Temple #49: St. Paul, Minnesota

Josh and I decided to spend the morning of our fifth wedding anniversary at the St. Paul, Minnesota temple, which is about a 5 1/2 hour drive from Grand Forks. I love going to the temple on our anniversary.

This temple was dedicated in 2000, so it's one of the smaller, more plain temples. There are a couple pretty notable things, though. Firstly, this temple may have the least amount of grounds area than any temple we've been to so far. What you see in this picture is literally it: 

The temple shares a parking lot with a stake center, but even that isn't very large. The other unique thing is that this message, which appears on all LDS temples, is etched in glass over the door. I don't think we've seen that before, either:

Finally, the temple workers were mostly young marrieds, which was unusual. But maybe it was just that weekend for some reason. Also, someone's cell phone went off multiple times while I was in the dressing room. In a temple that small, you can hear that stuff. Turn off your cell phones, people! You're in the house of the Lord!

a weird, backward way of letting you know with my fingers how crazy we are for visiting so many temples

I have said many times that the 50th temple makes us officially crazy. Well... we've chosen #50 and we're heading there soon. I'll let it be a surprise as to which one it will be. 

Five Years of ShepAlders

I always like to surprise Emily with something fun for her birthday and our anniversary, as they are literally on consecutive days in late July. This year, I decided to make a video chronicling our engagement, wedding day and (briefly) our honeymoon in Jamaica. Then, while we were in Minneapolis, I covertly posted it to her Facebook wall.

The song in the video is "Real Love," by John Lennon, one of my musical idols. I sang it while playing my guitar at our wedding reception. It's one of my most favorite songs and I think it perfectly captures how much I love Emily. Enjoy!

"5 years is almost 7 years and 7 years is practically a decade"

This is how I justify telling Josh that we've been married for "nearly a decade," but I guess the world has only had the pleasure of the ShepAlder union for 5 years as of... TODAY!

During my staff retreat last Wednesday, one of the "getting-to-know-you" questions was "What 30 seconds of your life would you choose to relive if you only had 30 seconds to live?" I chose these 30 seconds:

We had been married less than a year and were at Disneyland together for the first time. My grad program hadn't yet gotten stressful and we didn't yet know how hard the next few years would be both personally and professionally. We were just newly married, at Disneyland, and extremely happy. We had probably eaten at the Blue Bayou earlier in the day and watched the fireworks from Splash Mountain. It doesn't get more perfect than that.

Happy Anniversary, Schwobes! I'm sorry I made you move to North Dakota, but at least you have been spared from living in Utah. ;)

Things I didn't know about Grand Forks #20

Another thing I mentioned to my coworkers that I thought was strange about Grand Forks is the prevalence of these tiny stop signs:

a terrible picture taken by me of me and one of these weirdly tiny stop signs during a run for size reference. They are about 6 ft tall and the sign is slightly larger than my head

The conversation went something like this:
ME: I don't understand why there are all of these pedestrian stop signs.
COWORKERS: Pedestrian stop signs! (huge laughter) Don't tell her, don't tell her! See if she can guess what they are!
OTHER COWORKER: What else would people drive in Grand Forks? Think of during the winter.
ME: For snowmobiles?
COWORKERS: YES! SNOWMOBILES! (more laughter)
ME: That makes more sense. I kept stopping at these stop signs during my walks, thinking, "This must be a particularly busy intersection. I would stop, look both ways, and then keep walking."

wouldn't you think you should stop for this?

They think my ignorance is hilarious.

Things I didn't know about Grand Forks #19

During lunch today, all the counseling coworkers gathered in the break room for a potluck. Someone asked me about some of the things I found strange (he used the word "provincial") about GF, and I answered:

Blue laws are weird. It's nice that stores are closed so that the employees can go to church, but if you believe Sunday is the Sabbath, then you probably wouldn't be shopping anyway. Also, what if you don't view Sunday as the Sabbath? One of the interns discovered that you can't just drive over to East Grand Forks-- that WalMart is also closed on Sunday.

Something I have learned? GF just got their first mosque two weeks ago and it is actually in an abandoned Christian chapel. I tried to find an accompanying newspaper article about it, but apparently, though I find this to be supremely outrageous, the GF Herald doesn't think of this as news.

I actually learned all sorts of things from my coworkers today, so you can expect more "fascinating" facts about GF in the next few days.

My First Day

It happened. I started my internship. I am officially a pre-doctoral intern at the UND counseling center (it says so on my nametag).

I started out my day like this:

But ended the day like this:

under those band-aids is a world of horror not fit for human eyes. I am lucky I have a mom who taught me to always have a first-aid kit handy.

In between, I had a two hour tour of campus, which I knew was coming but apparently didn't prepare for adequately, a chocolate doughnut, a serious conversation about how it's strange that heroin isn't more of a problem in GF, and I got to flex my newly-acquired moving muscles by moving all the furniture around in my office. It was awesome (aside from the blisters), and I'm looking forward to more tomorrow!

Doppelganger: The Return

Last Summer, around this time, Josh and I spent the weekend in Vegas and happened upon a man who looked startlingly like my brother-in-law Kaly. This year, we happened upon someone who looks startlingly like my little sister (not the one married to Kaly) working at Devils Tower, Wyoming.

Judge for yourself:

My sister

My sister?

I wish I could have found a picture where my sister was making the same face as her doppelganger because she does make that face too. I wasn't even stealth with my picture-taking this time. I full on, shamelessly camera-phoned her.