Grand Canyon, Sort Of

While driving from Oklahoma to Las Vegas, Sarah and I decided to stop by the Grand Canyon since neither of us had ever been there before.  The only problem we ran into was that the National Park was closed because of snow at five the night before we got there and they weren't sure it was going to open because snow was in the forecast.  Sarah and I didn't think it was worth $25 to bet against the weather, so we took some pictures from the scenic view points outside of the park:

(I realize that there is no snow in the pictures, but the entrance to the park is at a higher elevation and about 20 miles away.)

  

  

 

  

  

  

 

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Chickasha Festival of Light

On Sunday, Sarah and I went with our friends, the Barbers, to see the Festival of Light in Chickasha, Oklahoma (population: 16,036).  How big is the Festival of Light in Chickasha, Oklahoma, you ask?  Big enough that there are permanent road signs (up all year) to guide you to the park where the lights are.  The lights are in the city park that has a lake in the middle.  I apologize in advance if any of the pictures are blurry - it was pretty cold and it's hard to keep a cold hand steady.

Here are some of the highlights

  

 

The tall light tree can be seen for miles.

  

(Yes, that's a monster in the lake.)

 

Bryan, Sarah, Kate, Tyler (too busy to look for the picture)

 

Sarah though a snowflake like this could become my dad's next light project.

 

  

 

  

 A real, live camel

  

 

 

On the bridge over the lake

 

My personal favorite:  Here is Bryan with the lights.

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TMQ Fame

I'm pretty sure that none of you read the TMQ column on ESPN.com.  If you do, you must have missed the December 11th column.  I know this because the only person who has asked me about this was my brother Ben, after a young man he works with in scouts asked him if he had a brother in Norman, Oklahoma.  Otherwise, he wouldn't have known about it either.

I'm sure that I've lost most of you by now, but if I haven't, allow me to explain.  TMQ is short for Tuesday Morning Quarterback and is a weekly column written by Gregg Easterbrook.  (If you'd like to know more, you can check out it's Wikipedia page, or previous columns on ESPN.com.)  I started reading his column a while ago and they are typically quite lengthy and cover mostly football and politics, but sometimes other topics as well.  He likes different statistics, such as writing about teams that gain more than 600 yards in a game yet lose or encourages teams to always go for it on fourth down because the odds are in their favor.  

He also invites readers to email him when they see things, such as football games with a combined score over 100 points, teams getting artificial turf fields that are a color different than green, etc.  One of these things that he asked readers to email him about is called the Christmas creep.  The Christmas creep is basically when retailers move forward the Christmas shopping season.  In his December 4th column, he mentioned that a reader had pointed out to him that the Christmas creep originated when the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary to announce Christ's birth nearly a year before it happened.

Since he invites readers to email him, I thought I'd give it a try.  I told him about Samuel the Lamanite's prophecy of Christ's birth five years before it occurred, which would have been a specific announcement of the day four years prior to Gabriel's announcement to Mary.  I didn't think much of it, but the next morning I got a short reply: "thanks will mention and thanks for the kind words -- best Gregg"

So, I can't say I was completely surprised when I saw this in the following week's column:

 

Although it was not the first time the Book of Mormon has been mentioned on ESPN.com (a search for "Book of Mormon" yielded one result - this column from 2003), to the best of my knowledge it is the first time the Book of Mormon has been quoted on ESPN.com.  I was a little surprised that he followed the quotation with a jab at the Book of Mormon, even though Sarah told me I should have seen it coming.  On the bright side, he did include a link to the online version.  Missionary work can occur in mysterious ways.  I've always been a fan of the more creative approaches.

For those of you who are interested in reading the whole column (which I'm sure is none of you) here is the link.  (It's about two-thirds the way down, but it's easiest to find by looking for the picture.)

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Christmas Card Photo Shoot

I'm convinced that the only people who look at our blog are those who received our Christmas card this year (and probably only a portion of them actually checked it out when they got the card).  But in the unlikely instance that there is someone who hasn't seen this picture yet, here is our Christmas card picture for this year:

 

Not that exciting, I know.  However, the exciting part was getting that photo taken.  Across the street from our apartment complex there is a field with large trees and bushes.  The combination of seeing these every day, thinking about the Christmas card we needed to send, and not having a good picture of just the two of us from this year led me to one conclusion:  We could run over there for a quick photo shoot and kill three birds with one stone.

Rather than dragging a friend into doing a free photo shoot for us, we decided to build our own photographer.  With Sarah working on her research in the other room, I put together our tripod.

