Escaping the Inversion for President's Day

I'm glad that Abraham Lincoln and George Washington were born.  It gives me an excuse to do something fun every year.  (They were great presidents.  I suppose I should be glad about that as well.)

This year, the number 1 thing I wanted to do was get up in the mountains and be above the inversion.  The inversion was pretty bad when we planned it, but there was a storm Sunday night that blew most of it out.  But I still wanted to get up into the crisp mountain air.

We put Jared W in charge of planning it, because he is our official adventure planner.   We got in the car and headed up Big Cottonwood Canyon.

We donned our winter clothing, and the adventure began.

It's customary for Robyn to complain about the cold whenever we are outside.  It's also customary for her to look precious.  Isn't she cute?

 We didn't have snowshoes.  We just had our boots on.  For the most part, the snow was frozen enough that our boots were perfect.  Although, I did fall into the snow a few times.

The beginning of the hike was pretty steep, and was further complicated by the fact that we were on snow, but it was beautiful up there and I was super happy to be out in nature.

It's important to get a couple's picture.  It's also important for Bryce to photobomb in the back.

Jared stopped to rest, so I told them both to look cute.

Do not underestimate the importance of selfies.

Sometimes Robyn just takes a belax in the snowy wilderness.  (Belax is a word coined by my niece when she was about 5 years old)

Here's the whole crew that went on the adventure.

All in all, it was a successful President's Day.  How did you celebrate?

The Day of Love

Valentine's Day is a day of love.  I feel like mine was very successful with lots of love from my love.

The day of love started on Saturday when we ordered pizza at Papa Murphy's.  Obviously, it was important to get a heart shaped pizza.

It totally looks like a heart... kind of.

A selfie with the heart shaped pizza.  Except it doesn't look heart shaped at all.

I tried to take a selfie with Robyn while she cut the pizza.  But I fogot to put myself in the picture.

In addition to the heart shaped pizza, we also ordered a chicken bacon artichoke pizza.  I didn't look at it when I took it from them, but when I got home Robyn took one look at it and exclaimed, "Oh no!"  It turned out they gave us the wrong pizza.  But the good news is that when I went back to get the right pizza, we got to keep the wrong pizza for free.

True love really does conquer all.  Our true love got us a free pizza.

Valentine's Day morning, I woke up early to make Robyn breakfast.  Unbeknownst to me, she had placed nerdy valentines all over the house.  Here are just a few examples.

I'm pretty sure that was true love.

Of course, she got some true love as well.  I gave her a box of chocolates with a little note I had written.

Free pizza and nerdy valentines are clearly signs of true love.  What love did you receive on the day of love?

The Time that Hackers Made Me Arabic

If you take a look at me, there's pretty much a zero percent chance that you'd mistake me for someone of Arabic or Middle Eastern descent.  But about 2 days ago, if you were to take a look at my instagram, you might get a different idea.

I'll start at the beginning.

On Tuesday night, I got several follow requests from people I didn't know.  I didn't think much of it, I accepted their requests and moved on with my life.  Wednesday morning, I noticed that 2 different individuals with the name of "Ahmed" had requested to follow me.  I thought it was a really funny coincidence, so I took a screenshot.

But then I started thinking a little bit more about it.  Why was I getting follow requests at all?  I have a public profile.  Anyone can follow me without my permission.  Then I looked closer at some of the people that had requested to follow me.  They weren't just following me.  They were following me back.  I was already following them.

What?  I never followed these people.  What is going on?

Then I looked closer at my profile.  My profile picture hadn't changed.  I was still as white as they come.  But my name had changed.  It was something in Arabic.  I also looked at who I was following.  I was following all the people I used to follow, as well as a little over 100 other individuals, most of them Arabic.  (I clicked on profiles and their pictures had captions written in Arabic.)

The obvious conclusion was that I had been hacked.

I can only think of two possible theories for why this hacking occurred.

• One of my friends thinks that Arabic culture would really suit me, so they thought I might enjoy seeing pictures of that culture.  (If this is true and it was you, the better strategy is to make me some Arabic food.  I'm just sayin')
• Someone in an Arabic country has one of those things where people pay for followers.  They used my account as a follower and wanted it to seem like a legit Arab account.
• Somebody just thought it would be really funny.  (I probably would agree with them.)

Maybe there is some other reason.  I'm not sure.  

I think the strangest part of all of it was that they set my account to private.  I think it would have taken me much longer to realize it if they hadn't done that.  The follow back requests were what set me off.

The important thing is that I changed my password and unfollowed all of my new Arabic friends.  (Although, I think some of the follow backs still follow me.)  I also set my profile to public again, so all of you are free to follow me without asking my permission.

