Have an Elfing good Christmas!

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Christmas Parties!

This week brought 4 Christmas parties for us! One for Ariel's work, one for Monica's work (and Jake watched Kaydince), Jake's second work party, and one ward party for which I am making funeral potatoes. Who knew the day would come when I would make funeral potatoes!


Monica and Ariel at the Roof.


Jake and Kaydince having a party at home!

Standby for Thanksgiving

We flew to Tennessee on standby passes for Thanksgiving! Things went fine on the way there, only missed one flight. The way home on the other hand (the Saturday after Thanksgiving)...

I was stuck in the Houston airport for 9 hours by myself while Jake hung out in the Knoxville airport and eventually had to pay $400 to get from Knoxville to Houston!! Once we were both stuck in Houston and we were definitely not getting on the last flight to Salt Lake it was decided there was ZERO chance of us getting from Houston to Salt Lake within the next 3 days. So we were re-routed into Vegas, stayed the night, and drove home the next day. We had ONE CD and no Ipod jacks!!! So Taylor Swift (6+ listens), Jake and I made the drive from Vegas to Salt Lake. Not exactly fun especially since I hate car trips already!!!

Styling our drugstore sunglasses!!
Packing up the most expensive 24 hour rental car ever!!!
Rocking out to Taylor Swift for the millionth time, while Jake did this...

Go Utes!

Some pictures from the University of Utah v TCU blackout game.

Another Thanksgiving is almost upon us! Usually I really like Thanksgiving but as of late eating all day and doing not much else is not exactly my cup of tea. So ways to make that better...join the Knoxville track club in a fun run! Jake and I are planning on running the 8K, as a team, in Knoxville on Thanksgiving day. I'm not quite up to running the entire 5 miles myself so we are pulling the team card. We may have some other teammates we will see. And if that doesn't work there is always the day after Thanksgiving shopping!!!

I FINISHED A SPRINT TRI-ATHLON!!

I completed my first Sprint Tri-athlon Saturday, with a high of 44 degrees things were a little cold! I finished a 3 mile run, 10 mile bike, and 1/4 mile swim in 1 hour 31 minutes! Pretty happy I finished at all!!

Me at the pre-race meeting, too scared to smile!

Just about to finish my 3 mile run!

Just finishing my 10 mile bike ride!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
From Elaine, Dwight, a princess-fairy, a rockclimber, and a bag of jelly bellys!

A before picture of the roof above the upstairs bedrooms and a picture in the process, stripped down to the 2 by 8's.

I wanna have fun!

Artist Site

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After ripping down 4+ tons of shingles, putting 1.5 tons back up, and picking up 3+ tons of shingles off the ground I'm ready for a little fun!!

Work Week Continues

After grossly underestimating the amount of time it would take to rip off the old roof; work week lives on!! Twenty-seven hours and counting for Jake and I, plus countless hours provided by our friends and families!!! If we work on shingling tonight from 5:15pm to 9:00PM and Tuesday night from 5:15pm to 9:00pm hopefully that should be enough to get this thing done! My body can't take much more roofing, Sunday my hands were so swollen I couldn't wear rings!! Pictures to come when we finally finish and get time to post them!

Work Week

I am calling this week WORK WEEK! It runs Saturday, October 12 through Sunday, October 19. Last Saturday we built a vinyl fence, which turned out beautifully! Then Monday night we tore down our shed that sits at the back of our carport. Wednesday we are tearing out the concrete on our driveway/carport. Friday we are tearing down the jungle that is our backyard and cleaning it up and also buying shingles and setting them up to be used. Then Saturday we are reshingling the roof!! What an exciting week!!

Seattle was tons of fun! Pretty sure we walked 20 miles!

SEA ON MY WAY!!!

Gold's

Working full time and having a life and trying to train for a triathlon (see my older post about doing a triathlon in November) don't exactly mesh. So my co-worker and I have taken to going to the gym two days a week on our lunch break. At first I thought it was ridiculous and gross. However it is awesome! Where has this idea been all my life? We have a snack before we leave and change clothes at work and with the Gold's being 7-9 minutes away we essentially have a 40-45 minute workout! We don't do anything too overly exertive or sweaty just ride the bike for 15 minutes and then lift weights, do crunches, stretch, and in general just bask in the fact that we aren't at work. It's really great, it gives me an excuse to lift weights (which I normally never do). But now that Biggest Loser has started I am even more gung-ho into exercising. Before I hurt my ankle (March 2008) I was running 10+ miles a week and I would love to get back up to that!

Rock Climbing

A couple of weeks ago Jake bought me a rock climbing harness that was such a good deal on sale so we could go rock climbing together. The first time I tried to belay him down, this was a test run mind you-he was only 6 feet off the ground, I got yanked into the rock and scuffed up!!! He was scared I was going to drop him and frankly so was I. But I got it together and we had fun. I even completed a 5.6!

