Oakland Temple Hill Tour

I hope you enjoy this post about the Oakland Temple. I've always loved Temples and I'm grateful to work at one as beautiful and unique as this one. Following are pictures and videos of the Temple Hill area.

Here's some pertinent data, courtesy of ldschurchtemples.com:


And now for a bunch of really cool pictures (no, I didn't take these shots):







Here's a few pictures from Christmas time:




Lastly, some views from the Temple property:


The far bridge in this lower photograph is the Golden Gate Bridge. The two closer bridges are the bay bridges linking Oakland and San Francisco.



Overall, it really is a great place to come to work each day. I don't think I'd ever be able to switch to going to work at an office building. I'm grateful that everything has worked out so well for me to come here to work.

California

Well, we're moving to the Bay area! I accepted a job at the Oakland CA Temple as an Assistant Engineer, building upon the work I've been doing as an Intern for the past year. I'm really excited for the opportunity. Margo and I has a great first week here after our drive down last weekend. Margo will be going back and forth until she graduates in April, so we'll both be very grateful when things get settled down then. Highlights of our first week here together include lot's of driving. Believe it or not it's actually been a lot of fun driving around and seeing areas that we may soon call home. The purpose of all the driving was really to see where we want to live. We found a lot of good options and lots of places where we definitely won't live. On one afternoon we drove through a farming community called Clayton, which is only about a 35 minute drive from the Temple. We were amazed there was such a place so close to the metropolis of the Bay area. Margo immediately started dreaming about buying a farm with cows. I told her that it's probably not going to happen. It's good to know there is such a place though so close. Here is a picture of Clayton.

We went to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie at the Historic Orinda Movie Theater. It was awesome, both the theater and the movie. The great part is that it's only 10 minutes away.

On Saturday morning, before Margo had to fly home, we spent the morning in San Francisco. We both love the city because of it's beauty. We drove down to the piers and got out and walked around the Golden Gate National Park. We're definitely excited to live here because we'll never run out of things to do.

Christmas

It was great to get out our Christmas decorations and see them again. Margo surprised me with a new circular mirror that she bought on sale at the BYU bookstore. It looked great behind the trees. I told her that although a surprise like a new mirror is great, next a surprise like power tools would be even better. The Christmas color was purple, so that's what all the presents were. Parker enjoyed them the most perhaps.

After driving home from Ethan's baby blessing on Sunday I surprised Margo by stopping in and seeing the Christmas lights and Temple Square. We didn't get to see them last year, so I was glad we got to this year.

Christmas was a very special time to be with both of our families. We got to spend a lot of time with both. I surprised Margo with a set of antique Christmas ornaments. I think this may be one of the best presents that I've ever given her because there's more than just the initial surprise when she opened the package. The excitement went on for another thirty minutes as she unwrapped each ornament individually to inspect their unique beauty. Margo got me a beautiful set of blue cuff links and a really nice blue cuff link shirt. I also received an awesome watch from Perry (my assigned sibling). He matched my wish list description perfectly.

One of the highlights of the break was spending 3 days, 2 nights up at a cabin near Flaming Gorge with Margo's family. The setting was absolutely perfect. We spent a good amount of time enjoying each others company, playing games, cross-country skiing, and playing with Parker. Perry took Parker for a little rendezvous on sled. If you look closely you can see that Parker is strapped into his booster chair which is strapped to the sled. He was pretty unsure of what was going on. I think the look on his face was saying "I'm pretty sure this booster seat is for indoor use only." Cross-country skiing is a pastime event for the Farnsworths. We had a good time forging trails and also taking the trail that wraps around the rim overlooking the reservoir.

Provo dining at its best!

One of our favorite things to do is to try new restaurants. While in Provo we've tried many different restaurants and definitely have our favorites. When Maren and Joseph were out for Thanksgiving we took them to one of our favorite restaurants called The Communal. This is must for Provo dining. The food is excellent and the Pear Pandowdy from the dessert menu is supreme.

Over the Christmas holiday we took Megan and Perry to Spark, another great dining establishment in Provo. It's in the style of a night club, but since it's in Provo everything is non-alcoholic. Our recommendations here are the specialty drinks and any of the entrees. The chocolate mousse dessert comes with fresh grapefruit with a creme brulee top. Amazing. The banana strudel is also superb.

New Baby Ethan!!!

 

Ben and Elaine had their new baby Ethan on December 22nd. Mona, Margo, and I traveled up to Asher and Erin's wedding in South Jordan. From there we continued northward to Logan through the snow and got to see Ethan just a few hours after he was born. We're so happy for Ben and Elaine.

We got to spend some time with Lorna. We helped her make some welcome home decorations for Mommy and Baby Ethan.

Nana showing Lorna her the first pictures of her baby brother.

Old Taurus, New Taurus

November saw some interesting happenings. First, some 16-year-olds ran a red light and caused a truck to hit into our car and scrape the side pretty bad. I was on my way home from work at 11:30PM. I'm glad Margo wasn't there. We got to drive around a rental car for a few weeks until we settled the insurance claim, which we got some money to put towards a new car.



We ended up getting Goober, the Duchesne auto mechanic, to put some new doors on it so the car would still be drivable.



Even though the blue doors were pretty smashing, we wanted to something a little more reliable. As we were looking the car started to have a few more problems, such as the engine misfiring, so the hunt for a new car intensified. Amidst car selling scams on Craigslist and other classifieds, we actually found a good deal posted on a 3x5 card in the Wilkinson Center on BYU campus. Margo was not into it at all, mainly because the car was a.....any guesses? Another red ford taurus. We looked into it further and it actually was a really good deal. It's newer, 200,000 less miles on it, and we were able to get it that day. Getting this car really turned out to be a blessing because we got it right when we needed it, it's reliable, and we were able to pay for it with money we had saved up.