Class Water Party

We had our second annual class water party today.
Here is a little video I made highlighting the event:

He is LICENSED!

It is offical. Ryan is an LCSW (Licensed Clinical Social Worker). After getting a master's in social work, licensing requires 2 years of weekly supervision, biannual evaluations, lots of paperwork, and a few other hoops through which to jump. There are so many perks to being married to a social worker like his effective communication, great social skills, reflectiveness, and ease at handling difficult situations. I am so proud of Ryan and his hard work. Not only has he achieved this but has done it while working at the state psych hospital, no less. Kudos, babe.

Paint Ball Warriors

I (Cheyney) have always been intrigued by paint balling. My brothers used to do it when we were kids but I never did. When I found out Aspen Grove would have it available, I was on board. We were one of the first to sign up for it and we were busy making strategies of how to capture the flag. It was just our family on the field plus one to keep teams even. Yeah, I have heard that it hurts but it just looks like so much fun. My sisters- in-law seemed to think so too because the girls were the main ones rushing the field to recover the flag. Well, we learned a lot from the game; mostly that we are a close family to still be speaking to each other after. Here are our stats.

272 shots
32 cup fulls of paint balls
8 players

5 hits on my body
3 people shot in the head (I was one of them)
2 people cried (I was one of them)
2 illegal shots (after yelling time out)
2 flags captured by me
2 times I yelled "enough" while bundled up on the ground
1 person wanted to play again (not me)

Family Reunion

Our Cabin

We have recently returned from a Lindgren family reunion at Aspen Grove. Aspen Grove (above Sundance in Utah) is an organized LDS family reunion camp filled with fun activities including paint ball guns, ropes course, swimming pool, frontier village, miniature golf, badminton, shooting, hikes, fishing, and much more. We tend to rely on Justin to be our photographer so we are missing some pretty great pictures but here is what we have. I went a little crazy with the collages as I figured it was the easiest way to display all the pics.

One of the greatest things about becoming a Lindgren is to automatically become the aunt to 8 great nieces and nephews. We had so much fun teasing/playing with them, making them sing for a dollar, and trying to get the little ones to not cry when we held them.

From Collages

Wendy made us all matching reunion t-shirts for family photos.

From Collages

These are a few pictures of some of our activities.

From Collages

One real treat was meeting up with my (Cheyney's) Mom, Dad, and sister at the Mt. Timpanogas Temple. It was the first time I got to be in the temple with McKay. Afterwards, we hiked to Stewart Falls. Here are some pictures from our hiking trips.

From Collages

BYU and Ligers

At the end of June we went to Utah for a family reunion in the mountains. We had a chance to stop by BYU on the way to Aspen Grove near the Sundance resort. Both Cheyney and I went to BYU for part of out undergrad time. It was fun to walk around campus and see the new buildings and reminisce. We got to take two of our nephews with us too, Caleb and Tucker.
Here is a picture with the statue of the founder. During Football Rivalry week this statue is wrapped in layers of saran wrap to protect it from U of U vandals.


The director of Napolean Dynamite went to BYU and I think the Liger references in the movie are related to this gal. BYU has a taxidermy/life science museum (Most everything there is actually dead though) and Shasta guards the door. Here is her history:

Expect more Utah trip posts to come...

Best Kindergarten Teacher EVER

Ryan visited our dear friend, Mrs Velasquez's, Kindergarten class last week to volunteer (year round school). They fibbed a little and said Ryan was a famous actor. Christy has trained her students so well. She has not only taught them reading, writing, and arithmetic but also advanced vocabulary including "economic downturn" and "glorious." After explaining that Ryan had a master's degree, she asked the kids what they thought of that. They all gave him a standing ovation. Here are a few of the drawings and writings of her class to thank Ryan for playing and reading with them.
"I liked when Ryan made us read the book and asked us questions. I like Ryan because he is" continued to say "jokes and playful and funny." The picture is of Ryan telling the class he couldn't read and the class laughing.

