Columbus Zoo...

Back in September we spent the day at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium and it was pretty darn fabulous.  Let me tell you a little bit about the Columbus Zoo - it stretches for 90 acres, the Zoo is home to over 700 wildlife species including big cats, elephants, gorillas, manatees, koalas and more! It's even broken down to Regions - while on our Zoo adventure we went to - Asia Quest, North America, African Forest, Australia, The islands of Southeast Asia, and The Shores (aka:the Aquarium).  I took a ton of pictures - but I will show you some of our favorites...

It was sleepy day at the Zoo for the animals - but we still had a really good time seeing them...

Cute penguin chill'in in the warm sun

My favorite - the Koala Bears - they were so cute - Tyson let me set there and watched them for over 20 minutes and all they did was sleep. He said he would have sat there all day if I had wanted too. Isn't he great!! *Did you know fact: Koala's sleep at least 22 hours a day! What a life!

This was in Asia Quest - posing with the I guess Asian kitties. 

(*please note the OSU shirts - it was game day! Read the last post if your confused.)

Awe, the Tigers were just snoozing away along with...

the Bears...and...

the Rino too.

But sleeping animals didn't get us down. It was a really warm day - and it was OSU game day, so lots of people were either tailgating or watching the game, so the Zoo wasn't even that busy - and on top of it we saw some amazing animals - We got to see a Red Panda which neither of us had seen before and Koala's was a first for us as well. In the Region of Australia you got to go into a fenced in area with Kangaroos, and they we just hanging out, they were like only 3 feet away from us - it was crazy. You couldn't touch them - but we've never been that close to Kangaroo's before.  The Aquarium was really fun too - they have Manatees and they were amazing. So our day at the Zoo was really fun - I am sure we will go back again and again.

Ode to my Oregon Sweatshirt...

So let me tell you - when we moved to Columbus, we knew we were moving into a state full of Ohio State University Buckeye Football Fans. But what we didn't know was that they aren't just your average fan - they are Fan Fanatics and they LOVE their Buckeyes! Don't get me wrong, I too am an Ohio State Buckeye Fan - I have yet to turn to the dark side and become hardcore - pretty sure Tyson has - but I know before we leave this place, I too will be in the category of "Fan Fanatic". 

So why am I telling you this? Because a sad day arrived back in September - it was the first football game of the season for OSU. We ran errands all around town and everywhere we went everyone and I mean 99% of the population out and about were in some sort of OSU gear. 

1. We totally looked out of place and 2. why didn't anyone send us the memo that we too needed to be geared up for game day - and the game was even an away game - good news we did win the game!

Well later that same evening we were going to walk to the local Dairy Queen that just happens to be four blocks from our house - yes that's right Dairy Queen is four blocks from our house a good 5 minute stroll to yummy peanut buster parfait happiness, but that's not the point. It was a little chilly out (for me) - so before we left I put on my Oregon sweatshirt - My beloved Oregon sweatshirt that I wear far too much and I am sure family members and friends probably think that's all I have in my closet. Well it just so happens that Tyson was wearing his Oregon t-shirt, and it wasn't even planned - we were just a cute matchy couple. So as we headed on our little walk to the DQ, cars were slowing down and staring us down - people on the side walk corners looked like they were ready to pull their guns out and shoot us - it was all pretty awkward - until we realized - we were in Ohio State territory and pretty sure Oregon was not welcomed AT ALL. Thank heavens I had a t-shirt on under my sweatshirt so I took off my sweatshirt and that helped us a little - but I think the guy at the DQ almost didn't want to take our order because of what we were wearing. Well - do you see where I am going with this? That nice Saturday evening trip to the local DQ would be the last time I ever wore my Oregon Sweatshirt out in Ohio public. Okay, Okay...I'll admit I have wore it out a couple times since then, and every time I do I am afraid I am going to get shot (I am not being dramatic). So no more Oregon sweatshirt outside the house.

Therefore, I feel before I can blog about anything else - I must have this Ode to my Oregon Sweatshirt...I love it- I have like 4 of them - oh and just so you know I don't even like the Ducks or the Beavers for that matter - I just have good ol' Oregon pride.

So here are some pictures of me in my Beloved Sweatshirt...

it''s gone lots of places...Like...

to - Serendipity in New York City for Frozen Hot Chocolate...and...

to - standing in line at TKTS on Broadway waiting to buy tickets to the Broadway show Tarzan...and it's been to...

Disney World in Florida to pose with Mr.Potato Head and...

it's been there to hold babies (Mer that's Tanner - he was so little - awe!)

