Thanks sis!

So I got an e-mail from my sister today and she had made me the cool format for my title above. I just wanted to say thanks to her. I've always thought the style of everything on my blog is a little lame, so at least the top of it looks cool! It also looks like she did a cool one for Robb and Heather. I'm still looking for a cool template/background. Let me know if you have any good sites that have good patterns, though I do want to keep it masculine! Thanks again Sis!

Streak Running

Okay, now don't get the wrong idea or anything about the title of this post. I read an article on ESPN.com recently (coincidentally I could start a lot of conversations this way) about streak running, which is people that run every single day.... for years... decades even. The guy pictured above and at right has been running every day since Jan 1st, 1975. His names Robert Kraft, but you can just call him the "Raven". You can look at the active list of Streak Runners through the United States Running Streak Association, Inc. The guy at the top of the list has run every day for like 39.5 years (over 14,000 day)! Raven isn't even in the top 10! That's just crazy!

Anyway, I started my own streak recently, though I don't think I'll qualify for any list of any sort. I now have a streak of running two consecutive weeks (I ran last Saturday and this morning). One might call this a "Weak Week Running Streak". Sure, 14,000 days is a lot, but if we're counting just the weeks, that's only 2,000 weeks, so I'm like 1/1000th of the way there! Plus if I say that the only people that can be a part of this club had to start their streak after me, then I'll be unstoppable... if I keep this up... which is highly unlikely! We'll see if I can even make it to 5 weeks! Now I just need a cool nickname, short shorts, lame glasses, no young kids, and a long flowy mane. Mary will probably like this post as much as she liked the Evel Kneivel one! Oh, and it's true that I may have written this post solely for the purpose of getting a comment from my bro Jordan.

Just loved this quote!

I teach Gospel Doctrine (a Sunday School class for the adults in our congregation) in church and am enjoying this responsibility more than I thought I would. I only teach once or twice a month because Mary and another guy are also teachers, so we alternate weeks. Anyway, I was studying for my lesson today and randomly came across this quote that was tucked away in my scriptures from Jeffrey R. Holland that I used in my lesson:

"... the Savior said, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you. … Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” (John 14:27).

I submit to you, that may be one of the Savior’s commandments that is, even in the hearts of otherwise faithful [Christians], almost universally disobeyed; and yet I wonder whether our resistance to this invitation could be any more grievous to the Lord’s merciful heart. I can tell you this as a parent: as concerned as I would be if somewhere in their lives one of my children were seriously troubled or unhappy or disobedient, nevertheless I would be infinitely more devastated if I felt that at such a time that child could not trust me to help or thought his or her interest was unimportant to me or unsafe in my care. In that same spirit, I am convinced that none of us can appreciate how deeply it wounds the loving heart of the Savior of the world when he finds that his people do not feel confident in his care or secure in his hands or trust in his commandments.” (“Come unto Me”, Ensign, Apr 1998)

The whole article is wonderful and I used other parts of his article in my lesson as well! I love quotations that help me to understand Christ or Heavenly Father by relating it to my experience as a parent, husband, father, son, etc. The way Elder Jeffrey R. Holland does that helps me to understand so much more how important it is for me to rely on my Savior and God at all times, but particularly in difficult times!

A little help?

So most of you know that I work at a facility that treats juveniles with sexual behavior problems (SBP). I run groups 6 hours a week (3 groups, 2 hours each). There are times when we show "therapeutic movies" that we can tie in and relate to SBP relevant topics. The residents love watching movies and they often get a lot out of "processing" the movie in our next group or completing the accompanying assignment that we might hand out while they watch the movie. At work I have been tasked with trying to create a list of movies that our facility would like to own that relate to SBP issues. There are two categories of movies that I'm looking for. The first is healthy relationships. Since they watch movies regularly we have tinkered with the idea of compiling a list of movies that they can watch that portray healthy, consensual relationships. The one we own and have shown, for an example, is A Walk to Remember. Other things that we have talked about are some of the Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan flicks. Any good ideas out there for the first category?

