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!!