasant experience. For some reason though, Kortney loves them.

So the joke revolves around the premise that Kellogg's is clearly not very creative with their product development and so it is likely that if people started making rice krispies treats using their newer Rice Krispies Treats Cereal (i.e. Rice Krispies Treats Cereal Treats) and it got popular enough, they would naturally come out with the newest Rice Krispies Treats Cereal Treats Cereal. And then we would really be able to make some delicious Rice Krispies Treats Cereal Treats Cereal Treats. Well, Kortney loved the idea and on Sunday we made our first Rice Krispies Treats Cereal Treats. I wasn't very hopeful but wouldn't you know it? They are delicious! I'm not being sarcastic at all, they are chewier and sweeter than normal rice krispy treats. I really think I'm on to something. Everyone should try these and then we'll contact Kellogg's about getting the cycle in motion. I see a future filled with ever worsening cereals matched with ever improving desserts.

Quick Shout-Out to Cool Parents

2010-06-14T19:10:00.001-07:00

Just want to give some recognition to my awesome mother who has agreed to be a volunteer for our Red Rock Relay team. She agreed to giving up her weekend to man an aid station somewhere along the 180 mile route. Her compensation? A free T-shirt. Now that is motherly devotion.

My Dad is cool too. He rode in the reenactment of the Pony Express for the 150th anniversary of their first ride. Jealous? You should be.

Meet Robert Wadlow

2010-06-14T17:09:00.000-07:00

THE LARGEST MAN IN THE WORLD!!

Robert Pershing Wadlow was know as Alton's Gentleman Giant. He lived in Alton, IL most of his life. Peter found out that this man lived not too far away from us, and that there was a memorial site for him there. Of course, we were off to meet this huge man within days.

Robert was born on February 22, 1918. At age five Robert was 5'6" tall and wore clothes that would fit most 17 year olds. At age ten Robert was 6'5" tall and weighed over 200 pounds making him the largest boy scout in the world. And at age 14 he was 7'4" tall. Robert died July 15, 1940 at a height of 8'11.1" tall and a weight of 490 pounds. He was a very active part of his community, known for his positive attitude and gentle manner.

In November 1939, Robert was on a business trip where he met Mr. C. L. Smith, president of Galax Furniture Co. Smith noticed the blatant discomfort Robert experienced when sitting in a normal-sized chair, so he decided to build Robert a chair that would attend to his unusual needs. This chair was used in Robert's home until his death. At the memorial site they have a life-size statue of his chair. It really was huge!

Robert Wadlow is the tallest man who ever lived. I enjoyed learning all about his life, I almost feel like he is one of my friends now. I'm glad Alton, IL decided to let the legacy of this man live on forever.

Metropolis-The Official Hometown of Superman

2010-06-14T09:23:00.001-07:00

We all know that Superman's hometown is Metropolis, what you may not know is that Metropolis is as little town on the Illinois side of the Ohio River, right before you get to Kentucky.

When Kortney and I were driving from St. Louis to Nashville to visit her family over Memorial Day weekend, we'd been on the road for three or so hours when out of nowhere a sign on the side of the freeway says "Giant Superman Statue, next exit". I don't know how it originally came about but I've been on a really big tourist trap kick lately and just by reading the sign out loud, Kortney already knew that we weren't going to pass that up.

We took the exit and followed the signs. I was under the impression that it would be standing right off to the side of the exit, watching cars pass by on the interstate, instead we wound through one small town on the way to the next, every once in a while we would see a sign that would reassure us that we hadn't passed it and there was still a "giant superman statue" to see.

The great irony of the whole thing was that as soon as we got on to the Main Street of Metropolis, we passed by an even bigger statue of a grocery store mascot named Big John who seriously puts the superman statue to shame.

Now, see that is what a Giant Statue should look like. If you had told me I'd be seeing a giant man carrying groceries on this trip, I would have gladly driven the six miles out to Metropolis.

Well, we got to the "Superman Square" of the town, and honestly, for a touristy attraction it doesn't disappoint. There was a Superman Museum, which for the sake of time, we didn't go in, and a ton of great photo opportunities.

"But wait!" I can just hear you say. "What about the Giant Statue?" Well, after all that, he was in fact there.

Just kidding, that would have been a dissappointment. The real statue was much bigger. But not nearly as big as Big John.

