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!

With Thankful Hearts

Well, it appears that it has been longer since we've posted a real blog (with pictures) than I thought! The last several weeks have been very intense, with lots of school assignments due and not enough time to work on them.

We can't pretend that it's been all work and no play, though. We attended a BYU Marching Band concert a few weeks (?) ago and saw some of our friends perform. I had to wear earplugs because the concert was inside - in a concert hall - and we had seats in about the third row. It was loud. But we had fun.

I've been privileged to spend some time with my female friends lately. This has made me very grateful for them! Thomas and I tend to hang out with each other the majority of the time - which is a delight - but it's healthy and happy to get out once in a while. So, thank you, my dear friends, for inviting me to do things with you!

Yesterday at church, our Sacrament meeting was filled with a Primary program. We wanted to show you pictures of the programs - each one colored by one of the children - but they asked that we give our comments/feedback inside the programs and leave them in the chapel so the leaders could read our notes to the children during Primary. They were cute. The program was nice, too. There was, of course, the one kid (about 6) who got up there and said silly things into the microphone. Word on the street (by street I mean Relief Society) was that this kid's mom confiscated silly string from him before church. Thank goodness.

We officially have snow - not a lot, but enough that it is sticking on the lawn etc. We had a very windy evening the other night, and fortunately for us, the huge gusts blew all of the fallen leaves from our lawn to somewhere else. We were amazed by how clear the sidewalks were after the windstorm.

We're still managing to get to the temple on a pretty regular basis. Sometimes, this takes miracles. We had an especially sweet reminder of God's love for us this week. We were on a time constraint when we got to the temple, and due to there being a wait, it looked as though if we stayed, we would be late in getting Thomas to work. Heavenly Father heard our silent prayers, though, and once we put things into His hands, everything went smoothly. We made it out in time to rush home and change before driving to Thomas' workplace. Sometimes, it is these little blessings that are the most significant: would it have been a disaster for Thomas to arrive a few minutes late to work? No. But this little miracle reminded us that God does care about the little things in our lives, and that He blesses His children for their obedience and effort.

In other exciting news, we are on our way to Thomas' parents' for Thanksgiving. In fact, I am writing this 36,991 feet above Kansas. I have never been this far east before! Thank you, Seth, for getting us to the airport today. We've been blessed with good weather thus far and we are so grateful to have a break from the daily grind.

Finally, Thomas wants to make sure we share our most recent numbers from Google Analytics. From December 13, 2009 through this morning, the totals are:
Countries: 53
States: 41
Cities: 425
Visits: 4441
This means we've had 4441 visits to our various websites, coming from 425 cities in 53 countries, including 41 United States.

Happy Thanksgiving!
oxox

YADB: Yet Another Drab Post

(so sorry for the wait - Thomas wrote this post 4 days ago and wanted me to add pictures, which I haven't had time to do until now! so it's all my fault :o) Enjoy! -Lisa)

Since Lisa's been too busy to play lately, you're stuck with another post by her best friend. I'll try to post some photos as well, as the last entry was a little lacking.

On Sunday evening we were invited to a party with several of Lisa's roommates and their respective spouses. We had marvelous food and good laughs.

Dara, our hostess! Of course, Tyson was there too.

Joyce. Another roommate, Beth, was present as well, but we didn't get a photo of her?

Megan (and the blue thing on the right is her hubby, Evan)

On Monday evening, we were treated by Del Taco to dinner. That's right: free food, whatever we wanted. On further inspection of the receipt, all became clear. Notice who our host was...

"Host: Jesus"

Lastly, a few more statistics. Our site has been booming despite the internet outages and busy schedules and such. Read on for a few milestones:

• Visits: 3457
• Cities: 302
• Countries: 40

Feel free to help us fill the gaps on this map:

2^3 * 379 visits

In celebration of Lisa's rapidly-approaching Calculus class, I figured I'd start with some numbers through the First of August (yes, less than a month left of summer):

Visits: 3032
Countries: 33
States: 28 + DC
Cities: 265

Yep, that's right. In under 8 months, we've managed to accumulate quite a following. The sports idioms page seems to be a popular funnel for international users.

