Blanding Isn't Boring

Well, we've traveled about 3,500 miles in the last 3-4 weeks. The next few posts will outline our vacation! We went to southern UT, Colorado, Idaho, Arizona, and Nevada. We had a blast!

Blanding
We went to Blanding last month to visit family. In Blanding, we went to a dinosaur museum, an indian museum, and Avery even got to go swimming for the first time in the city pool! She loved it, although she probably swallowed a bit too much water (hence our new Blogger background). :) She liked swimming so much, that we ended up getting her a swimsuit afterward. This is the pre-swimsuit picture. :)





One morning, Nathan looked out the window and asked, "Are there supposed to be horses running through the backyard?" Aunt Dianne does not own horses. So she went out to round them up:



We went out to try to catch them, but to no avail. They ended up ruining the grass in my Aunt's and Grandma's yard. Eventually the owner was able to get them and bring them back to his house. He said that his 10-year old daughter had opened the fence and let them loose. :) Oops. See Nathan's arms outstretched below? He was trying to play Red Rover with them. (Is that only a Minnesota game, or do other children outside of MN play it?)



Here's us not catching them.


We also went hiking up a beautiful canyon with my dad, aunt, and uncle! It was about 2 miles up to the waterfall. Boy, am I out of shape. The trail had this really fun tunnel we had to go through.


Avery didn't like it much. She had to go through on her back most of the way. :)


We discovered that if we took her through on Nathan's back in the baby backpack, she would probably hit her head on the low ceiling:


Here's Nathan posing. I think he thought I was talking a picture instead of a video. :)


We also went to this fun park in Blanding with my parents. Here's Grandma with Avery. Avery is happy because she is holding a cell phone. May this phase of life pass quickly.


Here's grandpa.


Avery didn't think the slide was all that great. It was reallllly hot. Poor Nathan probably has third degree burns in places where it hurts. :)


The teeter totter kept her attention for a few minutes before she tried to wriggle out of my arms to get to the ground!


We love to bathe Avery outside during the summer. It makes less of a mess, and she loves the pool! My parents got it for her for her 1st birthday. Thanks Mom and Dad!

I Want to Move to Colorado

It's summer!!! And we've been living in the pool!

And the Winner is...
Thanks for everyone's help in deciding on a new logo for the business! We ended up going with #3 after hearing back from many, many people (Nathan emailed most people in his address book for their opinions). #3 was different enough from a normal san-serif font so that it wasn't boring, but also so that it wasn't so trendy that it would look strange 10 years down the road. We also took the "design" box and made it a little smaller so that the logo wouldn't be so bottom-heavy. Here's the result:



Breathtaking Colorado
We spent the last weekend in Colorado at a Family History Expo. It was my second time in Colorado, and I fell in love with it! We got to stay at my old seminary teacher's house, Sue Ockey, and got to spend some time with her and her family, which was so fun! I knew them back in Minnesota when I was growing up.

Colorado was beautiful! We drove through Glenwood, which is probably the equivalent of Park City for those of you familiar with Utah. I was so amazed at how sheer the canyon was while we drove through it! I decided that I really, really, really want to move to Colorado. It was so green and the winding roads and canyons made it incredible to drive through.


We also passed a city called "No Name," but I was too slow to get my camera out and get a picture of it...so I stole one off of the Internet. :)



Great Minds Think Alike
While we were at the Embassy Suites for the Expo in Colorado, we met so many fun people! Our booth was right across from a guy named Bill Burch, who owns ArchivaLife. It was kind of uncanny because our booths looked so similar. We each had a quill in our design, our colors were deep reds and browns, and we both used parchment as a backdrop. Here is Bill's website and here is our Richardson Design website so you can compare.



Bill was one of the reasons we didn't go stir crazy of boredom during the down times. It's always fun when you have fun Expo booth neighbors. I realized we never got a picture of Bill, but he's in the video below. :) He actually had a really unique product. It's basically a really nice, leather bound, timeline/journal so that you can write your own personal history without it being a major undertaking, and it's succinct and interesting enough that your grandchildren will want to read it.



