Spring Mountain

Melo and I went to Spring Mountain Ski Resort this weekend. Think bunny hill, not multi-peak ski resort. We decided to go tubing. You start by hooking your tube to a wench that pulls you to the top of the mountain. When you get to the top, you choose a lane and let her rip. You can actually get going pretty fast (maybe 25 mph?) if you get yourself into an aerodynamic position and limit contact with the snow. Anyway, here's a video I took that basically explains it all:

Melody's lesson for the children at church was on light and dark (these are 3 year olds so they keep the lessons pretty simple). We went to the library across the street from where we live to see if we could find a book on light and dark. They didn't have Goodnight Moon, a childhood classic; but they did have this book:

I would have totally gone for it. I can think of few illustrations of light vs. dark that are more memorable to me as a child than this.

Snowmageddon

Yes, snowmageddon has officially arrived in Eagleville, PA. I'm not sure who coined the term, but they certainly succeeded in creating mass hysteria in the mid-Atlantic region this weekend. My theory is that the weather stations have a racket with the retail stores where they get a cut of any snow shovels, melting salts, or other snow-related purchases. To be fair, Philadelphia did receive over two feet of snow, setting a record for 2nd highest accumulation for any snow storm ever in the area. The western suburbs received much less, probably 12" to 18". Here are some photos of our apartment complex:






We are also in the midst of purchasing plane tickets for our travels this year. Already purchased are the tickets to Dallas in April. We will be visiting my family for a week. We're biding our time on tickets to Hawaii to see if the price comes down. We're also looking at tickets prices to SLC to get Melody home a week with her family. By the way, if you have not used farecast.com, you should. It searches all flights and predicts trends in pricing. It will even recommend purchasing or waiting and give you a percent confidence that it is correct.

I will be doing a weekend winter encampment with the scouts this weekend at Valley Forge National Park. This particular encampment is the longest running encampment in the United States and is the only encampment that takes place in a National Park. I think it will also be cool to remember George Washington and the other soldiers that made it their winter home so long ago. Needless to say, these are my justifications for (potentially) freezing this weekend in (potentially) a foot of snow. Good times.

Happy New Year

It's hard to believe that the year is already over. So much has happened to us this year, we're kind of hoping for a quiet 2010, we'll see. I haven't written in a couple of weeks, so here's a quick update. Jeremy turned 25 a couple of weeks ago. Here is a picture of the birthday boy!


There was a big blizzard on the night of his birthday. We had reservations at PF Chang's, but they called us that afternoon and told us that they were closing down because of the storm. We tried about 5 other places before we gave up. Both of us were kind of blown away, we had never seen anything like that happen in Utah before, even with all the big snow storms they get there.

We had a fun Christmas by ourselves, although it was sad to be so far away from family. We tried to do most of the traditions from both of our families...We went out to look at Christmas lights, watched a Christmas Carol, and made a bunch of yummy appetizers on Christmas Eve...I made so much we ended up eating it for about the next week! It was nice to be able to talk to both of our families on the webcam on Christmas day, just not quite the same as being home.

On New Year's Eve, we drove out to Salisbury, PA to visit some friends back for the holidays from BYU. Jeremy had a great time doing manly things with Matt...playing with a chainsaw...burning an 18 foot Christmas tree...lighting off fireworks. We're so excited that this fall, Matt and Kim will be moving to the Washington DC area, so we'll get to see them more often!

New York City and Becoming Urnal

This week has been a busy one for us. This week, I went back to working the night shift, 7pm-7am. Jeremy and I have a joke that since I stay up all night I'm not diurnal any more, I'm just plain urnal (just because it's sounds like a word you would use to describe someone who is grumpy). Although, Jeremy can vouch for me, I've actually been a lot less grumpy with this round of nights.

This weekend, Jer and I took a little day trip into New York City. We had been pretty busy all week with work, and so we didn't realize that it was only going to be 32 degrees and we were going to be walking around all day outside. Jeremy was really sweet and made a midnight run to Walmart to pick me up some pink long underwear and hand warmers. We were actually both pretty comfortable all day, those hand warmers worked great. I stuck a couple in my back pockets and gloves Jer put some in his hat and in his shoes.

First, we went and saw the tree in Rockefeller Plaza. You can't really tell in this picture, but it was huge! It looked so pretty lit up when it got dark.

Afterward, we walked over to Bryant park and went iceskating on the pond. They had a special promotion going on that day where you could iceskate for free, your rentals were free, and they even gave you free hot chocolate We thought it was a pretty good deal! I think this was my favorite thing we did all day. It was just kind of magical, everyone was just so happy and frolicking around on the ice.

That afternoon we went and saw "Newsical" on broadway. It came very highly recommended from the people in the discount line, but we both thought it was just ok. I think next time we'll try and see "Wicked." After the show we did a little bit of window shopping on 5th Avenue and went to FAO Schwartz. It's a pretty amazing toy store. Jeremy had a great time looking at all the Lord of the Rings stuff.