The second category is fairly open. Obviously, anything that deals with sexual abuse and it's effects is great. One that I showed this week that covers so many SBP-related issues is Antwoine Fischer. Other movies that we have shown are Batman Begins because it deals with repressed anger and it's effects. Other movies that are good that we have shown have dealt with empathy for people that are victims of anything. Around Sept. 11th we showed Flight 93 and talked a lot about empathy for some of the families. Other ideas are those that deal with teamwork, making life-changes, motivation: Gridiron Gang, Remember the Titans, etc. I have thought recently that I need to watch The Power of One (which if you haven't seen you need to see. I have been so surprised at the # of people that haven't seen it) as it deals with motivation and the ability to make changes.

Anyway, anything related to the effects of sexual abuse, anger, motivation, making life-changes, working as a team, effects of victimization (any type of abuse, harm), effects of mental health disorders (bi-polar, depression, anxiety, PTSD), etc. is welcome. Please know that we typically only show PG-13 or below movies at our facility, however we do have a video store in town that still carries and creates Clean Flicks movies (Mary and I watched Crash recently) so your rated R suggestions may pass the test. Also keep in mind that we don't show anything with nudity. If you have ideas just email me or post your ideas in my comments and let me know why you think that particular movie might be a good fit. If in doubt, just post-it. Also, if you think you know friends that have better ideas than you feel free to ask them for help as well! THANKS!

Free Rice

That last post reminds me. I visited a friends blog today and noticed a post that he had about a website called FreeRice.com where you go and essentially just match vocab words with their meanings and by doing so you are donating rice to the United Nations World Food Program. It's pretty cool. My friend does a better job explaining it and advertising for it then I do so you can see his blog link if you want. I donated 600 grains of rice today and Friday alone the site donated over 158 million grains of rice. Pretty Cool!

Biggest Loser!

I hope that that will be me! At work they're having a weight loss challenge that goes from the beginning of Feb to the beginning of May. I've lost about 6 lbs. so far and have done quite well. I have never had a financial reward ($50 - 150 dollars for the top three finishers) placed in front of me to motivate to lose weight/get in shape, so I decided to venture. I hope that I can win one of the prizes and in the meantime lose some weight and exercise more. I've done a sporadic job at doing push-ups and sit-ups over the last few weeks and enjoyed going for a run yesterday, even if it was less than two miles. I'm terribly sore today though, which is sad, but I haven't really exercised much these last few months. Anyway, I've been eating really healthy and I'm surprised at my resolve to do this. Mary, of course, has been very supportive of this change in eating. While we are eating more healthy, my biggest roadblock continues to be portion-size and not eating too much. I like food and I hate to see it wasted. I like food because it was always a reward in my family and a way that my mom shows us that she loved us growing up: good grades = dinner out, birthday = favorite sugar cereal, special event = lot's of good food. This continues today, but in different ways :^). I think that my not wanting to see food wasted is closely related to at least two things. First, if my grandma was being encouraging of us kids she would tell us that we should all be members of the "clean plate club", but if we left food on our plate she would gently but sternly tell us to clean our plates or there wouldn't be dessert for us, can't blame my grandma for this one given the era that she grew up in. The second one is that I lived in the Philippines for two years and saw real, heart-wrenching poverty and I just hate to see food wasted as a result of that. Anyway, I'm trying to lose weight, eat better, exercise more and earn a reward. Wish me luck!

"Dada.... Play.....Now!"

Those were the words we heard wafting from the toy room during dinner tonight from Nathan. He had shut himself up in the toy room (he hasn't figured out how to open the door yet) and was just saying that over and over. It was followed shortly thereafter by "Saah (his version of Sarah, without the 'r').... Play....Now!" It was really cute, so as soon as I got the chance I went and played "choo choo's" with him, which he loves! Nathan is starting to put these 3-4 word sentences together, particularly ones that end in "NOW!" We, of course, can't help but smile and dote on him. This is not, however, appreciated when Sarah says these types of phrases! But we love it from Nathan, for NOW.