Click on the image above to see a larger view.

Here's a video that shows some of the aspects of it that we really liked. At 1:20 it shows the overview of the timeline (a.k.a. "Lifeline"). At 2:03, Bill shows you sample Lifeline filled out.


Isn't that such a clever idea? Me likey. Plus, you can't go wrong with a quill, parchment, and deep reds, right? :)



The Jailbird
Here was one of my favorite booths.


His name is Ron Arons. His booth was called, "Got Black Sheep?" He helps you find ancestors who have criminal records. :) So if you want to find out about your criminal ancestors, check out his site! He had a great outfit and it even matched his booth backdrop! He was a really witty guy. He and Nathan had fun punning.



The Funky Embassy Suites
The Conference Center part of the Hotel we were in was so beautiful! It was funky, but classy at the same time!



Here's where the vendors would present for their classes.


Nathan is hoping to present at the Family History Expo in Sandy, Utah in August about how to use Microsoft Word Stylesheets to make writing much faster and easier.

We're looking forward to the next one in August!

We'd Like Your Help!

Nathan here! So I'm making a new logo for my design business to replace the not-so-nice looking one I made in a hurry last year. I was wondering if any of you could look at the 8 versions I have so far (they only differ by font for "Design") and tell me which one strikes you as the best.

I also haven't decided whether to do the logo in pure black or with a colored box (or which color to use). And if I do color, whether I should vary it to match the cover of whatever I put it on (like how the RSC logo always matched the colors of the book cover it was on) or whether it should always stay its normal color.

I'm planning on using this on a book that's going to press on Friday, so replies before then will be the most helpful, but late is better than never!

Thanks for your help!

Just click on the image to see a larger view.

Avery's First Fishing Experience and Gpa/Gma R.

Nathan's school had a field trip last week where they got to go to a lake and go fishing. One of the perks of being a speech therapist at an elementary school is that you get to pick and choose which field trips you want to go on. Utah Fish and Game dumped a bunch of fish in the lake for the kids. We wanted Avery to have the experience of touching a fish, but she didn't seem too keen on the idea:


The weather was so cold and rainy, but the kids didn't seem to mind. Once the kids caught a fish, they took it over to be gutted and put in a bag so they could take it home and eat it.


This is Nathan and Avery's favorite game when Nathan gets home from work. It's called Steamroller. :)


Nathan's parents came and stayed with us during the week. They got Avery a fun Playskool Ball Bopper toy for Avery's birthday. Now she knows that pushing the button will turn it on, but it was fun to watch the learning curve! You'll also notice Bunny, her new obsession. She's so funny -- she always has to have Bunny with her. I got the bunny in Middle School I think, and I just never threw it away. Thank goodness for Avery, eh? :)



It's been a fun week! I can't believe Avery's already 1! Nathan wanted to write the next post about his childhood dream come true (it also was an event at his school).

Goodbye Geertje, Helloooo __(fill in blank)__!

My beautiful green Geertje (pronounced "Geer-cha" with a hard guttural "g") is gone. Yep. I sold her on KSL.com. She was my trusty '97 Ford Taurus that got me through grad school and 5 moves.

She'll be missed, but think I'm pretty much over it. I found an awesome ice blue '04 Hyundai Accent(also on KSL) for uber-cheap, with only 48k miles. Now I just need a name for him/her.


We had been looking for a couple months for a car, what a blessing this deal was.

A Big Icy Blue Blessing
At first when I saw the ad for the car on KSL, I thought, "You're kidding. For that cheap? There's gotta be something wrong with it." So I called the number, and found out how the car came to be so inexpensive; it's kind of a fun story.

