Christmas time is here

Wow I cannot believe how fast the past two months have gone. I swear it was just Halloween and now Thanksgiving is over and in 2 days its December! Its kinda weird, but how fast time goes by kinda scares me. Like it genuinely freaks me out a little. I feel like I am on a spinning merry go round and the last couple of years it has gotten progressively faster and faster. I feel like before I know it, I will be 50! Im not quite 28 but I still feel not a day over 24 and often times forget that I am actually NOT 24. Does anyone else have this weird phobia like me?

I am so happy that we have all our Christmas shopping done for the three of us! Beside stocking stuff, we just have to do family gifts and we are in business! We put the tree up, in all its glory, well half its glory. We decided to try and squeeze our giant fatty tree into the living room this year instead of our kitchen (that is just weird, and we have no space to eat at our table) so we decided to put it up right against the wall and leave off the branches in the back! GENIUS! It only looks a little funky when you walk down the hall and can see a gap between the wall and the tree, oh well i guess.

Lucy is Super stoked and even MORE helpful than she was last year (if you can image)

My cute little bums fixing the tree

I am a lights snob and they have to be done JUST right

Lucy being her adorable self. Whats better than a necklace? A necklace that lights up!

I didnt get a pic of the finished product though. I realized the other day that this is the first winter I have been a stay at home mom. And i realized it may be harder than I thought! I have been pretty stir crazy lately and I jump at the chance for any reason to get out of the house! I also realized I am not good at playing 2 yr old games and toys. Does that make me a bad mom? Im still deciding. Its just hard when Lucy REFUSES to play by herself (she never has, never, not for more than 5 min). I feel like a dancing monkey most of the time as she is constantly saying "mommy dance!" "mommy tickle" "mommy come get me!" "mommy kick a ball". This is about when I wish she had a constant playmate, like a twin or something. Im horrible!

Butterfield princesses

My lovely friend Meggan asked me to take pictures of her darling and GORGEOUS little girls before it gets too cold outside. Of course I couldnt say NO! We just love those Butterfields. Here are a few of my favorites

Spoooooky Halloween!

 To wrap up the October month it finally came, HALLOWEEN! We have been preparing for this moment for quite awhile. It takes me forever to figure out what we are going to be for halloween so I start deciding like in January. Just kidding. Kind of... But we were especially excited this year because this is the costume I have wanted to do since we got married and now was the time to do it! Ty and I were Mary Poppins and Burt and Lucy was a penguin. Our initial plan was to do the white dress up costumes when they are in the park and they have the cute little server penguins dancing along but once i realized how intense the costume making (or putting together) would be, we decided to go for the much easier costumes at the beginning of the movie. But lucy was still a penguin. Didnt make much sense, but oh well. In fact a lady at Ty's work said  to Lucy "what a CUTE little duck! What does a duck say?!" it was funny.

Trick or Treating with the Geilman boys and Lucy's loot after our ward trunk or treat

Fall fun

We have been so excited for the Halloween season this year! Ok we are excited every year, but this year Lucy can participate more and understand it a little more. I want to be a festive mom who really makes each holiday special and fun. Something that my kids will always remember as having fun and being together. So here are a few of the festivities we did this year. 

Awesome drive through the Provo Canyon

Decorating halloween cookies

Of course decorating!

Cornbelly's

Cornbelly's giant chair

 

Pumpkin patch in Orem

And painting pumpkins!

Trythalls 2012

So the last few years I have been selected to participate in the exclusive event of family portraiture of the Blake Trythall family. I have been deeply honored to have been given such an opportunity as this and will treasure this for years to come... Ok ok so i am making myself seem super important. The truth is I am cheap and easy and they know I wont say no to taking their pictures. Here are a few fav's of mine from the blessed event.

Winds of Change

Man I swear our lives are never boring. This summer has flown by and today is Oct 1! I love this part of the year though. I love the changing leaves, the cooler weather, wardrobe change, fall/Halloween decorating, and of course all the fun halloween festivities and activities. Love it. But with ALL that, we still can find ways to overload our lives...

