Rob & Julie Snow Family Blog

Hey guys, I just want to let you know that I have started a del.icio.us feed. If you don't know what del.icio.us is you might check it out. It is basically a good way to share all the cool things we all look at online. When we find something cool we tag it to our feed in a click or two and anyone who cares can see what we think is cool. So you can always click on the link in the sidebar but I recommend using a feed reader such as newsgator (free online based feedreader that I use). For instance, I have a link to a desktop search client that I think is fabulous and I use it all the time. It is tons faster than any of the other that I have tried. And you can see it by following the link in the sidebar.

032906_eclipse_lebanon
Originally uploaded by EngineeringNerd.

It is a good thing this kid put goggles on his goat!!!! This kid is looking at the solar eclipse that the other side of the planet was blessed with today. That would have been soooo cooooool to see. Anyway, I just couldn't help sharing this picture with you guys. Enjoy!

In May of 2001 my family went on a cruise to Alaska. We left flew into Seattle, Washington and drove to Vancouver, British Columbia to board the ship. We made two stops, one in Sitka and one in Ketchikan. Both were very small towns with not much but a main drag with shops. We didn’t end up doing any pricey excursions. But these two towns were cute.

Sailing Alaska’s Inside Passage was soooo beautiful. It was amazingly quiet; there was hardly any sound at all…just peaceful. One thing that amazed me the most was how large and empty the “Last Frontier” is, and I just saw a small portion of the coastline. It’s very cool how secluded and lonely Alaska can seem.

One of the coolest moments of the cruise was being on the upper deck in the middle of nowhere in freezing temperatures, soaking in the hot tub surrounded by the majesty of the mountains. Very cool.

Check out the slideshow for a few more pictures.

Recently Julie and I were discussing what types of phrases we should stop using because we are too old to use them. This was really sad because I don’t want to change my vocabulary just because I’m old. This also sucks because it is a reminder that I am getting old!!

“When the crap (or other explicative) hits the fan”

This is a really good expression because it really represents the worst thing that can happen. I mean really, it is the worst scenario when poop is involved. My friend over at the Mommy Going Crazy blog really knows that we are talking about here. She dealt with the lesser poop problem. She had it pretty bad but I am quite sure that no fans were involved over there.

So you got some crap, it’s a localized problem. It is a mess to clean up at this point! So imagine you have an industrial strength fan, no of these wimpy ceiling fans, I’m talking high velocity here. So you turn the fan on “high” and throw the crap at the backside of the fan. It hits the fan with a “womp” and now you are experiencing the worst scenario. The small and localized problem you had before is now terrible and most likely hazmat will need to be called in to take care of the problem. It is everywhere and has been smeared into everything.

So Julie and started talking about things phrases we could use to replace this one. So we put on our thinking caps and this is what came out.

“When the crap hits the fan” can be replace with, “when a whole family of dead (poisoned of course) bloated field mice are found under a wood pile in the garage and must be sucked out with a ShopVac fitted with a special bag and filter made specifically for this type of application.” Oh yeah, the sounds associated with this one is, “Thwump.”

So I think we have made and improvement here. I think this is more fitting for the situation where you just can’t say “when the crap hits the fan” such as during a professional lecture, during church, or while speaking for foreign dignitaries.

This has been a public service announcement

It is official. We are now living on campus. We live in Shoreline Ridge Apartments close to Red Butte Gardens. They were built in 2001 for the Olympic athletes. We wonder which athletes stayed in our apartment. We're guessing the gold medalists men's snowboarding team. But that's just a random guess.

The move went well. We were able to get it all in one trip. A loud shout-out to all those who helped. They include: James, Michelle, Mark, and Karen Raines. Bob, Gail, and Kelly Snow. Mike (Kelly's friend). Jace, Colleen, and Jason Painter. Troy and Dianne Denter. Greg and Elizabeth Maxon. Becca Gatrell. Brett Lingwall. Hmmmm, I think that was everyone. Thanks!!

So we've spent all week unpacking and I think we're finally to the point of decorating the place now. It'll be so nice when it's all finished. We're tired of living in an unsettled home. Oh, and after 3 1/2 years of marriage, we FINALLY bought a kitchen table!!! YAY!!! So we can finally have people over for dinner without doing it Japanese-style around the coffee table. We're pretty stoked. Oh, and Nate loves his own room. He's slept all the way through the night since we've been here. It's been great.

Well, we'll post some pictures of the place when we have some. Au revoir!

So on Monday morning our plan was to move to the Santa Fe Apartments in Sandy in a couple of months, soon after the end of the semester. It was a good plan that would have served us well. Anyway, our friend Becca works up at residential living at the U of U. Our other friend Shannon worked there in the past as well. Anyway, we have called both of them in the past asking about the price to live up there and have always gasped is horror at the price. So we decided to ask again knowing that our costs have gone up and it that it might be economical at this time. So we got on messenger to contact Becca and made a lunch appointment that afternoon. That next morning we paid our security deposit and made a plan to move in a week later during spring break! Crazy world!! It is funny how quickly our plans can change.

We had some really good help this weekend getting packed. My parents came over twice on Saturday and took care of Nate for like 4 hours at a time which allowed us to get almost all the packing done. We are really grateful for their help.

