fall in the air

it's that time of year again...football season! we lucked out with our student tickets -- right behind the goal post and super close. it was way too hot for a football game yesterday, but a lot of fun.

i think nate gets sick of me asking
"wait, why did they throw that yellow flag?"
"what number is the quarterback?"
"who scored the touchdown?"
"what do those letters mean on the ref's shirt?

i swear i have learned the game of football, but every year i seem to forget some things...

la famille

i missed my family so much while we were in chicago (even though i have a lot of fun with nate). who would have thought that me - the girl with plans to move across the world with my charming husband - would end up being such a baby and missing her mom terribly?

i know my parents love us because they hooked us up! they drove a huge trailer of our wedding gifts down to p-town for us and have been staying in our humble abode. i love having them here! my dad flew home, but my mom is still kicking it with us at apartment #4.

my younger brother, chandler, is a freshman at byu this year, so we moved him into the dorms too. in honor of nate's birthday, we partied a lot and ate good food...

on a side note, my sister-in-law akasha (above) has the cutest baby bump i have ever seen. love that baby already!

24

...twenty four...
...is the number of hours in each day

...is how much time jack bauer has to save the world
...sounded old to me when i was eighteen
...is my husband's age TODAY

happy birthday nate.
i loooove you!

USA! USA! USA!!!

YEAH BABY! We have the gold medal back again. I haven't been able to watch much of the Men's Basketball tournament during the Olympics but tonight I stayed up late to watch the Gold medal game, it was a doozy. My man, Kobe Bryant, took over in the fourth quarter--which included a dagger of a 4 point play--to bring home the GOLD!

The Olympics have been awesome. They are showing all of Phelpsees 8 gold medals right now, what an amazing summer in Beijing.

currently

here's what we're up to:

n a t e

j e s s

camping...in our apartment

after a twenty one hour drive, with a pit stop in grand island nebraska, we made it home to p-town. i'm not gonna lie...i felt let down when we drove into provo. this again? the same old smith's, same old school, same old apartments from the 70's. but now, after moving in a little and trying to be excited like nate, i don't feel so bad. i am really grateful that we made it here safely and have a place to call our own...for eight months that is.

on our last night in chicago, we took a moonlit walk along the river...

and nate surprised me with a lovely dinner here:

iowa was beautiful to drive through. thank you iowa for this treat:

we are currently camping in our own apartment. we purchased our first bed together: a deluxe camping blow up air mattress. and by delux, i mean the top is "flocked" with that fuzzy stuff that gives you turf burns if you move too fast.

we only had one pillow and two baby-size blankets that cover 2/5 of your body last night. we thought "no big deal." sharing a pillow may start out fun, but it can only end in crooked necks and sore backs. this whole camping thing lost its edge real fast. we unpacked our storage unit today and miraculously found another pillow in our heaps of stuff. victory!

we are awaiting a uhaul truck and our families who currently have most of our belongings. five more days of camping!

soon

two more days left of our semi-vacation here in chicago.

we took a walk along the river tonight, then raced home to our favorite obsession: michael phelps.

addicted

i am totally addicted to watching
michael phelps.
what an amazing athlete!
he blows my mind.
and i wouldn't mind having his abs.

Cubs Win! Cubs Win!!!

So this past Wednesday, Jess and I took the afternoon off from work and headed to historic Wrigley Field. It was amazing! I love baseball and this was definitely one of the more memorable moments for me during this summer. If you ever come to Chicago during the summer, this is a must.

We had pretty decent seats but the one caveat was that there was no jumbo tron for Jessica to see the players' faces and know who was batting and things of that nature. She kept having to ask me who was doing what :)

The game was fun because something like 3 home runs were hit, two three-run shots and a Grand Slam. The Cubs destroyed the Astros, and it was fun to celebrate with the intense Cubs fan. In LA, the saying is that fans show up in the third inning and take off after the seventh, in Chicago, the place was packed for the opening pitch and we left in the eighth because I had to get back to work (the catch of going to the game was that I had a ton of work to do and had to stay at work until 11 pm or so). Cubs fans are known for staying for the entire game, regardless of the score in the ninth.

All in all, it was a great day at Wrigley. We even saw the missionaries; they get to go to one game on a P-day so it was fun seeing them. There was a greenie from the Ukraine who was experiencing his first baseball game - not a bad way to start off an American past time.
GO CUBBIES!!
who am I kidding, Go DODGERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thank you Red Sox for your gift.

return to me

last night we hit up this famous little restaurant that is known for their ribs (which aren't that amazing in my opinion) AND.....for being in lots of movies, including Return to Me (the restuarant that the movie is filmed in) and The Dark Knight (it's the scene where Harvey Dent kills the white cop in the bar).
we loved it.

twister

last night, a really loud siren started going off while we were eating dinner. i was picturing a fugitive running around hyde park, but then our neighbors knocked on the door and told us it was the tornado warning. we booked it to the basement laundry room of our building.

there was a crazy storm complete with 70 mph winds, pelting rain, super loud thunder, and lots of lightening. luckily, the tornado never touched down in our area, but it did in nw indiana. there were tons of trees that fell on cars and the streets are kind of a mess, but no one is hurt.

i seriously felt like i was in the movie twister. i was half excited, half terrified that a tornado was coming. we had a little radio with us in the basement and the news people were saying, "if you are driving, abandon your cars. do not go near windows. take cover immediately." it ended up being just a loud, wet storm, but the experience was pretty exciting.

nauvoo

this weekend we drove five hours out to the middle of nowhere and the first thing i saw was this:

i know there are lots of beautiful pictures of the nauvoo temple, but it is stunning in person. it was the most beautiful temple i've been in yet.

we stopped for a little photo op in front of the mississippi river...

the red brick store, where joseph ran a store for awhile and where the relief society was formed. and they serve ice cold rootbeer - mmm.

we went to the nauvoo pageant (so good!) and played pioneer games before the show started. we had a contest to see who could saw off a piece of wood the fastest. guess who won? nate and i! yeeeah. then the cute little pioneer man branded our pieces of wood.

at the blacksmith's shop, we got sweet horse shoe nail rings.


the whole group in front of carthage jail. we went with some of nate's coworkers and buddies.

and one last picture of the gorgeous temple. i would have driven five hours just to see this!