Special Time with Liberty

Not to disagree with Diane, but October is the best month! Sweater weather,  fall colors, Haunted ski lift/hay rides, Halloween, pumpkins, corn mazes, farmer's markets, my birthday, apple cider....what could be better?

My first time of a ski lift. It was so pretty!

Life as a grad student is pretty great. I love teaching the group classes and my work keeps me busy. I'm in 5 classes, which is a lot for a grad student, but I like all of them. ....Well, except my library research techniques. An intensive course about library cataloging taught by a guy with a distrust of technology and passion for citation details is....something I could live without.

Graduate Student Dinner

 Tim is taking a full class load plus putting in a good 26 hours every week at Adobe. Somehow he keeps up!

Concert at Adobe

It was so windy at the concert that people's chairs and blankets kept getting away....or maybe that was just ours.

 Aha! You thought the Perkins' blog was just boring couple pictures without the cute kids. Well, I can
steal a couple of Richard's. Eleanor is getting cuter every time we see her...especially in this picture:

Watching a BYU football game at Qualtrics

Last Friday, I didn't have any classes so I decided to take Libby on a "special time".  Basically I just showed her around campus and tried to make stuff seem exciting. The art museum had an exhibit about big dresses from various films, so we went and looked at all the costumes. Then, we did leaf racing at the stream/pond. 

Then I showed her the huge magical 10 foot pianos in the HFAC. She played me a few Liberty originals and got me to play her favorite song while she conducted. Apparently, her favorite piano song is a preloaded song on her electric keyboard at home...which just happens to be the Mendelssohn concerto I played this year. I'm so proud. 

(about an opera singer warming up next door) "That girl sounds just like a Princess!"

"Let's find the smallest crystal ever! It's so cute!"

We visited the Planetarium and the science-y stuff. Then, we got some ice cream and just had to pretend it was a Blizzard since that's what Libby would have preferred haha.

"It's your turn, Penny. Just try to knock some down this time."

Then, to finish out the morning, we got a free game of bowling on my student card. Even with bumpers, I only got a 95 - and Libby was only one or two points behind.  She insisted on using the 18 pound ball because it was pink. To her credit, I was surprised that she could pick it up at all, but her tiny body had trouble balancing all of that weight both Libby and ball went tumbling over. I could not stop laughing haha. Anyway, I convinced her to use a lighter ball and as you can see her form was pretty excellent.

date night

Thanksgiving point

This is my favorite Dobe!

 So Tim's intership at Adobe (*funny story below) is ending soon on his birthday Aug 8th (Tim's birthday is 8/8/88). They've been keeping us in suspense about whether he would get a full time offer or not. Since he still has a semester of school left, there were a lot of barriers etc. Every week, they would say "we'll let you know next week for sure." But finally, they realized they couldn't live without his mad programming skills and worked it out to give him an offer. Below is his steak dinner celebration at Outback!

*funny story = We took the Bells and Egans to Adobe for a tour and Libby and Tristan thought we were saying "a Dobe" instead of "Adobe". Libby told Tim that "this is my favorite Dobe!"

We've been doing a lot of scum with Richard/Becky and Thomas/Mary. Tim and I had more than our fair share of hands like this:  (and yes....that bearded man is Thomas.) Last night, we also did 4-square badminton and creepy-humming-spin-the-gun mafia.

 

On Pioneer Day we went to a really awesome fireworks show in Mapleton. The finale got so loud, it was rocking our lawn chairs. I feared for my life a little bit.

 We also went to an outdoor movie that the Thanksgiving point gardens with the Egans which was really cool! Unfortunately even though they advertised Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, they actually played Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2. Disappointing.

 I still have not gotten into Pinterest. But, we did hear about this pancake trick which we've been having fun with. You draw lines with the batter first, let it sit, then add the rest on top. Tim surprised me on Sunday morning with this little bear pancake....so cute.

 Tim's parents visited and took us to an outdoor play of Les Mis. How great is that musical?

I just got my schedule for the 2 classes I'm teaching this fall. One of them is pictured below...I just took a snapshot from BYU's registration page because I thought it was cool that my name is on there. I'm trying to decide what I should ask my students to call me. Any suggestions? Professor Perkins? Master Penny?

We went to Idaho for the 4th of July and drove to this cool mountain lake. It was fun kayaking and fishing.

Family Film Festival

Here are the Bells and Perkins' submissions to the 2014 Cabin Reunion Film Festival. Annaliese's will be on their blog. It was a lot of work, but needless to say, I'm glad we did the Film Fest.

