Our Kentucky Trip (pt.2)

After our trip from Nauvoo, Craig and Danielle flew into town as well, so we set out to see the sights of the Louisville area.

We toured the Louisville slugger factory, where they make all the bats.  They showed us these cool machines where they take the best blocks of wood and shave them down to all sorts of different kinds of bats.  Who knew it was such a process?  They also have very specific computerized machines there that take the exact specifications from baseball players and make them customized for each one.  

They also had a neat museum of how bats have come to be what they are today in the baseball world, as well as some fun bat trivia.  Matthew had a great time looking at all the cool stuff and saying "bat" about 1,437 times in one afternoon.

The next day we drove to a state park called "My Old Kentucky Home" which is apparently what the name of the State Song is, which song is about this really really old house.

  It was a neat park, but the best part was just being able to walk through some nice gardens with the kids and just enjoy the beautiful afternoon.

Next stop for the day was Lincoln's birthplace.  The funny thing was that the ranger in the visitor's center told us that even though the log cabin was moved and rebuilt, it was the logs from the original cabin itself.  Later on, when actually viewing the cabin, the ranger there told us the opposite, that it was a replica of the original.  I don't know, but it was still cool to see this piece of American history.

We ended the day by driving down one of the most picturesque drives I've ever seen.  Rolling grassy hills with trees dotting the landscape.  I wish I took a picture to show, but I didn't, so I just got this one off of the internet, but it gives you an idea.

The drive was on the way to some authentic southern cookin at a nice restaurant called Claudia Sanders.

Alright, class is about to start, so I'll have to save "Thunder Over Louisville" for the next post.

Our Kentucky Trip (pt.1)

Since Cindy already told you all about our adventures in moving, I'll pick up the next part of our story and tell you about some of our trip to Kentucky.

We flew out on April 12, with a layover in the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport.  This may seem lame for me to say so, but that was a pretty cool frickin airport.  If you're making flight arrangements, and have the opportunity to have a layover there, I'd recommend it.  It's big, but not as overwhelmingly large as some other airports out there, like Houston.

It was great to be able to spend time with Jeff, Cheryl and the kids.  Personally, I feel like I was able to get to know my wife's side of the family SO much better by spending just that one week with them.  They are a great family and I'm excited to be part of it.  

Monday morning we woke up and went to Jeff's Office, where Cindy worked for about 6 months.  It was neat to be able to see all of the places she spent her time during the time we were dating.  We then hit the road for our 8 hour (or so we thought, let's just say it ended up being about 9 on the way there and more on the way back) drive to Nauvoo, IL.  Now that's almost the same drive from Rexburg to Las Vegas, and this was just an overnight trip!  But considering I've never been there before, and we had no idea when we would have another opportunity, we just decided to give it a whirl.

It was great!  I would definitely recommend the trip to anyone who is interested in a little Church History.  They had restored a lot of the original buildings and had furniture and items in them dated from the original Nauvoo Era.  We also went to Carthage for the tour there.  It was very powerful, and spiritual.  It was all around a wonderful trip!

Winter Catch Up

So I intend to get a good amount of Blogging done tonight.  So I must start with saying what's been happening thus far.

Since I've had time off of school, I've been working almost full time from home.  It's been fine, but after a few months, I'm now ready to get back into school.

I did really good during the break to go to the Gym 3 times a week.  Between that and being on an official diet, I have lost 30 lbs from when we first moved to Rexburg!  Hooray for being somewhat less fat!  It has felt good and been good for my self-image.

When I would go to the Gym, I would always bring a book.  Man, you'd be surprised how much reading a person could do when trying to take their mind off sweating themselves into madness!  In the past 6 months, I have read the following books.

Porter Rockwell Chronicles (The entire set of 4)

Night of the Dragon

Angels and Demons

Ender's Game Saga

 -Ender's Game

 -Speaker for the Dead

 -Xenocide

 -Children of the Mind

Ender's Shadow

Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy

I am currently working on reading the entire Hitch Hikers set, but with school starting we'll see how far I get.  I liked all of these books well enough.  Depending on what you enjoy to read, I would recommend some over others, but rather than rambling on about my personal critique's about each one, you can ask me and I'll just tell you what I think.

