Things I Miss about Portland

1. Sunday dinners at the Perry-Hanchetts. We love Sundy's Aunt Carla and Uncle Chuck, and her cousins Crystal, Kevin, Kayleen, Bobby, and little Perry, and visiting them on Sunday evenings was always a treat. It's not going to be easy getting used to Sunday afternoons without them. And let's face it - that was the best food we ate all week.
2. The Tigard 2nd LDS Ward. We attended two LDS church meetings today, one for the ward where we are temporarily living and one for the ward we hope to move into (if everything on the rental we want turns out okay). (LDS congregations are assigned by location, so where we attend is matter of where we live rather than where we choose to go). Both were good wards. We felt the Spirit at each, though we felt more warmly welcomed into the second ward (the one we hope to move into) than we did in the first (maybe they sensed that we were short-timers?). But none compared to the feeling of good ole Tigard Two. Maybe it will once we get to know people, but we sure miss the good folk of our congregation back in Oregon.
3. Our friends. The McCollums, the Huffakers, the Rudolphs, our church friends, Sundy's work and school pals, my De Paul buddies - evenings are long without our friends to enjoy them with!
4. Grocery stores. No Winco or New Seasons Market out here. Fortunately, there is a Costco, and we hear there are some Trader Joes (though we haven't yet seen one), so we haven't completely lost all of our favorite stores. What they have here, though, at least what we've found, just isn't the same. Walmart is no Winco, and King Sooper's is no New Seasons (what kind of of name is that for a grocery store, anyway? And what's with the deliberate misspelling of "Super"?)
5. Wooded parks with trails. I really miss running through Cook Park. Jogging on sidewalks through urban sprawl just doesn't compare.
6. Clouded skies. Yes, I'm missing them already. It is nice to see the sunshine, but 95 degrees is HOT (it appears that our time in Oregon has decreased my tolerance for heat). As I sit typing this in our brick oven of a rental home without AC, I really wouldn't mind some 60-degree rainy days.
7. Good, friendly drivers. It may be our out-of-state license plates, but I get the feeling that Colorado drivers don't care for us. And, man-o-man, the jaywalkers! I've almost hit several of them leisurely walking across 7-lane city roads, mid-block.

Not that we aren't enjoying our time out here. It is a fun, sunny, beautiful place, and we are excited for what this next phase in our lives brings.

Our New Home

We have arrived! The Mile High City is now considered home. These beautiful souls, Bob and Nancy, took their blessed 2000 Odyssey on an epic journey, bringing what would fit of our meager belongings in the cavity of the van. Mom has always been up for adventures, and she made sure to call along the way here to let us know  the botany of Colorado, the geography of the Denver area, and the local site-seeing attractions, including the Molly Brown Mansion:

We did some botany sighting of our own with my dad while Mom went to dinner with her high school friends, finding ourselves at the Denver Botanic Gardens on "free day." This lovely bush is called Darwin's Joyce.

We actually did not tour the Molly Brown Mansion as the picture above may allude to, because, well, we have our own Molly Brown mansion. The place we're subletting for the next two months is owned by a lady named Molly Brown. I was disappointed to learn that Molly is not her real first name, thinking it was too good to be true, until I learned that the unsinkable Molly Brown's real name was Margaret.

I'll take you on a small tour of our rented M.A.S.H.:


Meet our newest additions, Nellie and Nick. Both seem to believe that this bed is their bed. I was fine to let them think that, but Tyler has been teaching them several times a night that if they break through the barricaded door, they will end up on his wrong side of the bed ;)

 This is the bathroom shower curtain. I never knew how fun it was to look at the world when doing your business. Did you know that there is a Prince Edward Island owned by South Africa?

Here's the Mansion proper, aka the living room/dining room. Molly and Eric left wonderful books to peruse, including American Test Kitchen recipes for me and Mammals of Colorado for Tyler. Scratch that. All the books are for Tyler.

