Becoming Vegetarians

That's right, Parker and I are vegetarians... for a month... ok, and we're actually only "semi-vegetarians" which means (according to my professor) that we can eat fish and chicken occasionally. I have to do it as part of an assignment for one of my classes just to try it out. Parker has to do it because he agreed to do it with me, and it makes my class easier. I've done it for 6 days so far, and I don't think it's that bad. I like fruits and veggies. :)

Weekends Are Never Long Enough

The weekends always seem to be jam packed with activity! Once Sunday comes around I'm usually thinking something like "I'm not ready to go back to school! I need another weekend to recover from all this excitement... and to get everything done that I was supposed to do."

Here's a recap of the past couple weekends for anyone who's interested...

Two weeks ago we got to watch general conference, and spend time with lots of family. My siblings came from Idaho, and my parents came from Oregon. It's always fun to see them. Hopefully they'll come visit again soon. (Side Note: I watched the movies "Wives and Daughters" at my grandma's house, and I have to say, if you love Pride and Prejudice, I definately recommend this movie!)

This last weekend we spent Saturday in Payson going fishing for rainbow trout! We had so much fun with our good friends Bobby and Helena out in the great outdoors! Everyone except Parker caught 3 fish, (not counting the ones that got away) but poor Parker didn't have much luck. His very first cast he caught a fish but it got away... and it was pretty much downhill from there for him. Regardless, Parker was a pretty good sport and we both agreed, we'll need to go again!

Sunday afternoon we ate a delicious dinner with Parker's grandparents and other family. It was great to see many of them!

Now we're back to the grindstone... classes, homework, reading, tests... but life's going well. :)

New Toys!

A couple weeks ago, Parker and I attended the Living Scriptures Banquet. This is where the company gives out the awards/prizes the salesmen earn over the summer. We didn't know what Parker might get, but even if he didn't get anything, I was just excited to have a nice dinner at the Joseph Smith Memorial building (and it was just as delicious as I was expecting). We had a great night, and Parker was pleased with his awards. He got an I-pod touch for being one of the top first year salesman and got a digital video recorder for selling over 250 sets. He decided to take the video recorder back to put towards upgrading the i-pod to a 32 gig. He pretty much loves his new toy (maybe a little too much... he's not very good at holding a conversation when he's playing with it, which happens a lot, so hopefully he'll either get better at doing/thinking about two things at once, or learn to put the toy down when someone's talking to him) and I have to agree with him, it's pretty handy. Unfortunately our memory card from our camara malfuntioned, so our pictures from this awesome night are gone... but you can use your imagination. :)

Daily life...

Sorry if this is a little boring... it's just a little update on our daily life.

Well, the summer's been over for about a month, and life's definately been keeping us busy! During the first week of September, we went up to Idaho and saw my side of the family. It was so great to see family again. :) The next Thursday we finally got to move into our apartment. The living room is MUCH bigger than our last place, but there's much less storage too, so that's been a little tough. Our ward seems to be really great! Everyone is very friendly and welcoming.

School's been going well too. I've got all health-related classes (infectious diseases, health promotion, intro to public health, and 3 different chronic disease prevention classes) and Parker's got a varity (Philosophy, Sustainable building, D&C, spanish, and volleyball).

We've been very excited about the BYU Football season. We've got the All-sports pass so we were especially excited to go to the first home game. Alas, we were very disappointed. I still have confidence in BYU, but Parker claimed he just might give up on BYU and never cheer for them again. I don't believe it, but none the less, he was very disappointed in them.

That's about it! I can't think of anything else right now that might be mildly interesting. Maybe that's because I keep thinking about the vaccine research homework I need to do for tomorrow.

I'll finish up with some pictures from our Idaho visit...

Eating at Craigo's after our quick trip to Rexburg... so delicious! Parker and I on our way to Rexburg... Playing with cell phones...
They were having a staring contest. :)

Side Note: The other evening I was expressing to Parker my discouragement at the fact that our apartment was still horribly unorganized, and I was feeling swamped with homework, and nothing seemed to be going right that day. Anyways, I went to bed while Parker was still working on homework, and when I woke up in the morning, everything was organized! The dishes were all done, the garbage taken out, the boxes in the living room were put in the 2nd bedroom (our "storage" room, for now) and the storage room was organized. I don't know how long he must have stayed up to do it all... I'm sure it was into the wee hours of the morning... but it was awesome! Parker said he didn't know anything about it. "It must have been elves." I love those elves. :)

Lake Powell

After Arizona we went to Lake Powell for 5 days, compliments of Living Scriptures. We had a wonderful time enjoying the beautiful scenery and playing on the lake. We stayed on a houseboat, played card games in between being out on one of the 4 ski boats. We went tubing, wakeboarding, water skiing, and even gave the air chair a try. Parker loved the tubes... and had many bruises once the week was over. We ate great food too! All our food was cooked for us, and it was pleatiful... that was definately nice. At night we would all go on the upper deck where a sheet and projector were set up for us to watch a movie. It was so beautiful there; we had a great vacation and look forward to going back someday soon!

Parker would jump off anything... if you look close you can see his head in the water.

Another jump... and he's the one jumping. Parker skiing...Parker wakeboarding...Parker Air Chairing... (?)And now documentation that I was there! Can you tell Parker's excited? :)Tubing was what I did when I actually got in the water. I loved just riding IN the boat and watching everyone else, but I got in on the action a little bit too.

Update: Arizona!

It's been a while since I've posted, and a lot has happened, so I'll try to get caught up soon. Arizona was fabulous! I got off the plane, expecting to be picked up by Parker's mom, and there to my surprise was Parker! He'd arrived in Phoenix about 6 hours earlier than he told me. That was a nice surprise. Events while we were there...

-We golfed 18 holes while we were there. It was very frustrating at times but I got par on a couple holes, so I had fun.
-It was great to see Taylor before he left for his mission too. He will be a great missionary!
-We got to see a big storm!
-Parker and Bobby played many a ping pong game.
-Our car finally got fixed! The engine had to be replaced. Too bad it wasn't all fixed in Ohio before it got to be that bad, but... oh well. We're driving Parker's dad's Dodge Neon now since our car wasn't out of the shop by the time we planned to leave.
-And, last but not least, Bobby celebrated his 17th birthday!