Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Ice Day and Old Pictures

Greetings from frigid, frozen-over NW Arkansas! For those who are not from this part of the world you may not be familiar with all of the different ways water can fall from the sky and keep you from going to work. Well, today the Gosneys (and everyone else here) experienced just about all of them. Yesterday started with freezing rain, which continued for quite some time until changing over to sleet and, finally, some snow. The snow and sleet aren't too bad, but the freezing rain encases everything in a thin (or in this case extremely thick) layer of ice, making roads impassable and power lines snappable. (Snappable isn't a word, so just go with it.) So far the Gosney household still has power, but others aren't so lucky. Needless to say, the good folks at Wal-Mart Home Office were encouraged to stay home and not risk life and limb. The Gosneys readily oblidged. Attached are a few shots taken from the front and back yard. Notice the driveway is a solid sheet of ice, probably about an inch and a half thick. Sharon, particularly, is extremely sad about not being able to go into the office and insisted she needed a chocolate cake in order to deal with her grief. (She cited "extra-ordinary circumstances" for the reason to have non-healthy food on a weekday.)

Back in Utah Sharon's family spent some time looking through old photographs and decided it was a good time to digitize as much as possible. So, after a trip to Sam's Club (where they have a cool machine that you can feed stacks of pictures into and they get scanned in with lightening speed) Sharon and her siblings were able to take home CDs with many of their photographs on them. Meanwhile, an old friend of Matts from the old house he grew up in was doing the same thing as he visited his family for Christmas. This friend, also named Matt (totally cool when you are 7 years old) lived in the house directly behind Matt (even cooler to have someone with your same name share your backyard fence.) Friend Matt sent over some pictures that brought back lots of memories. And now you get to enjoy a few pictures of Matt and Sharon as kiddos. Note how much hair Matt had. *sigh* Matt particularly enjoys the picture of Sharon looking longingly at her brother's birthday cake. Clearly, Sharon's sweet tooth was established at a young age.

For those of you in the ice storm with us, stay warm and safe! And for those who aren't, be glad!

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Back in Action! Christmas '08 Redux.

So yes, several of you have commented that the Gosney's have been extremely poor bloggers over the last several weeks. While there are many excuses that could be given (Christmas, Finals, depression brought on by the Obama Inauguration) Sharon probably identified the true reason for the lapse. Matt tends to write in the blog when he is attempting to avoid doing homework. Given that there was a nice break over the holidays there was no homework to be done. Thus, much less blogging. Never fear, there is plenty of homework to be done, and that means plenty of attempts to procrastinate that homework. Count on plenty of blog entries. (Despite the procrastinating Matt did still manage a 4.0 this previous semester. So there.)

Christmas was spent in two locations this year with Christmas day in Oklahoma with Matt's family. The day after Christmas saw Matt and Sharon brave the airport to fly to Utah to visit Sharon's family. Delta only lost Matt's luggage on the way back, which for them is probably above average performance. Utah was beautiful with lots of snow, and it was great to get to spend time with the Smith's. The Gosney Christmas was also great fun, Matt made lasagna as a "something different" Christmas dinner. The dinner was deemed successful as everyone slipped into a broiled cheese-induced coma. Below are two slide shows, the first from the Oklahoma Christmas and the second from the Utah Christmas. Browse at your leisure.





When in Utah Matt decided it would be fun to take a look at the old stomping grounds where he used to live down in Provo. A picture of Matt's first apartment in Provo after his mission is included. Matt lived in the basement appartment. Note the horrifically-dangerous ice sicles hanging over the basement stairs. Not dangerous at all. The hand rail was an "upgrade" that did not exist when Matt resided there. The best part of the house was, by far, the highly sustainable toliet paper caulking used around the windows. One could be sitting in the living room and experience a draft so strong items would get blown off your lap. Good times. Needless to say, Matt only stayed in the apartment for a year and then moved on to better accomodations.

After all of the traveling Matt and Sharon decided to buy themselves a Christmas present. Not known for a lot of decoration on the walls the Gosneys decided it was probably time to actually hang a picture. Matt and Sharon had seen this picture a year ago while in Utah and had coveted it for quite some time. It is a beautiful photo of a small portion of the Salt Lake Temple framed with some fall foliage (that just so happens to match the red accent wall in the Gosney home.) So they decided it would be the perfect addition to the living room wall. Matt is just glad he was capable of mounting the picture without it crashing to the ground ... yet.

Hope everyone is happy and well!