Times ahead?

Hello ya'll. I thought that I'd hop in on this blog action. If you haven't guessed it by now, this is Greg and let me share what's on my mind.


First off, I'm 24, married, a RM, and about to graduate in April. Guess what? I feel old. I remember when my siblings (more specifically my brother Jon) were 24 and close to graduating, they were old (to me). Now, all of those things are supposed to make me feel old; however, I feel old for none of those reasons. Two things make me feel old.


The first: I actually voluntarily listen to talk radio and the news. That is something that old people listen to and enjoy. Now my news has more of a variety then just ESPN. The second: I think and worry about the future. For the most part, I have been a notorious procrastinator but I'm starting to change my ways. I actually thought about Christmas gifts before Dec. 15th this year! (that's a first).


The second is a big adjustment for me. When I was single, one of my favorite moments was driving home to Michigan after a summer of living with the Donkersgoeds. I had all four windows down, no shirt or shoes, and all of my possessions in the car with me. I didn't completely secure a job yet and was needing to work 2 days later. I didn't have my class schedule lined up, and I was starting classes the following week. I did not even have any coins on me for the Chicago toll road (I asked the cars behind me with my no shirt or shoes...). No cash. No problems. No worries. I pulled over somewhere in Iowa and slept the best I could in the front seat of the car.

That moment, everything was so undecided for me, and that was ok. I could go wherever or do whatever I pleased, and that summer, I did. I almost didn't come back to Michigan at that time but I decided to come 12 hours before I left.


So now, I'm graduating in April, and I am already concerned about everything in front of me. That makes me feel old... and worried. I am like this because I now realize that my decisions affect others as well as myself. Oh crap, I'm becoming responsible. Now, I crave stability so that I can best take care of my family.


So, what is my life going to be like a year from now? I have no clue and that doesn't excite me like it once did. Now, let me be optimistic. I do have stability in my life. First off, Becca and I have an incredibly good relationship. We love being together and we'll be fine. Second, we have the gospel. In Venezuela, the stability of the gospel attracted people to the church. We have the same opportunities here.

So a year from now, I will still have the stability of the gospel, and Becca and I will have a still have a great relationship. For now, that's enough for me.
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(I realize that all successful blogs have pictures posted so here ya go!)

This was me being a dork driving home that summer. So dorky yet carefree....

Becca and I having a great time together in Yellowstone this summer.

Halloween and such.

Ahh! It's been so long since I posted, now I'm going to have to simplify or write forever.
Greg and I just got called to be on the Activities Committee the Sunday before Halloween. It gave us a good excuse to get dressed up and go to our ward's Halloween Party.
The problem came with costumes. Two years ago I made a "princess" costume to wear to school. I called myself the good witch from Wizard of Oz. I wore that costume last year as well, being Gelinda again during the day, and then Peach, Mario's princess that night. So when Greg wanted to be Mario again, you can't blame me for wanting to try out a different costume. Before we left for DC I decided I would make a poodle skirt and wear that. I never got it started before we left, so I was down to a week when we got back.
Me, being a procrastinator since birth, put it off again to make a costume for a fellow teacher's daughter. (Which turned out adorable!!! Thanks to Tennille for taking it on with me!) So then I had two days to make my skirt. I read through the pattern, and decided to leave out the zipper and put in an elastic. I guess sometimes I think I'm more skilled than I actually am. The two parts of the skirt went together nicely, but then I couldn't fit into the top opening! So, after talking to my sewing buddy, Tennille, I decided to just attempt the elastic waistband. I cut 1/2 an inch off the waist opening, and then measured and sewed in the elastic. Then I tried it on, and it was too big, even about to fall off. So I unpicked (I hate unpicking!) cut an inch and a half off the elastic, and stretched it again around the top of the skirt. After sewing this in, I was down to about 30 minutes left til we needed to leave for the ward Halloween party, so I just left it even though it was still a little big, and sewed the waistband over the elastic.
At the Halloween Party, most couples were dressed as pairs. There were two Star Trek characters, Mr. and Mrs. Pacman, The Addams Family, Sonny and Cher, and a disected frog and scientist. It was fun to see what everyone came up with. Greg and I remembered that we love to dance, and spent most of our time on the dance floor. We really had fun.
We had plans to carve pumpkins when we got home, but we were just so tired that we put in Red Eye and then went to bed.
Part of me is so excited to have children and to dress them up, and the entire family up, but after the costumes that my students were wearing (I think there was like 5 "punks", 3 dead people, 2 witches, a movie star, a ghost, a princess, etc.) I realized that I probably won't have the pull that I'd want on this silly and so fun holiday. Oh well. I'm sure if I show my enthusiasm for the holiday, it will be fun anyway.

