Part 1: The Video

Joey and I made a video a while ago on YouTube and wanted to share it with everyone.

Here is the link in case the video doesn't work. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWwnZ-Aa2qg

Part 2: The Explanation will be coming in the next couple of days as well as a Graduation Day post. Joey is finally done with school and we were both able to walk together on Saturday.

What are we doing this summer? Bear Lake Cabin Rentals and sun

My brother and sister in law, Chuck and Ginger, own a cabin rental/property management business in Bear Lake called Bear Lake Cabin Rentals.  Last year they were very busy and now they have added even more cabins to the rental pool, so they have hired Emily and I to help take off some of the load.  We are very excited.  Our first summer after we were married was spent in Bear Lake, so it will be fun to be back up there.  I am especially excited.  As a soon-to-be college grad with a degree in business entrepreneurship, working in a start-up company is a lot of fun for me.  I get to wear multiple hats, implement some new things I've learned, and all that good stuff.  One thing I will be helping with a lot is doing more online marketing, especially through social media such as Facebook and Twitter.  Chuck and Ginger work really hard to make their customers happy, so it will be a great working environment.  If you know of anyone who needs a cabin this summer in Bear Lake send them our way (www.BearLakeCabinRentals.com)

We may not get out on the lake much this summer, but we'll definitely have fun and get a nice tan.

Follow us on twitter: @gobearlake and @bearlakecabins
Like us on Facebook: Bear Lake Cabin Rentals

And come to visit us if you can!  Life is good.

Sandbagging for homes along the Logan River

Emily and I signed up to go help sandbag along the river in Logan.  It was good fun.  We made about 700 bags.  I sat by the big truck with the sand and put the bags in the right spot for the sand to fill it up and then passed it off to be tied shut and then the bag was passed down (with Emily's help) to the stack.  If you've never sandbagged, it's a fun little activity.

Emily and the sandbags she stacked, with the river in the back. If you can see the orange stick, that is how high they need to stack the sandbags because that is how high the river might get.

Spring Break and Good News

This past week was Spring Break for Joey so we headed up to Bear Lake to work for the week. We actually had a lot of fun. We have been going up to Bear Lake on our free weekends to help Chuck and Ginger (Joey's brother and sister-in-law) work on their house. The original remodeling was for the master bathroom but since the house is full of construction supplies and they are living somewhere else for the time being they decided that they wanted to change the texture of the walls and do some other small projects. We spent the week painting closets and skimming and adding texture to the walls and ceilings of the master bedroom, kitchen, and the living room.While there we had a power outage one night, it didn't last too long but it was still fun to sit around in the dark talking about how long we would last without electricity.
Spring Break can't all be about work so we had to have some fun. We invited a bunch of people up to Bear Lake to stay at a cabin and have a movie marathon. Friday ended up being Joey and I just hanging around watching Psych but that night we had some friends show up and we watched movies and chowed down on snacks! It was a lot of fun.

Saturday Morning we saw Moose on the side of the road.

Saturday night we had a Birthday Party for 3 babies turning 1 year old. It was a lot of fun to see all the presents they got and to watch them "eat" their cake. Zaxton and James were a little hesitant and didn't want anything to do with the cake, while Gracie was having fun shoving her hands into the cake.

Zaxton, Gracie, and James with their cake.

Acting a little more interested.

Now to the Good News:

  While we were in Ghana, Joey gave a loan to Dompreh who was the manager of a Pharmacy in Abomosu. We got news the other day that he has paid off his loan! We were super excited to hear this wonderful news! We have also got updates on the other loans, almost everyone is making their monthly payments only with a few who have missed a payment here or there but everything looks very optimistic except for the loan for a Sugar Cane farm for Ben Boadu. The rainy season was very bad for him and his farm was flooded and he was unable to save his crops. His family has moved to Accra the Capital of Ghana to find work and Ben still travels to Abomosu once a week to check on his farm and see if there is anything he can do. We knew the farm would be a hit or a miss but since many of the loan candidates were looking into expanding their farms we thought it would be worth while to loan one farm to see how beneficial it would be.

Dompreh's Pharmacy

Abbie, Spencer, Dompreh, Joey, and Em

Picture Update

Aggie Basketball

Aggie Basketball Again!

At the YSA New Year's Eve Party

The YSA Group

The School made us dinner one night. This girl told Nick that he is crazy and needs to go to an insane asylum!

The Taco Stand!! I crave those tacos!

The Taco Stand again.

The site for the Tijuana Temple

We worked on this bathroom last May. It turned out really well!

We helped sheetrock this room last May!

Jorge's room. We built that closet last May!

Martin Luther King Day Snow Shoeing

Bryce Jensen what a stud!

Tanner and Amber Jones

Getting my snowball ready to roll down the hill!

Tanner and Amber got stuck after they jumped down the hill.

Still stuck.

Tanner fell face first.

These are all of the pictures that I could get from Joey. I still need to find the pictures from our project in Tijuana this year. Once again I will make you wait for some more pictures. Hopefully they will be posted as quick as these ones were.

