The Joys of Moving

The past couple weeks have been a little crazy for us. We have taken finals, had family staying at our house, gone to graduations, and moved. Our time has been filled with very good and worthwhile things, but it seems like everything in the world was happening all at once, which made it a little stressful.

I forget how crazy moving is. The year that we first got married I moved four times, and it seems to just get harder and harder each time. I feel like the longer I live, the more stuff I acquire, and the more things I have to worry about.

It boggles my mind how much stuff you actually have in your house. I would look around our apartment before we started packing and think, “There’s not that much stuff in this room. Only a few books, a book case, and a couple desks.” What I failed to realize is that the “few books” I had ended up filling about seven boxes. Not to mention all the decorations on the walls and shelves, the garbage cans, and rugs. Oh yeah, and you have to pack up all your pots and pans, your towels, extra sheets, games, tvs, pillows, your shower curtain, your cleaning supplies, that odd shaped basket you love but can’t figure out where to put it, and tons of other random things.

It seemed like we moved out the majority of our stuff within a couple of hours. On Saturday we moved out all of our furniture, the seven boxes of books, our big bins of Christmas and Halloween decorations, and some boxes of food storage. When we were putting it all in the trucks to take it away I looked around and saw how empty it looked. Everything else just seemed like small things that wouldn’t take that long to get packed up. I was definitely wrong though. It took us part of the next three days to finish it all.

After doing this, I decided that each item takes about the same amount of time to get ready and packed away so items that are large and have a greater volume are much more satisfying to move. We moved out a greater volume of things on Saturday, but a lower quantity. Thus, it was the 2,000 tiny things that took up most of our time.

After the big items were gone and I was packing up smaller boxes, I tried to keep similar things together. This worked for a while, but then somehow, the last fifth of our boxes ended up just being miscellaneous items that didn’t seem to fit into any category. After a while I just started putting things in boxes without worrying what they were because it didn’t seem to make sense labeling everything as miscellaneous.

This move has been a bit different for us because we weren’t just moving things from one apartment to another, we were moving some things into a storage unit, some things to my parents house, and some things we are taking with use to Oregon. It seems easier when you know everything is going to the same place, but we had to be pretty meticulous to make sure that it all got to the right destination.

It is sad to pack all your worldly possessions into boxes just so they can sit in a dirty storage unit for four months. It is all for a good purpose though. We are really excited to be able to go to Oregon for the summer. We hope that we will both be able to find good jobs so we can save money, but the thing we are most excited for is to just be doing something different. It will be a great change from the non-stop drudgery of school. We are looking forward to not having homework and being able to see each other on a daily basis. It has been sad to leave everything and everyone behind for a while, but we hope that we will have experiences and adventures that will make it all worthwhile.

An Easter Farewell

It seems somewhat ironic to me that the day that my siblings are all leaving Provo and moving on into big person world, is also Easter Sunday.

Easter is a day focused around the happiness and joy of the resurrection of our Savior, and what it means for our future destiny as his children. He came back from the dead, to be among the living. Yet inside I just feel an emptiness that I can only compare to what the saints must have felt as they watched their Savior be removed from the cross and laid in a tomb. This individual that meant so much to them, their older brother, was gone. In spite of what he said regarding his resurrection, they must have felt so confused and lost as the one they held their confidences in had offered himself up freely. Surely there would never be a time where they could feel happiness again.

So it is also with the graduation of my two older brothers. They came to BYU with a mission, and we were lucky enough to all be here to experience it together. All 5 Glazier siblings at BYU at the same time. It was too good to be true. I remember being on my mission and thinking how hard it would be for all of us to ever be together again at the same time for an extended period of time. But the planets aligned and we got to share in some of the best times together. We camped out for basketball games for days on end. We had dinner together every Sunday, each taking turns preparing fun food for a mass of people. Fondue nights were everyone's favorite. There were a lot of times where I truly felt like this time here together was going to last forever. Sure people left during the summer months to go to internships and the likes, but there was the surety that come August, everyone would safely return. Well, they have finished the work they come to do. They are now both a Master of Business and Doctor of Juris Prudence. There is nothing left for them to do here in the land of school, it is finished.