Anyway, moving on. I was told by mine acquaintance that I should try to be witty. I shall thus expand my creative sphere by writing in verse:

1. And in those days, there was great heat over all the land; yea, the inhabitants cried forth from their shelters, but respite was none to be found.

2. Nevertheless, the scribes continued in their belief of winds from the north that were prophesied to come.

3. And they were on Wednesday found within the gates of the house of the Lord.

4. And they were on Friday found in the presence of friends, feasting and fraternizing.

5. And they were on Saturday found cleaning and wrapping up loose ends.

6. And at all other times did they walk hither and thither, talking and enjoying the sights and the company of the other.

Beautiful sky scene we saw whilst walking

Bark surrounding a tree from which it did not fall....??

Anyway, enough creativity for now. We had a pretty good week and were invited over for dinner on Friday. We've got many a thing planned this week, as Thomas' dad is back in town for work and personal things. Speaking of which, his new book entitled Temple Themes in the Scriptures is soon to be released, along with the second edition of In God's Image and Likeness.

And a snippet of a conversation we had:

Lisa: You're crazy.
Thomas: No more than when you married me.
Lisa: That's what you think...
Thomas: If that were true then I wouldn't be crazy.

...oh, and by the way, THANK YOU!

Dear readers,

 We just wanted to let you know how big you made our month of May. We track the number of visits etc. to our websites (www.lotsaoxen.com, blog.lotsaoxen.com, www.lotsaoxen.com/wedding, and bistro.lotsaoxen.com). In the month of May, we hit some neat milestones!

 On May 10, 2010, we reached 2,000 visits.

 As of May 19, 2010, our pages have been viewed in 20 countries, including Denmark, the Philippines, and Brazil. We've reached every continent (except for Antarctica...).

 And, as of May 14, 2010, our pages have been viewed in 200 cities. Hooray for multiples of 20...?

 Today, we're up to 2,249 visits from 212 cities in 23 countries.

 Of course, not all of our visits are from people we know. We also get to look at search engine queries that brought up our page (that searchers then clicked on), like:

• whatever happened to dristan cold medicine 
• stuff for thomas and lisa to do tonight 
• sacramento car oxens
• emergency kits for temporal and spiritual preparedness 
• layered pasta dishes  
• oxens sick february 2010

  Anyway, we just thought we'd share! Feel free to drop by the Bradshaw Bistro for a new recipe. And here's a couple photos for you to enjoy:

(Thomas & Lisa at the Provo temple in May 2010)

(at Lisa's parents' house)

oxox

Hello, world.

This is not a computer program, though (sorry if you don't get it).

But in another usage, we want to thank all those that have visited our sites. Between the bistro, the blog, and the wedding site, we this week hit 200 (two hundred) unique cities from 19 countries and 26 states (plus D.C.). That is over 2000 visits and just short of 5000 pages viewed (until you read this and put it over said number). Feel free to help us out in our effort to be visited by more places around the world!

We don't have any pretty photos this week, unfortunately, due to a misplaced charger. Here's one you can enjoy from our lesson a few weeks ago (no, this is not a live photo, but instead a reenactment):

We got library cards for the Provo Library. We are now officially among the literarily elite in Provo.

We had grilled cheese sandwiches. Those were pretty good. We also went shopping and got MORE food! Some may eventually be featured on the Bradshaw Bistro...

We also finally tried out our blender and sacrificed the contentment of our stomachs for a milkshake. Or so we'll claim a sacrifice.

Thomas has been working on a pollen count widget with his former roommate (yes, they parted on amicable terms). If you have a Mac, we may need beta testers in the future. Let us know...

Lisa has been working. And working. And working. Luckily she found LibriVox, where you can find free public domain audiobooks for download. Coincidentally, they mostly use books from Project Gutenberg, which Thomas is using for another project...

Lisa has created a few free photo books at Hot Prints. They let you make a free book every month from uploaded photos and there aren't any gimmicks. Good deal...check it out. They do include a 4-page advert in the middle of the book, but you can easily pull it off the staples...

Oh, and check out our new wedding photo album on the wedding site by typing "wedding" (unless you're using Internet Explorer, which requires you to click on "Home" at the top of this page and then go the wedding section). These are a few of the photos we've received thus far. If you didn't know about our shortcuts, just type "short". Not in a text box. Just start typing now.