Space, the final frontier...

"You ready for this?"
"Aye captain...."
 (Warning this post is mostly a running record of our current conversation)

"What did we do at the beginning of this week?"
 (Ryan is singing the intro to Star Trek right now, and I can't remember)...something to do with getting home late after consoling staff after they got bit by one of my clients.

I had my first camp meeting with the girls and am beginning to
- Ryan-"you made those cool rope bracelets"
and I am beginning to have more empathy for Jonah-The things that bring me the most anxiety and stress in my life are all things I could choose to run from, my job, my calling as camp director, my primary calling. For the first time in my life I'm having...

"Ryan-"you only have like 10 episodes left of star trek, that's kinda a big deal, you could tell them that"

...having minor anxiety attacks when I think about my callings. However, I have noticed that the more time I put into my calling, the more energy I have when I get home from work, before the camp director calling I just wanted to curl up on the couch after work, but now I'm really noticing that I have a lot more energy and I'm grateful that everything we give, God returns twofold, and everything we hold back God takes away.

Ryan-"I'm going to tell you something, but you have to promise not to get angry...We forgot to take out the trash"
Emma-"Garbage day is tomorrow you big lump!"
Ryan- "I guess you have nothing to be mad about then"

With Johanna and Jared...

Ryan-"We pulled up to an elementary school, waited patiently in the hall, a teenage girl walked up to us and said 'Are you guys here for the experience? you're going to have to wash your hands first" we all took turns with sinks that came up to our knees
Emma- "Our bathroom smelled so bad"
Ryan-"Kids are gross"
Ryan-"um, we were led to a small teacher's conference room with a whiteboard and tiny chairs, there we received our mission objectives: Rescue a human and Klingon ambassador from the Orion pirates...
Emma" Wow, I can't believe that Klingon is in the spell checker"
Ryan- 'After receiving instructions for 20 minutes on the tasks and duties we were led down the hall into what was obviously a elementary school cafeteria
Emma-"with a star trek shuttle in it"
Ryan..."After another 20 minutes of training we proceded to live the adventure"

I (Emma) got to be engineer, which basically meant plugging in plasma relays and engaging the tertiary bypass to solve engine and life support problems. Ryan was our dear captain, (in order to clear up any confusion he announced our consensual relationship and that it was not going to interfere with his command decisions"
Fortunately we were able to trick the 13 year old boy who was running the simulation into trading us fuel for a transponder and navigate into the orion nebula where we were successfully blown up (but miraculously tractor-beamed into the safety of a Klingon bird of prey. (This is a true story, see photos below).

(This one is when we were under red alert)

Today we started the week off by going to the temple which was great. Also I had to file 2 police reports at work, one for an animal abuse report on 4 dogs that I found roaming the canyon and brought to work in my car and the other for a girl who won't stop biting staff. The nice thing about my job is that it's never boring. Ryan solved a problem with normal-mapping (aka computer stuff).
Ryan-"We need that photo of our group" (at the shuttle)
Emma-"We can always add it to the blog later"
Ryan-whimper

Love you guys.

Later:

More February

Last week I introduced Ryan to God's gift to winter-The Banff Mountain Film Festival- along with the scruffy hippies, free swag, the pullup contest which I so totally could have won, there were also some sweet films as an added bonus:

After watching these films and feeling both intensely motivated and intensely like lame-o's we Went on a climbing trip with Brent, Becka, and Karina-St. George, valentines day. Ryan did awesome smoothly working his way up 9's and 10's

 and my favorite route of the trip was a gross little offwidth, check out the knee jam below:

One of my hardest climbs was about twice the length of Ryan's forehead (see scale reference below)

In our woodworking class we decided that furniture building was way to easy so we decided to learn how to build dovetail joints by hand-our instructor turned into mister miagi-forcing us to cut precise angled slices into wood with a handsaw.

