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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Ferocious Beard...No More

I mentioned a little in the Halloween post about how much Sarah liked my beard.  One of the first conversations we had about it after she got back here went a little like this:

"Why don't you trim your beard a little?"

"Why do I need to trim my beard?"

"Well, for one, it looks un... how do you think it looks?"

"Ferocious.  Kind of like a lion.  What were you going to say?"

"Unkempt."

"Oh."

"Do you think you could say that it's ferocious instead?"

(This led to multiple jokes about ferocity over the next couple weeks, one of them being the fact that Sarah actually used the word ferocity in conversation.)

Then, I convinced Sarah that I couldn't trim my beard until after Halloween because we all know that lumberjacks don't trim their beards.  However, once Sarah returned from Pittsburgh, the day of reckoning had arrived.

(For some reason, Sarah didn't like the fact that when I smiled, my mustache covered part of my teeth.)

 

  

(Or that I would occasionally comb out my beard.)

I was, however, able to convince her to cut my hair before I would trim my beard.

 

 After she started, she wanted to take a picture to show how long my hair was.

 

I don't know how many of you have seen this picture floating around on Facebook, but I definitely felt that way with my beard.

 

  

  

 For those of you wondering what my beard looked like from behind.

I then started progressively trimming my beard, taking occasional pictures for your enjoyment.

(I even got Sarah to take a couple of her favorites.)

 

 

 

 

 

 For those wondering which one was Sarah's favorite, it was this one (above).  We almost went and bought something at Walmart when it looked like this, just to fit in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first time Sarah kissed me after getting back from Utah.

(Once I had shaved the beard, Sarah changed her opinion of the beard from "unkempt" to "you looked like a hermit."  I guess once it was gone she felt she could tell me how she really felt.)

  

 I almost feel like I was on the biggest loser. 

 

And this is all that remains of the ferocious beard.

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Halloween

I've been growing a beard ever since Sarah left to go back to Utah to finish her experiments.  Once Brandon got back from visiting us and had actual evidence of my beard, my mom decided to post about the familial facial hair on her blog. Unfortunately, nobody voted on her blog (probably because they couldn't decide), although Brad did complain that he wasn't given enough time to fully participate in the competition (not to mention the trouble he would run into with the Honor Code).  Luckily, Ben posted a link on Facebook, where some voting did occur:

 

I don't want to point out who got the most votes, so I'll draw your attention to the comment from Michael Lundberg.  Now you can see the inspiration for my Halloween costume.  I told Sarah that I would love to trim my beard for her, but it just wouldn't be quite like a lumberjack to have a well kept beard.  Although neither of us wanted to, we decided to let my beard keep growing.  

The night of a friend's Halloween party arrived and we were finally able to show off our costumes:

Lumberjack and his beloved tree.

(We were going to do Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox, but we were afraid someone would accuse us of copying them.)

  

 (Our friend Tyler went as a pinata that he made out of party streamers.)

  

 On Halloween day, Sarah dressed up as a researcher who was presenting to her sponsors at a conference in Pittsburgh.  I thought she took it a little far with actually buying a plane ticket to fly all the way out there.

 

I dressed as a lumberjack on that day as well, though people weren't sure if I was in costume or if I just normally wear those clothes (welcome to Oklahoma).

 

Unfortunately, my excitement for trick-or-treaters was for naught as zero came to our apartment that night.

However, I think I know a lumberjack who won't mind a little extra candy.

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Tag, That's It

Monday morning, I got a text that was a surprise for two reasons.  First, Sarah had taken our Mazda to the tag agency to get an Oklahoma tag (that's what they call license plates out here in the old Indian Territory) and second, we had forgotten to change the insurance on the Mazda to Oklahoma insurance.  

The result: One unsuccessful attempt to register our car in Oklahoma as a car needs valid Oklahoma insurance to be registered here.

