For our first world travel date we “flew” to Italy.

I was 7 months pregnant and didn’t feel like cooking so instead of making Italian food we went to a local Italian Restaurant called “The Brick Oven”.

While the food wasn’t quite authentic Italian food we tried lots and lots of different kinds of pizza and desserts. It was so good and we ate way too much!

After dinner, we made Italian Sodas…

We made them green, white and red like the Italian flag. 

Italian Soda recipe

1. Fill cup halfway with ice and add 3 tablespoons of green Torani syrup.

2. Pour 1 cup of club soda then add 3 tablespoons of half and half.

3. Last pour 3 tablespoons of red syrup and then add whipped cream on top.

Next we drew each other’s portraits while wearing chef hats and mustaches like Italian chef cartoons.

To end our date in Italy we watched “When in Rome” as we drank our Italian Sodas. 

Addio Italy!

Well, it is now officially 2016 (and several weeks in by the time I’m finishing this), and it is just as good a time as ever to post a recap of our Christmas vacation on the blog. First off, this was my favorite Christmas ever and mostly because it was the first one spent with my lovely wife, Angela. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Angela’s vehicle registration expired back in October, so Utah was our first stop. On our ride up there, we were actually pulled over just outside of Nephi, Utah, for the expired registration. Thankfully we were let off with a warning and went on our merry way to Morgan. Once there, we passed out, when to some of Angela’s sister’s basketball games, and her Dad took care of the car registration for us, as well as changing the oil. Once that was wrapped up, we drove to Boise where we would spend the remainder of our Christmas break. Here are some the highlights from the trip. Click on to read more (plus a great pic of Ang)!

Continue reading “The first Lovell Christmas!”

So I have been in Corona for the past 24 days now. For those who were not aware, I just moved down to Corona, California for an internship. Since it is my off track at school I figured why not? I can tell you one reason why and that is the picture above. 🙂

So about the internship: it is at a company called PixelMags. PixelMags is a company that specializes in ‘digital content distribution.’ What that means is that if you are a publisher and you want your magazine available on the iPad, then you contact us and we get it done.

What I do is marketing and PR. And what that has meant so far is that I have spent a lot of time redesigning things; mostly in making them look more Apple-ish. That aspect is a bit hard because design has never been my forte, per se. The fortunate thing this is that it the wheels in my head so eventually start turning and the mess in my head turns to something that hopefully is good. I have a vision for the company’s brand and ideas are moving a lot better now. 🙂

My biggest hope? To be assigned to travel to England to do something over there. The company has about half of its staff over there in the green and pleasant land and I am hoping that maybe, just maybe I can get shipped off there. The question is how to convince them…

Well, I hope that you enjoyed my blog update. I have set a goal to update it frequently again so any comment of encouragement would be greatly, ummm, appreciated. 😀

So the picture above reminds me of why life is good. It makes me happy and nothing beats it.

So you can see my laptop open in the bottom of the screen. That is a letter that I was writing to Elder Taylor. I was feeling like I needed to accomplish something worth while and finally got this letter done. So let me tell you a little about him.

 

 

These two pictures that you see above are of Elder Taylor while we are serving together in England. A couple of weeks after I transferred to Oxford, I got a call from the assistants to the President telling me that I was going to train. At first I was really surprised because it was the middle of a transfer and they never have done that before. They told me that he hadn’t been to the MTC so thought that they were joking around but soon realized that they weren’t. The next emotion? Worry. Haha, yeah, I panic because I didn’t feel ready.

Well, the next morning we had Elder Taylor show up and we learned his story. Elder Taylor was from Salisbury, which is, in fact, only an hour south of Oxford. That also meant that he was from our mission. Since we were a bit perplexed on how that all worked, we were told by him that he was actually assigned to the Idaho Pocatello Mission. With our heads cocked slightly he then explained that his VISA for entry into the US didn’t come through and that he was only going to be with us until he got his visa cleared.

So I had for six weeks a chance to train a missionary that was greener than green. I don’t even know what color that would be but it was one of the best times of my life. So the companionship was me, Elder Stringham and Elder Taylor. Elder Taylor was enthusiastic, hard working and spiritual. Through a lot of hard working we were even able to see a baptism in Oxford before he had to go back to the states.

So why the letter and why at this specific time? Well, he is headed home and since he was the last one to write, I wanted to make sure that I got a letter off before he left. From what I have heard, he has served a hard working mission and has been greatly blessed. I am excited to finally be able to talk to him

So not a whole lot happened today in life. Except for one thing. These past couple of days I have been working at a electronics manufacturing place called KimCo. There are about 100 workers at this warehouse. The company struggled a lot through the recession and I learned today that they had to lay off about 130 workers. The company didn’t go under but did turn to other means to stay afloat; temp work. Companies love ’em because they are quite a bit cheaper than hiring and paying full=time employees.

So there was this one guy that I worked with earlier in the week. For the whole ten hour shift, Jason (the guy) literally spent the whole ten hour shift yapping my ear off. Mostly about his “hard-knock” life and such. I found it quite entertaining and figured it would be nice to give him someone that would listen. In particular he told me that he had quit smoking.

Well, for the past two days I got moved to a different department. Today he came over to help with wrapping chips in bubble wrap. Holy cow. He didn’t say a word to me. I asked him about his new born baby. “He’s good.” I asked him a couple more questions … no answer. I swear the guy was going to kill me. Its funny how people act when they quit smoking. But hey, good for him. It’s tough to quit smoking smoking especially cold turkey.

Fun fact: China is home to 300 million smokers who consume approximately 1.7 trillion cigarettes a year, or 3 million cigarettes a minute.  Woowhoo! Just over two weeks!

So yeah, as the post implies, here I am in the Kimball building on campus and I am getting sleepy. It’s funny how when I was younger I always used to make fun of old people that use to sleepy and tired so easily. My culprit? The sun. Yes, the sun. Because I am need to be in the Kimball building to interview someone for the scroll, I decided that I was going to sit in the direct sunlight. Warm and sleepy. Not a good combo at all.

As you might be able to see, this is my first blog post. I am hoping that I can make this more of a habit from now on. I am currently a communications major emphasizing in Journalism and I was recommended by quite a few people to do this. They say that it will enhance my writing skills. I sure hope that it will.

So I will post later tonight (if I am not too tired) with some updates. Until then, enjoy!