Vegas....I will tell you everything I did there, I am not ashamed :)

On Friday August 20.  Mckay, and I rode down to Vegas with Ann and her family to go to our cousin, Brian's wedding.  (Brian wants everyone to know he got married in the Vegas Temple, not on the strip.)  Brian's now wife, Erin is from Henderson, Nevada.  So I was super excited for the opportunity to go to their wedding, and to also get to go see Las Vegas (which is right next to Henderson.)  So when James offered to drive down to the wedding, I was all for it.

I started off the trip by taking UTA up to Ann's house, because I wanted to leave my car in Provo.  It was a fun trip, it took twice as long as driving would, but I could read the whole time, and I was able to ride every form of public transportation Utah has to offer: Bus, Traxs, and Frontrunner, (their new commuter train) It was fun, but I think I will still drive to Ann's house, from now on.

Friday afternoon we all piled into Ann and James van, and set off on our 6 hour trip.  This was our test run for driving out to NC, everyone seemed to fit into the car pretty well, I will let you know in December what it is like traveling with the whole crew for 36 hrs.  They did amazingly well for this trip.

We got to Vegas pretty late, but it was amazing. We were just driving through dark desert when suddenly a city of lights just shows up.   Vegas is really really bright.  We were looking for our hotel in Henderson, but it was fun looking at the Strip from a distance.

The next morning Thomas woke up pretty early and wanted to know when we could go swimming.  So we went down and ate breakfast then went for a long swim in the pool.

After the pool we had 2nd breakfast, because it is Vegas and they still serve breakfast at 10:00 am, then got dressed and went to the temple for the wedding.

The Vegas temple is beautiful with lovely grounds, but it was sooooooo hot.  Luckily the Vegas temple was aware of how hot it was and they had a large waiting area inside the air conditioned temple, where those who were not going to the ceremony could wait.

The ceremony was wonderful.  I know Brian and Erin did not catch very much of it, I just encourage them to go to other people's weddings so they can learn from the wise sealers that always share wonderful insights about the temple.

Here is the happy couple.

As I said, Vegas was soooo hot,  hotter than NC even.   Thomas did not like all of the heat.

So he refused to participate in any picture taking.  While we took the traditional pictures Thomas announced he was going to sit down and wait for us.  Which he did.

After the fun times at the temple all of the Barrows went out to Olive Garden and had lunch.  It was a fun treat, Thanks Uncle Joel and Aunt Elana for a great lunch!

We then all went back to the hotel took a small rest then went to the reception.  Where Erin's brother's Skaw band played.  They were really good.   After they cut the cake, we slipped out of the reception to go down to the Strip!   I really just wanted to drive the strip and go see the Bellagio.

James was a great tour guide and took us down the whole strip.  It was kind of funny trying to explain Vegas to the kids, we would say look there is the Statue of Liberty , but not really,   Look there is the Effel tower, but not really,  look there is the Sphinx, but not really.  I am sure it was really confusing to them.   Here is a picture of the fake Statue of Liberty among other things

We then parked at the Bellagio and tried to get through the hotel with out taking the kids to the Casino, we managed to do it!  I have successfully been to Vegas and never been on the floor of a casino!

We then watched two fountain shows.  It was nice, but my favorite fountain shows are still the ones at Longwood Gardens in PA.   If you ever get a chance to go see their fireworks and fountain's show go, it is amazing.

Thomas was pretty sure he would not like the show so he sat down with his ears covered.  We convinced him to actually watch the show, and he surprisingly did like it.

Here is video of the show.  It is on Mckay's facebook page, so I don't know if the link will work, but we will try. Hmmm it is not working.  I will  work on this.

We went back to the hotel.  Went to sleep, then after church in the morning left to go back home.  It was a nice trip.   And it was nice to see Vegas; if I do go back it will be in October or February.  August is way too hot!

Math Camp...It is time to stop the silliness folks.

(Disclaimer this is a long, preachy post, you don't have to read it)

Ok.  The last two weeks have been super busy.  I have done math camp, went to Vegas for the first time, and endured a week long orientation.   So many things to blog about....but we will start at the very beginning.  And that takes us to Math Camp.

