Reed & Natali

The Holidays

2011-12-28T12:27:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is not really much of a holiday for me because it comes right before finals so I need to study the whole break. But we went to the Crosby's home in Eager for the break and Reed had a great time with his family while I studied up in my room. Mostly he just watched football but he also played some football and basketball and went shooting with his brothers. I did surface momentarily for Thanksgiving dinner though so we managed to capture one picture of that.

We also snapped a couple pictures of our niece London and nephew Kingston in their cute snow hats. Here is one of the best ones:

Oh and here are these two waiting for Thanksgiving dinner:

Christmas
Christmas was much more of a celebration for me than Thanksgiving because school was over! Yay! I still have almost a week of freedom before we start up again and I am sure enjoying it. Before leaving Provo Reed and I did a couple fun Christmas activities such as going to the Festival of Trees and the David Archuleta concert. We were actually at the concert when he announced his decision to serve a full-time mission, it was really neat. He is an incredible guy and a great role model, nobody deserves the success he has had more than him. We didn't take any pictures at the concert but here are a few from the festival of trees:

Then we went to my parents home in St. George to spend the rest of the holidays. We didn't really take pictures actually because I wanted to get my hair done before taking pictures (my highlights were like halfway down my head) but then nobody would do my hair until after Christmas so it took us a while. But we did finally get my hair done and convince my little sister Tracie to photograph us...We really like a lot of them....Here are some of our favorites:

It's also important to note here that Reed gave me this entire outfit for Christmas (including the jewelry) and I did not help him pick it out at all. Isn't he great at picking out clothes?! The goofy photo down on the left is Reed's favorite. He always likes the silly photos the best.

As far as Christmas presents go...as you can see I got some nice clothes and jewelry from Reed (as well as others that are not in this picture). In keeping with tradition, Reed/Santa gave me some new supplies for my popcorn machine and Reed also gave me a cute jewelry holder, a new curling iron and some perfume. I gave Reed some cologne, a couple new church shirts and ties, some regular shirts and a football. My parents and younger siblings gave us some great kitchen supplies (we always love new things for the kitchen) and new clothes, Jaimee gave Reed a pocket knife that looks like a rifle when opened up and gave me some lovely scents from Victoria's Secret. Dana and Jason gave us gift cards to a really nice steak house. Reed's parents gave us some honey for food storage and some Christmas decorations. Our favorite present to give was to Randi and Shane. We joined with Dana and Jason and gave them a 16 x 24 canvas picture that I had taken and edited for them. I think they really liked it and we were super excited about how it turned out. Oh and we gave Smoochie a bird pinata :-).

The things I do for a T-shirt

2011-11-20T17:25:00.000-08:00

Year one: The Fresh
I thought it would be fun to throw an ultimate Frisbee team together my freshman year so I got a bunch of guys that lived in the dorms with me to play.
Result: Championship game, 2nd place finish... no t-shirt :`(

Year two: The Fresh Reunion Tour
We got the guys that were back from their missions and put together another team. We were missing some key players but picked up a few others.
Result: Semi-finals, 4th place finish... no t-shirt :`(

Year three: The Fresh Elite
We put the team together with some additions and had a great season.
Result: Championship game, Heartbreaking loss, 2nd place finish... no t-shirt :`(

Year four: The Fresh Elite
Last year we had an awesome team, even had matching t-shirts for games, and have a sweet highlight video of the season.
Result: Semi-finals, 3rd place finish... no t-shirt :`(

Year five: The Fresh Elite
This will be most of the team's last year so we made the most of it.
Result: Championship game, 1st place finish... Sweet t-shirt!!!

This T-shirt has eluded us for over 6 years and we finally got it, so when you see me wearing it way too much, you'll know why.

Some of my best friends at BYU are because of this team. It is sad that it might be over. Some of the team (including me) will be around one more year but we will have to appeal the NCAA for a 6th year of eligibility... If granted, I will be posting next year about our repeat.
Here I am sporting my sweet shirt. I'll bring it home for Thanksgiving so many of you can see it in person.

And here is a highlight video of last year's team.

Seven + 1

2011-11-02T22:12:00.000-07:00

So my wife is an amazingly busy person. She studies so hard at the law school and does really well with that. On top of studying she is a Teaching Assistance for a writing class, she spends hours every week doing assignments for law review, and she even has time for this:

Yeah, I know, it is really impressive. Natali was in a crew called Seven+1 for BYU's Best Dance Show held in the Wilk tonight. They were the best crew there. She spent hours every night for the last couple weeks with the crew making this perfect. She is really talented and loves dancing and I am really proud of her for everything she has been able to do and still keep me under control. Oh and just a side note, the very first part with the feet is something I have never seen before. Dancers have done tutting with their hands for a long time but I have never seen people do it with their feet. It was Natali's idea. Pretty amazing!

Two Year Anniversary

2011-10-24T20:47:00.000-07:00

Today is Reed and my 2 year anniversary! We didn't do much because we had school but I think Reed has some adventure up his sleeve for this weekend. He did make me a lovely breakfast and then I made him a kinda fancy romantic dinner of salmon, potatoes, asparagus and a chocolate fondue dessert. Anyways, in honor of our anniversary I wanted to post a couple wedding/bridal shots to reminisce and this darling poem Reed wrote about our first date (he wrote it right before we got engaged). I will treasure this poem forever. Reed writes great poems.

First Date

There comes a time in a man’s life

The moment he tries to find his wife

But every story must have a start

A time or place where a girl steals his heart

This story begins with me sitting in class

Professor Holland had a question to ask.

So he called his TA’s to go help him out

And carry around mikes so we didn’t have to shout.

The girl that stood up really caught my eye.

Fifteen minutes I stared at her, I cant lie.

During that time I didn’t hear a word

But I told my buddy, “I’m gonna go out with her!”

Three weeks went by without any luck

To get her alone so that we could talk.

So finally I said “Today’s the day!”

I knew exactly what I would say.

So after class I finally manned up

And followed her out like a little scared pup.

I went up to her right then and there

And blurted out, “I love your long hair.”

I found out her name so I went online.

If she would accept my friend request, that would be a sign.

I also looked up when she taught in the lab.

Yes, I’m a stalker. Is that bad?

So I’d go and get help from that hottie TA

Madison and Marbury.. now who were they?

But I still didn’t have the guts to ask her out

Would she say yes? I had my doubts.

She speaks French so I translated a phrase

And carried it in my pocket for days and days

So finally I gave it to her in a rush

My face turned red and I started to blush.

She wrote me some French that I couldn’t read.

The ten numbers on bottom were all I would need.

So I called her that night and I set up a date.

Saturday November 22^nd, I just couldn’t wait.

I thought and I thought of what we could do

Something fun and exciting but romantic too.

So I called and talked to my family and friends

To get ideas and updates on the latest dating trends.

The big night arrived and I went to her door

I can still remember the shirt that she wore.

We went to Bajio to get something to eat.

What happened next is embarrassing to me.

We got our food and we both sat down

She grabbed her fork and started to chow.

I stopped her right before the food reached her face

I said, “Excuse me, do you think we can pray?”

Somehow she continued that very first date

So we went to watch hockey and that started late.

I taught her Zambonni and she was impressed.

Who won the game? I couldn’t care less.

Then we went to Color me Mine

To paint some pottery and have a good time.

She painted my cup and I painted hers.

Red, black, blue, and green: she loves those colors.

Then back to her house with starbursts in hand.

Who can unwrap one first? She says she can.

She got a phone call and talked in French

While I ate popcorn and sat on the bench.

Downstairs we went to play the Wii.

Beating a girl in Nintendo, how hard could that be?

Bowling, boxing, Tennis, Baseball.

You name the game, she won them all.

Then we decided to go old school

At Super Mario I looked like a fool.

She knew all the secrets cuz she played a lot.

Beating the castle she was soo hott.

A few other games and then Bubble Bop.

We were addicted and just couldn’t stop.

Finally we ended at a quarter past three

It was the greatest first date ever, if you ask me.

Dallas

2011-10-01T15:10:00.000-07:00

So I have finally finished interviewing for 2012 summer associate positions. It has been crazy. For the past month and a half I have spent almost every Thursday and Friday flying around for interviews. Since my first interviews were in the summer time, Reed and I decided to make a vacation out of my week of interviewing in Dallas. So here are some pictures of our time in Dallas. Oh and BTW, after spending much time considering our different options we have decided to spend the first half of next summer in Palo Alto and the second half in Dallas so that I can compare my two top firms and we can both compare the different areas etc. Reed might actually spend the bulk of the summer in Palo Alto and I will go to Dallas alone if he gets an internship that wants him for longer than 7 weeks. We are really excited about the opportunity to discover both areas. I have been so blessed to get offers from the firms I did, all of them were really great firms and it was a hard choice. But I'm extremely grateful that it was a choice I had to make since it's so difficult to get any job offers in this economy.

Dallas- I wish I had gotten better photos of the city and especially of the freeway system in Dallas because it's seriously like a spider web but supposedly it works really well at keeping traffic quite minimal for a big city.

Dallas Arboretum- We loved walking through these incredible botannical gardens in Dallas. It was pretty hot while we were there (it was during the time when Dallas was setting a record for the most consecutive days over 100) but we went a little earlier in the morning so it was not too bad. Inside of the arboretum there are a bunch of little houses/huts etc to show the story of some of the history of Dallas.

We also braved the heat to go to Six Flags in Dallas. We didn't like it as much as Six Flags Magic Mountain, particularly because it was SOO hot (which is why we went on a water ride almost immediately and got soaked) and also cause it's a lot older so some of the rides gave us a bit of a headache. We felt like old people when we were ready to leave after just 3 hours :)...we held out a little longer and managed to stay for about 4.5 hours but we were EXHAUSTED when we finally left.

Friends from France, Bryce Canyon and All Sorts of Craziness!

2011-08-28T18:38:00.000-07:00

Before I get too busy in school I wanted to blog about our time with the Lemarchands. They came all the way from France to see the natural beauties of the Western United States and boy did they see a lot! Bryce Canyon, Arches, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Lake Powell etc... They camped for 3 weeks! Reed, me, my sister Tracie and my brother Jayden tagged along on one of their excursions to Bryce Canyon and had a wonderful time then spent the rest of the weekend at my family's cabin while they continued on to Arches. Then on their way back after a couple weeks we got to hang out with them again so we ate, swam, shot guns (only one of them had ever even touched a real gun before--guns are not permitted in France) and took a tour around the St. George temple and in the visitor's center. We had such a fun time with them. I'm so glad we have kept such a strong friendship with the family ever since I lived with them years ago as an au pair. Now my family is really close with them too and they all want to learn French to be able to communicate with those of them who don't speak English.

First Off: Bryce Canyon
This was actually both Reed and my first time at Bryce Canyon and it was incredible. The really bizarre thing though was the fact that we didn't hear any English while we were there. The whole park was FULL of French people and a couple Italians haha. It's funny how Europeans and Americans both flock to each others countries for vacations yet many of us have never even seen what there is to see in our own countries :).

We started at the top, hiked down through the canyons and then hiked (or rather dragged because we were so tired) ourselves back up the canyon on the other side.

One theme you will notice through the pictures is that my bro Jayden really hates taking ordinary pictures so don't be surprised if ever you see something very odd in the background of the picture and realize it's jayden pretending to fall off a cliff or save the world or die or something odd like that.

I think it's fairly obvious that by this time we are a little sick of hiking.

Then when it was all over Jayden and I took a moment to gaze across the horizon and revel in our great accomplishment...

And Reed and Jayden taught Julien how to strike cool poses in pictures.

Up Next...FUN AT THE CABIN
Although the Lemarchands invited us to stay and sleep in their tent (on the hard ground fighting off bugs and wild beasts all night), we unfortunately just had to decline since my parents were waiting, I'm sure very eagerly, for us to return to the cabin. Since I didn't have to go back to work until Tuesday (it was the weekend of July 24th), we decided to spend the rest of our long weekend at the cabin.

We took a long fourwheeling ride out to some lava tube caves. The fourwheeling was very fun. However, you'll notice there are no pictures of me in the cave. That's not because I wasn't there but because nobody would have dared to take my picture in that moment due to the mood I was in while crawling around like a reptile in a wet/dirty/disgusting cave. However you can see by the picture taken with Reed right after the cave, it was a very unpleasant experience.

And Finally: ADVENTURES IN ST. GEORGE
When the Lemarchands came back through St. George on their way to the Vegas airport, we had a great time showing them around our home. First we brought out the slip-n-slide since none of the kids had ever played on one. From the looks of things, Reed has really been missing the slip-n-slide days himself :-).

