Catching Up

So, I'm still recovering from a hard drive crash, which is part of the reason I haven't posted in a while. Last week my computer started acting really funny. Fortunately I was able to back it up with my external hard drive before it crashed for good. Instead of purchasing a new computer, we decided to just buy a new hard drive. I've since transferred my external hard drive info. back to the computer, but there are still some things that are lost and gone forever, mostly some of my research from my master's degree program and other information that was saved within applications I had downloaded from the internet.

So here are a few things that happened since I last wrote:

While Melody was here, the two of us went to Cornbelly's at Thanksgiving Point. Jason was invited by happy to pass on the experience since he had just gone a few weeks earlier with the YM/YW. Melody and I had a great time though. The weather was beautiful, maybe even a little on the warm side. Besides the traditional corn maze, Cornbelly's has a lot of other fun activities. We spent our time rock climbing on a rock wall, "caving" in the Speleo Cave, wandering through the themed corn maze (this year the theme was explorers and outer space), watching a live pig race, jumping on a jumping pillow, and finding great picture locations. We had access to the "scarey" events too, but we only went on one of the less scarey ones before we'd had enough. It was a lot of fun and we were both exhausted by the end.

For Halloween, we attended our ward Trunk-or-Treat and I dressed up for work Monday since it's a highly celebrated holiday at my company. We only have two company parties each year, one for Halloween and one for Christmas. Almost everyone at the company dressed up and there were some great costumes! Thanks to Keith and Kim for letting me borrow their costume.

I actually needed to pick up my computer from being repaired right after work and didn't have normal clothes to change into. I had some really funny looks and comments walking into the Apple Store at Gateway Mall wearing my very bright silver costume. It made me laugh and others as well.

Work has still been slower than usual for me. I've been working on several small projects, but I'm hoping things will start picking up again for me in the next few weeks. I did just give a company lunch break training on Learner Assessment yesterday. It was a 40 min. PowerPoint presentation. I was super nervous but it went really well and was well received by my co-workers and supervisors. What a blessing!

Jason is really close to taking his Calculus I final. This week he started Accounting 200 and he sent his formal request to the Post Baccalaureate Program for permission to take several classes from BYU starting Winter semester. He should find out whether or not he's accepted by next week so we're hoping for some good news.

Fall Activities

Here are a few pictures and activities we've done over the last month:

• Enjoyed watching General Conference
• Ate several yummy family dinner
• Made a classy decorative clock at a Relief Society activity
• Attended several institute forums with Jason
• Had dinner with friends in Provo from our married student ward
• Watched and listened to parts of several BYU football games

My sister Melody is in town for a short stay. It has been a lot of fun hanging out with her this past weekend. Saturday Melody came with Jason and I on a fun bike ride along the Jordan River Parkway. The weather was perfect and the bikes were great--(Thanks Mom and Dad B!) We stopped by Gardner's Village to see the Halloween decorations. It was pretty crazy busy there so we didn't stay long. My friend told me later that we picked the worst weekend to go because it was Witchapalooza weekend which is apparently always over crowded. The funny thing is that we couldn't figure out why there were so many people there because there didn't seem to any activities or entertainment going on.

My 4 1/2 yr. old twin nephews think we are twins too because we look so much alike that they get us confused.

Gardner's Village

My funny story for the week is about food storage, specifically 72-hr. kits. We made a couple of kits two years ago for a ward activity. We've been trying to rotate out some of the food every 6 - 12 months depending on how long we think the food will last. We decided to eat a package of Ramen noodles from the kit the other day and it kind of tasted funny so we took all the food out and put it away with our everyday food so it would get eaten. The next day Jason grabbed one of the peanut butter granola bars and took a big bite only to discover that it felt like a granola bar in his mouth but the only flavor he tasted was Irish Spring soap! He saved it for me to taste later when I got home from work and told me to try it. I only broke off a small little piece but as soon as I started chewing it I felt like I was eating soap. After I swallowed, it felt like I had just washed my mouth out with soap. When I told Melody about it she suggested that we keep the rest of the granola bars to give to our kids when they say bad words, that way we won't be accused of child abuse but it will still have the same effect. :)

Trip to Southern Utah

September is a great time of time of year to visit Zion's National Park. We decided to take one last little trip for the year to Southern Utah. Jason had never been to Zion's and it's been at 15 years or so since I had been last. It was kind of a "spontaneous" decision we made a month ago, and yes, a month ahead of time is considered spontaneous for me--our other trips this year were planned 5 and 7 months ahead of time.

