On my birthday weekend Bethany took me to the Nashville Zoo! She did an amazing job at making sure I had a great weekend. This first picture here is us in front of the elephant exhibit. You can see the three elephants they have just behind us.




We had to ride the carousel of course. In case you can't tell, not sure how you would, I am riding a Koala Bear. I did not know they were that fast.

Bethany, looking gorgeous by the way, is riding on a tiger. Yes it was a slightly cold day and some of the animals were not out in their exhibits. However, we did see the Cloud Leopard cubs playing and the reptile and amphibian exhibits which were the very best parts!

Bethany also threw me a huge birthday bonanza where we had a ton of food and a George Killians keg. Not to mention she pulled together everyone in the house to have a poker tournament with a $5 buy-in. Not only did I play, but I won the tournament and $40. A pretty sweet birthday I would say. Thank you my loving wife Bethany!

Teaching a new dog new tricks!

So here is Zoe officially playing fetch. Finally! She still does have a little puppy A.D.D. as you can see, but she can now sit, lay down, and she waits until we tell her she can eat. She is very smart but still has her puppy ways of disobeying. She is doing great though, especially now that she has been housetrained for over 2 weeks!

Here are a few more puppy pictures. They are from last week, but I think you can still see that she has grown. Zoe is 10 weeks and 4 days old today.

^^ This is Bethany and Zoe on a walk just a block from our home.^^

^^Sometimes Zoe sleeps in funny positions.^^

^^She really is so cute...^^

^^She was shaking her head and I happened to take the picture, great action shot right?^^

From Bethany

Hey!!! Finally a post!!! So, Tennessee has been a major culture shock. Is this still America? Yes. Is this a COMPLETELY different culture? Definitely, yes. When we drove south to a city called Lewisburg to get Zoe, (and that's right, there's no longer a "Y") a guy got out of his el camino at the gas station where we stopped. The incredible spray painted car creaked loudly as the door opened and a duct-taped covered (We literally could not see any actual shoe, we're assuming that somewhere beneath there was a pair) set of feet stepped to the sidewalk. The curly mullet-esque hair yes, cascading down beneath his dirty frayed ball cap was a bleachy blond color. The stereotypes continued with the cutoff sleeveless shirt and carhart pants covered in dirt...all in all, it made me just really miss Arlington. :) Maybe it's not such a different culture after all...
I've heard more "y'all's" that ever before in my life. A personal favorite is, "I'm fixin to". I love that at restaurants when they ask me if I want Coke, and I say, no I want Dr. Pepper, they look at me like I'm ridiculous. Because obviously, I should have known, Coke means pop. I've also discovered the strange phenomenon of Lip Sweat. I DID NOT KNOW MY LIPS HAD PORES??? Is this even possible? Unfortunately yes. Now that it's October it really has cooled down a little bit, but a month ago? Unbelievable.
Zoe is sooo exciting! She just got back from surgery today. Yeah I know, we've had her for a week and she's already diseased and dying. No, she actually had some kind of boll wevil larvae embedded in her throat. We got her from a rural situation where I guess these things lay in wait in the grass for some potential victim. I wish I were joking, but no. She had to go under anesthesia and get it cut out of her neck. Sad day. But now, for the first time in a couple days she's been a little peppier! Yay! She makes me so happy. :) She also got some medicine for her worms, and she's been pooping out these GIANT hookworms all evening!!! They're incredible! They're definitely the length, maybe not quite the width, of earthworms! And they're white! I'm pretty sure the valets across the street at the restaurants stare at me oddly when they see me pick up her poop in the yard and examine it thoroughly... Whatever. Don't judge me.

New Puppy!

I know we have not finished out trip entries, but hey, life is crazy. Bethany is getting settled into her new position at work, and Jarid is taking seminary classes head-on. The purpose of this post, as you may have seen, is to announce a new member to our family... Zoey!

She is about 7 weeks old, and is a border collie/australian shepherd mix. She has a gorgeous reddish-brown coat, a black snout and tail, and little spots of white on toes and under belly. Zoey is very calm too, and a little shy, but she is soooo sweet. She likes to sleep around our heads or on stomachs when we are sitting on the couch. Yay for puppies.

The Trip to Nashville: Day 2

Start: Howell Home, Hermiston, OR, 10:00AM

We slept in a little this morning, then took showers, packed the cooler, and left the Howells. They were gone to work by the time we woke up, so we didn't really get to say goodbye. :(
We stopeed at a Walmart, bought a book to write about the journey, and some envelopes to mail our rent deposit to the disciples Divinity House at Vanderbilt.
We got to the town of North Powder and the van started to make funny noises. We pulled over and Jarid put two quarts of oil in it because the oil pressure was low, but it still sounded funny. It was whining and banging loudly.