We really love the gas stove top and all the awesome cookware the Browns are graciously letting us use. As we got rid of all our old cookware, we are getting ample time to know the joys of All-Clad pots, double broilers, and dutch oven cookware.

Like I said, we've arrived. Adjusting takes time. The sun has been shining. none. stop. It's hot, quite frankly. This is the best time of year to be in Portland--we miss the green and the cool. One thing Denver has that Portland was missing are streets have the same names and go on forever, rather than Portland's meandering streets that never lead to the place you thought. In all that meandering, we found some real treasures.

There are treasures here, too. Tyler's medical school campus is gigantic and quite impressive. I'm glad he's the one starting school. We will adjust. This is our new home. It almost feels like it.

10K

I do not have the body of a runner. To give you an idea: at 5'9", I have the same inseam as my 5'3" wife, meaning that even though my torso is 6 inches longer than hers, our legs are the same length. Not only are they too short to be good running legs, but they are also supporting 6 inches of extra body mass. Add to that a propensity for allergies and an overweight body, and it is no wonder that I never enjoyed running when I was growing up.

That changed when we moved to Oregon. At the time, I was considering applying for a Navy scholarship to help pay for medical school, but I discovered that I would have to drop about 15 pounds in order to qualify for it. With that as my motivation, I started doing daily jogs on our apartment's treadmill, and once summer arrived, I began jogging in parks around the area. As my body started adjusting to the runs, and as I found podcasts on interesting topics that I could listen to while I run, I actually began to enjoy running, especially medium-distance runs.

Up until yesterday, though I had never run any races outside of elementary school track meets. Running was a solitary thing for me, something I enjoyed doing by myself or with one or two other people. Also, though I would keep track of either the amount of time or the distance I ran, I never would keep track of both at the same time. That way I could live in blissful ignorance about how slow I run. Running a race would change that - lots of people and no way to remain in ignorance about my rate.

My cousin Kristin, though, talked me into running my first race: The Speedy Spaniard. That 10K is held every July 24 as part of the Fiesta Days celebration in my hometown of Spanish Fork. As Sundy and I would be in Utah on the 24, Kristin convinced us to go run the race with her.

I anticipated that the elevation change, going from Portland to Utah, might make running in Spanish Fork a bit more difficult than I was used to, I did as much training in Utah as I could in the 3 weeks leading up to the race, including some long distance runs on the country roads in West Mountain and a 15-mile run from Orem High to Bridal Veil Falls and back. The training went well, and by the day of the race I felt ready.

Unfortunately, I made a few mistakes.

Mistake #1: Forgetting a shoe. On the morning of the 24, I woke up in Spanish Fork and discovered that I left one of my running shoes in Orem. My brother Sage was kind enough to lend me some of his shoes, which were a half size too big and not what I was used to, but serviceable. They ended up giving me shin splints.

Mistake #2: Not using the restroom before the race. I meant to take care of that, but the lines to the restrooms were too long before the race started, so I thought I could manage until the end of the race. Unfortunately, as soon as I started running, I had to pee, and the urge only got worse as I went along. Finally, at mile 3 I stopped to use one of the porta potties provided for us along the race track. Things got much easier after that.

Mistake #3: Starting out too fast. The gun went off, and people started running. Some of them were running pretty fast. The competitive guy in me pushed hard to keep up with them, even though I knew the rate was too fast. At the time, I told myself, "I'm used to running 15 miles, so I can handle 6.2 miles at a faster pace." Wrong. There were some big hills at the first, and I was tired even before I hit the first mile marker. And it never got easier. I felt like I had to fight for every footstep I took in that race.

Mistake #4: Not checking the race route beforehand. I knew that the race went from Canyon View Park to Spanish Fork City Park, but I didn't realize that the race route overshot the park by two blocks then looped around and completely circled the park. So I started my final sprint (if you could call it a sprint) too soon, and wore myself out.

I ended up running the race in 50:23, which worked out to about 8:08 a mile. Not bad, I guess (10th in my age division!), but I like to think that had I not made those 4 mistakes, I could have finished the race with a less-than-8-minute mile.