So the detour certainly proved successful. As we did a little bit of reading on the place afterwards, it actually turns out that every year, second week of June, they host Superman Days. A Thursday to Sunday weekend with all sorts of Superman related hooplah: strength tests, costumes contests, movie screenings, celebrity tents. It basically sounds awesome. It was last weekend. We almost went back, but we wanted to go with some of Kortney's TN friends and meet in the middle so that lodging would be cheaper, and when they couldn't come we decided not to take work off for it. Someday though we plan on going to Superman Days, and maybe even winning the $1000 for best costume.

And yes, I did get a haircut, thank you for asking.

We sold our contract!!

2010-06-10T21:09:00.000-07:00

Wahoo!!

Our summer sales situation just got a whole lot better this week. We were finally able to sell the contract on our Provo apartment. That whole situation has been something of a nightmare, from trying to get into it 6 weeks before our wedding, which created a whole lot of unnecessary stress, to trying to sell it four months before the end of its term. And now its over!

As happy as we are to put that burden behind us, we definitely didn't get out of our contract on any sort of favorable terms. in June there are only two types of people looking for housing contracts that only go through August, newlyweds and failed summer salesmen. The newlyweds for some reason just weren't biting and in the end, we were as desperate as to get someone to sign up for it as Brinn and Anjo--a pathetic pair of down and out sellers giving up on the dream in Colorado and returning to Utah--were to find someone who would pay all their upfront costs to move in somewhere. The intersection of our paths was nothing short of fate.

Anjo had seen our ad on Craigslist and even though we were offering 100 dollars off each month, he was intent on haggling. Basically, he didn't want to pay anything at all until July. Since we had already payed June rent I figured that if he would pay full price for the last two months, we would not ask for June rent back. I thought I was being generous.

Anjo pushed his luck even further by asking us to also pay his deposit, which he assured us he would pay back over time. The deposit was $500. At this point we have to wonder how desperate we really were...do we really trust two strangers to hold up their end of the bargain? After serious discussion, we tell them we will front them $400. Again, we are feeling very generous.

Anjo and I had retreated to our respective camps to see what our wives thought of our negotiations. When we got back on the phone again, Anjo has the audacity to tell me that they think they can get a better deal elsewhere...Say what?? What poor suckers are gonna pay a month rent and 400 bucks. Well, I was shocked but I had a pretty good feeling they would come crawling back. We had given them an offer that was essentially unbeatable.

Sure enough, the next day they called back and told us they would agree to our terms. Sadly, it got worse for us when The Branbury told us they would not transfer the rent from our account to theirs and they would have to come up with whatever was left of June rent, at this point $505. Who do you think had to fork over that dough? That's right, us. Fortunately, we'll get that money back within a few weeks so aside from the hassle of coming up with the money upfront, we wouldn't lose anymore. We reluctantly agreed. They would pay 100 dollars of the deposit and we would put up 905 dollars for them to start their new lives. They would be moving in on Monday.

Well, they called us Monday and to my utter astonishment, they had even more demands to make! "umm, we were wondering if it would be ok if you guys paid the full 500 for our deposit because we came across some unexpected expenses on the drive home, so we don't have that money right now..." ??? Are you kidding me? And you're telling me this now?? Who do you think...I can't believe this!

So yea, it took us 1005 dollars plus transaction fees to free ourselves of this Albatross, but, after that final road bump, they did actually sign on our contract (wouldn't you with that kind of deal?) and we are free. We are free at last!

Turtle Playground in Forest Park

2010-06-08T18:20:00.000-07:00

Forest Park is at the heart of St. Louis. As Peter and I were trying to find fun things to do here, every single website we went to and every person we talked to mentioned Forest Park. It is 1,293 acres, that is about 500 acres bigger then Central Park in New York City. Besides all the normal "park" things (biking, tennis, baseball, jogging, boating, fishing, golf, ice skating, rollerblading, etc...) Forest Park offers many other unique, fun, and free things. This park is home to some of the most popular activities to do in St. Louis, such as: The Zoo, Art Museum, History Museum, Science Center, and Muny Opera. It gets about 12 million visitors each year. Obviously, we have not experienced all these activities yet. You will most likely be hearing about Forest Park many more times in the future. However, last Sunday we decided to go take a bike ride around the park and see what it has to offer. It really is beautiful. I has a place where you can rent paddle boats, a restaurant on the lake, and an amphitheater. I was pretty impressed.

