Unexpected Stop

Our family headed up to Spokane to join the crew on Wednesday, Dec 28. It was rainy pretty much the whole way, so it made the roads even worse for seeing clearly. It was about 10PM and we were about 15 miles west of Missoula. As we came around a corner I noticed a couple of clumps of something in the road. I didn't want to take the chance of sliding on black ice by swerving, so I opted to hit one of the debris.

As soon as we hit the object we heard air bursting out of the front driver's tire. We slowed and pulled off to the side of the road and sure enough, our tire was as flat as could be.

I got out and changed the tire in the misty rain while passers-by sprayed even more water on my backside as I leaned over to work on our third flat tire for the year. I got the donut tire on and after about 20 cold minutes we were on our way again.

I didn't dare take the van through the two mountain passes on the 180 mile stretch that stood between us and our Washington destination. We also discovered from all of our tire information pamphlets in the jockey box that there was a Big-O tire store in Missoula. We had purchased the tire from Big-O and hoped that it would be under warranty.

Once we got to Missoula, we drove around to try to find a hotel we could afford. We were discouraged by the 70+ dollar price tag on the first hotel, but were elated when Holiday Inn said they were having a special for just under $50.00.

We bedded the family down in the hotel room and tried to get some sleep. Amber and I struggled to get much sleep since our adrenelin has been running in overdrive from the flat tire. But, we eventually fell asleep.

I got up about 6:30 and headed to the nearest Big-O tire store. They opened up the doors about 15 minutes early for me so our tire was replaced at no cost by 7:10AM.

I picked up some breakfast food and headed back to the Hotel. Everyone was still sound asleep, so I whispered to Amber to call me on my cell phone when they were up and we would get ready to go.

I did some odds and ends for a few minutes, but then decided to do a litle geocaching in Missoula while I waited for the crew to return to conciousness. I got a couple of caches in and became a lot more familiar with Missoula than I had ever been.

The unexpected stop in Missoula went well overall, and by the time we were getting in the van and heading out to Spokane everyone was in good spirits and ready for the short three hour segment that would bring us to our destination.

Cory Don Andersen

Troy and Linda had their baby on Christmas day. His name is Cory Don Andersen. He sure looks like a little tike when then placed him in this Christmas stocking.

Finally been accepted!

Well it looks like after two and a half months I've finally been accepted into the family, I've now been given an account in the family blog. Thanks John for sending me an invitation.

We really enjoyed being in Arbon for the Christmas holliday and spending time with all of you; it was sure hard to break away and come home yesterday. We kept saying "if we could only stay one more day"; Jen could have, but I didn't think I should since this will be my last week of Junk. So we made the hard trip back through the snow and rain and icy roads (with the piano in back), the whole time dreading going to work the next day. This morning I woke up at 4:30am got on the bus, then trax, then the bus, then walked to a junk truck, then drove to the office, to get there in the nick of time at 8:00 only to find no one else there. When I called Grant (the new manager) he said they had already left to do the morning jobs, and that they would have waited for me but he didn't think I was going to be home until tomorrow...

We apreciate all you're love and support, and look forward to seeing you again soon.

Here Comes Santa Claus

Well, he came, just ask the wee ones at our house. With the help of a digital camera and a little photoshop, Santa Clause got his picture taken in our house on Christmas eve. The evidence was on the table on Christmas morning next to the crumbs on the plate the kids left for the Jolly old elf.

Life Stinks!

Aylee got the game of life from Jen and Dave for Christmas. They wanted to play me and mom. Of course at the beginning of the game, Johnathan declared,"Let's have Dad come play so that we can whip him." I thought I had life figured out, so I took on the challenge.

I hate the game of life. I chose to be an accountant, because Aylee beat me to the punch at being the computer specialist. Aylee earned 90,000 per year and got 50,000 every time someone spun the spinner off of it's track. I had just finished my USU Accounting class, so I felt that accounting would be a reasonable alternative. Not so!

My Accounting Salary was $20,000 - I was the lowest paid player of the game. By the time the game ended, Aylee ended with over 1.7 Million dollars with Amber and Johnathan trailing somewhat behind with over a Million dollars themselves. Me? I barely cleared all of my debts,lost money on my house, turned in my expensive insurance policies that did me no good the entire game, and sold my stock - yielding me a lean retirement of about $300,000.

