Viva las Chambers

Hello! I was going to be excited and write all about how it seems that warm weather has finally found a home in Utah because yesterday was so nice, but today it rained. Oh well. It was kind of pretty.

So Joe and I got to go to Las Vegas for 5 days with Joe's family a couple weeks ago. It was a much needed getaway from Provo/school/work/cold. It was very relaxing. It is so interesting how different the word "vacation" annotates in my family as compared to the Chambers. On Woodbury vacations, every second of every day is planned, with prior research and contributions of each family member as to the selection of where we go and what we do. When we go somewhere, we have explored every part of there by the time we leave. I love it. But sometimes a vacation is needed once home from the vacation.

So before we got to Vegas, we stopped on a little side trip to Capitol Reef and went on an awesome rappel/hike led by Uncle Dave. Tom had driven up with me and Joe and then Jeniel, Sharla, and some friends of Dave came with us. A second group went the following day. Well the hike turned out to be a lot longer than we expected so we got a late start driving the rest of the way to Vegas, but it was an awesome experience-- it was my first time rock rappelling (besides at Brighton and at indoor climbing places) and still am finding random bruises.

We got to Vegas at about 11PM Friday night and chatted with the rest of the family who had arrived a few hours earlier before passing out to sleep. Joe's parents had rented out a house instead of a hotel because there were 16 of us in all including Rebecca's 5 kids (the oldest is 9). It was a big house and almost every couple/family got their own room. There was a pool table and a huge TV and a pool in the back yard. Unfortunately, the pool was akin to freezing, but on the hottest days, was kind of enjoyable. We had lots of fun just hanging out playing games, playing pool, watching some 80s movies, chasing kids around, and eating. There were also lots of naps taken. Lots. And lots. Anyway, Saturday morning we went to the natural history museum and got to see lots of 'Nemos' and sharks. We also toured the old Mormon fort, which was the beginning of Las Vegas. We went home for some lunch (and naps). Later that night, the adults, minus Grandma and Grandpa who stayed home to babysit the kids, went to the Blue Man show at the Venetian. That was my first experience walking through a casino. It was so fascinating to me. There were some very interestingly dressed individuals. And lots of cigarette smoke. Anyway, the show was awesome and I found myself thoroughly entertained. I highly recommend it to anyone, even kids. Though there are strobe lights and loud music. But really cool and interesting. After the show we walked around the strip for a while, since Joe had never been allowed to while on his mission. With all the lights, displays, noise, and people, it is like a PG-13 Disneyland, but stays open all night long. We got some really yummy gelato (pistachio for me), and the weather was perfect.

Sunday we got an early start to drive about half an hour to Green Valley, one of Joe's favorite wards. Even though it has been 6 years since Joe was there, there were still quite a few people there who knew him. The rest of the day we... slept. No seriously. I think Joe and my bodies were like dead from that rappel trip. I seriously had so many sore muscles I was popping Tylenol like Tic Tacs. Just kidding. Kind of.

Monday we drove to the Hoover Dam. We got an exclusive, inside tour because Rebecca knew a guy who worked there. He gave us like a 2 hour tour of everything. It was awesome: he took us down the elevators way inside the dam and then we got to walk out on it and I learned so much about it. They are constructing an arch bridge to help relieve the traffic over the dam and it was impressively huge and yet fragile-looking because it was so high up and suspended. It was the best dam tour I've ever been on. Sorry, had to throw one in there...

Later that day, Joe drove me around to see some apartments he had lived in and places he tracted. We also drove up to the temple, which was gorgeous, although it didn't stand out as much as some temples because it had a black roof. Keren and Nik and Rebecca and David and family left for home that night, so Brittany and Kenton and Joe and I watched the movie "Innerspace" which was like from the 80s and... not as awesome as we remembered. But enjoyable nonetheless.

Tuesday morning we packed up and Joe and I left an hour before the others so he could show me around Logandale, which is a town about an hour north from Vegas. It was the cutest little sleepy town I've ever seen. We also drove by the Valley of Fire which would have been awesome to see more in-depth if we would have had time.

We got home Tuesday night to a rainy, chilly Provo night, which actually felt really nice after the long ride home in an un-airconditioned car...

It was very relaxing. I think I would still like to go back though sometime and see some things that we didn't do. But lots of fun. Vegas is a very interesting place.

In other news, Kara graduated high school! it was fun to go to her seminary graduation, where she gave a very good talk. Her school graduation was at the Marriott center at BYU. We all went to Macaroni Grill afterwards for lunch.

It's so nice to live so near to family. I love getting to go to my parents house for dinner every other Sunday, and being able to go to Joe's parents' house every other Sunday. It's also been especially nice this week, as Dad has been able to help Joe with his nasty trigonometry homework.

