Wow

Today I was in the Quilted Bear-- it's a huge store with lots of booths with crafty things people make to sell-- just pricing some flower hair clips (to see if I could buy them or make them cheaper). This is only the second time I've been in the store, but I really enjoy just walking around and looking at all the things people have made. I was just looking at some wall signs with cute sayings on them (wishing I could get one for our bedroom) and this cute lady stopped me. She was older, but not very old. I would guess at maybe late 60's? Anyways, she said "I'm sorry, you are probably going to think I am very strange, but I would like to give you some money for your purchase today." I started to object, but she interrupted me. "This is a tradition I have to commemorate my husband's death," she said. "Every year I do this, and I always start here at the Quilted Bear. I saw you walking around a few minutes ago and I thought you might be the one. Then I happened to run into you again and I knew that I needed to talk to you. Please take this, it brings me so much happiness." Then she handed me $40 in cash! I was trying to object, to tell her that it was too much, and she just told me maybe I should buy something I wouldn't have normally bought-- but she was insistent that I could spend it however I wanted.

So I bought the wall signs I was looking at. I bought both of them! One says "Always and Forever, no matter what" and one says "together is a wonderful place to be". I am excited to put them up in our apartment. Now they will have double meaning to me. I love the sayings, but also they will remind me of the example of that sweet stranger. I never even got her name! What a selfless and Christlike way to live-- instead of dwelling on her loss, she took the opportunity to reach outside herself and give to others. It will be a long time before I am in a financial position where I can hand out money to complete strangers, but I want to follow her example, if in different ways. This has been a strong reminder to always serve others, even when (or maybe especially when) the situation would warrant more selfish thinking.

Sarah's Mission Call! ...and a Jell-O eating contest

Sarah Evans received her mission call on Friday! We were on our way to our ward Barbecue when Sarah called Brian's cell phone (I had left mine at home). She was on her way to our grandparents' house to open it there. 5 minutes later she got us on the phone again while everyone else was setting up conference calls on all the other phones. It took forever to get everyone on, but finally she opened it. She will be serving in Fresno, California and sharing the gospel in Spanish! She reports to the MTC on Octopber 14th. We are so excited for her!

The ward Barbecue was a lot of fun! The highlight was the Jell-O eating contest. Before we left home, Brian was worried about his favorite white and red polo shirt getting dirty and was considering changing before we left, but I told him it'd be fine, he wouldn't get it dirty. Then he goes and participates in the Jell-O eating contest!


He was so worried about getting his shirt dirty, he couldn't "really go at it" and didn't win. But as you can tell, he intensely enjoyed that Jell-O! (p.s. the Jell-O that did get on the shirt came right off with a little Spray-and-Wash)

4th of July Madness!

We had a great 4th of July weekend! We spent Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings with some of Brian's cousins who were having a family reunion.

Thursday night was a pool party at the Pleasant Grove pool. Too bad the internet gave us the wrong address (they had the numbers for North and East mixed up) so we drove around neighborhoods in completely the wrong place looking for it. Finally we called Aunt Leah (who was the grand head of the reunion) and she told us the pool was on 100 East 100 West. Without thinking I said "OK" and hung up... before I realized that those two streets are parallel. To make a long story short, we got an excellent 40-minute tour of the thriving metropolis of Pleasant Grove before finally making it to the pool with only 15 minutes of the party left! The trip was not completely worthless-- we raced each other down the slides twice (Brian won both times) and got to sit in the hot tub for a few minutes before the lifeguards kicked the group out.

Friday and Saturday evenings were BBQ's, one in Mapleton, one in Pleasant Grove. There was good food, a family talent show, lots of basketball, and a huge volleyball game. Somehow I got pulled into doing a dance with all of Brian's female cousins. Our group name was "Middle Aged Mothers and Natalie." It was hilarious; none of us knew what we were doing and half of us all but lost it laughing hysterically.

