Wasatch Reptile Expo

Last year Andrew talked me into going to the Wasatch Reptile Expo in Salt Lake City. There was of course one rule: I wouldn't have to touch anything if I didn't want to. After getting this in writing I attended and played camera woman. Some of my work is below:

Of course Andrew was disappointed to leave the show empty handed. (He's been begging for a snake since day 1.) So I had to placate him with our beta Chowder, and the promise that next year we could possibly get something small. (You see there was this whole sugar glider fiasco a few years back.)

Over the last year I have been given about 15 different power point presentations about various reptiles and their care. It all came to a head when I came home from Germany and Andrew found a "great deal" on a terrarium. Then he started collecting plants and ledges and heaters and lamps. I found myself agreeing to a crested gecko because they are small, but not so small you wouldn't be able to tell if it was crawling around your house. It doesn't have to eat bugs, mice or any other living thing that would have to be stored in my freezer, and it doesn't bite or if it was eaten, wouldn't kill my cats.

Plus they have cute little eyelashes! 

So this Saturday we woke up early and headed for Salt Lake with a budget and hopes to find the perfect gecko. But first we had to shop! Andrew of course, had a blast!

  

After all the fun was had we walked back to the booth that had the best looking gecko (in our humble opinion) and Andrew got to take home a new friend. And he didn't waste any time in being friendly.

  

I still haven't held the gecko yet...to be honest I'm afraid it will jump on MY face. But Andrew is in love, and this reptile doesn't scare me so much. :) 

Camping - Snow Canyon State Park

I was raised by a woman who taught me that there is nothing worse than camping, fish is disgusting, and being polite is the most important thing you can be. These principles have affected my life more than you know.

Well my nature loving husband begged me to come along on his last camping trip to St. George to complete his research last weekend. (He received a grant last year to do a bee survey in Snow Canyon State Park.) And I knew that I had to oblige, even though I probably would be miserable the whole time. You see, I just wasn't built for the outdoors. I'm so fair I've had people mistake me for an albino. I'm allergic, and apparently very appealing to mosquitoes. I just don't do the outdoors much. My husband on the other hand, could very easily forsake society and backpack around the country for the rest of his life. Opposites attract.

Anyway, whether I was fully sold on it or not, I packed all of my necessities into my pink backpack and strapped myself in for the long ride to St. George after work on Friday. Overall the trip was surprisingly better than I thought, with just a few bumps along the way. (Literally, I was eaten to death by mosquitoes both nights.)

Here are the highlights!

1. Snow Canyon is beautiful! Southern Utah is known for it's red rock, and it didn't disappoint! 
   
   

   

   This picture was taken around 7 am, I couldn't believe the moon was still up! 

   
   

   

   Johnson's Canyon

   
   

   

   All of this black rock is from lava flows. Cool, huh?

    

   

   Johnson's Arch

   
   
   2. Watching Andrew do his research was really cool. He's described it to me before, but actually watching him complete the process made me realize how much work he was really doing.
   
   

   

   First you have to scout a good location off the path to place your different colored traps that attract the bees.

   

   Then you fill the cups with soapy water and leave them for a day.

   

   While we waited, Andrew used this cool contraption to collect more bees.

   Andrew's research is on a bee survey. So he preserves and pins all of the bees that he collects, so that he can identify and analyze what species are present in this state park. It was really cool of Snow Canyon to give him this permit to do a collection, and even better that the school gave him a grant to do it all!

   
   3. I was pleasantly surpised to find that Andrew's secondary research was actually kind of cool. ha! He did some lizard tail sample collection for his professor who is doing research on the genetics of lizards in the region. Andrew used his lizard noose (Yes, I have made fun of him for this. And yes, it actually works!) to catch lizards then he would take a small sample of their tails. He is actually really good at this!
   

   
   

   

   One unlucky lizard who he caught on his noose.

   
   

   

   The lizards have really cool looking underbellies! (On top they were just gray and black)

   4. Hiking! Ok I'll let you in on a little secret: I really enjoy hiking. There were some cool short hikes around St. George. Heck, my favorite was one we spotted from the road!
   
   
   

   

   Me at the top of this cool hike we found while driving through St. George. Andrew is terrified of heights so he wouldn't even go close to the edge.

   
   

   
   

   

   It was just over the side of the road!

   
   5. And lastly, just spending an entire weekend with my guy, no cell phones, no worries. Just a lot of great conversation. How wonderful it is to be able to do this.
   
   

   

   He's handsome even when he gets mad at me for taking pictures and grimaces. :)

   
   
   Overall my first camping experience wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I did get eaten alive by bugs, and trying to share a one person tent didn't really go so well....but the 5 points above more than made up for it. I might just have to give this camping thing a try again.

BYU vs Texas

The company that I work for has season tickets to BYU football games, and for a while it was my job to help give them out to the lucky few who were selected to attend. Last year we found out that the Texas Longhorns (my FAVORITE team) would be playing BYU in Provo, UT for the 2013 season. Well obviously I had to go!