So it's Easter morning now, and there is a Penske truck headed to Arizona, and another caravan headed to Oregon. Lisa and I are sitting on an air mattress in our furniture-less room that has carefully organized piles of our possessions lining the walls, and I'm trying not to be sad. I feel like the ones whom I respect and admire so much, have left me and I'm here alone in Provo-world trying to figure out when my time will come. I'm beginning my own three days of darkness the apostles and early christians experienced after Christ died. How can I possibly do this alone without their friendship and support?

I don't have to, and that's the point.

One of the greatest blessings that has come from this time together is the foundation we have established of friendship and love. It actually started a long time ago when our parents enforced family dinner and introduced the contention box. My parents understood the immense power that comes from mutual admiration among siblings. They fostered that strength and it has become this force to be reckoned with as we have become married adults working to build our own families. I suppose I should be angry with my parents because it's that affection we share that makes these partings so difficult, and they started it. But that would be ridiculous because I wouldn't trade this love I have for them for anything. Christ felt that too, and wasn't even willing to sacrifice his own personal comforts to risk us not being able to be with him again.

So it comes full circle. Easter is about Christ and his return to mortality, and the hope it gives us that we can be together again, and that hope is what I need. I have the greatest hope that I will be able to be with my brothers, sister and parents again. Fortunately we are all still living and the connection can be felt with a quick phone call or skype session, but there is nothing that compares with sitting in the same room with each other laughing over stories of childhood embarrassments or cheering on your favorite sports team. It's not that these moments won't happen again, on the contrary, I highly expect them to happen often. But it's the proximity that makes them more frequent and enjoyable. If I could have my way, they would stick around until we were all done. But while I love them, I wouldn't wish an eternity in Provo on anyone.

In the end, I guess really it's not as ironic as I originally though, in fact it's more appropriate than I ever realized. Easter helps us remember the hope and happiness that comes from our potential reunion with our Savior as we come to the end of our lives. So while we have not come to the end of our lives, but merely the end of a season of our lives, I hope for a time not far distant when we can laugh and spend time together again and remember the time we were all at BYU together.

Ten Things I Love about Disneyland

Todd and I have decided we will take turns blogging each week, and this week it is my turn. There are a lot of things going on in our lives now with moving and finishing classes, etc., but that is all kind of boring. What I really wish we could do is go to Disneyland! As you may know, we both LOVE Disneyland (and Disney in general) and we try to go there as often as possible. At the end of this semester, we will have time off and enough money saved up to go, but sadly the timing is off. We have both felt like it would be a good idea to wait until the fall to go when things aren't quite so crazy. We are both sad, but it is all for the best. But just because we aren't going doesn't mean that we have stopped thinking about it.

In fact, we think about it every day, several times a day because we recently bought "A Musical History of Disneyland," which has the music from most of the rides and songs they play throughout the park. It has changed my life! I feel like I can close my eyes and be in the Tiki Room or on Space Mountain wherever I am. It is awesome!

So today I wanted to share ten things I love about Disneyland. They are in no particular order because there are so many things I love I would never be able to pick what I love the most.

I love leaving behind all my worries and cares and going to a place that is full of magic and wonder.

I especially love being there with my family and the people I love most.

I love knowing where the cameras are and being really dramatic when they are taking your picture on a ride.

And being the center of attention....

I love the "spare no expense" holiday decorations and the exciting night life.

I LOVED the California Adventure food and wine festival when we went in April 2010. They had professional chefs come and teach you how to cook different meals, and also the proper way to eat cheese. All you had to do was wait in line for a little while but everything was free and they gave you pretty good portion sizes, plus a water bottle and note pad. It was all things I love in one. Togetherness, Disneyland, and cheese.

I love having our own boat on Pirates of Caribbean. It is my favorite ride.

I love random places like the Mission tortilla factory where you can get a delicious tortilla and watch a funny little video where little kids tell you where corn came from.

I love meeting the characters.

And I love being a kid again.