Most things in the park are very normal touristy, park things. However, there was one thing that I have NEVER seen before. This feature of the park is not even on the main Forest Park webpage, though it is on roadsideamerica.com. It is called the Turtle Playground! Turtle Playground was constructed to be a kids area in 1996. It contains 3 HUGE cement turtles (named Richard, Sally, and Tom), 4 small cement turtles (Antonio, David, Adam, and Emily), two cement snakes (one forms a sitting area), and seven cement turtle eggs (three of which have emerging baby turtles). These turtles were sculpted and donated to Forest Park by Robert Cassilly. He sculpted them to resemble real live reptiles, and he did an amazing job.

While we were at the Turtle Playground we saw families having picnics by the turtles. Kids climbing all over the turtles. And people taking pictures with the turtles. It seemed like everyone was having such a wonderful time. It really is a great idea to create fun and interesting areas in a park that still provide the same purposes for the public as regular park areas. I just think sitting on a snake is much more fun than sitting on a boring old park bench!

If you ever have the opportunity to visit St. Louis, Forest Park is a MUST see! And while you are there, you better not leave without taking a few pictures with these huge, awesome turtles! =D

Our Epic Giant Day

2010-06-07T21:23:00.000-07:00

Today we did an activity that I've been planning for a while. We called it "Giant Day". This summer I've become an avid visitor to the website "Roadside America". It features wacky, zany, off-the-beaten-track type of touristy things that are definitely worth a visit if for nothing more than its randomness. You just type in your hometown and a list of attractions will follow. My hometown of Sandy, UT has one such attraction, the Mayan Restaurant (which despite having lived there since its opening, I have still not gone to). By some wonderful twist of serendipity, St. Louis is jam-packed with these, 44 entries in total. Now some of these are duplicates, and some are now defunct, but there are at least 20 individual things to go see and do in St. Louis. A common type of attraction is a larger than life version of something regular. St. Louis is home to many "giant" objects including the world's largest wrench, the world's largest Amoco sign, the world's largest set of teeth, largest pencil, largest pair of men's underpants, etc. etc. It also boasts fun to look at big things, even though they may not be the biggest in the whole world of their category.

I plotted a group of the rather non-commital attractions (the teeth require a tour, the pencil is part of a larger museum, etc.) and made a route that would take us on a loop of the city, stopping at six points that boasted giant sights. It was estimated to take one hour and forty minutes on MapQuest, the whole adventure ended up taking us about an hour longer, but it was a blast. Here are the highlights of our "Giant Day".

Stop 1--The World's Biggest Wrench

13 miles from our home sits Skyway Auto Repairs, home of the world's largest wrench. It is big. It was built by Branden Strange about five years ago in an effort to promote the auto repair shop. It is 25 feet long, its ends are six feet tall, and it is 10 inches thick. Parking was easy for this one and aside from running across the street to get better perspective on our photos, our lives were not really risked at all. We came, we saw, we marvelled, and we moved on.

Stop 2--The Giant Vess Soda Bottle

OK, we got a little turned around on this one and headed the wrong way for a while, which cost us five minutes of driving time. We had tried and failed to get to this one once before. The pictures online show it lit up at night, and we headed to it at night several weeks ago. We found it, but it wasn't lit, and since certain roads were closed we couldn't get to it without walking through a creepy abandoned worksight in downtown at 12:30 at night. Kortney's vote was no on the one, and I had to respect her wishes. Now we were back. In broad daylight, and coming from the opposite direction to avoid all the pesky closed roads. This one still ended up being the most challenging one to get to.

We pulled off the interstate and certain roads our sometimes-trusty GPS seemed to believe existed ended up being figments of its digital imagination and we found ourselves with no way to turn off from a road that took us on a bridge over the Mississippi and into Illinois. We about-faced and came back to Missouri as fast as we could. We ended up at the same dead-end as we had two weeks ago, facing the same creepy abandoned work sight. This time we were on a mission. We parked and walked.

