Random Pics

So I found a couple of random pictures on my computer that I felt like sharing.  One is from Dancesport a few weeks ago.  Well, rather the aftermath of Dancesport, as I began to undo my hair (which had quite a bit of gel and hairspray in it):

Chrisser thought it was hilarious and had to take a few pictures :).  That particular piece curled that way because I had it basically pasted to the back of my head in a little swirly-swooshy pattern.  Since I can't really describe it, I'll show you another picture where you can kinda sorta see it if you look real close.  This one was taken by a professional back in March 2012:

The other picture I wanted to show was this one of Chrisser, just 'cuz I think he's cute in his Santa hat:

We went to CVS a couple weeks ago to check it out.  They just opened a location here in Provo and had sent out a few coupons for free things like gummy bears and toothbrushes, and of course free = we must go!  While we were there we browsed their Christmas stuff and he found this hat and fell in love with it.  We didn't buy it then, but he kept talking about how much he wanted it.  So when I went to fill a prescription a few days later I bought it and gave it to him as an early Christmas present.  He was so excited he wore it all day for like two days.

Dancesport

A couple weeks ago was the BYU Dancesport Championships, a ballroom dance competition that is really quite a big deal here at BYU.  Chrisser and I competed in Novice and Pre-Championship Smooth together.  We didn't really have much time to practice because of our friend's senior showcase that we were in, so we didn't make any cuts in either event.  But we made it through our routines, which was really nice, especially considering I had just learned our Tango like 3 days earlier.  Oh, speaking of the showcase, here are a couple pictures of us in our costumes:

Yes, the thing that started as my skirt became his cape halfway through the number.  It was pretty cool. (Don't worry, I had another skirt on under it....)

We totally spaced it on taking a picture of us in our Smooth costumes, so all I have are a couple of videos.  Which are awesome, I just like to have pictures, too.  Oh well.  Also, I tried to put one of the videos in this post, but it just wasn't working.  Sorry.

Chrisser was also in several other events for his classes, as well as the Open West Coast Swing event.  The best part is that he had four different partners for his various events, and all of them were named Sarah!

These two are of his class Cha Cha event.

This is from the West Coast event.  Yes, he loves his crazy outfits :)

October

October was a busy but fun month.  Chrisser got to dance in BYU's Homecoming Parade with the ballroom teams again this year, and I ran along the route with them taking pictures and videos.  I was focusing more on getting as many pictures of as many people as I could so they could all have their awesomeness documented, so I didn't get quite as many good pictures of Chrisser as I did last year.  Scratch that, I hardly got any of him.  Oops.  But he is in these:

He's dead center in this picture.

And on the far right in this one.

I actually don't feel too bad about not getting tons of pictures of Chrisser, though, because a) I got several last year and he looks pretty much the same, and b) everybody else is constantly telling me how much they love the fact that I take pictures and videos of all their dance things and post them on Facebook for them.  Sometimes I kinda feel like a celebrity that no one actually knows, haha.  They just know my name and that I'm Chrisser's wife and that I record everything.

Nothing really picture-worthy happened between the parade and Halloween.  Just lots of school for Chrisser, work for me, and dance practice for us both.  One of our friends is a dance major and has asked us to be in her senior showcase, for which she had to choreograph something.  So we've been spending many evenings at rehearsals for that, and we've also been trying to prepare to compete open Smooth at Dancesport this month.  Hopefully I'll have pictures of those things that I can post after they've happened.

Then of course Halloween happened.  We never got a chance to go shopping for decorations together, but I put up a few things that either we already had or that I made really quick.

I also made an Oreo Cheesecake and put food coloring in it so it would be orange and black.

We decided to be Mary Poppins and Bert this year.  Everyone at the social dance lab (basically just a dance for all the people in a social dance class at BYU) loved us.  They were particularly intrigued by Chrisser's chimney sweep broom, which I had made from a dustpan handle, a chunk of styrofoam, and bristles that we yanked out of a couple of brooms.  It turned out surprisingly well.  I love it when I have an idea that actually works :).  I also had to make my hat out of a poster board.  Kinda weird, but you know what?  There were two other girls dressed as Mary Poppins at the lab, and my hat definitely looked the most like the one in the movie :D.  I wished I could have gone all out and made her overcoat and scarf, too, but I just didn't have the time or the money.

Oh, I almost forgot our pumpkins.  I guess I should really say my pumpkins because Chrisser never had time to carve his so I did it for him at the last second, but whatever.  Once again, I just didn't have time to be creative with them, so I just did pretty generic faces.  I'm hoping next year won't be quite so crazy...

