Vacation Report - Update: Days Three & Four

It's been crazy fun the last few days. Running around doing all the last minutes things on Thursday and Friday to get ready for the wedding. The best part was making sure everyone had something to wear. We made a few skirts and swapped shirts around and made some alterations to people's dresses. That's the problem with living so far apart. One person would find the perfect shirt, or skirt and buy it for someone but we wouldn't see each other until a day or two before the wedding. But we made it work.

My brother's all married now. It's kind of weird...but I'm excited for him. The ceremony took place Friday at 1pm. It was beautiful. I'm not sure who was smiling more. Melissa was rather emotional and so was my mom. After the ceremony we took pictures. It was a beautiful day, except for the wind...it was a killer. If it wasn't for the wind it might have been almost warm. I'm sure we looked cold in the picture the photographer took, even if he told us to think warm thoughts.

Waiting for the bride and groom outside the temple...brrr

My BEAUTIFUL sisters...they look good. Becky's hair looked better before we went out in the wind. Next time we're going to use more hairspray.

Elisabeth and Grant

Becky

Sarah

After the wedding we had a luncheon with those attending the wedding. Melissa and David made a slide show of pictures from their growing up years to share with us all. There were a few interesting pictures of me...and here I thought I was so cool as a kid :)

Some nieces and nephews. They are so cute!

Chris & Grant

"Sisters...sisters...There were never such devoted sisters"

Mom and Dad with Becky.

It was a lot of fun. We got visit with family and friends. Every thing was beautiful. Now we just have the reception to look forward to on Monday.

Vacation Report - Day Two

Nov 13th: A lot less traveling today...



I finally met my future sister-in-law. She seems like a really nice girl. I wish her and my brother all the luck in the world. They were both super excited about up coming wedding. David would say periodically during the day "I'm getting married tomorrow," and would get a silly grin on his face.


Today's highlight was picture taking. We took family pictures. We had the entire Durtschi family together for the first time in forever! Grandma Maren (my great-grandma on my dad's side) was even there, with all of Aunt Bev's kids and their spouses and Grandparents Durtschi. Lots of us. Sadly I forgot my camera so I don't have any sneak-peek pictures to share, but I'll post a few pictures once we have them (if I can). I got to meet my cousins-in-law who I had never met before. All the nieces and nephews were good about the whole thing. It was hard for Elisabeth's kid's especially since we STARTED at 7:30 pm, which is 9:30 pm in Florida and WAY pass their bed time. Towards the end they were letting us know that they were a little tired. I hope the pictures turn out.

I love being with my family!

Vacation Report - Day One

Okay. So I can't promise a daily report, but at least every few days to keep everyone updated.

Nov 12th: Today was a day of traveling. I left about 7 am DC time and landed in SLC about 3 pm DC time. Overall it was a painless experience. The best part of the day was seeing all my family. Elisabeth and her family landed about 30 minutes or so before me and we all when out to lunch. Mommy, daddy and Sarah were there too. Elisabeth's kids are so so cute! I can't believe how big they are. After lunch we stopped by Becky's work to say 'hi!' and then finally went home.

Being home was rather short lived :) Since we got home about 4:30 or so and then left about 5:30 to head down to Spanish Fork to visit a little more with Elisabeth and family. They are staying with some of Elisabeth's and Cameron's friends for freshman year at BYU. We had dinner together and then just played about. Good times had by all.

After dinner and play we came home and we found David here :) YAY! We put on a fashion show of what we're going to wear to the wedding (well mostly my mom did, since she's the one that matters most.) We finally went to bed about 1 am DC time. SO tired! It was a long, good day.

Enjoying the beauty of Fall

Mel needed to get out of the house...working on a master's thesis for too long isn't a good idea. And being the dutiful roommate that I am, I dragged her out of the house to go enjoy the beautiful fall weather. Of course a last minutes excursion wouldn't be complete without making Reed come with us as well. We headed out to Fort Marcy. The afternoon was brisk, but beautiful. I love this time of the year. It really is one of my favorites. Here are a few attempts to capture on camera the amazingness that is the changing seasons.

While we were taking pictures this lady walked by with her dogs and offered to take a picture of all of us and we figured, hey why not.

Fungus growing on a dead tree. It's amazing how pretty Fungus can be.

Walking off into the sunset....kind of.

Presidental Election - Voting

Everyone was freaking out about long lines and machines breaking down for the voting today. They were worried that it would take hours and hours to vote. That in mind we made a plan in our office to have a 'morning voting shift' and 'afternoon voting shift' to make sure our office would be covered. I was in the 'morning voting shift' and decided that 7 am would be a good time to go get in line.

I got ready and drove over the Longfellow Middle School and expected to see a line, which there was, but nothing to write home about. The hardest part was finding a place to park. Finally I just parked up the street and walked back to the school. I was accosted by campaigners the minute I got close, from both the Republican and Democrat parties. I guess they want to give the wavering voter one last chance to decide who to vote for. Honestly...

The wait wasn't bad...45 minutes start to finish.

Here are some things I learned from my voting experience

1. You can make some great friends waiting in line. I met one of my neighbors I never met before. We had a great talk about the area and what we liked or didn't like.

2. My Grandpa Larsen was right, if you go to the front you'll find a parking space. After I got in line I saw that the front row had an empty space I completely missed or may have come available after I left, I'm not sure, but I will tell you 3 more came available during the time I stood in line and not a single car came all the way to the front to use them. See...Grandpa was right. It always worked for him I don't know why I doubted.

3. Your vote does Count and voting makes you feel good. One of my coworkers received her citizenship last year and was extremely excited about voting and then someone told her that her vote doesn't really count and kind of explained the electoral college. She was really put out and felt that it didn't seem to matter if she voted or not, but it does. First off for the electoral college it counts. the Electors of each state can technically vote contrary to the popular vote of the state, but they rarely do, therefore you vote helps to influence the popular vote of your state and ultimately the election of the President and Vice President of the USA. Second it counts because how it can influence you. Voting (hopefully) makes you more aware of the issues/platforms etc of the politicians and more concerned/consciences of the out come. Wear that "I Voted" sticker with pride. I know, cheesy, but I feel that involvement, even in this small way, in our political system is important. It made my day to be able to vote (again cheesy, but true)

Halloween '08 - "The Best Halloween EVER!"

My friend Reed has daubed Halloween '08 "The Best Halloween EVER!" and that my friends is because we had the most awesome costumes ever. Reed and Brian came up with the idea to be Mario and Luigi and then Cat joined them as Princess Toadstool. But was that enough? NO! We had to find some more Mario Brother friends to join the fun.


We ended up with a Bowser (Darin Poulson)









A Magic mushroom (me)










and Flower Power (Melanie - see picture of Bowser)




The trauma of putting all the costumes together was totally worth it when all was said and done. Here's the final product of Reed's Halloween vision

FreeRice.com

My cousin-in-law Amber introduced me to this website via her blog and I've become a big fan. It's a great way to practice your vocabulary, geography, and foreign language and all the while helping out the rice donation.



I've enjoyed it so much that I want to share it with y'all!