75 Month Anniversary!

Mary and I have been married for 75 months today! Pretty crazy and quite a landmark... even if it is only in months. I've now remembered our "silver" month (25) anniversaryand our "golden" month (50) anniversary. I try to make a point of remembering our "month" anniversary and after getting in the habit during the first couple of years, one of us usually remembers to say "Happy ____ month Anniversary" each month on the 16th, and I was looking forward to this one. It's kind of a fun thing to celebrate each month and serves as a reminder of our wedding, which is always something great to look back on and be reminded of. For those of you that are whizzes at math, we'll be married for 100 months in March of 2010. We're currently about 1/12th behind where the Hinckley's were at when Sister Hinckley passed away (67 years). Something to aspire to! (hint to Chris and Rebecca: your 75 month will be on March 8th, Robb and Heather: yours will be on November 30th, Taylor and Leah passed theirs last month).

First Trip to the Park in '08

It's been sunny and warmer the last couple of days and most of the snow has melted, so when I was able to come home early for work yesterday, I decided to take the kiddos to the park. After being outside at the park for five minutes I realized it was probably too cold to be there but I had to give the kids some good time there before we left. I should have noticed that while the much of the snow has melted, that there is still a good foot of snow right behind our house because the sun doesn't hit it. If the temperatures have not been warm enough over the last 12 days since it last snowed to melt the snow that is in the shade, it should be a sign that it is not yet warm enough to spend a significant (more than 10 minutes) amount of time just being outside with kids. Needless to say, they both had plenty of fun and had really rosy cheeks and staticy hair by the time we left, but we'll probably wait for the weather to be warmer, not just for the sun to come out. I suppose this is a common mistake that a Washingtonian would make, where Sun = Warmth, Spring or Summer, Shorts, etc.

Here is Sarah at the bottom of the slide, posing for a picture.
Nathan saying "Cheeeeeeeeeeessse!"

Nathan likes to maximize his time at the park. One way he does this is by not ever stopping, to do anything. If he has made it to the top of the stairs and is at the slide he realizes it would take more time to actually turn around, sit down and go down on his bottom. His solution to this hesitation: just dive right down the slide without stopping.... literally. The problem: He has to put the brakes on at the end of the slide (seen above with his hands) so that he doesn't face plant into the woodchips. I think that he's having some fun!
Sarah thought that it was the coolest thing that she could tilt her head back and see behind her. So, of course, she had to have a picture! Notice that there is still plenty of snow in the background of this pic and that the snow seems to be getting plenty of sun. Yeah, it's still really cold outside! Whoops

Sarah's Art

I wish the color was better than it is in the scan above, but this is one of Sarah's recent creations. No, that isn't the Devil on the right! This is (left to right) Rabbit, Winnie the Pooh, and Piglet. This is one of the first pictures that Sarah has drawn and colored as it typically is just coloring in a coloring book or drawing with a pen or pencil. I was very impressed to say the least. I think that she colored this after watching a Winnie the Pooh movie about Easter. I thought that Rabbit was holding a carrot, but she informed me that it was his "list" for Spring Cleaning and that he was wearing his Easter hat. There are also several Easter eggs in the picture as well. She LOVES coloring and when she's bored, she will often get her "art bin" out and then request a coloring book and go to town. She can spend a lot of time on her own doing this and gets so into it and is excited about showing them to us and giving the pictures to people. It really was a great idea that Mary had to get her that art bin for Christmas. See below for a pic of Sarah in action.

Valentines Day

Even though Mary and I don't generally get into Valentines Day (see below), Sarah was greatly anticipating it, counting down the days for about two weeks. She knew that she had pre-school on Valentines Day and that she was going to be making Valentines for all of her classmates and was ecstatic enough about that, but then when her friend invited her to her Birthday Party (where they were supposed to dress up like Princesses!) on Valentines Day, Sarah could hardly wait. So we got a few little things and added them in with the little things that Oma and Opa had sent for Sarah and Nathan and that made for a fun little surprise for the both of them toward the end of the day. They both got coloring books and some candy from us as well as individually mailed cards and some candy from their Oma and Opa.

Nathan's t-shirt says "Li'l Heartbreaker"... so true!