Then some of us took a dip in the pool and after that we all went to the temple.

Our final activity with the Frenchies was to take them shooting. They had freaked out a little last night when my dad showed them some of his guns, they thought he was joking and that they were really just fake guns haha. They couldn't believe we had real guns in our house and that even my little brother Jayden had shot with them before. So we all went out shooting. Almost everyone shot the big guns and then my dad let Julien and Ines shoot the little bebe gun (he would have let them shoot the other ones but Christine was just too worried).

They REALLY got excited/nervous when my dad brought out the big artillery...This was actually my first time shooting this type of a gun as well (obviously since I'm pretty sure I'm holding it wrong)

I LOVE this picture of Ines but actually it really mis-portrays her because she was loving shooting that bebe gun. She shot it for like 40 minutes until she finally hit the little circle target my dad had drawn for her.

At the end of the trip we all sat around and watched Rio together. As you can tell, the kids really miss their best friend: "Ouide".

And That's All Folks!

Lake with the Crosbys

2011-08-14T10:26:00.000-07:00

This post is long overdue...I've actually been waiting for my sister to give me photos she took at the lake but I want to get moving on this so I think I will just add the photos she sends me later. Over the Fourth of July, Reed and I spent a couple days out in Arizona with his family (well Reed spent a week out there before I came then his sister Lisa and her husband Barry very kindly offered to fly me out later because I was working). They originally were going to have a family reunion, but with the fires out in Eager things just didn't work out for that. So Reed's immediate family still decided to get together anyways. My sister Dana now lives out in Phoenix so it was nice to be able to see her when I went down there. Reed's family has a little cabin/house by Roosevelt Lake in Arizona so Dana came out there with us to the lake before we went to Eager. Anyways...here are some photos from the lake and one from Eager.

Dana is going to kill me for putting this beauty on here. This is the unfortunate truth about what wind does to thick beautiful hair like Dana's on the lake haha (btw, her hand and mouth actions are supposed to spell out "wow").

On the left is Reed's brother Mark, right is his brother-in-law Kirk and below on the right is Reed's other brother-in-law Barry.

What does one's face look like when falling off a cliff?

2011-07-10T10:46:00.000-07:00

My parents came to town a little while ago so we had a fun little picnic and then went up to squaw peak. It was a beautiful day and we got some great photos.

We started off with hot wings (our favorite food) and potato salad made by Reed and then had some Watermelon. Reed put together everything for the picnic, he is quite the cook!

I asked Reed to take some "candid" shots but he doesn't think a shot is candid unless I'm making a funny face so I should have predicted the result of that request...

Well if I have a goofy picture on here, I thought it was only appropriate...

Here are my beautiful parents and a random photo of Reed talking about the bridge with my dad (engineers are obsessed with bridges)...

Up next, once at Squaw Peak we decided to take some pictures.

We then decided to try and make it look like we were falling off a cliff, but I find our faces a little unconvincing...What does one's face look like when falling off a cliff?

Maybe it's like THIS:

OR maybe it's like THIS?:

Rrr..Uh maybe more like this?

No I'm going to have to say if two people are falling off a cliff, their faces would definitely look like this:

Wow, we have some great actors/actresses in this family.

The MG's

2011-06-29T20:29:00.000-07:00

MG get-togethers are absolute highlights in my life and I have a BLAST at every one. I am so excited we got to spend some time together last Friday. For those of you who are unfamiliar, MG stands for missionary girls. Our story begins about 4-5 years ago (depending on the girl) when we were all waiting for missionaries. We were brought together by this common aspect in our lives but we built strong friendships that grew throughout the time waiting for our missionaries and have continued to get stronger since. Most of the girls married their missionaries, some of us didn't but it hasn't changed how close we are. Now we get together every couple months and each time it's like we were just hanging out yesterday. Mostly we just sit around talking and laughing. The MG's hold an especially important place in my heart because they are really my first group of girl friends I have ever had. I have had an occasional girl friend here and there but never a group of girls like this. The first time I ever met them (on my birthday) they surprised me with a birthday cake and sang to me! Seriously when I went home that night I cried because I was so happy. No girls had ever done something like that for me! I had been praying so hard for even just one girl friend for such a long time and finally my prayers were answered :). As cheesy as it may sound, I see each of these girls as a sort of angel sent into my life and I am sooo grateful for them. (Introduced below the photo)

Unfortunately, not all of the girls were able to make it Friday night but I will introduce the ones in the photo from left to right starting at the top:
Leanna: Classy, Honest and Organized. Leanna is a red on the color scale. She knows exactly what she wants, she makes plans far in advance and works out every detail. She is extremely well-organized. I have never seen Leanna with a hair out of place or a wrinkle in her clothes. She generally says exactly what she is thinking which is one thing I love about her because I'm quite similar. Leanna has the most beautiful smile I've ever seen. She is an expert in so many things I could call her with just about any problem and she would have a solution. One Leanna quality I hope to acquire: her organizational skills, my life would be so much less stressful if I could plan like Leanna.

Adrianne: Down-to-Earth, Selfless and Confident. Adrianne does not get worked up about little things, she really has her priorities straight and she has such a mature perspective on life. I'm always blown away by her insight into how to handle what I would think could be a disasterous situation in just the right way. She is very crafty and creative. She knows what is most important in life and she doesn't get distracted from her goals. She is kind of goofy and is not afraid to laugh at herself. She is very stead-fast in her beliefs and she really lives those beliefs fully. One Adrianne quality I hope to acquire: I want to be as good of a wife as Adrianne. She naturally always puts her husband first and thinks about how every decision in her life will affect him.

Lindsay: Kind, Level-headed and Selfless. Lindsay is one of the most Christ-like people I know. It's hard to describe her in any other way. She is so caring and service-oriented. She always thinks of others. She gives the best advice. I know it's a weird word to use today but Lindsay is wise. She thinks and communicates with such clarity. I feel like she has a unique grasp on human relations and how to relate to people in ways that will bring about the best results. One Lindsay quality I hope to acquire: her kindness, especially in the way she speaks to people.

Natalie: Fun, Energetic and Helpful. Natalie is a lot of fun. She makes people around her happy because she is very positive. She is a really great listener. People feel great talking with Natalie because she genuinely cares about what they have to say. She is always eager to help her friends in any way she can. Natalie is a loyal and supportive friend. If you need someone to laugh with, cry with, scream with etc Natalie is the type of friend who will be by your side. One Natalie quality I hope to acquire: Her eagerness to help. I want to be like her because she is not just willing to help, as many people are, but she actually makes you feel like she would love to help or be there for you for whatever you need.

Britt: Happy, Genuine and Caring. If I have ever seen Britt frown, I can't remember. She is so positive about life and her smile is contagious. There are few people I know that it would be impossible not to like and Britt is one of them. You can't help but want to be Britt's friend. Britt is an extremely genuine person. I have not known her for as long as I have the other girls but I still feel like I know her very well because she is so sincere. It is refreshing to know someone who never seems to be withholding anything or pretending to be someone she is not. She knows who she is and she is confident. One Britt quality I hope to acquire: Her ability to make everyone around her feel comfortable and important.

Bonnie: Funny, Quirky and Honest. Oh I love Bonnie. She is hilarious. Seriously sometimes I think all of us just love waiting to hear what Bonnie is going to say next because she is SO witty. Bonnie is kinda quirky (ie: she doesn't like elbows) but it just makes her all the more lovable. She doesn't take offense easily, she loves life and she is a great storyteller. Bonnie is delightfully unpredictable. She is full of energy and she sees the world from a completely unique perspective. One Bonnie quality I hope to acquire: I have to say her wit. Sometimes I try to pretend I am as funny as Bonnie.

Jamilyn: Stylish, Dedicated and Brilliant. I have known Jamilyn for the shortest amount of time but am more and more impressed with everything I learn about her. Jamilyn is an extremely accomplished musician. She works hard and is determined. Jamilyn has an awesome fashion sense. Jamilyn is ladylike and classy. She is fun and extremely creative. One Jamilyn quality I hope to acquire: I want Jamilyn's dedication. Jamilyn is an accomplished woman in every sense because she never does anything half-way.

Stephanie: Cute, Happy and Friendly. Stephanie has the cutest giggle you will ever hear. She is so energetic, fun and upbeat. And she is passionate. When she loves something she REALLY loves it. She doesn't do things half-heartedly, she really follows through when she sets her mind to things. Stephanie is adventurous and very creative. I love to steal her date ideas. She loves to do things for other people and is always one of the first to volunteer to help out with things. I think she has at least helped (if not done it herself) to plan almost every MG bridal shower, get-together etc. She is very thoughtful and tries hard to let people around her know that she cares. One Stephanie quality I hope to acquire: Her creativity.

Annika: Beautiful, Smart and Talented. Annika is pretty much wonderwoman. She can do anything. She is not one of those people talented in just one area, she is artsy, scholarly AND athletic. Annika is very intelligent and focused. She is outgoing, passionate and loves to have fun. Annika does not live inside of any type of box or comfort zone. She is adventurous and up for new things and new experiences. Annika exudes confidence, strength and independence. I'm not sure if Annika is scared of anything but if she is I have no idea what it would be. One Annika quality I hope to acquire: Her willingness and desire to experience new things (without being scared of change like I am).

My Beautiful Nieces

2011-06-12T21:13:00.000-07:00

Ok, you've got me, my family is beautiful. Here are some pictures from a couple weeks ago when we went down to St. George for my sister Randi and her family to be sealed to their lovely adopted daughter, Annessa. I'm so happy I got to be there. It's such a special ceremony and not very many people go through it because kids are usually born sealed to their parents so it was a really neat opportunity for Reed and I.

Blog Makeover

2011-05-21T10:23:00.000-07:00

I really want to be able to post larger and better quality photos and maybe even put them side by side...if that's what the below pictures end up looking like then you know I succeeded! So ya... I'm experimenting. If our blog disappears...well that will be sad. Hopefully that doesn't happen. BTW...here are some darling picture I just took of my new nephew. So cute.

Springtime in Provo

2011-05-08T11:00:00.000-07:00

Well school's out and spring is finally here! It actually has stopped snowing in Provo and we are starting to see a little sunshine. Reed and I are loving the break. Especially now that work has started for me...it's just enough to keep me from going crazy but it's nice that when I leave work, I can actually be home and hang out with Reed instead of just coming home to do more homework.

I am working at Heideman, McKay, Heugly & Olsen. They are a Utah firm with offices spread around Utah but I'm here in their Provo office. I LOVE my job. I mostly work with Sonny Olsen and he is awesome. I really like that they trust me with substantive work and they don't hover over my shoulder. They just give me an assignment and let me do it my own way. It's so nice...I really don't like being bossed around and I like to be trusted with important work so this place has been a wonderful match for me. I am working on a defense case for someone charged with tax evasion, a class action tort case, and a property ownership dispute. All of my assignments have been extremely interesting and challenging.

Reed is working as a TA at the school but he doesn't work very many hours so in the meantime he has been doing this (he let me help a little as you can see--as you can also see he was not happy about me taking pictures of this):

Planting us a garden!! Yay! I am really excited to have fresh veggies like tomatoes and cucumbers so here's to hoping Reed's garden grows!

We also had a nice experience yesterday going to the Carl Bloch exhibit with my sister Dana and her husband Jason. The paintings were beautiful but we weren't allowed to take pictures in there.

Other Happenings:

Reed had a Birthday! Unfortunately it was during finals week so he did not get as much attention as I would have liked to give him but I think it was still a success. He got 3 pairs of new shoes, and a custom made "Chef BoyarReed" man-apron for when he cooks :-). Okay yes he got a store bought cake...my last home-made cake did not turn out well haha...I can cook but I seriously cannot bake. Maybe cause I don't like sweets so I never really got much practice. I made him dinner the night of his birthday but then on the weekend took him to Tucanos for his traditional Brazillian birthday meal.

My little brother moved home :-(. We miss him already. Especially at meal times cause he eats a ton and he is always VERY complimentary of the cook. He lived with us for this whole school year but now is back in St. George for the next 3 weeks before he leaves to Arkansas on his mission. We are very happy we got to have him with us for a little while.

We also went to Reed's mission reunion a little while ago. It was very long and boring for me and I didn't understand anything anyone was saying haha but I'm glad Reed got to see his friends and mission President again.

