Manti Pageant and Stuart Falls

It’s hard to believe that it’s almost the end of June. This month has flown by, especially since starting a summer class this past Monday. It’s called Assessing Learning Outcomes. It’s a 4 credit class about the best ways to assess whether or not the students are learning what they’re supposed to, including how to write many different kinds of tests. Anyway, I have it M - Th for two hours a day and we have a test every other week and a project due on the weeks we don’t have tests. I really enjoyed the substitute professor we had this week, Dr. Richard Sudweeks, an expert and professional in the field of educational assessment.

Last Sunday was Father’s Day. We spent the day with Jason’s family where we had an extended family get-together, something that doesn’t happen very often in his family, but I guess the stars were aligned and lots of people were in town. Besides his sister and two brothers and their families, there were both sets of grandparents there; Aunt Nancy and Uncle Bruce, who are about to start a mission in Washington; their daughter Amanda and her family; Uncle Gary and his son Stephan from Texas who just started BYU as a freshman; his cousin Alex who was there for basketball camp; his cousin Andrea, who goes to BYU, and her friend Nate. Anyway, we had about 30 people there. It was nice to talk to them and get to know them more than just names. So, happy Father’s Day!

In addition to classes this week, I’ve been working on finding resources to teach motivation in my research and I attended a BYU conference on course design for about 5 hours on Friday. It was kind of fun to work with a conglomeration of BYU professors from all the disciplines in trying to improve the courses here at BYU. I must say that I think more that anything, it boosted my confidence in what I’ve been learning because there wasn’t much said that was novel to me since many of my classes focus on the kinds of things they were teaching at the conference. And the free lunch was also a great incentive!

Friday Jason and I decided to go to the Manti Pageant. We wanted to go last weekend, but it just kept raining and was cold so we decided to go this week. After a rainy afternoon, we were glad it cleared up in time for the pageant. After we got past Spanish Fork Jason said, “Where are we? This doesn’t look like Utah.” We enjoyed a beautiful green drive down to Manti and it felt like we were really far from home. The pageant itself was pretty good. It had been years since I’ve seen it, and Jason had never seen it. It was a little over dramatic for me, but the costuming and the stage production in general was really well done. We had great seats about 15 rows backs in the center, and we were able to get out quickly so we didn’t have to wait for a long line of cars to get out of Manti afterwards. It turned out really well.

This morning we got up and went on a ward hike up to Stuart Falls near the Timpanogos trailhead up by Sundance. The ward turnout ended up being three other couples besides ourselves, but we had fun and had a good chance to get to know the other couples better. It was fun to get out and hike a little and the trail was pretty shady. With all the winter run off and rainfall we’ve had, the falls were much more magnificent than usual. Definitely worth the hike!

Jason spends most of his time working at the coding lab, taking care of the responsibilities of his calling, or spending time with me. :) One nice addition this week has been that he has been taking care of fixing dinners. Since my summer class is between 5:00 and 7:00pm, he decided that he would try cooking the meals. He even made Curry on Monday when Steve and Kirsten came over for dinner! He does a great job! . . . so much so that I’ve decided to take all of my classes between 5:00 and 7:00 from now on! J

June 7

Last Tuesday Jason and I decided to try a new exercise routine. Usually when I want to exercise Jason will come run or bike with me or something. The problem is that what is “exercise” for me not even “breaking a sweat” for him. He never complains about it because he generally just likes being with me, but for some reason it’s hard not to feel bad when I’m huffing and puffing and he’s going around me in circles. Anyway, we decided to try something new, I would ride the one bike we have and he would run. Now, if we’re going on flat ground there’s no contest who would win, but going uphill is another story. So we went up to the MTC from our apartment (probably about 4-5 miles round trip), Jason running and me riding the bike. It’s pretty much all uphill and it was just as I suspected, we were pretty much going at the same speed. Granted on the way down I had to slow down just a little, but Jason ran all the way there and back again without stopping. And you know what, the next day he had sore muscles. That doesn’t happen very often and he didn’t even know what sore muscles really felt like for the first 6 mo. of our marriage! I’m glad I could introduce him back to a “real” workout again. I won’t even mention the fact that when we got back to our apartment he started hopping up and down the stairs on one leg because he said “his muscles didn’t get a very good workout.” All I can say is that I hope our children inherit his physical skills and ability.