The Giant Vess Soda Bottle seemed to be in disrepair, which to me was surprising. After some poking around, I discovered that this location was the bottle's second home. At its last location it actually spun around and was lit by neon piping. This made it the largest spinning, neon-lit bottle in the world. This of course is a dubious honor since it suggests there a both larger spinning bottles, and larger neon-lit bottles, and this particular Vess only qualifies for the honor under very specific criteria. Sadly, in its new home it is neither lit, nor spinning, and seems to be well passed its prime.

The good news is, its future is bright. Its new home is a soon-to-be-developed entertainment district, complete with restaurants, casinos, and clubs (none of which are yet built) that will bear the name "The Bottle District". Hopefully during all the construction they will take the time to fix up the neon lights that were missing in many places along the letters of the bottle's label. And while they're at it, maybe they could even make it spin...

Stop 3--Giant Cherokee Indian

This one was a wild card, only about 10 minutes away from the Vess bottle, it was the only one of the six that I hadn't seen a picture of. Only a vague description exists on Roadside America and so it was naturally steeped in a lot of mystery and we drove with great anticipation into the rougher part of town. Apparently the area that the Indian is located in is called Cherokee Station. This statue was commissioned by local businessmen in honor of the name. It was made by Bill Christman whose work is all over Roadside America. This would be our first experience with him.

The only thing that seemed remarkable about this Indian is that it is UGLY. The website said so and we concur. In fact, Christman is quoted as having said "To my everlasting mortification I was the sculptor of that". Well, we found it. Looked at it, and couldn't help but feel pity for Christman. We plan on visiting his studio later on in the summer.

Stop 4--Giant Farmer Fred and his son Clyde

This was a step up from the Indian, although they still kind of look creepy. The history behind these two iconic landmarks is quite interesting. According to legend, a giant creepy clown used to have their spots and vandals actually burnt it down. Supposedly, the locals were actually pleased with the destruction since noone cared much to have a giant creepy clown watching the town 24/7. Mysteriously, these two farmers just appeared and noone knows from where. Anyway, they are pretty cool. We really got a kick out of these two. They are definitely worth a visit.

Stop 5--The World's Largest Amoco Sign

This one we actually came upon yesterday as we were touring Forest Park but we needed gas anyway and we wanted to do it justice. In the context of the day, the sign actually impressed us a lot more than it did the day before. It is seriously HUGE. Not even joking. We had a tough time getting to a good place to take pictures since its right off a freeway exit and we at this point running kind of low on time. But we made it. After filling up the car, we hit the road for the last stop of our Giant Tour.

Stop 6--Giant Shoe of Shoes

Wow. If anything is worthy of a visit, this giant shoe made out of regular-sized shoes is most definitely worthy. We had actually done this once before since its the closest one to our apartment but since we didn't have our camera with us, the return trip was a welcome one. We had about four minutes to spare if I was going to make it to work on time so we booked it. Coming back to it was seriously like seeing an old friend again. This thing is freaking cool. I am a huge fan of this type of thing (giant versions of something made from its regular counterparts) and this one is just so perfect. I want to see more of this type of thing. Definitely an amazing way to end the day.

We zipped home and made it at exactly 12:02, which is the latest you can legally arrive within being counted late. Perfection.

Scott Joplin House

2010-06-05T22:42:00.000-07:00

When I first started poking around for fun things to do in St. Louis, I came across a really great site called explorestlouis.com. This site originally inspired me to get the most out of this amazing city. It is full of really useful information about upcoming events, interesting attractions, and it has a list of the top 25 things to do in St. Louis. Of course visiting the Arch was number one, but the list was surprisingly diverse and interesting. Now if you know anything about me, its that I have a thing for lists. Make me a list and I will accomplish so much more than without one, and this list acted as a great jumping off point for my own list. We have something like 46 or 47 things to do in St. Louis this summer. One by one, we are checking them off.

This Wednesday we checked off number 23: Play Scott Joplin's ragtime tunes at the composer's historic home. That's right, Scott Joplin himself once lived in the heart of downtown St. Louis where it is believed that he wrote some of his most famous works including the Maple Leaf Rag and the Entertainer. Needless to say, this was something we could not miss.