For Monica's birthday we watched
Kaydince! And College Football!

Sept 11

It's September 11th and I feel very disconnected from everything going on in NYC. It's hard to imagine what those people were and still are going through when I am so far away. I really want to visit New York sometime soon (never been always wanted to go). It is a very sad thing that we are being attacked because of our freedoms.

Adventure is our collective middle name!

This summer I made a list of fun things to do because I didn't want the summer to just fly by. The list included things like float the Provo River, go camping at Mirror Lake, go hiking, etc. So most of the list got done and now I have a new item for my fall list, do a triathlon!!!! YAY! We are very excited! I have issues with riding bikes-boring and my bum hurts! And Jake has issues with swimming, he just can't swim. Which is sad bc I love swimming and have been in water every summer for most of my life. So we each have areas we need to work on but we are planning on doing the T3 Turkey Triathlon on November 8th. It's all very exciting, more details to come.

It's Jake's BIRTHDAY!!! The big 2-4!!! Is it time for a quarter life crisis yet? It sure is, for both of us! Maybe a trip around the world? Yeah that sounds nice!!

Australia

I have been researching visas and requirements for different countries so we can have an idea of what we are doing when we leave Taiwan and I think we will go to Australia!! We want to visit Japan, Hong Kong, Bangkok, and Bali after/during our stay in Taiwan. But once we leave we are probably going to need some refueling time/money making time and Australia seems like just the place. First of all we speak the language so we could get real jobs and make real money and Australia is awesome! All we have to do is get work visas three months before our proposed move. I have looked to see how much housing costs and what jobs pay and it's pretty comparable to here so...Australia here we come (in 18 months!!).

Kids

Won't Jake and I be great with kids?!?!

Sugarland Wisdom

"I've got my whole life to change the world and climb the ladder!"

We're moving to China and we're not coming back!

The awesome folks at ILP have accepted Jake and I to teach english to children in Taiwan. So technically I guess we are moving to Taiwan a republic of China. We got our pre-acceptance letters this week, but the actual school in Taiwan has to approve us too. So we have a bunch of paperwork in our future and a video of each of us interacting with kids.
Taiwan is our jumping off point to the rest of the world! Awesomely enough the program pays for our airfare to/from Taiwan so that's great. While living in Taiwan we plan to take a few mini vacations to Hong Kong, Bangkok, and maybe Tokyo and Bali. After that the world is ours! We will let the wind take us wherever. Mostly it will take us to hostiles and WWOOFer farms. We just want to be hippies for awhile and not worry about too many things, just see the world!

Can a body be one big bruise?

This past weekend we floated the Provo River with a couple of our friends. It costs $10 per person to rent a tube and life jacket, so someone I work with suggested we buy our own tubes. Great idea right? We bought some tubes from Big Lots that did not have holes in the middle, big mistake.

The first 5 minutes were nice and relaxing, even though the water was freezing we dealt with that. But when we had to manuever under a bridge and then immediately under a railroad bridge things got a bit sticky. I ended up being raked over rocks for a couple of hundred feet, my shoes and tube sent flying. The river's current was too strong for me to stand up and too shallow for me to swim so I was screaming (I thought I was screaming) "Jake." However, Jake says all he heard were gasping noises. (this was probably the second coldest I have ever been in my life, so it makes sense)

After living through that we were tipped another time by fast moving water (we determined it was our tubes that had a too high of center of gravity that were ultimately to blame) and did not recover from this one. Jake's tube was lost and so was Jake! I grasped my tube (bruising my finger tips, the very tips!!) and had to hold on for deal life and again I was dragged across rocks and sticks! Finally the other girl we were with helped me get out and Jake caught up. But we were left with only 3 tubes so the boys rode to the bottom to get the care while the two of us waited on the edge of the river. Two hours later, bruised and broken they picked us up and we all went back to their house barefoot, starving, and exhausted.

The first step is the hardest

Step one to our dream of traveling the world, stop buying stuff! Consumerism is my new enemy, I had to give about 10 pairs of shoes to DI last week just to make some room in the closet. But today I sold Jake's bike, his beloved bike. A bike that he bought 4 years ago and used a total of 3 times! Consumerism at its finest. (You would think working in adverting would keep me from falling prey to it, but nope I buy uneccesary stuff as much as the next person.)

Traveling the world obviously does not lend itself to having a lot of stuff. So pondering this fact I have realized I don't want STUFF, I want experiences and memories. Just thinking about traveling the world makes me happy so thinking about preparing to travel the world makes me happy too. And if that includes selling everything I own and living out of a back pack, cool! If it includes awesome countries I've never seen and exciting adventure sign me up.

Look ma I have a blog!

We're Jake and Ariel, two twenty-somethings that have already become bored with our corporate lifestyles, we want something more! That's why we have decided to become nomads, traveling the world to see what's out there. Our story begins about a year before our world travels is set to begin so stay tuned as we make it happen...