Case Lot Sale!

This week is the Case Lot Sale at Macey's (the grocery store here in Utah, not the department store Macy's), where they put a lot of stuff on a pretty good sale and sell it by the case.  When I was growing up my parents would always buy a TON of stuff at these sales and end up with a receipt that was about a mile long :).  They don't put things on quite as good of sales as they did back then, but they're still much better than full price, so I went and got several things for us.  It's a good thing we have a huge pantry:

I got 2 cases of ramen noodles, a case of macaroni and cheese (Chrisser goes through that like crazy!), a case each of refried beans and taco seasoning, and a case each of diced tomatoes and tomato sauce because tacos and spaghetti seem to be Chrisser's other favorite foods.  I guess I won't bore you with all the details of my purchase, but we were pretty excited about it.  Now I just have to make sure we actually use the stuff instead of buying other things and therefore spending more money instead of less...

Road Trip--Take 2

So, I really had intended to do this post about our trip back to Utah like, the day after my last post.  Guess that didn't quite happen...  Better late than never!

So we left on a Tuesday morning and stopped at my cousin's house in Ohio again for the night.  We loved getting to see them and their super cute 2-year-old boy!  The next day we went to Nauvoo, IL.  This was my first time in Nauvoo, so we decided to stay a whole day there.  We had gotten a tent with some of the Target gift cards that we received for our wedding, so we camped in the Nauvoo State Park the two nights we were there to save some money.  And to have an excuse to use the tent :).  The first night, we got there after most places had closed, so really all we did was walk along the main street, get some frozen yogurt (which is always a good idea), and take lots of pictures of the temple (also always a good idea).

We also drove around and found the place where my 4th-great-grandfather, Nathaniel Ashby, lived.  I couldn't figure out if the house is the same one he lived in or if it was just built on the same spot, but whatever.  I'm guessing the missionary couple that is living there now is from Canada since there is a Canadian flag in the window.

The next morning we went and did a session at the temple, which was a really neat experience.  It was our first time seeing the new film, and it was my first time in a temple where you change rooms throughout the ordinance.  We got there just after one session had started and it would be another hour before the next one, so we did a few sealings first.  It was also our first time doing sealings since our own.  After that we went to Carthage Jail and took the tour there.  We even got our own private tour of it!  We walked in the visitor's center and the senior missionary there said, "Well, it's just about time for another tour and no one else is here--let's go!"  The Spirit was very strong there, such that I didn't even feel quite comfortable taking a picture of the room where Joseph Smith and the others were kept, even though it is allowed.  I did take a picture of the outside, though.

Then we went back to Nauvoo and just wandered around the shops.  We went to the blacksmith's shop and got the rings made out of nails that they give to everyone.  Apparently Chrisser's family went to the blacksmith's shop every time they went to Nauvoo, so he insisted that you simply have to do that every time :).

The next day we headed back out on the road.  We stopped and visited Adam-ondi-Ahman and had a little picnic by the sign.  The sign is all that's there besides farms, but I still enjoyed getting to see it.  We took turns taking pictures of each other by the sign, and I pretended that I'm skilled enough at photo editing to make it look like we were in the same picture.  Don't laugh at the obviousness of it, k?

After lunch we continued on to Independence, MO, where we stayed the night.  We went to the visitor's center and had a tour of it from a sister missionary, then went across the street and saw the temple lot.  I was kind of curious about the Community of Christ temple that is also across the street, but we were tired and just wanted to head to the hotel by that point.  The next day pretty much all we did was drive to Denver, CO, take pictures of the temple there, and buy some groceries.

The next day was Sunday, so we found a Sacrament Meeting to go to and then headed out again for the last time, arriving at my grandma's house just in time for her birthday party!  (Okay, so we were a little late to the party, but we were in time to get cake and ice cream, which is what really counts...)  All in all it was a fun trip, and it was certainly a lot less stressful than the one to Virginia!

Summer 2013

So, I kinda slacked off on blogging this summer.  Oops.  So this might be a long post (I will make a separate one for our trip back to Utah, though).

We've done a lot of things since going to Philadelphia.  One of them was going to Rehoboth Beach, DE.  It was my first time ever going to the beach, so it was quite an adventure for me.

I think my favorite part was when a wave would wash back out and take the sand out from under my feet.  It seems like a rather simple thing, but I had never felt that before, so it was cool to me.  Chrisser's sister also came and brought her 2 kids, so I had fun with them, too.  And Chrisser had lots of fun building this Mayan Temple thing:

We also took a day and went up to New York City with Chrisser's sister and her family.  We mostly just walked around and went shopping.  We also didn't take many pictures, but we did get one of us with a Minion!