So from last post, and many comments on facebook, we are in the process of potty training our little princess. Did I mention that this is the WORST!!! EVER!!! Seriously, I cant handle it. She was doing so well and then all of a sudden it became this power struggle. I tell her to sit on the potty so she does and then she doesnt go. But then she jumps off the potty and runs in her room, or somewhere and pee's before I can catch her. She does it on purpose people!!! She knows exactly what she is doing too. UGH! I nearly blew a gasket (yes I just said that) this morning over it. The thing is though she will NOT keep a diaper on either. I feel like our house is a feces covered, urine soaked, germy mess! Yes I clean up the messes of course but still! How do I know after she goes on the floor that she didnt touch it and then touch everything else in the house before I even know what happened! I feel like I need to wear a hazmat suit. Maybe im developing a case of OCD. Am I spiraling?

So even bigger news. My lovely husband was called to be Elders Quorum Pres. Talk about stressful! Holy smokes. Especially sense we have a very needy ward. The Bishopric told him that this is going to be VERY hard and that the ward needs A LOT of help. So thats comforting. But he was called for a reason, that I know. It will be really good for us and I am excited for him. He will do a great job for sure.

Even bigger BIGGER news. No we arent pregnant. Therefore, the infertility treatments we have done the last few months have not worked so that means we move on to the next option. The Dr gave us 2 choices of either Artificial Insemination or the big Invitro. She would have us do up to 3 rounds of artificial and if that didnt work then our last option for sure is Invitro after that. There is up to a 30% chance of conceiving with AI, and she isnt positive that that would even work or not. It may. But she said obviously there is something else going on that we just cant understand because i should be preg by now. BUT with Invitro there is a 70-75% chance of getting pregnant. Pretty good odds seems how the average normal couple conceiving is a whopping 20% each month! They are extremely successful in there office with invitro, one of the highest in the country! So we feel like that is what we need to do, go big or go home. Invitro. Crazy.

But in order for this to happen we are strongly feeling like we need to made some BIG changes! We decided that instead of waiting til Feb to apply for jobs we should start right now. This is the last semester of classes for Ty and he is finished with them the first week of Dec and next semester he just works on/defends his thesis, which he can do anywhere! So we are applying for actual career jobs right now. Its awesome! well awesome for me. Ty would rather break his leg than to apply for the million jobs just to get one. But this means our lives are moving forward!!! Ok its always moving forward, but I feel like we have been stuck in school for so long and student living that we have been going CRAZY to move on! So as soon as we get a new career (YAY!) then we will start the process of invitro (hopefully soon).

Our ever changing lives are never boring. We only get through it all with the tons of support and MAJOR answers to prayers. And for that, I am grateful.

Have your cake and eat it too

Well school has officially begun and the leaves have started turning. For the first time in many years, I am excited for fall! I don't know why but shorter days and coldness really put a damper on my love of fall, but not this year.
Lately we have been potty training. Not cool. I'm officially not a fan. Luce was really gun-ho and doing great for the first few days and now its all we can do to get her to sit on the potty. I feel like if I bug her and bug her she will just hate it more and more. So im not sure what to do. Hmmm. But it would be awesome if she were completely trained by lets say tomorrow Halloween.

Also we went to the specialist to talk about her eating. The early intervention people convinced me that there is probably something go on with her stomach as to why she only eats 5 foods. So we got up super early, headed to primary childrens (after 3 months of waiting for the appt date) and went into a horribly depressing hospital that totally freaked me out (im a little irrational around sick people) and met with a dr who basically was wondering why I was there. He said "she is stubborn", there is absolutely nothing wrong with her. And he gave me a couple of ideas (that we have tried a millions times before) of how to get her to eat and shoved me out the door. Ok he didnt shove me out the door, he was very nice, but thats how i felt. Dont get me wrong i am GRATEFUL there is nothing wrong with my babe but I just wanted answers, well a different answer. Boo. I was so ticked. I almost started to cry right there in the office (and i am not a crier). I have been fighting this battle since birth and i got my hopes up that we would find something that could easily be fixed and we were off to an eating wonderland, but no, my dreams were squashed in an instant. So now our new plan of action is (we have already tried this time and time again mind you) that Lucy will eat what we are eating for dinner and if she doesnt eat it she goes to bed hungry. its been hard cause when we go to friends house and there is dessert, she cant eat any until she eats some of her dinner and there is lots of crying and whining, and i feel really bad, but i guess the wild stallion will take time to break. We are on a week of this, still no luck. She has an iron will that Hilter would be jealous of.