The Scott Joplin House is the only historic house that made the list of top 25 things although St. Louis has several homes on the National Register of Historic Places. It is the second historic home that we have visited where very little details are known about the person's life outside of the body of work they left behind, the first being the Edwin Carter House in Breckenridge, CO. What I find most interesting about these places is the insight they give you into how history actually works. When you hear someone's life story, while visiting some historic place, you take it for granted, but when there is no life story, you wonder why, and then you get a glimpse of the info historians use to piece together the past. The problem with Scott Joplin is that certain courthouses burnt down and marriage records and other such documentation was lost. Furthermore, the only reason people even knew he lived in that house was based on one existing document in a phone book, listing him as Musician, and placing him on Delmar Blvd. I found it so interesting that this whole museum existed only because of one little line in an old phone book. If it hadn't been for that, there would be no Scott Joplin house.

Another thing I thought was so interesting was that Scott Joplin married three times and there isn't a single known picture of any of his three wives. Isn't that crazy? In our day of digital photography, online albums, and facebook tagging, the idea that not a single picture exists of any of his three wives is so foreign. Only six photos of Scott Joplin himself have survived. Since no one knew the legacy that the king of rag time would leave behind, none of his original belongings are around, and the house has been restored to "period". At first, I thought that was disappointing, but you know what, an old stove is an old stove whether or not Scott Joplin ever warmed his feet by it. Touring his house, I really got a feel for what life was like back then, the iron especially was crazy, we have it so easy nowadays. And the washing machine...oh boy.

One interesting insight our tour guide gave us was about the way taxes worked back then. You would be taxed for how many rooms your residence had as well as how many doors you had. Many doors were designed to be more of windows that opened really wide, rather than actual doors, in an early form of tax evasion. Some things never change.

As we ate breakfast that morning, we played a bunch of youTube videos of people playing his ragtime tunes. Unfortunately, I didn't have any memorized and didn't know how I would actually accomplish number 23 on the list which clearly doesn't state "visit the Scott Joplin home" but rather, "play Scott Joplin's ragtime tunes". Problem solved when we came into the ground floor's main room where they have a wonderfully cooperative player piano and an enormous collection of various ragtime pieces to stick in the middle and play. By pumping the pedals on the floor, the piano literally played itself. The piano was open so that the gears and inner workings were visible to all. It was a lot of fun to play.

Here's a video of me giving it a spin, if you look very carefully, you can actually see that my fingers never touch the keys...

I tried to do some tricky camera work, a la Miley Cyrus in The Last Song, (not that I ever saw it...ok, second day in theaters), so that you might actually buy into the illusion.

Success! It was a nice way to start the morning.

Here was what I took away from this experience.

1. Greatness is almost never appreciated at the time.
2. You have no idea what your legacy will be once you are gone.
3. Never believe what you have done is a failure, time casts a different shade of light on the past.

Scott Joplin died of syphilis in near poverty as he spent all his money trying to get his rag time opera Treemonisha off the ground. Kind of depressing. Gutzon Borglum and Eero Saarinen never lived to see the completion of their biggest projects. It seems like a recurring theme in the sights that we have gone to see that one lifetime isn't long enough to accomplish one's full potential. But the monuments that stand to this day seem to say that this fact shouldn't discourage us from trying.

If we were rich, we might have left with this Scott Joplin doll. As it is, we only bought a magnet.

Home Sweet Home

2010-06-04T16:42:00.000-07:00

Last weekend Peter and I had the opportunity to drive to Tennessee and visit my family! Another perk to being here in St. Louis is that we are only 5 hours away from my home town. Living in Utah has been hard at times because I am so far away from home and I feel like there is no chance for me to stay involved with my family, besides over the phone. I miss so many important milestones in my siblings lives and feel like every time I visit they are way more grown up than they should be. However, I have to be grateful for the time I do get to spend with them, and last weekend was a very successful and well-needed visit!

At first the plan was for me to drive to Tennessee alone because Peter thought he was going to have to work on Memorial Day. Luckily, Linx decided to let everyone have a holiday and Peter joined me. Besides the fact that last weekend was Memorial Day weekend, we decided to go this particular weekend because my youngest sister, Katie, was performing three numbers in her dance recital. The last time I saw Katie dance she was at that awkward "she's so cute because she can't really dance, but at least she is trying" stage. I knew she would be better this year because she has been practicing so hard. However, I was not prepared for just how much Katie has improved. She was absolutely gorgeous! I honestly had to hold back tears because of how grown up and talented my baby sister has become. I am so excited for her to continue learning and growing, and I know she has the drive and talent to go far. From day one my family has been calling Katie a mini-Kortney, and it is so true. She aspires to be everything I wanted to be at that age and I know she was born with the same passion I was born with. I am so excited to see what she accomplishes.