"Rook ft. Enya" by Pimothy : https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7VNaiCUvmCRb2NkS1FvQ0diNFU/edit?usp=sharing

"The Bells" by the Bells: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7VNaiCUvmCRRk5XRU9GeVBXd2M/edit?usp=sharing

Visit to a pretty cool school

All the kids loving on Ivory

A lot!

Curiosity Museum

Park City

We had a fun mini-vacation to Park City last weekend. I had never been there before, and it was pretty fabulous. We splurged on a room in the lodge on main street. The reviews online said it was small and not fancy, but it turned out to be awesome. It was 3x the size of our apartment and super fancy with a fireplace, full kitchen, whirlpool bathtub, and fancy furniture. 

The recreation center had an indoor/outdoor pool and 5 hot tubs! Main street was really empty because ski season is over.

We went on a mini hike recommended by the "concierge" (first time talking to one of those)

Tree full of shoes

five hot tubs!

Tim enjoying the fireplace

We also had fun looking in all the art and photography galleries.

p.s. (accepting film festival entries now, email to me when you're done so i can make a program)

Bike Accident

 This is going to be a long one. I don't even know where to begin! I graduated, I had an odd first day as a graduate student, we are loving spring (I can never decide if seasons get capitalized), we celebrated Easter, and more! Okay, first of all Spring is awesome! I love it when it snows pink blossoms from the trees.  

Tim bought a bike so we can go on rides now. We like to ride to the RB and play tennis, racquetball and volleyball. Also, we have been doing major spring cleaning and I parted ways with 3/4 of my shirts. It's hard for me to throw out clothes that are technically still wearable, even though most are 6+ years old, came from a thrift store in the first place, and are now far too small. Plus, I feel emotionally attached to even the clothes I dislike because they have memories with them like the shirt I was wearing when Tim proposed etc. But, it feels great to have cleaned out a bunch of stuff. (P.S. I know that Orson has a lecture prepared for the comments section about the importance de-junking, but don't worry, Tim also has strong feelings about it and he keeps me in check.)

So, I graduated last week and went out to Kneaders with the Egans for the marvelous french toast. Tuesday was my first official day as a grad student and it was...a little unusual. For starters, I went to my first class and I was the only student registered for it. So, the teacher said he'll guide my studies for the semester and I'll still take the tests in the testing center. This means I can never be tardy or not do my homework because that would just be awkward haha.

Then, on my way to my next class, I got in a little accident. I was riding my bike to tennis class on the sidewalk and started going pretty fast. You can ask Tim- usually I'm a really slow bike rider because I like to take my time. But, there were no pedestrians, so I started picking up speed. As I passed in front of an underground parking garage, a car came zipping out and I slammed right into it. I'm always on the lookout for cars coming out of those, but it came so fast, I just didn't have time to slow down (the picture shows my tire streak trying to slow down). It's crazy how fast your mind can work when adrenaline is pumping. In the split second between when I saw the car and collided with it, I had a whole conversation in my head: "woah that's coming up fast. Can I slow down? Nope. Okay, this is happening. Yikes, that girl looks familiar- this could be awkward if she's in my ward. Oh wait, no I don't know her." ...then BAM! My bike is kind of broken, but it might be just that the chain fell off. I didn't feel any pain right when it happened, but when I came home I started to feel all the bumps and bruises (some as big as my fist!) Even though it wasn't very serious, it was still pretty scary and my heart was racing for several hours after.

 In other news, we learned how to make really good omelets with ham, cheese, bacon and bell peppers! Tim has very impressive flipping skills.

For Easter, we made baskets for each other and a trail of clues and riddles to find it. We also hid Easter eggs around the apartment for each other to find. It was quite fun! We visited Tim's grandma and hung out with Richard and Diane.

It's pretty fun having the Bell's in town. At least Tristan thinks so because he gets to play with their awesome dinosaurs. He was roaring like this for about 20 minutes straight. 

Graduation bowling with some friends

 Also, in the spirit of spring cleaning, I chopped off a bunch of hair which felt great as it always does.

 This is me at work. I play piano for rehearsals of the Spring opera. It's super fun!

Tim testing out an Oculus on campus

Tim and I went to go check out Richard's house for them when they were in Idaho. I meant to share the pictures and video tour with only him, but I accidentally posted it on Google+. I tried to delete the post, but I've been steadily getting messages from friends congratulating my on buying my first house for weeks now.

april fools day joke by BYU..put on all professor's doors

This is from the day that Tim and I were bogged down with studying and decided to drive into the canyon for a spontaneous bonfire! That was awesome. And tasty.

creepy chuck e cheese robot at Tristan's birthday party