In other news, my body hates me. totally random, but it does.

In other, other news Ty got a job offer completely out of the blue, like they sought him out and wants him to work for them right now. PRETTY CRAZY stuff. We don't have any details yet but as soon as everything gets worked out I will definitely be blogging this miraculous miracle for the world wide web to see!

Oh ya! and in other, other, other news. I am dangerously close to begin ready to start up a cake business!!! This is something I have been thinking a lot about and I really REALLY love to do it. Plus i can do it from home. I am just struggling with a name... There are so many good names out there how could i possibly choose just one?! But here is my latest design. This is a birthday cake for my bro-in-law Andrew and to say he is a serious BYU fan would be an understatement, so it was only fitting that i do a byu cake just for him.

St. George

Every year we have made it a tradition with the Kings to make the voyage to St George for the awesome Tuachan. This year we saw Aladdin. I hated it... JUST KIDDING. Like all other Tuachan plays, it was absolutely amazing. The costumes were so detailed and cool. They had real life camels, which was double cool. And you cant beat great company! I sadly didnt get one single picture... Boo... So you will just have to imagine...

• The kiddo's at a cool splash pad/park
• The guys moving the BS Kings to a new house
• Kaylee singing "Stuck Like Glue" for the 800th time.
• The "big" girls out shopping and eating the most delish pie
• Mckell and Lucy not getting along
• Going to the Esplins to play in the pool and have a pizza par-tay
• And finallly, teasing Cam about his love life

 We started and ended the summer in St George and it was great BOTH times. Thanks Ama and Papa King for the great memories and vacation!

Bear Lake

I love going to Bear Lake in August. Its so pretty and the water is warm with the most amazing turquoises color. It was the Nelson reunion (minus a few people) and it was lots of fun. The best part of all was that Lucy had TONS of people to play with and give her all the attention she demands. Again, more pics...

Wise River

Over the 24th of July we had the opportunity to go to Wise River, Montana. Ever heard of it? I didnt think so. Thats probably because the population is about 5. Our cabin was literally in the middle of nowhere, a few miles outside of the booming metropolis that it was said to be located. But it was AWESOME! Not only did we have the river right out our back yard but there was a private stocked fishing pond and all the fresh air you could handle. It was gorgeous. We played a lot of Skip-Bo, ate lots and lots of yummy food and just relaxed! Here are some pictures that I know you are dying to see ;)

So apparently Wise River and the surrounding areas has a "wolf problem" as well as bears and other animals that can eat you for a mid-morning snack. But this is the extent of our widelife encounters.

 

Lots of elk

Lots of Bald Eagles

 Reenacting The River Runs Through It

 Isnt my little snookie GORGEOUS! These turned out great!

Ama King and my Ty Bear

The big "I" and speech therapy

Since we have been home we have been on a voyage to solve a few mysteries that have been plaguing us for a while. We decided that enough was enough and when we got home from St. George we decided to make a few phone calls to see if we could get any closer to solving these mysterious mysteries that are somewhat concerning. I bet you are eagerly anticipating my great reveal as to what these mysteries just might entail. Well wonder no further my friends.

First things first. I am infertile. There it is. This isn't something that is super secret and it isn't something that I dread talking about. Many people don't know this little fact about me because the topic never comes up and what am I supposed to say "Hey whats up? How are you? Hey did you know Im infertile?! Crazy right?!" Awkward. This also isn't something that is super devastating for me either. I know people who have gone years and years and have a lot of serious problems and have very little hope for a little nugget to call their own. But since I have gotten pregnant before and have a little cutie (who unfortunately is sick right now) I feel that it can happen again. However; Even when I got pregnant with Lucy I had to get a little boost from the OBGYN to help out with the process. But lucky for us one month of Clomid did the trick and bada-bing bada-boom next thing you know I have a little baby in my arms. This time however, this was not the case...

