BRM

Happy Veteran's Day and Happy Lady Legs Day:

11-11-13 



I want to give a shout out to my brother, Kevan. He passed his real estate exam and got a job with Remax. Good job bro-man. 

Kevan playing with 2 Bingo cards.

Kevan invited the family out to El Sol to announce his good news, but right before going to the restaurant the whole family went to the Elk's Lodge to play Bingo. We only played 3 games, but guess who won. Okay, it was me. I won 2 tickets to Regal Cinemas. Definitely using the tickets for Hunger Games: Catching Fire. 

Bingo has a special place in the heart of the Willes family. We play Bingo mixed with White Elephant every year for Thanksgiving. In Bingo, B11 is often refereed to as lady legs because the double ones look like legs. Also, today is November 11th, making today Lady Legs Day. This year for Thanksgiving, Patrick and I are going to Bend with my family and the Killens. Patrick's parents and sister, Shadra, are going out to Ethiopian food for Thanksgiving, which I think is quite funny. However, if you are with family or friends and you are eating good food, then you are doing Thanksgiving right.

Now that we live in Corvallis, we don't see Patrick's family as much, but we did spend this weekend up there with them. It was like a dream vacation, full of so many fun activities. 

We went up to Portland on Friday because Patrick was touring Bob's Red Mill with his senior design group. Bob's Red Mill is sponsoring their project (a human powered wheat grinder.) He got to see the whole process and all the machinery. If Patrick could get a job working there, he would love his career. I'm all for it too. He's already working on winning over the man in charge. Bob and Patrick apparently became buddies at a luncheon a few weeks back and Bob felt comfortable enough to call Patrick "Pat." But then again, when you're 85 you can call anyone anything you like.

I picked Pat up from the mill store and then we crossed the street and went inside Dave's Killer Bread quarters. That's right, Bob's Red Mill and Dave's Killer Bread are right across the street from each other. Infact, Dave's Killer Bread moved into Bob's Red Mill's old building. And yes, Dave's Killer Bread does buy their wheat/flour from Bob's Red Mill. These long three-letter bread companiy names are killing me, I really should have started abbreviating them like 5 sentences ago.

Patrick in front of BRM holding a BRM bread loaf.

Jessie in front of DKB quarters. 

That night we celebrated Tucker's birthday. We went to Out of This World Pizza. This place is pretty much Chucky Cheese, but galactic themed. Patrick and I are looking forward to having kids so that we have an excuse to do the activities that kids get to do. like the play structe, slides, and inflatables. Is that a good enough reason to have kids? Sure, why not. We'll feed them and love them too, don't worry.

Saturday we went to OMSI with Sally and Jerome (Patrick's parents.) Tucker and his kidlets came later. Sherlock Holmes is the featured exhibit right now. Our job was to solve the mystery. We might have been a little over zealous out of the gates because we read pretty much the entire history and inspiration of Sherlock Holmes, searching for secret clues in efforts to solve the mystery (none of which were relevant to the actual mystery). Once we got to the clearly defined mystery solving section, it was fun and challenging.

We built this structure at OMSI and exactly 1.3 seconds after finishing, a small boy attacked it and it was demolished. So we built it again and got this picture. After the second build, it took more like 39 seconds before a small boy destroyed it. Patrick was mad at small boys for a while.

OMSI was followed by Five Guys and then Ender's Game at Cinetopia. I really liked the movie. It is up there with Now You See Me (probably my favorite movie of the year.) I was distracted by the fact that Ender looks a lot like my cousin, Andrew. My mom thought the same thing. Thanks for validating me, Mom.

Routine

We are in a routine now. I go to work and Patrick goes to school. Then we eat dinner and play a game. Being in a routine is satisfying for now, but being in a routine is just a hop, skip, and a jump away from being in a RUT. What a dreadful 3 letter word. Don't worry though, we do mix it up in our lives. Here is the spice in our lives this season:

We went to an OSU volleyball game last Friday with the Buys family. It was the "spike out cancer" game and we got free pink T-shirts to support breast cancer awareness. Pretty much everyone in the crowd was wearing pink. So when we were trying to meet up with Dar and Trevor at the game we thought it would be funny to text them "You can't miss us, we're wearing pink." Indeed, it was funny.

We also joined the stake choir. We are practicing for the fireside meeting celebrating the 50th anniversary of our stake. On November 3rd at the Stake Center we are having a fireside to commemorate the past 50 years. All are invited. We are singing "Faith in Every Footstep" and "How Firm a Foundation." Both are beautiful, but this arrangement of "How Firm a Foundation" by our choir director is so so so pretty. This arrangement actually makes me want to be good at singing. I'm probably the least experienced one in the choir, but whatever.

As you may remember, a few months ago we 100%ed the Lego Star Wars game. Well, we've done it again. This time we 100%ed the Lego Harry Potter years 1-4 game. It was full of magical surprises and a few glitches. One of the glitches made it impossible for us to get the 100%, so we started over after getting 75% of the way done. Worth it.

Sunday we engineered a spider wed in our window. It is made out of yarn. I love it and am thinking it is the beginning of a new family tradition.

I've been intending to get my passport renewed for a while now, but never got around to it. I finally planned to go, but alas the government shutdown the day I was planning to go to the courthouse. If you get married, you have a year to update your passport for free. If you wait longer than a year, you have to pay for the renewal. I'm coming up on the year mark so I have to get it done soon. I formatted my own passport photo online instead of paying $10 for the courthouse to do it. It was kind of a fiasco, but ended up working out in the end. Plus, now I have 3 extra 2" by 2" photos of myself; just what I've always wanted.