To Walk Where Jesus Walked

This is an original road where Jesus walked

Last month X and I spend two weeks with her family in the Holy Land. I've been so busy since getting back that I haven't had a chance to blog about it yet, but I hope to get on it soon. With over 700 pictures to sort through, it is going to take some time, but I'm going to try to do it in chunks so it isn't such a massive novel of a blog.

See you soon! Shalom.

I'm Famous!

The other day I stumbled upon this link. I was surprised to see a blurb about me on the GE website! You never know who is going to see what you write on your blog. Keep an eye on my TOP 5 Blog for an upcoming post about the dangers of blogging.

Christmas Tree

Can you believe this is OUR tree? We got a new (used) tree from the classifieds this year, and we bought some nice ornaments from Target. Growing up we've never had a "nice" tree with matching ornaments, and it was always something I've wanted to try. Let us know how you think it turned out!

Father Candy

I just had to post this picture of the candy poster X made for me <gulp!> LAST YEAR for Father's Day. :)

Click here to enlarge

Sorry for all these belated posts, I just want to get through them all so I can go onto more recent things.

King of the Tube

Over the 4th of July we were able to go boating with some friends in the ward. We have two lakes within 30 minutes of our house, so a lot of people in the area have equipment to do all sorts of fun water stuff. We enjoyed water-skiing, wake-boarding, tubing, and canoeing. I even got to drive the boat!

Towards the end of the afternoon things started to wind down and we got a little bored. Me and Kyle (another guy from our ward) decided to have a little fun and to play "King of the Tube" (think King of the Mountain, but the winner is the last one still on the tube).

Kyle and I prepare for battle

We struggled mightily to try to knock the other person off. At this point we were having fun. This is the last time I think either of us smiled that day.

As things progressed and we still hadn't knocked each other off, the boat driver started going faster and hitting harder waves. At one point we were turned completely vertical and we hit a huge wake. CRACK! Kyle and I slammed into each other sideways, and we both let go. I had the wind knocked out of me (isn't that one of the worst feelings ever?), and it was at that point that I was grateful to be wearing a life jacket! It wasn't clear who let go first, so we decided to call it a draw.

The end of the battle - for now...

That whole week I could barely move. My side hurt so bad, and it hurt to move between any sitting, standing, or laying position. After a week of pain and not feeling any better, I decided to go to the doctor to make sure I hadn't done anything really bad. The doctor told me I probably had some broken ribs, but that it was pointless to get an X-ray because there is nothing they can really do for it. The next week at church Kyle told me that his ribs were broken too! So let this be a lesson next time you are tempted to play "King of the Tube" - don't do it unless you want to be in pain for the next 6 weeks!

Pumpkin Carving Extravaganza 2010

Happy Halloween everyone! For those of you that don't remember, two years ago I posted pictures of the pumpkins X and I carved for Halloween. I really wanted to turn it into a yearly tradition, but last year we were so busy with the Murder Mystery Dinner that we just didn't have enough time to get any done. So I had to make up for it this year! I don't have any novels to tell of inspiration-invoking pumpkins this year, but I still had fun coming up with unique ideas to carve. Since X wasn't around this year, I still got her involved by having her help me come up with some of these ideas. Hover over each picture below with your mouse to see what the pumpkins look like when they are lit!

Red M&M

Yellow M&M

Hunchbart

Jelly Belly

Several people have told us about a free tour of the Jelly Belly factory in Northern California, so on our way back from our trip to San Francisco we just couldn't resist stopping to check it out. We're both pretty inquisitive in regards to how things are made (we love watching shows like "How it's made") so we figured this would be pretty awesome. We weren't let down!

Outside the Jelly Belly factory

X standing in front of the creepy Jelly Belly mascot

All of the pictures inside the Jelly Belly factory are made out of (you guessed it) jellybeans! Most of the pictures are made up of over 10,000 individual jellybeans!

A jellybean buffalo nickel

Three jellybean presidents

Two Jelly Bellies (after we ate all those jellybeans!)

