Father's Day

As I was perusing other people's blogs tonight, I noticed a common thread. Perhaps there is an excess of love for men today, or more realistically, it's Father's Day so we are thinking about our husbands and fathers and how much they do for us. So, since Bryce is up in Park City presenting at a conference for his work (yes, only chemists would schedule a conference over Father's Day), I have free reign to write whatever I want about him without any sort of censoring. Oh, the power. Use it wisely, Cathi, use it wisely.

I guess I'll begin with two pictures. First, Bryce in Hawaii taking our niece, Grace, to the pool. He had no idea I was taking this, since, if he had, he would have put a hand up (see picture #2).

It is with our nieces and nephews that I see glimpses of what Bryce will be like when we have our own kids someday. He is always so loving and kind towards them. He will play all of their silly games and go to extraordinary lengths to make sure they are happy. I know there will never be a lack of laughter in our home. Yet I also know that he will nurture them, help them to grow up to be responsible, and hopefully, love the Lord and have a desire to serve Him as they follow their father's example. I anxiously, but patiently, await for those days to come. Thanks Bryce for always making me happy and putting up with me when I frustrate you (trust me, this is a frequent event and Bryce is very, very patient). I love you with all my heart. Happy Father's Day.

And next, my father. (This part will probably be a lot longer seeing as I've got 24.5 years of memories to draw from.) It seems fitting to have two pictures of him as well. The first is on top of St. Peter's Basilica (the Vatican) when he, my mom, and Joy came to pick me up from my mission. He looks happy but try to get him to let go and look over the edge and you'd realize how tightly he was gripping that masonry. Second, is obviously, from my wedding. It almost makes me cry every time that I see it.

I really appreciate everything my dad has done for my sisters and me. He has worked so hard to provide for us, and for that we are all truly grateful.

But, more than the temporal help, he has been a great dad. It's been a few years, but we used to watch old 8mm films of us when we were little. I still remember the one where he was playing bucking bronco with us. We would climb on his back and he would try to bounce us off. We never won.

Of course there are the daddy-daughter dates, the numerous AFA hockey games where I could get a sip of Coke from him if I begged long enough, and plenty of mini-golf (which he always won, of course). As we got older, I recall him coming to our lacrosse games when he could. It's not easy to get away from his work, but as much as I generally played worse with him there, I still appreciated seeing him in the crowd. My favorite was when Joy's team played mine (we went to separate high schools). She was on offense and I was the goalie so he was always hoping that Joy wouldn't score on me. She never did, but her team beat us every time, so I'm not bragging.

Dad's never been a man of many words, but there's a lot to be understood in what he doesn't say. I am grateful for his commitment to the gospel, and as we've grown, I think we've seen it, especially as he serves in the temple. I also know he loves my mom and my sisters and me and that he would do anything for us. I love him very much and hope he really does know how much we all honor him, especially today. Love you Dad.

Fruit Basket Adventure

One of our former employees had to come home about a month and a half early from her mission due to some health concerns. She had been in the hospital in the country she was serving in for three weeks so our office got a package together and sent it to her, just in time for her to miss it on her early return. We all wanted to do something for her still, though, and since her family lives in Provo, we decided to make her a fruit bouquet. Mind you this was a first time experiment, so it didn't turn out quite as professionally as those you can buy for a few hundred dollars online (Google search edible fruit and you'll see what I mean), but we were fairly proud.

All of the full-time staff were at a planning meeting on Tuesday so Maria, Sarah, and I decided it would be the perfect day to work on our creation. Here's a rundown of what we did:

First, I used a letter opener to shave pieces of stryofoam down to put in our sand pail.

Second, Maria skewered the strawberries and grapes

Third, we cut the fruit (pinapples with mini Reeses Peanut Butter cups, cantaloupe, and honeydew melong for the other flowers, centers, and leaves).

Fourth, we assembed the arrangement.

And the final product...although we did add some wrapped peanut butter cups to the base as decoration after we took these pictures. Not too bad for a first time try.

Sarah, me, and Maria holding our prized gift. (it's a bit fuzzy).