Don't let the smiles deceive you, at one point I got so involved in the project that I accused my husband of chopping off my carefully sawn joint- when I couldn't find it. Only realizing later that I had cut out the parts I was supposed to leave and left the parts I was supposed to cut out. Poor Ryan, between me and mister miagi it was a rough night.
(Ryan gets a little nostalgic looking at this picture because it is the last photo of his friend, the brown corduroy jacket, which passed away earlier this week)

I also finished a TV console out of Pallet wood and I'm kinda in love with it.  (The wood was free but the tools and hardware made up for the savings

I got my first paid photography job-a wedding (for $50, they offered to pay me more but I told them not to expect too much) and unfortunately the day we scheduled to shoot engagements it rained, so we tried a parking garage and for some reason those photos just didn't work out, I guess the lovely scenery of concrete  oil stains and honking didn't really create an ambiance of love.

But we went out again yesterday and the magic was happening so I was happy that we got some good shots.

Ryan has been working hard on the Rome visitor's center, I've been working hard to avoid work. In reference to one of my clients a coworker told me "you know what they say about headbangers(referring to self-harming individuals)-if you can't beat 'em join 'em" and that about sums up my job (some days).

I got invited to go on the Nicaragua trip with work-so I'll be taking my girls to a third world country-because apparently I'm not challenged enough with headbangers.

Random Pic of the week (is actually a video-yes I've been watching too much star trek)

Random Pic of the week-since we missed last week

February

It's been two weeks since we wrote-mostly because Emma has been tired and sick.
My (Ryan's) family came to town, for Aunt Linda's funeral and we used the opportunity to eat ourselves silly at Tucano's and multiple other restaurants.

Went to the ice castles with Ryan's parents

Our woodworking class started, Emma missed the first 2 weeks because she was travelling for work, once to Minnesota and two days in a yurt with a dozen girls from work. Ryan learned how to not get impaled with a board while using the table saw. Hopefully we both survive the class.

 (while up at the Yurt Larra(Our lead residential supervisor) told me the story of the time she was waiting at the ER with a strep throat and a man in a trenchcoat walked in, he looked pale and wobbled as he walked up to the counter, where he opened his trenchcoat and revealed that he was currently impaled by a board, Larra graciously allowed him to go first.
On a completely unrelated note Larra also told me that she ran into her conspiracy theorist friend at Costco who attempted to convince her that all artificial sweeteners are produced by milking the anal glands of Beavers (I am not making this up!) and that the proof was on the internet. I told Larra that she better stop drinking Diet coke because every Diet Coke is another beaver being milked in captivity)

Emma went to Minneapolis where she froze-it was -25 when we arrived and walking the little tube thingy between the airplane and the airport my teeth started hurting because of the cold.

On the way home I(Emma) got glared at multiple times on the airplane by the woman sitting in front of me because I was non-stop chuckling the whole flight while reading a book "Hyperbole and a Half" which I can't recommend because of the number of times the F-bomb is dropped but it is the funniest book I have read in years. I was snorting and crying the whole flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix.

I bought said book in the amazing Mall of America which is a ridiculous place-there were 3 GAP's, an amusement park, 70 ft lego statues, and an absurd amount of people hoarding around the mall. It was terrifying to walk three miles while staying indoors and being acosted by PINK! stores. We ended up going to the MOA to meet with a client, but if I'd had my say I would have gone to the "Extreme Sandbox" where they let you drive backhoes and bulldozers and complete an obstacle course

Ryan shoveled meat for 3 hours at the church processing plant--and still managed to eat 3 hamburgers that day...Emma is considering that as a new job-at least it wouldn't interfere with her home life (except for maybe the residual ground beef under the fingernails).

Random pic of the week.

Ryan can't remember much of what he did this week.
We did eat at Red Lobster- a memorably bad experience
Ryan got a new harness for climbing and it's much more comfy(if that's possible for a harness).

I finally built something out of the pallets I've been tearing apart-The longest part was 3 trips to walmart, a trip to the home depot and a trip to Lowe's-all for screws.