"I love when Ryan came to visit our class. Ryan is a actress. I love Ryan. He is the best and the world's best actress."

notice the red carpet

36 Hours in Reasearch Triangle, NC

The New York Times has a fun series where they go to a place for 36 hours and tell you what's cool to do, where to eat, and where to stay. In the paper today, their destination was the triangle.
First the article. Here is a condensed version of what they like. I've included links to places we've actually been to:

Sights:
North Carolina Museum of Art
Eno River State Park
Durham Bulls Minor League Baseball

Shopping:
Father & Son Antiques
The Scrap Exchange

Food and Drink:
Poole's Downtown Diner
Raleigh Times
Taqueria La Vaquita
The Pit
Mama Dip's

Venue:
Cats Cradel

Stay :
Umstead Hotel, Carolina Inn, or Arrowhead Inn


Being two year residents here, I liked the article and wanted to give you our version on the triangle in 36 hours if you were to come visit us. So 36 hours in the triangle, a little Raleigh heavy, Lindgren style:

Sights:
It seems our favorite places to go with people are to these three:

Duke Homestead and Tobacco Museum
The famous Duke family earned all of there money bringing Tobacco to the masses, and later gave their fortune to Duke University and Hospitals to try to make up for it. This sight of their old homestead has a cool tour where you learn how tobacco was cured and get to tour their old home and see how tobacco is grown in a field nearby. There is also a cool museum to Tobacco that was done in the 80's before Tobacco companies became the villains they are know as today. There are heroic pictures of tobacco farmers, and even a Liberty Bell replicated from hundreds of pounds of compressed tobacco.

Umstead State Park
Right in the middle of everything is a 5,579-acre park park that is about 15 minutes away from our apartment. It is a great place to see fireflies on a summer hike, ride your mountain bike, or canoe in the lake.

North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences
Right in downtown Raleigh near the State Capitol, this museum is free, big, and modern. They have a Butterfly Arboretum at the top, Whale Skeletons on the first floor, and lots of fun things to see in between.

Honorable Mentions: Durham Bulls games are cool and so is the Tobacco district in Durham. We've been to one Tar Heels game since we've been here and would go to more but tickets are hard to come by.

Shopping:
eh Target? We have a few Trader Joe's around which is essential, but does grocery shopping count?. Cameron Village has some fun shops if you're into the whole shopping thing.

Food and Drink:
Best BBQ place the Pit? Not good enough to try to those I've spoken to. I've tried out about seven different BBQ places in the area and my favorite is Clyde Coopers' BBQ. It's a cash only greasy spoon in an old brick building downtown. They sell pig ears for your dog in a bucket near the cashier. There are booths and a lunch counter. They bring out pork rines and super tasty fluffy hush puppies when you arrive. Every plate is around six bucks. The BBQ sauce is vinegar based with pepper and no tomato in it at all. True Eastern Carolina Q. The slaw is heavy on the vinegar as well. A true treat you can't get anywhere outside of the area.

Dessert and Large portioned dinners can be found at the cute 40's themed Hayes Barton Cafe. The Chicken Pot Pie and salads are great. The best part is the pieces of cake for dessert that are as big as your head. The coconut cake and chocolate pecan are definitely the best thing there.

Big Eds City Market is a great place to eat breakfast for a hot bowl of grits. They have a brass band outside some mornings. Also if you are in a hurry, the triumph of the Southern Culture is the chicken biscuit. If you like it a little sweet, go to Chick-fil-A, If you like it spicy, go to Bojangles.

Venue:
They close down the main street in Raleigh one night in September For Raleigh Wide Open. We went right after we moved here. Last year we tried to go but it was too rainy. Last year we missed Chuck Berry and Arrested Development. This year who will it be?

Also at Moore square park in downtown Raleigh in the summer they invite formerly famous bands to play for free. This years highlights are Joan Jett, the Charlie Daniels Band and Candelbox.

Stay: We have an extra bedroom and love to have visitors. It's near a lake with a walking trail. We always clean for guests. We cook some, play board games, and probably wake up after you.