Absence makes the heart grow fonder

Okay, we've slacked off big time. Sorry. BTW- Natalie and Ulli did make it to South Bend, albeit a day later than anticipated. And Kevin's mom and aunt made it here without any glitches, thankfully. I swear there is a traveling curse in my family. Any trip I take using an airplane is bound to be late or some freak accident will occur, preventing my travel. Kevin and I missed our connecting flight to Egypt due to a bad engine on a Delta plane and ended up losing a whole day stuck in a second rate hotel in New York. We missed the first day of our Egypt tour at Giza and the great pyramids (although we did make it up by staying a day longer). Another time, Kevin and I were supposed to fly with my family to California to see the King Tut exhibit, but the night before I broke my eye socket at Aikido and air leaked from my sinuses into my eyelids causing alarming swelling. I had surgery instead of the trip (it was okay since Kevin and I had seen the good King Tut stuff in Egypt and Kevin got some cool pictures of my eye). And my favorite: I flew out to interview at Notre Dame with Dave, a fellow BYU student. I warned him of my curse, but he didn't believe me. We made it to South Bend just fine, but along the way back, our flight was diverted to Fargo, North Dakota, so we could deliver airplane parts to the local airport. Random. We ended up sitting on the tarmac for over an hour. Oh well, I would never have been to Fargo otherwise. So, Natalie and Ulli's travel tragedies aren't all that surprising to me. It didn't end there, however. Sometime during Natalie's trip back to Utah, her Wii games were misplaced and lost. Her trip out here was a bit more costly than we had anticipated. But thank you for coming! I really enjoyed having everyone visit. Mostly our guests slept 'til noon and relaxed. Everyone loved Riley, and it was really nice to have extra dogsitters around.

As for other news, I went to an allergist last week (I made the appointment three months ago while my hayfever was driving me nuts). They tested forty different compounds on my back (it's quite painful being stuck with over forty needles) and discovered I am significantly allergic to all forty compounds and severely allergic to all but two. Joy. It's a miracle I'm alive. The doctor sent me home with literally a bag full of drugs to try. I'm actually worse than my sickly sister- how can that be?!

As for Riley, he's huge. Kevin's been teaching him tricks non-stop. Riley can now sit, come, lay down, shake, crawl, rollover, retrieve, hide, and play dead. I don't know who I'm more impressed with- Kevin or Riley. He's also taken a liking to agility exercises. A fellow dog owner we've met on our walks has a little course set up in his backyard where he practices with his dog. He's taught Riley how to jump over a two and a half foot hurdle, and Riley will now jump over piles of bricks or other obstacles around. We're thinking of putting him in agility school after obedience school. Riley is now six months old (almost seven), so he can start obedience school. He'll begin in a couple of weeks. Riley has also reached the "lapdog" phase meaning he'll sit on you whenever you sit down. As soon as you sit down on the couch or floor, he plops himself down on your lap (or laps- he's now big enough to cover me and Kevin). He's still doing great and keeping us very busy.

School starts next week. Joy. Classes may actually be a nice break from the breakneck speed my lab work has been going at. It's been raining here in South Bend for the past couple of weeks. It usually clears up in the day, enough to make it muggy, then big thunderstorms develop in the middle of the night so the thunder can wake you up, and it doesn't matter if your eyes are closed or open because the lightning is so bright. The storms have been severe (as you've probably heard on the news), but South Bend's been okay. Good luck with school and all! And go see The Simpsons' Movie, for no other reason than spider pig.

Drifting

Drifting
Originally uploaded by anyoungkevin

This is mainly a test. I'm trying to do a blog entry from my flickr site and I wanted to see how it posted. :-)

The Miller Hotel is Open

It was a busy past week! An old BYU friend passed through here on his way to dental school in Maryland. He brought his parents, wife, and two kids. I was worried our home wouldn't be able to accommodate us all (especially with one bathroom), but we all fit. The finished basement was a life saver. We put the parents upstairs and the rest downstairs with a TV and dvd player. It worked great.

Kevin's actual birthday was low key. The visitors didn't leave until noon, and I had to work. But we had a celebratory dinner with the Behling's and had a good time.

Last Friday we spent the day helping the Behling's move to Chicago. Garrett got a job at Price Waterhouse Coopers there. They moved into a brand new complex in Oak Park--they'll love it there. Kevin helped them load in the morning and then we both went up to Chicago to help them unload. It's a good thing we went, because nobody else showed up to help them move. The missionaries came by for the last half hour when most of the stuff had already been moved in. It was super hot and muggy too; we were all drenched in sweat by the time we finished. The Behling's treated us to pizza at a nearby Giordono's, so all was well.

Kevin had a work party on Saturday. He was the official cameraman for the event and took that responsibility very seriously. It was nice getting to meet his coworkers and put faces to names. I liked it because it was at a park with swings.

Our next set of visitors arrive today. My sister Natalie and Ulli are coming for a visit. I'm really excited to show them around. Their trip was a last minute decision. Natalie decided last Monday that she wanted to come out, and that she wanted to come out on August 1st (then a week away). We decided to use our Delta skymiles to purchase the tickets, which began a two day wrestle to redeem them and ensure we had enough miles to purchase the tickets. After all the hustle, everything was finally ready to go- until today. Nat and Ulli missed their flight. That set off a series of scrambles to get them on another flight at a reasonable time. They ended up waiting for seven hours for another flight that had a layover in Cincinnati. Now there's a delay in Cincinnati and they won't leave until midnight at the earliest. That will put them in Chicago at 1:30 am at the earliest. We told them it would be best if the airline got them a hotel in Chicago. Hopefully they'll make it here.

Kevin's mom and aunt are also coming out on Friday (they had their trip planned well in advance). They'll be staying for a short time (until Tuesday) and want the trip to be pure relaxation (perfect, since they will be in South Bend, Indiana). After fitting eight people into the house, six shouldn't be that bad. We're just happy to have visitors.

I've got the yard finished except for two plants I need to order from a catalog. It looks great. I'm very pleased with how everything turned out...except for those darn rabbits. I bought a repellent spray, but you have to reapply it often. I just bought some pelleted predator urine (I don't know how they did that) to place around my plants. We'll see if that works.

Well, I guess I better get some more things ready for our visitors.