Wednesday at institute was definitely a surprise for us. We’ve been looking around to find an institute to go to since Jason has Bishopric meeting on the night our stake institute meets. I looked on-line and found a contact number for our area. I made Jason call, and the person on the phone said that the information on-line was correct and invited us to come, so we headed over there and were very surprised to find that in was an institute program especially for young adults with special needs. Needless to say that our institute experience was quite different from the one we anticipated; but I still learned a lot about Heber J. Grant and I will never forget how helpful and kind everyone was, nor will I forget the enthusiastic leading of the opening and closing hymn, or the spiritual thought about the movie “Titanic.” ☺

Thursday I helped out a sister that I visit teach by watching her 18 mo. old while she and her husband went out to eat and shopping. The little girl Emily slept for the first two hours, but when she woke up we played with almost every toy, read almost every book, and went in almost every room of the apartment in about an hour and half. I was starting to wonder what moms do with one and half year olds every day if I had already done it all in an hour and a half when her parents came home and I didn’t have to worry about it anymore.

Friday Jason and I babysat Jeff and Sally’s three kids and then later Steve and Kirsten dropped off Ben as well. It went really well minus the crying babies, but it just gives us good practice for being parents right?

Saturday morning I took the Praxis II Principles of Learning and Teaching exam at BYU. It’s a standardized test given by ETS and required for teachers getting their permanent license. It also happens to mostly be based off the class that I teach, Educational Psychology. So, since I have to take the test if I ever want to go back to teaching and I working right now to help revamp the course to better prepare the students to take the test, I thought I would take advantage of the opportunity to count my study and preparation hours as work hours too and get paid for it. The test went pretty well and hopefully I scored well too.

That night Jason and I went to meet our new three-week-old niece Kira Rogers in Riverton. She is really cute and very fun to hold. It’s hard to believe how small she is!



Jason and our niece Kira

Memorial Day Trip to Denver

Well, the last two weeks have definitely kept Jason and I moving. Last weekend Jason and I flew to Denver to visit with the Rogers, Eliasons, and Roberts. It was so nice to see Melody and Brandon again since I haven’t seen them since our wedding, and Emily and Mordechai are definitely entertaining. We arrived Friday around noon and spent some time throwing the Frisbee with Emily and taking her to the nearby park with her bear named “Fabulous.” Melody and Brandon came in that night and we talked and played games a lot of the weekend. We went to the Butterfly pavilion on Saturday and Jason (as well as everyone else except me) had a tarantella walk across his/her hands! I was too afraid to get that close. Sunday we had a good day at church and after the kids were asleep that night we had a great FHE for Memorial Day about remembering what legacies our grandparents had left us. We listened to part of Grandpa Rasband’s funeral and then we each shared specific traits or characteristics that we had learned from our grandparents. Monday morning the girls went to IHOP for breakfast and to do a little shopping. We didn’t find anything we wanted to buy, although Kristilyn and I had fun trying on really, really high heels and trying to practice walking in them. We had a good laugh. ☺ Melody and Brandon had to leave in the afternoon and then later that night we went to Red Robin and played some mini-golf. All the little kids were having a ball trying to drag the balls into the holes . . . until this huge, loud volcano went off right next to us, complete with fire coming out the top and a lot of heat that came with it. James and Emily were scared to death and started crying hysterically. James kept saying for the next several hours, “no like volcano.” Emily actually flipped out again at the end when the last statue totem pole that eats up your golf ball and sporadically sprays water surprised both Emily and Mike and soaked them both. Other games that we played were Ticket to Ride, Carcassone, Dance, Dance Revolution, and Mariokart. We would have liked to get outside more, but it rained all weekend. Oh well, we had some good lighting and thunder storm which taught Grant and James the word for thunder.

Another hit with James and Grant was the cool slide in the basement and the two banana chairs. They loved going down the slide over and over again and also pushing their toys down the slide before them. They also loved standing up on the banana chairs and facing the back of the chair and then leaning into them to make them fall down. Then giggling, wiggling off, and running around the chair to do it again and again. It was quite the entertainment.

Desi was an amazing hostess and prepared delicious meals every day we were there. I tried to help her with the meals a couple of times, but she always managed to be just finishing with it. We also had yummy desserts almost every night. Thanks Desi and Mike!