First Post!

I didn't think that one of the hardest parts of blogging was picking a title for your blog. I was so excited to finally start blogging, since I just can't seem to physically write in a journal, but I sat on the "Pick a title" page for at least a good five minutes! In fact, choosing a title was why I put off starting a blog until now. I'm still not sure I love or can work with that title, but it will serve for the purpose of Title until I come up with something amazing., or just workable.

Greg and I got back from our anniversary trip to Washington D.C. this past Tuesday. It was a great learning experience for a couple of reasons. First, I've always wanted to go. I've been in love with our country's history ever since I can remember. It is such an inspiring story! I was excited to see the sights, and explore the many museums there. Because I started teaching fifth grade this year, and it was feeling like a first year all over again, I didn't begin actually planning our trip until about two weeks before. It was then that we found out you need a congressman's permission to enter the capitol, Senate, House, or White House. We quickly emailed our local congressman, and waited. Nothing. So we counted those things out of our trip, this trip anyway, and just got a feel for the things we could see there. We bought a Fodor's travel guide, which was a big help. Then we decided to just play the trip by ear. LESSON - Plan ahead!

Since neither of us are 25 yet, we couldn't rent a car, but we'd heard great things about the public transportation system there. Plus one of Greg's mission buddies lives in Arlington. We knew we were going to use the Metro System a lot, so we looked into getting week long passes. Easily done, we just had to find a station, and use one of their machines to purchase a pass ($39 a piece!) Not as easy.

The night we arrived in Washington D.C. we realized that we hadn't planned how we were getting from the airport to our hotel. We had looked into a shuttle and found that they didn't have one, but for some reason we didn't look into another way to get to the hotel. So waiting for our baggage, Greg talked to some people, and then finally called his mission buddy, Chris Hare, who offered to come get us as he only lives 10 minutes away. He wasn't sure where our hotel was, but figured we'd find it if he got on the road that it was on. Lucky for us we brought our Garmin. So when Chris said that we were on the Highway that our hotel was supposed to be on, we broke out the Garmin, and clicked on the nearest Marriott. Chris dropped us off, and left. We walked into the immaculate lobby, and tried to check in. They couldn't find our reservation. After looking for five to ten minutes, they noticed that our reservation was at the OTHER Marriott just down the street about five miles. They called us a cab, and we went to wait. LESSON - Know where you're going.

