This is what -12 feels like

Yesterday I told you a bit about our pre-thanksgiving bounty. Today I will share a few pictures. By the way, it's a good thing we bought our shovel yesterday. On our way home from work yesterday we got stuck in a snow bank and had to dig our way out. Our preparation paid off!

The warmest temperature over the next three days is supposed to be 4 degrees. Yes, we're talking fahrenheit. The lows, negative teens. Remember, it's still fall.

A time to prepare

I spent the morning shoveling snow. Last night our landlords came over to tell us there was an 80% chance that we'd be snowed in. Allison's job won't even allow her to miss work when she's throwing up, so we knew the "snowed-in" excuse wouldn't work. So I woke up early to ensure a pathway to our car. I woke to about 10 inches of snow and read the weather report to find that another 8-10 inches will fall today with wind gusts of up to 45 MPH and temperatures in the teens. A pleasant Rexburg day.

Luckily, we left in plenty of time to take the drive slowly because the roads were terrible. On our normally 50 MPH road, cars were traveling 20 MPH. Arriving in Rexburg 20 minutes early, I asked Allison if she would practice driving if I took her to deserted roads. Surprisingly she accepted the challenge. For her first time driving in the snow, she did quite well!

When Allison and I were dating, we shared a very memorable experience on a snowy day like today. Allison's roommate had gone out of town and told us we could use her car while she was gone. Because Allison lived in a house with 16 girls, we figured we would take advantage of the car one night when we wanted to watch a movie. I brought my laptop, a DVD, and a blanket for each of us and we headed out to Beaver Dick Park. When we arrived in the park it was about 9:30, and we couldn't see any other cars. We drove in the park loop seeking out an ideal place to park for our movie. When we got to the end of the loop, I attempted to turn around, but ended up lodging the car right into a snow bank. After trying several maneuvers to dislodge the car without a single budge, I figured we were stuck.

We tried everything we could think of to get ourselves unstuck--digging out the tires, pushing, placing boards under the tires--all without luck. No other cars were in sight, and Rexburg was 15 miles away. So we made ourselves comfortable, watched the movie, and eventually fell asleep. Well, I fell asleep. Allison lay shivering.

Every once in a while I would get up to turn the heater on in the car, give more blanket to Allison, and assure her that we would not freeze to death. She didn't believe me; as far as she was concerned, this was the worst night of her life.

In the morning we were able to flag down a man in a truck who helped us out. We drove back into town and decided to never take the car again.

This experience taught us the importance of having emergency equipment in our car. So after dropping Allison off at work today I drove to the CAL ranch store and bought an avalanche shovel and a first aid kit to put in the trunk of our car. Then I put some heavy blankets back there as well. This is how we are preparing for "the storm."

We have also begun preparing our food storage. Right now we figure we could live about a month on all of the food we've stored, but we have created a separate budget for food storage to allow us to really start storing more food. We are starting small right now by adding several cans to each shopping trip, but we know that each little bit will make an impact.

So, this is how we're preparing, what are you doing to prepare?

Goldbug

My mom still has a box of things I wrote in the first grade. I may be one of the few people in the world who could, if asked, produce every single document I have ever written. Well, at least every document I wrote from first grade until 12th. Since being in college I have been less careful with the documents I save. You see, as an English major my job is to write. To save everything would mean lots and lots of documents. My mom still wishes to read my writings, and so this is my chance to show my mom something I wrote this week.

My English 450 class has us making, designing, editing, and writing for class magazines. When it came time to sign up for magazines, I was hard pressed to find articles I was interested in writing. One, though, seemed perfectly suited to me: describe a hike in Idaho.

Allison and I had done a lot of hiking, and I felt that I was seasoned enough to provide a good article on the subject. After signing up I received an email stating that they expected my article to not only describe my favorite hiking spot, but also use humor, descriptive language, and provide motivation to new hikers. "Oh Yeah," they added as a side note, "your article should be less than 400 words." This is not exactly what I had in mind when I signed up for the article, but I'd have to make it work.

While not perfect, this is the article I turned in. This was supposed to be my rough draft (I will still consider it that), but they apparently liked it enough to publish it as is. Like I said, this is my rough draft.

“Allison! Wake up! Did you hear that?” She bolts up. Eyes wide. All semblance of sleep on her face now transformed into terror. She doesn’t speak but her eyes are asking a thousand questions.

“What is it!?” she finally whispers.

“Something just hit our tent. Something big.” I was struck with fear. No blinking. No moving. My loud, nylon sleeping bag will give me away. My hand slowly moves towards my twelve inch, solid steel Mag-Lite. I see her hand reach for the hatchet. We’re armed--I will blind them as she puts the hatchet through their skull.

We’d arrived in the early afternoon and quickly found our spot under the trees. The stream trickled ten feet away as we set to work staking our tent. We knew it would be nearly dark when we returned from our hike.

Shortly after our marriage Allison and I promised ourselves to go camping every weekend--a tradition we’d kept for nearly three months now. We had hiked in many lovely places throughout Idaho but Allison always wanted to show me her special hike. Located between the cities of Challis and Salmon, the Goldbug Hot Springs lay in a secluded stretch of mountainous poplar and aspen forests.