I also had my big hip hop performance right before finals in April. I really don't have time to be in the hip hop club but I do it anyways because it keeps me sane. I figure I need to allow myself at least that 1.5 hours per week to do something active that I love....Here is a pic of me with a couple friends after the big showcase. If you have nothing to do for about an hour, you can watch the showcase here: http://www.synergetikmedia.com/film/club-style-2011 --I'm in about 6 dances spread around throughout the showcase.

Well...we are a little sad that we won't be posting about amazing adventures in Europe this summer but we are excited to relax a bit and explore our own home. Reed has an interview coming up for an engineering internship too so hopefully that works out for him. I will be working at this firm for the next 6 weeks and then I'm going to be working at the US Attorney's Office in Salt Lake in the violent crimes division! So this should be a very interesting/educational summer.

When it Rains...

2011-03-20T19:20:00.000-07:00

In the past week...

-I have received 3 rejection letters from all 3 firms I interviewed with for a summer associate position this summer (for which I missed 2 full days of classes for call back interviews in SLC)
-I did not make it past even the first round of the moot court competition (more than half of the 80 students who did it moved on)
-I got sick
-I tried to bake my first cake and failed MISERABLY
-And Reed just told me Texas lost (yes I had them winning the national championship on my bracket...and no that doesn't really matter to me but it's one more thing to add to my list of failures for my short little pity party).

I'm hoping all of this means something great is about to happen and it's only going to be greater in light of the recent failures :-).

Yes. I'm Polish.

SOLD!!!

2011-03-19T14:55:00.001-07:00

I finally said goodbye to the old 1988 Beemer I have been driving for the last few years. It has been a good around town car but I needed something I could hop in and go to Arizona without worrying about being left stranded on the Rez. I had it on KSL for a few weeks and finally sold it.

Mom and Dad came up after the MWC Tourney and they helped me pick out a new car. Dad also helped me out a lot so I could get something nicer. THANKS DAD!!! Well here it is, the Honda Accord LX.

I was thinking and this is the first time I have had a car that was built later than 1990. The Carolla was a '78, the Jeep was a '79, and the Beemer was a 1988. Natali is happy to have a 2nd reliable car too.

CS Lewis

2011-03-07T21:22:00.000-08:00

I read this quote the other day and thought it was good enough to share.

“We begin to notice, besides our particular sinful acts, our sinfulness; begin to be alarmed not only about what we do, but about what we are. This may sound rather difficult, so I will try to make it clear from my own case. When I come to my evening prayers and try to reckon up the sins of the day, nine times out of ten the most obvious one is some sin against charity; I have sulked or snapped or sneered or snubbed or stormed. And the excuse that immediately springs to my mind is that the provocation was so sudden and unexpected: I was caught off my guard, I had not time to collect myself. Now that may be an extenuating circumstance as regards those particular acts: they would obviously be worse if they had been deliberate and premeditated. On the other hand, surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is? Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth? If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man: it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am. The rats are always there in the cellar, but if you go in shouting and noisily they will have taken cover before you switch on the light.”

- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

What rats are in my cellar? If you sneak up on me suddenly then you might just find out...

One more pic

2011-02-17T09:48:00.001-08:00

I just wanted to put a picture up of the whole EERI Seismic Design Competition Team. These guys did a lot of work and deserve a lot of credit.

San Diego!

2011-02-13T19:52:00.001-08:00

Well I think most of you know that this last weekend I went to San Diego for a Seismic Design Competition. For the last 4 months we have been designing, building, and analyzing a balsa wood tower with a group of 15 students. We would go to the school two nights a week for a couple of hours and we would work on the tower. Before talking about the tower I want to talk about San Diego. It has been freezing here in Utah and it was so nice to walk on the beach in California. I actually came back with a little tan.

We went to the Children's Cove in San Diego and watched the seals flop around and bask in the sun. They are pretty weird animals.

I also got an acai bowl on the beach. I had been craving one of these ever since I got back from my mission. It wasn't exactly the same but it was the best one I've had since being in Brazil.

But we didn't go to San Diego just to hang out on the beach and eat Acai bowls. We went for a competition. Here are a few pictures of the tower under construction.

The main goal of the competition is to maximize your revenue. The revenue comes from floor area of the building. Higher floors get a higher revenue per square inch of floor area. Then we have costs based on weight, area of land it was built on, and seismic costs. the tower is put under three earthquakes and the seismic cost is determined by the drift and acceleration of the top of the tower.
After your revenue is totalled, there are then four factors that could act as multipliers for the final revenue. These are presentation, poster, architecture, and predictions. If someone had the best poster, their score would receive a 10% increase, 2nd best poster would receive an 8% increase, and so on for all four things.
Anyway, that stuff is all pretty boring. The competition consisted of 29 teams, including teams from Malaysia, Romania, and British Columbia. Then you had UCLA, USC, Purdue, Missouri, Nebraska, UC Berkley and many others. we had a guy that was really good with a computer program called Revit and he did some drawings for us. Here are a few of the renderings that he did.

Out of 29 teams we ended up taking 6th place. We wanted to do better than this but this isn't bad. We did have some penalties for certain reasons. I won't go into any detail about it but we got a 28% penalty for something that is not in the rule book. We talked to the judges about it, had the rules right in front of us, and when I asked him to point out what part of the rules we had broken, he couldn't show me. It was very frustrating. But... the experience was fun and we learned a lot.

Oh and the best part was that I got to see and hang out with Mark! (but I forgot to take pictures)... We got to watch the BYU game together, went to the comedy club and he watched me take a shower...I mean shake a tower. It was great to see him PLUS he fed me twice so that was really nice of him. I was way excited when I found out we would both be there at the same time. Great timing Mark!

On a side note...

Natali made some Banana Bread for the first time the other day and it turned out really good.
We have also been looking for some good French cheese ever since we got back from France and we finaly found some Camembert at Harmon's. Natali was REALLY excited.

Things I Love

2011-01-27T21:42:00.000-08:00

Well I copied this post idea from my friends Leanna and Annika but it was just too great of an idea. Here are a couple random things that I love (not a comprehensive list of course)...

Of course, I love Reed. He is, by far, the best thing about my life. He is supportive, funny, positive, easy-going and kind...everything I need. And I can't get over how hott he is (and while I'm on the topic, I LOVE his jawline)

I love Sunsets. Even the worst day in the world melts away when I get a glimpse of one of these.

I. Love. Monk. If you have never seen Monk, it is hilarious. He is a crazy, quirky, OCD detective and he's awesome. Me, Reed and my brother Jared like to watch an episode every other night or so when I'm too tired to do anymore homework. And Monk is never wrong about anything. So I guess we have something in common ;-) haha. jk.

My new Kindle! It is so great! I read like 10 books on it over Christmas break! Now when Reed and I travel we don't have to bring a whole suit case just for my books :-).

BYU Law School. I know it's nerdy...but I love it (sometimes I hate it too...but it always invokes strong emotions haha). I love the challenge, the learning, the homework...And I love that all my hard work paid off with awesome grades for last semester. Seriously, definitely one of the best moments of my life was seeing last semester's grades.

Reed's guacamole. My husband is the guacamole king. Sometimes I wake up at 2 am craving this :-)

The Ranger's Apprentice book series. My mom introduced me to them. I LOVE them. Just enough fantasy to make for an interesting read but not too outlandish. I have read like four of them but have slowed down now that the semester is heavy underway

All things Apple. I have loved my Macbook from the day I set eyes on it. We are inseparable...unfortunately I am also inseperable from every document I've ever written and picture I've ever taken so I'm overloading my good friend. I think it's time for an upgrade:

I love Musicals. I love listening to them, watching them, or singing the songs from them. Especially Phantom. I have seen the Phantom in New York and London and hope to see it many more times (hopefully sometime with my husband). I love music in general but musicals are just amazing.

And lastly, I know Leanna posted this already but I had to as well, I love the MGs. I would say they are my best friends but I think sisters is almost closer to the truth. I seriously feel so privileged to have them in my life. They all are so unique, brilliant and talented...I have learned something from each one of them and each one is my hero in a different way. Really I would do anything for these girls.

Anticipation

2011-01-17T11:44:00.000-08:00

Anticipation seems to be one word that describes a lot of my life. Right now I'm living in anticipation of the day I will get my grades back from last semester and I'm so worried about it I can't even sleep! Which is ridiculous because there is absolutely nothing I can do about it at this point. I tell Reed that as soon as I get grades back, I will be much happier because I will be able to stop living in worry and anticipation.

But...well I guess I told him that last semester when I was living in anticipation of finals. And hmmm...again before that when I was worrying about whether or not I would get into law school. And before that, while worrying whether or not I would get an internship in France...and before that when worrying about taking the LSAT, and before that when worrying about wedding planning etc...

So I think that's my one goal for the new year is to try to live my life in the moment rather than anticipating the day I will start enjoying my life. I have a tendency to say..."Well I just have to get through _______ and THEN my life will really start." But the fact is, there will always be something I can worry about, anticipate and spend all my time on. It would be such a waste if I realized at the end of my life that I missed all of my todays waiting for tomorrows.

I've actually never been one for New Year goals because I don't like doing something just because everyone else does it haha. So maybe that's why I have waited until January 17th to set a goal. Nobody sets goals on January 17th right? :-).

Anyways, everyone knows the only reason people read blogposts is for the pictures so I guess I will post a nice picture we took over Christmas so my blog isn't pointless :-).

Christmas Break

2010-12-29T16:37:00.000-08:00

For Christmas this year Natali and I traveled down to St. George to spen Christmas with the Wyson Family. We were supposed to go to the Wyson's Cabin in Duck Creek (about 40 minutes outside of Cedar City) but there was a huge storm that dumped 7 feet of heavy snow in a day or so and the roads were closed for over a week. We ended up staying in St. George which meant no white Christmas for us this year.

Christmas was great. We spent the days before Christmas just relaxing and playing a few games. We also had a gingerbread house decorating contest. There were 4 gingerbread houses that were prebuilt so we just had to decorate them. Natali was really stresed out because as soon as she found out about this contest she kept bragging how she was gonna win because she had an "engineer" on her team. I put engineer in quotations because I am no more an engineer than she is a lawyer right now. I will take away those quotations in a few years. Anyway, lets just say I felt a little bit of pressure from being so talked up to everyone in her family.

Dana and Jason had the whole idea for doing the competition. They built the perfect gingerbread house. If you looked up gingerbread house in an encyclepedia, this is the picture you would probably see. It was perfect from the river that sparkled to the marshmellow picket fence to the wreath over the door.

Next we have Randy and Shane's gignerbread house. If oyu have ever seen the movie "Up" (Or "Snipe" for Bret and Becki) you might recognize it. The marshmellows above it are the balloons pulling it off of the ground. You will also see the g-pa, the little kid and the dog if you look hard enough. It was a cool idea. Shan also put some lights inside of it so it would light up.

Team three included the Wyson's unmariied children (Jaimee that just got back from Marine Combat Training, Jared, Tracie, and Jayden), Launa, and they got help from one of Jaimee's Marine friends. Having two Marines on the team explains the theme of the house: Fort Wiseguy. The two guys out front are Mr. Thimble and Mr. Wiseguy, 2 characters that Jaimee made up and does made up skits about these two mean old men. It is hilarious. Anyway, their Fort was probably the most protected Gingerbread house ever.

Natali kept saying to me all week that she wanted to do a tree house and I had to figure something out. I didn't know how I was going to do it but we just started working and this is how it turned out.

That is Tarzan on the left. We almost got disqualified for nudity but the leaf covers enough up ;). On the right int he window is a lion and there are 2 monkeys hanging from a vine in the middle. It turned out pretty cool, the house sat on top of one tree trunk and it was a lot sturdier than I thought it would be. We had a good time.

Here are some other highlights of our trip. We got to see Randy, Shane and their 4 cute little kids. here is a picture of Riley (She loves doing funny poses) from the last time we saw her (for some reason we didn't take any pictures of them this trip).

For Christmas we watched "The Muppet's Christmas Carol" to keep with the Wyson Family tradition. It is a great show. There was a lot of singing and I just sat in awe most of the time, trying not to mess up the very talented group of singers as they sang Christmas songs. It was great to sit around and hear the Christmas story again, and be reminded that after the shepherds were told the news of Christ's birth, they went in haste to find him, just as we must.

Christmas morning is always fun and I got spoiled more than I should have. My favorite present was a DVD that Natali gave to Santa to put in my stocking ;) It was a DVD of the first year of our marriage. Natali would spend hours on her computer and every time I would ask here what she was doing she just said she was working on a project. She was very secretive about it. What she did was she put all of our pictures and organized them into groups such as "Dating", "Wedding", "Barcelona", and other topics like that and put all of our pictures into a slideshow with music. It is amazing. Each topic has about 5 minutes of music and pictures of us and our adventures. Thanks Natali! I love it!