We love minions :).  This one was at the F.A.O. Schwarz toy store.

Just before we left Virginia, we all went and hiked Old Rag.  It was quite the mountain.

In addition to all the little trips we took, Chrisser had lots of fun at the camp where he was an animation counselor.  He loves animation, he loves teaching, and he loves kids, so it was pretty much the perfect job for him.  They even had some costume days, which are another thing Chrisser loves.  I have pictures of all of his outfits on Facebook, but this one for Wacky-Tacky Day was probably my favorite, just because it's so ridiculous:

And while Chrisser was having fun doing that, I was having fun redoing one of the bathrooms in my in-laws' house.

Before: blue-and-white striped wallpaper, floral border, beige ceiling

Middle: trying to pick colors

After: three blue walls, one tan wall, white ceiling

We decided to go with a beach/ocean theme since their sink is a seashell shape and their soap dispenser is a lighthouse.  I had to leave before we had gotten any decorations or the like for the walls, but I got all the painting done. Yay!  I quite enjoyed that job.  I like being able to learn a new skill and to have something to show for my work, and this project gave me both.

And there were some things that I don't have pictures of, like our trip to Amish country, the time we went with Chrisser's brother as he went through the temple the first time, my first time seeing fireflies, the social dance class that Chrisser and I taught at his church building every Friday night, the course I signed up for to become a Medical Transcriptionist, and the movies we went to (Monsters University, Despicable Me 2, and Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters).  All in all, it was a pretty eventful summer.

Philly!

Agh, I'm behind again!  Last weekend Chrisser and I took a mini-trip up to Philadelphia, PA.  His sister Sarah lives in a suburb up there with her little family, so we drove up on Friday night, stayed at their place that night, and on Saturday we all spent the morning seeing the sights.  First we went to the visitor's center to pick up tickets for a tour of Independence Hall, but they were for an afternoon tour so we headed over to the Liberty Bell Center first.

Yay.  Then we just kind of wandered around the city for a while.  We stopped at the Verizon store so Sarah could get her pictures transferred from her old phone to her new one, we went to the Reading Terminal Market for lunch (they have just about every kind of food imaginable), and we saw the capitol building.

Then we finally got to go on the tour!  I was really excited.  I've always been fascinated with early American history, so getting to be in the building where the Declaration of Independence was signed and the Constitution was debated and signed was pretty much a dream come true for me.

Sarah's almost-3-year-old son was getting pretty bored and tired by the time the tour got started so she took him outside right at the beginning, but her 4-month-old daughter was well-behaved and kept a few other bored tourists entertained :)

After the tour we all went back to Sarah's place and watched National Treasure.  I had never seen it before and they insisted that I see it now that I had seen the places where they went in the movie.  It actually was pretty cool seeing it right after seeing the real places.  After that Chrisser and I went to get cheese steaks at a diner a few blocks from Sarah's place (Chrisser's dad said that getting cheese steaks in Philly was mandatory) and then headed home.  So now I get to cross another item off my bucket list!

Air and Space Museum

Yesterday I went with some of my in-laws to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.  I didn't find it particularly interesting, but it was still really fun just because my nephew, who is almost 3, was so excited about the whole thing.

The whole time he was saying things like, "Come on, Mommy!  Wet's go find Wawee!"  He was absolutely convinced that we were going to find Wall-E.  And even though we never did, he loved looking at the planes and cars and watching a video loop of a space shuttle taking off.

We may not have found Wall-E, but some of us older folks got to geek out a little bit when we found this:

A USS Enterprise model that was actually used in filming!  Pretty exciting.  That museum was the only thing we went and saw that day, but that's fine.  That's the nice thing about having relatives that live so close to DC--you don't feel like you have to see everything in one or two days; you can always come back later.

Our Cross-Country Dash

So last week we had to drive from Utah to Virginia in 3 1/2 days.  We couldn't leave any earlier than Thursday afternoon because Chrisser had to finish up some things for his application for the animation program, and we had to make it by Monday because we thought Chrisser was going to be starting work that day (turns out he didn't actually start until Tuesday, but whatever).

So Thursday afternoon we left Provo and made it to Rawlins, WY, where it took us quite a while to find a hotel to stay at.  We tried about 5 of them before one said he was full but had just gotten a call from the Travelodge a few blocks away saying they had just had a couple of cancellations.  So we went there and paid the whopping $140 that it cost.  The next day we headed across Nebraska (which was very windy) and stopped at Winter Quarters.  One of the sister missionaries gave us a little tour of the visitor's center and then we walked across the street and took a few pictures of the temple.

