Really Darn Cold

The temperature around here has stayed around… really cold (-2F out right now, and the high today is 8F). We got some weather alerts on our phones about a storm that was coming in on Thursday. Well, we didn’t get out of work until 9pm and it had already snowed a bit. The roads weren’t too bad but when I tried to pull onto our road my car lost traction and I was stuck. Ezra got out and gave me a push until I managed to get far enough out of the snow to regain traction and make it up our road. Friday we didn’t have to go anywhere, thank goodness. So we stayed home and enjoyed watching the snow fall while being warm inside. Saturday when we left for work I lost traction briefly pulling off our road and onto the highway, but that was the only time and it didn’t cause any problems.

Saturday after work we attended our first ever Staff Book Club. We’re going to be reading Round House by Louise Erdrich. It won the National Book Award this past year so I look forward to digging into it. I promised Ezra that as I read it I would read it out loud to him since he’s not one for sitting down and curling up with a book. This way we can get through it together and both talk about it at our next book club meeting.

I finished my first online grad school class Friday! I think it’s funny that one week after having access to the class I’m done. Okay, so I’m not officially done. There is one assignment where I have to attend a collaboration session and all the sessions last week were already full, so the soonest I could attend was today. My session is tonight at 5pm MST. Once I attend that I’ll be able to finish the assignment and then I’ll really and truly be done with Libr203. I look forward to starting my other two classes next week when they become available.

Well, that’s all the news from our neck of the woods. Hopefully next week will be a little more exciting.

Crazy week, but back home

We got back home to Utah to a ton of snow.  Our car was half frozen shut in the airport parking lot.  It was a good thing that we didn't need to fill up the gas tank since that was on the side that froze over.  We went back up to Salt Lake two more times throughout the week.  Once to help my (Ezra's) mom move into her new place, the next for Edward's (Ezra's nephew) birthday party.  It was fun and it is good to be back in the swing of things.

School starts back up for both Allison and myself.  It is an exciting time and stressful too.  We live farther away from BYU and the Provo Library now. I feel sometimes trapt with all the snow and distance.  It takes longer and is more difficult biking in these conditions (not to mention the deadening cold morning wind on your face as you ride a bike hurrying into work before the sun comes up.... eek, yeah, we've been driving lately).  This is just the beginning of snow though, maybe I should get some studded bike tires...  and a face mask.

We are, on the plus side, halfway out of the dark.

Icicles hanging from our house.

The poor plants have become encased in ice.

2012 Christmas Letter

We've been meaning to write a blog post, but things have been a little crazy since we made it home from the Northwest. So, to make up for it, here is a copy of our Christmas letter. Enjoy!

2012 has been a rather productive year for the Smith family. Here are a few of the highlights.

Allison became a reference librarian at the Provo Library in January and is absolutely in love with her new position. She rarely asks for time off but on Saturday, June 9th she took a day off to run the Utah Valley Marathon. She trained hard throughout the year and it was tough, but she finished in less than six hours and received her finisher’s medal. She can finally mark “run a marathon” off her bucket list. In August Allison decided she wanted to further her education and become the best librarian she could by receiving her Masters in Library and Information Science (MLIS). She applied to San Jose State University and was accepted. She will begin classes in January 2013. Finally, in November, Allison decided to participate in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The goal was to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. She did it! Allison can now claim to be a novelist, even though it’s unpublished and may never see the light of day. That’s just one more thing she can mark off her bucket list.

Ezra went to California for a week in March with the Illustration department from BYU. They visited animation studios, video game studios, some fine artist personal studios, grad schools, and museums. He has a stronger drive to work in the animation industry but also continues dabbling in electronics and mobile app development. Having always been a little ADD when it comes to hobbies, he has had difficulties in choosing a major and sticking with it while in college.

We took our anniversary trip in August to visit Allison’s family, then toured various places in Oregon such as McDowell Creek Park, Enchanted Forest, the Oregon Coast Aquarium, Yaquina Head Lighthouse, and the Tillamook Cheese Factory. Then we traveled up to Washington, went zip lining, and saw Ezra’s family. It was a fun vacation and we look forward to planning next year’s.

To end the year, WE’VE MOVED! It was sudden but necessary because of some unfortunate circumstances with our home at [Address not available online]. Our new address is:

[Address not available online.].

