Updates, Thanksgiving, and Fun

Adrienne and I spent another few hours working on our adoption profile this last week. There's still a ton to do. It's a just a matter of taking the time to fill it all out again. It's really a shame that the data was not exported very well from the old system. It's ok though, we'll get it done and it will be fine.

We had dinner with my sister and her boyfriend (Austin) last night at PF Chang's. The food was great and it was really fun. They are headed to Missouri so they can meet up with my parents for Thanksgiving. Sounds like a fun trip.

Ade's littlest sister (Heidi) is having her invitations printed today at my work. It's weird that the little girl I met over 9 years ago is engaged to be married on the 20th of December. What's even weirder is that a girl that I baptized in 1997 has just moved to Utah and will be married the 19th of December. What happened to all the little kids I used to know? How did they get so big? I'm starting to feel old.

Speaking of 9 years, Thanksgiving Day marks our 9 year anniversary (and my parents 38th anniversary if I remember correctly). Ade's family is driving up from Arizona to stay with us for the Holiday and help out Heidi get ready for the wedding. We bought a 24 pound turkey to cook up for everyone. I'll be cooking that with 2 kinds of stuffing and a Pumpkin Pie Cake...but that's about all I can handle cooking. I've delegated the rest of the "fixings" to everyone else.

I guess I should mention that BYU Football lost on Saturday to our biggest rival, Utah. It was 24-27 in the third quarter before Utah's defense stepped up and BYU fell apart. Congratulations to the Utes and bring on the bowl game so that we can end the season on a high note. If we win the bowl game, that will make 3 seasons in a row with 11-2 records. Not bad!

While I'm making a post, I just want to wish all our friends and family a very Happy Thanksgiving. This is my favorite holiday. It seems to me to be the least commercialized, and is one that helps us focus on gratitude. I am very grateful for all of you. I am grateful for your love and your prayers. May God bless each of you in your lives.

LDS Adoption Profile Going Digital

So last week we started the "new" online adoption profile. It was supposed to have a lot of our old information scanned or transferred over to it. What we found was that very little of our information made it in the system and even the parts that did make it were out of place much of the time. We spent an hour or two cleaning it up last week and we'll continue the process this week.

Chris and Karissa came down Friday with their son Landon. They just needed to get away from the parents house for a night (their staying at Karissa's parents' house while their new home is finished). It was tons of fun having them over. Landon is growing up so fast (just turned 2). We had a great dinner and watched a movie on Friday. Saturday, we had French Toast for breakfast and took Landon to the park for a bit.

We met the Clydes at the temple Saturday afternoon. Then Adrienne ran a few errands in Orem while I sat in the car listening to the BYU game. We beat Air Force by 14 which sets up a very interesting rivalry game this week against Utah (we have just one loss and Utah is undefeated). I hope we can pull it off this year. Our defense has been ravaged by injury all season long and now our big tight end Dennis Pitta (one of the top 2 or 3 tight ends in the country maybe even the best) sprained his MCL at the end of the Air Force game. I hope it's not too bad and that he can play this weekend, but I don't know.

It's late

I came home from basketball tonight and realized that I hadn't posted this week as yet...so I thought I'd put down a few thoughts for everyone.

Last weekend was the last home game of the year for BYU. It was fun, but not much of a game. It was as close to bored that I've ever been at a football game. The outcome was never in doubt, but our offense is always fun to watch.

We were going to head down to our friends' homes for Christmas again this year, but it turns out that they have family coming in from the 4 corners of the United States and don't have enough room. Now we need to decide on a different plan. We might go down to the time share in Las Vegas and hang out with some other friends, or maybe we'll just stay at home and sleep.

Work has been slow, but seems to be picking up a little. It always does towards the end of the year.

Chris (old mission friend), Karissa, and their son Landon are coming down Friday to hang out and stay over. They've been living with Karissa's parents while their new home is being built and just wanted a night away. It's going to be a lot of fun. We haven't really hung out much over the last year it seems, so this will be some good catch up, good food, good games, basically good times.

Well, I think that's enough for now. I've got to take a shower and go to sleep.

Back from St. George

Last week was tough at work for me. Not much going on with any of my clients. It was great to get away for the weekend to St George and recharge. We stayed with the Todds and hung out with all the kids and grandkids all weekend. It's great when all the little ones just pile up on us and play.

Also, our good friends Brent and Andrea just had their baby (Gabriel) a week ago so we spent time with them too.

I thought I was keeping in pretty good shape with basketball and volleyball each week, but a little game of two-hand touch football has shown me new levels of soreness in some areas that I haven't used in a while. It was still fun no matter how much I'm paying for it now. I do wish I had brought cleats though. It would have been that much better.