Tuesday we drove back to Salt Lake with Kristilyn and Mark and boy do they know how to take a trip with two-year-olds. The boys did really well with the rest stops every couple of hours, a nice long lunch at the McDonald’s playland, and a couple Disney movies to watch. It was a nice little break from work and it was hard to want to go back.
Unfortunately, every vacation must have an end, and I feel like I’m been running around in circles a lot ever since. The night we drove into Denver we didn’t even make it to our apartment. Jason’s brother Steve and his wife were away last week and this week saying goodbye to family and trying to find an apartment to live in New York City for next month, so Jason and I have been staying at their house on the weekdays to help take care of Scottie. (He’s the one that came to Jason’s and my sealing. He’s 6’ 3’’ and several hundred pounds, so you can’t miss him.)

Last week Scottie participated in the Special Olympics for the 25m dash, 50m dash, and the softball throw. We watched him compete on Thursday last week and some a little time with his parents Elder and Sister Zwick of the Seventy. Scottie did really well and medaled in all three events with a gold in the 25m dash. He was very proud, and so were his parents. I think he’s been wearing his medals around his neck every day since.

Another funny moment with Scottie was Sunday night when we were sitting upstairs on the couch waiting for Jason to come home from a home teaching appointment. Scottie was in an especially good mood and when Jason came home we were all laughing with Scottie and having a good time. Well, as we were laughing we heard some creaks in the couch which only made us laugh harder as Scottie would say, “Oh no, there it goes again.” After several minutes when we all got up to go to bed we realized that all those creaks was Scottie sinking further and further to the ground, and by the end, his side of the couch was pretty much on the ground. The sad thing is that the couch is broken, but the good thing is that we were all laughing really hard when it happened.

Other than that Jason and I continue to work a lot and spend the rest of our time together. We discovered a new game this last weekend called “Dominion” that liked so much that we bought it on Saturday and have been trying to find time to play it. We’re still learning how to play it, but we really like it so far. We’ve also started playing tennis with Jason’s parents occasionally on Tuesday mornings which is fun. I haven’t played tennis much, so it’s a good thing that Jason is on my team. :)

Tandem Bikes and Zoos

Well, today is my 10 mo. anniversary. It’s hard to believe that I have already been married 10 months and I can still clearly remember the feeling of thinking I would never get married. Time goes by so fast!!! Jason has been saying lately, “It would be so different to be single right now. It’s such a different life.”

Jason wants you to know that I would have written this earlier but he has been quite the chatterbox in telling me lots of stories from his mission and from junior high. I like to go on real walks, but sometimes he just likes to go on walks down memory lane. He gets really excited about it and I think we would be in Korea right now if I could speak the language at all. ☺

Today has been a pretty mellow day. Jason has had his hands full with his church responsibilities. I think he was doing three people’s callings, and when two of them are ward clerk and executive secretary, he was really busy. So busy in fact that he missed both Sunday School and Priesthood today trying to help the Bishop out. I tried out a modified recipe of some peanut butter chocolate chip cookies today and they turned out pretty well.

Yesterday Jason and I went out on more of an official date. Jason has been noticing my excitement over the people riding tandem bikes lately, so we rented one for the day and rode out to Utah Lake from our house. It was a lot trickier that it looks. We didn’t have any gears and to use the brakes, we had to back pedal, just like my good old red banana seat bike when I was little. Anyway, I first tried sitting in the back and letting Jason steer, but I must admit it was kind of wobbly and a little unnerving to not be able to see or steer. I convinced him to let me be in front and that’s how we stayed for most of the journey. Somewhere along the way I decided our bike riding adventure was a good metaphor for our marriage; Jason provides the power and I give us direction. ☺ He thought that was really funny.

We stopped by a park on the way back and had a picnic lunch and played some Frisbee. The only hitch in our whole date was when Jason noticed his back getting wet about 15 minutes into our ride. As we rode across a river on a bridge he asked, “Are you getting wet?” I said “no” and that was when we realized that our brand new camel backpack had sprung a leak. The leak actually turned into the valve breaking off completely from the bag of water so we had to dump out the rest of the water. Neither of us had even taken a single sip. How disappointing! Before we turned it in that night, we took one last spin on the bike and got some ice cream shakes.