What should we write about

The problem with being a slacker blogger is that when the time comes to blog again after a year and a half there are too many things to write about. We could write about me getting into Dental Hygiene school, Todd changing majors to Industrial Design, going to San Francisco, going to Disneyland, going to Oregon (twice), buying a new car, winning a $100 Macey's gift card, deciding to move to Oregon for the summer, or just regular day to day stuff I guess. So not much has really even happened. I suppose the most pertinent subject is our decision to leave Provo for the summer.

We've lived in this house for almost 2 and a half years, basically since we've been married. It has been awesome, and considering the circumstances under which we found it, it has been a huge blessing. We did live somewhere else before here after we got married - it was for about 2 months and it ended when the people we shared a house with knocked on our door and just said "Sorry". Sorry for what? We were being kicked out because the house was not technically a duplex and we had an eviction notice saying that we had two weeks to find a new place of residence. Living in Provo, that is not an easy thing to accomplish. However, this place quickly fell into our laps and we have loved it ever since.

So here we are at the end of this semester/time of our lives and we are packing up our house and putting it into storage as we leave this house and ward and venture into a new environment for a few months in Oregon. It definitely is exciting, but somewhat sad to think about the good times Lisa and I have had here. There is a picture my mom has hanging in her house, I believe it is from Martha Stewart, and I feel like it captures the way I feel about leaving here.

one awesome year

one year. 365 days. that's how long lisa and i have been married and it's almost impossible to believe that's how long it's been. there's been a lot of ups and downs, uproarious laughter and moments of grief, but on the whole it is amazing to see how much we've learned. i was telling lisa that we have both grown and stretched ourselves in many ways and more than we realize, but the best part is that we've grown together and not in separate paths. that is huge and certainly makes me feel grateful, considering the shambles my life would be in if i did not have her. so that's one reason why i am madly in love with my smoking hot wife. but now onto our anniversary day and one of the main reasons why i love lisa.

so about a month or two ago when we realized our anniversary was quickly approaching, we decided to figure out how we would go about celebrating our anniversary. we thought it would be fun if each year one person planned out an event or multiple activities for the day. originally, we decided i would do this year, but then lisa realized that she would have to do all the big ones (10, 20... 70?) so she quickly volunteered to do this first anniversary. that was the last i heard of it from lisa. if you don't know lisa, let me tell you that she can keep a secret like her life depends on it. she made no peep of her secret plans until about a week ago, and even then it was quick and mysterious. so all this week she has been going about some secret activities and i have been clueless as to her plans. until this morning. I woke up and came downstairs and on the coffee table were pictures with words above them. take a look.

so lisa had been secretly wanting to figure out a way to go to disneyland (the real one) but with work, money and time it just wasn't going to work out. so what did clever lisa do? she made our very own disneyland out of utah and salt lake county. seriously, i was and am still so impressed. she got everything. frontierland, adventureland, tomorrowland, critter country, etc. and each with an equally awesome destination and/or activity. so i'll give you the tour of our disneyland-utah adventure.


our day started off on "main street usa" (aka provo center street) for breakfast at einstein bagels.




it was delicious and a nice way to start the day. and fyi, if you order the shmear, they do not skimp out. lisa's bagels were half bread half cream cheese. kind of insane.


after breakfast we made our way to salt lake city to frontierland (heritage park).

this park is a trip back to the pioneer days when they arrived in the salt lake valley. it basically is a complete replica of a typical pioneer town right down to the clothes and even hygiene. all over they have activities you can do like the pioneers did. such as making candles

caring for the local wildlife

and blacksmithing... obviously.

needless to say, frontierland was awesome and we were ready for the next portion of disneyland-utah...

critter country (aka hogle zoo)

i love the zoo. everyone should love the zoo. especially the primate building. seriously, i could sit and watch monkeys ALL DAY LONG. the way they move, eat, sleep. they're just boss.
but we can't neglect the cats. tigers, lynx, etc. this is one of the few animals crowds would stop and stare at even if the animal was sleeping. the felines just demand attention and respect. have you ever seen a tiger paw up close. those suckers are friggin huge! if i ever had the chance to get mauled by a tiger paw, i think i'd pass. i'd rather have a bear claw... mmmm, donuts. so critter country was a giant success and much fun was had by all.