Catch Up 2: January

In January after we returned from Tijuana we headed up to Bear Lake to work for the week before school started and also to celebrate Christgiving Thanksmas with Joey's family. We had lots of food, played the XBOX Kinect, played Christmas Style "Minute to Win It", exchanged presents, Grandma's general store, and just lots of fun. Joey was really good at the Minute to Win It challenges while I sat on the sidelines watching feeling kind of sick. (That night a couple of the children and a few of the adults got sick :( No Bueno). Then school started up again for Joey he started out being really busy with some hard classes but then after realizing that one of his classes wasn't needed for his Major and only for a minor that he was tacking on because he had the classes and it was keeping him way too busy and stressed he decided to drop the class and ease his burden. He is now enjoying his classes and learning a lot. Emily has been trying to keep herself busy and trying to find a job. The job hunt isn't going as well as we had hoped but Emily has stayed busy. We are involved with two charity organizations, Charity Anywhere (the organization that we go to Tijuana with) and World Joy Foundation. We learned about the World Joy foundation while we were in Ghana and fell in love with their goal and what they do. When we returned from Ghana we joined the Cache Valley World Joy committee.On February 3rd we held a Dinner/Auction Fundraiser for World Joy. Our goal was to raise $35,000 to build a Medical Clinic in Asunafo a small village just next to Abomosu (where we stayed). It was a lot of work. We had a silent auction, a live auction, raffle, and a big dinner. We spent a lot of time looking for donations, advertising, finding entertainment, and inviting people to come. It ended up being a wonderful night and we made a new friend, Foster. Joey and I were dressed in our Ghanaian outfits and a man walked up to us and started asking if we had been to Ghana. Turns out that he is from Ghana so we refreshed a little bit of our Twi with him and just reminisced about our time their. He had only been in Logan for 2 weeks but he had heard about the fundraiser and had to come. He is a new professor at USU. It was great to talk to him but now we really miss Ghana. The funds raised totaled was over $19,000 we were proud of what we were able to accomplish. If you want to see pictures of the event go to http://lauravanderbeek.blogspot.com/2011/02/world-joy-benefit-dinner-and-auction.html

On Martin Luther King Day we went snow shoeing with our friend Tanner and Amber Jones and Bryce Jensen. It ended up being a great day it was nice and warm but there was still lots of snow. We had competitions rolling snow down the hills and had a great time jumping down the hills. It is fun to have friends around to spend time with.

We have been staying busy going to Aggie Basketball games which are always fun.

(Once again pictures to come once I get my hands on Joey's Laptop)

Playing Catch up: Part 1 December

It has been quite some time since we have updated our blog. I have either felt too busy to do it or that nothing of importance has happened to write about. Emily graduated from Utah State University in December so she is now trying to keep busy and look for a job. Joey is finishing up his last semester of school, he is excited to be done but is learning a lot this semester.

Back to December:
 After finals we headed up to Park City to spend some time at a timeshare that Emily's parents have up there. We were able to relax in the hot tubs, play in the indoor/outdoor pool, watch movies, read, and just lounge around. At this point we had decided that we didn't have the money to go on our yearly trip to Tijuana and since we went twice last year we thought that we should stay in Logan/Bear Lake and earn some money. Well we received a phone call from Gordon Carter (the founder of Charity Anywhere Foundation) and he tells us that he needs us in Tijuana. After discussing it we decided that we had to go. We missed all of our friends, the amazing food, and we love serving the wonderful people in Tijuana. We had about a week to get ready to go, which is the reason I don't like to make plans they change very quickly for us. Every year I am amazed at how different our experience is but still how amazing it is. We worked in an area of Tijuana called La Gloria with Miguel and his family. Miguel's house is built right up next to a wall of dirt (the mountain was cut into for his house to be built). The weather down there has been very wet which has led to a lot of runoff, which has caused the dirt to fall in large clumps and they are afraid that it will fall into their house and ruin it. We attempted to help Miguel build a retaining wall to prevent any damage to his house. This ended up being quite the adventure. We were covered in mud most of the week. We began by digging a trench and bailing out water so that we could begin our footings. It was so wet that this took a lot longer than planned. Then on Wednesday it rained all day so Miguel told us that he did not feel comfortable with us behind his house with the weather and the possibility of falling dirt and rocks. Joey and I headed over to the orphanage and began helping them build a preschool with another group. We were really proud of everyone for toughing out the rain and cold and working almost all day long until Gordon told us that we need to go back to the clinic and get out of the rain. We spent the rest of the week laying the footings. Then Saturday after everyone else left we returned to Miguel's house to find a massive chunk of the wall fallen down onto our re-bar and footings. Luckily the footings were down and dry it made it easier to dig it all out. We really enjoyed this year in Mexico again and we truly are addicted to Charity Anywhere and serving in Tijuana.

(Pictures to come when I get a hold of Joey's laptop or just look on Joey's facebook page).