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.