After receiving the coloring book, Sarah went right to work and was plenty occupied for the next 1.5 hours, busily coloring pictures and showing them to us. She is getting quite good!

V-Day from Mary

Neither Mary or I are really that in to Valentines Day for each other, which means one of us often surprises the other. This year Mary surprised me, even though we had talked about not doing anything for each other. It was simple, inexpensive, and creative (all Mary hallmarks). By the time I decided to take a picture of this the orange slices had already been eaten so there are only strawberries in the picture. It was a nice little gift to come home to.

I'm really blessed to have such an amazing and loving wife who does SO much for me. Thanks Honey!

A University Teacher.... Me?

So starting in mid-March I'll be teaching at Park University's pilot campus at the Air Force Base here in Mtn. Home. It's pretty crazy and a really cool opportunity that I'm pretty excited about. I'll be teaching classes in Psychology. It's unclear what classes they will need me to teach but I'll be teaching Social Psychology sometime in the middle of March. They run 8-week courses so I'll be teaching about 5 hours (3 credit class) a week in the evenings. I'm a little worried as they've requested that I teach this first class on Monday nights, so that would be a five-hour class once a week. This is a little intimidating and I'm worried about how I'm going to fill five-hours, but we'll see what happens. I heard about the job from a co-worker who is the lead teacher at the facility I work at and she also teaches out at the University part-time and has a small administrative role in the English dept there. Anyway she approached me and asked me if I'd be interested and I thought that that was an awesome proposition. It sounds impressive, but I didn't even really interview for the job as they looked at my qualifications and took the informal recommendation from my co-worker and that was good enough... I guess. Anyway, it's going to be a really cool experience and I'm greatly looking forward to it.

Tribute to President Gordon B. Hinckley

We were in McCall when a friend called us and told us that the beloved Prophet and President of the LDS church, Gordon Bitner Hinckley, had just recently passed away. Like many have said it was a somber, bitter-sweet moment for me as I considered the loss of an amazing, loving, humble man that I never met but he meant so much to me. At the same time I almost immediately thought of his reunion with his sweet wife, Marjorie who had passed on several years earlier. As we watched the funeral services yesterday on the internet, I loved hearing all of the stories and tributes to this ever-humble man of God. He spoke out strongly against the evils of pornography, condemned all forms of abuse, yet constantly encouraged others to try a little harder and expressed his eternal optimism and hope that we could be better people. His humor will always stand out to me as a man that had a very pure sense of humor and wit. He was such a hard worker, at the age of 97 he was still at the church offices up until the Wednesday before he passed away! I loved this wonderful man of God. He was a Prophet to me and his 12 years of service as the President of the LDS church were during the most formative years of my life, as a teenager and young adult. He loved people from all walks of life and showed an interest in so many different things. I will miss him but am glad that he is with his wife and beloved parents and step-parents. What sweet and greatly-anticipated reunions!

Two plugs

These two products/tools are must haves. The first is your basic kitchen scissors. If you haven't fully realized their potential you're missing out. They are very helpful when you have toddlers or young children. Just this morning I made pancakes for Sarah and Nathan. When you try to cut pancakes into nice size squares for kids with a fork or a knife it is somewhat laborious and can tear apart the pancake (the top or bottom breaks off from the other side), but with these scissors it's a cinch (is this sounding like an infomercial?).

They are also great for cutting up your kids pasta/spaghetti into kid friendly sizes or really any other food product for that matter. We have used it to cut meats (fish, chicken, lean beef, etc.) and just about any meal that we've needed to cut down into a smaller, more reasonable size to accomadate the fork/spoon sizes of kids. It also reduces messes. These things are awesome! Get yourself a pair!

The second thing is the Miracle Eraser. A friend blogged about the power of this recently and I'll just say that Mary and I saved ourselves a lot of time (let alone saving our company a lot of money) when we managed apartments. It saved us from re-painting walls and replacing vinyl or countertops on many occasions. This thing gets out just about anything and everything. One caution: if you use it on something that has some kind of shiny finish (semi-gloss-painted wall, shiny vinyl floor, etc.) it does take off some of the sheen and might be noticeable from certain angles. However, you have to consider whether that black Sharpie mark on your tan wall looks better than a little lost sheen on it. Also, according to my friend, aerosol hairspray accelerates the process. Go Aquanet!