This all started a year ago in May. Lucy was 15 mo. old and that same nagging feeling was creeping up on us again that maybe we should get going on #2. Since I was still traumatized from Lucy's birth, to say the least I was not thrilled nor excited to start the process again. But since I ignored that feeling the first time (with Lucy) for a couple of months and it turned out that we really DID need to get a move on if we were going to have children before we retire. So I sighed and headed to the Dr. Needless to say it has been 14 mo, 7 rounds of Clomid, 7 months of getting blood drawn, one HSG procedure, Tyler's "analysis", about 452 ovulation tests and about that many pregnancy tests and still no baby. Don't get me wrong about the whole "this isn't something that devastates me" business that I talked about earlier. I have had a few days throughout this process that I have been frustrated and bummed out, especially when my Dr said there was nothing more he could do and I would have to see a specialist. At that point I was really nervous. Mostly I was nervous about our bank account, or lack there of, and what it would take finically to get the job done. Insurance doesn't cover squat with infertility, don't EVEN get me started on THAT, and the costs really add up quick, especially when you have no idea how long it will take and what exactly needs to be done. Plus you hear of those horror stories of the people who had to get extremely expensive procedures done and it didn't even work. We were at a cross roads. We even looked into adoption. Really heavily actually. I even talked to a few agencies and at one point we had decided this was the way to go. But a little while later, we just didn't feel right about it and this isn't the route for us right now. I just felt that Im not done having babies and we need to see a specialist. So I made an appt and went to a seminar. That seminar was completely eye opening to me. I found out that infertility was in fact a disease, who knew right?! Also not only was it a disease but it was completely CURABLE! I learned that if you or your partner are not sterile, you can have a baby, point blank. And most of the time, you don't have to have those super expensive and invasive procedures. At that point I was completely confident and super excited.

Currently this is the first month after seeing a specialist (whom i HIGHLY recommend) and we are in the process of getting things done! I found out (it was speculated before) that I do in fact have PCOS, luck for me it isn't severe and my Dr is very confident that she can get us a baby, quickly. I feel really confident too, but realize it still can take a few months.  My current treatment includes a medication called Femara, lots of ultrasounds, HCG injections (that i have to give myself, yikes) and progesterone supplements. So... super exciting right?!

The OTHER mystery that is currently under investigation is with my little darling. We have been concerned about Lucy's speech since about 18 mo. Finally I bit the bullet and called an Early Intervention clinic. We had a few people come to our house and ask lots and lot of questions and evaluate her. Well it turns out that she has to be below 16 %ile to qualify to get help. Everything was GREAT, except her speech, she was exactly at 16th %ile! So she doesn't qualify... Which is great, however kind of frustrating that she is RIGHT on the line but we can't do anything about it. But something cool has come out of this. They asked us if she has a normal diet and she eats well or if we have any concerns about her diet. DING DING DING! Uh, how many posts or Facebook status's have I written about Lucy's eating habits! This has been my #1 concern about Lucy since the day she was born! They even told us that sometimes a babies speech and their eating habits correlate with each other. Again, who knew! So today they sent a feeding consultant over and again asked a ton of questions about her eating and diet. Well she said there were a couple of red flags that makes her think that Lucy isn't stubborn and difficult and it just might be a GI health concern and she highly suggests that we send lucy to a GI specialist. When Lucy was born she had TERRIBLE reflux and she said that most of the time kids grow out of it, but sometimes they don't. Even though she doesn't throw up constantly anymore and we aren't giving her medicine for reflux and there aren't "obvious" signs of it, she may still have it, or have something that is making her scared to eat, because she doesn't trust food that she isn't familiar with because it might hurt her stomach. But it makes total since. The ONLY foods she eats are the ones that are super basic (opposite of acidic) like bread, and cereal, and pb sandwiches. This TOTALLY makes sense to me. However now I feel really bad about those nights that I got so fed up and frustrated with her and screaming and tears for hours and hours, all because I thought she was just insanely stubborn. She was probably trying to tell me that she is scared to eat the food because it will make her feel yucky. SORRY LUCE!! So yet again, another specialist is in our forecast but they can't get her in til SEPT 11!!! Holy smokes! Hopefully they will quickly and accurately diagnose her problem and it WONT be severe. However I feel like we will still have a long road ahead of us because even if we do get the problem solved, how are we supposed to convince her that its ok to eat now, and get to her try new foods... I guess I just eat the elephant one bite at a time right!?

