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By Neil, 25 October 2009

I fly  to Utah tomorrow morning (Monday,26th  Oct.) to prep for Kate’s birthday season celebrations (see two posts down). Shoot me an email and let’s hang out!

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By Kate, 14 April 2009

Easter has come & gone & my internet fast has come to an end. Lucky you.

As always, I took Easter as an opportunity to bust out my glorious Easter bonnet. Normally I am joined by a few of the 60+ crowd in the congregation I attend, but this year I stood alone. Luckily, this bonnet was a particularly glorious gift from Neil that was resplendent enough for all to enjoy.

We had a fabulous time in Utah & got to see many good friends & have many good times.

We got to enjoy a delicious Iraqi feast and a rousing game of darts with the Alhasnawy family.

We dyed some delightful Easter eggs & stuffed about 1 million with candy.

We also had an Easter fiesta complete with a visit from the Easter bunny & a full-tilt Easter egg hunt in the garden!

Does anyone else have a good explanation for a Muslim from another country on why pastel eggs & bunnies & candy have anything to do with the Christian holiday Easter? Because, I sure don’t. After about 10 minutes blabbering about how Christian holidays often were meshed into Pagan celebrations, and what a Pagan is, and how eggs & bunnies represent fertility… I finally just gave up and said, “I don’t know, it’s just a tradition I suppose.” In retrospect, I should have started off with that.

We also got some fabulous gifts from my dad, including, but, not limited to, this chick CANDLE and purple hat.

It was great fun. Back to slaving away at school & diverting my studies with internet endeavours. Hoo-rah!

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By Kate, 28 December 2008

Neil and I hit the slopes on Friday at Brighton for some sweet, sweet night skiing. Me for the first time since about 1998 when all of my friends in high school were on the ski team in Oregon, and Neil for the first time since his 6th grade ski trip to Switzerland. (The benefit of living abroad is that you get to take field trips to Switzerland instead of, say, to the Wonderbread factory, which is one of my more memorable childhood field trips).

Neil really warmed up to the slopes after starting the night cursing my name on the way up the lift to the bunny slope. He caught on really quick with master teacher Jim Kelly in tow.

He ditched the snowplow and was carving up a storm.

We had a blast, but there are two primary barriers to our future as ski buffs. Primarily that skiing is such an expensive hassle. I mean, you have to load all of the equipment, get all the gear ready, drive forever to get to the resort, put all the gear on, unload all the equipment etc. Then by the time you are ready to ski you realize that you have to go to the bathroom and you have to peel of all 17 layers and repeat. Ugh.

Secondarily, it is always cold when you go skiing. When we went it was 0 degrees at the bottom of the lift. Which means it was at least 5 below at the top. Granted that’s nothing compared to, say, living in North Dakota… but, there’s a reason we moved to San Diego.

Despite the cold we had a really fantastic time & even graduated from the bunny hill to the green triangle & blue square runs. Any time we can ski for free… we’ll take it!

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By Kate, 26 December 2008

Snow is so nice when you’re on vacation & you know you’ll soon head back to 72 degree weather & beaches. We spent Christmas day making a 10 foot tall snowman & snow angels. The snow in Utah is truly perfect… at least for snowpeople construction. My mother was cursing all who prayed for a white Christmas… I say, let it snow!

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By Kate, 3 August 2008

We had an excellent good bye party with many great & dear friends & excellent presents from my dad (see above). We had some stellar veggie burgers that we learned how to make on Guy’s Fieri’s show on the food network (due to my mom’s obsession with said network). Here’s the recipe if you want delicious hearty veggie burgers!

After the fiesta we had a lawn campout!

Adieu Utah! Tomorrow we are on to California!

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By Neil, 24 June 2008

Does anyone else remember that just three weeks ago Utah was a chilly wintry wonderland, snow was still falling in the mountains and my apartment was the loveliest of temperatures and then all of a sudden as if over night it’s 92° outside and my apartment feels like the impact zone of a nuclear blast? Well it’s strange, and now I can’t sleep very well because our windowless apartment is just too dang hot. For the last two weeks Kate and I have been battling it out each night over whether to sleep with our tiny street-side bedroom window open or closed. Kate sleeps best when she’s wrapped in quilted blanked and the room temperature is right around fresh magma. I, on the other hand, can only sleep when naked in a bath of liquid nitrogen. Needless to say, this has been a source of contention in our family resulting in sleepless nights, me on the couch, late night showers and early morning runs. I’m just hoping I will get used to this because if we end up moving to Arizona I will perish.

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By Neil, 25 May 2008

What can I say more than the wedding was fabulous. Chrizelle, our new sister-in-law is from South Africa and it has been about a year since she and Peter decided to get married. What they thought would be a 6 month processes to get her finance visa turned out to take about a year. Luckily it came through and Chrizelle came over without a hitch. She has only been here for about a month and in that time Peter and Chrizelle have had to work extra hard planning, preparing, and baking for their wedding. Even with such short notice it was the loveliest of occasions.

The wedding ceremony was just beautiful and the reception, while almost immediately after the ceremony, was great as well. Everyone had a lot of fun, we were able to visit with old friends and family we hadn’t seen in years and the best part of the whole thing is that Peter and Chrizelle looked as happy as I have ever seen them. Congratulations guys!

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By Neil, 13 March 2008

Okay, so last week I presented my senior thesis research at BYU’s Inquiry Conference (mentioned in a previous post). Everyone said I did well, although I feel I did better the week before when I presented at the Utah Conference for Undergraduate Research. If you are bored enough to want to watch my presentation then click on the following link “Click Here to Watch My Presentation: The Waking Tiger and the American Dream” and you will be guided to the Inquiry Conference website. I tried to put the video into this post but it was not happening.

Secondly, Kate and I went to a presentation by Jane Goodall called, “Reason for Hope,” and it was wonderful (click for previous post). The presentation was inspiring, motivating, and fun. Afterward Kate, being the greatest of all companions, waited in line with me for an hour to get our books signed by her.

Oh and a photo taken with her.

Tonight I am going to a lecture by Michael Pollan (book review), one of my favorite authors about food culture and the American food-like-substances system that is killing our environment, our health, and our happiness, I will try and get a picture with him for the site.  Actually my goal is to get him to sign a copy of one of his books personalized to www.KateandNeil.com, we’ll see how it goes.

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By Neil, 3 March 2008

I can’t wait. This Tuesday evening, I am going to a speech and book signing by Jane Goodall, one of my childhood heroes. I actually listened to her two times before while attending the International School of Kenya. Her work in the Gombe Stream National Park has always fascinated me. I mean, she was the woman that discovered animal tool making and forced the educated gentry to rethink and redefine what it meant to be human. That and she named her son Grub. I don’t think you can get much cooler then that. I am also very excited to see Michael Pollan when he comes to speak in a few weeks. March must be Utah’s lucky month.