Update on Accident

Well, Christina and I went to a Lehi tow-yard to get all of our belongings from our car. That's right, our car was declared totalled. But it's all right. The amount the insurance company is going to give us is higher than we expected. I researched as many 2001 Mazda Protegés as I could, planning on arguing why we should get more. But they're giving us more than we thought they would, and we don't have to argue our case.

Doesn't look too bad at all from that first picture. I'll walk you through the accident.

The car hit us from behind.

Here is where our car hit the barrier after getting hit by the car from behind.

We were actually thinking about selling my car this summer, so this works out really well. We got more from the insurance company than we could have from selling it on our own. It was a good car and I'll miss it. But everything worked out well.

Graduation

Last week Christina and I walked for graduation! I graduated in December and she just finished up her last semester (she was student teaching). Both of our parents came down for the big occasion. 

The commencement for the entire school was on Thursday. The Marriott Center had a lot of people in it (although a lot of people don't even go). I was worried it would be really long, but Elder Christofferson kept it short and good. Christina and I sat by each other even though we aren't in the same colleges. We were very happy with that decision after we saw that it really didn't matter where you were sitting, just that you got in an orderly manner.

With my parents afterwards.

Christina with her parents.

Christina after walking at the College of Humanities convocation. The white thing is for being in the Honor Society, Phi Kappa Phi. She had forgotten to wear them for the commencement on Thursday.

Us afterward the Marriott School convocation, which was pretty long because there are A LOT of graduates. I like this picture.

Wreck on I-15

If you were driving Northbound on I-15 around American Fork on Saturday afternoon, sorry for the delay. Ok, I'm not really sorry, because the accident wasn't our fault.

I was driving and Christina was in the passenger seat heading up to Salt Lake to play games with my parents before they headed back to Washington and go to the Salt Lake Temple. We were in the lane to the right of the carpool lane. For some reason they are removing the carpool lanes for a big stretch of the freeway. There were signs and now cones telling people to move over. Well, a big SUV decided they didn't want to merge over until the last second. I remember seeing an SUV crossing the double white lines into our lane as cones were already starting to appear in their lane. Since he was trying to suddenly work his big vehicle into a very small space, people began to slam on their brakes, including me. Unfortunately I must have been a half second too late, because we weren't going to stop in time. I veered into the carpool lane (in that short time period the cones had already pretty much blocked off the lane) and went in between the giant cones to get out of hitting anyone. I had my foot all the way down on the brake. We were coming to a stop. A moment of relief came over us as we had avoided something catastrophic. Then we were suddenly jolted forward. Even though we had our seatbelts on, I was jolted forward and hit my forehead on the window. It hurt, but wasn't that bad at all. Christina's neck and upper back hurt. It seems that a car behind us had tried to do the same thing as us, only they didn't stop as fast. They actually hit us and pushed our car into the barrier (thanks goodness for those, otherwise it could have been a lot worse). So there is damage in the front and back. There was even a third car that hit the car that hit us.

So we were not at fault. Christina's aunt came to pick us up and we went to the hospital here in Provo to get everything checked out. Christina had some X-rays done as she felt more pain. They said we looked okay. Now we just have to go through the hassle of insurance companies. Even though we weren't at fault, we're bound to not end up with as much as we started out with.

We are very glad though that neither of us was hurt really badly. We have so much to be thankful for, including that. It could have been A LOT worse. Unfortunately there were two accidents behind us on the freeway, probably caused front ours.

Trip to Arches!

Christina and I decided to take advantage of the fact that I had Friday off. We took a trip down south to go camping and hiking at Arches National Park. Neither of us had been before.

Our first plan was to take a slight detour and visit the Manti Temple on the way down. Luckily, I remembered to look it up online before leaving, and we found out it was closed for maintenance. So, we decided to drive an extra hour past Moab to visit the Monticello Temple, in honor of the apartment complex where we met.

Monticello is a really small town. The temple was also really small. We were able to go through it (we brought a change of clothes).

We then drove back up to Moab to find our campsite. Christina and I are both used to camping in Washington where you get a big, secluded campsite the places we have both been to. This was not that way. You get a narrow strip of land. It was a lot of fun though. We roasted hot dogs (well, we had to share cause mine fell in the fire), marshmallows, and had s'mores. This picture is of me in the morning taking down the tent.

We then set off for Arches National Park, just two miles north of Moab. Here we are at the beginning of our journey, the trail to Landscape Arch.

