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!