I think Peter even enjoyed himself. Katie and Whitney seriously ADORE Pete! Its so cute!! =D

Besides the dance recital the weekend consisted of playing boardgames:

hanging out with Ali, Stephanie, and Brent:

going to war memorials and battle sites:

church, the movies and just catching up. It was such a relaxing and fun weekend! I really hope we have another opportunity to visit while we are so close to home.

Red Rock Relay

2010-06-03T21:14:00.000-07:00

Today Kortney mailed off a check to Cal Schoenrock for $184. This money will serve to register our team into the second annual Red Rock Relay. That's right, only Utah's newest epic running event. Now that the money is gone, there is no turning back, we are really gonna do this.

Cal was my coworker for nearly two years at the BYU Math Dept. She is our team captain and the reason that we are involved in this. She has been quite an inspiration to me. She is one of those stories of people who decide to set an impossible goal and eventually reach it. She just completed her first marathon in May after months of training for it. It was very interesting to hear her progress as the race date arrived and follow her training story on her blog. She lost something like 40 pounds in the process and developed a love for running along the way. Well, after the completion of her marathon, she started seeking out the next endurance event she could participate in. And here it is, The Red Rock Relay.

I first heard about the RRR from my manager here in St. Louis. He and his wife joined a team to run it as well and were using that as their motivation to get in shape this summer. I thought it would be cool to also find something to motivate us since getting into shape was something we both expressed interest in doing. Later, I saw Cal's status on facebook that she wanted to run this race and was looking to organize a team. When I inquired about joining up with her, there were only two slots left. It was fate.

The Red Rock Relay is a 24-hour stage race, run by teams of 12 in relay fashion, that cover 180 miles of amazing Southern Utah scenery. I feel somewhat guilty for having lived in Utah and never having taken advantage of the amazing Southern portion of the state and am grateful for this opportunity to begin redeeming myself. Anyway, the race is divided up into 36 legs and each runner will run three of them. The legs will be anywhere from three miles up to eight miles each and so some serious getting into shape is in order. We have until September 10th to get into race shape and that has motivated us to work out more than ever before.

In a twist of fate, Kortney's little brother Travis was on the team before we were. We were both surprised to learn this. It turns out that Tyler, Kortney's older brother who replaced me at the Math Department, had tipped Cal off to Travis, a TN track star, when she was originally looking for teammates. He signed on before us and that only solidified our decision to do this thing. Now Tyler is also on our team and so a third of the runners will be from the same family. We need to have two van drivers, as well as two vans, so if anyone out there wants to volunteer, please step forward. Also, if anyone is interested in volunteering at an aid station or anything, get in contact with us, they need about 400 volunteers to make this work.

Since deciding to do this we've been hitting the track of our local high school nearly every night. We are slowly improving and getting ready for our first official race. We started out running 4 and 6 laps respectively, and tonight, we both busted out 12! We now know we can at least run the shortest leg. Its all uphill from here.

Adventures in St. Louis

2010-06-02T11:35:00.000-07:00

This summer Peter and I decided to adventure across the country and try something completely new; Summer Sales. Needless to say, it's not the most glamorous job in the world. When we first decided to sign on with a company called Linx Satallite, they told us we would be selling in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I don't know much about Iowa, but it was all the same to me, at the time. Luckily, there was a Sales Rep who had family in Iowa and he really wanted to sell there. So, we were then told that we would be stationed in St. Louis, MO. Like I said, at the time I really didn't care where we went, I just wanted to make money. =D Now that we are here, I am SO grateful that we ended up in St. Louis. Don't get me wrong I have nothing against Iowa, it's just that I have already fallen in love with this fun and exciting city. There are so many interesting things to do and see here. Peter is compiling a list of all the things we want to visit before the summer is over, and let me tell you, it is pretty impressive. Even if Summer Sales turns out to be the worst job ever, at least we are in a fun, new place where we can have some great memories and take some awesome pictures!

