Work Responsibilities

Hey all, so no pictures for this blog post.  The past few weeks has kept me (Adam) very busy.  My boss at the testing lab has been gone for two weeks on vacation and has no access to his e-mail.  In his place, he has asked me to make sure things would run smoothly.  When he left, he created a list of things to do, which consisted mostly of printing out exams and compiling four exams.  However, as it always happens, there were many unexpected occurrences.  One teacher forgot to let my boss know about an exam, so I had to scramble to create the exam and schedule the time.  I was also asked to proctor a few credit exams on the first Saturday.  Well, a few students didn't show up, so I had to set up another Saturday session for the credit exam.  I was able to manage it all, but I did have a few days worth of work and had to conduct many e-mails worth of conversations with teachers.

In the end, it was a very great opportunity to gain experience and also to impress professors and secretaries.  Tomorrow, my boss will come home, so we shall have to see what trouble I shall get into.  That is all for now!

I have one of the best husbands!! (not to gloat haha)

Hey guys! So Adam and I try to go on a date every Friday if possible. Usually we don't do anything super exciting. Well Adam decided to switch it up on Friday and surprise me a bunch! His goal was to try to make an ordinary day extra special and boy, did he succeed! The day started off with me going to work at noon. On Fridays, Adam doesn't work until 2 so he drops me off. After he dropped me off and I got settled in at work, in he comes with roses!!

 This is obviously not at work but a good picture of the flowers in our kitchen :) Anyways, my job can get pretty boring so I chat with Adam on facebook. He would constantly tell me how excited he was about our date and that it was going to be really fun and special but he wouldn't tell me what it was. After work, we came home and he blindfolded me. He had me pick a piece of paper out of four of them and then took off my blindfold and this is what he had :)

So if you can't tell from the picture the papers say Bingo Dating!! haha so Adam spent his shift in the testing lab creating this bingo dating game for our date! He completely came up with the idea on his own (not even enlisting help from the internet). Needless to say, he's incredible :) So, we started off at our favorite Provo thai place, Thai Mango (the BEST thai food is sadly all the way in Washington at Dok Koon). It was quite yummy. And then we started the game. Basically, the hat is filled with little pieces of paper each with a letter (D, A, T, or E) and a number for the Bingo part of the game. On the other side of each piece was an activity that we had to do. We then had to draw pieces until someone got bingo and we had to do all the activities that we drew. Adam got bingo :P haha so some of the things we drew were eat cookies, arrange a fort, speak only in questions, go to a bowling alley, play name that tune, annoy friends, speak in a British accent, exchange little gifts, taste the rainbow (eat skittles), enjoy the view, play phase 10, and some more!! There were more that he had made that we didn't do because he got bingo so we'll get to do this again! It was so much fun running around Provo together :) I always thought that I would never get a date like that again because that amount of creativity is usually reserved for if you want to impress someone but I got to have that while being married!! We had lots of fun bowling :)

Adam took a bowling class his freshman year so of course he slaughtered me. But it was still fun. We did enjoy the view at our favorite spot at Rock Canyon :)

 And we had fun playing games, eating things, going to the Dollar Tree to buy little gifts for each other, and annoying our friends Steven and Kayla (we made up for it by giving them a Spiderman puzzle though). All in all an amazing day, thanks to Adam. I'm just incredibly amazed that he did all that for little old me :)

 I know that I am one lucky girl to have Adam as my companion for eternity and I don't mind being mushy to say so!!

Love, Ashley <3

Adam's Birthday

Hello everyone!  This year, my birthday happened to fall on Independence Day!  Ashley and I enjoyed the chance to celebrate without going to work.  Earlier in the week, we had been helping our close friends move into a new apartment.  Since they had been unpacking the night before and unable to get everything ready, we had them sleep over at our house.  It was a fun morning hanging out with them.  We decided to go out to a restaurant  where they were offering all you can eat french toast and pancakes.  It was quite delicious and very filling!  Afterwards, my friend and I played a little bit of Axis & Allies. We didn't end up finishing but we had a good time nonetheless.  After hanging out a while, we decided to have our own little barbeque with our friends and we left to get ready.  As we were waiting, my friend and I decided to play a little foosball. (He was kind enough to let me win.)

We had a lot of fun with our barbeque which could be considered a feast with bratwurst, hot dogs (which I did not consume), pasta salad, chips, corn, soda and (later on) cake!  We then started playing a board game while waiting for it to get dark.  We had a bit of fun with the camera as well...

Finally, it got dark enough to head out.   For the first time ever, we went high on the foothills to a spot where we could look out at all the fireworks going up in Utah Valley.  What a sight it was!  The only problem was that none of them seemed really large or booming.  When we decided to head back, we passed by the stadium where they started to set off a few fireworks so we got our big booms and show but we wanted to avoid the traffic so we went back home after a few minutes to have cake.

We ended our evening with a few sparklers, where we got some good pictures.  As soon as we ran out of supplies, we said goodbye to our friends and went to bed.  It was a very fun, if a little low-key day.  I really had a great time though!