Well this is gettig a little bit long but we have had a great Christmas break. School will start soon and so will a new year. I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and will have a happy New Year!

A little post about my crazy life!

2010-11-15T20:05:00.000-08:00

Well I just realized the other day that I needed to write about a few things going on in my life right now. Life has been pretty crazy lately. I thought this last week was going to kill me: I had 4 tests, I had a 15 page lab report due, I started my second job as a basketball referee, we started on our balsa wood tower design, and I was able to do something else to keep me sain...

My freshmen year at good ole DT I put together an ultimate frisbee team with a bunch of guys from my ward. 5 years later we are still playing ultimate frisbee. This year we got put in the best division for the trournament and took third place out of 120+ teams! Pretty cool. The team captain this year even started a website and rented a video camera for a few games and made this video:

If anyone was wondering, it was me who made the second pass the last catch! Ya, pretty good huh? Well the season was great and if you want to see more videos or you just get really bored check out our team's blog here! You can watch some of our games on youtube also. Mom and Dad were able to catch one of our games when they came up and I was glad they were able to watch.

Our dream season ended this year last saturday as we fell to the Shaugiman. It was okay because I was able to come home to an amazing lunch that Natali had made from some halibut we got from Aunt Nan and Uncle Denney. MMMMMM. It was good. She made it in the oven with parmesan and green onions and other goodness on it. If you want the recipe, its a good one. Natali is pretty amazing. She studies 11+ hours a day and still has time to do hip-hop and cook me some good meals. She is really stressed right now about finals in a few weeks so for everyone going home for Thanksgiving, you might not see too much of Natali because she will be studying a lot during the "break" to get ready for finals.

Anyway, I better get back to grading some papers and doing some homework!

Why I love the holiday season

2010-11-13T18:46:00.000-08:00

I just love the holiday season. And I am SO excited for it this year. Reed won't let me set up our Christmas tree yet but I am still rebelling and listening to Christmas music and lighting Christmas candles :-D.
Few things I love about the Holidays:
1. Great food!
2. Music everywhere (and who doesn't love Christmas music?!)
3. Beautiful colored lights
4. Christmas scents
5. Wearing Turtle necks
6. Christmas shopping
7. Family time
8. Romance (seriously nothing is more romantic than listening to Christmas music, drinking hot chocolate and looking at Christmas lights)
9. Christmas stories!
10. My new most favorite part of the holiday seasons is how hott my husband looks in sweaters.

A Break from Studying

2010-10-07T12:10:00.000-07:00

Every couple hours of studying I start to get really fidgety and have to do something else for a little while so I decided to write a quick blog. This week is placement break which means the 2nd and 3rd year students have a chance to travel for interviews and such and first year students have a chance to catch up on mountains of studying and work on our Memo 3's. Memo 3 is the only graded assignment in the first year writing class. That means, no matter how good or bad I did on the first 2 memo's, I could still fail the class if Memo 3 is not wonderful. So I have spent approximately 17 hours over the break doing research. And the rest of the time I have been preparing outlines for finals (ya they are in 2 months but when the final exams are the only things on your grades, you spend the whole semester preparing for them). Anyways...a lot of people have asked me about law school so here is a quick summary of life as a first year law student at BYU.

BYU is one of the top 10 most competitive law schools in the nation once you get in. So even if you are studying for 10 hours per day, 5 days a week, you can still rank in the bottom half of the class since others will certainly be putting in 12 hours per day, 6 days a week.
Law professors are all about the Socratic method so they will call on you to analyze a case you read (one you probably read a week ago) and then will give you hypothetical after hypothetical until they can stump you in front of the class...and trust me, they will stump you haha. But it actually is pretty fun once you get over the fear of looking like an idiot.
The reading for law classes is really interesting. The case books use the craziest cases they can find to illustrate the different aspects of the law. Torts is by far the most interesting though (law suits)...it's unbelievable the kinds of things people sue over. One of our first cases was about a 60 year old lady who was sueing a 5 year old boy. The boy definitely did something lawsuit worthy but it's still crazy to read about them calling the 5 year old on the stand to defend himself against an $11,000 lawsuit haha.
I used to love classes that were graded on a curve because I knew if I worked hard enough, I would be at the top of the curve but in law school...everyone has always been at the top of the curve. So I prepare myself everyday to be at the bottom but I think nothing can really prepare any of us for the emotional breakdown that is sure to follow final grades :-S.
Law is such a different subject to learn. Because the law changes every single day. With every new case, new precedent is set. It's really fascinating to me that I could write a paper about what the law is on any particular subject and by the time I graduate law school, that paper could be entirely useless because the law has changed so much. Usually in school you learn how to apply rules that will typically never change. But in law school, you learn how to manipulate any kind of rule to work in your client's favor, which could even mean changing the rule entirely. It's interesting that one attorney could look at the rules set out in one case and construe them to favor his client while the attorney opposite him could use the SAME case and construe the rules in favor of her client.
One thing I have learned in law school: People should just stop trying to argue against Justice Scalia. Justice Scalia is a conservative judge in the Supreme Court who was appointed by Reagan. And let's just say, I feel bad for the other Justice's when they argue against him in their opinions because he destroys their arguments every time. He is sometimes criticised for writing such scathing dissents against the majority but it certainly makes his opinions interesting to read. Seriously...this guy is so cool.
One unfortunate thing about law school is it has made me hate mundane activities such as showering or cleaning the house, because I feel guilty every time I spend time on stuff like that knowing someone else is probably studying at that moment.

Okay...I really should get back to studying.

When in Rome

2010-09-18T08:12:00.001-07:00

Well it's long overdue but here is a post about our romantic moments spent in Rome. I just have to say, no pictures can ever do this place justice. If you can do one big vacation in your life, I highly recommend at least a couple days in Paris and a couple days in Rome. Our first day was spent at the Vatican...which actually I would not recommend doing first because once you see that, the other sites, such as the Colosseum, just aren't as impressive as they could be.

This first picture is one of my favorite statues (it's at the Vatican). It's of a priest who warned the Trojans not to accept the Trojan horse. When he went to thrust his spear in the horse's side, the gods sent serpants to kill him and his two sons. The strain you can see in his muscles and the fear in his face as he tries to get away make this statue feel so real.

We couldn't use a flash in the Vatican so whenever we are in the pictures, it's a little dark so that we don't overexpose the beautiful backgrounds but here is a glimpse of a couple of rooms inside of the Vatican.

Throughout various rooms we saw this really neat painting technique. We would have never realized it without our guide but although it's painted to look like it's 3d, it's really entirely paint.

I'm not going to post too many photos of paintings but I just wanted to post this, the painting is way too big for one picture but this section shows something cool that we learned. You see how most people are looking at something within the picture but there are a couple looking directly out of the painting at us? Artists did that when they painted someone they knew into the painting. Usually they did it to show respect to other painters they admired and sometimes it was a woman they loved. There are a couple men in paintings that are speculated to actually have been painted to represent a woman the painter loved but they painted them as a man to keep the love secret. One of the funniest stories though is of a painting in the Sistine chapel (I'm pretty sure that's where it was but we didn't take pics in there) where Michaelangelo painted a bunch of the people he didn't like being dragged down to hell.
The hallways are beautiful to look down. In many of their hallways they use an interesting technique (seen in second photo) of putting the pillars closer and closer together as the hallway continues down so that it looks longer than it really is. (I guess it only works if you walk down it the right way though). You have probably noticed that we have ear phones in (in one ear so we can still talk to each other), that's because we are listening to our guide talk as she walks in front of us, we tuned into a certain radio channel to hear her so she didn't have to yell in the Vatican.

Now for the most beautiful site in Rome, St. Peter's Basilica. Honestly, I just gasped when we walked inside of this place. Pictures will never even come close but try to imagine how ginormous this building is. Imagine a room with ceilings so high you could easily put the Salt Lake Temple inside. The little black thing you see at the back of the room is actually 5 stories high. And we were there at the perfect time of day when two beautiful rays of sun were shining through the windows in the dome. It was breathtaking.

We snapped a few photos out in the courtyard in Vatican city before heading out...You can tell Reed was pretty exhausted by this time.

Next up: Fontaine de Trevi and the Roman Pantheon!! The legend is, if you throw a coin into the fountain over your shoulder, someday you will return to Rome. So I kissed it first to bring EXTRA luck :-). We heard the Red Cross makes a lot of money by coming and collecting those coins from the fountain every Sunday night haha. By the way, Reed planned this WHOLE trip by himself. I was so busy with my internship and homework I didn't even double check his planning. He did a great job...He even downloaded little explanations of all the sites onto his i-pod (that's what he is listening to in the Pantheon photo).

The COLOSSEUM...(Imagine this section was introduced over a loud speaker or something dramatic like that) I can't choose which photos to use of our visit to the Colosseum because we had perfect weather for getting beautiful colors (which will not be as beautiful probably when I load them on blogger). First, here are a couple outside views of the Colosseum. This first picture is of Reed doing his...gladiator pose?

These next couple photos are of the inside of the Colosseum. There used to be a floor there of course but it's no longer there so you can see below the floor where the animals and (unfortunately) people were kept and/or prepared.

And Voila the view of the Roman Forum from the Colosseum

One of my other favorite things we saw was the Galleria Borghese...but we didn't get to take our camera inside :*(. I found my all time favorite sculpture in this Galleria by an artist named Bernini. The really cool thing about his statues is you never know the whole story until you have walked around the entire statue because it looks different from every angle. My favorite statue is called Apollo and Daphne. It's of Apollo catching the wood nymph Daphne as she is turning into a tree. From one point of view it looks like Apollo has his arm around a tree and then as you walk around you realize it's a woman. (Here is a photo I found online of the woman angle). It was beautiful.
Bus tour! I always think tourists look so silly in those topless buses snapping pictures as they go along but I just felt like there was no other way we were going to see everything so we gave in. And I really loved it. So ya...we were crazy tourists for awhile but it was well worth the humiliation.

Wow...this blog is taking forever. Okay here is a quick photo summation of a bunch of basilicas we visited...they were all incredible. It's worth it to go inside anything that says basilica because a lot of times the outsides are really ugly but the insides are always stunning.

Every time we saw Asian tourists, they were always doing peace signs in their photos haha so we decided we would spice up our poses with a couple of those as well. In concerns to Reed's pose in this Basilica, I'm not really sure what the explanation is.

We loved the night life in Rome. There were comedians, dancers, painters and others performing all over the city to try and earn a little cash. Below are a bunch of photos we took during our two night walks around Rome. One of the following photos is of Reed drinking out of one of many Roman fountains throughout the city. The water is perfectly clean if you drink it right out of the fountains so that's really handy in a city where it gets so hot in the summer time. And a lot of the water is still coming from the aquaducts built by the ancient Romans! Another of our favorite activities in Rome was eating ice cream. We ate a couple cups of ice cream each day. The ice cream in Italy really is just as good as everyone claims. We found our favorite ice cream is this little side shop in Trastaveri. It was delicious! So much better than I ever thought ice cream could taste! The other photos are of various sites we saw walking around at night.

Wow that was a long post. Moral of the story is: We love Rome.

Why Reed should always do the blogging

2010-07-21T02:17:00.000-07:00

Because I am simply TOO attached to the photos to make decisions about which ones go and which ones stay. It'd be easier to pick a favorite sibling (Jayden). Okay just kidding. Anyways...We have some catching up to do before going to the Romantic city of Rome this weekend so I am going to do a quick (quick for a french person at least) round-up of our most recent adventures.

4th of July
In honor of our beloved USA, we had a barbecue! Oh and don't you worry America, we ate really juicy hamburgers for your birthday party, not just these wimpy vegetables in the picture.

And here is a picture of a thumb. Don't know how we stumbled upon this or what the heck it means but how many people have pictures of the Parisian thumb? Ya, not many.

14th of July
To be fair to the French (the French are all about fairness), we also celebrated the French, independence/revolution/prison break/they don't actually know what they are celebrating, National Holiday. We had a great time going with some of our French friends from Evreux to see the Fireworks in Paris.

Julien, Allen, Martin and Reed

Cathedrale de Chartres
On our way to La Vallee de Loire to see all the Chateaux last weekend, we decided to stop and see this beautiful Cathedral we had heard about. It did not disappoint (though it was unfortunately too dark to really see anything inside). Reed made me run out there so he could sneak a picture with the priests in it.
We are not sure why, but statues at Cathedrals are always standing on something (humans, animals etc.) and I tried looking it up but couldn't find any information.