This was the only place we actually took any pictures.  Hopefully I'll do better on the way back in August.  Anyway, after that we headed back out again and drove about 1 1/2 hours into Iowa.  By then a huge storm had rolled in and it was raining so hard I couldn't really see the roads anymore.  So we pulled off in Stuart, IA to look for somewhere to stay.  Our GPS only found two places.  One of them appeared to be closed down (no lights on, several letters missing from their sign...), and the other one said they were full and that we would have to go all the way to Des Moines to find something.  So we got back in the car and prayed that we would be able to find a place safely (it was raining even harder now), and then Chrisser headed back towards I-80.  Before we actually got on the ramp, however, he said he just couldn't see the road and that he thought we should pull into the gas station across the way and wait for the storm to let up a bit.  So we pulled in among the huge semi trucks and waited a couple minutes, but the storm just got worse.  About a minute later, Chrisser looked behind us and saw this little motel tucked back in the corner of the parking lot with it's vacancy sign lit.  We were saved!  So Chrisser went in and got us the last non-smoking room (thankfully that one was only $45) and came back out to help me get our stuff.  The rain had just kept getting worse this whole time, and by the time he got back to the car the wind was so rough it was rocking the car back and forth.  We decided not to open the trunk to get our bag of clothes out, so all we had was our toiletries, my purse, and our little cooler of food.  But we grabbed that stuff and ran/pushed our way to the motel.  It was only about 30 feet, but we were completely soaked by the time we got in.  Once we were inside I said, "That wasn't even rain; that was just...water...in the sky...."  Yeah, it was crazy.  We had hung all our clothes up and they were still soaked the next morning.  But we had a bed to sleep on, so we were happy.

Saturday we headed out again.  We passed through the rest of Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana, and stopped at my cousin's house in Ohio for the night.  We were very glad that she and her husband live where they do.  We didn't have to go searching for a hotel that night, we got to dry our clothes from the day before, and we got to relax, visit, and play a couple games with them.  I hadn't seen them in almost 2 years and Chrisser had never met them, so I was glad for the chance to see them.

The next morning we went to church with my cousin's family and then headed out for the last leg of our journey, arriving at Chrisser's parents' place just after 6:30pm.  Just in time for Father's Day!  It was a fun trip, especially for me.  I had never been anywhere in between Utah and Virginia, having flown every other time I had gone out east.  We also had lots of yummy snacks, we listened to a couple of Chris Heimerdinger's Tennis Shoes books on tape, and I read several chapters of Phil Vischer's Me, Myself & Bob out loud.  And of course we enjoyed getting to be together 24/7 for a couple of days, especially since Chrisser had been on campus pretty much all day every day the previous couple of weeks getting his portfolio ready and working on his final for his figure drawing class.  I'm already looking forward to our trip back!

Manti Pageant Set-up

Life has been so crazy the past couple days trying to get moved out of our apartment that I almost forgot to post about last Saturday!  My bishop's sister is the secretary to the president of the Mormon Miracle Pageant in Manti, so he offered up our ward to go help set up for it.  Chrisser didn't get to go because he was feverishly working on his final project for a drawing class (he spent 12 hours on campus that day), but I went.  Such a cool experience!  We left Provo at about 5:00am.  When we got there the men began loading sheets of "rock" in the warehouse onto trailers,

and us women were given nails that were probably 8 or 9 inches long, a rough map, and a tape measure and told to go start stabbing the ground to find the holes where they put the fence posts every year.  It was interesting :)

Once we had found all the holes we got to put the posts in them.  After the fence was done we hauled out all the props.  Sadly I didn't get a picture of it, but we got to have a little mini trek (aka, they needed the handcarts taken from the warehouse around to the hill, so we each grabbed one and pulled it).  That was pretty much all I did.  One thing I was glad I wasn't doing was attaching the lights to the towers:

Yeah, they're pretty tall...  They had a few of the men harnessed to each one working on that.  It was really cool, but I probably would have died.

As we were getting lunch, one of the men from Manti said that in years past, they would normally get the main scenery set up, then have lunch, then do the fence, and maybe get around to pulling out the props around rehearsal time that night.  We had all of that done by lunchtime.  Needless to say they were pretty glad we had come to help :).

And--a couple more pictures just because I have them.

Sorry my pics aren't very good quality--I took them with my phone since I didn't want to take my camera and risk losing it.

Here are some kids rehearsing.