Half way through Summer

    As I wrote the title for this post I realized it probably wasn't the best title to choose because for some reason my wife gets really freaked out by the passage of time, especially summer. I've tried to figure it out and the best answer I get is that the faster the summer goes the closer school is. But Jody hasn't been in school for over four years so I'm not sure why she has so much anxiety about this subject!  But anyway it is pretty crazy to think that the summer is half way over, its weird to think that 2012 is half way over.
    Its been about a month since our last post so I thought it was time to catch everyone up on what we are doing. So for the past month I have been apply for jobs, mostly on campus because they have the most variety and they understand students needs better than your average employer. I applied to everything, research assistant, secretary, janitor, you name it I applied to it. One of the most painful things about looking for a job besides not earning any money is how long it takes for a job to open, interview, close and for the powers at be to decide. I always tell Jody if some day I am in charge of the interview process I'm going to let them know the second they out or the running or give them a firm date when they will know. The waiting is the hardest part of and I had to call some of the jobs to ask if they were still considering me and they had hired the job over a week earlier! Towards the end of the month I was getting desperate so I decided to go apply to the Marriott Center. I've had quite a few friends work there and the best things about them is that higher anyone, so I felt pretty good about my chances. But whats funny is the day i decided to go apply for the Marriott Center a new job popped up on the BYU board. The job was BYU Visual Communications to be the Social Media Coordinator for the BYU Center. I quickly applied because between my previous job experience I felt I had a pretty good chance. Finally after a week of waiting and two interviews I got the job. So now I am in charge of the Social Media Advertising campaigns for the BYU Salt Lake Center and I helped a little bit with EFY's Social Media. It's a lot of fun and everyone I work with is great, the main challenge is helping some of the older generation realize that social media isn't a fad and BYU needs to do a better job of creating an online social media community. I started this past Monday and now I've created  Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, YouTube, Instagram, and Google + accounts. I think I have all of my bases covered if anyone knows any more let me know! I will work here through the summer and when school starts and do this along with my Research Assistant job. Its going to be a busy fall but the best part is I only have two classes!!  I'll probably have to write two 30 page papers but that really isn't too bad anymore.
    We have a crazy July and August so we will do our best to take pictures and blog about it as we go. This week we have a bunch of different 4th of July acitivities and I'm really bummed we didn't get Stadium of Fire tickets because were both huge Beach Boy fans!  Our ward is having a "Street of Fire" on the 3rd. We will try to not start any new forest fires but your lawns may not be safe. The following week were headed up to Logan to visit my family and to ride in the first annual Grand Fondo, a 50 mile bike race that goes around Cache Valley. When I say we I mean me and my mom and dad. Jody and Lucy will be the cheerleaders at the finish line. I've been biking about a hundred miles a week to get ready but never 50 all at once. I need to get my biked fixed though, after i got home from my ride my front tire went completely flat!  After the Grand Fondo we are off to Dillon Montana, random I know but my parents know a guy who is a massive cabin that we are going to stay at, Jody is already on bear watch. Then the week after we get back we are off to Bear Lake for my dad's side of the family's reunion. In August we are headed back to St. George to see Aladdin and then school starts! 