As both Mom and Kristilyn mentioned I went to the zoo with Grant, James and Kristilyn on Monday. It was a perfect day as far as the weather was concerned, unfortunately, everyone else thought so too and it was filled with many, many school kids, and other kids with matching shirts and tags, and possible leashes. ☺ Probably one of the funniest sights at the zoo was James and Grant pushing their own strollers most of the way through the park, especially when we went downhill at one part and James’ stroller got away from him and he chased after it until it crashed into the curb at the bottom and dumped out the precious cargo of his red jacket. He was pretty upset that it got away from him, so we pushed it back up the hill so he could push it back down again by himself.

I was also able to visit with Mom and Dad for a while I was in Salt Lake and that was a lot of fun as well.

Last Saturday Jason and I went with Keith and Kim and Kim’s family to the Oquirrah Mountain Temple Open House. It is a beautiful temple and it was neat to have our group led by Elder Kikuchi. He has such a strong testimony of the gospel and of the Savior and his love for us. That was probably one of my favorite parts.

After the open house we went back to Keith and Kim’s and played hide and seek with Talisa and Ping Pong and Guitar Hero with Keith and Kim. Keith even taught me how to put some spin on the ball, but I’ll need to practice it a lot more if I don’t want to forget.

Those have been our most exciting events in the last couple of weeks. Other than that, we mostly spend our time working, and when we’re not working we play a lot of games together. The game of the last two weeks has been “Lost Cities” which is a 2 player card game given to us by Katrina and Neal (Thanks guys!). It only takes about 15 minutes a game, but it’s not unusual for us to play 2-3 games a day if we have time. It’s really fun! I have also been doing a lot of reading and finished the second book in the Kingdom and the Crown series by Gerald Lund. It’s so nice to be able to read fiction books after reading lots and lots of non-fiction stuff for months and months.

Well, I think that covers most of the big events from us. We’re excited to see Mike and Desi and Melody and Brandon this next weekend and hope that Brandon and Jason’s brother Tim had a terrific birthday last week and that Desi will have a great one this week! We are also very grateful that Anna is doing better and that Katrina, Neal, and Anna are home from the hospital. Our thoughts and prayers have definitely focused on you the last couple of weeks.

May 4

Well, this last week I have been reading, reading, and more reading! I work for a professor and right now he’s just having me do a lot of reading to help me get familiar with the literature for Distance Education and Blended Learning. Let’s just say that several hours of reading journal articles every day is enough to make any day seem really long. I guess this is definitely another way to make the summer longer. ☺

Jason on the other hand is spending a lot of time in the coding lab. He’s a team leader now so he doesn’t do as much coding, but he keeps plenty busy. He actually did some work for his dad at a townhouse that he just bought to rent out. Apparently he painted the whole inside of the garage with a few coats of paint. I didn’t know my husband was such a good painter, but I’ll have to keep that in mind for future reference. ;)

I would say this has definitely been a week of family. We did something with someone’s family almost every day this week! Monday we had a Bham FHE at Jeff and Sally’s house. I was somewhat responsible for dinner and Jason took care of the lesson and did a great job.

Tuesday, Jason and I took Jason’ Korean friend Pap Young Hah to see Temple Square. We were able to visit Mom and Dad at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building and see where they spend they’re days. Mom is right; Temple Square is gorgeous right now! The tulips were unbelievable and much more amazing than Thanksgiving Point when we saw it a couple weeks ago. (For the record, apparently the tulips all came out after we went and it’s supposed really pretty right now.) Anyway, we toured the Church Museum a little, as well as the Assembly Hall and Conference Center, and finished up watching the Joseph Smith Movie. It’s such a great film. I forget how sad it is. We would have stayed longer, but we were all starving, so we drove a little outside of Salt Lake and ate a very late lunch at a Korean Restaurant. It was very yummy, and Jason especially liked it!

Friday we had Jason’s brother Jeff and his wife Sally over to our apartment for dinner. They had still never seen our apartment and had both had birthdays recently, so we celebrated them a little late. After cleaning, rearranging furniture, and hanging up some pictures our apartment is definitely feeling a lot more “home”y. For anyone who still hasn’t seen it, you’re more than welcome to come over. We may even feed you dinner as well. ☺

Saturday was Jeff and Sally’s daughter’s 2nd birthday, so we stopped by for a princess party complete with crowns, princess games, and princess cake. Lots of fun!