We often gauge a hike’s quality by the number of people we pass along the way. Using that as a guide, I found this hike excellent, for we passed only one hiker along the way. As the trail meandered through meadow, desert and mountain, I reflected on the diversity of God’s creations and the beauty of Idaho. While the first two miles meandered up a slight gradient, I was surprised to meet a rough, mountainous portion that had me on hands and feet for the last half mile.

“It’s totally worth it,” she kept reminding me. “We’re almost there.”

Worth it it was. Upon climbing over my last boulder I came face to face with a dozen small bath tub-like springs, perfectly sized for a few people in each pool. The water was perfect. The upper pools were scalding, the bottom pools were warm, the middle pool comfortably hot. Nothing could be better than ending a perfect hike with a warm soak in a natural spring. We had the springs to ourselves to watch the sun set between two mountain peaks. This is a memory we will keep forever.

We hiked back to our camp in the dusk exhausted: ready to eat and ready to sleep. We climbed into our sleeping bags while still chewing on the last bites of our hot dogs. We were asleep within minutes.

Waking in the morning with mag-lite still grasped tightly in my fist, I pondered over what had happened during the night. No trace of animal, man, or branch. Then, as I rolled over I heard it again, the same rustling of tent against something hard. The exact same sound that had awakened me and kept me awake for hours. The sound of my hand hitting the side of our tent.

FOr your Birthday, make It a Red Robins niGht!

Yipee, for our birthdays, we usually decide on one place to dine in celebration and go inbetween our birthdays, but nope, we weren't having it this year. THis year we each picked a place to eat. Jacob picked Famous Daves cause we've heard a ton about it, but neither had been. Here's what we got:
2 corns
2 corn breads
beans
texas toast
1/2 a chicken
6 ribs
mac n cheese
bakes beans
brisket
a crap load of fries

This things a beast. The corn bread tasted like cake, the corn was perfect (although would have been better with Jacobs garlic butter), and the chicken was the best I've ever had. We of course couldn't finish it and had THREE BAGS OF LEFT OVERS. THis was great because dinner the next night was left overs night. They also had an array of yummy bbq sauces, one very vinagery one that was right up my alley.

For my birthday, we decided to take our nifty coupons to Red Robins and see if they would redeem them both, and they did. This means that if we wanted to, we could have had two gourmet burgers, endless steak fries, and two sundays completely free. Now that's awesome. We then felt the need to splurge on freckled lemonades and Mile High Mud Pie so we weren't taking too much advantage (my conscience more than Jacobs). I will say, they didn't make us feel guilty at all, so next year I think well just take full advantage and get a complete free dinner. What a great deal.

We are grateful for:

November is the month of gratitude. Allison and I both get to be grateful for presents on our birthdays, the season begins to transform the earth into beautiful hues of orange and red, and we get to celebrate thanksgiving. At the beginning of this month Allison and I made a gratitude chart for Family Home Evening. We each were given a pencil and a piece of paper and we set the timer for three minutes. Our goal was to find 50 things that we were thankful for in three minutes. Here's what we came up with. (I wonder if you can guess who said what)

1. Jacob

2. Allison

3. BYU-Idaho

4. Family

5. ______(This one is private, sorry)

6. Home

7. Allison's job

8. Food

9. Warmth

10. Shelter

11. Candies

12. Health

13. bikes

14. Educational opportunities

15. Money

16. The Gospel of Jesus Christ

17. Church

18. Blankies

19. Warm water

20. Camping

21. Sturd (A reliable car)

22. halloween

23. Rikki

24. A nice bed

25. Funnies

26. Cozies

27. America

28. Puppies

29. Freedom

30. Grass

31. Nature

32. Olive garden

33. Steak

34. Days off

35. Spicy Cheetos

36. safety

37. Bread

38. A clear face

39. Skinniness

40. Past

41. Present

42. Furture

43. Music

44. Painted Walls

45. Safety

46. Modern conveniences

47. Furniture

48. Good experiences

49. non-sickness days

50. The Snake Bite

BIRFDAY BUDS!

Jacob's birthday is.... TODAY and mine is not far behind. We are getting very old. We received awesome gifts and cards in the mail and have had a fun time opening them. Yesterday at work I had a great activity planned for Jacob and me. For the first time in 2 weeks I got off of work on time, but found out Jacob had a group meeting to attend so that was a bit of a bummer, but we sure made up for it. I told Jacob to head in the general direction of walmart and to stop in a shopping mall. We entered none other than The Dollar General and each had a budget of 5 dolla to spend on one another. We then returned home, wrapped each of the presents, and then waited until we could no longer wait and opened them all. Here is our splurge.

Once the presents were wrapped, we noticed that two of ours looked very similar. Turns out, out of hundreds of thousands of items, we picked the exact same one for each other. We either think a like or there wasn't much good to choose from. Jacob got me black licorice which was a surprise considering I told him the day before the only two kinds I didn't like were black and twizlers. BUT, he was excited to find the expensive aussie brand at the $ store. He also got me nik l nips which I told him was a childhood memory of mine. Now I think of it as drinking pixie sticks, boy will our primary class like those.

I, on the other hand, got Jacob caramel chocolate popcorn which he has also recently told me he doesn't appreciate much, but I did that on purpose and have been enjoying them ever since.

Here are the splendor of cards we have received thus far in celebration of our oldness.

Here is the day of birth boy getting ready to go teach school

We have many more plans, we will post later with details.