My class is going really well still. I'm taking a print publishing class (for my editing minor) and our latest project was to create a personal history book. I decided to type up my journal from when I went to Europe with my family right after Tom got off his mission. It was really good to do because it was just in this old, spiral notebook in like, pink junior-high handwriting. It's a good 15 pages of text. Now I am just working in pictures. Its a really fun class because there are no tests. Just projects. And I have been able to learn how to use InDesign and Photoshop a little bit.

I have lots more to say, but it's late and I have at least relatively caught you up to what's been happening with us. Hope you are all doing well!

Love, Wren

History of Shakespeare in Germany

Hi everyone. As promised, I decided to upload the paper I wrote on Shakespeare in Germany for those interested. Sorry the only way I could figure how to upload it was by converting my Word file into PNG images, but each page had to be a separate file, so sorry for the inconvenience and let me know if you know an alternate means of uploading files. Just click on each page image to make it bigger and then you can click on "View" and then "Zoom in". Wow. Sorry. Maybe if you get frustrated, just comment that you want to read it and then I will email it to you. And the pages might be backwards... we will see shortly:

Oh Spring, where art thou?

One week of school to go before finals...

I am actually feeling pretty good about things. I finished my research paper on the history of Shakespeare in Germany, including performance history during WWII. Maybe I will figure out how to put it on my blog for those interested parties (Pika and Dad probably. And Kara. Maybe Kathleen? Mom? Ok well if none of you are interested that's ok...).

Work has continued to be pretty stressful. 40 hours this week. But the other manager just got back from her vacation today so that should relieve my schedule.

I just applied to be an intern for the summer as a technical writer at the company Joe works for because it is small so I think it would be a great way to get a lot of varied hands-on experience. It will probably be unpaid so I would just do it about 15-20 hours a week and then stay at Charlotte Russe and just work 20 hours. And I am going to take one class.

Ok tangent: Conference was amazing. I really appreciated all the talks on love and the atonement and forgiveness. I especially loved Elder Uchdorf's talk, and most all the talks on Sunday morning.

I had to work the Saturday of conference, but Joe and I got to spend the whole day at my parents house on Sunday and Mom made a delicious Easter dinner. We also dyed Easter eggs; unfortunately, I left my egg in the green dye for a minute and then got distracted and didn't remember it until 2 hours later after conference was over. Luckily Tom noticed it and saved it.

Stella is doing well-- yes I decided on "Stella." Her only quirk is that sometimes she gets stuck going into 2nd gear, or she will shift out of 2nd gear into neutral randomly. But she is great.

My question of the day is: has anyone seen Spring? I think she has gone missing. Amber alert! Waking up on Easter morning to snow was not the highlight of the day for me. Oh Utah.

So (I need to work on transitions), Joe had bought me Muse tickets for Monday night as my Christmas present. The weather was terrible getting there (and traffic) and it took us 2 hours. We therefore missed the opening band, but luckily only missed the first Muse song. The concert was awesome- they know how to put on a show. The lights and effects were amazing. When it was over I was still wanting more.

Well, that is probably enough for today. Let me know if you find Spring.

Love, Wren

Stella?

So... it's all I can talk about lately, so you have probably all heard about this, but I HAS A JEEP! I know, I know-- what happened to the reliable, efficient Corolla or Civic? We almost bought 2 different Corollas, but they both fell through, and because we had gap insurance on Saabrina (the car that was totaled), we had $1000 to use towards a car purchase but it had to be within 60 days. So after being frustrated about the Corollas falling through, I just for fun looked up Jeeps on KSL. Well, Joe and I found this awesome looking green Wrangler and we decided to go test drive (just for fun). Well, I loved it. And after consulting Uncle Dave and Paul Shelley, resident Jeep experts, they both said it sounded like a good deal. Well, we had pretty much decided on it, but not finalized anything (to my knowledge) when Joe surprised me with it and bought and picked it up. I was shocked! It was mine! All mine Buwahahahaha! Ehem. Sorry. Anyway, it's a 1997 Wrangler but it's in really good condition and only has 100,000 miles on it. It already has a 3" lift and new 31" tires, so Moab: here I come! It has a soft top which is fun, but it does make for noisy freeway driving so I may invest in getting a hardtop for it someday. And yes. It has bad gas mileage. But, I figure, if I'm ever going to own a Jeep in my life, now is the time because I am only driving to work or school or the store, which are all less than 5 minutes away, and I don't have kids that I am trying to fit and be safe in a car yet, and we live in Utah where I actually have opportunities to do some off-roading... Okay so maybe I am crazy. I think I shall name her Stella, but I am still thinking. Any opinions? Joe likes "Dexter", but it is clearly a girl, so any other ideas? I have also considered "Juke" and "Zuka"

School is good but crazy. I only have 2 weeks left before finals. I am working on 2 different (lengthy) research papers right now: one about the Nazi appropriation of Shakespeare, and the other about new media rental methods and business strategies.