We call it our best Black Friday deal because that’s the day we found it. We were finally able to start moving in on December 8th and are actually still in the process. We’ll officially be out of our old place on the 19th. This was definitely a move we needed to make and our new home is wonderful in all the ways our old place was lacking. Though the actual process of moving hasn’t been very fun, we really like our new home and it fits our needs well. Hopefully we’ll be staying here for quite a while.

We hope this letter finds you well and wish you a wonderful holiday season.

Best wishes,
Ezra and Allison Smith

I'll be home for Christmas

We have officially left our old place and now only have one home rather than two! On Wednesday after work we worked on cleaning our old apartment. We finished at eight o’clock which is when we had our manager scheduled to be over to check it out. She thought the place looked great and gave us our full deposit back. We were sooo happy to be done.

Our little Christmas tree, in our new place.

We slept in a bit on Thursday to recover from all the late nights and hard work we went through to get everything done. After I got Ezra to work I made sure to get laundry done so we had clean clothes to pack. After work we packed and got everything ready for our trip.

Well, I’ve never had any major problems with holiday travel before. This year changed that. Everything was fine getting to the airport. Our plane was a little late but not much and it didn’t cause any problems. We flew into Portland, OR and took TriMet over to the train station. Our train was running about two hours late. Apparently all the snow in California had slowed it down. So we made it to Lacey around 8 o’clock.

While in Washington we did a lot of packing. Ezra’s mom is moving down to Salt Lake City so our days in Washington were filled with packing and sorting through things. We made a lot of progress and hopefully everything will be done and ready when they take off this weekend. We also had a wonderful get together with Ezra’s family on Saturday the 22nd. I got to meet family members that I hadn’t met yet and I think I’ve finally met most of Ezra’s family.

We found some of our wedding cake in the freezer. We decided we should eat a bit.

Monday, the 24th was the really crazy day. We got up early and worked on packing things. I got a voicemail that there was an issue with our train. Great. I called Amtrak and they told me that the train that we were supposed to catch at 11:20 was running late, two hours late. They said to call back again at 12:45 to check on it. Okay. Well, there were a few things we still had to shop for and some bank stuff Ezra had to take care of, so we took our time getting that done. On our first stop Ezra asked about the trains again (it was about 10:20am) and he suggested I call Amtrak and check on it again. So I did. They told me there was a train we could catch that was supposed to arrive at 11:20 (our original time) but was running about ten minutes late, so it would be there at 11:30am. That train would take us to Portland, then we could take a greyhound bus down to Albany. Cool! We rushed through our last stop, which was Target. One of the items we got was a gift card, a normal, typical, every day gift card. It had some issues and took a while. We had a train to catch and I knew we would be pushing it so I sent Ezra out to the car and he and his sister, Casey, went back to the house to get our things. Then they would come back, pick me up and we would go straight to the train station. It was a great plan! The only thing was, we were slightly short on time.

We were pulling up to the train station and we could see the train sitting there. I knew this was a short stop and that we’d have to hurry. Then we pulled into the parking lot as the train pulled out. We missed it. I walked into the train station and asked about it. He said that was part of the train, but that our original train was running late and they didn’t know when it would arrive. We'd just have to wait. I had about an hour of frustration and then was fine. I just don’t like being let down. I felt like we were so close to being back to our normal schedule but then had that ripped away, and literally seeing that missed opportunity chug away. So we sat and waited. The train arrived around 3:40pm and we finally made it to the Albany train station at 7:45, about 3.5 hours late. I was really just relieved to be back in Oregon and so close to home.

Then we were pleasantly surprised by our welcoming party! Who pulls up? None other than my mom, sister-in-law, and my adorable new nephew Oliver! I’m ashamed to admit that Oliver was a little more exciting than anything else and when we walked in the house and I had Oliver in my arms I may have forgotten to greet my dad… Oops! The rest of the family was just starting on desert when we arrived so Ezra and I ate dinner and then didn’t have to wait for desert. It was great to see my family. And play with Oliver. Oliver trumps all.

Auntie Allison and Oliver!

On Tuesday we had a great big family breakfast, opened presents, hung out and relaxed, then in the afternoon we had more family show up and did some more presents. In the evening we got to watch the new episode of Doctor Who. Awesome! Oh, and throughout the day there was a lot of Oliver. Did I mention that Oliver is the best? I love being an Auntie!

The Christmas tree! All ready with Santa's gifts.

Britney, Oliver, and Matt getting ready to open Oliver's stocking.

