Memorial Day Weekend

We had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend. On Thursday, Mallory drove down to Las Vegas for a girls' weekend. Her mom, Amy, and Gavin flew down Friday morning, and that was when all the fun began. They went to dinner that night at the Palazzo Tower at a fun Mexican restaurant.






Then they went to Jersey Boys, a Broadway show that is now playing in Vegas. Saturday morning, they got up early and went to the Bathhouse, a glorious spa in Mandalay Bay. It was so relaxing. That was definitely the best part of the weekend.



The rest of the weekend consisted of shopping and eating. Girls' weekend is the best. Next time, they will plan girls' weekend when the boys aren't going anywhere so that the kids don't have to come. But, it was still a perfect Memorial Day weekend. Now... back to school for the rest of our lives!

Random pic of Gavin:

As for me and the boys... we went to Indianapolis for the Indy 500. Last year, Dorn took Steven to the race as a graduation gift. They liked it so much that they decided to buy tickets for Adam and myself so we could all go. Thanks Papa Do!



We got there on Saturday and went downtown. It was full of race fever. We saw some pretty sweet cars there. Outside of one restaurant there was a Bentley, a Ferrari, and a Ford GT all parked next to each other. They were nice.




Saturday morning we made the trek to Indianapolis Motor Speedway. It's quite the journey, especially when you are fighting with 400,000 other fans that are trying to get parking spots. We ended up parking in a guy's front yard for $20. We still had to walk about a mile to the track.




The race was completely awesome! It was way cooler than I expected it to be. The TV doesn't do justice to the speed and roar of the cars as they are flying by at 230 mph. It was really a spectacular sight to see.

During the middle of the race, Steven and I ventured to the grassy part on the inside of the track. That was quite a treat in itself. Sometimes it doesn't get any better than seeing a bunch of fat, white trash, topless, beer gutted people getting totally plastered. The grass crunched as we walked through the field of empty beer cans.

The race was pretty good. We had great seats (just in front of the entrance to Pit Row). We saw some pretty cool wrecks that were right in front of us. However, we were really disappointed that Danica Patrick was knocked out of the race because Mr. Douchebag, Ryan Briscoe of Team Penske Racing, doesn't know how to drive out of the pits. There were only like 25 laps left. Sorry Danica (moment of silence).

Anyway, Scott Dixon of Ganassi Racing dominated the race. He had a fast car and was pretty unstopable. He won pretty easily. Here are some pics of the race and some of the cars.

Scott Dixon

Danica Patrick

Davey Hamilton, from Boise

A panoramic shot of part of the track

Here's a cool link that shows how Vatican City, the Roman Coliseum, the Wimbledon Campus, the Rose Bowl Stadium, Yankee Stadium, and Churchill Downs all fit nicely inside of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway track. However, I don't think it's accurate.

http://www.indy500.com/flashmap.html

The Greatest Spectacle in Racing!!

Rochester, New York

On Wednesday, we finished up our last finals of the Winter Semester and packed our bags for Rochester, New York. My sister, Alicia, and her husband, Marcus, live there with their kids Ellie, Lucas, and another baby girl (to be born in the next week or so). We arrived there late Wednesday night and spent the night with their neighbor, June. She lives two houses down in this massive, old home where she raised 14 kids.

On Thursday we went to Palmyra to check out some Church history sites. I thought that it was really interesting that when you first drive into town, the first thing you see are a couple of church steeples. At the first major intersection, there is a Baptist Church, a Presbyterian Church, an Episcopal Church, and a Methodist Church. One at every corner. It seems as though the town hasn't changed much since the time of Joseph Smith.







Our first stop was to the Hill Cumorah. They have a great display at the Visitor's Center at the bottom of the hill. They really cater to non members about the Book of Mormon and they have tons of video displays. The kids loved it. The Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit was also at the Visitor's Center. It was pretty interesting.





Next, we went to the Palmyra temple and looked around at it. Then, we went to the Smith Farm and the Sacred Grove. There was a very peaceful spirit there as we walked through the grove. On the tour of the farm, one of the sister missionaries made Mallory bear her testimony and then they forced us to give them referrals. It was kind of funny.






Our last stop for that day was the E.B. Grandin Printing Press, where the first 5,000 copies of the Book of Mormon were printed. The tour there was excellent. I learned a lot and I thought that it was very interesting.

On Friday, we went to the Peter Whitmer Farm in Fayette. It was cool to see the home where the Church was first organized.



Later, we stopped at Seneca Lake, one of the "finger lakes" and threw some rocks in the water with the kids.




On Saturday, we took Marcus to the airport in Buffalo and then traveled to Niagra Falls. They were pretty cool, but a lot of the fun tourist things there were closed until May. Therefore, we didn't get a good view of the Horseshoe Falls, unless we were on the Canada side (and we all know that wasn't going to happen).





After the falls, we stopped in Buffalo on the way home to try out the "Original Buffalo Chicken Wings" at the Anchor Bar. Apparently, this is the birthplace of the buffalo style chicken wing. I'm not really a big fan of buffalo chicken wings, but they were pretty tasty.




On Sunday, we went to the Rochester Zoo. The kids loved all the animals, and Mallory, the monkeys.





We also went to Highland Park, which is over 110 years old. It began as a nursery and since has expanded to 155 acres. It is home to the Lilac Festival every year and has thousands of flowers.








Overall, it was a very fun trip and we enjoyed seeing our niece and nephew... and Alicia and Marcus as well.

Conference Weekend

These past couple weeks have been exciting in our house. We found out that Logan got rejected by the Marriott School of Business, only to find out that he wasn't rejected, but only wait-listed. We then started to make plans to go to Boston for the summer to sell security systems with Pinnacle Security. However, we got news this week that Logan was accepted into the Marriott School for the Spring/Summer semester. Apparently, he was ranked #1 on the wait-list. Yeah... that's right. The number one loser. Anyway, now we have some decisions to make.

General Conference was good this past weekend. We really enjoyed it. We Tivo-ed it so we could fast forward through the women speakers... NOT! Actually, this is how Mallory spent Conference Weekend.



Just kidding. This is actually why I love my wife. I usually play basketball with a bunch of friends on Tuesday nights. Sometimes we play until 11 p.m. The other week, I came home to see my beautiful wife had fallen asleep reading her scriptures, the Doctrine and Covenants to be exact. I thought that I'd never get a chance to take a picture like this again. We usually read our scriptures out loud together to stay awake, but I must've been out too long. Sorry.



Anyway, we really enjoyed Conference. President Monson and his big, floppy ears are awesome! I thought that there were a lot of great talks and we are happy we Tivo-ed it so that we can watch our favorite parts over again.



This weekend we also got to see Steven and Libby as they came down to visit us. It's always fun to have family come stay at our place. Now, if we could just get more of Logan's family to visit.

Logan has spent a lot of spare time lately reading different financial blogs. He really enjoys learning new things. Seeing how we are poor college students, some of the information is really helpful. He has posted links to some of the blogs.