Work is fine but stressful: one of the fill time managers is in Fiji for 3 weeks and so I have been working 30-40 hours instead of my usual 25.

We just found out on Sunday that our ward is splitting in half, effective the week after conference. So now all the Orem residents are in a separate ward from us Provo residents. Our ward is getting a new bishopric, but we still meet in the same building at the same time. It is bittersweet- I was just getting comfortable with our ward. But most of our close friends that we have made live at the Branbury with us so they are still in our ward.

We are hoping to be RA's starting in April for our building at the Branbury (the majority of our apartment building is single students), which would be awesome because we would get a discount on rent.

I am also hoping to do an internship this summer as a technical writer.

We also plan on going on many camping, hiking, and jeeping trips...

Many, many, many.

Okiloveyoubyebye!

And yes, I just revamped the blog design

Let me know what you think... is it too busy?

Observations

No exciting stories today.





I do want to thank everyone who contributed to the painting of Christ (shown below) that we were given for our wedding! We were able to finally get it framed (thanks to Mom) and put up on our wall (thanks to Joe) and it is GORGEOUS. So thank you thank you thank you.

I mostly just wanted to write down a few of things I have been learning and a some observations.

So I am taking a technical writing class (English 316) and I am learning a lot, but mostly, realizing that this is something that I really enjoy doing and am fairly competent at. Can I make that observation? Ok well I just love that it is all about writing CLEARLY. As an English major with a poetry emphasis, writing flowery, creative, and profound language is all I've ever learned or focused on. I love doing that and it is great, but it's also nice to learn this skill, and I mean SKILL. It is hard sometimes to just be really economical and straightforward. You put clarity above everything else, even at the sacrifice of repetition, sentence flow, awkward phrasing, etc. I also think I like this field because I get to investigate, read, absorb, learn, comprehend, analyze, interpret, translate, write, communicate, edit, and then design; all of which I like to do. Plus, it includes just the right amount of business and technology with the writing. I guess I am just trying to say that I like the environment. Note to self: maybe you should pursue this career...

I am also taking this great Shakespeare class: pure, liquid, awesome. Basically, we come to class having done the reading, and then sit in a circle and just discuss Shakespeare all day. Brilliant.

Another observation: now that some 70% of my classmate peers are married or at least getting more serious about life because graduation is near, they are a lot more reliable, efficient, hard-working, responsible, confident, etc. This makes collaborative and group projects so much more enjoyable to work on, and also makes class discussion so much more relevant and interesting.

I've decided that young married student wards are AMAZING. Everyone is like, in the same boat and going through similar life experiences. I feel so unified with my ward and especially my relief socity because of this. It's like, one person has a baby so everyone helps out and brings meals, etc. one month, and then the next month, you* have a baby and everyone brings you meals and stuff. No one is afraid to ask for help because we are all taking turns helping and many are going through life-time firsts together. Pretty cool.

*Author's note: "you" is not referring to me here; this was a rhetorical situation; I am not with child.

Observation #3 (if anyone is keeping track): Husbands are rad. Pretty much Joe is so good at helping me through stuff when I am an emotional wreck. I thought it would take longer to be able to identify each other's needs, and I know we are still learning, but he has been so good to me when I am having one of my (amazingly many...) bad days.

Our newest exciting endeaver is trying to buy a car. Our Saab was declared a total loss after the accident so we inherited Joe's old car that was being used by his brother-in-law, but they didn't really need it anymore. So this new (to us) car would be for me! We are looking at Toyota Corollas because I want something really reliable. We are looking at a 2005 with 80,000 miles on it. Any input/opinions? I am really excited: I haven't really had a car to drive since I used the K-car for about 6 months in high school... oh the memories.

Sorry if this was broing. But I am just thankful that work (I finally got a raise!) and school are going really well and for this temporary calm in the craze of life after the past month. I am definitely grateful that January and February are over: 2010 can only go up from here! Thank you for all your love and support,

Emily

Car accident

So it's sad that the reason that compelled me to finally write again is the fact that we got in a car accident. I just wanted to write down what happened before I forgot too many of the details.

First of all, we are both okay.

Joe was driving and had just picked me up from work at the mall. It was about 10PM last night (Thursday). We were coming out of the Mall parking lot, going through the intersection towards our apartment when I turned my head to the right (from the passenger seat) and saw a car coming straight towards through the red light from the perpendicular cross road. I remember trying to communicate to Joe that we were about to be hit, but it was only a few milliseconds between when I realized we were about to be hit and when we got hit. I must have either screamed or gasped because that was all that Joe had to indicate that something was wrong before we got hit.

