The most beautiful girl in the world gets an upgrade

Allison decided that it was time to update her look while in Washington. It started with a haircut. Then a makeup consultation at Nordstroms. Then a hair coloring.

I had scheduled Allison to get her hair done at Jax salon by my cousin, Austin. What I neglected to do was also schedule her coloring (sorry!). Allison had plans to go a very vibrant red (maybe even putting streaks of very light blue throughout). She got the idea here (No, that's not Allison on the red carpet, that's Liz Lee from My Life As Liz). She did eventually get her hair dyed a stunning auburn, but these pictures were taken before she had that done.

If getting hairs did wasn't enough, she decided to schedule a makeup consultation at the Bobbi Brown exhibit. She apparently had tons of fun with the consultant and now looks like a new woman.

I am so lucky to have a stunning wife.

A New Car?

We Spent all last week in Washington with the Call parentals. We had so much fun that we will have at least a few days' worth of blog posts. For our first post we wanted to brag about the new car we picked up in Hilltop. This was the first of many gifts and treats we were given while visiting.

Okay, this isn't really our new car, but we would trade our sturd for this car anyday. We parked next to this car at the Supermall and couldn't resist snapping a quick picture. So if you see us riding around in this in a few years, you'll know where we first saw it.

Babies Everywhere

Babies Everywhere

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.