We weren't allowed to take pictures on the actual manufacturing floor, but we were able to see the whole process. Unfortunately we went during the weekend so nothing was actually running, but it was still cool to see all the machinery and each stage of the jellybean. We also got to try out some of the new flavors they are working on, and also some of those horrible trick jellybeans (think earwax, dog food, and rotten egg). With all the free jellybeans that you wanted to try, who wouldn't love coming here? We would just recommend if you are interested in going that you go on a weekday so you can see everything in action!

Unpleasant Neighbors

Throughout the summer we worked pretty hard on our yard to try to keep it looking nice. We even cleared away the spider webs that we found, but we noticed that some of them kept showing up again a few days after we cleared them. We never saw any spiders out during the day, so one night we went out with the flashlight to see if we could spot any culprits. We found out that apparently the rocks used for our landscaping are a favorite vacation spot for black widows!

Think your spiders are bad?

After an extensive search of our front and back yard we found and killed 10 black widows. All of them were huge and terrible! We are hoping to find some way to keep them from showing up again next year. Let us know if you have any suggestions.

Cruise Lifestyle Challenge

Ever since we got back from our cruise in May, we have been DYING to go on another one! But we didn't feel like we could just freely spend the money - we felt like we had to EARN it. So we started brainstorming ides of how we could use another cruise as motivation to get something done. We ended up settling on losing weight - neither of us have felt motivated enough to really work hard at it since we got married! And as part of the deal, we decided to invite my family and X's mom and sister (none of which have been on a cruise before) to go with us, with the deal that we would cover the cost of the cruise if they also made a list of goals and got them accomplished in the next year. What better way to help inspire change, but also to let people feel like they owned the changes they were making to themselves?

I've always heard that if you write your goals down you are more likely to get them accomplished, and if you make them public you are even more likely to accomplish your goals! So here are my goals for the next year:

1. Lose 60 pounds by:
1. Exercising at least 2x a week for 30 minutes
2. Not eating any desserts, candies, or sweets (except for the rare "once in a lifetime" chance to try something new)
3. Walking to get the mail every day
4. Only eating one helping at meals
5. Not drinking any soda or sugary drinks
2. Read the Book of Mormon and pray everyday

And here are X's goals:

1. Lose 18 pounds by:
1. Exercising 4x a week for 30 minutes
2. Eating slowly and stopping when satisfied
2. Read the scriptures everyday for at least 10 minutes
3. Read the entire Old Testament by reading 2+ chapters each day
4. Pray every morning and evening

We start tomorrow and go until next October. Wish us luck!

A San Francisco Treat

X and I spent out last weekend together in San Francisco before she moved back to Logan to finish her last year of school. The bay area is only 4 hours away from our house, so it makes for a quick and easy weekend getaway!

On the way to San Francisco we stopped by Mountain View, CA to visit my friend Mike who got a job working with Google. We were able to visit him at work and he gave us a tour of the Google campus. We arrived around noon and Mike was kind enough to treat us to lunch (it was easy enough for him since all the food is free...)

This is a famous Google Chrome bike. They have these and other Google bikes available for anyone to ride around the Google Campus. X just couldn't resist!

After our brief stint in Mountain View, we headed north to San Francisco. We checked into our hotel and went out to explore the city. We ate at a fresh seafood restaurant for dinner and enjoyed walking around the city. The next morning our first stop was Fisherman's Wharf:

We accidentally jumped on the wrong trolley and ended up on the other side of town. It turned out to be a one-way ride, so we had to pay another full fare to get back to where we had parked!

We loved the seals/sea lions at pier 39. It was pretty funny watching them fight and try to push each other off the end of the floating docks. It wasn't warm or sunny at all, and there were plenty of other floating docks to move to, but they all seemed to want to share the same one.

We couldn't find out what was wrong with the one on the left. He stayed frozen in that position the whole time we were there...

We also drove down Lombard street!

30-minutes later we decided it was one of those "once in a lifetime" experiences

Later that afternoon was the main event for us in San Francisco - I had surprised X with tickets to see Wicked for her birthday! She was pretty excited to spend the entire weekend with me, but I think she was more excited to see the show!

