My Life: March 2009

Well on Thursday we were able to go to the Guachimontones. It was so much fun and pretty cool to imagine what happened there. For those who don't know about the Guachimontones, it is a location in Jalisco, Mexico. They are a series of circular pyramids created either 1000 B.C. or 300 B.C. The tour guide and Wikipedia were in disagreeance on that. At any rate, I zoned out a few times while I was there. There wasn't much to look at. It was cool and all, but my zoning out was thinking of the people that created these pyramids and this culture. After much thought I realized that it was probably the Jaredites in their migration to the north. It was so cool. I can't express that enough how amazing it was to be there and to know that. The archeologists haven't decided who was the group of people, except that they were an ancient people to this area. Of course, but luckily I know! And even if it wasn't the Jaredites, it would still be the Nephites or the Lamanites. But I doubt that by 300 B.C. the Nephites or Lamanites would have migrated so far north by that point. It was so cool. I'm excited to go there again with my parents and be able to discuss things out loud as opposed to in my head. Tomorrow we are going to Guanajuato, another ancient city. I'm excited to go there, too.

In other notes, Onna and I found a place to live! At first the rent was a little more than we wanted to spend, but I called the owner and explained it to him and he was fine with the rent that we wanted. It was nice, and it was exciting for us. The cool thing is that it is an old house, but an entirely new inside. He gutted the whole house and will put in all brand new appliances. We are excited. It feels like its a house that we built. Onna will move in there on June 1 more or less in preparation for our wedding at the end of July. How exciting!

It's so hard to blog when you keep meaning to and you always think that today will be the day, but instead more things just pile on that you think you should blog about and, eventually, it becomes so great a task that you just fight it all the way to the end. This is what happened to me. Of course a lot has happened in the last month, but the more that happened the more that piled and I just knew it was going to be too great a task for an ordinary man. Since I last posted I have received somewhat of a calling in my ward. It isn't a calling because I won't be around long enough to have it be known as a calling, but it is an assignment. My assignment is to attend mutual and help out with the Young Men. What a great assignment that has been! I love it! I love the young men, it's so fun to feel their spirits. Mutual is on a Friday night, so it is no easy task, but nevertheless, these guys come and enjoy themselves all night. And afterwords everyone plays soccer (of course). So far I have attended two mutuals. The first one the boys all brought in food they cooked themselves and we ate and we also learned how to iron correctly. The second one was watching Mormons and Mafia. Good movie. I have really enjoyed myself in that. Speaking of my ward, it has the youngest ward leadership I've ever heard of. The Bishop is early 30s, the Elder's Quorum President is 24, the Young Men's President is 21, the Young Women's President is 20. I am unsure of the HP and RS, but the counselors in each of these organizations (minus the Bishopric) are the same age, so it is very young. I like it though. School has been interesting. It has turned out to be quite easy. I am making straight A's without doing much studying. My days mostly consist of watching Seinfeld and surfing the Internet. In fact, the three seasons I brought of Seinfeld were all completed and I was lost, so I decided to buy the rest of the series. That's fun. I watch a few episodes a day. I actually saw an episode yesterday that I had never seen. It was a miracle! Jerry, George, and Elaine all decide to do some volunteer work. I'd never seen it. But it's cool to see the order of the episodes and how things happened in the series. I've also been watching quite a bit of sports. I was an avid watcher of the World Baseball Classic. The USA did good this time, but they still lost and tied for third, which is alright considering they got eighth last time. We haven't been on any trips in Mexico since I last posted. We were going to go to Guanajuato but Jill lost her wallet the day before so we were unable to go. We are going this weekend instead. And tomorrow we are going to Guachimontones. It's an archeological site. Wikipedia has some good info on it with pictures. Although I didn't travel around Mexico I did go home again for a weekend. Boy was that some trip. I got in on Thursday, Onna picked me up and we drove to Columbia to show the boys the temple. Christian had seen it before, but we weren't sure that Ethan had. It was a positive experience for them both I think. The purpose of going was to talk about eternal families and how mommy and daddy were going to go there and how they were going to go in a year with us. We also attempted to teach them to call me dad. Ethan picked it right up. He loved the idea of us being a family. Christian was not so fortunate. Actually, he refused to talk about it and walked away. Onna took him as I took Ethan and we each talked to them. Christian actually took it much worse than expected. He cried. Some welcoming! Oh well, he'll come around. It doesn't make me lose my excitement at all. On Friday night Kyle and MaryEllen came to Hartsville and we were able to hang out. We ate dinner first. I ate 50 chicken nuggets from McDonalds. Onna and I had a bet and she thought I couldn't do it. No one did. I proved them all wrong. And they knew that if I did do it I would be in a terrible mood the rest of the night. Not so! We were rockin' out to Guitar Hero all night. I surprisingly didn't get to much like a blob. In fact, I was able to bounce around playing Guitar Hero and wrestling later. I wasn't hungry for breakfast on Saturday though. We got up early and went to Ikea. Onna and I bought a good bit of stuff. We bought 4 chairs, a kitchen table, and a sofa. The ride home was interesting trying to fit everything in the truck. Onna and I were so squished in the back seat of the Tundra. We stopped at Wal Mart and I bought exactly what Kyle told me to buy--the biggest tarp they have. Well it was in fact WAY too big. It was 20' by 30'! It was a comfortable ride home from there on out. On Sunday we drove to the airport for me to return. Sad day. It was such a long trip home, though! We got to Charlotte and it was pouring, the planes were delayed. I didn't take off until 5:30, I missed my connection home in Atlanta and so from Atlanta I flew to Los Angeles and from Los Angeles to Guadalajara. I arrived at 5:30am instead of 8:30pm the night before. On top of that, my bag was gone. It didn't make it. How sad! Luckily we didn't have school on Monday, but even Tuesday I didn't have my bag until after school (luckily) and so I went without deodorant on Tuesday. And my contacts were in from Sunday morning until Tuesday night. They were burning. But all is well again. Onna and I have been avidly searching for a place to live come June. Hartsville doesn't have a lot to offer, but we are searching. We found a great place we love but it is just barely out of our price range so we'll see. While Onna was out looking in a neighborhood, my future son decided to unbuckle himself and jump out of the car. He must have done it quick and quiet (premeditated/planned) because Onna looked back and he was seated and next she saw him rolling on the street. What a scary thing! Luckily he's okay and it was a neighborhood road before the speed got up higher. He left with a few scrapes and bruises but is mostly doing just fine. Spring break starts next Friday and goes for two weeks--most of which I'll be spending in Arizona with my sisters. I'm pretty excited to see the Easter Pageant. I will try to write more. It's not like I have an excuse.