Afterwards we went out to dinner at Broadway Joe's on restaurant row. They have amazing cheesecake! As we were walking back through Times Square to the train station, we noticed an little convention of Santa Clauses


All day we had seen people dressed up as different things...a toilet, bacon, the statue of liberty...Elmo (he looked as if he had fallen on some hard times....) I guess it's a New York thing. I'm really glad we got to see the City during the holidays, what a fun day!

Thanksgiving

This year we hosted a Thanksgiving dinner for the first time, and we think it was a success. Jeremy's family flew in from Dallas and Jeremy's brother came from BYU to spend the holiday with us. I made cranberry sauce, rolls, and apple pie, and Jeremy was in charge of the Turkey (he did a really good job!). It was an awesome experience finally finding out exactly what giblets are...


The next day we took Jer's parents into Philadelphia. We went on a tour of Eastern State Penitentiary and saw Al Capone's cell. We also went to Reading Terminal Market for lunch and then took a tour of Independence Hall. That night we went to Gino's for cheesesteaks to complete the Philadelphia challenge. Jeremy thought that Pat's was a little bit better, but I thought they were both equally good. The next day we drove out to Lancaster county to a little town called Lititz. First we visited the Wilbur Chocolate Factory. They have pretty much everything you can imagine covered in chocolate. I think my favorite were the chocolate covered potato chips. We also went on a tour of the historic Sturgis pretzel factory while we were in Lititz where we all became certified pretzel makers. Apparently, pretzel makers were the second highest paying profession at one point in the United States...sometimes I question the accuracy of the information on some of these tours...

Saturday night we visited Longwood Gardens with Jer's family. We had heard a lot about the gardens from everyone here, and it definitely lived up to the hype. The outdoor lights were gorgeous, it reminded me a lot of temple square

They also had some pretty spectacular indoor displays


The trail you can see leading up to the tree is made up of lots of poinsettias and ivy. All of the garlands around this tree were made up of beautiful real red flowers. There was another tree there that had hundreds of blue butterflies on it. Every now and then, one or two of them would flap its wings slowly, just like a real butterfly. It was amazing. We were really sad to see Jeremy's family leave. We don't have any visitors to look forward to for awhile, so you should come out to PA and play!

History and Cheesesteaks

Last weekend, my parents came for a visit from Boise. We had a great time, it was sad to see them go. On the first day they were here we did some sightseeing in Philadelphia. We saw the liberty bell, Independence Hall, and went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art

That night we decided to get a taste of true Philadelphia culture and get philly cheesesteaks at Pat's. I was a little bit nervous because we heard that they get mad at you if you use too many words when you order. You basically want to communicate three things: 1) that you want a cheesesteak, 2) what kind of cheese you want, and 3) with or without onions. Chad did the best..."American with" The cheesesteaks were amazing, we'll definitely be back.
On Saturday we drove out to Gettysburg and spent the day exploring the park. We saw the cyclorama (which I thought would be a movie where your chair would spin around a little bit) it's actually a huge old painting that goes in a circle around a whole room that shows all of the major events in the three days of the battle. We also went to little round top, the devil's den, and then went for a ranger walk on the spot where pickett's charge took place. It was great having my dad there with us, it was like having our own personal tour guide.
Gettysburg truly is "hallowed ground." It really makes you feel reverent when you think of all the men who died there and what a significant event took place on that battlefield. I think Jeremy and I might come back in July to see the reenactment of the battle. I am so glad that we are both nerdy and like those kinds of things.

Avoiding the Swine Flu

I came home from work on Monday to what seemed like an empty house. Instead, something I can only characterize as an undead Ben Franklin jumped out of the closet to greet me. Melo said that my reaction was half scream, half hysterical laughter. I guess this was Melo's way of encouraging me to get into the Halloween spirit!

We are definitely in full Halloween mode this time of year. This was always in contention with Christmas as my favorite holiday as a child. We had a great night decorating halloween cookies with some of our friends in the area last week. Here are some sample cookies:


As you can see Melody made some jack-o-lantern and manatee shaped cookies. We're planning on going to a pick-your-own-pumpkin pumpkin patch tomorrow. We'll see how they turn out.

Swine flu hit home this week as some of the members of our church congregation came down with it. On another note, Melody and I had a good time walking along the Perkiomen creek trail this afternoon. It's really incredible how vivid the trees become in the fall up here:



I'm settling into my new position as an 11 year old scout leader. I've really enjoyed it so far. My old scout shirt even fit! Apparently I still need to make some modifications to my old shirt for it to be suitable for a scout leader (i.e. removing some badges, changing epaulet color, etc.). I guess I could still pass as a Boy Scout however, because one of the scouts asked me if I had "received any of my eagle palms yet". I laughed and could only reply that I was still working on them. (For those not in the know, eagle palms are an award available only to scouts 18 years of age and younger).

We had a lot of fun baby-sitting for a couple we know recently. One of the children referred to Melody as "Jeremy's mommy" haha. This coming on the tail of the comment from the scout was just too much! At least Melody knows that I'm a full-grown adult... Right Melo?