making a bad thing a little better

Finding married housing in Provo is literally a search for the holy grail. Our decision to live at Wymount came at sort of a "Quick! Let's grab a cheap apartment!" moment. Although we weren't crazy about living at "the bunny hill" we found that Wymount had a few things going for it.

Close to campus. We save gas and get our excercise by biking to school/work every day. Not to mention we don't ever have to worry about parking/BYU ticket nazis. In the winter when I student teach, Wes can still get to and from school and I can have the car.

Cheap. Also difficult to find a DECENT apartment in Provo for under 600.00. Now I know I shouldn't be complaining (all you "back East" people) but our budget struggles. Our 2 bedroom Wymount apartment 615.00, utilities included.

Ok, so those are pretty much the only good reasons to live at Wymount. And we figure, our first apartment can be the worst because we are just married and so in love and it doesn't really matter where we live. That's what we keep telling ourselves. Well, that's what I keep telling myself. Wymount sometimes feels like "Whyme?mount."

Nevertheless, we have tried to make the best of our cinder block, industrial warehouse carpet, fluorescent lighting, 40 year old plumbing situation. And so I'll show you a few things we have done to improve the situation.

{Problem 1} Everything looks like a barren prison. Especially the front doors. Hard to know if an apartment is occupied or not.

{Resolution} Do something obvious. We bought a welcome mat, put a hook on our door (which we'll never use, but still helps with the welcoming effect) and a giant orange magnetic flower.

{Problem 2} The lighting. The lighting is terrible, even when we replaced all the light bulbs with uber wattage ones.

{Resolution} We bought a few extra lamps for the office. However, the bedroom was still dingy. So we placed 9 1' x 1' square mirrors on the wall opposite the window to reflect light. They work great and are so stylishly modern if I do say so myself.

{Problem 3} The blinds. I really don't like the blinds in each of the rooms. They are just so... blah. Functional yes. Eye candy no.

{Resolution} Tear them down and replace with cute IKEA curtains. We found a silver curtain rod from Home Depot (thank you gift card). It works great. Then we cut the curtains down to fit our window.
We bunched them all up for a layered effect that looks so much better, and gives some privacy.

{Problem 4} The heat. Wymount is without air conditioning. I know. Can you believe it?!

{Resolution} Have a good husband who is faithful about home teaching. He will go the first time and return with a free AC unit. Then have him build and install a frame to hold the unit in the bedroom window. I don't think you are technically supposed to do this because you have to pull the screens out... but we don't care. Shhhh. And don't we think that Wes could totally pull off the Ty Pennington thing?

{Problem 5} The lack of sheet rock.

{Resolution} Wymount puts in up to 4 anchors in the cinderblock in each room. The catch is, they don't take them out. Ever. So we are stuck with anchors from the couple that lived here 20 years ago (and terrible placement I might add!) We have resorted to command strips. Wes has become the king of command strips. I think just about everything in our apartment is hanging
on one.

The place looks so much better! We're grateful for our home and I shouldn't bash it so much because the ward makes up for it. We have really great neighbors. And as a Relief Society, we always try to collectively be grateful for Wymount in the "Good News/Missionary Moment/I'm grateful for minute" every Sunday.

Spence

Seems like my brother is always up to some insane physical "become one with the wild" adventure. Here is an excerpt from his latest.

The Gannett IAD (in a day) Story:

Gannett Peak: Highest Point in Wyoming: 13804 ft, 40 miles, 20,000 feet elevation change.
Usually done as a 3-5 day backpacking trip.

We took off from Elkhart meadows trailhead around 4:30 am after it rained all night. We were afraid it wasn't going to happen with the bad weather, but sure enough it cleared up. We made really good progress for the first 15 miles, passing quite a few campsites through ups and downs, but not really gaining too much vertical. We stopped every hour or so to both refill and empty our dual bladders, and tried to eat lots of calories, though the jarring of the trail caused our stomachs to heave. I had a headache by about mile 10, but luckily my friend Mr. Excedrin pulled through for me with 800 mg of pain relief. The weather was off and on, raining a little but nothing worth turning back for. I ate 2 packages of peperoni, 2 Hostess fruit pies, 4 packages of crackers, 2 salmon packets, 4 bagels, 4 power bars, 3 snickers, 4 string cheeses, and a bag of nuts plus 12 liters of water the whole day.

We hit Titcomb Basin, which is a beautiful valley of lakes with pristine, jagged peaks all around(see sarcastic video) around mile 16 and just had to make up to Bonney Pass, a wicked steep climb either on loose boulders or soft slushy snow. We split it 50%, 2 to the snow and 2 to the rocks. At this point, Steve, who hadn't been training quite as much as he should have in order to do this horrible murder run, started to fall behind. The other 3 of us hit the top of the pass(see other video in next email) while he was only half way. We were a little worried, but decided to take off without him. We slid down other side of the pass on our stomachs via snow and then crossed the first glacier on somewhat unstable snow. We then started up the mountain proper and found ourselves at the crux of the climb, the bergshrund. This is where the glacier has separated itself from the mountain and so a huge crevasse forms and is impassable late in the season. Luckily we made it over it as there was a short vertical snow bridge that passed over it. Soon enough we were on top, 8:15 hours later. We met another group attempting a 24 hour push. They had left the parking lot at 11 pm the night before, for a fairly ridiculous time of 13 hours. They felt good about themselves till we got there, having beaten them by 5 hours. We tried not to rub it in.

The hike out was, well, awful. While crossing the glacier a hailstorm came in. Steve had just summited and was now almost an hour behind us. Greg almost fell into a crevasse and lightning struck nearby. We arrived back at the top of Bonney pass unscathed but fairly ready to puke. The last 15 miles was just mental. Run when you can, walk the flat, crawl the uphill. We were hoping to make it out before dark, but the headlamps came out about 9 pm, and we finished an hour later at 10 pm, 17:14 hours and 40+ miles later. Steve came in an hour after at 18:30. He said the other 24 hour group was quite a bit behind, so they didn't make it unfortunately. All in all it was an awesome experience and one that we will remember for a long time. Very hard and long. Greg, who runs 100 milers, said that Gannett seemed almost as hard as lots of 75 mile runs he's done because of the vert. Fun stuff.

I just had to share. I'll never be as cool as Spence. Or as crazy.