OOOOOklahoma!

Wow! For the first time I, Lindsay, am posting on our blog! From all my friends blogs, I think the women tend to post more than their husbands do... but oh well. I guess Kyle and I have always been a little backwards. :)

Or...maybe upside down is more accurate with this image...you get the point.

So today I received a call from one of my cousin's (the beautiful Tara Walker) friends. Turns out this girl is going on a mission to Tulsa, Oklahoma at the end of the month! She must have been pretty righteous because only those truly loved by the Lord are sent to the South! Okay, maybe I'm a little biased (I served in the Oklahoma City Mission from Feb '07-Aug '08) but Oklahoma is absolutely incredible. I answered a few questions for her and also offered some sage advice.

#1 Nylons are impossible to keep intact, don't worry too much about it.


#2 Get used to awkward spaces between Elders and Sisters in pictures, or really, throughout your mission.


#3 Having two companions is a blast!


#4 Temptations will come on your mission but you will be strong enough to take a picture of them and then move on.


#5 There are only so many Jodi dresses in the world, odds are another sister will also own your dress...


#6 Don't try to find cute sister missionary shoes, they simply don't exist. Just try and keep them from smelling after rainy days by using "odor-eater."


#7 There are billions of churches in Oklahoma, don't get intimidated, just remember the message you share.







#8 Biking can be difficult because of the terrain,



the skirt,



or an unhappy companion.


#9 You will meet very cute kids.



#10 Utilize public transportation, it beats walking.



#11 Be prepared to plan weddings...




that lead to baptisms!


#12 Watch out for enormous bugs, the humidity makes them double in size.



#13 There are strange mile markers on the mission. For instance the halfway mark is 9 months, hence to prego belly


A picture at "Good Year" tire at your 1 year mark.


"Killing off" your companions when it's their last transfer



#14 There is strong wind, wet summers, and harsh winters in Oklahoma.






#15 But there are always beautiful sunsets.


#16 Some addresses are hard to conceive, but they really do exist!



#17 Celebrate Special Moments!






#18 Elders will be Elders...



#19 And Sisters will be sisters...





#20 You'll meet amazing people and witness miraculous things!

Start of a new semester

So the time has come to start Fall 2010 semester, and my last one here at BYU. It has been great, and I am super excited for my classes and everything that has been going on. But before school started again, Lindsay and I had some fun to close out what has been a fun and eventful summer. So, here come some long awaited pictures from our fun times in Utah.

We had a chance to get out and do some hiking. Not a ton, but it was a great summer to be outside. This is from our Stewart Falls hike towards the beginning of summer.

And we have some grills in the back of our apartment complex, so we used those pretty much two or three times a week. It was great!

We went with the Hastings and Mom Pennock to go to Colorado for Lindsay's cousin's wedding. It was great to be back home for a little while and fun to spend some time with the Pennock's. The drive was awesome...I don't think you could have a bad drive with such great company.

Luckily for us, that was not the last trip to Colorado that we had over the summer. The Bradley's got together for their family reunion up at Ragged Mountain. I thought that was cool to have Lindsay visit the place where I went almost every single summer growing up.

Isn't Colorado pretty?

Also luckily for us, it was not the last time we got to see the Pennock's either! The whole family made the cross country trek to have the Pennock family reunion in Salt Lake. you can see part of the family here chilling at our place, playing some Mario Kart before the went back to home. Lindsay will have to post more about this vacation, it was a great one.

We finished the summer off the same way we started it, by going on some spectacular hikes, like this one up Squaw Peak. It was a training hike before we hit the the even bigger...

Mt. Timpanogos! Here's us at the top. I'll write a different blog on this one, because it was quite the adventure. Full of early mornings and wildlife. 

And finally, a view from Lindsay's hospital. Ah Provo...we had fun hanging out this summer. Please don't be a bad winter!

So it's been a while...

And I have no excuse. Unfortunately I don't have any new pictures to put up because I didn't really take any pictures. It has been a pretty routine month with a few little surprises here and there. I think one of the big things for me personally was getting the nasty GRE out of the way. I took it earlier this month and was pretty happy with the results...so far at least. I don't know how I did overall yet because it takes a few weeks to grade the essays that I wrote. But the other sections of the test went fairly well. I'll just say that I never want to have to face that test again. Now it's off to bigger and better things.

Lindsay well too. She's working at the hospital here in Provo as a nurse, and doing an amazing job. It is incredible to hear here stories of the day when I pick her up at night. It takes a very special kind of person to handle those long, 12 hour shifts surrounded by sick people, and she does a great job at it. Just this week she finished her training period where she worked side-by-side with another nurse and has now taken on a full-load of patients by herself. I would be terrified, but she handles it amazingly well. 

We are about to embark on a few weeks of family time. First we head off to Ragged Mountain in Colorado to meet up with the Bradley Bunch. A nice weekend camping up in the mountains. I'm excited for Lindsay to go up there because it has been a family tradition for as long as I can remember to camp up there for our reunions. It will be nice to get away from Provo for a bit (not that I don't like Provo, it just nice to head back to Colorful Colorado every once in a while). Then the week right after that we head back to Utah to spend time with the Pennock's. We're going to be up in Salt Lake just hanging with the fam. Her whole family drove all the way across country so that they could be here for it and I am way excited to see them again! 

We did have the pleasure of hosting the Pennock's here this last weekend before they went up to Idaho to be with extended family and it was a blast. We all had a chance to practice our Mario Kart skills a little bit and float down the Provo River in tubes. That's the second time this year for me and Linds, and it gets better every time. 

My friend Tiny borrowed my camera a few weeks back and I still haven't seen it again, so I hope that I'll get it back before our trips so that I can post some stuff from family time. I'll post something new when I get back!