Summer

We are officially back from St. George. It was a short lived moment we had there, but great non the less. But we are sure glad to be back to Provo. I honestly didn't think I would miss it. I mean we were only gone 6 weeks, but I have to admit, I kinda missed the ol' Utah county. I guess it just feels like home to me, and its always good to be home. I am glad for the pretty mountains and provo river. I am glad for the more mild temp (compared to St. George) and how much more humid it is here. Don't get me wrong, Provo is dryer than a bone compared to most of the country, but St. George is dryer than dryer than a bone! We are glad to be by our friends and closer to family. I think the thing we will miss from St George is the fact that there are TONS of bike trails right outside our door. We got really into biking and its just so convenient there and we don't have to worry about the wretched traffic and driving on the street with Lucy towing behind in the trailer. Also, lets not lie, we will definitely miss the home we stayed in. We were spoiled beyond belief with all the space and high tech amenities that I don't have (like a Kitchenaid, and Ninja, bikes, yard, King sized bed, and the list could go on for pages). We are just super grateful to Ty's parents for letting us stay there and bum off of them for the time being.

I love summertime. I just love it. To me, there is nothing better. It just seems like life is a little more laid back and everyone is more loose and fancy free. I love how pretty it is and how good it smells outside with all the flowers and grass. I love that I can go outside without a coat, and we can go swimming, have bbq's, outdoor parties. I just love it all.

Weekly Ramblings

    It's crazy to think that we have been in St. George for over a month!  Its funny how when you move to a new place time seams to speed up and then after a while get back to normal. I think we are all settling in to a routine here in sunny St. George but Lucy has been the best at making new friends. For the past couple of weeks our neighbor's daughter has been knocking on our door, she can't talk or anything she just rings the doorbell and stares at us when we answer the door. At first we didn't know what was going on until one day Lucy got to the door before me and before I knew it they were both heading over to our neighbors house to play which goes to show that Lucy already thinks were not very cool and is looking for someone else to hangout with!  She's been sick the last couple of days at first we thought it was allergies but now we are thinking she may be finally cutting her last few teeth, I swear that child could be from the south with the lack of teeth she has. I feel bad for her because she won't drink her medicine so she has been miserable the last couple of days. Though I think Jody doesn't mind because the only time Lucy will cuddle is when she doesn't feel good. We tried everything to get her to take the medicine, I even put it in ice cream but that only worked for a few bites until she figured it out. But other than that Lucy is having a great time here but I'm afraid she is going to be in for a shock when we have to go back to provo in July!

     Jody is doing great, she has started a sewing club with our sister-in-law Stacey and family friend Nicole. I have no idea what they are making or doing but there having fun so I guess thats all that matters. Both Jody and I have really gotten into biking over the last month. My parents have a bunch of bikes here and even a little kid trailer for Lucy to ride in. Though she is getting a little spoiled because now she has to have her own water bottle, books, and my iPod for her to come with us on our rides.  There are a ton of trails near our house so its been a lot of fun to go out together and explore St. George. I think what we both like about it is that afterwards you don't feel like your bones are going to fall off like they do after you run and its actually fun. We want to get some bikes when we get back to Provo but were not sure where we would put them. 

    I'm still going on strong with my internship with Dixie State, its not as structured as I thought it would be, for the last three weeks I've been on my own but I've been able to keep my self busy researching adverting and social media campaigns other universities use to increase attendance and community involvement, so now I have to put it all together so that it makes sense and see what things we can do here at Dixie State. This weeks main adventure was taking down all of the signs on the fences that surround the baseball field. At first I didn't think it would be a big deal there was only about 8 left but then I found about thirty more and three and half hours laters in the 100 degree sun I was done. And I have to admit for the first time in my life I broke into and trespassed but I rationalized it because I needed to get into the actual stadium to get all of the signs, I just didn't have a key!!

     We haven't had too many adventures this week but we did try to find some ducks to feed but every pond is on a Golf Course and I really didn't feel like getting chased by rent a cops on golf carts because if Duck Dynasty has taught me anything its that when the lights start flashing its every man for himself. (Duck Dynasty if you don't know is one of the greatest show on television today, check it out at 8pm on A&E, you'll thank me later!!)

    I think that about sums up our week, here are some fun pictures!!!

          This is what i found when I got Lucy one morning, yea not sure if we are ready to move her to a           big kids bed!!

                              These are the cinnamon rolls that I "made" for Jody for Mothers Day.

                        I actually did make this dinner, but don't worry Jody was there to supervise!

                                                                   My cheesy girls!! 