OK all of my facebook friends we had a quite a discussion about Math, and I have formed the conclusion that you all are not "Math People"  For more information see the irrational numbers discussion on my facebook wall. (you will have to scroll down a bit to find it)

I propose that we all come to terms with this dislike of the science of numbers.  We use math every day, math actually explains the world we live in, and sometimes yes math is beautiful.

I know you all are rolling your eyes now, thinking oh you are one of "those" people who loves math...no I am not really.  Math and I have had a very rocky relationship.  Here is a brief history.
First 6 years of life:  Math and I were pretty good friends, I could count, I could write my numbers,  good times.
1st grade:  This was my first battle with math, and sadly I did not come out the better for it.  You see we were learning addition and subtraction, and my teacher wanted to move me into the second math group, instead of the first math group (where I clearly belonged!) Her thinking was Jenny needs to think about the problem a bit longer than others to get the right answer (which is true) My thinking was, I am always in the top group period.  She moved me to the 2nd group.  I sat in the coat racks for the rest of the day refusing to participate in an unjust system. (I was a tad stubborn)  My protest proved fruitless, and I was put in the 2nd group even after appealing to the higher court of Mom and Dad.  The battle was lost but the war was yet to be won, I decided right then and there I did not need math, and refused to learn my basic facts.
2nd Grade:  my refusal to learn math became more difficult as it became necessary to learn the multiplication tables.  Mrs. Butterfield (2nd grade teacher) and I fought over this and some concessions were made.  I would learn my times tables up to the 5's  but I would not budge an inch beyond this, besides she could not even spell my name correctly, she called me Jenny Burrow's  why should I listen to her. I right then decided I would not complete timed test.
3rd Grade:  It became much harder to stand by my principles of refusing to learn math, because my math teacher was Mrs. Price.  I loved Mrs. Price.  She explained greater and lesser than in such a wonderful way, that I could not help learning it. (it involved Alligators)  but luckily my two previous years of refusal to learn math were helping me keep to my principles, despite for my love of Mrs. Price and her discourses on Fractions and even percentages, I could only go so far, because I had refused to memorize my basic arithmetic in the two previous years.
4th Grade:  I had Mrs. Price again!  Egads!  how am I suppose to keep from learning Math!  I just gave up and learned 4th grade math.
5th Grade Moved to NC.  They did not know what to do with a child that could complete fractions, and percentages flawlessly but was unable to complete a simple timed test of simple arithmetic problems. So I was stuck in the Library during math period with Dennis Bissile (another move in to NC who also did not have the AIG or AG or Gifted status) and we were told to teach ourselves math.  (that is the NC education system).  We had a lot of fun, but we did not learn a lot of Math.
6th Grade   NC decided to let me join the gifted program with out taking any test, so I was in the top Math Class again, where I belonged, (in my opinion) so I decided to start learning Math.
7th-9th grade:  Continued on this route, but always struggled some because I had never learned my basic facts, so always felt a little behind in the class.
10th grade:   Algebra II  and Chemistry (Despite all of my whining I really, really liked Chemistry, I finally had a place to apply the math I had learned.)  And Algebra II taught the wonderful formula of A=PTR (math could finally help me earn money, it suddenly had a use) But I hated my Algebra II teacher with a passion, so I rarely did her homework. (that would teach her!)  That same year our school was selected to participate in a national mathematics test.  All of the students enrolled in a math class had to take the test.  I took it and scored in the top ten of the whole school!  I know!  totally did not expect that.  My Algebra II teacher showed me my test score then scowled at me and said, you should be doing better in here.  (I was a little ashamed, but mostly happy that I had annoyed her.  Student 1 point Teacher 0)
11th grade:  I moved again, and decided to not take the class all of the top students took (statistics) and instead took Trigonometry.  Loved it, and loved my teacher,  and found I kind of understood math, reluctantly started to teach myself my basic facts on the sly.
12th grade:  Decided to bite the bullet and took Calculus.  Actually enjoyed it, but I always seemed to be the last in the group to get it (last week of school learned I was sitting next to the 1st, 2nd and 3rd ranked students in the graduating class....go figure)  Also took Physics that really opened up the world of math to me.  I love physics, I honestly think had I been stronger in math I would have become a Physics major in college.
College luckily I placed out of the general ed math, and went to a school that oddly enough let you take a foreign language literature class in place of a higher mathematics class.  So I took French Lit, read Les Misrelables,  Decartes, and  Tin Tin (in French mind you) but never had to take another math class!  Score!