By some miracle I was able to scrounge tickets at the last minute, and convince Andrew that he should postpone his trip to St. George. I was so excited about this game that I went out and bought two new longhorn hats, and even replaced Andrew's ragged old UT shirt. My enthusiasm was a bit clouded however by an experience that happened to us two years ago....

In the stands! 

 My other (and really only other) sports team is the Dallas Mavs. So when we moved out here I secured us cheap seat tickets to watch them play the Jazz. One thing you need to know about Utah is that the only real professional sports team they have is the Jazz. There is no NFL team, no hockey, not even a baseball team. So they go all out, even though let's face it the Jazz isn't exactly #1. Well coming off the 2011 Championship we were decked out in all blue and ready to cheer on Dirk! Thankfully the Mavs were victorious! (I was sweating bullets for a while...) But this only made the Jazz fans furious, and they were not happy to see us cheering on our team. We got several rude comments and things got pretty tense. Even walking to our car after the game I was a little worried by the comments people were making. Thankfully nothing really happened....but it wasn't exactly a fun relaxing game.

I was worried to be sitting in the BYU section decked out in orange. I even tried to look up etiquette for away games....I would link to it, but there wasn't too much out there. Everyone pretty much recommends you be respectful, and keep in mind it's just a game. Anyway as game day approached I decided that I was ready to go out and support my team!

Driving up to the stadium I was happy to see tons of orange shirts! I couldn't believe how many people were decked out in support of Texas! I felt so much better as we finally found a parking place and headed toward the stadium. That's when we noticed ominous dark clouds swirling in the sky. I literally stopped and asked Andrew if Utah got tornadoes. That's when the heavens released a downpour. The rain was so hard it hurt my legs, Andrew was even assaulted by a flying fruit coming off of a tree that split his lip. It was crazy! We took cover under some thick trees. I couldn't help but look down at my white shorts (great choice Lacey) and my soaked cotton hoodie. After about 30 minutes we decided we needed to just make a break for it. The game was starting in a half hour! So we ran through the rain only to see people fleeing the stadium. Did we really just drive 1.5 hours for a cancelled game?!

Soaked but ready for the game

They told us if we wanted to wait in the stadium we could, but they were encouraging everyone to return to their cars. Well that was a nice half a mile back in the soaking rain. At this point we were committed to sticking it out. What I noticed as we walked the stadium was the crazy amount of orange. I've hear rumor that Texas was allotted 5,000 tickets to play this game, and I would believe it! It was nice to be with my fellow Texans for a day. :)

Finally the game started back up, and that's about where this story gets worse. Unfortunately it was a slow start...and then after a few touch downs we just lost hold of the game. I believe it was something like 550 rushing yards that we lost, breaking a previous BYU record. Despite the sad performance the thing I noticed most was the hospitality of the BYU fans. It was a bit awkward to cheer against everyone else in the stands...but despite that awkwardness the woman sitting behind us could see how much we were shivering in our soaking we clothes and offer us a blanket and some hand warmers. After we couldn't take it anymore and left with 4 minutes left after the game almost everyone we passed thanked us for coming (they assumed we traveled from Austin) and told us that they hoped we had fun with a pat on the back. And this was not the least bit a way to rub in the loss. I think that if we had to lose, we probably lost to the nicest team possible.

Munchen -Part 1

Did you know that Munich is not really called Munich in German? Apparently they call it Munchen, and us English speakers changed it to Munich. Weird.

Munich was the last part of our trip after leaving behind all of our new friends in Karlsruhe. This meant that we were no longer staying with our buddies, but staying in hotel rooms with our classmates. This proved to be a bit of an awkward situation with our small group, and the European hotel rooms.

The first night we stayed at a hotel in Munich called Cocoon. It was a strange 70's style hotel with a theme around....you guessed it, cocoons. Now obviously (at least I hope it's obvious) I wasn't alive in the 70's so I'm going off of total speculation here, but the green and orange shag carpets and egg chairs made for an interesting blast from the past. The hotel itself was curious, but coming down to breakfast and hearing the 70's music blaring really made it like a trip through the twilight zone.

Here are some pictures of the hotel, and our room:

The lobby of the hotel

The tv stand had a mirror on the back and could rotate. 

I took a very nice nap in this chair. 

My classmate Darin in one of the egg chairs in the lobby.

What made the situation so awkward was that our group was small and uneven. There were only three of us girls total, so we had to share a room. This room had a cot, and a queen size bed. (Remember back in my overview how I explained that we had never met before...) The bed situation wasn't too difficult to navigate, but the bathroom situation was a bit more awkward. The bathroom had no real door. There was a sliding door that either covered the toilet or the shower. So to step in or out of the shower...you were totally exposed. AWKWARD. 

Toilet with the sliding door.

Thankfully I stayed with some amazing ladies and we worked out the situation with little discomfort. However, we were the lucky ones. The boys were stuck in rooms meant for only 2 people. And one student had to share with our professor. (This is a little less weird in that most of us are older non-traditional students. So it's not like there was some CRAZY age gap. However a nameless source did confide that the prof snored quite loudly through the night. AWKWARD!) The 2 people rooms had a similar bathroom set up with one exception....the sliding door was glass. Now that is one awkward situation I am glad I didn't have to navigate! 

