Time to catch up!!!

Ok so by now you can tell that I am just about the worst blogger ever. Truth is the weather had been so nice and gas prices so low (below $2.00), that who would want to sit around and type on a computer all day. Well, you are in luck, the weather has turned colder, fall came and went in a week, and the harsh cold winter is about to set in. So, I'm back to keep you updated on all our adventures, but first to play a little cath-up. The next few entries will go month by month and include all the fun activities you see here. So stay tuned for an update on our exciting life.... 

Somebody turn on the A/C

Well, its been hotter than... well, you know. The last couple weeks we've seen temperature in the 90's, even up to 96 the other day, and with the humidity around here you'd almost think that we are no longer in North Dakota. And then you realize that no one ever imagined that they would need air conditioning in ND so they didn't install it. Well, we went to Wal-Mart and bought a fan that we carry around the house to blow hot air on ourselves, since the air conditioners were like 75 bucks... I can't wait for winter. You know when it's freezing you can always put more clothes on... but in the sweltering heat you can only take so many off, and even less outdoors. Maybe we'll see a lot of movies this summer, or like teenagers spend time hanging out in the mall bumming some of their A/C!

19 Credits... 6 Classes... 1 Grade... Priceless!!

Julie's sooooo proud! That's 3 semesters in a row, we'll just see if I can keep it up this summer with more advanced classes.

AVIT 103: Intro Air Traffic Control - A
AVIT 208: Aviation Safety - A
AVIT 260: ATC:Tower Operations I - A
AVIT 261: ATC: Radar Operations I - A
ECON 303: Money & Banking - A
MATH 146: Applied Calculus I - A

Courses Attempted - 6
Units Passed Toward GPA - 19
Current Term GPA - 4.000

Stress... Stress... & MORE STRESS

Stress...

Well we learned recently that Julie's job is coming to an end. Blue Cross Blue Shield is shutting down the Grand Forks office in her department. We are hoping that they will be able to place her in another office here in Grand Forks and it will be a seamless transition. Needless to say, it's been kinda wait and see and so far we haven't seen anything. So we're worried and stressed and on top of that...

Stress...

It's finals week, the time where all the time work and energy you've put in all semester can be pretty much thrown out the window by a poor performance on an exam with no recourse. So I've been studying and praying, that I will do well enough to get the grades I want. I feel ok about most of the ones I've taken, the last one is tonight at about 5:30 - it's Calculus which has been kicking my butt all semester, in other words I need to do really well. After that I'll have a couple days off to relax before... I get to start the cycle of stress all over again as a new semester starts on Monday and I'm fully loaded with classes. They cancelled one of my summer courses which threatened for a time to push my graduation back till next May, all for a 2 credit class, but luckily I spent a single semester here back in 1999, and that class hadn't been invented yet, so I don't have to take it. And then...

AND MORE STRESS....

Late last week I got a call asking if I could drive to Fargo early Saturday morning to meet with the Stake President. So we got in the car, made the long drive, and got the news... more on that later...

But we did have some fun in Fargo, Julie wanted to check out some garage sales, and man do they take those things seriously out here, cars were parked for blocks as we walked street after street of one large neighborhood where everyone was out hawking there stuff... I've never seen such madness.. The even had professional hot dog vendors and such out for the event... We did get a nice desk for 5 bucks for my future studies and some other stuff to, we took in some Famous Daves with a giftcard while we were in town, and went to Kohl's for the latest deals. It was fun...

It's just too bad that it was the result of somebody feeling they needed to extend me a calling of Elder's quorum president... Yeah, I'm going to be busy. My plan is to just choose a couple good counselors I can lean on a great deal, only problem is we haven't been here very long and I don't really know hardly anybody, I have been staring at the ward list night after night hoping for a name or two to pop out at me, but so far no luck. Well I'll keep you informed, boy I sure wasn't ready or even expecting that one, after all it's not like we are going to be around for very long.

Well keep praying for us... We sure need it!!

Easter etc....

Well the water is receding, and the grass is turning green, overall things are great. We've had temperatures in the high 70's while it was snowing in Utah, and are enjoying the outdoors with nice long walks, For example for Easter, Julie got me a football and frisbee, so we've been known to walk to the park or just hang out and play.



Speaking of Easter it was good we died eggs, got gifts from home, and have plenty of candy to last for a while, I made French bread (I make bread a lot) and baked artichoke-spinach dip, and we ate that along with some spaghetti, and Julie made no-bake cookies it was good!

THE GREAT FLOOD OF 2006

I know it's been a long time since our last post, so forgive us.