I was officially done with Math, and at this point in time I was a Math hater.  I would say things like Math is not who I am.  I am not a Math person.   I read books, I don't do Math.

Until Three things happened.

1.   I served a Mission to Taiwan which involved speaking Mandarin.  The Chinese speak very mathematically, in casual conversation you are describing the mathematical structure of fractions, or discussing the base ten system ( for example to say 1/4 you actually say one part of four parts) Also I was not in a school setting anymore, so there was no teacher to hate, and I was older.  I came home from my mission finding I could finally add and subtract and multiply and divide in my head.  Was it learning Chinese?  Was it maturity?  I don't know, but I realized math had finally won the war I had waged on it in 1st grade.  
2. After my mission,I tried to go to NC State (a very Math heavy school) They were appalled when they saw I had graduated from college with out taking a math class, and told me to go take one right away.  I went and took it, never applied to the program I was looking into, but the math class was amazing.  I found I could do the math, it was interesting, and I understood everything the teacher was saying. I began to rethink my preconceived notion that I was "Not a math person"
3. I watched A Beautiful Mind.  I know most people think that movie is about Schizophrenia, but I learned so much about how mathematicians think, and how they view the world.  It was eye opening, and I started to see how math could be beautiful.

So in my early twenty's I decided to stop saying I was not a Math person, and it was amazing how the math world changed.

So back to Math camp I took a 4 day class that reviewed math from the basic number line all the way to calculus.  It was wonderful to see the math progress in an orderly manner, and to work through the problems and not to be mumbling to myself all of the time,  I hate math.   Math describes the world we are in, the universe obeys mathematical principles.  Math can describe eternity! Language has a hard time with that.   So I encourage all of you Irrational and Rational number haters to try to make peace with math.  I am not a mathematician, nor do I foresee myself becoming one.  But I firmly believe that everyone of you Are Math People! Because you live in a world dictated by math, and you understand this world pretty well, don't discount a great language that can help you describe this world, sometimes very elegantly.  So please stop hating it.

Sorry to be so preachy about this but I really feel strongly if we change our attitude we might be surprised what we can do with math.

Home Sweet Home (again this is a long post I am sure only my mother will find it interesting)

OK,  As promised I will now talk about my house.    Before I get to my Provo house I want to give some background information.   First of all  when my mom and I go on our daily walks we discuss many things but one topic that keeps coming up is the idea of  identity.   How most of the conflicts we encounter in our lives are really questions of identity and roles, and whether our life circumstances are meeting our personal idea of who we are and whether our roles are fulfilling our identity.   I know interesting... have you thought about what your identity is and what roles that identity has, and what society, your family, or even your inner voice (which I believe is the Spirit) tells you about your identity, .....I know! see how this topic can cover years and years of  walks.   Any way what does this have to do with houses.   Well actually a lot.

In 2008  I bought myself a house for my 29th birthday.   See my lovely house.

I loved this house, but I was also surprised how much it became part of my identity.  I think in the United States especially home ownership says a lot about a person's identity.  It says I am a stable, contributing member of my community, who pays taxes, cares about the crime rate, and wants to have a beautiful lawn.   Home ownership says I am successful enough to make a down payment and pay a monthly mortgage, to maintain a home and to put nice things in a home.  It also says I am now a grown up, and trust me nothing makes you grow up more that a  mortgage.   I would have quit my job numerous times had it not been for that mortgage.   It really made me grow up :)   But all of those things could have happened with any house.  Why did I LOVE this house?

First of all the neighborhood.  I loved that I could walk to my parents house, my office, downtown, or even to the store,  not that I did that a lot, but I liked the idea.

But mostly I loved the inside of the house:  

See that arch over the dining room,  I fell in love with the home right there, plus there is a little entrance nook (that I don't have a good picture of) that also helped with the wooing.    Plus the wood floors...don't you love the wood floors?  And finally the color.  (I know it is silly to buy a house for the paint color, but I did, and honestly  my renters rented the house for the paint color as well.)  They are really nice colors.  