Sunday we were in home for Dad’s birthday dinner with Frank and Lillis. The dinner was very yummy and we had a lot of fun talking, and playing with James, Grant, and Talisa. It’s nice to live close to a lot of family!

The only notable thing this week is that we bought a used window A/C from someone off craigslist on Wednesday. It hasn’t really been that hot so far this season, but just remembering how hot it was in our bedroom last summer was motivation enough. Since the A/C we have right now is on the opposite side of our apartment, the cold air pretty much never makes it to our bedroom, so it probably averages about 85 degrees in our bedroom day and night.

April 26

So, I guess we survived the last week of school and finals week. It was pretty intense at the time, but it all seems like a dream now. I got all my classes finished last week. Even though I didn’t have any classes after Mon., I spent many, many hours every day trying to finish a research paper on Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK) which is a framework for technology integration into teaching. I have read and studied and coded and analyzed and discussed TPACK for enough hours that I don’t really care to learn anymore about it ever again! But perhaps that will change in a few weeks after I’ve given myself a break. I was working a few research hours with a professor and another grad student on all of the TPACK information, but the grad student moved away and is getting married and I’m going to start working on my master’s project, so I don’t know if I’ll do any more research for that professor anymore. It was a really good experience though.

I was also able to finish my statistics final and finish the final loose ends of the Church Museum Department project. One of the people in the department that we presented to sent us a really nice email about the project. In part she said, “I had high expectations when I recommended to Marie that she contact you…and I want you to know that you far exceeded anything I had hoped or dreamed that you would create for us. . . . What you have created is a masterpiece…and I was so amazed by how perfectly it was aligned with every ideal that our department is striving for (and everything I hope to someday be able to accomplish). . . Thank you for being willing to put so much into supporting us and striving to create the very best that the Church History department can offer the world.” It felt good to receive such high compliments after so many long hours of work!

This week I spent many hours grading, grading, and more grading, but I am now done and ready to enter all my grades into the system tomorrow. Yippee! Fortunately, I was able to do a few fun things in the midst of all my grading.

Monday night Jason and I went to a dinner celebration at Susan and Gerrit Gong’s home. We had a little over half of our design team there from the Church History project and we had a delicious dinner. Dr. Gibbons even came, which was fun. After dinner, Susan got out a set of hand chimes and we played “Come, Come Ye Saints.” I thought it was really fun and I got really excited about it.

Tuesday I went to the Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving point with Jason, Sara Moulton, and her roommate Kristen. It was beautiful, but I must admit that I was a little disappointed because almost half of the tulips had not bloomed and in some areas I just had to imagine how pretty it would be in a couple more weeks. The weather was perfect though and I managed to get my first sunburn of the season. Fortunately it wasn’t really that bad.

We went to the Tulip Festival on Tuesday because Sara had major hip surgery on Thursday. Wednesday I went over to help her do her cleaning checks (in return for her expert editing on my TPACK paper). I cleaned out their apartment fridge and freezer and both of them were disgusting! I think it’s been a year or two . . . or four of five since that thing has been cleaned and it was pretty satisfying to leave it behind spotless.

Thursday Jason and I played some racquetball and then Kristilyn, James, and Grant came to visit us in Provo. We played a little in our apartment, played some more at a nearby park, and then topped it off with some Arby’s sandwiches, fries, and milkshakes. It was fun to talk with Kristilyn and see her adorable boys.

Jason’s brother Steve graduated in Accounting from BYU so we went to the convocations on Friday…well at least half of it. It was really long, and after an hour of talks and everything they finally started reading the long list of graduates. Fortunately I married into a family at the beginning of the alphabet, and since he was getting his masters, he was about the 18th in line. After he walked across the stage at the Marriott center, Jason and I left to go visit Sara at the hospital. Apparently they were still reading names an hour and a half later!!! I can’t say that I’m sad that we missed it. ☺ We went over to Steve and Kirsten’s that night for pizza and cake to celebrate.

