you know it's going to be a good day....

when you pour your Marshmallow Mateys and they look like this:

oh baby, the day is mine!

nothing between the ears...

As much as I'd like to write something clever, fun-to-read, and utterly hilarious that proves how awesome our life is, I got nothing in my brain. Uhhh...Thayne did a puzzle in the other room last night while I read Special Problems in our room.  Wait, that's not exciting.  Hmmm....I made chicken fried steak for the first time last night and it turned out well, but the meat was about 3-4 centimeters too thick, super neat, I know. At this very minute I'm just sitting in the Maac lounge (oh yes, us cool accounting master's students have our own lounge complete with a microwave and couches) dreading this partnership return that my group needs to get started on. Barf. But you know what?  Life is good, spring is coming, and we have a killer weekend planned.  See you soon.

just pretend it's still February...

drool.  What a dapper, handsome, stylish, impressive, sweet, attractive, and fine young man.  All I need to say about our Valentine's is that I love him and our immaculate dinner was almost as delicious as this boy is wonderful.

Nothing says love, romance, and forever, like a giant, bloody, heart-shaped steak from your father-in-law.  Happy Valentine's day everyone.

I've had some adventures of my own since I last wrote.

1. I am most definitely the Phantom of the Canyon Rim 3rd Ward, aka one of the ward organists. (In case you don't understand the picture, my hand is the phantom mask).

2. This is one of the more exciting jobs an accountant gets to do: an inventory count in an operating room.  I got to wear a giant, blue, sterile suit and count stuff.  Totally worth 5 years of studying.

Bluebird, soft-snow type of day with dad and Soph.  There are few things I enjoy more than a beautiful ski day.  Some of those things are the giant lunch in the lodge that we inhaled, new socks, and Thayne Davis.

Special Problems...

I have special problems.  Lots.

Just kidding.  I DO have a tax class called "Special Problems" and it makes Thayner and me laugh every time I say it.  The class is so perfectly named because it really does cause special problems in my life. Actually, all of my tax classes do...thank you, you beautiful 21 hours of mind-numbing, Internal-Code-scrounging, near-coma-inducing day after day legal jargon and impossible tests...you are my special problems.  My special problems also include: the fact that this post has taken me five, yes, five days to write, the fact that I haven't posted the true awesomeness that was our Valentine's Day, the tupperware of lasagna that has been in our fridge for, oh, I don't know, four weeks now that I'm scared has come alive, and the absurd amount of comas in this sentence.

*After posting these thoughts, another of my special problems has been brought to my attention: my lack of proficiency in the English language.  If you notice, there aren't an absurd amount of comas in the last sentence, but an absurd amount of commas. Thank you to the kind, handsome, and obviously verbose gentleman who brought this to my attention, I love you honey.

a few things...

So, Thayner, being the perfect man that he is, volunteered for dinner duty on Tuesday (one of my busier school nights) and made these succulent, bacon-wrapped, made-me-feel-as-if-we-were-on-the-beaches-of-some-Carribean-island, shish-kabobs smothered in sweet teriyaki sauce.  drool.  Kind of embarrassing that he is a better cook than me on his first try. Side note: these shish-kabobs were the first thing I ever cooked by myself and they were not even in the same galaxy as these perfection sticks that Thayner grilled up.  I guess he'll just have to cook everything from now on.

So, remember how cross-country skiing was our "thang".  hmmmmm...not so much.  We still go and love it, but as we slide all the way down Millcreek canyon on our bums because we can't get up after we fall and as professional cross country skiers whiz past our bruised rumps and egos, we can't help but think, "maybe we aren't really good at this."  However, if having fun were a measure of how successful you were at something, we are professionals.

Speaking of professionals, we have found our life's calling as ice dancers (again, fun level being the measure of how good we are).  Here we all in all of our glory on the annual homemade Davis ice rink.  Don't be fooled by Thayne's gorgeous arabesque, he is basically a professional Canadian knock-your-teeth-out hockey player (side note: Carrie Underwood is married to such a hockey player, other side note: Thayne is secretly and openly in love with Carrie Underwood see here.

adventures in the testing center part two

Yet another amazing day in the BYU Testing Center.  So, there I was just minding my own business on my HR exam, when all of a sudden I felt an uncomfortable pressure on my behind.  Of course, this must be an unfortunate mistake, I should alert the keister-kicker to his or her error.  I politely made my presence known by rapidly sitting back in my chair, but to no avail, the toe-tapping remained.  For the next twenty minutes, I felt a whole range of emotion: uncomfortableness, impatience, rage, then I laughed for about three minutes because the tap dance on my caboose never ceased.  The thing is, I never got up the nerve to turn around and see who the fanny-feeler was, they left before I could identify the bottom-bandit.

Who are you, mystery bum-toucher? Are your legs so long that your knees can't help but to curve over into my heinie?  Are they so freakishly short that you can somehow shove your legs up under that tiny desk and wedge your toes between my derriere and the seat?  Is your view of the world so skewed that you think it's okay to completely be in breach of my personal bubble, especially during a test at the BYU testing center?  I'm sure that's in the Honor Code somewhere. Anyway, fanny-feeler, I wish you the best in your future endeavors. I hope you are a female so you and testing-center-snot-sucker can get married.