Sleepy Oliver.

Such a happy baby! He loves watching the village scenes around the living room.

Auntie, why are you taking pictures of me?

Today has been a pretty relaxing day so far. Britney and Oliver showed up this afternoon and I got to see my adorable nephew some more. I have to get my Oliver fix because I won’t see him again until sometime this summer.

So, that’s the news from this past week! It’s been a busy one, and we won’t leave Oregon until the 31st. So hopefully the rest of this vacation is just as fun as the first half has been!

Neck deep in the middle of moving and needing to get ready for vacation

We have spent the past week and then some packing and moving and moving and packing, not to mention cleaning, there has been a bit of that too.  We really like our new place. And it wasn’t until the third time we were here (when we started moving stuff in) did we see it in the daylight and realized that it is pink.  But that is okay.  It is our pink elephant of a house (cottage? So we have been told, don’t ask).  It reminds me of my aunt and uncles old place when I was really little because it has this awesome 70s wood paneling.

We can’t seem to find a spot for our lovesack though; it is just huge and devours anything it is close to.  Also we think we have figured out how to solve any drought problems Utah may have in the future, every time we tried to move a load from one house to the next, it would start raining or snowing. Very inconvenient, but skiers, snowboarders, and those that like campfires in the summer… you are welcome.

We will be leaving for vacation in a few short days and am very excited to see our families.  Allison has a new nephew to meet and we are both in need of some good ol’ Pacific Northwest goodness. 

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

Guess how much I love moving!

I don’t like moving. Not a bit. It’s not the unpacking and finding a new home for everything. I actually enjoy that because it’s like a fresh start. I HATE packing. I hate taking apart the house I’ve worked so hard to make into a home.

We’ve taken five or six carloads to the new house, and our old place is feeling particularly empty. We started with the non essentials. We figured since we weren’t living there just yet we shouldn’t take the stuff we use often. That will change on Wednesday. Our home teacher and his wife will come by with a truck in the evening and that’s when we’ll move all the big stuff like the bed, dresser, couch, and larger bookcase(s). So that will be the first time we stay the night in our new place. I’m sure we’ll still have some carloads to take over, but there’s so much there already it’s definitely starting to feel like home. Last night I practically gutted the kitchen so we’re surviving on cereal and sandwiches until we’re into the new place.

You know another thing I’m not fond of that goes along with moving? Changing my address everywhere. I’ve made about five phone calls this morning to adjust things and then did a few online. There’s still more to do… but I realized the information I need is already over at the new place, so I’ll grab that on our next trip. It’s just such a pain.

Hopefully we’ll stay at the new place for the rest of our time in Provo. We thought we would do that for our current place but the problems we had with the landlord and management became too much. Our new landlord seems like a much more attentive person. She’s super nice and really helpful, and our neighbors seem pretty awesome too. All around, our new place looks like a good fit.

NaNoWriMo

This week I’ve been sick and hacking up a lung most of the time. On Monday I woke up with a fever and felt miserable most of the day. By midafternoon I couldn’t really move from the couch, not even enough to lift my laptop up and type for NaNoWriMo. How much energy does it take to sit at a computer and type? I mean really? But I couldn’t do it. I just curled up in a ball with some chicken noodle soup.

Ezra took great care of me and made sure I had everything I needed. My fever finally broke in the early evening and I started feeling better. I ended up writing over 5,000 words that night for my NaNo and caught back up to where I should have been. I’d stopped writing regularly when we didn’t know where we were going to be living. Since my fever broke on Monday I’ve had a lingering cough and occasional stuffy nose, but that’s about it.

Along with writing news, I finished my NaNoWriMo this week! I can officially say I’m a novelist. It’s only a first draft and I know it needs a LOT of work, but it’s a novel draft and I was super excited that I accomplished that. How many people can say they’ve written a +50,000 word novel?

You can tell when the stress of finding a place to live hit, and then my word count jumped up on the day I had a fever.

Our move-in date keeps changing but as of right now we can start moving in to our new place this coming Saturday, the 8th. We have until the 19th to move out and clean this place, so there’s no major rush to get everything done in one day. Everyone keeps asking if we need anything, and the only thing we really need that we can’t take care of ourselves is a truck. Some of our furniture simply won’t fit in my car. At church yesterday we had a lot of people mention that they have connections to someone with a truck, so I think we may have that problem solved. We’re so grateful to everyone who is so willing to help!