Today was our last day in the Ensign 2nd Ward. It was a really nice day. One of the hard things about leaving a ward is that everybody wants to say that you did a fantastic job and I don't like to be recongized publicly. It is really weird for me for some reason. I love it when Julie sings me praises but it is weird for other people to do it.

But I guess the important thing is that we really learned a lot in this ward from the people and the opportunities that we had to serve. We really learned a lot while living in this apartment. We had our first child here. What a change! So leaving here is very positive but also strangely disappointing. Julie feels it more than I do but I know where she is coming from.

The next time we blog it will be from our new apartment. How exciting!!

In May 2003 we went on our first vacation as a married couple to Los Angeles and San Diego. We visited Julie’s grandparents, went to Six Flags Magic Mountain, and the beach. We also went to Tijuana, kind of. We got off the train, walked over the bridge, and were about to go through the turnstile into Mexico when we looked around us at the ghetto, didn’t see one gringo, and turned around, got back on the train, and headed back to San Diego. We’re not racist, just not stupid. We had no idea that the touristy part of Tijuana wasn’t right on the other side of the border and didn’t feel like wandering around the shacks lost asking to be mugged. But we had such a great time on our trip that we’ve decided we’d love to live in San Diego one day.



You might think that I am in flight school but no I’m actually not. I’m in a really cool tester plane at the Balboa Park Aerospace Museum San Diego. This is the first of many times that I’ve drug Julie into a flight museum where she proceeds to be very bored. But since she is wonderful she pretends to have fun.



Here we are at Julie’s Grandma and Grandpa Clark’s house in Tehachapi, California. What a cute couple!! We’re standing in front of one of the many pieces my grandma has painted in her lifetime.



We are standing at the end of Santa Monica Pier. It was a pretty cold and foggy day, but doesn’t the sailboat in the background look picturesque?



So that same day we went to the little dive (hahaha) of an aquarium that was on the pier. I must say that I found the aquatic life on the beach much more appealing – If you know what I mean. That is about as far as Julie was willing to go into the water.

Hey guys, welcome to the new Snow Family Blog. It still has a few bugs to work out but it is really cool I think. We have several new additions that I will go over for you.

First of all, we have made our first official post to the Snow Family Travel Blog. It talks briefly about Julie's trip to Mazatlan when she was 19. Definitly check that out! Next new item are the various subscription options. First for the extra techy people, Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is the little orange button in the sidebar. If you follow that link it will give you several options for subscriptions in several different news readers and aggregators. Then you will get all the updates either Julie or myself will make right into your news reader. The idea here is to stop wasting time going to 10 different blogs when you can get all your blogs in one place. I use NewsGator for mine. I is web based so I can still access my feeds even when I'm not at my laptop.

Also I offer an email based subscription service for those who do not want to be bothered by RSS and have a hard time remembering to come to read the blog. Just put your email here and follow the instructions to get all my posts and updates delivered right to your email inbox.

Finally I have provided a link to my paypal account. So if you just feel like you would like to support the snow family staving student fund or even owe me money please feel free to do so. You can pay with a credit card or bank transfer. It is important to know what you do not have to have a paypal account to pay with a credit card.

I have set up the feed options for this blog and also for our travel blog so please take advantage of the options that I have provided for you and be sure to have fun.

It is really interesting when you get the point in your life where everybody is at the same stage. Where everybody is graduationg from high school, or everybody is doing this or that. Two friends of ours just announced that they are having babies. Jeff & Diana Roberts and Ben & Kira Fowler are both having babies later this year. There are a couple people in our ward that are also having babies. So that is really exciting. I just don't look forward to the day when all my friends are 40 years old or when we all retire. It will especially suck when all my friends are dying and I'm like just waiting for my turn. That is just really weird.

Animals
Originally uploaded by EngineeringNerd.

Julie Sun
Originally uploaded by EngineeringNerd.

My friend (Rachel Ostler) and I went with the X96 radio show to Mazatlan, Mexico in Feburary 2001.
We had a blast hanging on the beach and going dancing at night.

In the second picture, it's kind of hard to see, but I have an iguana on my shoulder and Rachel has a
lizard on her hand. The peddlers were trying to sell them to us.

One night we were walking down the street with a couple of friends we had met there and a guy came up
to one of us and started talking. Meanwhile, there was another guy trying to take my passport and money
out of the pouch I had slung around me. I caught him,slapped his hand away, and asked him what he thought
he was doing! They left and everything was fine,but looking back on it,it was probably pretty risky of
me to do anything besides hand over the pouch...I mean, we were in Mexico and you just never know who can be
potentially dangerous.

That same night we were dancing and I had on some black capris and the zipper in the back split!
Luckily, some girl in the restroom had a spare safety pin.

Rachel and I were also hit on by these two gross military (aka buzzed hair and mustaches) twins...who
happen to be, like, 35 years old. Gross!!

I remember hanging out by the hot tub and someone was holding my passport for me in his pocket and he
jumped in the water! I was like "Dude, my passport, you idiot!" I take my passport pretty seriously and
it will forever have watermarks thanks to him. Oh, well. Memories.

So that just about sums it up Mexico!