Cute husband by a cute french apartment complex

View from the Cathedral

Not sure what this means either but they have the same pathway carved on the inside of the church and people were walking on it so it must have some religious significance.

Bahaha I just love Reed's poses

Château de Chambord
This Chateau was definitely the most impressive. It is HUGE.

I love this shot of Reed. My husband is hott.

I felt right at home at the castle. Reed says I probably was supposed to be a queen back then but I protested against it when I found out I wouldn't have running water and air conditioning. Sounds about right ;-).

Château de Chenonceau

This is supposedly the most popular chateau for tourists so we felt really cheated when we saw they were doing construction on it! But the inside was still cool.

We found out that the beds were usually shorter back then because people slept sitting up!! Apparently they thought the lying down position was reserved for the dead. Crazy.

Yes, Reed is using his tour guide book as a prop to pretend to be a butcher :-).

Bed chamber of the 5 queens

Reed was really excited to do the "Labyrinth" in the gardens but it was too easy cause he could see over the hedge haha. So he decided to pretend to get lost anyways.

Château de Villandry
We didn't go into this castle because we heard it wasn't worth the time but the gardens were absolutely breathtaking. There were many gardens including an herb garden, vegetable garden, sun garden, water garden, flower garden and ornament garden.

Château de Cheverny
This was the smallest chateau we visited but the grounds were huge. The chateau itself was very quaint and even recently lived in so it was very interesting to see the inside. The grounds are also home to around 100 hunting dogs! Here they are all waiting for feeding time. It was REALLY neat to see when they opened the gates to feed the dogs, they were jumping and running all over each other.

This next picture was probably my favorite and most interesting discoveries during the whole trip. I have always been baffled when I look at paintings of women through the middle ages/renaissance etc, because they all look the same! And it's not really a look I had ever seen in women today so I thought painters just didn't paint women very well back then (ok, let's admit it, the women in these paintings are not very attractive). Then I saw this photo on the wall of the family who just moved out. They inherited this home through a long line of royal descendants of those who built the castles. And look at these young royal girls!! They look just like those old paintings (a little more attractive of course)! But really, the painters got it right! Same face shape, same eyes, same foreheads. Seriously...It all makes sense now. The woman all look alike in the old portraits because only royals could afford to be painted and the royals all looked alike cause they married each other. Okay...maybe no one else finds this as enlightening as me but I love it. All my life I have wondered why these famous painters didn't know how to paint women.

Château de Versailles

The famous Chateau de Versailles. We went here to see their nighttime firework and water show, it was great walking around the lit up gardens with all their little fountains and statues. Really a beautiful area.

They had something blowing bubbles all over the place when we first arrived, it was neat.

Some more Paris pics

2010-07-19T04:27:00.000-07:00

A week or so ago I picked up Natali from work and we were able to see a few things in Paris. We found a couple of cool buildings. From what I understood this building with Natali is where the President stays so it is kind of like the French White House.

This building was just down the road from the other building.

We found this cool bridge that Natali could have stayed at for hours taking pictures of it.

We also took a trip to Paris with the Family on a Saturday. We went and saw Notre Dame. Below is the family: Thomas and Christine are the parents, and from left to right Ines (7), Clemence (10), and Julien (4). It was fun to go with the family somewhere and see them running around and playing.

We finally went and saw the real Arc de Triomphe so that I wouldn't call every single arched building the wrong thing. It had a lot of detailed statues around it that were really big and cool to see.

The kids are finally out of school and I watched them for a week before the family all took off for vacation. They come back on Sunday so I will have my hands full again soon. The family has this inflatable pool that we filled up and we went "swimming" about every day when they were here. I'll have to take a picture of the pool later.

Natali has also introduced me to some musical culture. Since we have been here we have seen 2 musical shows: The Lion King, and Les Miserables. The Lion King had amazing costumes and stage scenes. The lions would do this weird sideways claw thing when they got mad that I am trying to immitate. It was in French so it was hard to get all of the jokes and details of what they were talking about but it followed the movie so I knew what was going on most of the time.

Les Miserables was really good and had some really good singers in it. Natali loved this one and we had better seats than for the Lion King so that helped. Natali got emotional a few times during the play because they had some really talented people. This one was in English so I could understand it.

BARCELONA!

2010-06-23T00:36:00.000-07:00

While Natali and I are here in Europe we want to make the most out of our time being here so we planned a weekend trip to Barcelona. I found some really cheap flights, some good prices on a few hotels, we rented a car and we explored Barcelona for the weekend. We stayed at 3 different hotels and I found something new about myself; I enjoy trying out new showers. The first thing I think when I walk into a hotel room is "I wonder if they have a good shower..." Yes, weird but true.

We flew into Spain around 9:00 Thursday night and were able to go out to eat and walk on the beach before heading to the hotel room. Friday we enjoyed the hotel room then headed to Barcelona in the rental car. We ended up checking into our hotel room on the way into Barcelona (Natali still thinks we were lost for an hour or so, I say we were just enjoying the scenery). We ate and by the time we actually got to Barcelona it was 6:00. Luckily it doesn't get dark until about 10:30 so we enjoyed our evening and the whole next day in Barcelona. Here are the highlights of our trip:

LAS RAMBLAS

There is a street called La Rambla that is one of the most famous streets of Spain. Thousands of people just walk down it and go to the little shops or restaurants or just enjoy the "scenery" (You will see what I mean when I say scenery)

On one end of the road there is this huge statue thing called the Barcelona Colon Monument and supposedly Christopher Columbus is the statue on the top.

On the other end of the street is the Placa de Catalunya. It had fountains, statues, and what every good tourist attraction has, pigeons everywhere. If you look at the picture below you will see a kid glaring at the camera. He thought Natali was sneaking in the bushes to take a picture of him... I guess it didn't cross his mind that there was a castle and other cool things behind him.

Here is some of the "scenery" that can be found on Las Ramblas. There were human statues everywhere trying to get money in bizarre ways. I don't know how many people think, "When I grow up I want to be a human staute." There is nothing wrong with it, I just don't see how trying to sit in the same position all day without moving would be appealing.

I don't know if this was her actual pose of if she took a lot of smoke breaks but every time we saw her she was smoking in this position.

I gave this guy 50 cents and he went from statue to cowboy killer and shot me (Luckily his guns weren't loaded) and then he let me wear a hat and pose with him. There was a cowboy here too but the cowboy statue got a phone call.

We found a mime... except he didn't really do anything besides pose for a picture, take our money, and he didn't even say thank you.

We found these drawings. We couldn't believe how real they looked. Crazy.

We even found animal rights people there petitioning against the Running of the Bulls. I guess letting them run through our streets is much crueler than keeping them in a cage until they are fat enough to be taken to the slaughter house.

The Works of Gaudi

Antoni Gaudi was a famous architect and his works are some of the most famous in all of Barcelona and even in all of Spain.

Park Güell

This whole park was created and designed by Gaudi. There are houses, stairways, bridges, walkways, buildings, and monuments all designed by Gaudi. Pretty neat stuff.

Sagrada Familia

This is another work of Gaudi. It is a huge cathedral that is still under construction. I guess it is a never-ending project. What is done looks really impressive but the pictures just don't do it justice. It is really huge and there is a lot of detail in the building.

MILÀ HOUSE, LA PEDRERA

Gaudi also built a bunch of houses and other buildings around Barcelona.

Natali makes fun of me because she says my fingers are disagreeing with each other in this picture.

Casa Batlló

This house was deffinately interesting. If you look at the balconies it is said that each balcony is a skull and the pillars are bones.

All of the houses and cathedrals we could have gone into for a fee but we decided not to. We deffinately regretted not going into one of the houses later. By the end of the day we were so bummed that we had left the houses without going in we decided we should go to something. We were by the Aquarium and so we decided on that. The aquarium just made us regret our decision even more because we paid more for the aquarium than we would have paid for one of the houses yet there really wasn't anything special about it.

L'AQUARIUM

We made the most out of the sitiuation still and had a good time. All of the member of Nemo were there to greet us.

This poor little guy was there too! We named him Herbert. I just found my new favorite fish.

There was a large tank you could walk through and see all the sharks and other fish. I wanted to see a shark eat a fish or something interesting but nothing happened.

On the way out of the aquarium there was a submarine and this guy wouldn't get out of my way... how rude.

Montjuïc Castle

Luckily on Friday night we decided to check this place out. There is a big castle on top of the hill that is also an art museum. The castle alone is pretty neat. What is the coolest part is what is below it. Natali and I would say this is the one thing you would HAVE to see if you ever went to Barcelona, and make sure you go at night!

Font Màgica de Montjuïc

Coming off the hill there are a series of waterfalls that leads to the Font Magica. It is this huge fountain that plays music along with a light show every 30 minutes. We took some amazing pictures but even those cannot capture the real feeling. Even the video doesn't get it either. Being there and seeing is the only way to really enjoy it. This is exactly the type of thing that Natali just can't get enough of. She loves music and beautiful things so putting the two together made it perfect for her. Natali loved it so much that we went back on Saturday night to enjoy it again.

Observations

2010-06-22T01:16:00.000-07:00

Well you haven't heard from me in a while so I thought I would do a little post about observations I have made while working/living here and things I have learned. Sorry it will probably be long so be warned. Now of course this may not be completely accurate and may only reflect my very small sphere of experience here in Paris so just bear in mind that I don't claim to understand everything :-).

It serves no purpose to be rude. People will not like you more, they will not work harder to help you succeed, they will not respect you more etc. It's respectable to be strict, honest and to expect the best from people around you but there is just no reason to be rude. At work I have been blown away by how rude people are. I thought it was maybe just to me but it's not, it's to everyone. Of course not EVERYONE here is rude but many of them are. And I just wonder what they think they have to gain from such rudeness. I have also seen that rudeness is contagious so I am working hard to fight against the disease.
When you become friends with a French person, they will be your friend for life...whether you want them or not :-). The French really value friendship. They are not as open as Americans though so they don't have as many friends. Typical Americans have hundreds of people they casually call "friends" but they don't really keep up with them. Like friends from high school. There are very few people that keep up with their high school friends after high school. However in France, once you are friends, you always are friends and you will do anything for each other. Example: Thomas and Christine often drive across France for like 8+ hours just to go to a friend's birthday party. That would pretty much be unheard of in the States.
Not everyone wants the same things in life. Some people don't want a nice house if they can live in a dump without doing any work. Some people don't care about injustice. Some employers are not impressed when their employees work harder than is required. Some people don't want to advance in their job if it means more responsibility etc... I think sometimes I am ignorant and think that everybody wants what's important to me or what's important to Americans but it's just not true.
French lives are just like American lives...except about 4 times slower. Really Americans are always in a rush and it's really in our blood, we can't get over it. We can try, but we will never have the patience of a French person. For example, a very fast meal here would be 40 minutes long but normally, meals take at least 2 hours. If you are eating at a restaurant at night, you need to allow yourself 3 hours before your next activity if you want to be on time. That's one thing Reed and I really struggle with.
Not everybody wants to be American. I already knew this but it's a funny myth that seems to be very popular among Americans.
When people don't have a personal interest in doing something, they either won't do it well or they won't do it at all. The perfect example can be found in restaurants in Paris. Tips are included in the bill (because it would not be fair for one waiter to earn more than another) so the result is thus a bunch of waiters who ignore you through your entire meal and couldn't care less if you enjoy your time there. People need motivation.
For many (if not most) Americans, (from my observation) work is life. For most the French, work is some causal annoyance they have to do in order to live their real lives. I really like this about the French and I hope that like them I will remember where my priorities should lie. However, they do take this a little far. Everything is higher on the priority list for the French that their work. From what I have seen, in an 8 hour work day, they will generally take at least 3 hours worth of breaks between their lunch break and their coffee breaks. That's a little extensive people.
Americans really are so loud. I know you have heard this but it's so true. Reed and I can pick out Americans from a mile away because we know they are the people we can't see yet but we can hear.
Wanting a welfare state does not necessarily stem from actually caring about the welfare of people in the country. I have often heard people joke in politics that the liberals are the heart of the nation and the conservatives are the brain. This obviously stems from the fact that liberals are hardliners behind most welfare state policies. But after my experiences here in France (one of the most liberal countries in the world) I can't help but wonder if compassion and "heart" are not really the motivation for many liberals behind their policies. I witnessed a perfect example of this the other day when one of my very liberal friends quite rudely turned down an older woman who asked for a slice of the large pizza we were eating in the park. This friend continuously spouts strong ideals about equality and caring about our fellow men yet couldn't spare a slice of pizza for a very hungry stranger. And afterwards said if they want food they should go over to "blah blah blah" (I don't remember where but it's some gov't run shelter). In that moment I felt something I have observed a bit which is that people seem to use their support for a welfare state as a way of shifting the responsibility of charity to someone else and being able to live with themselves when they don't personally excersize any type of charity. As I said, these observations of course reflect my very small amount of experience and obviously can't be applied universally but it's something to think about. Though I have only given one example, this is not a rare occurence. It's no surprise that the poor and the homeless tend to spend their times in tourist areas because the average French person will surely not show them compassion. Now I, of all people, am not one to encourage free hand-outs for every person who chooses not to work but we should all still excersize charity in our lives...and charity does not mean pushing the poor off into the hands of someone else like some pest.
In America we must avoid the mistake of Europe, we cannot let our fight against child abuse lead us to preventing parents from raising their children. Children need to be disciplined and they need parents who will teach them. Whether it's spanking, grounding, working or other punishments, something needs to be done to mold them into respectable, hard working citizens.
The nature of mankind may not be as good as I thought. There is a movie I saw a long time ago called "War of the Worlds". I don't know if you have seen it or not but there are a couple scenes depicting people fighting brutally with each other for necessities they all want like cars and food etc. It depicts them as acting like animals where it truly is every man for himself with absolutely no regard to the immorality of his/her actions. I have always believed that if there ever was such a world crisis, people would not really act like this. However, when I see how people act under just some small crisis such as overcrowding on the metro, I wonder if I have placed too much faith in the good nature of mankind. Occassionally one of the metro lines will have a problem in the mornings resulting in all of the lines beind overcrowded. This means everyone will be late to work and will be sardined in the metro if they can even get in. I was shocked though at how inconsiderate people are. There are people trying to get off the metro and unable to because no one will risk moving out of the way in fear that they will lose their place on the metro. And even worse, when someone does step out to let someone off, they often DO lose their place because everyone else waiting to get on will push them out of the way. When I see pregnant women and 87 year old ladies tossed aside by teenage boys as they shove their way onto the metro, it's disheartening to witness where society has gone.
When people don't have to pay for healthcare as they get it, they will be in to see the doctor for everything from fatigue to a canker sore.
Ok that's all I wanted to say for now so if you made it through this post I guess I will let you in on another little secret: I got accepted into University of Utah law school. It was not my first choice obviously but it's a very good school. It's ranked 42nd in the U.S. (tied with BYU) and has the 3rd lowest professor to student ratio behind Yale and Stanford. So I guess it's a good thing I've gotten used to commuting everyday to Paris.