As fruit doesn't hold up that well, we had Maria and Sarah run it up to her house. She was very excited and has finally started doing a bit better.

Much Needed Amusement at Work

As most of you know, I work for Graduate Studies at BYU. During the summer, it is notoriously slow, especially when the full-time staff are at a conference and it's only the student and other part-time employees. I'm not saying that we don't work, but we have to get pretty creative sometimes to make up a project to keep busy. We can't really cut down our staff all that much because we all do have assignments, they just rely so much on the full-timers that when they are gone, it can be a bit rough. Wednesday afternoon was one of those afternoons. Fortunately, fate seems to see our misfortune and creates amusement every once in a while. What I'm going to attempt to explain has happened four times in the last year and it baffles us every time. There is no explanation.

On Wednesday it all began when the front desk phone started ringing. I looked down at the caller ID and it said it was the front desk's number calling itself. Odd. Shortly thereafter our data analyst got a phone call on his cell phone that showed the front desk number was calling him, despite the fact that no one was on the phone. He answered and after a moment of silence it started ringing as if he were calling someone. Then my cell phone started ringing. I look down to see that it is also showing that the front desk is calling me, but obviously that's not true. I didn't answer it and then Curt heard my voicemail and actually left me a message. Various scenarios of this type happened for about an hour. People's cell phones called the front desk, and then when someone picked up, it would ring to another person's cell phone under the first person's number. Never does it show on the phone that starts the cycle that a call was made. It's just weird. The first time it happened last year it was initially between Verizon phones so we called customer service (you can imagine their confusion), but then phones on Tmobile and land lines also began to do similar things. We've tried searching the internet to see if it happens to anyone else, but to no avail.

We were naturally suspicious as to who might be messing with us. We originally thought it might be the data analyst, but he can't figure it out. We also suspected the webmaster or publications intern, but both were out on Wednesday and were doing things that wouldn't have allowed them to spend time creating havoc. Of note, it only involves cell phones that are in the office, and generally only rings to office phones where people are working; it didn't involve any of the staff that were at the conference or out for other reasons. So, since that seems to limit how an outside person could be involved, and we've checked with IT and they can't seem to find anything behind it (although they would love to figure out how to do it), we've come to the conclusion that it's got to be some signal issue with our building. We are moving offices within the week so I'll let you know if it happens again...in some ways I hope it does. It provides much needed amusement on those slow afternoons.

Just B.S.

We finally graduated. Cathi and I completed our B.S. degrees in Exercise Science and Biochemistry, respectively. We also had two minors each. Cathi’s were in Nutrition and Business and mine were in Business and Spanish. We hope they’ll come in handy down the road.

It seems like I’ve lived in Provo forever, considering I started at BYU in August of ’01. Cathi started a year later. We’re excited to be moving in August. Given the time we’ve been here, it goes without saying that we’ve both taken classes we didn’t have to, but we enjoyed them and would probably take them again if we did it all over again. Along with that, we probably graduated with enough credits for three people instead of two. We’re definitely excited to be done and to not have anything else to worry about during the summer.



I guess that’s only a half-truth as we do wonder/worry about the medical school situation. You have to catch me on a good day for me to enjoy talking about it. I’m currently on the wait-list for 4 schools – University of Maryland, Virginia Commonwealth University, Medical College of Wisconsin and University of Toledo. I have no idea where I fall on VCU’s waitlist, but I do know about the other three. I’m designated as high priority for Toledo, am in the 2nd quarter for MCW and am in the first half for Maryland. That last one doesn’t tell me much as I could be fifth on the list or 105th because there are 220 people on the waitlist. So we’re just hanging out till we hear something, which could be as early as June or late as August (or Sept. for Toledo). If I’m not accepted this year, the plan is to move to NC and work for a year before re-applying. For now, we’re both working full-time at BYU at our same jobs.

Besides work, Cathi is participating in a BYU wellness program and wears a pedometer all day (she’s supposed to walk at least 8000 steps per day), has read the Twilight series and is re-reading it, and I play about 3-4 softball games a week and basketball twice.