Here is Landscape Arch. It looks like it's about to fall apart (a large section of it did break off in 1991).

Here we are right before getting lost on the trail to Double O Arch. Christina was proud of this picture because she used the timer on it.

We then visited several other smaller arches, including Tunnel Arch, Pine Tree Arch, Sand Dune Arch, and this one, Broken Arch (this one is actually pretty big).

After all of that we were so tired, we almost decided to skip the 3.0 mile round trip hike to the famous Delicate Arch. We're glad we decided to do it! It was much bigger than I imagined.

Much cooler than the St. Louis Arch (sorry Jason, but it's true).

Our last hike (it was a small hike of 0.4 miles total) was to the Double Arch.

Here are few more pictures for your enjoyment of us at Balanced Rock.

It was a very fun trip! We recommend checking out Arches National Park if you haven't already.

Mt. Timpanogos Temple

Can you believe there are 13 temples built in Utah with two more announced? Christina and I want to visit some before we leave Utah to reach our lifetime goal of visiting 100 different temples (not just the grounds, but going inside). So far I've been to 12 and Christina 4. 

Last night we went to the Mt. Timpanogos Temple in American Fork. Two of my siblings got married there and it's the first one I went through. Christina agreed with me that it's very beautiful.

Afterwards we stopped by Red Robin for some Mountain High Mudd Pie.

We shared one. It was yummy.

This is no April Fool's joke

I didn't even remember it was April Fool's Day until after getting back from the gym at 8:30am. Right away I texted Nathan to see if he had any good jokes up his sleave. He didn't.

About an hour later I checked my e-mail on my phone. There was a new message from QVC. I thought to myself, "is that the TV network that sells all sorts of junk?" My e-mail doesn't usually get spam, so it was kind of strange. But I didn't expect at all what I saw. It was a confirmation of something I had apparently ordered off of QVC costing $970.40!!! It was an HP 15.6" Notebook with some software. It was being sent to Dana Jackson at 300 Lewis St. Apt. 1104 in Minersville, Pennsylvania. I have since tried looking her up, but didn't find anything or anyone by that name attached to the address. I'm also aware that someone living there could have just used her name, and she is completely innocent. (That would be the smart thing to do if you're going to use someone else's credit card).

At this point though, I still thought it was just a fluke and that the e-mail was sent to me by mistake. I called the QVC customer service number on the e-mail. Sure enough the lady on the other end confirmed that it was my credit card that had been used—meaning the person had my card number, exp. date, address, and security code on the back. I'm pretty sure the only way this could have happened was someone hacked into one of the places I have made an online purchase, because I still have my card. That's a little scary. Luckily, I caught it the day it happened. I'm not sure how QVC even had my e-mail to send me the confirmation. Maybe it was in there with all of the data the person hacked. Lucky. I usually check my bank account every few days, but no guarantee that I would check it today or tomorrow.

After QVC cancelled the order, I called Wells Fargo to cancel my card. So go ahead and try using the number again! The person made a purchase on Net Flix too. But Wells Fargo just took it off of my card. Thank goodness that's all taken care of now. It's a little scary though how easily people can take information from you. We feel all safe because the http has the "s" after it (https), but how well does it really work? I don't know. If you've ever had to cancel a card they ask if you will talk to a company that gives you three credit reports and tracks your credit. Usually, I would say no, or just hang up while being transferred. But I figured it might be a good idea, since I've never looked at my credit. And to make sure nothing else fishy has been going on. Just remind me to cancel it in 30 days, or I'll be paying a monthly fee.

I'm pretty sure this isn't all a big prank by Nathan. If it were I'd have to congratulate him, cause getting Wells Fargo and QVC in on it would take a lot of work.

Summer Adventures!

Christina and I are excited for this summer. I'll be studying for and taking the CPA Exam and working. Christina is looking for work for the four months we will be here so that she's not completely bored. But that's not the fun part. We want to do a lot of things this summer! We already have some ideas and definite plans, but I want some ideas if people have recommendations of things we HAVE to do before leaving Utah. Here's our ideas and plans . . .

Ideas while in Utah

-Hike the Narrows at Zion National Park from top to bottom

-Go to Moab.

-Climb Mt. Timpanogos.

-Visit more temples.

Plans

-We're going back to Washington for a few weeks in August.

-We're going to Brazil as I mentioned in my previous post.

We've already hiked the Y (and Christina's hiked Y Mountain and I've hiked the one next to it, Maple Mountain) and hiked Angel's Landing. Let us know if you have any other suggestions . . .