This wasn't the first time we'd seen the show - we won the raffle in New York for front-row seats back in 2008 - but this time we were a little further back and we enjoyed being able to see the entire show without it being right up in our faces. After the show we found out that Wicked was only playing in San Francisco for another week or two before ending its run, and that ticket prices had skyrocketed for all of the remaining shows - luckily I had purchased our tickets right before the announcement was made and didn't have to pay an arm and a leg! (just a leg)

After the show we drove out to the Golden Gate Bridge (our show was a matinee, so it was still light after we got out) and watched the sun set on the city from the bridge. A note for anyone who hasn't ever driven across the Golden-Gate Bridge - it is free to travel north across the bridge, but it is $6 to travel back the other way (cash only, of course). You've been warned!

We parked and started the long trek across the bridge. We only walked to the halfway point so that in the end we walked the "entire length" of the bridge.

As I thought about living alone for the next year...

After I found out that we had to pay $6 to get back across the bridge...

After the bridge we stopped by a nice BBQ place for dinner and then Ghirardelli Square for dessert.

This beef rib was as large as my forearm!

Apparently this is how chocolate is made

All in all we had a great time and look forward to our next trip together!

The Postcard

X and I wanted to come up with a really creative way to let people know that we had moved. While we were on our anniversary we came up with a really good idea to send people a postcard - but what to put on it? We passed on the cliche "posing in the front yard" idea, and decided to have some fun. This is what we came up with:

On the reverse it says: "We've moved! Life's a little different out here in Nevada, but you should still come out for a visit! You're welcome anytime, so give us a call or just stop by and we'll have a good old-fashioned boot stomp!"

Maybe I just have a thing for cross-dressing? We heard a lot of people enjoyed it, and that is what we were going for. If you didn't get one, all I can say is sorry we could only afford to send out a handful (they were pretty expensive) but you ended up seeing it here anyways. So no complaining!

Alone

Saying goodbye is always hard. Especially when it's to your best friend! Today my wife left to go back to school. I tried to spend as much time as possible with her this summer before she left (I didn't have much time for posting). She has two semesters left before she graduates with a Bachelor's degree in Public Health, and she's going back to Utah State University to finish it up. Most people think we're crazy (sometimes I even think we're crazy) but to those of you who want to know "why did we do it?" here's the rundown:

• She has a Presidential Scholarship at USU that covers all her tuition and fees
• She only has one year left at USU before she graduates
• UNR (University of Nevada - Reno) is the closest university to us here in Nevada that offers the same program that she is studying. It's an hour away and we only have one car
• UNR will only accept 1/2 of her credits that she has already earned - that turns into a whole extra year of school to make up those credits
• Since we just moved to Nevada and haven't established residency yet, she'd have to pay out-of-state tuition and it is EXPENSIVE!
• The actual cost difference per year between USU and UNR is $16,000

Most people typically think that we made this decision solely based on the money. But honestly, I would gladly pay anything it costs to keep her here. The main reason she is going back to Utah State is because she doesn't want to have to go to school for 2 more years; she just wants to be done!

So she's going back to school and I'm here all alone. It's not all bad though. It isn't like we aren't going to see each other for the next 9 months. We already have a good schedule setup for the Fall semester and we'll see each other almost every month! Here's a preview of what we've managed to plan:

September - Our friend Allison is getting married and I'm flying out to Utah for the wedding

October - I'm headed out the University of Utah and up to Utah State University for a work recruiting trip (my boss specifically chose me so that I could go see her)

November - We're going on a 2-week trip with her family to Israel, Jordan, and Egypt

December - She will spend Christmas break with me at home

We don't have something planned for every month during Spring semester yet, but hopefully I can go on another recruiting trip for work and she'll probably come home for spring break too.

If you are ever in the area please feel free to stop by. Or if you are bored call or text me. I've never been 100% alone before. I've always had a roommate or a companion or something, so it definitely will be an interesting time for me in my life. Wish me luck, and let's all keep our fingers crossed for her to get the grades she needs to graduate next spring to come back home!