And it's been to State Lines...

And it's been to Colorado to take pictures with Grandpa Crowther...

And it's posed with wood...

And it's been there when I've taken pictures of myself...

And when I've gone to the Amish Country with best friends...

And when I've gotten beautiful flowers from my amazing hubby...

And it's been to Jackson Hole, WY where I almost was attacked by a BEAR...

And it's been to Cozumel Mexico in the rain after a Hurricane had just hit...

And it's been to NASA in Houston Texas...

And that's just to name a few...awe so many other amazing places. I figure I got my point across. Now a days I will lay around the house in it - or go to bed in it. It will travel with me to many more places - but for now it won't be seeing the outsides of Columbus Ohio.

For the mean time you will see me wearing this...

Yup, my very own Ohio State Sweatshirt - it's not as cool as Oregon...but shhh. No one needs to know that. Who knows maybe by the time we leave here -I will have more Ohio Sweatshirts, than Oregon.

Anyways - just so you don't think that all we wear is our Ohio stuff we do have other clothes - but in the next few post that I will be putting up, well we are wearing our Ohio stuff, and in the post after that we are most likely wearing more Ohio stuff - and well that's because most of the stuff we do is on Saturday's and Saturday's are game days - and heaven forbid we be wearing anything BUT Ohio State Football clothing!

*( P.S. Mom and Dad - you could totally send me a new Oregon Sweatshirt!)

Portland to Columbus...

We are alive! It's amazing, I know! Back by popular demand and due to family and friends telling me that they are tired of reading the last post, over and over - awe such loyal readers. I would have posted long ago, but I was having trouble with my pictures and then I got lazy and then every time I'd get onto blog, I just get caught up reading everyone else's blogs and then by the time I was done looking at everyone else's blogs, I was good and didn't feel like blogging. But no worries - there is so much to share and this is just the first update out of MANY! So prepare yourself - and I will start with this one....

So on August 23rd we finally made our way towards Columbus, Ohio. Our first stop took us to Hermiston Oregon, where we met up with Tyson's sister Amy and her awesome family and we all drove up to, Moscow Idaho where we got to see Tyson's brother Tanner and his Wife Michelle and there new baby Taya. We stayed for the weekend for Taya's baby blessing - it was such a sweet blessing and I am so happy Tyson got to be apart of that with his brother.

The proud parents 

Sweet Taya - she's gorgeous!

After the blessing - Tyson, Tanner and brother in law Eric

My Awesome nieces and nephew - Love Them!!!

We lucked out on a great weekend - not only were we with amazing family - it was also Tyson's Mom's Birthday! My Beautiful Sister in law Amy made the most delish strawberry cake.

!HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM! 

After we ate dinner and cake with the fam - we said our goodbyes and it's was off to Rexburg. It was fun to be back in our neck of the woods and it was even greater to be at Tyson's sister Mandy's house - her house is like a second home for us and we love it and her family. As we drove down the long drive way to the house, it was like coming home. I love that feeling. Mandy was still up when we got there and we got to meet our new little nephew Copper. Oh my - he's so cute. He totally makes my heart gush! I wanted to take him and bring him with me to Ohio. After talking for awhile we went to sleep - because we knew what was ahead of us the next day...

Do you see this picture below? Do you know what it is? This would be an empty ABF moving truck. 

And this...this is a packed up AFB truck with all of our belongings. Looks easy doesn't it? 

Well, it would have been. Some of you have heard our moving woes - but the rest have not - so I am going to share with you what it was like moving all of our stuff, from Rexburg to Columbus. So way back in March we came back to Rexburg and packed all of our stuff in our apartment and put it in storage. Well about a week before we were moving - we called our storage unit to tell them that an ABF truck would be parked outside the storage unit for a day and they said that normally that would be just fine, but it wouldn't work for us the next week - because our storage unit decided that they were going to pave the gravel and that there was no place for an ABF truck to go. We were kinda freak'in out a bit, but then we called ABF and asked if we could bring our stuff to the Terminal and pack our truck there, and they said that was just fine.  Well then we had to get a U-Haul to get all of our stuff from the storage unit to the ABF truck. So that's what we did. Monday morning we got up early and drove into Rexburg, got our U-Haul, hopped on over the storage unit - the construction workers were nice enough to let us through to get our stuff - we packed up the truck and headed to Idaho Falls where we had to unpack the U-Haul and put everything into the ABF truck. Nothing like moving your stuff twice in one day. 

