Drip, Drip, Drop. April Showers?

While we've had decent weather the last few weeks, we're back to rain and a bit of snow. But if we are to believe Bambi, that's nothing new, right? Enough on the weather, though. You adhere to here to hear with your ear—that is, to see with your eyes—what's new in this Bradshaw household.

We've been busy with school and work, but there's not much to report on that end other than we're ready for summer if for only a break. We won't dwell on that, either. Some things we DID do in our leisure time:

• We started filling out a family tree.
• We got a new license plate.



Rather self-explanatory.

• We went to a rock show (for free), thanks to a thoughtful friend.



Scary entrance...



Some fossil displays.



"Watermelon" rocks (Ruby Zoisite)



"Mammoth teeth slices"...anyone understand what that means?



The kids liked "Mr. Bones", but I hope the wheelchair lady can get away...

• We went to the temple.



Provo Temple!

• We went to a St. Patrick's Day party and ate (too much) green dessert whilst enjoying live (and authentic) Celtic music. (We brought green marble squares.)



Us!



The band!

• Thomas began growing a beard after being selected as an extra for a Church film project on the New Testament.



Tired but happy...

• We had some friends from the ward over for Family Home Evening, where we recorded some of their songs (photos pending).
• We celebrated Lisa's birthday with dinner and a movie.



Lisa and some of her spoils.

• We bought some books, including a 9-book box set of The Little House on the Prairie in mint condition and an illustrated Pilgrim's Progress.
• We went to an Emergency Preparedness Fair sponsored by our stake.



Some of the booths at the fair.

• We celebrated our anniversary!



Old wedding cake!

• We had far too much sugar (PiM's (real and homemade (thanks, Liz!)), the aforementioned marble squares, cookies (thanks, home teachees), bran applesauce muffins, year-old wedding cake (thanks, Camille), ice cream (it was too cheap to NOT buy), brownies and blondies (for FHE)...), but Lisa's been running it off.



Enjoying homemade PiM's from the Vakalalas!

Oh, and our neighbours are back in town! Perhaps we'll get some better photos in the future...

Catching spring fever

First of all, we are devastated to see & hear about the destruction caused last week by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. There is a long road ahead of that nation in terms of reaching normalcy again. Our hearts ache for those people who have lost everything. Although tragic, this event serves as a good reminder that we just don't know what might happen from day to day. As much as we try, humans just aren't in charge here. This earth is very powerful and, as we have seen, can effectively wipe out our most "permanent" man-made structures; therefore, we must place our faith in our Creator and His plan for us. We need to prepare as much as we can, and do as much good in the world as we can, too.

With that said, I guess I should work on our 72-hour kits again sometime soon.

oxoxo

We're about to begin our final month of the semester (and Thomas' final month as an undergrad! Yay!), but the weather has been so nice, it is becoming really hard to stay in and study. I wish we could take a day or two and rent some kayaks or maybe a tandem. I guess that will have to wait another month or so.

The past week was pretty standard for Lisa, but Thomas got to do some cool things.

First, on Tuesday, Thomas' choir class sang at the BYU Devotional. They performed a song called "This is My Father's World" and they sounded fantastic. As soon as the video is available online, we'll share it with you so you can see (& hear) for yourself!

Thomas is 4 rows up and just about center :o)

Then, on Wednesday, Thomas traveled to the Church Office Building in Salt Lake City for work to assist in training some newly hired IT folks. He got to tour the observatory of the COB and snapped some neat pictures of some nearby buildings.

The McCune Mansion

Temple Square

Conference Center

Salt Lake Temple; Tabernacle directly behind

Utah State Capitol

My friend Shari and I began the "Couch to 5K" fitness program yesterday. It is going to be fun working out with a friend! Hopefully we can keep it up and achieve our fitness goals. There are downloadable podcasts (by Robert Ullrey) for this program that basically tell you your workout so you know what to do when.

Just for fun:

Google Analytics Stats from December 2009 through today:
Countries: 79 (from Vietnam to Slovenia to Qatar to Antigua... I can't find half of them on a map)
States: 48 (still missing Alaska & North Dakota)
Cities: 1,116
Visitors: 3,402
Visits: 7,020

Some recent keyword searches that got people to our pages:
"marriage license dress"
"lotsa kids+catholic blog"
"overspending spouse"
"compiled nib files"
"business in the 1920s"
"how to restart apache on snow leopard"

Some of our most popular posts:
How to Open Compiled .nib Files in Snow Leopard (On Thomas' project site, Mactips)
Microsoft Office 2011 HUP Availability
Business in the 1920s (On Thomas' page for his Corpus Linguistics class)
Sports Idioms 
Provo Tabernacle (On our main blog, Lotsaoxen)

oxox

PS - don't forget to show some love at Lisa's project site, Family Proclamations!

Now Is the Month of Marching...

Tho' a large fraction of those reading this page may not get the title, there is no reason to fret. But interestingly enough, the only other site with said title (coincidentally, as I did not copy them) according to Google is a blog based in Sweden. This is particularly significant if you read on, or marginally significant if you don't. If you didn't read the above, then it is likely completely insignificant in its entirety...ok, I'll stop. Don't let me get carried away.

March is upon us. But let's catch up a bit. Let us take you back to the time of yestermonth, a land of magic and wonder...

Sunset

Oh. So it wasn't all that exciting, eh?

Well, here's a few highlights, anyway:

Over the weekend of President's Day, we celebrated Swedish things. We made Swedish meatballs and kladdkaka (like a Swedish brownie of sorts) with Swedish measuring cups on Sunday, and on Monday we had Swedish pancakes prior to our visit to IKEA, where we picked up a new bookshelf (at last we have room for all of our books...for now). We also ate lunch there (for free), but I suppose it wasn't truly Swedish food...we were really hoping for the chocolate cake there, too, but they were out. If we continue this tradition of Swedishness, we have far more we could do (feel free to give ideas as well), but this was a last minute idea, and we had fun nonetheless. Oh, and thanks goes to our wonderful cousin Sarah for providing the authentically Swedish recipes almost a year ago. They will be posted at the Bradshaw Bistro in the near future, alongside the Chocolate Truffles recipe posted today...

Swedish meatballs

Kladdkaka

The following Friday, since we both had the day off, we headed up to Salt Lake. We first went through the Salt Lake Temple for the first time together (sorry, no pictures this time 'round), then went up to a cemetery nearby to look for Thomas' grandfather's grave (but the office had closed, and we didn't know the spot, and it's a big place, so hopefully next time we'll have better success).

This was a neat tombstone: an Iranian Jew that died in Salt Lake City

We then headed to Gateway Mall and walked around before stumbling on Thaifoon. The atmosphere was fun and the food great.

Us at Thaifoon

The rest of the week was rather a blur. School, work, walks, and family life...what more can I say?

I guess one more thing. BYU's basketball team has done wonderfully this season, in large part due to the remarkable effort of one Jimmer Fredette, and it's nice to be part of a school that gains the national spotlight for positive things. While we aren't avid sports fans, Jimmermania is inescapable. Even the local Walmarts gave him a nod:

Orem Walmart display