Murder Mystery Dinner 2009 - Pasta, Passion, & Pistols

I was in charge of hosting the final (?) installment of the murder mystery dinners that my friends Sarah and Allison and I have been doing the last few years. Each of us has taken a turn hosting a dinner around Halloween each year, but now that each of us has had a turn and the fact that X and I have moved out of state, this last one might have been the last time (at least for all of us together). Knowing this I wanted to do something really fun and original for my dinner - I had all the guys play girl parts, and all the girls play guy parts! I had some negative response from a few people at first (mostly from homophobia or people who felt like it was just wrong), but after a little bit of coercion everyone was game! The murder mystery dinners are usually a little corny (you'll notice from the characters names listed below), but we always just have fun with it. So here's how it worked:

The Mystery

The succulent aroma of home-cooked pasta is drifting from New York City's most popular Italian eatery, La Speranza, but something else is heating up in the kitchen . . . cold-blooded murder! Restaurant-owner Pepi Roni has been shot in the back with his own pistol. Tonight his family and friends will gather to pay their respects to poor Pepi, but one of the guests won't be shedding any tears.

The Suspects

Rocco Scarfazzi

Pepi's twin brother, a tough-talking no-nonsense Italian business man. In addition to his vineyards and real estate holdings, it is rumored Rocco is in the 'laundering' business. He had no love for his brother Pepi but his reasons are his own... capische?

Tara Misu

Rocco's vivacious young fiancé. She was just an upstairs maid in Rocco's villa until she swept him off his feet. Now Tara keeps a smile on his face and a firm grip on Rocco's assets. Tara is dressed to kill. She knows the effect she has on men and flaunts her charms shamelessly.

Bo Jolais

Cousin of a cousin of Rocco's, Bo manages the Scarfazzi vineyards. Bo comes from a long line of French wine-makers and no one knows 'ze' grape like Bo. An important man in the Scarfazzi organization .... what could Bo possibly have to whine about.

Mama Rosa

Pepi's grieving widow. For 25 years, Mama Rosa cooked the pasta while Pepi greeted La Sperenza's dinner guests. In all the years they were married, not once did they argue. Had something finally boiled over in Rosa's kitchen?

Angel Roni

Pepi and Rosa's beautiful daughter. It was Pepi's dream that his 'Angel' would marry a good Italian boy, have children and carry on the family traditions. Angel has a few fantasies of her own though and one of them is that hunk, Bo jalais. Mama-mia!

Marco Roni

Pepi and Mama Rosa's only son, Marco was expected to take over the restaurant after his parents retired. Marco hates waiting tables. His goal is to play on a World Cup soccer team but his papa has been keeping him permanently on the bench.

Father Al Fredo

An Italian priest and long-time family friend of the Roni's and the Scarfazzi's. The good priest has heard their confessions and knows their sins.

Clair Voyant

Rosa's best friend and astrology advisor. Clair's talents include an ability to communicate with the spirit world and see into the future.

We had a lot of fun at this dinner. I love doing the murder mystery dinners with this group because a lot of people really get into it and try to act & dress like their character would. If you look online at pictures from other people's murder mystery dinners (like this one, this one, or this one), most of them have just thrown on a dress shirt and called it good. But we go all out! It's a good thing we have DI!

While I won't reveal who the killer was, I will say that I wasn't surprised! One interesting thing I have noticed is that the killers have always been women. The funny thing is that it would've been a man this time had I not swapped male and female parts, but I guess it was just intuition that made me do it! Here's hoping we can do another one of these sometime in the future!

Closing Time

We have finished signing all of the documents to close on our house! Our loan will be funded on Tuesday or Wednesday this week, and we'll be able to move in by Friday at the latest! We ended up getting a really good rate on our loan (better than the one our lender tried to get us to pay to lock-in a few months ago), and we'll close in time for the $8,000 tax credit. We have our fingers crossed that the sellers will be out of there by Wednesday, but either way we know that we'll be in our house by Friday. It will be such a relief to get out of our motel and suitcases and into our home! There are a few things we already know we want to fix-up in the house, but we just have to decide what we want to work on first! We'll be sure to post pictures and keep everyone updated on our home as we get all settled in.