Tuesday morning, I got a phone call that was a surprise for two reasons.  First, Sarah usually doesn't call me while I'm at school (she texts me) and second, the VIN on our Oklahoma insurance card didn't match the VIN on the Utah title or the VIN on the actual car.

The result: A second unsuccessful attempt to register our car in Oklahoma as a car needs its VIN to match both the VIN on the title and the VIN on the valid Oklahoma insurance to be registered here.

Wednesday morning, I got a text that was a surprise for two reasons.  First, Sarah had successfully registered our Mazda here in Oklahoma, and second, there weren't any problems.

The result:  Our Mazda is finally registered in Oklahoma even though we didn't get the new tag put on the car until Friday.  (We figured we'd run in to some sort of problem like breaking a screw or the holes not lining up with the old license plate so we didn't attempt anything tag-related on Thursday.)

Take home lesson:  If you're going to move, move at the same time as your spouse so you only have to do things like changing car insurance and registration once rather than twice.  That way the likelihood of forgetting something important like actually changing the insurance or giving them the right VIN goes down drastically.

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Reunited Again

Last weekend, I was reunited with two people I hadn't seen for a long time: Sarah, who I hadn't seen for six and a half weeks while she was finishing up her experiments and Brandon, who I hadn't seen since before Sarah and I met.

So, in order to surprise them, I left the door to the apartment unlocked and waited outside to try and get some good live action shots of them really excited to see me.  The only problem I had was that I had hidden too far from the front door to get a picture of them before they were inside.  Then I sneaked up to the front door with camera in hand (glad that none of my neighbors were watching).  Once inside, I realized that they hadn't quite started their search for me.  I hid behind a door and caught Brandon's eye, silently telling him that I wanted to surprise Sarah.  He understood and went along with my plan (some things never change even when you're gone on your mission for two years).  I followed Sarah without her noticing and then captured this intense moment with my camera.

 

 Yeah, I was a little disappointed with the picture as well.  So much for that plan.  (She was just started to text me to ask me where I was.  She didn't think it was as funny as I did.)

Brandon was nice enough to take a picture of our reunion.

 

  

 If you can't tell, Sarah was a little distracted by my beard.  She decided that rather than continuing to hug me, she needed to text our families and show them what I had done while she was gone.
She's not alone in her infatuation with my beard.  (Check out my mom's blog for the most recent beard contest.)

(Apologies to my mom for not getting a picture of the embrace Brandon I enjoyed after everyone received the "Check out Bryan's beard" text.  When you think about it, not having a picture of us hugging can't be that much worse than only having a picture of my butt while we're hugging though.  Apologies to my dad for bringing up that sore subject again.)

I hope Brandon enjoyed his time out here before flying back.  In his own words, "I can't believe I came halfway across the country just to play games.  That's what I was doing all the time in Utah."

It was definitely nice to have Brandon around so we could play three player games, which we haven't done in a while.  We also went and saw The Dark Night Rises and bought some discs and played disc golf until it was too dark.  (Ben would be proud.)

  

 Since we didn't have any pictures with Brandon, we decided to take one with all the games that we played with him during the few days that he was here.  As you can tell from the big smile on his face, he won most of the games.  (Sarah and I are practicing for when we become parents.  For those of you who will read way too much into that last comment, Sarah is not pregnant.  We just wanted Brandon to feel good about himself, so we let him win a lot of the games.)

The last day that Brandon was here, he went to the temple and the zoo with Sarah while I was at school.  The highlights for both of them included the following:

Being told by an older lady at the temple that they would have beautiful blue-eyed children

Brandon getting asked by a teenager at the zoo why he was wearing a white shirt and a tie.  Brandon's response:  "Because we're mormons and we just went to the temple." Sarah then added, "I decided to change afterwards."

Getting to see the baby elephant at the zoo (Sarah was especially excited about this one).

 

 Good thing she bought a year-long pass while they were there.  Something tells me I'm going to be seeing more of this baby elephant.

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