For Shame!

I am going to be better about blogging. I have recently had friends and family members start blogging (or I've found their blogs which were started long ago) --you know who you are-- and it is really fun to see what everyone is up to! So, although my life is far from interesting, I will make a more concerted effort to keep my blog updated and to add pictures as well, so that it is more interesting to look at!
Fall is here in Cache Valley and it's a pretty nice change from the heat of the summer. I get cold at night again, and get to have a comforter on the bed again. Hooray!
Work has been busy, then quiet. Busy, then quiet. Busy, then quiet. You get the idea. Not too much else to mention, except at this point of the quarter, I am still almost half a million short on my consumer loan goal. Yikes! I do the best I can, and that's pretty much all I can do, right?
Zak started school again at the end of August and is taking two psychology classes. They are more demanding than he expected, but I know that he's doing just fine.
I have a new calling at church. I am the education counselor in the Relief Society. That has been a challenge to adjust to Sunday meetings and seemingly endless phone calls throughout the week! But it is fun, too, to have an excuse to get to know more of the sisters in our ward, and I am really enjoying working with the other sisters in the presidency.
In other unrelated news, I am getting really excited for Christmas! I have already got a family exchange list going and have begun to hunt down addresses for the Christmas letter that we will actually get around to writing and sending this year! I wish that Zak and I were going to be able to go to St. Louis for Christmas, but it probably isn't going to happen. Plane tickets are just too expensive!
Speaking of trips, Zak and I had a rather fun trip to Las Vegas in August. I took a week off work and we drove down, stopping to visit friends and family along the way. We saw my grandma in Salt Lake, who showed us a scrapbook of family photos, including a lot of pictures of my dad as a child that I hadn't seen before. We also saw a friend of Zak's from his mission and a friend of mine from college. Carolyn and Jacob were more than generous in opening their home to us for the night once we got to Provo. We played some Super Smash Brothers (or Smashmouth Brothers, as Zak likes to call it...ahh, same difference!) and then headed for bed. We got up early the next morning and finished our drive to Vegas. We stayed at the Sahara Hotel for a couple of days, and did a LOT of walking up and down the Strip. Holy Cow, did we walk!
Incidentally, we got the trip by listening to one of those "buy these vacation credits for $20,000" things, and it was all free. Otherwise, we probably wouldn't have gone, so lucky us!
Two major highlights of the trip: we were able to attend the Las Vegas temple, which was beautiful (it's very pink inside, not what you'd expect), and we got a very cool "insider" tour of the Hoover Dam. Brent took us all through the dam and we got to see some crazy things! It was so interesting to learn about how the dam was built and how it operates. The power that water can create is astounding!
The trip ended with a whimper. My whimper, to be exact. Let me caution everyone: don't ever eat at the Circus Circus buffet, which is what we did Friday night before we left Vegas. I was so, so sick after we ate there... and we drove home anyway (Sprite in hand)! Luckily, there were no incidents along the road as we drove back to Logan. It was a fun getaway!