Anniversary & Graduation Vacation

After my graduation we spent a week down in Salt Lake City saying goodbye to friends and family and tying up all the loose ends before we moved to Nevada. Then we drove to California for our CRUISE!!

That was our boat - The Carnival Splendor - it was HUGE! I couldn't believe how big the boat was when I first saw it! There were 13 floors above water that we could access, and we couldn't imagine how many more were underwater in order to keep that thing from tipping over!

Our cruise was a week long and we visited Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, and Cabo San Lucas in the Mexico Riviera. Our first night X got a little sick because our dining room was in the "aft" of the ship and it was rocking a little more at the back of the boat, but we were able to get her a sickness patch and move our dining location to the center of the boat and everything was smooth sailing from there.

Our dinners were crazy good; we always had tons of options to choose from. Each night we were able to choose an appetizer(s), main course(s), and dessert(s)! It was a great opportunity to try something new, or a little bit of everything. And they always had live music!

This is the filet mignon that X got on one of the "elegant nights" (where everyone gets/has to dress up for dinner). Some of the other dishes we enjoyed were lobster tail, ribs, salmon, shrimp, red snapper, and of course the pizza and ice cream that were available 24/7.

Each night we had a fun towel animal waiting to greet us after dinner. Here were some of our favorites:

Our ports of call were AWESOME! X and I had both been to Mexico before so we already knew of some of the things we wanted to see again, but there were also new things that we decided to try out.

Puerto Vallarta

We did the "Extreme Canopy Zip-Line Adventure" in Puerto Vallarta. We'd heard from several people that this was something that we wouldn't want to miss out on, so we decided to buy tickets through the cruise line to make sure we had our seats reserved (note to self: never buy tickets through a cruise line in the future - on shore its almost half the price and very available).

The excursion started with a 15-minute boat ride to this small beach and dock. Little did we know we still had a lot of ground to cover in a variety of modes of transportation. You can tell we had no idea because we are still smiling.

The next leg of our journey took part in these Mercedes Benz trucks that drove us wildly up the side of the mountain. We were still smiling in this picture because the truck hadn't left yet, but we soon discovered as the driver left that he must've forgotten we were in the back of the truck because we were bouncing all over the place. Luckily the seats were heavily padded!

Once we reached the destination for the beginning of our adventure, we got all dressed up in our gear, but we noticed that we didn't see any zip-lines. They told us to sit on these benches and wait for our next ride. In this picture we finally saw what we were taking up the rest of the way... MULES! As you can tell in this picture, X and I were less than enthused. :) All joking aside, it really wasn't that bad. The truck ride up the mountain was fine, and we enjoyed ourselves on the different legs of the journey. We weren't allowed to take our cameras on the adventure, but they had their own photographer and she just happened to take that picture when neither of us looked very happy.

Here we are on our mules. My mule was really slow (a combination of the fact that he was really old and he probably didn't like what he was carrying). I didn't know this at first, so I waited for X so we could ride up together, but her mule ended up darting past me and I rode up the rest of the way alone at the back of the pack. The worst thing was that mules are very gassy animals, so being at the end of the line I got the full wind of all the other mules in front of me. So glad I waited! :)

These were our guides on the adventure. They were so crazy, and they made us all laugh.

Here we are on the 1,000 foot long zip-line 200 feet above the ground!

Here's us repelling down the side of a WATERFALL! What an experience!

Here is us doing a 100 foot free-fall repel next to another waterfall.

And here we are racing together on the last zip-line. I totally won!

We had such a blast on our adventure! Even though we probably overpaid for our adventure, we still had so much fun and would totally do it again!

Mazatlan

Both X and I had been to Mazatlan before, but we were excited to go back and relive some of our favorite memories from our childhood visits.