We went to a repair shop that apparently no longer does repairs, so they referred us to another repair shop called, no joke, Knuckle-Busters. They, of course, referred us to yet another repair shop 20 miles away in Baker City. By this time the car could barely pick up speed as we reentered the highway. Naturally we were in a Roaming area so we couldn't make any calls. :) The engine temperature slowly started creeping higher as we limped along. We dropped down from 55 to 45, then 40, then 35 until the temperature was almost in the red. Fortunately there was a rest stop about a mile ahead, we were still 11 miles from Baker City. We waited there for about 20 minutes until the van had a chance to cool down, then got back on the road. We went 30 on the side of the road with the hazards on until we pulled into this other repair shop, Paul's Transmission and repair.

Keeping with tradition, they referred us to another repair shop down the road. Finally, at Grumpy's Auto Repair (laugh and you die!) we found a guy who was really helpful (almost making up for the 19 other repair nimrods...almost). He said the options were a) buy a new engine and have him put it in for $4000, b) buy a used engine and have him put it in for $2615, c) trade the van in and/or sell it to a wrecking yard to then buy a new car altogether.
After we got ahold of Todd and Beth through Nextel's Direct Connect (thank the Lord!) and told them what had happened they offered to bring us their old van. We and got ahold of a guy named Frank at BC's Auto Salvage. He gave us $100 for the van and here we sit in a public library waiting for Todd and Beth. Their ETA is 11:00PM.

Will we ever leave Oregon? Only time will tell...

The Trip to Nashville: Day 1

Start: McCool's House Eugene, OR, 03:00 PM

We ate lunch at Chicken Bonz in Springfield with some of our family and our pastor's family, then took off for a gas station on the way out of town. Then we were off, up I-5 to the I-205 and then to I-84. We stopped in Troutdale for a potty break and got some post cards. We had a brilliant idea; to send postcards to our parents frequently throughout the trip. After a quick photo-op stop at Multnomah Falls,

we continued on to Hermiston. Arriving at 7pm we had dinner with Stephen and Jubilee. Jub made an amazing dessert of whipped cream, apples and snickers bars. We ate dessert while watching the movie "Obsessed." It was fun to meet up with them and to see their house. Not to mention stay in a home for the night. The route we took looks pretty ridiculous from an aerial view, especially if you know our destination is Tennessee, but we needed to drop off the truck in Eugene, OR, felt we really needed to help out at camp (they were understaffed as it was!) and really wanted to see Jubilee and Stephen before we left.

Better Late Then Never

So we must begin by saying that we had the most amazing honeymoon, and could not have been possible without some of the money people gave us for our wedding. We thank you all, but most importantly we thank my grandparents Bill and Marsha Hall for setting us up with a great place and my mom Cheryl and Ronnie too. What was made possible for us was the best celebratory start to our marriage that we could have hoped for.

I bet you are wondering where exactly it was that we went... Well the location was Puerto Vallarta, Mexico in a 5 star resort called Playa Del Sol Grand. Here are some maps:

Playa Del Sol Grand is "C" or the third down from the top. This next picture is us when we first arrived at the resort.
We stayed in a one bedroom vista with a great view. The resort is very nice and the landscaping and design is all very natural with lots of vegetation, right on the beach.
This next picture was during one of our excursions. We ATVed over 10 miles through the city up into the backhills overlooking the city. We stopped at a tequila distillery where they had 15 zip lines!! They had the longest, tallest and fastest zip lines in all of Puerto Vallarta and surrounding areas.
This was us exploring the boardwalk in downtown PV. We went shopping in all the flea markets they had around. What a blast! Not to mention that at every corner was free tequila tasting...

To Be Continued...

Gift Registry

We just finished registering at Target and may register at another store but we are planning to move to Tennessee in August. There Jarid will be attending Vanderbilt University's Divinity School. To limit the difficulties of moving, we are trying to downsize in possessions and personal belongings. Though the gift we ask for at this celebration is simply your presence and support, if you are considering blessing the bride and groom with a gift, please feel the freedom to bless us with gift cards as an alternative, to help streamline our move.

Wow, this is really it!

We're FINALLY getting married! This is unbelievable! It's coming up fast...and there's so much to do! We are SO excited!