Back in the USSR...Er, Provo

Hail Comrades! We're back in Provo and (mostly) loving it. I thought my bottom was going to fall off during church--those benches are hard and I was sore after the drive--but other than that, it's been great. We've already seen a lot of my extended family thanks to my brother's non-farewell farewell; sadly, we will not be seeing much of Paul's as we won't be trekking down to the cabin for the family reunion this year. We just not here long enough to do everything we'd like and the travel time makes it too impractical. Luckily, I hear the reconstruction of the deck will continue on despite the absence of Paul's strapping muscles.

Still we're happy to be here and visiting our families. We haven't seen them since Christmas and the weather is much nicer in the summer. Although the white Christmas was nice...though the driving is much easier in the broad light of day and on ice-free roads. Maybe Christmas should be moved to July.

The Fashionable and the Insane

Summer is in full-swing and that means I've moved over from changing stuff around the house to changing stuff about me. That's right, summer is when I decide to cut/dye/dry shampoo my hair, lose weight/tone/exercise more/eat better, get rid of worn out/ill-fitting/ten years out of date clothing, and paint my nails regularly and exciting colors. (Fuchsia! Teal! Lime!) I even plan to try out new makeup. I make the same decisions every year and they rarely make it to action. For example, since 2000 in the category of hair:

Number of dye jobs: 1
Number of radical haircuts: 3
Number of styling products regularly used: 0
Days of the week hair is styled: 0.5 (half-hearted effort on Sundays)

And for this year in the category of makeup:
Number of new lip products purchased: 7 (5 in a trial set)
Number of new lip products worn at least once: 1

It's not the best of track records. This year I have painted my nails once and been thoroughly annoyed at how fast it chips (seriously, one day?!!) and used some foaming shiny hair product once. I'm looking at leftover Panda Express for lunch, haven't even put on makeup, and threw my newly-cut hair into a ponytail. Why do I get these silly notions every year? What is it about summer that makes me want to redo everything in sight?

I'm still dying my hair purple this year after the family photos though. And trying the teal nail polish. And eating better.

Maybe I should just give up. :)

We Finally Have a Car Again!!!!

I put a lot of exclamation points because this was very, very, very exciting for us. After 15 (!) days of fruitless searching, disappointments, and two failed inspections, we finally found, inspected, and purchased a car!!! YAY!!!

This is our new car:




















It's a 2005 Sebring Coupe. It's awesome and I hope we're best friends forever. I love this car. It's nice and clean and everything works properly (including the CD player). There's plenty of leg room all around and yet you could still fit two adult bodies in the trunk. It's only drawback is that it has one of the chinzy gas caps that are attached to the door. Well, and the gas tank is on the passenger side. Other than that, I hope it is the best car ever made and we never have to buy one for again for a long time. The best part about the car is that it was within our original budget ($6500), which we had completely given up on and resigned ourselves to car payments for a while. I like to think of it as a car miracle.



Also when I say it's our car, I really mean it's my car.