We drove to Hurricane Wednesday night after I got home from work and stayed the night there. Thursday morning we hiked Hidden Canyon and the Emerald Pools trails and then drove on the Mt. Carmel Highway for several miles to see the upper plateau. Both the hikes were fun and the weather was gorgeous for us--not too hot or too cold. We packed a lunch for the day and ate it at the top of the Hidden Canyon trail just before you head back into the canyon. We sat on a high shaded rocky overhang overlooking the amazing red sandstone cliffs. It was awesome!

We saw more of a variety of wildlife than we were expecting on our trip. We had several lizards, a snake, and a tarantula cross our path on the various trails, as well as a family of deer off to the side of the road during the two days we were there.

We stayed in Hurricane that Thurs. night again and drove back into the park Friday morning to hike Angel's Landing. Neither of us had ever hiked Angel's Landing before and we totally loved it. It was such a cool hike with amazing views of the whole canyon. The last .6 miles of the hike is out on a steep, narrow, rocky ridge that has a series of poles and chains so that you don't fall of the edge of the cliff a few steps away on either side of you. It was so much fun and the view from the top was incredible! Again, the weather was so nice and we were able to hike in shade for most of the way to the top. We ate another picnic lunch while enjoying the incredible views. (Jason's commentary: Did Julie mention that she had us prepared with so much food that I had on my back the bulkiest backpack on of anyone in the park? That's not an exaggeration either. Lots of people had little camel packs with water and maybe some snacks. However, I was hauling around enough food and water to have a gourmet picnic lunch two days in a row at the top of cliffs. I never saw anyone carrying around as bulky of a backpack as me. Julie would have been a good boy scout--be prepared, right? I've told her before that she should be Scoutmaster rather than me : )

After Angel's Landing we walked along the Riverwalk trail to the base of the Narrows, but we didn't go into the water at all. It was pretty packed with people going into, coming out of, and just sitting around this area. Maybe another time we'll actually hike all the way into the Narrows, but that is an adventure for another day.

That evening we stayed in St. George. We ate at Brick Oven Pizza, hit the outlets and found some great deals on clothes, and then caught the 4th quarter of the BYU v. University of Central Florida football game on ESPN just before Florida fumbled the ball on a punt return and we scored a touchdown to take the lead of a tie game. It was a great 4th quarter!

Saturday morning we did a session at the St. George temple and took tours of the Brigham Young winter home and the Jacob Hamblin home in Santa Clara before heading back home. We tried to stop in Nephi for ice cream at Frost T Freeze where my family always stopped whenever we drove through Nephi on vacation, but it has since gone out of business.Too bad, I think I'll have to make the Culver's in Midvale our new tradition--their frozen custard is delicious!

Feel free to glance through the slide show of pictures at the bottom of the blog, but the pictures don't really do justice to the beautiful places we saw.

Many Languages

I haven't written for awhile. Things are good but seemingly "normal" so I don't always know what to write about. Jason took his second Calculus test today. He said he felt really good about it so that probably means he aced it. After his test, he came home and made a yummy curry dinner for the missionaries. I got home 15 minutes after the missionaries left, but at least I still got to enjoy the yummy dinner.

Right now at work I'm in charge of incorporating the translations for a course I designed into 16 languages: Spanish, German, French, Portugese, Mandarin Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, Thai, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, and Russian. What a big job that is! We have run into all kinds of formatting issues just to get the languages imported, but then once they're imported they must all be uniquely adjusted to accommodate the new language.

Here are a few interesting facts about these languages that you might not know unless you've been working with them a lot like I have.

• Thai: Who would have known that this language only uses spaces between sentences and phrases. This has been an especially difficult challenge because some sentences are so long that they don't fit across the width of the screen but you can't wrap the sentence on to the next line without changing the meaning of the sentence. We've had to go back to the translator for this problem.
• Chinese and Taiwanese: These languages are really hard to tell what you've added or deleted in tracked changes because there are so many strokes in each character that you can't see the horizontal line through the middle to know if it's been deleted or added.
• German and French: These are some of the longest languages which means adjusting margins and shrinking graphics to accommodate it on almost every page.
• Arabic and Hebrew: These languages are read from right to left so we have to re-orient the page layouts so that the activities are balanced and make better sense.
• Russian: In Russian, "personal information" should be translated to be "personal data" because if it's not, and your whole course is about personal information you end up having to do a LOT of changes after the fact.
  

