Well That Came Quick

Our first anniversary was this past sunday, Nov 21st.  I can't believe how fast this year went.

On saturday the 20th we went and did sealings at the Oquirrh Mountain Temple.  The sealer was really good, probably the best one I've seen while doing proxy sealings.  He would explain a lot of things in between and it was really neat.  After the temple we were gonna head up straight to Park City, but decided to go back to Provo and get my truck.  Good thing we did too.  It was so snowy up in Park City!  It snowed the whole weekend we were up there.

We started out our stay up there with a trip to the Tanager outlet mall.  Amanda found a $70 dress, but it was marked down half price.  Then an employee accidentally marked it down further to $10.99, so when we took it up to the register they rang it up and it came out to be like $25 (it had another discount), but I pointed out that the tag said $10.  They checked the rack and a few of them were marked like this, so they had no choice but to sell it to us for $10.  Pretty good deal!  I'm sure they immediately changed the other ones.

Then we checked into the hotel and went walking up and down the historic main st. where we ate some dinner.  It was pretty neat with all the snow, etc.  I had never really been on that main st. up there before.  It was a great weekend.  Sunday we just relaxed and drove home monday morning in time for me to go to class at 10.  Unfortunately we forgot the camera, so no pics.

Life Is Precious

Sometimes I have the tendency to feel invincible.  Especially in high school.  Nothing could happen to me. I have done some very high risk activities to include skydiving, scuba diving, cliff jumping, rock climbing, extreme skiing, wake boarding, flying, etc.  After my mission I kind of realized that I wasn't invincible, but still had this attitude that nothing could happen to me.

Today all that changed.  A student from UVU, who I knew, and his instructor crashed in their airplane killing both of them.  They are not sure what happened yet, but its pretty humbling and eerie to think that just yesterday he was sitting behind me in class, and now he's gone from this world.  He got married a month after I did, so it hasn't even been a year yet.  I've always taken the stance that these things happen to other people.  Somebody else, but not me.  Even though UVU has had 400,000 successful flying hours since 1987, all it takes is one unsuccessful one to cast a huge shadow.

I am so grateful for the protection I have had from Heavenly Father over the span of my short life, cause he knows I've done some stupid and outrageous things.  life is precious and we should live each day to its fullest.

Laboris Gloria Ludi

In case any of you have wondered what "Laboris Gloria Ludi" means, I'll tell you.  It is latin for "Work Hard, Play Hard."  I have adopted that as my life motto because I feel that both of them are important.  I try not to take things too seriously, unless I have to.  It feels good to accomplish something hard, but life needs a good balance.

Lately

Life has been great since I last posted. I try to post more often, but its hard to find time. So buckle your seat belts and remain seated until the post comes to a complete stop.

I have been looking to buy a truck for a while now. I finally found one that was in great condition and went to West Valley to look at it. I liked what I saw, so I called the bank and got the loan all set up. Then to my dismay, he didn't have the title for it, so the bank would not let the loan go through. I was disappointed, but kept looking. Nothing like it was coming up on KSL. Finally another truck came up on KSL, and I called and went up to Kamas to go look at it, gave him the money and drove away with it that night. The cool thing is, the body is in better shape, its a year newer than the other one, and has less miles than the other one.

It is a 1994 Toyota Pickup 4X4.  Basically a Toyota Tacoma, but they didn't start calling it a Tacoma until 96.  Its in awesome condition and I love it.  I sold the Honda I was driving to a friend in the ROTC.
I'm also in the process of selling the camper shell.

As soon as I drove off from the guys house buying it I went with my friend Steve Davis up to his cabin to go deer hunting.  We got up at 4 am saturday and hiked around the mountains until about 2 pm when I snow storm came out of nowhere.  We hadn't seen any bucks unfortunately (but lots of Elk and a few doe) so we decided to head back to the truck.  However, we still had about a 3.5 mile hike back to the truck in this snow storm.  The snow was not snow at all.  It was little ice pellets that were coming in sideways, stinging any exposed skin.  It was a fun day though all in all, even though we didn't get anything.  Next year.

I had my 24th birthday on the 28th.  We had a bunch of friends over for Hoagies, then 4 of us went to the Haunted Forest in American Fork.  It was pretty good, compared to some of the other ones I've been too.  It took about an hour to go through, and people were spaced out.  So we weren't just standing in line through the whole thing watching the people ahead of us get scared and know what's coming up.  Amanda had never been to anything haunted, so it was a good night.

The 29th was our ward Trunk-or-Treat.  It was pretty fun.  A few hours before we still didn't know what we were gonna do for our costumes or how to decorate our trunk, but pulled together something pretty good.  We decided to be a Mad Scientist (Amanda) and Igor (me).  We decorated the trunk like a mad scientist's lab with things in jars like grapes for eyes, fake mice floating in apple juice (AKA formaldehyde) and propped my head on a box with black cloth around my body so it looked like a live head on display.

 It was pretty good and kind of put some of the really little kids on edge, but everyone loved it.  It was pretty uncomfortable laying there with my head crained like it was.  But it was good.  We got 2nd place on the trunk decorating contest and only lost to a full on pirate ship with a mast and a plank.  A few couples came as peter pan, wendy, and some pirates.  So we felt good about our 2nd place, especially after throwing it together at the last minute.

After I climbed out of the truck I put on a trench coat and was Igor, the hunchback assistant.  We didn't win any prizes for our costumes.  However, after the Trunk-or-Treat was over there was a chilli cook-off that Amanda's chilli got 2nd place.  We take great pride in the fact that we are the #1 losers.  No one lost ahead of us. ha ha.

This is our Jack-o-Lantern that Amanda and I carved together.  I found a picture of a pumpkin like this on the internet and we tried our best to recreate it.   I think it turned out pretty well.

On Nov 1st Amanda got her wisdom teeth pulled and a few cavities filled all in the same procedure.  She got the laughing gas for it, but they didn't put her out.  I was kinda hoping she would be all drugged up and I could film her and put it on youtube, but she was pretty coherent.  The dental assistant told me that it only took like 10 minutes to get all 4 wisdom teeth out, but her recovery has been extremely quick.  The next day she didn't even need any pain killers.  Lucky her.