onomatopoopa

Because of the lame-ness of Frontier airlines and because we can't do anything about the fact that we are flying with them yet again after much turmoil and frustration (we wanted to use $200 in vouchers because of the mistreatment from our last trip--redeeming them should have been an issue in a different post, but I'm trying to release the bitterness I feel toward Frontier and the airline industry in general), Bart and I are going to have a contest on who can guess how many times our flight times will change between now and the time we arrive in Philadelphia after our trip. For those of you who don't travel often, it might be difficult for you to imagine that this number could be pretty high, but BELIEVE me. It will be high. Here are the rules for the contest:

1) This is NOT Price Is Right. As much as I adore that show, for the sake of this game, we are going to say that the person who has the CLOSEST guess--higher or lower--will be the winner.

2) You are ONLY guessing in regards to the Frontier leg of our trip. It is a one-way ticket from SLC to Philadelphia.

3) I will check the flight times once weekly (starting today) until it is 30 days before our flight. That will be 17 times that I will check the flight time. At the 30-day point we will be receiving phone calls to let us know the updates.* I will create a tally of how many times our flight time changes.

4) The tally already has one mark in it because it has already changed since we purchased it last week. So be sure to guess higher than 1.

5) Delays incurred while we are at the airport on July 15th DO COUNT so factor that into your guess.

6) Here is the flight information we had when we bought the ticket:
Depart SLC on July 15th at 11:25 am. Arrive in Denver at 12:55 pm.
Depart Denver on July 15th at 2:55 pm. Arrive in Philly at 8:25 pm.

The winner will receive a surprise obtained from one of the following cities in honor of our time spent in the airport:
Philadelphia
Cleveland
Seattle
Anchorage
Salt Lake City
Denver
or any other place we might get rerouted to

**we were guaranteed by a ticketing agent that the flight will change and to not bother looking at the flight times until 30 days prior to the trip.

For FHE last night Bart and I played squash-ish racquetball. And today, well, my arm feels like jell-o. I think I was holding the racquet too tight. Regardless, I was unstoppable. Or at least the amount of time I spent looking goofy didn't stop. But since Bart is such a wonderful coach (see post about swimming from 2008) we had a pretty fun time. He even told me I was surprisingly good. I don't know why he was surprised though--I did play t-ball for 2 whole years.

Hey family! We are super excited because we are officially coming to Alaska and Utah this July. Mark your calendars for the following schedule. (Oh man, we are really anal and controlling--can you tell we don't have kids yet?!) You all have permission to be this ridiculous when you come visit us!

July 3 at 11 pm: Bart and Katie arrive in Alaska. Will promptly greet Richelle, Andy, Savannah, and Gabe (assuming they are still awake), hopefully see some moose or elk or something, and then fall asleep because it will be 3 am Philly time and we will have been traveling for 13+ hours.

July 4-8th (all day): Bart, Katie, Richelle, Andy, Savannah, Gabe, and new moose friend will have tons and tons of fun exploring Alaska and seeing the Lays in their element. Katie is particularly excited to go fishing! (Minus the worming her own hook part--do you think Gabe or Savannah will help me out with this?)

July 9th-ish: We will take a red eye around 1 am to arrive in Utah at 8 am on the 9th and hopefully head up to Logan via one of our loving relatives... hint hint...

July 9-12th: We are thrilled to be able to attend Sydney's baptism and hang out in Logan with the Anderson family.

July 12-15th: Next, we will head down to Layton after Syd's confirmation in order to hang out with Katie's parents and Granny.

We are so grateful that we can come visit everyone and know that the trip will be way more fun than this lame post sounds!

Remember the movie Groundhog day? Well the real Punxsutawney is even more quirky, but not nearly as big or nice as that. But if your idea of a good time is getting up at 3:30am to drive an hour from your hotel so you can freeze your butt off on the top of a hill four hours from any real city in the dark with thousands of teenagers college kids and fanatical old people -- well, you should buy a top hat and apply to the Inner Circle! We thought it sounded like a pretty swell time, and we were right. We didn't get pictures with all 32 groundhog statues, but we got most of them.













This one's for Diane. Go STEELERS!!













Finally, here's a video especially for Shawn:

Back in December Bart and I went to a special seminar organized by our stake to train us to be official SEPA VOAD (Southeastern Pennsylvania Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster) volunteers. About one week later, we received badges that allow us special access to emergencies! In conjunction with this, SEPA VOAD through the Red Cross offered to give us more training classes.
So last night Bart and I became two of the newest people to be CPR certified. We spent 4 hours learning about rescue breathing, compressions, and saving people who are choking. We offered to do the mouth-to-mouth on each other, but they insisted that we use the Annie training dummies (see below). It was VERY informative and now we feel empowered to help in an emergency. I'm sure that we would still be terrified, but the extra knowledge will definitely help.