So when I decided to go to graduate school  this house was the hardest thing to give up...I even considered going to NC State just so I could keep the house!  I know!    But things did not work out that way, I knew it was time to leave NC  so that meant leaving my house, I spent many an evening sitting on my living room floor crying because I did not want to leave my house.  But the more I thought about it I told myself I was being silly... it is just a house after all....it is not who I am.  So I started to think about what about this house formed my identity and what part of my house could I take to school with me...

So with that thought simmering in the back of my mind I set about selling my house, telling myself the money from the house will allow me to graduate from school debt free.  

My parents also were looking for some investment property to purchase, and with some minor convincing they decided to purchase a condo in a University town, such as Provo.  So I was simultaneous trying to sell my sweet sweet home and looking for its replacement somewhere in Provo.   I decided that a huge part of my home identity is what it said about me, about what I liked, so I decided there were some must have items in my new home...  And I know these may sound silly, but we are talking about identity here.

I needed wood floors, and I needed a fireplace with a mantel.   I know silly items to look for in a college house, but those were the two parts of my house that I had to take with me.  I found some houses that looked  cute and one that even had an arch!  But my dad convinced me to get a condo by reminding me of the yard work...my yard was my nemesis, well not really my yard, but all of my trees that insisted on falling all of the time.  So we finally settled on this condo

See all of the trees around it!  For you NC folks that is a lot of trees for Utah.  And they can all fall down and I will not have to clean up a single one!   I love condo life.

Here is the inside of my new home (just the downstairs, I am still working on the bedrooms)

new kitchen

Here is the kitchen.  I think I might paint the cabinets at some point so it will look like my old kitchen, But I don't know if it will look good with the light counter tops.

old kitchen

Here is the dining area

And here is the living room

The floors are laminate instead of wood,  and the house is a lot smaller than my last one (this one is just 900 sqft) but it is just the right size for two busy grad students.   And it has the fireplace and mantle.  O.K. remember how I said a fireplace mantel was part of my identity?  This is why.   This is my old fireplace mantel.

My fireplace mantel gave me a lot of problems when I first moved into my home.  I am not a decorator, and that mantel just sat bare for a long time just mocking me.  I stuck a few candles on the mantel at first just to fill the empty space, but it looked lame.   I came across a Better Homes and Garden's article that talked about how to fill the mantel space and one suggestion was use books.  I really latched onto that idea because I have a lot of books.  The article said to group the books according to color with the jackets off, and then place them artfully on your mantel.  So I went through all of my books and found all of the hard covered single color books I could find.  I then chose the colors that matched the colors of my living room and placed them on the mantel.  It looked really good!  I was so surprised.   It was only after I had lived with my mantel for a while that I realized that these random books I had chosen solely for their solid color  really expressed a lot about my identity.   I am one of those rare people that have actually read all of the books that I own.  (I won't say the same for my Kindle books), but if I actually own a book I have probably read it at least once.  If you look over the titles on the mantel you will get a snapshot of who I am.   And I wanted to bring that to college with me.  So I shipped my mantel books out to Provo, (I stored most of the other ones) and set them up on my new mantel.

 So now my second house is starting to feel like home, and who knows in the Spring of 2012 I might be sitting on this living room floor crying because I will have to leave my little condo behind.

3rd Post!!!!! (and no it is not cheating that the 2nd and 3rd happened with in minutes of each other!)

Ok this is a historic moment. I have now written a 3rd blog post. Hopefully there will be a 4th only time will tell.

WARNING this is a very long post.

JULY 2010 was a busy month. I thought I would document all that happened.

July 1st- I offically became a landlord. I moved out of my house on June 28th and turned over the keys to my little home on June 30th. I then immediately had to replace the refrigerator :) (it had been working on breaking down for a while...I am glad it waited until I actually was a landlord because then it became a tax write off :)) With the tenant in, and new fridge in place. I gave my house one last hug, told it to be good then worked on wrapping up my last week at work.

July 7th- was my last day of work! Good-bye Girl Scouts!

July 11th was birthday time. We have a plethora of birthdays in July in our family. We had my cousin Adam come down (birthday July 5th) his wife Jaci, and two adorable kids Grant and Grace (who also have July Birthdays) to come celebrate Kelley's birthday which actually was July 11th. It was a fun super July birthday party.