The Kings of St. George

We keep saying we need to update our blog but it seems like life always gets in the way and before we knew it two months have passed by!  I guess the best place to start is with the end of school. I have completed my first year of grad school at BYU, man it was tough last couple of weeks. I don’t know what its like for other grad programs but for communications at BYU we didn’t have any finals just three twenty page papers. I already miss they days when I thought a long paper was 8 pages, now a short paper is 15!!  But we survived. Jody and Lucy were awesome those last couple of weeks they sacrificed a lot for me to be at school full time so I could get all of my papers finished. I have to admit I was a little nervous starting grad school in a subject I had only taken a few classes during my undergrad but I had great professors and class mates who really helped me catch up and didn’t look at me like I was a complete idiot when I didn’t know what spiral of silence theory was or how to use SPSS. 

So here is the game plan going forward. I have my committee all set up and this summer I start writing my thesis. My thesis topic is about advertising recall and brand loyalty which means I’m going to have a group of people at every home football game and after the game I’m going to have them complete a survey that asks them what ads did they remember, what about those ads that made them remember and finally did their opinion of the company who owns the ad change because they advertise with BYU? My thesis has to be a hundred pages long and a large chunk of that is my literature review, which is were I basically find everything written about this subjects already and give a history of it.  This Fall I collect my data and then winter semester I’ll crunch the numbers and defend my thesis and hopefully graduate in April.  But before all of that takes place I needed to get some more real life job experience so on April 19 we moved to St. George Utah to work as an intern for the Dixie State Athletic Department.

We love St. George so we jumped at the chance to live and work down here. Both Jody and I love being warm and Lucy can’t get enough of playing outside, it’s a daily battle to get her to come in for dinner! My parents have their retirement home here so they have kindly let us stay here, which is awesome. The house is in Santa Clara which is a small town connected to the western part of St. George. It’s really nice to be able to go to the store and not have tens of thousands of college kids running around. Santa Clara has some amazing bike trails, which we have already taken advantage of and Lucy loves to ride in her bike trailer.  Our first week here we went to Las Vegas just for the heck of it. I had never been so I wanted to see it for my self and I can safely say my Vegas canteen is full and I don’t ever really have a desire to go back. I mean if we got tickets to a cool show then I would go but besides that I can’t really think what we would do there. But it was cool to see all of the casinos and sites in Vegas. I was tempted to play the slots but I refrained but it would have been hilarious if I had won.  We even swung by the Pawn Stars shop on the strip but the line was out the door so we just drove by.

We also hiked Snow Canyon, which is just by Tuacahan in Ivins. Snow Canyon was awesome and it was Lucy’s first official hike. To say I was worried would be an understatement, not that she wouldn’t have fun because she did but because my daughter loves to explore and the last thing I wanted was for her to start chasing some lizard and run in to a cactus. Luckily she avoided all of the cactus’s and she had a great time. Though it was pretty funny to see as we were walking about to the car, she just was so worn out she collapsed into my arms and slept as we walked back. For those of you who know Lucy you know this never happens!! But Snow Canyon is awesome and we need to go back and explore more of the trails and canyons.

Lets see what else, we celebrated our 4 year anniversary with a trip to one of our favorite places in Utah, Anasazi. They grill your steak on a rock right in front of you and they have the best chocolate fondue I have ever had and it was just fun to be on a date together. We also stopped by the Ironman finish yesterday, Jody and Lucy saw the first runner come in but I missed it because I had to get to a the last Dixie State baseball game. It was pretty incredible to see these people compete in the race, they just looked like they were in pain the whole time. For those who don’t know and iron man race consists of a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride and to finish it off a full marathon. Yea I would like to do a sprint triathlon but not an Ironman I don’t think my body could handle it!  I think that about sums up our last couple of months, we will be here in St. George until the end of July and then its back up to Provo. The other day Jody and I were talking about if there was anything we missed about living in Provo and they only thing we could think of is all of our friends who we left behind so here is just a big thank you to all of the amazing friends we made in Provo over the last four years and if anyone wants to come hang out in St. George they have a place to stay!!