after all the walking that had been done, we had worked up a serious appetite. so we headed on to adventureland (aka the mayan adventure)

this place looks, smells and feels like a disneyland feature. from the minute you walk in you're greeted by the musky smell of indoor water and the same decorations as the indiana jones ride. and that's just the lobby. soon we were escorted to our table on the 4th balcony of the restaurant right next to a giant rock cliff overlooking a pool of water. as we were eating our appetizer of delicious chile con queso, divers took to the rocks and began performing flips and twists off them while music played and scenes were acted out.

it was awesome and definitely captured the "adventureland" spirit of disneyland. awesome

on our way back home we also stopped off at ikea (aka fantasyland)

while obviously this place is not my true fantasyland (wink wink), we had a blast walking through this labyrinth of a store admiring all the awesome furniture and do-dads we wish we could afford and hope to someday have in our very own house... someday. but we got some great ideas on how to improve our house and had a great time fantasizing.

finally, we got home and finished up the last two places of disneyland, new orleans and tomorrowland.
now, for these final locations, they were more activity oriented. i love mint juleps and they are from the south originally, so lisa made those while we watched star wars, which is obviously tomorrowland (star tours is one of the greatest rides ever and i'm stoked for the new one they are developing).

so basically it was the best anniversary i've ever had (and probably beats the crap out of any of your anniversaries) and i loved it. this is why i love lisa. she is insanely creative and knows how to surprise me (which takes a lot of effort) and plan a day full of awesome stuff that is only made better by the fact that she, my gorgeous and lovely best friend, was by my side for every minute of it. it was like some sort of metaphor for our lives. pure adventure.

working it out

i know it's a little late as we near the end of summer, but better late than never. i have been on a good workout program for a few weeks now and it's been great. initially it was tough, and my body resisted pretty hard at first but i have since established a good system. i've been waking up at 6:15-6:30 every morning to go running, swimming or some other form of exercise. my flabby body has regained its endurance fairly quickly and i am working up the distances i go each day which is good. then at night, i've been going to the gym with my neighbor clint and doing more muscular activities. this has been equally gratifying, but not as quickly or dramatically as i would hope

but i've been very consistent and i'm hoping that this preemptive strike on the fall fifteen (aka halloween-christmas) that so craftily sneaks up on me will be a strong enough offensive. i enjoy working out and am not too badly out of shape, mostly just soft. but my goal is that before i turn 25 in november to be in my best shape ever. let's just hope that school and work don't kill me first.

a new beginning

well, i suppose it's time to take this seriously. we've had this blog for some time, but we are too busy to update it. ok, i lied. we're just lazy. but if any of you enjoy reading blogs as much as we do, and you lives are half as exciting as ours, you deserve to know what goes on in the life of todd and lisa glazier. so, lisa has bestowed upon me, todd, the responsibility of keeping this up to date. as such, i decided that it was important that the blog have a more macho look to it. black and blue are fitting, no? of course i had to have some element of girliness, so i made sure there was some floral pattern subtly in the background for lisa. i'm sure lisa will occasionally contribute to the blog as well, and so you can always know when she is writing because she takes time to use proper grammar and capitalize letters. i'm way to scatterbrained to worry about that kind of stuff, my thoughts move to quickly. so with a proper explanation of our delay, let the blogging begin.

so, lately we've just both been working like crazy. lisa is finishing her last 20 days (she has a countdown on her ipod touch) at a doctor's office that deals with drug addicts and pain management - i'm sure you can imagine the pleasant folk that come through there. i've been working at the MTC in the development department working as a graphic designer making things like this
it is such a fun job and i really enjoy the environment at the MTC. the people there are a lot more goofy and crazy than you would think. however, in about 3 weeks, lisa and i will both be heading back to school. lisa to get ready for dental hygiene school and me to finish school in the graphic design program at BYU. after going through our budget for the next 9 months of school and life, we are beginning to understand just how expensive 2 people in school at the same time is. however, uncle sam is writing both of us a big fat grant check so that should seriously help out our situation. but we're definitely excited and we are going to be keeping busy with church callings, part time jobs, school and of course being awesome. in brief, life is good and we're having a good time. isn't that the way it should be?