Sunday it was tough to leave. There was great food and some great times just relaxing on the couch. We didn't get home until close to midnight.

Well, I'm back to work today and I feel much more energized than last week...so mission accomplished.

Fun Weekend

Another week has gone by. I can't believe how time flies. I helped put on our Stake BSA Court of Honor to recognize the Boy Scouts who earned awards in the last 6 months or so.

Our friend who usually let's us sit in the box with him for the BYU Football games had us sit in the Legacy seating instead this week. It was awesome being so close to the action. Our team beat UNLV in an exciting shootout. Then, later that night, we were able to get together with some friends to play volleyball.

Sunday Steph and Will brought their daughter Liberty over for dinner. Adrienne made Szechuan Steak and it was delicious. Steph made an Apple Crumble Pie that was so good I had two pieces.

We've made plans to visit our friends in St. George for Halloween weekend. It will be nice to take a mini-vacation and see some old friends. Not to mention, the weather is supposed to be GREAT!!! I'm bringing shorts and a swimsuit.

Home Improvements

Since I've already posted about the BYU game and some other things from the end of last week, I thought everybody would get a kick out of our recent home improvements. I can't remember if I mentioned this before, but our insurance changed. Adrienne's MS shots went from $500/refill to $30/refill. This basically means that we have a ton of extra money in our cafeteria plan. To use up the funds we had our doctor write notes recommending regular exercise and bought some equipemnt. Our unfinished basement now has a treadmill, exercise bike, and weight bench.

Also, I was successfull in my front door peep-hole experiment. Our front door is metal with a foam core. The peep-hole I purchased needed a 9/16" bit to cut the spot in the door. Unfortunately, the only bit that I could find that size (in 3 hardware stores) was specifically for wood. It was a speed bit or paddle bit (depending on what you call it). I decided to tempt fate and risk ruining the door. It actually cut through it like butter. Score 1 for Jason and Adrienne.

The last home improvement for last week was in our back yard. One of our neighbors decided to put in a fence, so we now have half a fence in our back yard. It looks great, and we split the cost with our neighbor so we each paid half.

I know these don't sound quite as fun as our normal posts, but they were fun for us. It always feels good to get things accomplished. I get a kick out of putting things together. When I was a kid, that meant GI Joes or Transformers. Now that I am an adult, it means treadmills and exercise bikes. Putting them together is half the fun.

Watching BYU Football with LaVelle Edwards

I don't know how many of you know who this is, but LaVelle Edwards was the BYU Football head coach for 29 years. Last night I went to an event called "Football Night at the Museum" where about 30-40 of us got to eat dinner and watch the BYU Football Game. Unfortunately, we got creamed. Fortunately, I got to meet LaVelle and have a great meal.

View from the Box

So have I let you guys know how cool my friends are? First, a friend gave us Box Seats to the football game. Then a different friend took a compilation of about 12 photos and squished them together. Now I have this great photo of the view from the Box. What a beautiful sight!!!

Crazy Busy

Wow, the week started slow enough, but we ended up crazy busy all weekend. Friday I took off early so that I could show my sister the way to the Oral Surgeon's office. She got her wisdom teeth removed. Her boyfriend and I hung out in the waiting room until she was done. One of her teeth was actually growing in sideways...weird! She's doing much better today.

Friday night we had some friends invite us up to a house they rented in Midway. The house was on the Homestead Golf Course, but it was too cold and windy to play. Instead of golf we played pool, watched a movie, talked, played cards, and ate some great food.

On Saturday, we headed back into Provo for BYU's Homecoming football game. On a cold day it was sure nice to be up in the box seats. The buffet was beef brisket with dutch oven potatoes (Yum!). BYU won 21-3. I thought BYU would score a lot more, but the game was exciting and well played on both sides.

Sunday was busy too. First there was OUR Ward...then I had to leave early to go to 3 other Wards to visit their priesthood meetings. I'm still getting used to having a Stake calling. We had Steph, Will, Liberty, Heidi, AND Trevor over for dinner. AND my sister decided she was feeling pretty good so she and her boyfriend stopped by after to hang out and watch a movie.

Great weekend

Let's see, BYU won, we had General Conference meetings all weekend, and our neighbors cooked us breakfast. All in all, it was a pretty great weekend.

More on the breakfast...Sunday morning our newest neighbors called up and said that they had cooked too much breakfast, so we needed to come over and help them finish. They had cooked french toast, bacon, sausage and scrambled eggs. Talk about a wonderful breakfast. We'll have to invite them over soon to repay the kindness. They have three daughters that are 8, 7, and 4 (to balance out our other neighbors that have 3 sons which are 12, 10, and 6). We feel blessed to be among so many great families.