I'm just kinda bored so...

2010-05-28T01:07:00.000-07:00

Becki posted some of the videos she likes so I decided to do the same with a BABY theme. Don't worry this doesn't mean anything about Natali and I because if there is one sure birth control on the planet it is taking car of 4 crazy kids. But since we will be having 2 more babies in the family in a few months I thought I would get Tami and Kari excited to be mommies.

This one is a classic.

And you can't have funny baby videos without Charlie!

Ryne said he was going to adopt a black kid...

Kids talking healthy.

I saw this one for the first time the other day. It is great. I'm gonna start doing this every day.

This baby laughs just like Ryne.

And you can't forget about Justin Bieber. I'm sure Kirk will teach Rivers all the words to Justin Bieber ;)

Natali just got home and reminded me of this one too :)

And here is a French one too (don't worry there are subtitles)

OWeed Lemarchand

2010-05-26T00:29:00.000-07:00

I'll start out with 2 stories. Ines, the 6 year old asked her father how to spell "Oui." He told her and she said thanks and walked away. Later I saw this board with outfits for everyone. There was an outfit for the whole family; Thomas, Christine, Audrey, Celmence, Ines, Julien, Natali, and yes, Ouide.

Here is a video of the youngest child, Julien saying my name.

When Julien gets in trouble his mother calls him by his full name, Julien Lemarchandm. The other day Julien wanted me so he kept yelling my name. Then after a while he yelled "OWeed Lemarchand."

Natali and I have been able to see some sights while we have been here. Last week Natali got a few days off and we got to go to see a few places in Normandy before Natali got sick for the weekend. First we went to a place called Honfleur. It was a very beautiful town by the ocean. We went there with Clemence and took some pictures and enjoyed the pretty scenery.

Then we went to Trouville and Deauville. It was nice to have Natali for a day and see some of the pretty countryside.

Then on Saturday and Monday we were able to go to Paris and check out the sites there. We went to Le Louvre on Saturday and the Eiffel Tower on Monday. Le Louvre was amazing. The building itself was enormous and was breathtaking. We didnt get to spend too much time there because it closed earlier then we thought. The time we spent there was amazing though. We liked the statues the best.

We didn't really see what the big deal was with the Mona Lisa but we had to go see it. Here it is. It is behind glass and well protected. The other paintings seemed just as great as this one but they didn't get protection like the Mona Lisa.

Here we are at the Eiffel Tower.

It is fun seeing the sites of France with my wonderful wife! These are the highlights of Natali's life. She works so hard during the week. Last week she worked really hard on the "Who's Who" book for the big convention the OECD is having. She probably put 16 hours a day in for at least 3 or 4 days. Then this week is the big convention so she is having to go to work at 8 AM. That means she has to catch the train from Evreux at 6:20. She is working really hard. We met with her internship director on Monday and he said that she shouldn't be working like that the whole time so she should be able to get a day off once a week to work on her homework (yes she is still a student and has homework to do after work) and more importantly hang out with me ;)

I went and got a haircut today and was able to converse a little bit with the person cutting my hair. Also just a side note I am officially addicted to 24. I am almsot finishing season 2 right now. I knew I was addicted when I started thinking things like "That's how Jack Bauer must have felt" or "David palmer was a great President." Although I am admitting my addiction i have not taken any steps to overcome it. Once I am done with season 8 I am willing to go get the necessary help.

Post TIme

2010-05-19T05:23:00.000-07:00

Well Tami's post about ketchup... or catching up inspired me to do the same. I was looking through our pictures and saw that we didn't post about a lot of cool stuff that has happened the last few months.
Natali and I went to the Festival of Colors in Spanish Fork at the Sri Sri Radha Krishna Temple. It is an Indian celebration to commemorate the coming of spring. So here is what happens in a nutshell: Everyone gets lots of packets of paint, they start a countdown, then everyone throws the paint into the air and onto all those around you. Meanwhile there was a band that must have forgot all the other words to the songs they sang because they sang "Hari Krishna Hari Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hari Hari" over and over again. Anyway, Natali and I showed up just after they sold out of the packets so that was a bummer but it was still very interesting.

Then April came and we all know what that means... TUCANOS! Yep Natali once again spoiled me as an early birthday present and took me to Tucanos, BRazilian Grill. Man I love that place. Who wouldnt love rice, beans, farofa, vinegrete, and all you can eat meats? Anyway, It was great. Thanks baby!

Natali spoiled me on my birthday. I got breakfast in bed, good Aqua Di Gio cologne, and the last season to Prison Break. Natali alos let me choose a manly meal for my birthday dinner so we went out to Fuddruckers and got the 1 pound burgers. My parents got me some much needed contacts, and my in-laws got me some nice shirts. I had to take a picture of the shirt that Dan gave me. On the back it says "Eagar is on fire."

Then Natali Graduated!!! Well she won't be officially done until August when her internship is over but she got to walk. She graduated with a Major in Print jounalism and a minor in Political Science. Everyone seemed so happy to be out of school but Natali was sad to see it go. She loves learning and the college experience. Here are some of her academic acoomplishments (I'm gonna write them as far as I know and I might be little worng but Natali wouldn't let me post them if she knew). She has held a scholarship for all 4 years of her college degree and hasn't had to go a penny into debt to graduate. She has a GPA of 3.85. WHile maintaining this high GPA she has also held numerous jobs. The one she loves the most is being able to teach American Heritage. She taught for 2 full years and is an amazing teacher. This last year she was able to maintain her GPA while working 2 jobs (American Heritage and Newspaper Photographer), planning a wedding, and putting up with me trying to distract her ;) I probably left a lot off that I should have put on here because she has done soo much during her 4 years at BYU. Good job baby and I love you!

Natali's parents came for her graduation and it was really nice of them to come and support her.

After the graduation we went up to Salt Lake with Natali's parents and had a dinner and a movie with Dana and Jason. We watched Clash of the Titans in 3-D. It was a nice evening spent with great people. Thanks again Dan and Launa for everything.

Now we are here in France. Here are just a few little things that I didn't post. Thomas and his friends went karting and they invited me to go. We went in a group and got paired up into teams. The go-karts were actually pretty powerful and fast and really fun to drive. We trained for about an hour and then had a 40 minute race. Natali was a good sport and went and watched me tear up the racetrack in my sweet racing suit.

While I was in Brasil I bought a hammock that I haven't really been able to hang up since I have been home. I got really excited to come to France when I learned that the family has a yard with trees big enough to hang a hammock from. Here it is. This is the greatest thing on a nice day to sit back and relax in my hammock. The kids really love it too!

And last but not least, I have learned a new sweet skill that I have. Here is a video to prove my awesomeness (even though no prrof is really needed because it is just accepted as a fact;)

(The white stuff is whipping cream)

Saturday May 8, 2010

2010-05-09T14:10:00.000-07:00

Natali finished her first week at the OECD and was REALLY ready for the weekend to come. Well on Saturday we had a nice little trip to Paris. Pictures really are way better than words so I'll let the pictures do most of the talking.

We woke up in the morning and went to a bakery in Evreux and just got what looked good. In France food is al about presentation so it all looked good. They even put the baked goods in a cute little box with a ribbon around it... anyway we decided on a strawberry eclair, a chocolate eclair, and a pain au chocolat. MMMMMM!! So good.

Then we went to Paris. I was able to drive there which might sound easy but for anyone who has been to Paris and driven there it is crazy. The trip there wasn't bad but in Paris is a whole different world. So many times I was thinking, "Where are the lines?" but you just go and watch out for other cars. And don't get me started on most of the round-abouts... well we lived and that was great. We parked and walked around a litle bit and took some pictures of some of the sites.

Some building, looked cool, took a picture. Below it is me with Clemence trying to give me bunny ears.

Then Thomas, Clemence, Natali and I walked around Paris for a while before Clemence had to go to Dance class.

While walking we found an old man with an umbrella and a cat playing music on the street. Pretty interesting, enough to take a picture AND put it on our blog.

After dropping off Clemence we walked up a huge set of stairs to the Sacre Coeur. Natali says it is one of the most famous Cathedrals in Paris... and she is usually right so I'll believe her. It was huge and in front there were a bunch of people just singing in front of it for the tourists.Lots of people were sitting below it jsut enjoying the nicer weather. Notice I say nicer because it has been really chilly since we have been here. We were hoping to get out of the cold but it followed us. Saturday was a nicer day luckily.

Then we went and saw the little tourist stands. Lots of paintings and drawings and a bunch of other stuff you can buy if you have a lot of money. We didn't buy anything :( Natali liked these bright paintings the best. They were pretty cool with all of the bright colors.
We saw some very pretty places including this little restaurant outside under some vines with purple flowers on them.
Another nice little place on the side of the street. Natali loves this kind of stuff. She was just beaming the whole day. It was exactly what she needed on her day off.Here we are overlooking the city of Paris. The Eiffel Tower was out of view and we weren't able to see it on Saturday but some other day we will go and take pics so look forward to that!

And Just how the day started with food it ended with food. The branch that we go to had a branch crepe party. The church is in a town called Mantes la Jolie that is about 30 minutes away from Evreux on the way to Paris. So Thomas dropped us off on the way back home and the after we took the train home. The branch is small but really nice. There were lots of good crepes, my favorite is definately the Nutella though ;)

FRANCE!

2010-05-06T12:55:00.000-07:00

Well we are here and it's been a whole week. As most of you know Natali got an internship in Paris at the OECD. While she is there I am just kinda chilling at the house and helping the family with whatever I can. It's been great besides the fact that most the time I feel like I am in my first transfer on my mission again. There is a lot of head nodding and saying "oui" without having any idea of what people are saying. It is fun to roam around the little city of Evreux. It's actually pretty big compared to Eagar. I just go walking around and run my errands and stuff. I have learned a few things since I have been here. Quick story: I went to the store and learned that French grocery stores do not give you bags to put your stuff in. It is BYOB (Bring Your Own Bag). I went not knowing this, bought some stuff and had to walk the 8 blocks or so home holding all the stuff in my arms like an idiot. I learn fast though ;).

