Snowman with cousins

A little end of the year snowman building with the Courtney and Buchi cousins!

Chirstmas '08

Halloween '08

Vanessa decided that this year she wanted to have a Halloween party so she invited a few of her friends over for some games, treats, and a movie.

So thus begins our little holiday season... I will post more pictures of all our halloween haunts through out the month. Alexander is still undecided as to what he will be this year, there is some talk of a Mexican Bandido... We'll see what we can create. Vanessa is a pirate, David is mini Darth Vader.

Backpacking to Wall Lake - Uintah Mountains

Last Thursday, I took off work a little early and headed up into the Uintah Mountains with Alexander and a few friends from the office for a weekend backpacking trip to Wall Lake. It proved to be a really good time and it allowed Alex and I to hang-ou a little.

Alex missed school on Friday - actually, Fort Herriman Jr. High missed Alexander because I know for a fact that he preferred to have been up in the mountains with his old man than doing classwork all day. You know sometimes it is better to not allow school to get in the way of education... Besides, he had to learn to be responsible for this missed time at school. He had to talk with his teachers and make sure that he could reschedule any tests or assignments. Hopefully he will see that whether you miss school or work you have to make up for it which means it can often times be a little stressful.

Thursday evening was pretty cold and the wind was constantly battering us from the north; however, that made for a fairly comfortable hike from the Crystal Lake trail head to Wall Lake. We set up camp just off the south shore of the lake. Downed lodge poll pines made for excellent seating around the campfire. That night, temperatures dropped slightly below freezing and we woke up to have found that it had snowed that night.

Friday, the cool fall weather continued and the northerly wind was relentless yet again, a perfect day for hiking. We headed north 2 miles to the 'Notch' where we ate lunch and took in the views.

To keep things interesting, we decided to use our GPS' to navigate a route from the Notch over to Clyde lake and back to camp. For the most part we followed the same contour line as our elevation at the Notch and headed west as we looked for a safe route (the least techincal) to decend. The scenary was breathtaking as we bushwacked our way around Clyde lake and back to our camp.

Often times we found ourselves with the challenge of traversing a marsh, or boulders, large fallen trees, small rivers, and sheer cliffs. Against Alexander's intuition (judging the terrain as he scouted ahead), Scott and Terry opted to take a route that almost cliffed them in...

This was a lot of fun - we kept ourselves pretty entertained the whole way back as we found ourselves in enteresting situations. When we got back, I found that Alexader's hammock provided the most relaxing position while Alex found the ground next to the fire to be suitable.

Needless to say, Friday night we slept like babies... Ironically, we prepared for another cold night only to have the weather change for the better. Saturday was very pleasant, the wind died and the temperature climed to 70. I tried my luck fishing in the morning and caught a small brooke trout - it wasn't quite worthy of cooking, so it was released to go hang out with is more elusive larger friends.

A highlight of our trip was stoping in Kamas on the way home and feasting on a bacon-cheesburger and diet coke after having all the freezed dry food our systems could handle.

Here is Spectrum Engineers' first annual Backpacking trip - Me, Alex, Terry, Will, and Scott.

Family Survey Results

I quickly found that there were a few flaws in my survey, so by no means was this conducted scientifically. Because of this, I really do not have anything of significance to report. Of course it came as no surprise that camping seem to be our family's favorite activity whether for the weekend or for an extended family get-together. The results also indicated that we lean towards wanting to vacation with our families in exotic places - also no surprise there. However, one item that seemed to get a good number of votes was a 'cabin in the mountains' which could tie in all our family's pastimes. Wouldn't it be fun to have a place where we could all easily get to and get away for a weekend or longer? Perhaps that is something we ought to look into...

Anyway, I'll have to give a little more thought into my next family survey.

SURVEY

I'm adding something a little different to my Blog - I want to see if I can make it a little more interactive so this will be my first attempt. Please take a second and answer my survey questions to the right - If you choose the "other" selection, please leave a comment on this post. I think it would be interesting to hear what you have to say.

If you have any fun family ideas that you like to do, please leave a comment and let us all know.

Back to School

Alex started 7th grade on August 25th and is attending Fort Herriman Middle School. He has a full schedule consisting of Pre-Algebra, CTE (Career Tech Education - AKA HomeEc), Choir, PE, Utah Studies, Science, and Language Arts. You can check out his school's website at http://www.fhms.jordan.k12.ut.us/.


Vanessa starts the fifth grade at a new charter school, Providence Hall. A charter school, as I understand it, is a public school but is able to operate independently from the rest of the school district... something like that. Check out wikipedia if you want to know more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_school. The nice thing about Vanessa's school is that it specializes in Art and Spanish. She will have a daily Art and Spanish class along with her regular 5th grade coursework. You can check out her school's website at: http://providencehall.com/. Besides the emphasis on Spanish, we are happy that the charter school has uniforms. I'll post pictures after her first day of class.