The previous owner of the car was cited for improper registration (apparently he never registered it after he bought it from someone else). He never showed up to his court date to pay the fee. So, the guys from the impound lot got a call to go tow the car, which they did. They submitted it to an auto auction, and no one bought it (again, I have no idea why). So, they brought it back to their impound lot and it sat in their lot for 3 months, until the lot worker decided to list it on KSL for the amount it cost to store the car on the lot for 3 months.

Before It Was Cleaned
It was not a pretty sight, though. It looked like the previous owner had lived in the car or something. The interior was probably the grossest thing I've ever seen. See the cigarette butt?


See that shiny brown blob with the rubber band stuck in it in the photo below? That was some kind of melted lollipop or hard candy. I tried to pick it off the carpet, but it was stuck. The other blobs melted into the carpet were other types of candy...probably some of his leftover Christmas candy that we found in the back.


I wanted to ask the previous owner, "Whatcha gonna do with all that junk? All that junk inside your trunk?" (Haha, sorry...I couldn't resist. I don't like that song, but it's a valid question!) Actually, the trunk wasn't very gross; just lots of stuff in it.


There was soda spilled on all the seats.


Every surface was brown and sticky. When we wiped down the steering wheel and door handles, our wet wipes came off brown.Ick.




Check out the glove compartment. Honestly, who really puts pop and candy in the glove box???:


When I test drove the thing, I was sitting on a pile of crumbs from who-knows-what. It was disgusting. Poor Nathan drove it 40 minutes all the way home when we got it. I don't want to know what those brown stains are from. Here was the driver's seat:


And the passenger seat:


Driver's seat floor:


Back seat:


When Nathan and I cleaned it out after we bought it, we found lots of cool stuff: cigarette butts all over the floor, broken lighters, a cell phone and its charger, a Redbox DVD, about a dozen half-full soda bottles, two baseball caps, one Seattle Marlins tie, a binder full of Smith's pays tubs and UPC stickers, a Christmas stocking full of melted candy, a small bag of unidentifiable pills (I thought about selling these on the street for some quick cash...hehe), nasty soiled clothes, a football-shaped piggy bank that counts the total as you insert coins , a screwdriver (which we kept), about $1 worth of pennies coated in soda (sitting in a suspicious-looking pile of white powder). We also found other things that were inappropriate to list on a blog...


Heck, there were probably enough pennies to pay for the detailing job we had to do (complete with more pop on them).


There were some scratches on the bumper, too.




Here's the grand total of what we cleaned out of the car when we were done:


And, what's even better, the car had new metal-studded snow tires on it! I changed those today for regular tires, but those will come in handy for the next few winters!
I've spent lots of money getting 4 new tires, getting a transmission flush and oil/filter change (I doubt the guy before me ever had it done), a new wiper, and the interior and exterior detailed. I was scared the mechanic was going to tell me that it had some major $2,000 repair that had to be done, but luckily, all it needed were new rear struts, and an A/C belst, which will cost about $150. Definitely worth it. That's it! I was sooo happy!

After
Anyway, here are the "after" pictures. I went to Picasso Auto Detailing in Orem, and they did amazing! They even painted over the scratches on bumper where the paint had chipped. Drum roll, please...

Here's the bumper. They're going to touch it up a little more when I take it in again, next week.



And now for the interior. I think I got my money's worth.

The driver's seat:


The passenger seat:


The back seats:


The ever-so-clean and candy-free glove compartment:


The floors:


Back floor:


The "penny zones":



Front, dash:



Door:


There are still some spots visible if you look hard enough, but overall, I can't believe how much better it looks. Plus, that nasty stale cigarette stench is gone! It now smells like some nice citrus-y oranges!

A New Name for a New Purpose
So now for the difficult part: naming the car. First of all, how do you tell if it's a boy or a girl? I've heard that its determined by which side the gas tank is on: if it's on the driver's side, it's a male; the passenger's side is a female. That means my car is a boy. Of course, I really don't care if it is or not, all I care about is that it has a fitting name. We were thinking about Glacierita (because the color is glacier blue) or Icy Irma, but I'm not too attached to those. ;) Let me know if you have any good name ideas.