Awe yes, this is us in our sweaty glory.  We were happy that we finished in the time that we did - it was like 100 degrees that day.  But my story isn't over - I am going to finish it - instead of jumping around. SO... our stuff was going to be in transit for about 2 weeks - well it almost took us a week to get to Columbus because we stopped in Omaha to stay with Tyson's parents and so by the time we got to Columbus we only had to wait a week for our stuff. Well the plan with ABF was they were going to drop our truck off in front of our house - sweet! NOT. When we finally arrived at our house in Columbus - we realized our street - A ONE-WAY street mind you - was way to narrow for an ABF truck to park. So what did we have to do? Oh yeah that's right, we had to call ABF again and ask them if we could come to the terminal and get our stuff there. So once again we had to get a U-Haul - unpack all of our stuff out of the ABF truck into the U-Haul then we had to unpack the U-Haul and take everything into our house. After all this, I never want to move again. I am however grateful for 3 things: 1. PRAYER, we did a lot of it while moving all of our stuff and it was amazing how it all worked out 2. all of our stuff came to us safe and sound and didn't get damaged and 3. we moved everything all by ourselves every time,we didn't get hurt moving our stuff and we didn't yell at each other once! Good times! 

Okay so back to still being in Idaho...after we returned the U-Haul truck we headed back out to Mandy's - got cleaned up and when all the kids were home from school we all got in the car and went back into Rexburg to get oh so yummy Delicious snow cones - from no other than the snow oasis. mmmm. Then we went to the store bought stuff for dinner - made an excellent mexican meal, played games, made yummy dessert and just had an all around wonderful time. We so did not want to leave. We tried not to stay up too late - because we were getting up early the next morning to head to Omaha.  Here are a few pictures of our good times at Mandy's...

The Copper Bug! Oh my goodness he's so cute!

While we played games - we all took turns holding Copper

Two of my Beautiful nieces Morgan and Madison - whom I miss sooo much!

Group shot with the girls and Houston and Harmon. I LOVE them!

This was our good morning sunrise - on our way to Omaha

There are all the bugs we got on the front of the car that we killed on our way to Omaha - this picture doesn't even do it justice! We took our car for a nice bath and got her all clean for her final leg of the drive to Columbus.

I wish I had pictures of the fun things we did in Omaha - but I didn't take any. But I am sure you are dying to know what we did while we were there. Well let me tell you - Tyson's dad got off work early so we could go to lunch with him and his mom - we ate at Red Lobster which was pretty darn good seeing to the fact that Tyson's mom and I both got chicken. After lunch we went home and picked lots and lots of apples off the apple trees in the back yard. Then we took a trip to the car wash and a trip to Walmart with Tyson's mom. Later that evening we quilted. Yup that's right - we quilted - and it was great! Tyson's dad is Bishop to the singles ward in there stake and there ward was assigned to make so many quilts for a service project, so we got lucky and got to help finish tying the quilts together. It was seriously so much fun. We ate dinner - sat around and talked and had a wonderful time. We also said our goodbyes because we were leaving early in the morning to get to Columbus.  

Well here ya go! We did it! We made it to Columbus, Ohio and here is a picture of the front of our house. We really like it and it's huge compared to our Rexburg apartment. Bonus it's also only a mile from Campus, which is fabulous.  I will post pictures later of what the inside looks likes...but for now keep on reading...

Alrighty...well about um...6 post ago I told you all about my trip out to Columbus to look for housing and I showed you pictures of what the place looks like - well go back and read the post or just take my word for it - but the kitchen was Hideous! It was nasty green - and I knew there was no way I could live in this place with a green kitchen - call me high maintenance - but really it was bad. Well, I feel lucky because our owner let us paint the kitchen! And seeing to the fact that we still had a week before our stuff was to come to us, we figured it would be a perfect time to paint. So here are some pictures of our make over. 

Tyson painting away...

Once again - another lovey picture of us in our sweaty glory

The Green Kitchen Before

The Kitchen After...Beautiful!

Painting was a fun project, but we were really glad that it was done. We got our stuff from ABF and unpacked our stuff just in time for Hurricane IKE to hit us. I am sure most of you heard about the Hurricane down in Galveston Texas that hit back in September - well we got not so lucky and it's jet stream made it's way all the way up to Columbus. We had hurricane force winds and we were without power for a week. Yes, a WEEK! We were just happy that we hadn't gone grocery shopping for all of our stuff yet. Over 80% of Columbus was without power for over a week. Campus had power and so did the 7-11 and a Barnes and Noble. We would go to campus or Barnes and Noble to charge our cell phones along with the rest of the world. One day while I was a Barnes and Noble there was not a free plug any where, finally i moved a book shelf and found a plug. Ya gotta do, what ya gotta do.  I wish I had of taken more pictures of all the damage the storm did just to our neighborhood - it was amazingly shocking. Trees were down everywhere - tree's had fallen on cars and into homes. 

