Fall Pleasures

 I love the fall!  I love the way the leaves sound when I step on them.  (And, yes, I do go out of my way to step on as many as I can.)  I love wearing sweaters and jackets.  I love fall foods like chili and cornbread and pumpkin rolls.  Speaking of pumpkin, I love the pumpkins too.  I love baking and eating the seeds, and I love carving.  This year I decided to take as much advantage of those loves as possible.  Therefore, I carved my 1st pumpkin for FHE on the first Monday in October.

 

We carved our second pumpkin with my family on Sunday.

This year, Telisa came up with the theme of "sunglasses" to base out pumpkins on.  This is Dracula.  He is wearing bat sunglasses.

Skyler has a pumpkin head!

My dad's pumpkin.  Mahna Mahna.

Here they are all together: a family of pumpkins.  Telisa's is a chef kitty, Melody's is the skeleton, and Mom's looks a lot like Mom.  What Halloween joy!

OOOO... spooky all lit up. It was surprisingly hard to get them all lit at once.

My mom sewed us each matching but unique aprons.  So cute!

As you can see, my sister Melody got to come visit.  It was great to get to spend a little time together.  How can I not be exited about fall after a post like this.  But wait!  There's more.  We also went up Provo canyon and took pictures.  The mountains are so beautiful.  I can't resist posting more pictures.

BAM!

I was feeling artistic.

I am pleased to say I took this picture.

Cheesy grins!

Tradition!

So, Lovetta and I decided to take some time out of our busy schedule and join in the BYU Homecoming festivities.  Every year, for many years now, BYU has an annual "Hike the Y" event where we all go and hike up Y Mountain to light it for Homecoming week.  We never did it as undergrads, so we figured that doing it as alums would be better than nothing.  Lovetta's family hadn't done it, either, so they came along for the fun!  It's a hike with a beautiful view of the Utah Valley.  Just look!

I wish we'd brought our nice camera instead of just having my cruddy iPod camera, but it's better than nothing.  We got to the top, about 10 minutes before they lit up the mountain.  It was pretty cool to see.

All-in-all, a very fun trip.

I've been trying to find something constructive to do with my time outside of work these days.  Truth be told, I've spent a lot of it playing video games.  And while that's a lot of fun, it doesn't quite fill my need to be productive with my life.  So, I've taken to writing a review blog.  It's all about the new things I'm discovering in life and how I feel about them.  While I feel like the writing is quite a bit amateurish, I'm hoping it will get better over time.  Feel free to check it out and give me some suggestions of things I should look into and review!  I'm hoping to write in it at least once a week, but we'll see how that goes.

Lastly, I'm finally getting an iPhone.  Here's to hoping it's everything I've dreamed of.  More on that later when it arrives, I'm sure.

I can't think of a title... here's the update anyway.

Quite a few things have happened since I wrote on this blog last.
1. We replaced some of the carpet in our living room/kitchen area with tile.

2. We replaced some broken blinds with curtains.

3. Tom had a birthday.  We made cupcakes with delicious frosting.  Dan and Ashley came over and we played a board game called Pandemic.  It's a cooperative game where everyone is on one team trying to beat the game.  We lost.  It was fun anyway.

4. The season changed.  It is starting to feel like fall.  I love the fall.  I love pumpkins and the colorful leaves and the way the air feels.
5. My weekdays filled up with all sorts of stuff, and I worked too much.  General Conference has been very relaxing and inspiring.  I am determined in weeks to come to spend my time on what matters most.

Video Renaissance

So, Lovetta and I decided we wanted to dig through some old High School videos of hers for a friend.  Upon doing this, we came across some raw footage from the move "Channel Surfing" that I filmed while we were dating.  I posted this thing up on Facebook and YouTube quite a while ago, but thought I'd share it here for those of you who have never seen this side of my wild, creative mind.  It's basically satire centered around my college experience mixed with the silliness of television and advertising.  Enjoy!

