Used Car Sales

Another day at the used car lot, I didn't expect I would have such a fun job, but here it is. I'm quickly learning there is a whole side to my education that I have neglected. It is the auto side. You would think that after a couple of years of more mechanical education at the airport, I would know more about cars in general. But it is not so... ooh, need to get back to work people are here.

CFI Busy Times

So, I'm sitting at my new weekend job as a used car salesman for Ellis Auto Group. Never thought I'd be doing this, but it is pretty fun. I'm getting a good car education.

I started my CFI ground class last week and at the same time I am finishing up my IFR work. I expect to take the checkride in 1 1/2 weeks.



Last weekend we went treasure hunting again. This time it was up Spanish Fork Canyon and over to Thistle, Utah. About 25 years ago that area was deserted because of a landslide. So, now there are empty houses half filled with water. It was quite a site.




We also went to birdseye, utah, which was a very pretty valley behind the mountain ridge. I was really attracted to it for some reason.

Treasure Hunting and Mojave Camping

So, I got a GPS for Christmas and we have had a ton of fun with it. There is an activity called geocaching that is like modern day treasure hunting. You go to this site: geocaching.com , download the Lat/long coordinates for various hidden treasure and then go out hunting for them. The are most often an ammo can filled with toys and whatnot, but searching for them has taken us all over. 

When we went on our trip to Las Vegas and Mojave, we went looking for a whole bunch of them. We found some in Arizona and Nevada. We didn't get any in California. 

Why did we go on this trip? It was free! We went to a timeshare presentation last year and they gave us this free trip to Las Vegas. It was pretty nice, but I'm glad we drove because we stayed at the Southpoint Hotel which was a good 5 miles from the main strip. 

One of the highlights from the trip was the wax museum. 

So, since we only had 2 nights in the hotel, but a the whole week off. We decided to spend the last night camping. I chose the Mojave desert because I figured it was the only warmish place we could camp. It is only about an hour south of Las Vegas. It was awesome because we were no where near city lights, so, we had an open sky. 

The campsite.

We got to tour Moffet Cave the next morning. 

Christmas Letter

Merry Christmas, 

Since we are new to the art of christmas card writing, we've decided to present some anecdotes from our life over the last year. 

Airplanes: Casey has started to pursue his lifelong dream of being a pilot. He bought a classic 1947 Cessna 140 from Minnesota and has been using it to build time until he can get his commercial pilot's license. We have taken all sorts of fun trips in his little plane including a sight-seeing trip over Canyonlands and Bryce Canyon National Park. 

Cakes and Felt: Noah took a cake decorating class over the last winter and has become quite proficient at decorating cakes. At the same time, she has honed her skills at creating felt art. She makes all kinds of detailed recreations of real life object using felt. She has made little cakes, Chinese dumplings, vegetables, and many other fun things. Over the summer and fall, we both set up a booth at the local farmer's market and sold her creations. http://www.duchinese.com/felt

Goats: Casey and his friends from college started a community garden on a quarter acre of land over the summer. 

One of Casey's favorite jobs was caring for the goats. Over the summer he would go out every morning and milk the goats. He later learned how turn the extra milk into very tasty goat cheese. 

Jobs: Casey had many jobs this year. He started the year working as an intern for the Provo City Attorney's Office. He did a short stint as a BYU concession department warehouse worker. He worked as a tech support guy for a local media production company. Finally, finished the school year with his usual job as a Philosophy Department Teaching Assistant. 

The big news of the year is that Noah has just started her new job as a full time employee of the BYU Global Service Center. She works with project managers in LDS Church Headquarters to develop knowledge base articles about church computer applications. 

We continue to have the fun calling of teaching the Sunbeams every Sunday at church. We are excited to see who our new group of children will be. 

LSAT: This Fall Casey has been busy preparing for the law school and finishing his last semester at BYU. His most recent hurdle was taking the LSAT, which he prepared for by spending many Saturday's taking practice tests.

Travel: We both were able to do some traveling over the year.

 In August, we flew up to Seattle to check out a possible law school and enjoy some of the fun sights in that city. Later that month we met our family in Hawaii. It was Noah's first trip to the island and so we saw all of the fun sites like Pearl Harbor and the PCC. Noah's favorite place was the big swap meet, while Casey's favorite event was a aerobatic airplane ride in an Extra 300.

 

Future and Website: We do not know what next year will hold in store for us. In the Spring, Casey will know about which law school he will be attending - most likely it will be in Utah. Casey plans to have his flight instructor rating by February and to start teaching. We plan on taking some Spanish classes together. We will probably both head back to Taiwan during the spring to visit our family. If you want to see more pictures of some of our events through the year, go ahead and check out our blog: blog.duchinese.com . 

We hope that you have a great Christmas. 

Love, 

Casey and Noah DuBose 

LSAT + Godfather

I crossed jumped a huge hurdle last week. I've been working on prepping for the LSAT for the last 6 or 7 months. I took the ACE test prep course, which I highly recommend. The materials and the program was very effective. We had a practice test every saturday and lectures a few times a week. 

I tried to do everything right the last week before the LSAT. I spent a bunch of hours working on games and reading (my two trouble sections). Friday, I spent half of the day reviewing and spent the other half I spent relaxing, playing WOW, and going to the ward christmas party. I even went to buy a small bottle of Sunny D, power bars and some yogurt, so I could have a good breakfast. That night I had my couple ward members give me a blessing, which really calmed my nerves. The day of the test was actually rather uneventful. Aside from a last minute printing problem, (I had to print at the law school because my print was out of ink) there weren't any troubles.

The other highlight of the weekend was a Godfather marathon. Noah doesn't understand why people like the movies, but I love them. Maybe it is my european heritage, but it makes me want to go out and buy a capolla hat, and start walking around in suits. 

We took some wedding photos in Taiwan last year and I think one photo makes me look like Micheal Corleone.  What do you think? 

Promotion and Sunbeams

In the last week, Noah started her new job. It is an awesome job and she really likes it. It is amazing the change in atmosphere and respect that this job brought. She gets an office, staff, and plenty of other cool stuff. We decide to pick up some much needed household impovements from IKEA last week, like a dresser and bookshelf. Now, I don't have to fight Noah clothing space. Of course, she now has two closets :-p. 

The funniest sunbeam related quote I've heard in a while came this week. We teach the 3 and 4 year olds in sunday school. We were as usual teaching about Jesus and showed this picture. We asked, "What is Jesus doing in this picture?". The response from one of our 4 year olds, "Touching the children." 

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