Labor Day Weekend

This weekend we took a quick trip up to the East Fork of the Bear River. Alex invited his best friend Zach to come along. (If you notice, the two walking bushes in the background really are Zach and Alex)

Despite it being Labor Day weekend, we were able to find a decent spot along side a little brook that fed into the Bear River. We mainly relaxed while the two big kids explored.

We ended up leaving a day early since we feared Monday was looking like torrential rains and thunderstorms. That little brook appeared to have the potential of turning into river... The one downside of a tent trailer is that if you need to move, you have to pack everything up. So, instead of setting things up again, we decided to check out Wyoming since we were just 30 miles shy of Evingston. The scenery was very nice as we headed West on I80 then over to I84 towards Morgan.

FALL BALL '08

I might have mentioned it before, but David started Fall Baseball this month. This is just an informal league that Riverton sets up at the beginning of August each year. However, he is excited about it because it is coach pitched and he is playing with 5 and 6 year olds.

Turning 40

Okay - this past Sunday yours truly turned 40. That's four decades gone by since that pivotal year that shaped a generation!

As part of some means to ease through my little 'mid-life' crisis, I thought I ought to take some time to reflect back over the many years that are/have so quickly faded into a colorless blur of memories. It is easy to get wrapped up in a self-centered pity-party focusing on all the things 'you should have had, or done' reminiscing on short comings and failures. Besides, I have lived almost half of a full life and in outside comparison of other's accomplishments I would easily rank low on many things. I'm going to avoid that pit-fall (remember that action packed Atari game) and highlight some of my more significant life events that make me who I am.

I have...

• been in attendance while baseball greats (and my favorites) Dave Winfield, Rollie Fingers, Pete Rose, George Brett, Reggie Jackson, Johnny Bench, Reggie Smith, and Steve Garvey played ball.


• been swimming in the Pacific (South: Zihuatanejo to North: Homer, Alaska), Atlantic (South: Miami to North: Deleware) and Caribbean (West: Cancun to East: Puerto Plata, DR) Oceans.


• been on numerous cross country road trips including Oak Harbor, WA to Burke, VA and Salt Lake City, UT to Homer, AK and SLC to Pensacola, FL


• seen the Northern Lights


• seen the Space Shuttle - in orbit, fly attached to a 747, and take off from Cape Canaveral, and watched it explode on live TV.


• lived in eleven different states including Washington DC.


• lived in a tent city


• seen Nauvoo, the Sacred Grove, Hill Camorah, Carthage Jail, and hiked the Mormon Battalion Trail in California.


• riden a 800cc Honda Shadow in Alaska and a 300cc Honda on the Washington beltway.
• fluent in Spanish
• apart from my current profession, worked as a fish processor, warehouseman, landscaper, nightclub doorman, record store clerk, bilingual collections rep, ski lift operator, call center manager, and panhandler.


• wrestled in high school, wore a skirt as a fashion statement to high school, and graduated 736 in my class of close to 800.


• seen Teotihuacan, took a boat around Xochimilco, and seen many other pre-columbian sites.


• taken a 100 mile bike ride from Burke, VA to Rehobeth Beach, Delaware.


• canoed the Shenandoah river.


• scuba dived at high altitude in a lake with full wetsuit.


• seen countless new wave, punk, and alternative rock concert and shows in the '80's which include big name bands: starting with Depeche Mode (1984), the Cure, the Smiths, Echo and the Bunneymen, OMD, Sinead O'conner, Joe Jackson, PIL, Gene Love Jezebel, Ministry, the Damned, Howard Jones, the Church, Ballam and the Angel, Hudoo Guroos, the Cramps, and local talent such as 9353, Madhouse, Bad Brains, Slickee boys, minor threat...actually too many to remember.


• been told that I looked like Andy Worhol by someone who knew him.


• deep sea fished in Mexico.


• slept in a train station, over pass, tent, on top of ferry-boat, airplane, bunk bed, hammock, with bedbugs, car, in the rain, in sub-zero temp, on the roof, and on the beach.


• had Dengue's fever.


• broke a finger and separated shoulder.


• bench pressed 220 lbs.


• lost 40 lbs from 200 to 160.


• passed my CBA and CBF credit designation exams.


• paid less than a $1.00 and more than $4.20 per gallon of gas!

However, my more meaningful events that top all of the aforementioned include:

• serving a two year mission in the Dominican Republic


• marrying the most wonderful and beautiful person in the world


• having 3 great kids


• 11 year old scout master


• running across an old friend, keeping in touch, and participating in his baptism


• seeing my parents off to serve a mission in Sweden


• being without work for a month and receiving a call for an unsolicited job interview and landing the job


• receiving a thoughtful letter from dad while I was in Alaska


• cruise vacation with siblings and parents

Well, I have to say this by no means is a complete list (and I will probably add to it as I clear out more cob-webs) but it touches on a few... I'm going to give some more thought as to what I want to accomplish in the next few years and post about that later... Thanks for your indulgence.