10 Things you (Probably) didn't know about St. Louis
I found this in the 2010 Official Visitors Guide to St. Louis, I thought it was pretty interesting. =D

#1 - St. Louis City is limited to only 61 square miles - it cannot physically grow any larger because of a mandate in the city's charter which was established in 1876.

#2 - The custom of placing chocolates on hotel pillows began when actor Cary Grant stayed at The Mayfair and used chocolates to woo a woman friend from her room to his.

#3 - There were four foods popularized at the 1904 World's Fair - the hot dog, the hamburger, iced tea and the ice cream cone.

#4 - The popular soda 7-Up was invented here and Dr. Pepper was first introduced at the 1904 World's Fair.

#5 - St. Louis offers more free attractions than any city outside of Washington D.C., including the Saint Louis Zoo, Missouri History Museum,. Grant's Farm, Saint Louis Art Museum, Anheuser-Busch Brewery Tours, Citygarden, Saint Louis Science Center, Laumeier Sculpture Park, Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, Museum of Westward Expansion, Old Courthouse, National Great Rivers Museum, and the Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site.

#6 - The world's first skyscraper - Louis Sullivan's Wainwright Building - is located at the corner of Seventh and Chestnut streets.

#7 - St. Louis was the first American City to host the Olympic Games (1904).

#8 - Juniors clothing was created in St. Louis in the mid-1930s when a merchandising manager at a local department store persuaded students at Washington University's School of Dress Design to create dresses that would appeal to women in their teens and twenties.

#9 - Planter's Punch and Tom Collins cocktails were Invented at a St. Louis hotel called the Planter's House.

#10 -Susan Blow started the first U.S. kindergarten in St. Louis in 1873.

As you can see St. Louis is a pretty bombin' city and we are SO excited to take advantage of all the various adventures it has to offer us!

Wedding Gifts are finally in the house!

2010-06-01T21:08:00.000-07:00

We finally have all our wedding gifts! Its a wonderful feeling. We finally have enough dishes and cups that we can go more than two meals without having to run a load of dishes. Now that is what I call fine living.

One of the side-effects of having two wedding receptions was the fact that we received our gifts at two different times. We were able to use our Utah gifts right away, but our Tennessee gifts had the double cons of arriving a month later, and being too numerous and bulky to fit in our suitcases after the whirlwind weekend was over. So, our life in Utah was crock pot and blender-less, and we just dreamed of the day when we would finally have all our appliances and knick-knacks within our walls and not in layaway in TN. That time has finally come.

Now I did enter into our marriage with some kitchen fixings and they had been getting us by, but only barely, for the last couple of months. These were simple dishes that my mother bequeathed to me when I left for college the second time, at the end of the 2008 summer, white plates and bowls, and cups, well maybe. See, my memory of the exact items she gave me is a bit hazy and what happened is that I quickly moved in with three other guys and our possessions were quickly amalgamated into one common, law-of-consecration, community-style collection. Halfway through the year, two of them moved out and two more moved in. Out of the four of us, three continued to live together over the summer and as the fall began, one had married and the other one continued living with me again. Needless to say, it had been a long time since I had actually thought of any of the things in our apartment as strictly being mine. When it came time for me to move into my own apartment with Kortney, I was not confident at all in what was mine and what wasn't. I decided that I would only bring two glasses, of what clearly was a set, because although I had used them a million times by now, how could I actually know that they hadn't been brought to the table once by Steve. I also only brought two of each utensils, and it turned out that they actually weren't mine and I eventually had to return them. I also brought four plates and four bowls with me and thankfully, they actually were mine. Needless to say, I was very excited for our wedding when we would get all new stuff, sadly, the two sets of 20 cups that we received, the plates and the bowls, etc. were all received in TN, and until now we've still only been using four plates and two glasses for going on three and a half months. Let it suffice to say that hosting friends was difficult and often, the guys had to share a glass and the girls had to share a glass.

Well, over Memorial Day we went and visited Kortney's family in TN and we finally got to load up our car and drive all the wonderful booty back to St. Louis with us. This is definitely one of the perks of living in the Midwest. Check out our cupboard!

What a glorious sight!!

We are very happy to finally be able to run a full dishwasher. If you come over and visit us, we won't even make you share a glass.