It's been a while

I don't write in this enough so thought while I have a few minutes before 24 starts up, I would write on this. So, we are moving across town. We are about 75% done, and I will post pictures later, (I promise I'll be better about writing on this). I have moved quite a bit in the past 6 years, but I guess that's just part of the college experience. The apartment I am moving from is the longest apartment I have lived in consecutively in that time, (I've been here 12 months). It will be nice to get all moved over and settled in. Hopefully we will be in that apartment the rest of our time in Rexburg.

It is still cold here in Idaho, (I know quite the shock ha). Spring weather keeps messing with me. It starts to get warm for a few days and then it turns around it gets cold and snows. I am very much looking forward to the summer.

We are heading to Kentucky in about 2 weeks to spend time with my brothers. It will be fun to see them as well as two of our nieces and nephews.

The moments of feeling 2" tall...

I work with a few girls and about 2 months ago I thought I heard one of my co-workers say that one of our other co-workers is pregnant again. What fun news!

So today at work, I instant messaged this co-worker who is 'expecting' asking her when she finds out what she's having. She wrote back and said, "What I am having for what?" I realized that she couldn't possibly be expecting with that kind of response. So, not knowing what to say, I just wrote back, "Nevermind." She then writes back, "What are you talking about?" I didn't know what else to say so I just wrote "Nevermind" again. So then she writes back and says, "I'm fat, not pregnant." Oh the moments of digging that hole seemed to keep feeling deeper. I then told her that I thought I heard something like that, and must be mistaken for someone else and that I was sorry, etc. She's not mad at me or anything, but I felt so embarrassed!

I cannot believe I did that! I will never talk to anyone about being pregnant unless I hear it FROM THEIR OWN MOUTHS or someone closely related!

Vegas!

Last month we went to Las Vegas spur of the moment for the long weekend.  No, really. . . like. . . as in Thursday morning we thought to ourselves, "wouldn't it be nice if we could spend this weekend in Las Vegas?" and then that afternoon we were packing up and leaving that night to drive to Salt Lake.  The Friday morning, we got up from Salt Lake and headed for the warmer climate.  It was very nice to escape the frozen tundra that is Rexburg and even writing this blog is making me wish we could have gone down this last 3 day weekend too!

Friday night we spent time at Vern and Lynda's (Uncle and Aunt) in Logandale, (45 minutes Northeast of Las Vegas) and just relaxed from the car ride.  Saturday we got up and drove over to Las Vegas and spent the day at Delray and Debi's (Uncle and Aunt)  and just having fun.  Cindy finally had the experience of going to In-N-Out Burger for the first time in her life.  That night we went down to the strip and hung out with the cousins, then spent the night at Dale and Jill (Cousin).  We got up and went to church with Dale and Jill as well as Grandma and Grandpa Olsen.  After spending the afternoon in town, we drove back to Lynda's for our last night, and woke up early to visit Daniel's (Cousin) grave before leaving Logandale.  We stopped for a couple hours that night in SLC to have dinner with both our parents at Cindy's parents house, then hit the road again all the way up to Rexburg.

Holiday updates

So, here is our holiday catch up blog.

We were very happy to have David and Cristina come visit us in November.  Other than my parents, they were the first members of my side of the family to come visit us here.  We had a blast!  

Thanksgiving was nice, I had a Turkey dinner with my family on Thanksgiving for the first time since before my mission, so it was kinda special to me.  There ended up being over 50 people there for it, kinda crowded but fun.  We also went out to dinner with my family for my birthday dinner at Red Robin on the day after thanksgiving.

I finished my semester pretty well, and I'm relieved to be done until April.  I found myself more excited about this break from school than I ever was for summer break in Highschool or anything.

Christmas was fun, but short.  We spent the weekend in Utah with our families and really enjoyed all the fun new toys and games.  

This blog post was mainly meant for the saking of saying everything we've been meaning to say over the past couple months, maybe now it will flow more freely and we'll keep more on top of things.  

Happy New year Everybody!