I think the moral of the story is that hackers are weird.

New Year's 2015/2016

Okay, so I know today is the last day in January, which means this is a month late.  But better late than never right?  Here are the events of our New Year's celebration.

We had some friends over for New Year's Eve.  We had several couples, and then the most die hard couple, Jared and Breanna, stuck around for a sleepover.

As always, an important part of our New Year tradition is trying new foods.

The weirdest thing we tried was parsnip chips.  I don't recommend them.

Robyn was not a fan.

Jared was indifferent.

Breanna was also not a fan.

Various treats

Robyn talking to Jackie

Jared and the Barbers

Of course, for the die hards, the part continued into the morning.  Jared and Breanna joined us for breakfast before heading off to do some New Year's day adventuring on our own.

You know a party is serious when the Cthulhu mask comes out.

Flying Home to too much Snow

On our last day in Clovis, we kind of had a lazy morning since our flight wasn't until around noon.

When it finally came time to head out, we drove to the airport and everything went smoothly from there.

When we landed, we drove directly to the Bureu of Criminal Investigations to get our background checks done for our adoption home study.  Robyn was super stressed that we wouldn't make it, but we were there with like an hour to spare before they closed.

We talked about going out to eat but I wanted to get home as soon as possible to shovel a week's worth of snow.  I wasn't excited about doing it, but I wanted to get as much as possible done before it got too dark and cold.

What our driveway looked like.

 I was still sick, so Robyn was kind enough to help out which made me very happy.

Action shot of Robyn

Triumpant shot of Robyn

I ordered pizza before shoveling in hopes that it would arrive just as we finished.  It took forever to get there.  But at least when it got there we had a snow free driveway and I could relax and eat it.

Monterey Bay Aquarium

In my continuing write up of our trip to California in December, here is what I wrote about the day we drove to the coast and the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

The day we went to the aquarium, I wasn't feeling super great, so I didn't sleep very much the night before.  I think I got about 2 or 3 hours of sleep since we had to wake up early to head out.  Part of me didn't want to go, but I'm glad we went even though it wasn't as enjoyable as it would have been at optimal health.  It's about a 3 hour drive, and we got on the road about 7 AM which put us at the aquarium at about 10.  I'm glad we left early, because there were only 2 or 3 parking spots left and we nabbed one of them.

The aquarium was super cool.  I think my favorite was probably the octopus.  Usually, octopus just seemed to sit there huddled up in a ball.  This one was moving around.  The coolest part was that the octopus was orange and then it went and sat on a rock and turned grey.  Sooo cool!

Here are some of our pictures from the day.

I had to get some shots in front of the ocean.

There was a section about tentacles.  They even had a copy of Call of Cthulhu on display.  I thought this picture was funny.

This is the octopus that changed to grey.  I didn't get a picture of that, though.

Robyn taking a selfie underneath the tide pool.

I took a picture of Robyn taking a selfie underneath the tide pool.  That's how we roll.

 We ate lunch at the aquarium.  I had a delicious clam chowder in a bread bowl.  After we were done, we went walking around downtown Monterrey.  I saw this pirate, and needed a picture with it.  Robyn was super embarrassed to be taking my picture.

 We didn't spend a ton of time in the downtown area.  We quickly decided it was time to drive home.  But I wanted to dip my feet in the ocean, so I made Robyn stop at the first beach that was on the way.

I thought it was cool to see all these birds at the beach.  That was unusual for me.  Apparently it's not abnormal in the norther part of California.

I had to dip my feet in the water, even though it was 45 degrees.

Looking out at the ocean.  (Not really, I think I was taking pictures of my feet.)

Standing in front of the ocean.

Selfies are essential.

I had to take a selfie to send to Mellen to let her know I made it to the beach.

She sent me one back.  So it was like we were at the beach together even though we were several hundred miles apart.

We only spent maybe 10 minutes at the beach.  We got back in the car and headed home.  I was so tired that I just went to sleep in the passenger seat.  I told Robyn I might need a milk shake before we get home.  In my head, I was thinking that Los Banos would be a good place to stop since it's about half way.

I went to sleep and woke up in Los Banos.  I asked Robyn where we were and when she said Los Banos I yelled, "That's where we're supposed to get a milk shake!".  I hadn't told her that was my plan, so apparently I sounded a little crazy waking up and yelling about milk shakes.  But she loves me, so she bought me a milk shake despite my craziness.

We made it home just in time for dinner.  (They had ordered pizza.)  It was a good end to a good day.