This is the one picture I got of our neighbors front yard.

So our first few weeks here were a little crazy. But let me remind you all of why we are even in Columbus Ohio...

Tyson started graduate school at as you can tell... OSU! He is in the Statistics PhD program.

This is him on his first day of school. The 1 he is holding up is not for his 1st day of school, but for his 1st year of grad school. 3 more years to go - okay maybe 4. We can't believe that it's already mid November and we've been here almost 3 months. We really do like it here, but we really miss all of our families. I told Tyson back in October, okay, I am ready to go back to Idaho. But no worries, Columbus is fabulous and we are getting use to living here. I have many more post to show you what we've been up to - so I will get on it and post some more.  We are doing great. Tyson LOVES grad school - and I really mean LOVES grad school. He loves his department and fellow students and teachers. There is nothing better than doing what you love! 

Well that's all for now...but stay tuned for more posts! 

Best Friend #2 (Tyson's #1)...

The time has come and we are leaving to head to Columbus Ohio for Grad School. So for a quick recap...While we've been in Oregon Tyson has been working for Intel and I had to the opportunity to babysit my little nephew Hayden. I started babysitting him just before he hit the 2 month mark, I was able to watch him everyday Monday-Friday. It was a JOY! We've had the best time and he's become my Best Friend #2, because we all know Tyson is my #1! We definitely bonded and we've had the best time! He's let me sing to him popcorn popping on the apricot tree more times than I can even imagine and each time he would smile and giggle, he's let me make up songs about him and he cheers me on with giggles, goo's and occasional screams of excitement as I sing to him, he's let me swing him, cuddle with him, play lots of patty-cake, roll around, watch our favorite movie Enchanted together, go on walks to feed the ducks, go to the zoo, we've gone to the beach, he'd let me hold him by the arms and we would kick around a stuffed soccer ball and he would giggle the entire time, we've read lots and lot of books and he would turn the pages for me, we've played lot of pee-a-boo...and that's just a start at naming some of the fun things we've done in the past 6 months. I've been able to watch him grow and he's almost 9 months old (next month). He's cried maybe 3 times for either being hungry or tired. He's is the most happy, loving, sweet adorable baby, and I LOVE him! Tonight I had to say good bye to My little Hayden Bear, Bug, Monkey. Yes, many names have been given and said and in so many different orders. My heart is so full of love for my little best friend. I will still get to see him via computer and at Christmas, but it's still really hard and sad. I had prepared myself that going into this, it was going to be hard, but it was even harder than I thought. Tears filled my eyes as I had to say my last good bye giving him lots of hugs and kisses. I am going to miss him so much. I know the same if for Tyson - Hayden loves Tyson and Tyson loves him. The two of them have bonded as well. It was sad all around to say good bye. But in the end only more goods things are to come and that is an exciting thing to know! I love my little buggy bear and I am excited for the next time I get to see him, hopefully he will be walking!!! So in the end, it isn't really good bye...it's more of a See You Later!

4 Years!

Dear Marriage,

Thank you for being so good to us these past 4 years. We can't even remember life before you. We've enjoyed every adventure we've had so far, and hope for many more years of life adventures with you. Thanks for showing us how to find the simple joys in life. Thank you for teaching us that true love means unconditional love. We've enjoyed every minute we've had together. Most of all, thanks for being our solid foundation in a world so confused on the definition of you.

Love,

Tyson and Jen

Also for your viewing pleasure... (thanks to my brother Jeremy)...

a look down memory lane... Make sure to have your volume up and on...

* (if it's having trouble buffering, just scroll the little timer arrow all the way over and then press play)

I'm The Luckiest Man Alive

It has been four years since Jen and I were married in the Portland, OR temple. The past four years have been the best years of my life and I know this next year will be even better because I have her with me to tackle it. I truly am the luckiest man in the world to have a wife as amazing as Jen. She makes everything shine in my life. Whenever I am having a hard day, I only need to find her and hug her and my troubles literally seem to melt away. She is more amazing and beautiful everyday. She is my best friend and I love her with all my heart. HAPPY ANNIVERSARY JEN!

What a Race!

Watching the Men's 4x100 Freestlye Relay race was Amazing! It was United States vs. France and United States came in and took it for the winning! It was so close, so intense - this is why watching the Olympics is so great! GO U.S.A!

picuture {via:NBC}