We went horseback riding on the beach in Mazatlan at the same place X went when she was younger. We loved riding in the surf and enjoyed all the Mexican sun!

We also went parasailing while in Mazatlan. I love X's facial expression as she is taking off!

Here is a video of me taking off. One thing I like about the parasailing in Mazatlan is that they let you take-off straight from the beach! It made it really easy to take these pictures.

Here is a video of X landing. You get to land right back on the beach, but you have to be careful of bystanders on the beach. Watch the last couple of seconds on the video and pay close attention to the lady in blue running/ducking for cover!

Cabo San Lucas

Our shortest time ashore was in Cabo San Lucas since the cruise ship had to start heading back that evening to make it back to California on time.

We decided to go on a snorkeling tour for the day and really enjoyed swimming with the fish! Our snorkeling guide brought some crackers that the fish really liked to eat, so when we stood by him as he crushed up the crackers we literally had hundreds of tropical fish swimming all around us. It was totally surreal!

Cabo San Lucas was our last port of call, and we headed back to California for debarkation. Many of the people we met were headed back to work after the week-long cruise, but we still had more vacationing to do! Heh heh suckers!

After we got off the ship, X and I drove to a nearby beach and spent a little more time on the beach. The water was much colder here than it was down in Mexico!

After a while the wind began blowing pretty hard and we felt like we were in a sand storm! The sand hurt pretty bad so we decided to leave. We drove to our next hotel near Anaheim, CA where we stayed for the next 3 days!

We visited Disneyland and Disney's California Adventure the first two days in Anaheim. We soon discovered that mid-May is THE BEST time to go to California. It's not super hot, and most people are still in school so we never had to wait in line very long!

X's favorite ride is Tower of Terror. As you can see I don't much care for this ride. ;)

We also enjoyed making funny faces (similar to the one we did here) on rides where they take your picture.

Disney's California Adventure had all sorts of construction going on near Paradise Pier. We found out that it was for a new water show called Disney's World of Color. It looks like it is going to be AWESOME! They were supposed to have it up and running by the time we were there, but they were still running tests when we visited. We were sad that we missed it, but we look forward to the next time we visit so we can see all the new stuff! Here is a video of all their upcoming plans:

We are definitely excited!

We also visited Knott's Berry Farm on our last day in Anaheim. They have a few more "thrill rides" than Disneyland has to offer, and we thoroughly enjoyed those.

They also had this crazy horse-riding roller coaster where you get to sit on these horses as you ride! The ride was alright, but it was definitely a unique coaster experience!

After 3 days in Anaheim we drove up to my aunt's house in Ventura where we stayed the night and were planning to drive the rest of the way to Nevada the next day. But... at the last minute we decided to go to Six Flag's Magic Mountain!

Magic Mountain has some of THE craziest thrill rides I've ever been on. Of course I've never been to another Six Flags park or to Cedar Point (someday I will, someday), but we figured that we might as well go since we didn't have any real plans for the weekend in Nevada, and since it was probably the best time of the year to go with the smallest crowds. And it turns out we were right!

X2, the world's first 4th dimensional roller coaster, was something I was excited to ride again. We had come to Magic Mountain with my family back in 2008, but the lines were terrible and we spent most of the day waiting in line (including a 3-hour wait for X2)! We were thrilled to see that the wait for X2 was only 15 minutes pretty much the whole day!

Magic Mountain also has a ride called Tatsu, which is a flying roller coaster (where you are lying down during the ride to get a sense of "flying").

This video I took (sorry for the bad sound and video quality) shows how the seats on Tatsu rotate 90 degrees into the "flying position" for the entire ride. You can extend your hands to feel like you are really flying!

After a fun day at Magic Mountain, we drove the rest of the way to Nevada, and are staying at a local motel until our house is ready for us to move in!

Overall we had such a blast on vacation and on our cruise, and we are looking forward to doing more cruises in the future. The only thing we'd change is to have friends come with us next time so that we have more people to do stuff with. So if you are interested, leave a comment and we can start planning our next adventure!