Life after vacation

So, if you've been counting, we have been back from our trip, which 5 of the last 6 most recent posts have been about, for 3 months. Here is what we've been up to in that time...

Our ward boundaries changed. We've made some new friends!

Thomas got me flowers:

Peruvian Lillies

Progress continues at the Provo Tabernacle/Provo City Center Temple:

On the ground are the 4 tower roofs...

Thomas did another day of filming. Filming ended for the year.

We saw the play Xanadu:

At a party hosted by my employer, Thomas came in third place in bowling. All 3 top scores were by employees' spouses.

I started my last semester at BYU!! I am taking 4 classes but they are upper-level courses and a couple of them are pretty challenging. I am currently working on some really awesome projects though, and I am truly grateful to be at such a wonderful school, where my faith is strengthened, not mocked, and where aspiring to be a wife and mother is still considered by many to be a worthwhile endeavor.

• Within a couple weeks I will be calling on anyone who reads this blog (and friends/family that do not) to participate in a family life education course (it's free & online) I am building with some classmates. It is for an assignment and I think you will find our treatment of the subject matter beneficial!! Stay tuned.

We got new neighbors. The ones upstairs are related to some of my friends back home!

Thomas' dad visited us a few times. Here are some pictures from his visits:

We made sweet & sour chicken with fried rice

Jeff took us & Samuel to Gloria's Little Italy.

On a walk, we saw the apartment complex where Jeff & Kathleen lived early in their marriage.

It is just down the street from where I lived when we were dating! Arcadia has a new sign.

On another visit, Jeff treated us to dinner at Banana Leaf. It is a Sri Lankan and Singaporean restaurant that opened about a year ago. It is in an old converted house on University Avenue. We loved it! Beautiful decor and plenty of delicious food.

Everything is served on actual banana leaves!

We ordered a party combination (the "Magical Kondatum") and got to sample quite a few different dishes! It was all delicious. And we had a lot of leftovers.

One of his trips was for the Temple On Mount Zion Conference in September. You can see his presentation here. This was the second meeting of this conference, where LDS scholars present research related to temples. Topics range from Old Testament connections to symbolism in current temple architecture.

We went to the Brigham City Temple dedication (broadcast to our stake center).

We went to a regional stake conference (broadcast) where Elder Dallin H. Oaks spoke.

We watched General Conference, where we listened to inspiring addresses from the current President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and sustained Prophet, Seer, and Revelator Thomas S. Monson (including exciting news about missionary service!). If you are interested in finding out what an authorized servant of Jesus Christ and true prophet has to say to us right now, you can watch/listen/read here:

• Consider the Blessings
• See Others as They May Become

We went to Megan's house for a Roommate Reunion:

We lived together in Arcadia 1 my first year in Utah. One other roommate moved in for a short time after Trista got married but she lives out of state now.

We cooked:

Lasagna with zucchini & onions inside

Sweet & sour shrimp

Cheesecake brownies. Easy and delicious.

 We explored:

We helped out at the ward Halloween party:

We carved pumpkins for Halloween:

We went to the eye doctor and ordered new glasses.

We went mini-golfing again with some friends:

Anyway, life is good -- albeit busy -- and we are looking forward to the upcoming holidays. I will graduate just before Christmas and then we will see where life takes us.

oxox

Christmas Is a-Comin'

...and the geese are getting fat, but we're planning on a ham next week instead. Still, now's the time to be generous and reach into your pockets and help those in need.

As easy as it can be to hate people, don't be a Scrooge; instead of waiting to see the phantoms, like life! You, only you, can be Father Christmas to Christmas children on December the 25th, and it will bring you happiness that beautiful day. Thank you very much!

If you haven't guessed, the above is both good to keep in mind, but by the end of this paragraph I will have referenced all of the song titles from the 1970 adaptation of A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. If you're not familiar with the story, please do look it up. I'll now begin again.

We've enjoyed the last few weeks with several outings. We were pleased to enjoy the company of two friends in attending the 2011 First Presidency Christmas Devotional, which can be seen here. It was a great experience albeit numbingly cold outside. We're starting to call it a tradition.

The Utah State Capitol before the devotional

Our group...thanks for coming!