Also I did all the cuts by hand with a little plastic miter box...maybe for my next project I'll use an electric saw. (and build a shed so I don't get sawdust all over the house)

And I'm a little too proud of how it turned out.  After I sand it I will put in in my office.

(Ryan) " Oooh I got a free chromecast from Google"

Emma got a third calling-YW camp director and I'm excited and also not sure how I'm going to do it and my job...but I'm sure I'll figure it out. 

One of the trailers in the trailer park burned down-another missionary experience. And this week in primary the kids got pretty distracted by the idea of Adam and Eve being naked in the garden of Eden. 

We bought tickets for our awesome RV road trip, flying into Alberquerque and out of New Orleans so that should be awesome!

Emma is flying out to Minneapolis where it currently feels like negative 32 according to the weather channel and it is supposed to get colder over the weekend. My client says that even 'target is closed" so you know it's serious. 

random photo of the week:

Taught primary in  which Ryan got scolded for letting the kids draw during sharing time and Emma got chastised for taking the kids on a walk.
Emma got a new favorite toy-a crowbar- which I am using to pry apart pallets for my next furniture project.

In swim class I'm learning to do a kick-turn-flip-thingy (I can't remember the name). The experience is kinda like a neti pot

 except instead of forcing water through your nose your force your your nose through the water of the swimming pool.

I'm not sure if all the chlorinated water in my sinuses will increase or decrease my chances of a sinus infection.

For our calling as ward missionaries we went to the bad side of town which happens to be 3/4 of a block away. We knocked a few doors in a trailer park and got our wildlife spotting in with all the crazy cats. There was loud mexican music coming from seemingly empty houses, and I was honestly scared... It just reminded me how protected we were on our missions.

We both worked a lot, often staying at work until 7 or later. Emma had parent weekend and survived. Ryan (insert techy programming language here)ed.  Ryan also worked on (insert code fragments) and optimizing the user interface something something. And he got more of a managerial role which he love/hates.

Ryan did so much kung fu that his thighs hurt and I exploited his weakness by poking him a lot.

Yesterday Emma drove to grandma and grandpa mahoneys to chat and they sent me home with some nice meatloaf and some tangerines.
Ryan is getting a lot better at climbing.
OK that's it.

This week we got super fast internet.
We gave talks in church.
We went out on the lake and took pictures early in the morning. This was a lot of fun, beautiful photos,

and my hands froze solid. But totally worth it. 

We went to the climbing gym twice, once with Steve and KJ. Ryan sweated a lot and I looked cool and classy.
I started swim lessons, which I learned that people laugh at you if you tell them you're taking swim lessons and you're over 4 years old. But with my pride intact in shambles I did go learn how to move my arms like a zipper up my side, how to kick with my hips not my knees, and how to think, breathe and swim for short periods of time. Ryan is jealous of my substitute swim instructor, mostly because Ryan only got to see my in my swimsuit after I put my pants back on over my swimsuit and got the bum of my jeans all wet.  Also I hung out with the kids in the lazy river at the Provo Rec center and discovered their deepwater bouldering area which is so cool if you're 5 or named Emma.

I nearly murdered my computer, but think that whoever invented Windows 8 would be a better target. Then I nearly killed my husband when right after I nearly lost this blog post because the battery was dead and we plugged it in he unplugged it.
We found lots of free pallets and I'm currently learning how to break them apart to use the free lumber for future projects.
We still love each other.

Happy New Year

spent a day and a half in logan with family...ate lots of food...watched the kids...it was delightful.

 lost a sock but I'm over it.  (Ryan)

went to the midway ice castles, it was cold, crowded, but it was fun, beautiful naturalist sculptures with multicolored interior lighting. Drank some HoCho, spent some time with my missus, fantastic. 

did night shots on the way home-after nearly wrecking while trying to pull over. got some nice shots near deer creek reservoir, Emma got lots of likes on Facebook on her photo (see below)