When we were finally at the real hotel, we checked in and went to bed. The next morning, since I wasn't feeling well, I slept in and Greg got up and checked out times that the bus to the Metro Station came. There was a stop just outside our hotel. After I got ready, we went out to wait for the bus that was supposed to come at 11:30ish. We waited, and waited, and waited. A bus came to the stop across the highway. Then, at about 12:30, we decided to give up and call a cab. When we are just 10 ft from the bus stop and a lady yells to us that a bus is coming. We shrug, and turn back to get on the bus. We find a spot on the crowded bus, and settle in for a ride. The bus stops at one other stop and then stops at a local mall. Everyone gets off the bus, including the driver. Greg and I look at each other, back at the completely empty bus, and back at each other. "What the crap just happened?" Greg says. We were hesitant to get off the bus as we didn't have another $2.50 to get on another bus. Finally we get off and wander around that part of the mall. Then we see the driver get back on, so we hurry back to the bus, and he lets us on. Phew! The bus makes a lot of stops, and even one at the hospital (not where the bus we were supposed to get on went) and finally stops at the second Metro Station on the route. By now Greg and I are frustrated. We go into the station and ask how to purchase a Metro pass. We get two small, paper weekly passes, and are thinking that these would be easily lost. When we finally got off the Metro around 2:30ish, we were almost giddy. We were finally where we wanted to be. LESSON - I'm not sure what we learned from this, but I'm sure we should have learned something. Maybe just that Greg and I make one heck of team, or maybe that we shouldn't travel alone, or maybe this is a lesson for everyone else on how NOT to navigate a big city. Pick your favorite!

The rest of the trip was great! We did a lot of walking and waiting, but had a blast and learned so much more about the nations capitol. One of our favorite museums was a lesser-known one: The International Spy Museum. It was awesome! Just a note about the Holocaust Museum - It is extremely graphic. I thought I just might throw up walking through it. It's planned out well and takes you through the entire event, but I knew all I needed to know about that horrific event in the world's history before I went there.

Sunday we took it easy. We wanted to go to the LDS Temple in DC, but it wasn't plausible without a car. So we just hung out. We planned how to get to the airport in the morning and when we were going to need to get up. We decided that with all the troubles we'd had with bus and metro (which was what we had to rely on to get to the airport on time) that we should pad our planned travel time with at least 20 minutes and take a cab to the metro. We went to the lobby Monday morning at 6:45AM and asked them to call a cab. They told us the cab would be here in 10-20 minutes. Knowing that we'd only padded our time with 20 minutes, we hoped that the taxi would be there before 20 minutes. 25 minutes later, we were in a taxi. We were already crunched for time and this was only the first leg of our race to the airport. At the Metro Station the foreign cab driver couldn't figure out that he owed us five dollars change, and that little pause in our trip cost us the last possible metro to get us to the airport 1 hour before our flight left. So as we sat on the metro waiting for it to leave, we took a deep breath. Once before we'd arrived at an airport 30 minutes before our flight left, and we'd made that flight, so we weren't too concerned, but nothing else could go wrong. We arrived at the airport about 50 minutes before our flight left, but we were lost. We weren't sure where to check our bags in at. We wandered for a few minutes, and then saw an escalator. Greg went up, while I looked around below for a minute or two. Then I joined him. The counter to check bags was upstairs, and when Greg got there the kid at the desk told him that they'd just called to stop sending baggage, but he'd call just to see if he could take ours. "You can't take anymore bags, can you?" he stated to the other end. Then he tells us, "They won't take your bags." We were EXTREMELY frustrated. The kid told us that we couldn't fly without our bags, so we'd have to take standby seats and wait to see if they could get us on a later flight. We got on the next flight. Then things got worse. The last three flights Monday to SLC from Denver were over booked. I hadn't set up a substitute for Tuesday, but it was looking like I should have. We had planned to be back in Provo Monday by 2pm. Now it was 8:30pm and we were in Denver. The airline wouldn't do anything for us, but to keep rolling us over to the next flight, but somehow after working his magic, Greg got them to roll us to the Tuesday morning flight for no charge and a way of contacting local hotels. We called one, and stayed the night in Denver. Luckily there was a shuttle from the hotel to the airport, so we got up early, and made it to the 7:20am flight back to SLC. We found our bags, and then searched for our car in the parking lot. LESSON - Plan to be at the airport 2 hours early, just in case your airline is anal. And the final lesson we learned: We really do love each other and work well together, because not once did we get frustrated, or angry with each other. Maybe we also learned that we shouldn't fly when we don't have flexible days...