We also went to Tucanos Brazilian Grill to celebrate Thomas' birthday. If you join their birthday club you get a free meal with the purchase of another, so we take advantage of that twice a year, and always leave stuffed, as they have both an excellent salad bar and good all-you-can-eat meat.

Us after a filling meal at Tucanos

We set up our fake tree again this year. We already have many ornaments and lights (more than we could fit), so it'll be interesting to see how full it'll be in a few years.

Some of our ornaments

Lights

Finished product

Lisa also put up various other decorations and put our Christmas/winter books on display.

The wreath on our door has real holly and (maybe) real ivy from our backyard

Door bells

A perennial decoration from Thomas' grandparents

Christmas plates from Lisa's mom

Our Christmas book display

We both love nativity sets.

An advent calendar/nativity from Thomas' sister's family

Thomas' parents give each kid a piece a year for Christmas...

...and when they get married, they get the core pieces (Joseph, Mary, and Jesus) along with the others!

Lisa's miniature nativity

A foam nativity

A gourd nativity from Thomas' mission (made in Peru)

We both like food, too. Lisa's been the busy one since she finished finals.

Grasshopper ice cream cake

Delicious. Perhaps it will show up on our bistro someday...

Sausage-stuffed acorn squash (this will definitely be there)

Lasagna al spinaci (delicious)

Egg rolls (recipe here)

Oh, and thanks for the birthday wishes!

Holding and wearing some of the gifts received (the pie didn't last)

Astoria-Redmond-Seattle Trip (part 2)

In Washington, we stayed at Thomas' brother's new home, and some of the Bradshaw family's dear friends, the Hoffmans, came over for a visit. This is Jeff & Kathleen Bradshaw with Laura and Rich Hoffman.

Elizabeth and Saki

Thomas' brother with his twin girls!

Samuel, Camille, Thomas and Saki in their Middle East getups

The Bradshaw brothers

We all went to the Woodland Park Zoo - what a cool place.

The bears at the zoo eat a balanced diet.
Remember if you go camping in an area with bears to put your food up and away from you-- especially if you have bear-tempting foods like these...!

A sleepy wallaroo

We spent a brief stint at the Pacific Science Center, where they have some cool dinosaurs.

and a tide pool!!

They have a really cool butterfly exhibit.

We stopped by Theno's Dairy, of course...

Theno's iconic cow... and us!

Kiddos climbing the jungle gym

Mere & Ruby: Spider monkeys?!

Glenn & Lydia

We dined at Claim Jumper. Thomas was very disappointed that they've removed their chili in a bread bowl from their menu, but I think we survived anyway ;o)

We got to tour a Google campus. This is a sign there made from Legos!

They have the Google maps pins around the campus

The whole group. It was a little bright out that afternoon

The Seattle temple was also closed for cleaning and maintenance.

We baked stuffed bell peppers for the whole family!

On Thursday, Thomas and I hit the city, just us. First stop: the Space Needle!

For $18 each to go to the top of the space needle, you, too, can have a cheesy photo taken for "free"...

Nearby, we found this drummer guy who was AWESOME with the field-trip kiddies. Those are 5-gallon buckets.

This looked SO much smaller from the space needle than it was in reality!

Afterward, we went back to the PSC to see a 3D IMAX show: Born to be Wild. It was my first 3D experience - and it was so cool!

We also walked to Pike Place Market. There was a lot to see there. The best part for me? The produce stands! At the first one we saw some Slimcados - I had to ask what they were, they were big and looked like papayas except they were bright green. I couldn't pass up some apricots for a snack - they were big and looked tasty. Living in Utah makes me really miss the wide variety of good, fresh, ripe produce found elsewhere (ie, the West Coast). Some of the other ones had peppers- and garlic-bouquets that were really beautiful.

Even though we got a little lost, we did enjoy seeing some of Seattle's cool buildings that we wouldn't have seen otherwise.

At least we didn't have to worry about parking... we'd found a great deal that morning (everywhere else was like... double)!

On Friday we all went up to Snoqualmie Falls for a picnic.

We were joined by Thomas' dad's good friend who happened to be in Seattle for a few days too!

Elizabeth prepared a yummy vegan meal complete with hummus.

Almost everybody pitched in to work on this beautiful quilt for Samuel-- Elizabeth made the design and pieced it together.

On our return flight, we caught a glimpse of Mount Rainier!