Fun in Vancouver Washington!

This Saturday, Trevor and I rented a car through Amazon and went to Vancouver Washington to visit our family Ryan and Maria Billen. Ryan is Trevor's cousin and roommate from his freshman year, and Maria was my old roommate my freshman year. Jamie, my other roommate from freshman year, also happened to be there in town that weekend, so she spent the day with us as well. We also got to see Maria and Ryan's son, Gavin, for the first time. He is so cute! It was a wonderful reunion for all of us!

We all went to a place in Portland called the Hoyt Arboretum which is a Vietnam memorial. They had little trails you walked on through a forest. They also had plaques where you could read stories about things happening in Oregon during the Vietnam War.
This was a big spiral you walked around at the Arboretum and read different stories.

We also went to the beautiful Portland Rose Garden. To give you an idea of the scope of this garden, on the website it said they have over 10,000 plantings and over 550 varieties of roses. All I could think about was "I wish I could take Grandma Walker here". She would love it! They had rows upon rows of rose bushes and the air was filled with sweet fragrances. It was like heaven.

Trevor and I were really worn out today from the 6 hours of driving and walking around yesterday, but it was all worth it. I'm really glad we made the effort to see them. It was such a fun day!










I guess all the seeds don't end up sprouting thanks to some friends of the garden!

(From left to right) Trevor, Lindsay, Jamie, Maria, and Ryan at the Rose Garden.

This was just a cool limousine we saw... They had a few weddings going on that day in the garden.

Online Savings... Is it for you?

I don't know how many people are aware that online savings accounts exist. I didn't until about a year ago when I was looking for good money market interest rates and found a link to one on the Internet. What's nice about them is because most of it is done online, they have much fewer costs than a regular bank does (like paying employees, costs of the building, etc.), so they can pay you a higher interest rate on your savings account. Trevor and I like it because it is still liquidable money, but we can earn a higher interest rate on the money. We have been using HSBC direct (I've read about others that are good as well like ING Direct. Just make sure they are FDIC insured as well) and we get 5.05% APY interest. Another really nice thing about is that you only have to have a minimum balance of $1.00. That is much nicer than money market accounts or CDs!

I was really skeptical about all of this at first, but I read all the fine print on the website. I also searched the Internet and could not find a single comment about someone who was cheated out of money or something like that (the only comment like that was someone who cancelled within 6 months, which isn't allowed, and were fined). So we signed up almost a year ago and have not had any problems since.

Okay, now you're wondering, "what's the catch?" Well, there are a couple downsides to it: It takes a while to get set up. They get your information, and then they send you confirmations through mail and send you your pin/password in different letters, , etc. It also takes a while to get the set up connected to your checking account to make sure that they have the right account and such. So it takes a couple weeks to get set up. Also, whenever you transfer money from one bank to another, it takes 3 business days. It's actually good for us because it is liquid money, but this makes it less tempting to take money out unless we really need it.

Just thought if anyone is looking for a savings account with a higher interest rate, this might be something to look into. If you have other means of investments, please share! I'm always looking for new avenues when the time comes that we want to invest...

I'm Published!!!

I just wanted to share my great news that the article Dr. Christensen (statistics professor at BYU) and I wrote for The American Statistician journal has been accepted for publication!!! It is titled, "Predicting presidential and other multistage election outcomes using state-level pre-election polls". Basically we show ways to predict the probability of a presidential candidate winning the race and also of a political party keeping control of the Senate based on state pre-election polls.

Just wanted to share the wonderful news!!!

The Amazing Amazon Picnic!

Well, we DID IT!!! We finally finished the last Harry Potter book! We ended up reading the last 200 pages together on Friday and Saturday. Our voices were hoarse by the end but it was worth it. We were able to make guesses and hypothesize with each other what we thought was going to happen. It was really fun to have the opportunity to spend the time together doing that.

On Saturday afternoon, we went to a picnic for all Amazon employees and their families at Mountain Meadows Park. We had a lot of fun there as well. It was definitely kid oriented, but there was plenty to do for the adults as well. Trevor and I played "Cue Golf" which combines pool and miniature golf (see picture below).

There were about ten of these stationed around, you just can't see them in this picture.

A nursery child's (and leader's) dream come true.

This was a train ride they had for kids (they sat inside the cages).