We'll keep you updated on anything else interesting that is going on here on the other side of the world.

Here I am in front of the Arc de Something (Not Triomphe)!

Natali and I in front of the OECD.

Au revoir.

Great News about France

2010-04-24T16:54:00.000-07:00

I'm just so excited about this I had to share it! Reed and I have just been given a grant which will cover our plane tickets entirely plus some extra! WAHOO!! This is really big news because we already had a scholarship covering my tuition...then the OECD said they will pay me enough to cover all my train transportation to Paris AND we do not have to pay for rent or food. So basically, the only the we will be paying for over there is anything we WANT to pay for. We are so excited and we feel really grateful to know the Lord is looking out for us. Money was really our biggest concern about going to Paris but now everything has worked out for the best, it's even cheaper than living in Provo! :-). We are getting all packed up now and almost ready to go! Our next post will be from Paris! A bientot tout le monde!

Life changing discovery

2010-04-15T14:54:00.000-07:00

Now why on Earth am I taking time out of my super busy finals week to blog about tortillas? They are THAT good. No seriously. Who even knew tortillas could taste like this? I have compared them to Cafe Rio and Rancheritos but frankly I think they are even better. You can find them at Costco. They are not pre-cooked but it really only takes a matter of seconds to cook them. My brother taught me the key to cooking them JUST right: impatience. Yes, that's right. Turn the heat on way high, let the pan heat a little and then, no matter what your premonitions tell you, flip the tortilla every 5 seconds (or 3 even) until it gets a couple dark brown spots on it. Pull it off the pan and enjoy. Oh Tortilla Land company, you are inspired. I know people always say that things are like the best invention since sliced bread...but these tortillas really are. In fact, you probably won't be eating anymore sliced bread at your house once you give these a try. Well, I would go on about this but I can't...I just can't keep talking about these tortillas, it's killing me, I need to go make another.

P.S. you can find them at Costco for sure...but I also heard they are sometimes available at Walmart

Soooo Excited!!!!

2010-04-05T17:14:00.000-07:00

I'm so excited, for so many things right now. And the least of which is the fact that I'm finishing my last semester of my undergrad in like a week. I'm really dying to go to France with Reed. We leave in 23 days! AHHH! And I just can't contain my excitement so I had to write a quick blog about it. In fact, I'm so excited, I'm about to burst into another list blog. Oh boy.

I'm sooo excited to...

See the eiffel tower sparkle at night in my husband's arms
Jog to the local boulangerie in the morning for baguettes and pain du chocolat
Hear and speak the world's most beautiful language for 3 months!
See Christine, Thomas, Audrey, Clemence, Ines and Julien!
Eat cheese! (And watch Reed's face when he smells french cheeses for the first time haha)
Show my parents around Paris and prove to my dad that the french are not snobs and France really is as romantic as people think
Walk down the cobblestone roads with my nose in a book like Belle
See Reed have to wear a speedo and swim cap to the pool ;-)! (the french are paranoid about germs and think that's the best way to prevent them in public pools)
Work at the biggest global economics organization in the world
Ride bikes around Barcelona

Okay...I could go on forever but I won't. The point is, I can't wipe this darn smile off my face and I can't focus on any of my schoolwork because I can't stop thinking about France! Wahoo!!

A list blog. I love lists. Lists make me happy, speaking of happy...

2010-03-05T20:36:00.000-08:00

10 things that make Reed happy (By Natali)
1. Clean houses—that weren’t cleaned by him
2. Sunday back tickles...But only as long as it doesn't actually "tickle", being tickled is not happy-making for Reed
3. Making people laugh
4. Sports—all things sportish

5. Being asked for advice
6. Religious books---especially about Joseph Smith (and with this category, I’m going to just include all things Gospel-related because that really makes him happy but could fill up all ten spots)
7. Eating all the cereal out of his Lucky Charms first and then eating all the marshmallows
8. The successes of others, especially his family. Reed rejoices in the happiness of others.
9. Sweets: ice cream, cookies, brownies, soda etc.
10. Playing games with his family

10 things that make Natali happy. And when Natali is happy, she is really happy! (by Reed)
1. France. Anything and everything about it. She daydreams about France all the time. As most of you know she was a nanny over there for a summer and she can't wait to be back there. Hopefully everything works out this summer for us to go back!

2. Flowers. Natali loves nice, pretty flowers on the kitchen table. Sorry we can't afford them more baby :(
3. Romance movies, romantic stories, just anything romantic.
4. Her Country. Natali is very passionate about her country. She teaches American heritage and loves teaching about the divine help this Nation has received through the years.
5. Making a difference for the better. She does this through American Heritage and anything else she can around BYU. She has high goals on things that she would like to see changed in the world and hopes to do this on a bigger scale in the future.
6. Warm weather! Yeah, what the heck is she doing in Utah?
7. Massages, especially foot massages.
8. Music. Nothing can affect Natali's emotions like music.
9. Dancing. This could go with music but it deserves a number all of its own. I've never seen someone dance with so much passion and she is great!

10. Food!!! I call Natali food high maitanence. She loves food. Today we got shrimp tacos from del taco and her whole day brightened. What does not make her happy is when her favorite menu item suddenly gets taken off the menu (and this has happened more than you would think!). Natali would eat out every meal if we could... but we can't so she is stuck with my baked potatoes and bbq chicken :)

Valentines Day

2010-02-18T22:12:00.000-08:00

Reed and I had a wonderful Valentines Day. Reed is quite the romantic of course and he did not disappoint this Valentines Day (well we celebrated it on the 13th but same thing). Upon waking up in the morning and going into the bathroom I found a beautiful rose with this cute poem written by my husband attached :-).

Good Morning my love, it’s a wonderful day. It’s not the 14th but that’s okay. You’re up this morning and I’m not there But that doesn’t mean that I don’t care. To start the day off, here is a rose Because I love you from your head to your toes. A scavenger hunt? Your probably thinking “What the heck has Reed been drinking?” I’ll give you hints and show you the way. To reach the end don’t go astray. Don’t worry you won’t travel too far But maybe just once you’ll get in your car. Now the first hint, I open and close, It’s too cold in here for a rose! (The fridge)

Anyways...the scavenger hunt continued throughout the house until I had found all of the 12 long stemmed roses. Some of my favorite short poems attached were:

The”3rd member” of our family lives here. If you don’t get her out she’ll scream off your ear. (Our bird smoochie)

You put this on when you feel a little frisky. Hanging this up was very, very risky. (Haha oh yes...he bought me lingerie)

A year ago we came here to eat, To fill up our bellies with something sweet. (We went again to the french bakery for breakfast)

After a lovely french breakfast, Reed took me shopping for some new pants and new perfume :). But I made him promise to hide the pants from me until my birthday. My honey sometimes spoils me a little more than we can afford to :) haha. So for dinner, Reed decided that instead of going to one of our favorite restaurants (Melting Pot) and spending all our money he would just use our fondue pot to cook our own melting pot meal. He looked up the recipes all on his own and went shopping for everything he needed. He started us off with a cheese fondue course with veggies and french bread. Then for the main course he cooked up a really fancy broth in which we cooked some shrimp, steak and chicken. He planned to do a raspberry chocolate fondue with strawberries, shortcake and bananas but we wanted to go see a movie so we saved the chocolate fondue for Sunday's dessert.

After dinner we went to see "When in Rome" which was really cute :). Then we came home and went to sleep...well went to bed at least ;-).

2010-02-16T18:20:00.000-08:00

Okay, Well here I begin my huge blog about my San Francisco trip and the Seismic Design Competition. First off, it was a fun trip. I didn't want to leave Natali all alone but luckily her parents were in town that weekend for at least a day so that was one night she didn't have to stay alone in the house. She was a good sport though and let me go have little fun.
So we went to San Francisco. While there we went and toured some of the sights. One day we went to the exploratorium. This is just pretty much a huge, interactive science museum.

While at the exploratorium I got stuck in a giant bubble...

... got turned into little pixels...

... saw that i have pretty much no heat in my fingers (Natali could have told you that, I'm in the middle)...

... And got a little education. (The heart looking one is like a hamster or something like that)

We also visited the Golden Gate Bridge. It was awesome to see it. It is pretty darn impressive. The whole time I was looking at the trusses and the cables thinking which ones had more tension and stuff like that. Yeah that's what Engineering has done to my brain. I get out there and I come back and half of my pictures are of the hinges and the bolts and stuff like that. Anyway, it was cool to see it.

This is one of the main cables. This thing is huge as you can see. It's interesting because it is really just a bunch of smaller wires in a casing. Hmmm, sounds like a family night lesson... everyone working together to become stronger... Anyway, again way interesting (at least I thought so).

Oh yeah, and on the side we decided to do the competition too :) Here is our Tower. We had a name for him... Mr. T and our motto was "I pitty the fool..." but that didn't really stick. Anyway, here it is with the poster. Pretty sweet eh.

Here is the team. Eight of us went. Jeremy, the guy in the red shirt did it last year all by himself and he took 2nd. He did a coupld things that most schools didn't do so this year they all did those things like testing the wood (The stiffness of balsa wood varies a LOT between pieces) so the competition stepped up their game.

Here are a few pics of the finished project. Turned out pretty well i would say so myself.

And here is a little video of us putting the whole thing together in about a minute and 30 seconds. It actually took a lot longer than that to build...

There were 22 schools there including Missouri, Nebraska, USC, UC Davis, Oregon St, and many others. There was even one from Canada! Here are a few pictures of other towers.
Missouri

Nebraska

Can't remember.

And now a video of the tower shaking. They attached an accelerometer (it measures the acceleration and how much the top moves) and from the reading we got a certain score. If a building is too stiff it will create a huge acceleration (some were getting over 4 times that of gravity) but if the building is too flexible you will get the top moving too much which is also bad the the goal was to find a good balance. So, It was ran through 3 earthquakes, 2 that were modeled after real earthquakes and the 3rd one that you can see below which was invented by some geologists just for this competition and was made to destroy everything. After the first big shake a lot of the bracing broke off. Our vertical columns were still in place so it became really flexible. You can see the bottom moving after a while but the top pretty much stays still. It was pretty funny, we didn't plan on this working like that but it worked pretty well. The only bad things is that some of our weights fell down (at the bottom).

And here is another school's Tower. I just wanted to show how fast some of the other's broke :)

So after all of this we ended up taking 6th place. Not too bad but we got docked for those weights falling (that wasn't in the rules). We were in the top 3 before they penalized us for that. Anyway, it was a great experience, I learned a lot, and it was fun. Sorry this is so long and if you got through this in one sitting I am very impressed!

Seismic Design Competition

2010-01-31T21:15:00.000-08:00

Natali briefly mentioned that I was going to be leaving her for a few days for an engineering competition. I thought I would give everyone a little update on how that's going. We leave Wednesday evening for San Francisco. We got a couple of sponsors to donate money so we could fly out and compete in a seismic design competition. Even our 5 foot tower got a handicapped spot on the plane. Here is the gist of the competition: There are a whole bunch of rules but in a nutshell, what we are trying to do is build the best tower out of balsa wood that has the best use of floor space and best design against earthquakes. Scoring is based on design, floor space (square inches), presentation and performance against earthquakes. So we will take the tower, and they will put weights on it and put it on top of a shake table and see how it does. Here are just a few pictures of the building process and I will be sure to post pics of the competition this week. Wish us luck!

The Holidays (including Halloween ;)

2010-01-17T20:22:00.000-08:00

I know everyone has been checking this site daily to see if the big update was up yet... and at long last I give you... Reed and Natali picture extravaganza! We have a few more that I might post that aren't here but I didn't want to wait any longer to post so here we go.

We will start with Halloween. Yes, October 31st 2009. We need to work on our blogging priorities, I know. Well we dressed up twice, once for a little get together with some friends where we were ourselves on vacation for our 30th wedding anniversary. Yes we both put on a few pounds.

Then for Halloween night Natali's sister Jaimee helped us out a little for our costumes. Since Natali and I are opposites, we thought that we would dress up as opposites. And we all know that opposites attract so we were really attractive that night ;) I was Hot/Cold and Natali was Good/Evil.

I didn't know evil could look this good!

Then after Halloween we went on our Honeymoon for Thanksgiving so you can see the previous blog for details about that.

Natali's favorite time of the year is Christmas. She started getting into the Christmas mood right after Halloween. She started playing Christmas music November 1st and she HAD to have a tree. So one day I surprised her with a tree. We actually put colored lights and bulbs on it later but here is our little tree after we set it up.