It was all very surreal because I saw everything happen and was fairly conscious of what was going on- the car hit my side of tha car which set us into a spin. I remember hoping we wouldn't flip over or swing into anything but the car came to a stop about 180 degrees later and just on the opposite side ot the intersection, so we didn't hit anyone or anything else. Right after it happened, I felt like I should be in more pain or that I should've blacked out or something. I remember the first thing I did was retrieve my classes because I think the airbag had blasted them off. In my mind, the car had hit my door dead on and I was sure I would find the car all crumpled around me. From the impact I felt, I was sure the other car had to be going at least 35 or 40 and she hadn't braked or anything. I don't know the full story, but she must have been really distracted because their were other cars stopped at the light in the lane next to her and I am pretty sure hitting us was as much of a surprise to her as it was to us. Anyway, Joe looked okay when I looked over at him but he kinda had some panic in his voice when he told me to get out of the car ( he told me after that it was because he smelled an unfamiliar smell and was afraid the car was about to catch on fire or something- we later realized that smell was probably the airbag). I tried my door but couldn't get it to open but maybe that was just psychological because later, someone opened the door no problem. Like I said though, my mental image was that the car had crushed all around me. I climbed out through the drivers seat (which was somewhat awkward in the skirt I was wearing) and after Joe and I sized eachother up for major damage, some bystander girls came over and made me sit down on the curb and called 911. I think someone else had already called though because it felt like they showed up like 30 seconds later.

A policeman came over to us and pieced together who was in the car and what had happened. He asked me a few questions, including if I had my seatbelt on and if I was okay. Luckily I could say yes to both of these. Then the ambulance arrived and a couple medic people came over to me. This was reassuring to me in a way because I knew that anyone else involved in the accident must be okay if they were paying the most attention to me. They again asked me If I had been wearing my seatbelt and if I hurt anywhere. I was extremely conscious of the pain in my neck, but I wasn't too worried about it because it just felt like what I would imagine whiplash feels like. I told them that my neck hurt so they felt my spinal chord and all that, but I told them it was more of a muscular pain and only on the right side of my neck. I must have been shaking pretty bad because they told me to come sit in the ambulance to stay warm, but I realized I was actually not cold at all and I kept trying to tell them that my teeth were chattering because I was anxious and not because I was cold. They asked me a lot of questions and continued to probe at my spine and neck and asking if it hurt. I took off my coat and when he finally got a look at my neck, he said I had some seat belt burn. I signed the medical waiver though, saying I didn't want to go to the hospital and that they had checked me out and I was ok. I stayed in the ambulance a few minutes more and Joe checked on me. He had called Tom and he was on his way. I got out of the ambulance and was surprised to see our car- it didn't look nearly as bad as I had originally imagined. I noticed that the car hadn't actually hit my door, but the back tire, so the damage to the car was apparent on the back passenger door and trim. Joe explained later that the reason why her car looked so much worse than ours was (I guess the whole front of her car was pretty smashed in)because she had hit the back tire and so the impact was probably distributed through the axel and whole infrastructure of the car, which is good for our health, but poor Saabrina's axel).

Joe called both of our parents to let them know that we had gotten in an accident but we were both ok. Tom came around this point and they had me sit in his car while Joe gave a statement and stuff. I kept hearing all the officials around us say that it was a really good thing we were in a Saab because I guess they are pretty safe cars. So I repented of all the times I have told Joe I hate his car (it's not that I don't like the car, I just hate how scared I am to drive it because it's so nice and because it's a sports-clutch manual transmission). It was really cool that it has side airbags because even though I was pretty sure that's why my neck nurt so bad, I was glad it had saved my head from smashing into anything.

I felt bad for the girl who hit us as I saw her Dad arrive and she was crying really hard. She said she was really sorry between sobs as her dad pulled her past us to go sit in his car and I wanted to give her a hug but she was already past me before I could act on it. She couldn't have been more than 18. I am glad she's okay.

We finally got home and took some ibuprofen and lay down, though it took us awhile of talking to finally get to sleep because I think we still had quite a bit of adrenaline.

Anyway, we both agreed that we were super blessed and that it could have been so much worse. We were thankful for Saabrina and our seatbelts and airbags and people that were so willing to respond quickly and help and for family nearby. I was also personlly grateful that I had been in the car with Joe because I know I would have been a lot more panicked if I would have been in the car by myself and although I always meant it jokingly, I've always told Joe that if he was going to drive un-safely that he better only do it if I was in the car with him because it's too traumatizing to think about him dying without me, I know it kind of felt true last night as I realized how realatively calm I felt throughout most of the experience because I knew Joe was nearby and that we were both ok. Sorry that was kinda cheesy I guess. But thanks for listening and for all your support and love. We are so blessed in our lives and I can't help reprioritizing some things in my life that really matter. It's weird how different you feel about all the trivial things in your life after going through an experience like that.