Love, Adam

(and Ashley)

Ultimate double-header w/ pictures :)

Hello all! This is Adam again.  Ashley was kind enough to join me at my Orem City League ultimate frisbee games last Thursday and take these pictures.  It was a double-header so I was pretty tired by the end of the evening.  Orem City League is a league made up of 10-12 teams and we play every Thursday night for about two months.  It is a lot of fun and there are many players or various skill levels and ages.  I started playing last year with my friend Shep and I knew very little about ultimate frisbee.  Three seasons later (Spring 2011, Fall 2011, and Spring 2012) and I feel like I have a lot better grasp of the game.  I like being a part of a team made up of very different people.  One of the teams we played against on Thursday had a player who I knew from home.  He was my older brother's age, so about 10 years older than me.  (Maybe I could convince my brother to play, hmm....)  Anyway, it is a lot of fun, however my team has been on a big losing streak.  We lost both of our games on Thursday.  

The first game, we played with an extra man for the first half (for those who don't know, ultimate is played 7 v 7 and Orem is co-ed.  The other team did not have any girl show up for the first half so we had an extra player.)  We kept it close and I caught the disc for the first point but even with having one less player, the other team started to pull away.  There was one deep throw that I was defending where I managed to block the disc but it flew forward into the waiting hands of an opponent in the end zone! Grrr!  Anyway, we lost our first game.

The second team we played against had some members of our BYU Intramural team and Ashley was delighted to talk with one of the girls for a while.  The start of this game was super sloppy.  Each team dropped the disc quite a bit, but we were guilty of carelessness more often and we found ourselves down 4-0 fast.  At halftime we were down by four or five points at least.  However, we came out firing after halftime and clawed our way back into the game.  Our offense was clicking and we were getting some turnovers on defense.  We were tied 10-10 with a cap at 12 (this means that the first team to get to twelve would win the game).  However, with a couple of close misses in the end zone, resulting in turnovers, the other team scratched out two points and we ended up losing.

However, ultimate is great sport.  It definitely keeps you fit and is very exciting and I have really enjoyed playing this year.  I have one more regular season game and then we have a two-day tournament in Alpine to finish the season.  I will give an update later!

-Adam

Salt Lake City Temple trip :)

hello again and happy father's day to our wonderful dads :)

So yesterday we got to do something super cool that I've always wanted to do..go to the Salt Lake temple!!

Adam hates driving up to Salt Lake and parking there so we decided to drive up to Sandy and take the Trax the rest of the way (reminiscent of those glory days of Adam as a missionary taking those England trains). 

I have taken the Trax twice before and every time I'm super scared that I'll end up in some random place and not know how to get back.

So we decided to go to the both Visitors' centers first which was nice because they weren't super busy (which almost never happens when I've gone in the past).

Then we went to find the entrance :) holy smokes there were a TON of brides!! Not gonna lie, it made me appreciate how there was only one other person getting married on the day that I did. Much less stress when everyone's not vying for good picture spots. Anyways, it was so cool inside!! Everything was so old and ornate! We went into four different rooms before going into the Celestial room and they were all gorgeous. The murals on the walls of three of the rooms were incredible. If you aren't able to go inside the Salt Lake temple, you gotta at least check out the South Visitors Center. They have a model of the temple that is cut out showing all of the rooms. I was amazed at how accurately they have everything in each of the rooms after seeing the inside. Like a little dollhouse :) and the Celestial room was of course gorgeous, so ornate and old. Also, for those who don't know, they do the endowment session differently in this temple. I'm pretty sure the only other temple that does it that way is the Manti temple. It was an incredible experience to see it done that way and I learned a lot. All in all, it was a great trip :)

-Ashley

Adam's super busy spring

Hi all!

So as Ashley mentioned last week, I have been kept quite busy working two jobs, taking classes, and working on an internship. For the second semester (or term..whatever you want to call it), I have been a teaching assistant for a Humanities professor. This term I have been a teaching assistant for IHum 202 (Western Humanities from 1500-present). It has been a very enlightening experience and I feel a lot more confident about my knowledge of the Humanities :) I have also had a chance to further my learning in the language of Spanish. Por ejemplo, yo hablo español mejor pero es un poco difícil todavía. The most time-consuming thing has been my internship for my minor Computers in the Humanities. For my internship, I am working with my boss and learning how tests are administered in the computerized testing lab where Ashley and I work. It has been quite fun and challenging but I have learned a lot and am excited to help my boss when he needs it in the future. The only other major thing going on right now has been my involvement in two Ultimate frisbee teams. Ashley joined me for our intramural team and we had a great time making it to the semi-finals before losing on Thursday. I am also playing in the Orem city league with a couple of friends. Our team has lost quite a few games but I have greatly improved my skills as an Ultimate player because of it. There are only a few more games before we finish our season with a tournament up in Alpine in a couple of weeks. Thats basically it for me for now but finals are coming up this next week and I will be done with school until the end of August.  I look forward to spending extra time this summer with Ashley and taking advantage of the attractions around us (which you will probably hear about!).

Adam

Mt. Timpanogos Temple Trip

 

Hey this is Adam!

One of our goals is to take advantage of all the temples close by while we still live in Utah. So we decided to go to Mt. Timpanogos yesterday! Connected with this goal is a desire to document our travels. We had already been to this temple before but didn't get any good pictures. So we decided to go again :) But yesterday was SUPER windy, so we might not have gotten the best pictures anyway. Being in the temple was quite good though and overall we enjoyed our trip. We plan on visiting a lot of temples and we'll post more pictures when we do!