The Best of 2008

Happy New Year's Eve! I hope that everyone has an enjoyable evening welcoming 2009. Greg and I are planning to go into Springfield to have dinner and join in some of the "First Night" festivities including an 1850s ball at the Abraham Lincoln Museum. Well it has been quite an eventful year! Here are a few highlights:

On January 4, 2008, Greg proposed to me in Salt Lake City while I was home from school for Christmas break!

Later in January, I was able to take a wonderful trip to visit my friend Angie in Pennsylvania. We visited the #1 place on my list of places to visit: Gettysburg! We also went to Hershey and Amish country. Good times!

Throughout January, February, March and April, my classmates and I worked feverishly to complete our museum exhibit at the Tarble Arts Center. We finally finished just in time for the exhibit opening at the end of April. We took our finals at the first of May and were done with all of our coursework!

Mom came out to Illinois and drove home to Utah with me. We had a great time stopping at fun sites along the way.

In June, the whole family took a wonderful trip to Nauvoo, and I was able to go to the Nauvoo Temple! It was one of the funnest weeks I have ever had. Camden, Riley, Sid, and Eliza enjoyed their pioneer adventures there.

We had a wonderful summer in Utah with everyone there--including Sarah, Joel, and Eliza who were home from South Carolina for a few months. I enjoyed working at Camp Floyd--especially when the girls would come visit.

Then in October Greg and I were married at the Provo Temple!!! It was a truly wonderful day. We then embarked on our long road trip to Illinois via Mississippi.

When I returned to Illinois, I began working at the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency to finish my school internship. It was an amazing experience, but also a very sad one as I saw the agency crumble under Governor Blagojevich's budget cuts. A slight bit of good news came earlier this month when the gov. was arrested.

Greg and I got our cute kitty Tiger Lily at the end of November, bringing our number of animal children to three as she joined Big Spike and Little Spike. We had a wonderful Christmas and are looking forward to a fun New Year's Eve!

And we can't forget the year's biggest project: the Zion National Park book!!! Thank you to everyone for your encouragement and support. Hopefully 2009 will bring big book sales?

So that's pretty much 2008 in a nutshell.

Life's Big Decisions

Hmmmmmm, life is full of big decisions. I had been hoping that the job at the Museum of Church History and Art in Salt Lake would work out for me so that Greg and I could move back to Utah (and that would have been a really cool job), but with the current Church hiring freeze, that will not happen at this time. Unfortunately the job prospects aren't looking great anywhere, so Greg and I realize that we might need to stay here in Athens for a while since we at least have a regular income and insurance benefits. Athens is a nice place, and I wouldn't mind staying here for the time being, but after Saturday's freak storm I told Greg that if we're staying here into tornado season, we need a house with a basement. And, I have what you might call rentphobia. I realize that renting is nice because you're not tied down to a place, but I can't stand sending money each month into the black hole more commonly known as rent. So, Greg and I have been talking about the pro's and con's of buying a house. There is a cute little house here in town that Greg and I have been looking at, and I would appreciate any input that all of you wise blog readers have on the matter.


The house we're looking at belonged to Dr. William A. Mudd and was built in 1860. (It's a historic house and even has a plaque in the front yard!!!) You can see some pictures of the house by clicking here. The original structure consisted of just the two front rooms of the house--then the other parts were added on later. William Mudd's father, Dr. Henry Mudd, was friends with Abraham Lincoln and was excused from official service during the Civil War after he agreed to give medical treatment to both Confederate and Union soldiers. William followed in his father's footsteps and became a doctor. The realtor said that supposedly William Mudd was related to the infamous Dr. Samuel Mudd who was accused of helping John Wilkes Booth escape after assassinating President Lincoln, but I was checking today and couldn't find any close family relations. But with a name like Mudd, surely they must be related somehow.

The house is in good shape for being as old as it is, but it has a few problems. It has a totally ghetto paint job inside, and the floor coverings in the kitchen and bedrooms are not tacked down to the floor. It has new electrical wiring and a new roof, but there is a small leak in the roof on the newest addition to the house. There is also a little water damage (it looks like some old condensation) beneath the linoleum on the kitchen floor, and there is a little bit of black mold around the storm door in the basement. That being said, at least the house has a basement! The house also has a lot of character. The kitchen wallpaper would have to go, and the ceiling panels in the living room and master bedroom would either need to be removed or covered up, but the house has amazing insulation. Their utility bills are 1/3 of what Greg and I are currently paying, and they keep their house 10 degrees warmer than we do!

