Recently (relatively)

So other than my negative diatribe on Provo (for which negativity I apologize, I was having a bitter day), I haven't blogged about anything we've been doing and have also not been taking a ton of pictures. Fail.

But for those of you who are deeply interested in our goings-on and to whom I do not regularly converse (and I'm sure there are so many of you), here is a bit of an update complete with low-res pictures where available...

But first...remember when we were in Venice? Yeah, me too. *sigh*

Also, this.

And finally, some classy local signs.

So, we spent Christmas up at the Tamarack house. I sort of had visions of myself being deeply relaxed, skiing all day every day, wearing lots of sweaters and maybe getting snowed in. Reality: not much snow, so the skiing was a little more like ice skating than one would hope, I ended up spending way too much time working on homework (meh), and, of course, found it much harder to relax than a normal human being would. BUT, it was a seriously freaking awesome Christmas. The skiing at the summit was way better than the lower slopes, we made a Fox Friend (not the network, no, ew, never!), and there was some serious hot-tubbing happening.

It was also our first experience with the Holiday Family Conflict we've heard so much about from almost every married couple we've ever talked to. Luckily for us, our families are great and we love both of them, so splitting our time was no problem at all. What I wasn't prepared for was a whole new brand of holiday homesickness: I had probably 3 Emotionally Dramatic Moments (weeping included) in which I missed Viseu and the mission so much that I thought one of my ventricles would shut down from the sadness. I made it through. But I miss it an insane amount.

I am pretty sure I didn't take any pictures, not of our first Christmas, not of our cute matching moose pajamas, not of the Christmas tree, not of the decorating of the Christmas tree. Tell me, friends, what is wrong with me? David, however, got a few pictures of one of a couple trips to the local restaurant/bar/classy hangout Vigilantes, where we celebrated life by stuffing ourselves full of chicken fried steak (only in America) and obscene hamburgers.

Vigilantes' decor:

A couple of days before New Years, we drove down to Preston to spend the rest of the holiday with the Beckstead bunch.

David learned to hold a baby:

The Annual Beckstead Whitney Church Saturday-After-Christmas Gathering:

The most unflattering picture ever taken of my nose (and there have been quite a few):

Kael-man's looking a little contemplative, probably thinking about poor Mrs. Wright:

Later that night, we had the World's Most Awesome White Elephant Gift Exchange That Has Ever Happened. Presents included this furry jock-strap:

For New Year's Eve, we headed to Salt Lake for the First Night celebration. This is the only photo we took, Ty and Vinny in a moon-bounce:

We somehow ended up passing the New Year at the Little America cafe. Every year, David's family makes a poster of all the things that happened throughout the year. There is also cake involved in this tradition, but we only had the resources available in the car and, of course, the Little America, so we ended up making our "poster" on a napkin:

The next time we took pictures was on a trip to Rexburg to visit the Zollingers, where we attended a ward chili cook-off, played an epic 4 years of the Farming Game (David, despite having grown up in the suburbs, kicked all us Idaho folks to the curb), hung out with cute little people, poked around campus, and attended the annual Rexburg Winterfest (or Snowfest, I can't recall.) Our favorite part of this _____-fest was the FatCat guy, who failed to tuck in his neck flaps, resulting in uncontrollable laughter from me.

Our other favorite part was the Polar Bear Swim, in which a bunch of teenagers and a crotchety old man (pictured below in black) tried to pretend that swimming across the 4-foot deep pool to a waiting hot tub was the craziest thing they'd ever done in their lives. My favorite part of this was watching how excited Lucy and Tegan got that the people were going to jump in and then how lame they realized it was once it was in progress.

The cat was super disappointed about the whole thing.

Back at the ranch, David learned to do letter-press and we made him a bunch of cool business cards with this machine...

Other than that, we have just been disgustingly busy, especially David. That kid works harder in school than anyone I know and has been doing super well at his job, too. He's getting ready to apply to the BFA Graphic Design program (the program he is in now is the BA, inferior because it's only 2 letters instead of 3) and working on the re-design of the Daily Universe.

I got accepted to the MFA Creative Writing program at BYU and will start that Spring term. Right now I'm working on getting hired to teach English 150, the writing class for freshmen. Until the term starts, I'll still be working as a graphic designer and general nag at Screenplay and finishing up this semester's 3 classes. I'm really hoping we survive finals, because, seriously, what a lame way to die.