Add Expert Upholsterer to her Loooong list of amazing abilities!

Mary decided to cover our dining chairs a while ago, which is a must because they are wicker-style chairs which DO NOT mesh well sanitarily with kids eating habits/styles. Just the other day Sarah (who we're trying to empower to do as much as she can on her own... with mixed results) spilled about a fourth a gallon of milk on the table, chairs and floor. Anyway, we had purchased this table and chairs set off of Craigslist this summer and Mary hoped to do something with the top of the chairs. She bought some deep brown vinyl a while ago and went to it this weekend. They look awesome, are more comfortable, match the color of the base of the table and the living room couches, and are easier to clean. These took a ridiculous amount of staples, but the results on the top look great! Nice work Mary! Here are some pics.

Trip to McCall

We decided a while ago that we wanted to go to McCall's Winter Carnival this year. We invited some friends and family and finally hooked my parents (Oma and Opa). I think they were going through some Nathan and Sarah withdrawals after not having seen them over the holidays and not since early November. Needless to say, we were very happy to have them join us. We drove up Thursday afternoon with near perfect road conditions. We got to the Farmer Cabin about an hour before my parents but found that the cabin's heat was not on. We turned the heat on and got unpacked and tried to stay warm while we awaited Oma and Opa's arrival. We soon found out that we didn't have any running water and were concerned that maybe the pipes were frozen. When Oma and Opa showed up we learned how to actually turn on the water to the cabin and were able to get running water in the house. However, we also discovered that it sounded like there might be a burst pipe or something under the house because when we turned off the faucets we could still here a mysterious running/gushing water sound. We phoned some of my Uncles (Jim, Warren and Rick) to get some support but were concerned that this wasn't something we could fix or diagnose this evening and we needed to stay in a place with running water. My Uncles Jim and Warren and my Aunt Peggy offered for us to stay at their cabin, so after we finished eating dinner we headed over there. We stayed at their cabin for the rest of our stay at McCall and enjoyed their company while they were all there for part of the time. Thanks so much Jim, Peggy and Warren for your typical hospitality, kindness, warmth, space, conversation, sleds, and beds!


Here are Sarah and Nathan enjoying bedtime rituals with their Oma and Opa on Thursday night at Jim, Peggy, and Warren's cabin. I think all were content with their individual roles (including Mary and I!)

The kids enjoyed spending time with their grandparents and vice-versa and we all just enjoyed being in such a beautiful place together. When the kids slept (and sometimes when they didn't) I was pretty persistent in getting us together to play some games. We had purchased Alhambra, which is a new fun game that we learned about from some friends, and I was anxious to break ours in. Oma and Opa really liked the game and we played it a number of times. We also played Ticket to Ride: Europe. Mary had a disastrous gaming weekend, not winning a single game and generally getting wasted until we played Ticket to Ride: Switzerland (she absolutely dominates as this game!) on Sunday night and of course she won. I'm glad she won the game otherwise the trip home may not have been as pleasant as it was (tongue in cheek!).
Anyway, see below for the fun festivities of our long weekend with Oma and Opa in McCall for the Winter Carnival. I tried to do the posts so that they would be in order for your reading pleasure!

p.s.- this is a total binge-blog which is the result of cancelled church due to the amount of snow we got last night. It's snowed every day since we got home from McCall, but dumped a lot last night.