The Speedy Spaniard was not my favorite running experience. Kristin is now trying to convince me to run a triathlon. We'll see.

Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Katherine Jenkins Concert

Before we left Oregon, Sundy's aunt Carla gave us 4 tickets to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Pioneer Day Concert. We are both Choir fans, but what made this even more exciting was that the concert would be featuring Katherine Jenkins, the British classical singer turned Dancing with the Stars runner-up (who should have won the competition, not that I ever watched the show or anything.) 


Wanting to make sure we didn't lose the tickets in the chaos of our move, we put them in a safe place. Of course, once we got to Utah, we found that the place was so safe we couldn't find it. Thinking that they had to be somewhere, I began going through our things, eventually unpacking many of our packed boxes. After all that unsuccessful searching, we left those belongings storage in my family's Benjamin garage and spent the next week with Sundy's family in Orem, fearing that we would not get to see the show. Sundy even called the Choir's ticket office to see if we could get tickets reprinted, but they told us the only way they would do it is if Carla went in person to the office in Salt Lake City and show a photo ID. Otherwise, our only choice was to arrive at 5:30 pm for standby seating. We decided that a 24-hour round-trip drive was not worth a few tickets, and we didn't want to brave the standby line, so we resigned ourselves to missing this concert. 


After a few days, though, we decided to search for the tickets one last time. We made the 30-minute drive to Benjamin, said a prayer, and began looking once more. Not long after we started looking, Sundy went through a bag that I had searched several times previously. She pulled out a box of blank thank-you cards, and there were the tickets. (Why didn't I think to check there?) 


So on Friday night we rode up to Salt Lake with Sundy's parents to see the performance in the LDS Conference Center. 


It was a well-performed concert. Its theme, "The Joy of Song," was expressed through a variety of songs and spoken word segments. The choir began the night with a set of two Mack Wilberg arrangements of pioneer hymns. Though for a few moments the choir dragged behind the orchestra, they soon came together and were in sync the rest of the night - a rather incredible feat for an ensemble that large in a performance hall as spacious as the Conference Center. 


Katherine Jenkins is an enjoyable performer - her Welsh accent and sparkling personality are delightful. Her lyric mezzo soprano voice was perhaps best showcased in "Cymru Fach;" her interpretation of the Welsh hymn provided one of the most moving performances of the night. The reality-show-following segment of the audience seemed excited by the appearance of Mark Ballas, with whom she reprised their paso doble routine from Dancing with the Stars. Indeed, the dance provided a welcome reprieve from the showtune-heavy program, which included pieces from State Fair, The Wizard of Oz, Kismet, Carousel, and My Fair Lady (the composition of which was mistakenly attributed to Richard Rogers rather than Frederick Loewe in the program). 


While Jenkins certainly has quite a set of pipes, her voice has a dark quality that I find unappealing (though that is a personal that preference stems from my training at BYU, where uber-forward, almost nasal, placement is taught). Her resonance placement, especially in her lower range, is far enough back in her throat that at times she seems to be swallowing the notes. 


Abandon is an element of music that adds excitement to performance. Pushing a performance to the limit carries an element of risk - it could reach a new level of virtuosic brilliance, or it could result in a technical mistake. To me, Jenkins played it safe. The high notes at the climaxes in "I Could Have Danced All Night" and "The Prayer" were transposed down, and thus lacked some of the emotional power that can be brought out in the pieces. 


Richard Elliott, on the other hand, brought down the house with his organ accompaniment to "Sing!" a piece based on the toccata from Widor's Organ Symphony no. 5. The incessant sixteenth note figures were executed brilliantly at a tempo that must have been risky even for a performer of his skill level.


The concert concluded with two standing ovations and one encore performance by Jenkins. 


One final thought: I would sure like to hear Leroy Robertson's setting of "Come, Come Ye Saints" more often. While Mack Wilberg's arrangement, the one performed at the concert and multiple other Choir events, is beautiful and poignant, it lacks the emotional depth and textural complexity of the Robertson setting.