While some may enjoy our Christmas card picture more, I thought the best part was our photographer, who didn't get any credit until now.  Here is our photographer, posing with me and Sarah.

  

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Thanksgiving in St. Louis

With our closest family members a mere 8-hour drive away, we decided to go to St. Louis for Thanksgiving where we stayed with Sarah's cousins, the Slezaks.  It was a rather exciting weekend, and I'll try to cover as many of our adventures as I can.

On Wednesday, we took a trip to the St. Louis Zoo.  (For those who haven't caught on already, Sarah really likes going to zoos and I'm sure our kids will love that.)  

Highlights from the zoo :

Watching two chimpanzees walk in unison, swaying back and forth with each step.  (I'm pretty sure they knew they were putting on a show.)

 

The new sea lion exhibit, complete with underwater tunnel.

 

(Yes, I am really proud of my live action shot of a sea lion.)

 

Sarah's aunt, Kristie (in the purple) and cousins, Anna (blue) and Lacy (white) checking out the sea lions.

  

Hearing a lion roar in real life (and capturing it in a life action shot).

 

Getting to see Sarah so excited (giraffe in background doesn't seem to be as excited).

 

Pretending to be sea lions (at least some of us).  Sarah's grandma is in the yellow (visiting from Oregon).

For the sake of those involved, we didn't take any pictures on Thanksgiving (so they wouldn't have any of those "before" weight-loss pictures floating around online).  Okay, the real reason is because we forgot.  The morning began with Terry (Sarah's uncle) and me going to play football with some families in their stake.  That was followed by Thanksgiving dinner with the Tuttles (a couple from their stake that they have had Thanksgiving with for many years - only this time none of their children were at home).

Sarah and I decided we would go Black Friday shopping for the first time.  We were shocked at how crowded Walmart's parking lot was at 10pm on Thanksgiving, and even more blown away when we got inside.  It was a mad house.  After finding what we were looking for (you'll have to wait for the Christmas post to find out what may have been purchased), and looking at how long the lines were, I decided to try an old adage I learned from my parents: "If you don't a-s-k, you don't g-e-t."  So, I asked a group of Walmart employees where the shortest line would be.  They looked at me like I was crazy and as if to say How would we know where the shortest line is - we're in the back of the store?  Then one of them said, "You could try the sporting goods section.  I don't know if that register is open, but it's worth a try."  Worth a try it was.  We were second in line at a register that was just opening.  I think we may be one of very few people that spent more time looking for what we wanted on Black Friday than actually standing in line.

From Walmart, we headed over to Shoe Carnival, because they were giving $10 gift cards to the first one hundred people in line and Sarah and Lacy each wanted a new pair of shoes.  I figured that even though we would have to wait in line for an hour before the store opened, they were essentially paying us $10/hr to do so.  After we'd been in line for a while, Kristie and her girls joined us in line, where we played the game "Life" on Lacy's iPod while waiting for the store to open. 

 

Our next adventure was when we went to a place called the City Museum with Anna and Lacy.  I'm not sure what qualifies something to be a "museum," but this is basically a huge playground, made of recycled materials in an old, nine-story shoe warehouse.  Sister Tuttle (from Thanksgiving dinner) described it to us as a hamster cage for humans.  That sounded pretty accurate to us once we got there.  There were tight spaces and more secret passageways than a kid could dream of.  I've posted the pictures we took while we were there, but it's one of those places that you actually have to go to in order to soak it all in (as if most places aren't like that).

As we were going to the outdoor section of the "museum," I got stopped by a worker who asked me where my parents were.  I stared at him and wondered why he would need to know that my parents are in Utah.  Since I couldn't figure out why I should tell him where they were, I didn't.  Undeterred by my lack of response, he continued in his interrogation, asking me how old I am.  "Twenty-five," I responded, with a questioning tone.  "Oh," his face said and we were free to go.  Apparently, I look like I am under the age of 16 (and require an adult chaperon by their rules), while Lacy (age 11) and Sarah (who looks the same as she did when she was 15, current age undisclosed) look somewhere between the age of old enough to not need a chaperon and old enough to be my mom.

I'll start with the picture of the nine-story slide (kind of hard to see because it was dark, but it's the spiraling chute) and Sarah coming out at the bottom.  The rest of the pictures are just trying to capture the essence of the City Museum, and don't really need explanation.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

Sarah and I also did a session at the St. Louis Temple with Terry.

  

Overall, it was a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend with Nana and the Slezaks in St. Louis.

  

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