A Week in Wisconsin

One really nice thing about being in my second year of grad school is that I really have no responsibilities during finals week. This semester, my students were scheduled to take their final on the very first morning so the rest of this week was completely open for me. We decided it was a perfect time for me to fly out and visit Jared in Madison, so we've been hangin out the past week which has been really fun! I cooked dinner for him the other day for the first time in about 5 weeks, I hate to admit that I actually kind of missed doing that!

Anyway, I flew in late Saturday night and we went to church the next morning. Our ward seems pretty cool, everybody was really nice and welcoming. That night we had dinner with our friends Jen and Ivan, who live out in Waterloo. They have the cutest daughters who remind us of our niece, Halle. We had a good time playing the Kinnect with them after dinner. I found out Jen is a big time Guitar Hero fan, which is right up my ally! We rocked out for a while, and I'm sure we will jam together many more times in the future!

We've spent the rest of the week exploring Wisconsin and getting a feel for the area. I was able to see the inside of our apartment the other day and it's really nice. Quite a bit bigger than our apartment in Provo, so it'll be great to have more space, plus it has a two car garage which will save our lives in the winter! Today we drove up to a city called Wisconsin Dells. It's a pretty cool little place, kind of the mecca of waterparks in America, it has a ton of indoor and outdoor parks. We also found a pretty big outlet mall there too, which Jared's mom will love to go to when she comes to visit us!

It has been a fun trip! I am not looking forward to coming back to Utah tomorrow. The next few weeks are going to be insane. I defend my thesis on May 1st, then I have to revise and submit the beast to my department. I'll hopefully be in STG for a couple weeks during the middle of May and then the movers will likely come sometime the week after that. It's crazy this is all really happening!

On the drive home from work

Jared is so proud he can hold up his new road bike 

with only two fingers!

We drove past a "ski resort" on our way up to see the waterparks

These Wisconsin folks have a lot to learn about real skiing. . . 

like how it's usually done on a mountain and not a hill haha :)

Just one of the waterparks out there

Ha, we don't really know what was up with this crazy building

we think it's somehow connected to one of the waterparks out there

Haha, we parked next to this gem at Best Buy,

it was definitely taking up about 3 parking spots!

Weekend with the Gibbons Fam

Well it was a super quick trip up to Washington for the funeral (Jared's grandpa) but it was great to see all of the Gibbons family. The funeral was really nice, I hope 60 years down the road (knock on wood) my funeral will be similar. My grandpa passed away several years ago and the comparison between his funeral and Grandpa Gibbons was completely night and day. None of my mom's extended family are LDS, so my grandpa's was pretty sad. Even though I knew I would see him again, it was still hard because I didn't feel that sense of hope that I felt at Grandpa Gibbons'. Kind of neat, Jared's grandparents have 40 or so grand kids, and they were all able to come to the funeral.

Ha, hanging out with his extended family has always been a little crazy as I only have 5 cousins on both sides and he has probably close to 100 between the two sides! It was fun to catch up with everybody. All of the guys were impressed with Jared's job at Trek, they thought it was pretty sweet. Jared and I got a lot of flak from everybody about seeing each other for the first time after almost a month. Haha, I think they were all expecting us to go nuts with the PDA but we have never been that way, so we did not embarrass ourselves! :) 

There were some pretty funny moments from the weekend that I have to share. I drove up with Heidi, Kell and two of Jared's cousins, Kira and Melissa. We got there Thursday afternoon before the viewing and had lunch and got cleaned up at Kira and Melissa's house. Their dad Clair was showing us this black bear he had shot and then mounted the skin (fur? whatever the politically correct term is) on the wall. Kell was trying to find the bullet hole and started rubbing this little black dot on the bear's skin.

Kell: "So is this the bullet hole??"
Clair: "Ummm. . . that's actually the nipple"
Kell:  "Oh. . . " (slowly removes finger from bear)

Haha we about died laughing. Oddly enough (not really ha) the second incident also involves Kell :)   As a preface, driving through Oregon is the pits for two reasons 1) the speed limit is only 65 and 2) you aren't allowed to pump your own gas, you have to wait for a gas attendant to do it. Anyway, we stopped in Oregon to fill up. We rolled the window down and were sitting there waiting for the guy to come over and get the credit card so he could pump our gas when Heidi started talking about how she thinks it's weird when pregnant girls talk about being "prego" or "preggers" etc. (she's 7 months along now and wonder woman for surviving a 12 hour drive in her state!). Kell was sitting by the window that was down and proceeded to shout her two cents worth on the issue while the gas attendent walked up to get the card from her:

Kell: "Yeah you just have to say I'M PREGNANT!!" (sees gas guy standing by the window and sheepishly hands over the credit card)
Gas Guy: ". . . uh. . ."
The rest of us: Bahahaha

The guy probably thought we were a bunch of crazy idiot girls but it was pretty freakin hilarious! Haha who just randomly shouts "I'M PREGNANT!" at a gas station?!

I wanted to take some pictures while we were up there, but my camera lasted exactly 4 pictures before dying on me, awesome. So I took them of two of my favorite people, our cute niece Hannah and Jared, while we were on our way to the funeral.

 Haha, pretty sure I caught her off guard

 Such a cute kid, I just want to squeeze her!

 Ha, nice face babe

Had to do black and white cause my camera takes crappy 

pics sometimes (I swear it's the equipment not the operator ha!)

I'm glad we were able to see Jared's extended family before moving out to Wisconsin since everything happened so quickly and he wasn't even able to really say goodbye to anybody before that. I will admit though, I'm somewhat relieved I never have to make the drive of doom from Utah to Washington ever again! (I'll be eating those words once I start the 21 hour drive from Utah to Wisconsin in a couple months though haha)