The Good Things in Life

So, we went to Pirate Island the other day.  It's one of those Chucky Cheese-style restaurants, but is automatically cooler because it's centered around pirates instead of a purple rat.  Yarr!  What made this particular trip exciting, though, was one little video game they had sitting just outside their arcade.  Why outside of the arcade?  Well, because it's obviously too cool to be around the other arcade games.  Well, that and it doesn't give any tickets or prizes.  But it does give a supreme sense of joy and happiness with a heaping helping of motion sickness!  What is this video game you ask?  Well, play the video here and find out!



I wish I had more of the video, but my iPod didn't have enough space.  Anyway, it's always comforting to get a little bit of Ohio all the way out here in Utah.

Speaking of a little bit of Ohio in Utah, we went on another hike this last week.  Lovetta and I decided that since we don't get out enough, we should go to see Stewart Falls up by Sundance.  This hike was a little different than other hikes I've done in Utah because there was a lot of beautiful greenery.  Unfortunately, we spent about an hour trying to find the trailhead.  There's two, you know.  What's worse, we found out after we got to the falls that we were right by the first trailhead we were trying to find, but it just wasn't signed very well.  Regardless of the fact that we walked at quite a brisk pace, the hike itself was very pretty.  Since you're up in the middle of the mountains you have an eye-catching view almost the entire hike (when you're not tripping on roots and rocks, anyway).  Here's some pictures and a little video from Lovetta to all of you!

Can you spot Telisa?

We did it!

Sorry for double waterfall blog posts, but who could pass up something like this?!  We've resolved to take better advantage of the Utah landscape and do more hiking.  I love it out here!

Sum-er Sum-up

Summer is zooming by.  I can tell school is just around the corner, and I am anxious and excited and apprehensive.  I also feel like the weather here has been disrupting my ideas of a calm summer lately.  It seems like our whole country is experiencing strange weather.  Maybe it seems eerie to me because I've been watching all the Harry Potter movies in preparation to see the last two.  I also reread the last book.  Hopefully our strange weather is not really a cloud of dementors.  I had forgotten so much of what happens in that book.  It was a fun reread, but it made me realize why I don't read as much during the school year.  I get sucked into books and abandon all other activities and responsibilities.  Today I finished the book, but didn't brush my hair, shower, put on makeup, or wear real clothes.

Tom and I went to Bridal Vail Falls with my family.  It was warm most of the day, but right when we got to the falls, it started to rain.  It stopped within a few minutes, so we were able to take some pictures.

I like the way the falls looks in the rain.  The colors seem so vibrant.

Here is Tom looking dashing.

 

I wasn't quite as good at looking dashing as he is.  The wind didn't cooperate.

I like the way Telisa's hair matches the rocks in the river.

We are in the process of having tile put into our kitchen/entryway.  I am excited.  Tom and I have been trying to put our home in order.  I bought some baskets to help organize the top of our closet, and it looks very nice if I do say so myself.  I also got a new art desk at a yard sale.  The room with the computer and art desk is still a bit of a mess, but it's much better than it used to be.

Hooray for organized closet space!

In Memory of Max

So, it's been exactly one year since the birth and death of our son, Max.  I'd be lying if I didn't say that it has been an emotional roller coaster the whole time.  Father's Day was a nightmare, let's be honest.  I spent most of church balling due to a baby blessing and primary children singing.  Then, I had to teach a lesson in Elder's Quorum. >.<  Ooof.

Anyway, today was actually much more enjoyable than we thought it would be.  We did fairly well at church and Lovetta survived Girl's Camp this last week even though we thought it might be especially tough being so close to Max's birthday.

After church, we decided to take a trip down to his grave and we realized that some of you may not have seen the headstone yet!  For shame on us!  Here are some pics.

We miss him a lot.  I think that's an understatement, but it should make sense to you.  We always speculate on what our life would be like if he was still with us, but it's inadequate to try.  All we have is our life without him and we're trying to find some happiness in this world despite missing him.

Thanks to all who have expressed their love and support for us during this period of our lives.  You have no idea what you really mean to us.  We know that not everyone understands (or even wants to), so those of you that try are a great support to us.  You're all wonderful!