Locks of Love

I know this is old news for those of you who saw us over Christmas break (probably the entire readership of this blog), but we didn't want to want to post the pictures before we saw you in person.  Sarah decided after we moved to Oklahoma that she wanted to cut her hair so it wouldn't get tangled as much because of the wind.  Because it was so long, she wanted to donate her hair to "Locks of Love."  At the time, I didn't think her hair was that long, but now as I look back at the pictures, I'm amazed that her hair was so long.

Without further ado, here are the before pictures:

 

  

 Because her hair was layered when it was long, Sarah and her stylist decided that in order to maximize the donation, they would cut off five pony tails rather than one.  (So, she ended up with one pony tail straight up and four around the sides of her head.)

  

  

  

And then the cutting began:

  

  

 

  

 

 Although I wasn't a big fan at first (I didn't admit that to Sarah), I've come to like Sarah's new haircut now.  Even though Sarah still hasn't received confirmation that "Locks of Love" received her hair donation, it's the thought that counts, right?

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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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