For date night we also made gingerbread houses. Being the Future Civil Engineer that I am am I planned it all out... and Natali and I went to work.

And here is the final product!

Haha, not really. That was actually a gingerbread house at the Festival of Trees that we went to. They had hundreds of donated trees, gingerbread houses, and everything else you could think of to sell as a fundraiser for the Primary Children's Hospital. It was amazing.

Here is our "Gingerbread house." It is technically a Graham Cracker house but we were porud of it and it is still standing to this day due to my structural analysis of the foundational grahams. Check out the river with the bridge!

Natali had to take pictures at the Holdman's house in Linden, Utah for the Newspaper. This house is amazing. Tons of lights all synchronized to songs. You tune in to the radio and just sit and watch this amazing light show. Check out this video as a sample. It was awesome.

Music Box Dancer 2008 - Holdman Christmas Display from Richard Holdman on Vimeo.

We traveled down to St George this year for Christmas. Natali and I just kinda bummed around for about 10 days. We would wake up late, sit around, watch a movie, eat some of Launa's great cooking, play some games, repeat. It was great. But after about ten days, they got sick of us and we came back to Provo. We did have a lovely Christmas with them and they made us very comfortable. I couldn't ask for better in-laws. For Christmas Eve we all had their traditional Christmas Eve dinner; chicken and dumb little things (dumplings as Natali called them and the name stuck). We then acted out the Christmas story and I got to play a king, a chicken, and a shepherd. Then we went to bed.

My whole life growing up I was probably the first one to wake up to go downstairs to see what Santa Claus had brought me. Even though Natali has 4 younger siblings, the youngest one being 9, I think I was still the first one up. But this year it was fun because instead of waiting to see what Santa Claus got me, I was wondering what Miss Claus had brought me. But more than that, I got to do a little Santa Clausing myself and I surprised Natali with this popcorn machine. It is great. We use it almost every day!

Well there you have it. A little update on us and hopefully the next one not too far away. It takes way too long to catch up.

Ya lots of words and no pictures...I'm a bad blogger

2010-01-14T09:01:00.000-08:00

Journal writing and blogging both share one unfortunate problem. If you fall behind at all, your next entry has to cover so much that you don't have the time to write it, so you don't. And then you fall even farther behind and the probability that you will ever find time to catch up becomes less and less. So I'm going to try not to let this stop me from posting. I'm going to leave the catching up to Reed haha. He would like to do a big blogpost about the holidays going all the way back to Halloween so I'm gonna let him take the reigns on that one and I will stick to writing updates.

Right now, Reed and I are just getting settled into our new school schedule. I wish I could say that my last semester at BYU was going to be an easy one but unfortunately it is not looking that way. The good news is though that I no longer have to take a math class! As you know, I took French 101 here at BYU before I left to France as a nanny. Since then I haven't really been involved with the French classes. This semester I needed some credits so I signed up for French 102. I went in to speak with the professor in french to make sure he thought I could still handle the class even though it has been so long since I took 101. He said he actually thought I should be in a much upper level class so he asked me to take the placement exam. I did reluctantly even though I thought I was really going to embarrass myself. Well there are 4 levels in the placement exam: 101, 102, 201 and above 300. In order to test into the 300 level, one has to score a 403...and I scored a 636! The French department was blown away. Especially since I didn't really even do very well in French 101 haha. They said they have never had that happen. So they obviously wanted to move me up into the 300 level classes but I found out that if I took french 202 it would count as a math credit so they let me take that :). Yahoo! Reed is probably actually happier than I am about this as he was dreading living with the high-stressed miserable person I become when having to deal with numbers :)

Reed is keeping himself really busy as well. He is on this engineering team competing in some kind of tower-building competition in February. He will be leaving me for 4 days! Wah :(. I guess that sounds like a pretty pathetic complaint to people like Reed's sister who is losing her honey to the marines for a matter of months. But I'm still really dreading it. After living all summer without him I resigned myself to never having to drop him off at the airport without me ever again. Even if only for 4 days, it doesn't bring back pleasant feelings :(. But I'm proud of him and all the hard work he is putting into this and his schoolwork. He is really trying to build up his resume and it's becoming quite impressive!

We do have a little time for some hobbies though. We are having a great time with our new popcorn machine! Haha just trying to figure out the perfect recipe. We also have gotten really into cooking. Fondues, hot wings, hawaiian pork, beef brisket, new pastas etc. It's a lot of fun to make and eat but no fun to clean up...opposition in all things I suppose. However, I did get really cute apron from Reed's mom for Christmas so that at least makes me feel cute and flirty while doing the less fun work in the kitchen :).

Well I have no pictures with this post so that makes it lame but Reed will be putting up TONS of photos pretty soon to make up for my follies.

Honeymoon!!!

2009-12-05T09:53:00.000-08:00

Well It has been a while since our last post. Things have been crazy with both Natali and I working 2 jobs, school, and finals coming up. But for Thanksgiving break Natali and I went on our HONEYMOON!!! So this is going to be more of a picture book blog because Pictures do a way better job describing anything than I can.

So We went on a Cruise on the Crown Princess. Here is our ship. We left Saturday Nov 21 and we came back Nov 28.

Day 1-2: At Sea
We got upgraded from an obstructed view to a room with a balcony! That was nice. I enjoyed sitting out on the Balcony and listening to the ocean and eating or just getting some fresh air right there by our room. The first night we had Lobster claws and shrimp at the buffet and I definately took advantage of that!

Day 3: Cayman Islands
We went and took a twenty minute boat ride to a sandbar where we swam with stingrays! Natali was crazy. She was chasing them and diving for them trying to touch and pet them! They were just swimming all over. The water was an amazing blue color.

After swimming with the stingrays we went to a reef to do some scuba diving. Here we are in our stylish scuba gear.

Day 3: Roatan Honduras
This was probably our favorite place. There were less tourist things there and more culture. It was a beautiful island with mountains and lots of little shops ran by the locals.
We went to the Beautiful Botanical Gardens. It was a place with a bunch of trails and beautiful trees and flowers. There was a trail to the top of the mountain but we didn't have time to go up to the top. It was a beautiful place though.

After walking around the gardens we went and played with some Monkeys!!! This was so much fun. There was a cage with about 6 monkeys. They would just climb all over you and swing from one arm to the other. The first thing they would do though is go through your back pockets, as you can see in the picture. The people were giving them Pepsi and fruit loops. No way that would happen here in the US with animal rights. It was great though.

Here are some other monkeys that we fed a banana to them. There were two big monkeys and a baby attached to the mom monkeys back.

Day 4: Cozemel Mexico
Here we were waiting for the taxi to take us around the island and it started POURING. It rained all day.

We went and saw some of the Mayan ruins. They weren't the big ones because that was an hour boat ride, then an hour bus ride, and the weather just wasn't good so we didn't do that. These ruins were pretty cool still

Cozemel was probably our favorite place to take pictures but it was probably the most touristy of all the places we went. Beautiful place though.

Day 5: At sea
We just hung out, watched some movies, and then that night Natali di the Princess Popstar competition. She made it to the finals and got to perform the last night of the cruise. She was great. She would have won but there was a guy that sang that put on a comedy show pretty much so he got the crowd vote. It was fun to watch her though.

Day 6: Princess Keys... Not
Well that is where we were supposed to go but it was too windy and rainy to go to the island so we just set sail for Fort Lauderdale. We just enjoyed the ship, going to the hot tub and watching movies on the big screen.

Day 7: Fort Lauderdale and Home
Well overall we had a really good time. Thanks so much to Dad and Mom for making it possible ofr us to go. It was so so so nice to get away from school for a break and just relax. The Caribean was great besides the two days of rain.

Now it's back to school and preparing for finals!

We are Married!!!

2009-10-28T17:46:00.000-07:00

Well, after all the planning, we are finally married! It's crazy how much stress went into that one day of our lives! But it went perfectly. My family was joking that I always get my way...Even the sky was my wedding colors :)! Haha. The reception was sensational, my mom is a dream decorator. My lovely sister Randi did my hair beautifully, she should seriously start a business just for beauty do's. And to top it all off, I ended the day in the arms of the best guy in the world! Reed and I are extremely happy but really wishing we had more time to enjoy our newlywed bliss. Between school and work, we barely see eachother :(. My only proof that I really am married is that their is boy stuff in my bathroom haha. Although I think Reed is purposefully leaving the shaving cream and razor out on the middle of the counter...he is pretty obvious. All he needs now is to leave a "please use" note attached and maybe I will take a hint :). Come on baby, I shaved on our wedding day, I'm not due for another week :-P haha jk jk. Anyways, Reed gave a beautiful family night lesson on love and the pure love of Christ....and I'm on strict orders not to tell anyone that he shed a couple tears. But it was so great to see how passionate Reed is when speaking about his Savior. I love Reed so much. The impression I had while listening to his family night lesson was that I finally truly understood what the phrase "a heart full of joy" means. We are so happy together. Yay for eternity!

Thank-you Reed

2009-10-13T09:21:00.000-07:00

I've just been feeling so appreciative of my wonderful fiance lately that I needed to write it down. I have been extremely sick the last couple days and absolutely miserable to be around I'm sure. But Reed has stayed by my side as much as he possibly could. Bringing me medicines, making me soup, buying me anything I thought I could eat, rubbing my back while I cried etc. The other night, neither of us slept a wink cause I was throwing up and Reed didn't want me to have to be alone so he stayed up running whatever errands he could for me. He finally collapsed in exhaustion right before he had to go to school. When I woke him up for school the first thing he said was "Do you want some breakfast baby?" Reed is quite the catch. Thanks sweetie for taking such good care of me. I love you.

Welcome to our blog :)

2009-09-27T15:23:00.000-07:00

So Reed already stole my thunder on our first official blogpost but I will pretend he didn't :). Things are really busy up here. I just took my LSAT yesterday but I won't find out until like the week of the wedding how I did...so you won't need to ask why I'm grumpy in all the wedding photos haha. Reed and I are running a million miles an hour right now. Just finalized our wedding invitations, took our bridals (which turned out stunningly), working out dinner details, wedding video details etc... It's kinda crazy. Plus I'm working two jobs and Reed recently started one that's keeping him pretty busy. He gets to be a TA for one of the best engineering prof's at BYU! School is tough as well...both of us signed up for pretty intense schedules before we realized we would be getting married mid-semester haha. But we are up for the challenge. We had a great date the other night! We went to Trafalga and spent 5 dollars on tokens to play arcade games. Reed kicked my butt at Dance, Dance Revolution (which is kind of embarrassing) but I beat him at air hockey so we are even :). You should all see Reed rocking DDR! He was doing spins, jumps, cool hip actions haha...he is quite the dancer. Well I'm gonna go start Sunday dinner. Less than a month before we are married! Wahoo!

The dangers of BYU!!!

2009-09-23T20:49:00.001-07:00

So I just wanted to show everyone how dangerous it is up here at BYU. Times are crazy. So I was reading the BYU newspaper (the Daily Universe) and the police beat caught my eye. Here are a few real things that have been happening here at BYU this past week.

"A hot air balloon was reported floating over campus. The officers responded and confirmed that there was a hot air balloon, but as BYU does not own the airspace no action was taken."

"A caller reported there was an injured duck in the intersection of East Campus Drive and 1060 North. An officer arrived and took custody of the duck, gently removing it from the road. The officer called Provo Animal Control and they came and picked up the animal."

"A 3 year old between the HFAC and the HBLL was giving high-fives to everyone he met. The child did not seem to be accompanied by his parents. When officers arrived, the child could not be found."

"A resident of Budge Hall was walking through the hall at 1:30 AM yelling. When police arrived, the suspect said he was giving Martin Luther King's "I have a Dream" speech. He was told to stop."

"Two Males were hiding in the bushes near the Grant bulding and jumping out and scaring girls as they walked past. Offecers searched the area but no one was found."

"A male has been calling students claiming he is conducting a psychology experiment involving hypnosis. The caller says that he is able to hypnotize people over the phone and then attempts to hypnotize the victims. This is a recurring problem."

So this is what I learned today from the newspaper:
1. If I am in a hot air balloon, the police can't do anything because nobody owns the airspace.
2. Injured ducks can make it into the police beat.
3. Don't give a high five to crazy three year olds walking around campus. They just dissappear into thin air.
4. If someone jumps out of the bushes and tries to scare you, call the police immediately because the police have nothing better to do unless a duck has been injured.
5. Don't let someone try to hypnotize you over the phone... hang up.

I hope this was as insightful to you all as it was to me.