The real adventure was getting home Saturday night. We left Pleasant Grove at 10:40. We can usually get home in 20-30 minutes. We got to BYU/Provo around 11:00. From there it usually takes us 1-3 minutes to get to our apartment, depending on the traffic. It took us over an hour and a half! Stadium of Fire (an extremely popular 4th of July show held in the BYU football stadium), this year starring the Jonas Brothers {insert pre-teen girls screaming here} and She*Daisy, had finished at 10:30 and traffic was absurd. We couldn't turn at a light to go directly to our apartment, so we had to go 3 blocks down, cut across campus, and come 3 blocks back up to get to Wymount. It took us over 3o minutes to go 3 blocks down University Ave and over 30 minutes to come back up 9th. I didn't realize that I had my camera with me all weekend until we got really bored sitting in the post-Stadium of Fire traffic.

Forced Smiles

Traffic! This picture definitely did not catch how bad it was.


Us passing the Stadium (you can tell how much Brian was enjoying himself)

So, finally we got home at 12:20 and collapsed.

The 4th of July always serves as a nice wake-up-call and reminder to what a wonderful life we have. We are so blessed to live in such an amazing country! (despite the temporary lack of organization in Provo's traffic controllers) We are so grateful for all of the many people that work every day to keep us safe and help us to maintain those freedoms. Our nation is truly unique and it is a wonderful blessing to enjoy the lifestyle we have. Our goal is to not take it for granted!

Baby Shower!

I'm throwing my first baby shower! It is for Kathleen Hamilton, who is in our ward. The Hamiltons have been such great friends to us for the last year and a half that we've been in the ward! We really enjoy hanging out with them. Kathleen is due in about 4 weeks; they are having a little boy!

So with some of my added free time last week (I love summer!), I made the invitations. I was pretty proud of myself: I am horrible at scrapbooking, but they actually turned out pretty cute!
Since I've never thrown a baby shower before, it will be an interesting experience. I'm planning on having a few "organized" activities, but mostly just good food and talking-- that's what most girls like anyways.

Medical Schools

We applied to Medical Schools this week! Tuesday was the first day that you could submit applications, so Brian got up early to submit them online. When he got online, it wasn't even open to submit yet, so he waited until after breakfast to try again. This time the submissions site was up and running. We did a double-check to make sure we had all the right schools and then clicked submit! 3 hours later, the application service had already processed his application (it usually takes 3-6 weeks)! These are the schools that we are applying to alphabeticaly, by location (funny how you can almost tell which schools have football teams just by looking at their logos):

Stanford Univeristy School of Medicine (Stanford, California)

University of California, San Diego, School Of Medicine (San Diego, California)

Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (Baltimore, Maryland)

University of Michigan Medical School (Ann Arbor, Michigan)

Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Mayo Medical School (Rochester, Minnesota)
Washington University School of Medicine (St. Louis, Missouri)

Dartmouth Medical School (Hanover, New Hampshire)

University of Rochester School of Medicine (Rochester, New York)

The Ohio State University College of Medicine (Columbus, Ohio)

Oregon Health & Science University School of Medicine (Portland, Oregon)

Vanderbilt University School of Medicine (Nashville, Tennessee)
Baylor College of Medicine (Houston, Texas)

Medical College of Wisconsin (Milwaukee, Wisconsin)

Whew! That's 13 schools right there, over $500 in initial application fees (secondary applications are even more... can't wait!)

So basically, Brian says he'd be really excited to get into at least 11 out of the 13 schools (Wisconsin and Ohio are kind of back-ups as of right now). So let's hope he gets in somewhere! Not that it will be that difficult for him-- he scored in the top 1% on the MCAT and he has a 3.9 gpa. I think he will be just fine. Even still, keep us in your prayers!

Blogging

Well we've finally caved and started a blog. It just seems like the thing for married couples to do. Not that anyone would care what we're up to; we don't even have cute children to post pictures of... but now that school is over, I have a little more free time so I thought why not?