So the first part of our adventure in Munich was our crazy 70's Cocoon hotel. It was quite an adventure, and we haven't even gotten to the city yet! 

Finding A Church

Well reader, it has been a busy September so far! (And it's only the 6th!) Andrew and I have recently found a church that we both like (this is actually a difficult task, as we both look for different things, and being a Protestant in Utah makes it even harder.) I don't usually share so personally, because, well, I don't know who you are! But this journey to find a church stems from a lot of background and personal experience.

 I am a Christian. I don't identify with a denomination other than the generic Protestant. I don't believe in men making decisions about what God has to say. I think he made it clear in the bible which is why I don't identify as Baptist, Methodist, Episcopal, or anything else. I believe in a personal relationship with God and do not merit any works as a means to heaven. 

It's a scary thing in this day and age to declare these things publicly. And while I'm not on a soap box in downtown SLC, or even writing for a large following, I do feel it is important that I share this information. I have friends, colleagues, and family that do not agree with my position. I don't like to take social media or my professionalism to use as a soapbox, but I do want to be clear. I don't judge anyone else for having different beliefs - but this is me. You should know the real me.

There is a lot to share in my personal journey and evolution of my relationship with Christ. I can't do that all here in one post. And I don't really plan on doing it regularly. That's not the intention of this blog. This blog is about travel, and well this journey is one that has been important in my life lately. I may choose to write more later, but I don't know yet. For now, I know that I want to share some insight into my family and our journey to find a church.

When we lived in Denton we found a church that we both absolutely loved. Then we moved to Utah. It was confusing to see a temple/stake center on every corner. Heck, I was used to seeing Baptist churches! So we dragged our feet and checked out a few churches as we thought about it. Some were shockingly evangelical...completely freaked my born and raised Southern Baptist husband. Some were a bit too immature, my deep thinker just didn't think it was enough for him to grow from. But this new one seems to be just right.

You see, we both have very different backgrounds when it comes to churches.

 Andrew, as I mentioned was raised in Baptist churches. When he was in middle school his family switched to a new church so that his sister could find a good youth program. She loved it, but Andrew was miserable. He didn't fit in with the kids that attended and saw a lot of hypocrisy as he moved into high school. One of the things I truly love about my husband is his passion for learning. He is no different when it comes to theology. He's a quiet guy, but he does have a lot of opinions and reads a lot. I respect him immensely and want him to have the opportunity to chose a church where he feels comfortable. He doesn't like sermons that are surface level. He thinks we should be gaining some insight and depth, and well, our last church was fantastic at that!

Now me. My father was a chaplain in the air force. He pastored his own Baptist church when I was a baby. Unfortunately the Southern Baptist stigma rang true in small town Texas and my family struggled with the whole denomination from that point on. Growing up we were never members of any church through we regularly attended a Bible Church from the time I was 5-17. We were involved, I was active in Awana, Small groups, the praise team (for a brief period), and my parents helped out with children's Sunday school. We felt loved there, and not domineered by a denomination or the political aspects of church administration. The teachings were based strictly on the Bible. When I turned about 17 my life had changed a lot. I was a bit more jaded and I suddenly realized that sleeping through the college like lectures of my pastor was not OK. Sure, I really enjoyed our Youth group and got a lot out of the message. But high school was almost over.

Not to mention when you attend a church for so long you see people change. I was frustrated by cliques that I was seeing evolve in our Youth group. As a very jealous person I was irritated to see people getting all of the attention and opportunities. I realized that it was time to move on. I needed to find a place where I was growing and learning, and a place where I felt loved and wanted. I just didn't feel that way anymore. (DISCLAIMER: I am not blaming anyone for this change of heart. If anything I am to blame for feeling distant and frustrated. My jealousy is probably my biggest struggle and unfortunately I let it warp my perception and take over my emotions. It's something I still struggle with today. There are a lot of friends that I have made at the church I grew up in, and for that I am so grateful. I think anyone who knew me in middle school really saw my heart. High school changed things, and not always for the better. I don't blame the church or it's members....but things changed and I needed to move on.)

When we went off to college there was another Bible church very similar to the one I grew up in. Andrew had been a few times and really liked it. But a lot of those same people (it's really common for people to move to Denton from my hometown) were attending the church, and it wasn't the fresh start I wanted. We turned our attention to a different church, and I'll be honest things were tough for quite a while. If high school was a change of heart, college was a roller coaster. I dealt with issues I wasn't prepared for, and struggled with demons that kept me from accepting the grace I have always revered. Thankfully I wasn't left alone to figure things out, Christ kept with me and led me back to him. (Not that I was ever truly away...just struggling.)

Finding this church here in Utah wasn't easy, and for two people who are shy it can be hard to really join into a new community. We are both pushing ourselves to get involved and make this church our home. I'm excited to see what we will learn and what kind of encouragement we can gain.