Zoo Day!

My family has a tradition of going to the Utah Hogle Zoo every Memorial day.

Here are a few of the highlights...

Carrying our picnic while waiting in line to get in.

Christi the Elephant-my favorite :)

The coolest bird show ever!

Brandon with his kindred :) just kidding

Look how cool the giraffe looks

The awesome train ride that was about 3 minutes long

We had a wonderful day!!

Take that worthless high school class!

In my Sophomore year of high school, I had one of those schedules that just wouldn't accomodate all of the classes that I wanted to take - go figure. So, my counselor got the privilege of choosing a few of my classes for me. My school was big into certification classes (probably because a select few of the student body would pursue higher education) and I got put into one of those, "Internet for Business".

I could have changed my schedule, but to be honest, "Internet for Business" sounded fascinating to a young nerd like me. And that was my mistake. The class was a joke. The teacher knew little to nothing about internet or business and didn't even pretend to teach. And the other 15 students were some of Cyprus High School's finest who cared less than the teacher. For a majority of the course, we were simply to look up 5 websites per day and write about what was effective and less effective about them. And after that 10 min of busy work we were free to surf the internet under very limited supervision.

The only useful thing I learned in the class was HTML coding. And I use the term "learned" very loosely. HTML was part of the curriculum for the class but our teacher merely gave us a handout with basic HTML syntax and then we moved on. I used some of my free time learning the material (and consequently I was the only one who passed the certification test despite the fact that the rest of the class cheated on it). And learning that HTML never paid off until now.

You may (or may not) have noticed that our background/layout changes regularly. That is Christy's doing. But what you will not have noticed is what is missing. That would be my doing. Have you ever visited a blog and noticed that in the upper left hand corner, there is an advertisement for somebody else's blog? I used to think they were awards given to superior blogs, but now I know better! They are just advertisements included with whatever template you may have used from their site. And all it takes to get rid of them is to delete the part of the HTML code that looks like this:

<div id="tag" style="position:absolute; left:0px; top:30px; z-index:50; width:150px; height:20px;">
<a href="http://christyandbrandonc.blogspot.com" target="_blank">
<img border="0" src="http://www.cs.indiana.edu/classes/a202-dger/fall2006/notes/chap11/pizza.bmp"/></a></div>

And if you decide to try this out, feel free to paste the above code in its place. What can I say? I'm only against the advertising if it isn't for me.

Conference for two

So, I must be a super spiritual person. Why?
Just recently we received the General Conference edition of the Ensign. Well a couple of nights ago, we were just sitting on the couch doing nothing of importance, when I decided that I need to get something out of my backpack. Because Brandon was closer to the backpack I asked him to get it and get whatever it was that I needed out of it. So, he reaches in and pulls out the Ensign and gives me a weird look. I just say that I like to read from it at work sometimes. He then pulls out another copy of the Ensign ! Oh did I mention that we receive 2 conference editions? We both bust out laughing. Yep, I guess for some reason I thought that I should have both Ensigns just in case. The best part is that they were right next to each other and I didn't even realize it. I guess that tells you how diligently I read.

Blog = Trouble!

If you were to ask me to describe my life in three words I would probably have chosen three synonyms: peaceful, tranquil, uneventful, etc. And then this blog happened. Being a statistician, I can't say that the blog has "caused" this new drama in my life, but I can say with 95% confidence that the two are correlated (as half of my readers cringe at memories of their Intro to Stats class). It's as if the blog knows I need things to write about...and provides them.

I work in South Jordan, so I have to endure 30-60 min. in rush hour traffic every morning and evening (Thank goodness for my books on iPod that keep me from going crazy). The ride to work isn't so bad until I hit 12300 South where traffic slows for the construction of the new 11400 South exit.

Well, this morning's drive was no different. When the slowdown happened, I ditched the fast line for the one just to the right of it (I've noticed it tends to do better in the trouble spot). I reached about 11400 in the stop and go and heard a noise that made me look over my shoulder. A car in the fast lane had put on his brakes and pulled a little into the carpool lane to avoid a crash. It worked...except that the guy behind him didn't do so well. He was rear-ended and collided with the car just to my left.

I was quite startled...and grateful that I had ditched that lane. I probably should have stopped since I was a witness to the accident, but I doubted I could have safely done so and so I drove off pitying those who would probably be late for work because they were behind the accident. It was all a close call...too close of a call really.

So blog, I have a simple request to make: if you are going to give me things to blog about, could you just tone them down a bit. No injury, death, emotional trauma, etc. If you need something big and flashy, you could have me win a trip to Hawaii. I think I could live with that.

Revenge of the Cube Steaks

Occasionally I find that I end up doing something so stupid that I can't help but laugh at myself. This is one of those little episodes:

Last Tuesday, Christy and I decided to go grocery shopping together - not exactly a party, but it had to be done. Christy dutifully went down the aisles picking out items for our week's meals while I pushed the cart and looked at snacks and other things that I could wish I were eating.

Ultimately the trip was as uneventful as any other shopping trip and I remember only two things in hindsight: 1) Wondering what cube steaks actually were and why they got their name, as Christy added them to the cart and 2) That the cube steaks were privileged enough to get their own bag when we checked out. Weren't they special?

Sunday dinner is one of our nicer meals of the week. Christy will usually throw some things into a crockpot before we go to church and then we can eat right when we get home. So it was no surprise that this past Sunday, Christy had planned to use the cube steaks for our meal. Only she couldn't find them. And my second search of the freezer only confirmed that they were truly missing.

My mind ran through the possibilities: Fridge? No luck. Store? Very unlikely. Car? Uh-oh.

I went out to the car expecting the stench of rotten meat to spew out of the trunk the moment I popped it. To my surprise, there was nothing: no stench, no cube steak. It wasn't until I went back inside that I realized where the cube steaks were. In our otherwise fairly clean house there were two assumed-empty Smith's bags next to the kitchen table. One of them wasn't empty and held the rotten cube steaks. How we could have left them to rot on the kitchen floor for 5 days is beyond me. How they even got there is a mystery since we put our groceries on the table when we bring them in. But the facts stand that we left them to rot (and we're just lucky that the packaging contained most of the smell).

So while those cube steaks may not have made it past the slaughterhouse, they had the last laugh. And instead of a lavish Sunday dinner, we had corn dogs.

Meet Us!

Well, here we are! I know we are little behind the times in the blogger world, but its never too late to start!. So, let's start from the beginning...Brandon and I met fall semester 2007. We both worked on BYU campus for OIT. After some matchmaking and time we finally went on our first date just before Christmas break. It didn't take long before He proposed and I said YES. And then before we knew it we got married on August 14, 2008 in the Salt Lake City Temple. It was the perfect day!! And now nine or so months later, here we are.
We are currently living in Provo in a cute little apartment. Brandon just graduated in Actuarial Science and is currently commuting to South Jordan everyday for his new full-time job. He will start BYU Law school next fall with a full tuition scholarship! Yay! I am currently going to school and studying Elementary Education. My days are spent going to classes, working, doing homework and all my wifely duties :) .
So, there you go- Us in record time.