Hopefully I designed a good course, because if not, 65,000 people that speak any one of 17 languages will not be very happy. :)

I bet you can't guess which language all of these words belong to?

español, Deutsch, française, português, русский, 中国, Bahasa Indonesia, 日本, 한국의, ελληνικά, ไทย, עברית, العربية

A Day in the Life of my Husband

So five days a week while I'm away at work my husband sits at home all day. No, he's not eating bon bons and watching TV, he's working, or should I say learning. Learning is his full-time job right now and here is his table full of tools.







Jason's routine:
--Wake up around 6:00am
--Run 5K around the surrounding neighborhoods as fast as he can, usually in just over 20 min.
--Shower, eat breakfast, and make his amazing wife a lunch
--Read the scriptures
--Do math and then more math and then more math

A few interesting and amazing things about my husband you might never know unless you've lived with him.

He doesn't like to waste anything, including scraps of paper so he uses small pieces of paper, often used envelopes, to figure out his math problems. He's writes so small you'd need a magnifying glass to read it if you're over 40. :) See the sample to the left. You'll notice how small the writing is in comparison to the printed letter and how completely he covers all the white space. Isn't that cool?








Now to anyone else, especially me, this would look like garbage, meant to be thrown away. But not to my husband. This is his eraser. It broke off of his pencil several weeks ago and he doesn't want me to throw it away yet.








This last object is his new favorite tool-- it is a microphone and earpiece that plugs into his phone so that he can now do the dishes when I call to talk to him during my lunch break, when he talks to family members in the evenings, or any other time he's trying to multi-task. No point wasting time just talking when you could be doing something else at the same time. :)

Sometime you'll have to ask him about his determination to reuse all of our sandwich baggies. I've been accused more than once for throwing away stashes of used plastic baggies that I find in the drawer. We've compromised a little by making rules about which baggies can be used again and which ones have to be thrown away. I bet most of you have never had that conversation with your spouses. :)

As you can imagine with all of Jason's efficiencies we save a lot of time and money. His frugality has been both a blessing and occasionally a frustration in our marriage, but I wouldn't have it any other way! He is a great example of the pioneer motto: Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without!

The Sound of Music

Well, things have been a little reversed lately, work is slow and weekends are busy. We’ve been up to a few fun things lately. Last Friday we went to a theatre production of The Sound of Music at the Sundance Resort as a late celebration of our 3^rd anniversary. It was so fun and a perfect setting for the play. The mountains are just gorgeous right now and so is the weather. Plus, Jason was such a great date planner and had all the details planned out and taken care. It was awesome!

We both totally enjoyed it. The Sound of Music is one of my favorite movies, one that I don’t get tired watching time and time again. In fact, right after we finished the play, it only made me want to go watch the movie even more.

Unfortunately we didn’t have a copy, so Sat. morning I started looking on the internet to see if I could get a good deal. Jason peaked over my shoulder and asked what I was doing. I told him I was going to buy The Sound of Music. He tried to persuade me to wait until Christmas or something, but I didn’t really want to wait. He disappeared down the hall and reappeared a few minutes later with a Christmas gift bag. He handed it to me and said, “Merry Christmas, or Happy Anniversary, or something.” I opened the bag and inside was a copy of The Sound of Music. It’s a good thing he saw what I was doing, otherwise we would have been the proud owners of TWO movies.

We actually watched the movie last night. It's been many, many years since I've watched it. It's amazing how well I remembered the lines and how much of the scenery I'd forgotten. It's pretty refreshing to watch something that portrays children and teenagers as sweet and innocent instead of little devils and miscreants. Not to mention it celebrates large families, the power of uplifting music, and the importance of marriage between a man and woman.

Hooray for New Babies

One very waited for event has been the birth of my two nieces, twins to be exact. They were born on August 15^th. They were called Baby A and Baby B for several hours until the names were finally decided—Lillian Dianne and Amelia Ann. They are tiny and adorable and so fun to hold. These adorable girls joined my sister and her husband and their twin 4 1/2 year-old boys. I’m so glad we live close to my sister so we can hold these babies often!

This picture shows us holding them at the hospital when they were about 16 hours old. Unfortunately I can't remember who is who in this picture. I'm not even going to try and guess. :)