Don't cry for us Argentina...

Words can not begin to describe the adventure we just had, but this post will attempt to scratch the surface.  The adventure was born somewhere at the end of 2011 on the butcher paper tablecloth of Macaroni Grill in downtown Salt Lake.  

Almost every day of 2012, we have planned and schemed and tried to save money for our Argentine adventure. Our original butcher paper trip turned out a little differently than we planned, but it was perfect.  We left Christmas day and flew to Santiago, Chile--took a bus over the Andes to Mendoza, Argentina--night bus to Cordoba, Argentina (where Thayner served his mission)--flight to Buenos Aires, Argentina--flight to Bariloche, Argentina (Patagonia)--back to Buenos Aires--home January 11.  Let me fill you in on the details!

 Top two pictures: we traveled, a LOT.  Bus, plane, train, car, walking, hiking with our bags for miles...you name it...we did it.

Bottom left: The highlights of Mendoza were a) the 95 degree weather, b) riding bicycles through endless vineyards, and c) getting asked a million times WHY we wouldn't drink the wine at the wine tastings.  Our tour guide informed us that certainly it would be okay if we just swished some wine around in our mouths to really get the full experience and then just spit it out.  Surely, that would be fine, wouldn't it?  See you later Mendoza!

Bottom right: This is what we discovered to be the "completo effect".  In my hand is a Chilean completo--a hot dog covered in avocado, tomatoes, and mayonnaise.  DELICIOUS, right?  I loved those things on my mission SO much.  As we bit into our completos, we couldn't help but have the feeling "hey, this is pretty gross".  And thus, the completo effect is born.  Sometimes we tend to idealize or romanticize the past and going back to it can be disappointing.  I'm pretty sure completos were delicious while I was in Chile, but they are part of my past (a delicious part) and will probably remain in the past the rest of my life. It's always a little interesting and melancholy to experience the "completo effect", but it's a necessary part of life that keeps us progressing and moving forward. 

Dean Funes.  A pueblo in the middle of absolutely nowhere.  As we were driving up to Dean Funes, Thayner described the town as "absolutely worthless, with no reason to even exist".  Dean Funes also happens to be the town where Thayner began and ended his mission, where he learned to love and serve, where he became the amazing man he is today, and where his favorite Argentine family lives.  Worthless? I don't think so.  

Top left: We went to the branch in Dean Funes. Let's be honest, teenage girls cried when they saw him come in.  It was like one of the Beatles showing up.  The aforementioned Beatle would probably have to show up somewhere in England or the U.S. because I don't know if anyone in Dean Funes would recognize a Beatle.  Nonetheless!  They really love Thayne there.  Thayner and I both spoke in sacrament meeting and Thayne taught sunday school. That sunday school lesson might be my favorite moment on the adventure.  He will kill me for writing this but he taught through the Spirit with such clarity, power and love.  That lesson really showed me what kind of a missionary he was (and continues to be) and I fell head over heels completely in love and in awe of my handsome husband again.

Top and bottom right: This is a lamb.  The Contreras family (Thayne's favorite Argentine convert family) killed the fatted calf for our arrival.  For the two days we were with them, we ate an entire lamb, a few chickens, a million empanadas, and eight gallons of ice cream.  We are so grateful for their kindness and sacrifice on our behalf.  

Bottom left: These little cuties are the familia Cabrera.  They have been members of the church for a million years and let us sleep at their house in Dean Funes.  They treated us like royalty.  As you can tell, they are hilarious and very romantic.

Before we knew it, it was off to Buenos Aires.  What a great city.  We walked the pick-pocket-ridden streets of La Boca, snuggled in front of the temple, people-watched in the ginormous and gorgeous park, walked a million miles, took in a tango show on the main street, ate the best meal of our lives in Palermo, and pilgrimeged to the grave of Eva Peron (socialist leader who is played by Madonna in one of our favorite movies ever).  It was a million degrees every day, and we enjoyed every second of it.

Ah, the Patagonia.  It makes me feel so cool to say I lived there for 1.5 years.  People think I was wearing spandex and colorful fleece zip-ups while summiting volcanoes and riding penguins in Antarctica...almost, but not quite.  The Argentine Patagonia is stunning, but much drier than the Chilean side but thankfully with all the same fleas.  Thayner fished and I read marvelous books on the bank.  We hardly saw anybody all day out in nature and then we'd come home to our separate bunk beds with six other Latins in a creepy log cabin in a town with 40 residents on a lake (aka setting for a horror movie).  We were the first Americans to ever stay there (probably the title of the horror movie). 

All in all, I'm going to say this trip was a resounding success. We only got mad at each other one time on the last day about the cleanliness of a certain white shirt of his.  Ridiculous argument that was over as fast as it was stupid.  What a blessing and opportunity to explore and understand this country and people that means the world to Thayne.  I love putting faces and places with the stories I hear and I understand to a greater extent why Thayner is the way he is.  His service as a missionary in Argentina changed him and I am forever grateful that I understand his story a little better.  We have story after story of animals running wild at the zoo, dead bodies outside our hostels, the worst, cheese-filled dinner of our lives, bank strikes, and diarrhea, but you can ask us about those, this post is meant to give you a taste of the delicious adventure that was Argentina.