Our Jaunt to the Ward Party

Tonight we were going to go to a ward Christmas party in our new ward (see below for story of finding the new ward). We had only been to the ward once and we were excited to be able to meet new people and start making friends. The party was at Aspen Grove, which is in Provo canyon by the Sundance ski resort, so it is about half an hour away from our house. The weather wasn't very pleasant today either, as this is the first day that it has snowed in Provo all year pretty much. We really wanted to go to the party though, so we braved the snow and drove up the canyon to Aspen Grove. Neither of us had ever been there before, so we weren't sure of where to go exactly. Once we arrived we ended up driving around for a while looking like fools because we had no idea what we were doing and everywhere we went seemed like the wrong place. Finally some kind decided to help us and he told us that the ward party had actually been cancelled and that even if we were going to go to a ward party we were in the wrong place anyway. So after driving all that way in the snow we turned around and went straight back home. At least the scenery was beautiful?!

The Great Bathroom Disasters of '07 and '08

2007
Last year, when Todd and I were dating, we made spaghetti for dinner one night at his apartment. We were about to start eating when I had a sudden call from nature and could not resist the urge. I went and used the restroom (#1 and uneventful). Then when I flushed the toilet, the water kept building up and building up and building up, until it started gushing out over the sides all over on the floor. I didn't know what to do. I panicked. It wasn't my house, I didn't know where the plunger was, and I didn't want to wade through the overflowing river to get to the toilet to shut off the water or anything. I mean that is gross. So what did I do instead? I started yelling for Todd and pounding on the door of the bathroom screaming for help while I was standing on the only dry spot in the room which was the mat on the floor. It was what I later called "my island of despair in a sea of overflowing toilets." Meanwhile Todd is sitting out in the living room wondering how soon it will be until he can eat the delicious food we cooked, only to be disturbed by my cries of help. He ran to my aid, grabbed a towel and started mopping everything up as quickly as possible. Luckily the toilet had stopped gushing of its own accord by this time, but it was still going long enough to have the water flood into the hallway and almost onto the carpet in the living room. We cleaned it all up and after we stopped laughing our heads off we were able to finish our spaghetti. However, if I could help it, I just used my own bathroom before I went to his apartment from then on.

2008
We figure that we will have some sort of bathroom mishap each year, and this year's happened this morning. Last night I left a bottle of benzoin tincture (which is a liquid medicine my dentist gave me after an oral surgery for use on sores in your mouth) open on the counter because I was using it, but then I was extremely tired so I didn't realize that I left it there. Then this morning when Todd went into the bathroom, he didn't see it and accidentally knocked it on the floor. The medicine, which is pretty foul smelling I might add, spilled all over the floor, the counter, and the cupboards. After I heard his cry of dismay I went in to help clean it up. It is pretty strong stuff and as soon as it landed on the cupboards it started eating through the paint. It has a very dark color and it gets really sticky when it dries at all, so our bathroom turned into a giant sticky smelly mess. It has an alcohol base so we got some alcohol (the medicinal kind of course) and started cleaning it off everything. It came right off the floor, and counter, and luckily the cupboards were white underneath so even though it took off the paint, you can't really tell. The smell sadly hasn't really gone away so we are still left with that pleasantness, but at least it is relatively back to normal now.

Finding Our Ward

We recently moved into a new apartment, and it has been rather an adventure trying to get into the right ward. The first week we decided to try out the married student ward since we had never been to one before and we thought it might be nice for a change. We looked up the location online, went on Sunday....and then we thought we might see how the family ward was just for comparison. The next week we went to the family ward. There were nice people there of course, but it came down to a decision of what ward we felt least awkward in since neither of them were nearly as awesome as our old ward. We ended up deciding that the student ward would be the best for us and so the next week we planned to attend that ward again. I thought I should double check the time and location to make sure we were in the right place and it turned out that there were actually two chapels in the same building and that we had gone to the wrong chapel. So the next week we went to the other chapel and felt as though we were finally in the right place. After sacrament meeting we went and talked to the bishop and filled out the usual new member sheets. After we had already given them our names and phone numbers and had written them up on big white board for everyone to see, they figured out that the online information was wrong and that we were supposed to be in a different ward in the stake. Well, third times the charm right? We finally met our bishop and went to our final ward the next week. Sigh of relief.