July 11th-17th was my last week in NC. I spent it painfully trying to separate myself from all of my stuff. I had decided to only move what will fit in my Honda Civic. It was hard work deciding what I would take with me and what I would store in my parents attic for the next two years...needless to say there was a lot of unpacking and repacking that Honda. But I finally got the most important stuff in...although I am still longing for some of my pictures that were left behind. Here was the end result. (I wish I took a picture of the inside of the car...it was a masterpiece)

Mckay flew in from China on the 20th and I picked him up from the airport. I took him home let him do some laundry, shower and kind of unpack. I then put him in the car and we started our trip across the country. (He was exhausted by that point having been traveling for over 24hrs (he had a 12 hr layover in L.A.) He slept until Kentucky...where we ran into freeway stopping traffic (we only moved 1/2 a mile in 2 hours) a flood (where I almost killed my car engine...really don't drive through standing water it is deeper that it looks....really) a period of wandering aimlessly and arguing with the GPS....my road sign reading abilities trumped the GPS in this case, and a super huge storm. After taking Mckay through all of that excitement I figured he was awake enough to drive us through St. Louis. So somewhere in Illinois I turned over the car to him and tried to sleep, trying to not think about the fact that Mckay had not driven a car for over 2 years.

Apparently driving is something you never forget. Mckay took us through Missouri. And we ended in Kansas City where we stopped and visited some friend of his from Xinjiang. After that visit we took a small detour to Winfield, Kansas to see the McClures.

This is Anika and Nikita Jumping for joy. It was a great visit. I loved seeing how the kids have grown into wonderful people. Scott and Shelley are truly amazing parents. I wish the visit could have been longer, but we had to get to Utah because the most important Birthday in July (for this year at least) had happened and we had to get to a baby blessing on the 24th.

Here is Miles McKay Bradley

We entered Utah the morning of the 23rd which I personally felt was a great way to celebrate the 24th of July. The next two weeks were spent at Ann's house (who was an amazingly gracious host considering she had just had her 3rd child, how many people would invite 5 extra people into your home the week you also have a baby...Thanks Ann!) We had tons of fun with everyone. We kept Thomas and Hailey busy so Ann and Miles could sleep (Hailey really likes Miles) And Dad and James, and Mckay worked on the basement so the next time we all come it won't be such a tight squeeze, although it didn't ever feel too crowded.

Here are some picture of what we did:

We went to a lake in Huntsville, UT It was even better that the beach because there was shade and no salt, although I did miss the waves.

but I would take the view over the beach any day (I guess I really am a Utah girl at heart)

Kelley and I even built a sandcastle. (I started it then Kelley really went to work )

After the beach Mckay, Kelley and I took Thomas and Hailey camping. It was tons of fun. We even went on a hike...which was quite an experience with a 4 and 3 year old.

Other fun things we did....Lagoon, Roy Water park, Museums, playing house with Hailey, and Star Wars with Thomas, and just holding and enjoying Sweet Miles (I might pull a Rebecca Steadman here and start referring to Miles in that way) It was a fun trip and we all cried when Dad, Mom and Kelley went to the airport. But luckily the weather man decided we could extend the trip one more day...their flight was canceled because of thunderstorms, and they were rebooked on a flight for the next day, so we went back to the airport, picked them up, and had one more day together...so we went bike riding at a beautiful park a couple of miles from Ann's house.

It was the perfect end to a perfect trip. After we took everyone to the Airport again Mckay and I packed our things and moved down to Provo. (Mckay is hanging out down here until my roommate moves in, then he will drive his car (which was in Utah) back to NC.

I will talk about my new life in Provo in the next post. Because I feel this post is super long already.

How am I doing as a blogger? I had no idea how easy it can be.

2nd post...this is exciting...Why blog?

Why am I blogging... well several reasons
1. People keep telling me I should have a blog
2. I have decided to practice being more open about sharing my live...I am an intensely private person. I like that about myself, but it is good to share your life with others...so I blog
3. I have quit my job, rented my house, and am going back to my alma matter to go to graduate school... I am nervous about returning to school after a decade long break, but also very excited. I thought that would be interesting to blog about.

So read if you want (especially if you are one of those folks who said I should blog) but even if you don't read it (which the reason #2 part of me will love) that is fine. I think I will enjoy the process of blogging regardless of the audience.