Marissa

Marissa is my youngest sibling, 10 years' worth of energy and twice that of spunk. She played in the state softball tournament last week. In the games we watched, she got three hits, one of which resulted in 2 RBIs and another that got her on base. In an age group where three-fourths of the at-bats end in walks or strikeouts, that's not too shabby. Of course, she comes from a baseball family - her brother Seth still holds the Utah state record for stolen bases.

Sundy and I have had a lot of fun with her this last week. I share the following with her permission:


Experience 1: While visiting our grandpa, Marissa kept vying for my attention. Finally, feeling a bit exasperated, I pulled an elastic band out of her hair.


Marissa: Hey, that's annoying!


Me: Call it karma.


Marissa: Hey, that's karma!


Experience 2: Marissa was playing with Sundy's phone, thinking it was mine. She sent a text to the number labeled "Mom" in the contacts: "Poopy :)"


Only the text went to Sundy's mom, not Marissa's.

Home on the Farm

Sundy and I spent the last week with my family on our farm in Benjamin, Utah. It was an idyllic week, full of nostalgia and good times - green apples, swimming in the irrigation pool, camping, horseback riding, ball games. Like being a kid again.

That's my sister Marissa looking towards the camera playing 3rd base. Baseball  and softball run in my family's blood - though for some reason I was passed by.

The Peterson family (my in-laws): Paul, Sundy, Bob (holding Precious), Nancy, and Lacey on the 4th of July (don't they look patriotic?)

Sundy's first time on a horse. A few minutes after this photo, the horse (Thunder) showed her how much he appreciated her by stepping on her foot.

At Stuart Falls (left to right: Kyle, Kristin, Marissa, Sundy, and me, the awkward one in cutoffs with my pocket hanging out (that's the pocket the picture-taking phone came out of)). We went camping up Provo Canyon, and got a sweet deal: my aunt LuAnn and sister BreAnn drove our meals up to us each day.

Me and my bros Collin and Sage.

This next week we will be spending with Sundy's family in Orem. More Utah adventures to come...

Moving

The two of us in the Roberts' doorframe just before leaving.

It is somewhat appalling to see how many belongings can build up over so short a time. Sundy and I felt like we got rid of a good proportion of our accumulations when we moved nine months ago. Additionally, getting ready for our next move, this time out of state, we took two car loads to Goodwill and made five trips to the Deseret Industries pod to drop off things we hadn't been using or thought we could go without; sold or gave away all our remaining furniture (including our beloved piano); threw out unneeded papers, source-forgotten keepsakes, less-than-functional pens, and other accumulated junk; and packed, stacked, squished, compressed, and otherwise forced all that remained into boxes and totes for the trip to Colorado. 


After all that, we were still left with this, an overflowing F250 and a filled Focus (rather fittingly, two American cars to haul our conspicuously consumed American belongings): 

Our full Ford Focus

Grandpa and Sage, Grandpa's truck, and all our boxed belongings

Fortunately, we had help. My grandpa, mom, and brother packed the truck for us and rotated the driving responsibilities. And I've got to say that their packing job was amazing. Our belongings survived Portland traffic, Columbia River Gorge and Idaho prairie winds, and Utah construction to arrive safely in my parents' garage, anxiously awaiting the final leg of their journey in a few weeks. 


Even so, I felt a twinge of envy for the pioneers, who fit all of their belongings into wagons or even handcarts. Granted, I appreciated the engines, air conditioning, and paved roads that allowed us to get to Utah quickly and (relatively) comfortably. What I envied was the constraints that forced them to make hard decisions on what to take and what to leave behind. There is something liberating and oddly comforting in having few belongings to take with us, not being tied down by material possessions.


Special thanks to Grandpa, Mom, and Sage for their help in moving. Thanks also to the Anderson and Peterson families for letting us sleep in their homes and eat their food for the next few weeks. That's one thing about being unburdened by possessions: those without tend mooch from those with them.