Winter Carnival Sculptures

So one of the biggest highlights and traditions of the McCall Winter Carnival is the amazing snow/ice sculptures that they do. This year's theme was "Wild, Wild West", which is pretty obvious from all of the sculptures. The Carnival essentially runs from the last weekend in January through the first weekend in February. On Friday the 25th, we went around and saw some of the sculptures. We didn't make it to all of them (there are over 40 at least), but we saw some pretty cool ones. They are spread throughout the town as they are sponsored by different stores, restaurants, hotels, etc.and are built in their parking lots, which makes it kind of hard with kids being in and out of car seats, but it is worth the trip. . Below are a couple of the cool ones that we saw and I'm sure we missed many other great ones. This is like the first day that some of them were finished and some were probably completed after we left. If we go next year we'll plan it better, but this year we ran into Nathan's nap and he was getting tired and cranky and we needed him to nap so he could be happy and have energy for his party later in the day. Anyway, it was a lot of fun. Some of them we just drove by and looked at from the car but below are the ones that we got out of the car and took pictures of. I hope you can realize how huge these are. Unfortunately with the sun out and all the whiteness of the snow the clarity of the pics is not as good as they are in real-life. Sorry.





The five pics above are all from the same display, which was definitely one of the coolest. It was huge and had like 5-6 huge cattle, two cowboys on horseback, a cave with two Native Americans carved into the side of the cave (see difficult-to-see pic above of me and Nathan in front of one of the Native Americans). This one was huge and really neat!

This was the front of a train in front of "My Father's Place" the diner we went to for lunch for Nathan's birthday. The kids enjoyed seeing this one and we all enjoyed the chimes of "Choo Choo" from Sarah and Nathan.

A prospector mining for gold in front of the old Burger Den that apparently is no longer.

The three pics above are obviously from the same one of a bunch of wild stallions going through a river or some kind of body of water. There are 7 horses that are ornately carved with really detailed manes and tails. It's really cool how they make the water look so real.

Well that's the last of the snow sculpture pics. We'd love to have some people come and join us for next year's carnival. It's worth the drive and there is lot's to do, besides just enjoying being together and playing in the snow. We were fortunate to be there on Friday as it got really busy on Saturday and Sunday and we were able to avoid the crowds. However, we wished we would have planned things better and gone to participate in some of their other events or seen more of the sculptures. By the time we were leaving on Monday some of the sculptures had already melted or been covered somewhat in the snow. The people try to gently sweep the snow off, but it is hard to re-do anything that is melted by sun or fluctuating temps.

Birthday Boy! The Big 2

Nathan turned two while we were in McCall, and I'm sure that was one of the reasons that Oma and Opa decided to make the trek to be with us up there. We decided to wait until Friday evening to actually have the birthday party as Jim, Peggy and Warren were going to be up there at that time and we thought they might enjoy being there for Nathan's birthday party. Of course, Nathan was oblivious to the wait and just happy when he saw presents that he got to open. With the Christmas present opening still somewhat fresh in his little mind, he tore into the unwrapping process with minimal assistance from Daddy and his big Sis.

He was pretty excited about his "Fox and the Hound 2" movie, of course you can all see that!

Opening some fun board books from Nanu and Bumpa (Mary's folks)!


Opening his Lightning McQueen spoon and fork set to go along with the plate, bowl and cup set he also got. Now he has one like his big Sis.

After opening several matchbox sized characters from the movie Cars, Nathan opened his "Radiator Springs" rug and went to town. He and Sarah were busy the rest of the night and since neither of them like cake (they had a little ice cream), they cut that short to continue playing with Nathan's new toys.

For the duration of our stay at McCall, whenever we were inside there was a constant buzzing sound. What was it you might ask: Nathan making a car sound. It seemed to never stop and was so cute to hear and to watch him so excited to play with his new toys.

Birthday Cake!

Nathan sees something he thinks he's going to like, he seems pretty excited!
It was so cute how excited Nathan was about his cake. I think that he's observed enough birthday parties to know that it is a pretty exciting event, even if he didn't even like the cake! He was quick to point out to everyone that the candles were hot.

For the last couple of weeks Nathan has been doing this cute thing where he blows air out and it flips his hair up. He gets a lot of verbal approval (laughter, applause, etc.) from us when he does it because it's so cute and he seems so proud of himself. Of course, when it came time to actually blow out the candles, he just blew up his hair over and over, but was so proud of his efforts. Dad finally chimed in and added some extra hot air to assist Nathan in the blowing out of the candles.

Going in for the final kill!