Here is a list of pro's and con's for buying the house:

Pro's

• It has a basement
• Utility bills are 1/3 as much as we are paying right now
• Our monthly payments on the house loan would be less than what we are currently paying for rent
• We could build up equity in the home
• It is a historic house
• It is a brick home and is very well insulated
• We would have an additional bedroom
• It would be our house
• We could make money when we sell it in the future
• It has a big bathroom
• We could have a little garden in the yard
• It comes with all of its appliances
• Did I mention that it has a brick-lined basement--good for taking shelter during tornadoes?
• It would be fun (though a lot of work) to fix up

Con's

• Owning it would tie us to Athens, and if we were to move in the near future, we would have to sell it
• It is old and could, at any time, have any number of problems
• Its furnace is kind of old and might need to be replaced in a few years
• It would need to be repainted and have the floor coverings fixed
• The mold problem around the door in the basement would need to be fixed
• We would need to make sure that the panels in the ceiling do not contain asbestos
• It doesn't have a garage
• It doesn't have a lot of closet space

What do you think?

Tornadoes in December

You've heard of Christmas in July, but how about tornadoes in December? Yesterday it was below freezing here, and today it got up to 65 degrees. With severe temperature change comes severe weather, and we got a load of that today. When Greg and I got back to Athens after our morning errands in Springfield, we heard on the radio that there was a bad storm headed our way. We walked outside and saw these crazy black clouds heading towards us. Why, you may ask, did we remain outside and take pictures when we should have been taking cover? That is a good question, and I don't have a good answer except that it was so fascinatingly scary that we couldn't help but stand there and snap photos. We saw the black clouds coming at us from the west, but then we looked on the northeast side of the house and saw this crazy downdraft. It wasn't actually a tornado, but it might as well have been. (Don't worry--we went inside at this point!) An 80 mile per hour wind gust then knocked out our power for a couple of hours. After the power came back on, I turned on my computer and found out that the storm that went over us turned into a tornado about 20 miles northeast of us. It was heading towards Champaign. Crazy weather! I think we need a house with a basement. Tonight it's supposed to get down below freezing again.

Merry Christmas!

We hope that everyone had a Merry Christmas! Lily was the first one to wake up yesterday morning. She was very excited for her first Christmas. She got some kitty treats and a fun new fuzzy pink toy which she absolutely loves. Her favorite part of Christmas, however, was batting mini Snickers, balls of wrapping paper, and ribbons around on the floor. It was the happiest day of her life. Big Spike also got some treats as well as a squeaky hedgehog. Little Spike is in Iowa with Greg's parents for the next few days, so he'll have to wait to play with the Christmas toys. We received some nice presents from Mom and Dad and from Greg's parents--thank you for everything! Greg gave me a heated blanket (which I am using right now), "The Office" and "Bones" DVDs, the new "Narnia" movie, and some beautiful earrings; and I gave him some Xbox games and a new shirt and tie.

Here is the Christmas aftermath. We enjoyed a leisurely day of playing Xbox and relaxing, then we went and had dinner with the Henning family (Greg's boss). The Hennings are so nice, and we had a wonderful time with them.

I heard that Richard was finally able to sleep in on Christmas morning this year! He didn't have his sisters around claiming that present opening should begin at 5:00 a.m. :-) It sounds very, very snowy in Utah, and I hope that everyone is staying warm. (I am confident that Sarah, Joel, and Eliza are warm in South Carolina.) The weather here is really weird. It is still just cold and icy outside today, but tomorrow it's going to get up to 60 degrees and we're supposed to have bad thunderstorms! But I'll take thunderstorms any day over freezing rain. This was my first Christmas away from home, and I miss all of my friends and family, but Greg and I have had a nice holiday here.

All of my hopes for getting the curatorial position at the Church History Museum in Salt Lake were dashed by the Church's new hiring freeze. They are not going to be hiring anyone for a few months at least--including at the Church schools. I am sad, but at least the Church isn't going to lay people off. Unfortunately these are tough economic times--and I have a feeling that things will only get worse over the next four years. Speaking of which, did you all hear the ridiculous news that Barack Obama is going to be sworn in as President using the same Bible that Abraham Lincoln used? Blaaaaaaaaah! All I can say is that he'd better be wearing some white cotton archive gloves so that his greasy hands don't ruin the Bible.

The Night Befo' Christmas

Merry Christmas Eve! We hope that you all have had a wonderful day and will have a Merry Christmas tomorrow. It sounds like Utah is getting a whole lot o' Christmas snow! The ground is white here in Illinois, but it's not really covered with snow--it's more like a few layers of ice and slush: yucky. This evening Greg and I went and had dinner with the Andreasen family. They are a wonderful family in our ward, and they have always been so kind to us. They cooked a turkey that had been grown at a local farm, and it was certainly the LARGEST turkey I've ever seen. It was 40 POUNDS!!!! I guess they had quite the adventures cooking it. We were also able to participate in the Andreasen Christmas Pageant as Mary and Joseph. We had a wonderful time and hope that all of our friends and family are having a nice evening. Now it's off to bed so that Santa can come!