As I discussed in last time, the mountains of snow had to melt sometime. Well, with the recent warm temperatures, it has!! And boy has it melted, the only thing keeping us dry, is the brand new levees they started building after the town was turned into a lake in 1997. We have seen minor and moderate flood stages come and go, and now we sit at several feet above MAJOR FLOOD stage with the Red River.

We went down for a walking tour and took some pictures for you all to enjoy. As you can see the roads are closed downtown, the bridges over the river have closed, since the water is now flowing over them.

There were a lot of people out taking picture of the event, walking on the dikes, and a few were trying to fish off the bridge, where the water is normally about a forty foot drop, but today it was up and over in some places. Now, we may have had to go over or under some yellow "do not cross" police line tape to get these pictures, but honestly, like some little yellow tape is going to keep us away, this is the biggest thing we have seen happen in our four months here!

This is the Minnesota side of the Bridge, Nobody is getting into East Grand Forks anytime soon, at least not this way.

Notice the gazeebo, there is supposed to be a large park here, playground, benches, tables, etc. Oh, yeah and that is the bridge that the water is usually a 40-foot drop.

Closed?? C'mon I have four wheel drive!

Sometimes you just can't find a convenient trash can.

I need some waders to get to Cabela's, but I need to get to Cabela's so I can get waders?

I hope nobody parked on this street.

The city is shut down, nothing to do, why not see if there is any fish in that flood. After all the river is a lot closer now!

If you want more or bigger pictures just e-mail us and we'll send them. And thanks to my family for the digital camera, so we can post these pictures the same day. Anybody want to buy us a raft, we can get a great parking space at Applebee's!

2 Years & Counting....

We recently celebrated our two year anniversary; it’s crazy to think that we’ve already been married that long. Of course, Julie says it seems like forever – I don’t know what that means. But it’s been a great two years, and we look forward to many more.

School is still going good, and still tough, calculus is killing me, of course I haven’t been in a math class in 6 years, so right now 8th grade algebra would probably whoop my butt.

The snow keeps coming down and the wind keeps blowing, and it never gets above like 10 degrees here (last week wind chills were between -40 and -60), so the snow doesn’t melt, so it just keeps piling up. We don’t have real mountains, but the way they pile up snow in these huge piles, you would never know this part of the country is flat, it looks like we have rolling hills.

Can’t wait for spring to come, just glad we live on the second floor, because when it warms up and the “mountains" melt, up will come the flood.

I have received requests to put more pictures up, so even though we don’t have any recent ones, we need to buy a new roll of film, I thought I’d post some from our Christmas away from home. We set up a small tree on a TV tray and put presents under it, got dressed up in pajamas my family sent to us and made the best of it.

Really Freezing!!!

After the warmest January ever recorded in Grand Forks, winter has finally decided to kick in. The last few days we have seen crazy blizzards and temperatures in the negatives with wind chills of -20...brrrrr.

The good news is we finally got our pictures developed and decided to start posting some on our blog. This is the picture of our apartment building. We live on the second floor, it's not as bad as Julie would have you believe.

We went to a hockey game the other day. These people take this sport way to seriously. First of all all the chairs in the arena are leather and trimmed in cherry, the concourse floors aren't concrete, they're granite! We got seats in the student section, which aren't free for students, but they're not as expensive as the rest. This is no E-Center Grizzlies game either, where they're lucky to get a thousand people to a game. No the place is packed with sold out crowds of 12,000, oh and though they have a huge parking lot next to the arena, nobody gets to park there. Then the fools, at least the ones by us feel that they need to stand for the entire game... it's hockey for heaven's sake and collegiate hockey at that... We found some seats though where people were sitting down so we could get off our feet. Well, anyway it went into overtime.. a whole 18 seconds of overtime before they lost, but oh well, it was still fun they had some cool laser shows during the break, and it wasn't too cold that night, good thing since we had to walk for like a mile away.

work and church

Well my new work is ok, there is so much to learn, and the people at my new job aren't as fun as you guys at Magellan. I haven't met anyone I would call my friend you know how I am anti-social. I have been to my new ward, and it is kind of cool because there are four girls from Utah that are in our ward. Their husbands are going to school for Air Traffic Control. So maybe we will eventually be friends.

Pictures

We are currently working on finishing up our roll of film so we can get the pictures developed and post some of them here so we can show everyone our adventures. Hopefully it won't take to long, but since we lack a digital camera, you'll all just have to wait.

Freezing

So we're her settled in and set up this blog to always let everyone know how we are doing. It's freeking freezing here, but we are trying to make the best of it. Julie still has one and a half weeks left where she has to drive to Fargo, but soon she be settled in to her job here. School is going good, I have a load of classes, not to mention the wifely responsibilities I have taken on since Julie is working. Anyway, things are great and we are just really getting started.