So, if you’re wondering about Jason’s finals, he finished as well. He’s such a good studier that he likes to save his finals until the end, so out of the four finals he needed to take, he took three of them on the last day of finals, and two of them after 8:00pm that night—He really didn’t mean to wait THAT long on the last two but it somehow ended up working out that way. In any case, he is done, done, done, and enjoying the lightened load of stress. He will just continue working at the coding lab this summer and can work up to 40 hours a week if he can handle working there that many hours a day. ☺ I, on the other hand, just found out the class that I was planning on taking Spring was canceled, so I guess I won’t have anymore school either until Summer term at the end of June. I’m still planning on working for Dr. Rich 20 hours a week, but I may see if I can pick up some other work hours for the next couple of months.

One last thing, I finally got my hair cut again on Friday. I lost both people I knew cut hair to having a baby and the other to getting married, so I got desperate enough and called a hair school. I usually have pretty good luck with hair cuts (I can’t say the same for hair coloring!!!) but I guess my luck ran out. Two hours later I walked out with much shorter hair—some of it much, much shorter than I would have liked! Oh well, it will grow back right? Some of you may even say that you like my hair, but you don’t know what I’m hiding. ☺

April 12

Happy Easter!!! It has been a really good Easter, and one that I’ve focused a lot more on the atonement and the resurrection than I have in some years past. Part of that probably has to do with the Passover dinner that Jason and I went to last night at BYU. It was hosted by Dr. Victor Ludlow. We were there for 5 hours, but we sure came away knowing a lot more about Jewish traditions and culture. I think we both wished we could have come away with that knowledge in only 3 hours.

I got a call asking me to play the piano in sacrament meeting today about 10 minutes before we left for church. I was a little nervous about playing Easter hymns without any practice but it turned out okay. . .except for the introduction of the first song. It’s the worst when you make your big mistakes when no one is singing!

The couple of weeks have been especially busy with the end of the semester so close. We’ve both been up a few nights or early mornings (in Jason’s case) to get are homework done. Of course it’s at busy times like this that unexpected things happen. The unexpected in this case happened at Jason’s basketball game. Usually I don’t go, but I decided I wanted to this time. I was asked to keep track of the points on the scoreboard for the game. Our team was ahead with a couple of minutes to go. Jason had the ball and the other team tried to foul him to stop the clock., and boy did they foul him. I guess it was determined later that someone’s teeth made contact with his head. Anyway, within seconds the blood was running down his head and he had to leave. He actually didn’t feel much pain or anything and wouldn’t have known he was bleeding without the ref telling him. I was going with him out of the gym, but the sight of the blood was getting to me and Jason could tell, so he just told me to stay there. He started jogging to the locker room, but didn’t make it because he started feeling lightheaded and didn’t want to faint. We ended up going to the urgent care that night and he got three staples in his head and a tetanus shot. Neither of us had been to a doctor in years, so it was an interesting learning experience. We definitely got an April Fool’s joke on us.

Last weekend we went to Jason’s mission reunion up in Salt Lake. Jason really enjoyed it and I met a lot of his companions and friends from the mission. Jason was excited to hear that his mission president was called into the 1st Quorem of the Seventy the next morning—Michael Ringwood. I would say one of the most interesting things of the night was talking to Elder Residori who was the financial secretary when Jason finished his mission. He remembered Jason but couldn’t remember how, then later that night he came up to him and said he remembered why he remembered him. Jason had a little extra money that he didn’t spend during his mission so he turned it back in to Elder Residori before he left. Elder Residori told me that the amount equaled about $1500 in US currency and they only received about $200 a month! Apparently the mission used that money to re-wallpaper some of the apartments in his mission that badly needed it. I hope that paints a little bit of a picture in your head about how frugal my husband is—and I thought I was frugal, but he has got me on that one.

General Conference was great! We watched the Sat. sessions here and Jason invited a non-member Korean friend over to watch the afternoon session with us. Unfortunately he couldn’t understand a whole, but we hope he understood enough to feel the spirit.

Sat. night we spent the night at the Burninghams in Alpine and ate doughnuts and played Ticket to Ride. We watched conference with them in the morning and ate a delicious lunch and then drove to Mom and Dad’s for the afternoon session and another delicious meal.

Well, not much to report other than that. We finished up the last full week of classes and I taught both of my classes for the last time this semester. I enjoyed teaching both of those classes and I really enjoyed my students. I gave my final presentation to the Church History Department on Friday as well and that went really well. I’ll have to show it to you sometime.