We challenged two guys to foosball and won! They also had bingo, arts and crafts, sack races, concerts, hula hoops, gigantic chess and checker boards, giant basketball (huge basketball and hoop) -- you can kind of see it in the background of this picture,
a rock-climbing wall, frisbee golf, volleyball, small golf course, broomball, and lots of carnival games for kids. They had more stuff, but it's too much name. They also gave everyone a free t-shirt and frisbee. They even had the picnic going for 5 hours. We can't imagine how much money they spent on this event.

I haven't even got to the food yet... there was TONS of it! Hamburgers, hot dogs, corn on the cob, french fries, chicken fajitas, Burbon chicken and rice, BBQ Beef ribs, Gyros, chicken curry, lentil something..., watermelon, pasta salad, cesar salad, strawberry shortcake, popsicles, ice cream sandwiches, and brownies. We tried a lot of stuff, but didn't eat much of any one thing.

Each window in this picture was giving out different types of food.

Nursery was really nice today. Sacrament Meeting went over about 20 minutes so nursery went by super fast. We also only had 10 children today (usually we have about 15 or so) and 6 adults so nobody felt exhausted by the end. Two children even stayed and ate snacks for a good 40 minutes. We kept asking them if they were done and they replied, "no". Then they would continue eating the other kids' leftover snacks. They must have been really hungry! After Trevor and I cleaned up the snack area there was only 10 minutes left! It's so sweet in nursery when kids come bawling when they first get there because they don't want to leave their parents, and then the same kids leave crying because they are having so much fun in nursery! It's also so touching to see them sing primary songs and how reverent they can be when they sing "I am a Child of God".

Here is a picture of one of the cruise ships that dock on the weekends taken from our balcony. This one is the Norwegian Star from Saturday. On Sundays the Norwegian Pearl docks here and Fridays it's the Royal Caribbean.
Trevor was really sad in nursery that the kids kept knocking his blocks down. So he decided to build his own structure when we got home today.

It's a bird... it's Superman... No, it's a PLANE!

On the first Thursday of every month, there are certain museums that have free admission in the evenings. Last time we went to the EMP (Experience the Music Project) and the Science Fiction Museum. Yesterday we decided to go to the Museum of Flight at Boeing. I had no idea Boeing was such an old company (Founded 1916). They had soooo many different kinds of planes there! Beginning prototypes, fighter jets (from all decades), commercial airplanes, amphibians, Zeplins, carplanes (cars with attachable wings to fly!), WWI, WWII, Vietnam and Cold Wars, and they even had a space exhibit! It was a very spacious museum as you can probably imagine! Trevor and I thought it was interesting how integrated the technology of airfare was with war. We found it interesting that they mentioned at the beginning of WWI, some people never considered anything but horses as transportation for war. They thought planes were only a loud nuisance in the air.

We really enjoyed the museum and found it very interesting. The only downside is there were a ton of people there, so it was hard to read and experience everything, but what do you expect going when it's free? Overall, though, it was a great experience!

Maybe it's just the Statistician in me...

This could be just new to me, but have any of you heard about Google Analytics? It's a service that Google does for free that keeps track of all sorts of information on your website. It's pretty basic, but still interesting. I can see it being more useful for a company website, but I enjoy it for our blog!

Mount Rainier the Beautiful!

We went to Mt. Rainier yesterday and everything people have told us about it is true. It is absolutely gorgeous! I can't get over the lush green trees, wild flowers, rivers, lakes, and soooo many bugs! I'm glad we brought bug spray, although we both managed to still get bit. It was so much fun though! It took us about two hours to drive there and we went hiking to this place called Upper Palisades Lakes. It was 7 miles round trip and it gave new meaning to the phrase "uphill both ways". My body definitely feels it today! We left our home around 9 am and got back at 5 pm - 5 hours driving, 3 hours hiking. The hike was absolutely beautiful. There were lots of pretty lakes along the way, wild flowers, and lots and lots of pine trees. The weather was also perfect for hiking! We had brought jackets just in case it rained, but we didn't need them at all. We highly recommend going to Mt. Rainier if you ever are up in Seattle. It is definitely worth the drive! Even if you aren't much for hiking, the drive itself is really pretty.

Surprisingly when we got home I had a lot more energy than I thought I would. I worked on my poster the rest of the night and Trevor read Harry Potter and straightened up the house.

Here we are on the top of the mountain at the beginning of the trail.

These are our silly faces.

Mt. Rainier

Trevor among the wild flowers.
Here's a closer look...

The hills are alive, with the sound of music!
Trevor by a waterfall.
Just beautiful!

Lindsay pointing the way we're going to go.

Sunset Lake

"Trevor... take the picture fast so I can swat this bug!"

"Eat your heart out Flagstaff, Arizona!"