What a dumb game! :-)

Sorry!

The game that Johnathan got for Christmas was "Sorry!" To my knowledge I don't think the kids have ever really played that game. We got it out and started playing on Saturday. The game was going well until the first Sorry! happened - I sorried Johnathan. As soon as he realized what happened, he broke out in his Bass pitched wailed and tears started just streaming down his face. He couldn't believe what I had just done to him.

Amber and I laughed about it and finally got him to understand the game. We did pretty well until Aylee got Sorried when she was close to getting into her "home" zone. Before we knew it, Aylee had her head buried into her hands as she non-chalantly prostrated herself on the edge of the table.

In the end, Aylee did win the game, thus renewing her enjoyment of the game. I never knew that the game was such an emotional roller coster. So whenever you're in town, and want a good laugh, come on over and invite our kids to play a round of Sorry! Who knows, you might be wiping away a sniffle or two yourself.

Oh man, Pretty, Pretty Princess Victor

I still need to get Jen and Dave back over this one. Jen and Dave drew our family's name for Christmas and had bought the children each a board game. They were leaving to Idaho and knew the kids would enjoy the games over the Christmas holiday, so they let them open the gifts on Thursday night before they left for Arbon.

Well on Christmas Eve, Amber was determined we would play all of the games they received. To my dismay, she also made us play Aliece's board game entitled, "Pretty, Pretty Princess". The object of the game is to go around the board winning different pieces of jewelry. The first person to get all the jewelry of their color wins the game.

Unfortunately, Johnathan was the winner of the game. And much to my disdain, Johnathan enjoyed his victory a little too much.

"Spirit of Christmas" Cache

On Christmas Eve, we decided we wanted to leave a geocache in Provo to reflect somewhat the spirit of Christmas. We made a geocache that was only full of blank business cards. On half of the cards we printed a specific task of service. On the other half, we printed lines so that people could write tasks of their own. The idea of the geocache is that instead of trading trinkets, people would take a task that they were willing to perform; they would them write down a task that they would leave in the cache for someone else to perform. All the tasks were to be service-oriented.

We had a little Christmas money left over, so just for fun we left a "First to Find" task that contained some money for someone to give to a needy family. We all had a great time hiding the cache - we are waiting for it to get approved so that it will appear on the internet for the Geocaching community to find. We're excited to see their reaction.

Soaked Sight See'rs

Last Monday the entire Andersen Clan gathered together and went to Temple Square to see the lights. It was a week before Christmas, and all through the square, not a dry spot was encountered there. It rained on us the entire time we were there. Needless to say, we had to break off from the rest of the group as when we started to notice the kids falling apart. By the time we got to the van, all of our kids were sobbing pitifully. Once we got in the van and cranked up the heat, our holiday spirits bolstered once again.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

Aliece....Scissors....Hair....Need I say more?

The Passing of a Dear Friend

As many of you remember, I used to have a home teaching companion by the name of "Bud" Sprouse. He was an old farm boy from way back. He lived quite a lively life, and was always ready with a story from his youth. Over the past ten years or so, he has suffered from some damage to his lungs and has been on oxygen ever since.

Bud and Laurel have been steady company at our Fourth of July and Pioneer Day fireworks celebrations in our front yard.

This morning around 6:30AM, Bud passed away. He has not been doing well lately and they have been preparing for this. He was a good friend to many and will be missed.

Last year he and Laurel asked if I would conduct the funeral. The Bishop agreed to let me do so, and he will provide some closing remarks. The funeral is scheduled for Wednesday.

I know several of you have met him before, so I just wanted to pass this along.

How Geocaching Strengthened our Marriage

With school projects and finals all wrapping up, and the Christmas season with all it's activities in full swing, Amber and I have not been able to spend much time together. Earlier this week we decided to go out on a date for Friday night. The activity of choice was to go to a movie.

Amber wanted to see the new "Pride and Prejudice", but it was at the expensive theaters still. So, we settled on going to a move at the dollar theater instead.

When Friday morning rolled around, I was up at about 6am getting ready for the day. While I was getting my socks on, I brought up my email and started reading my messages. I noticed that I got a geocache email notification that a new cache was hidden within five miles of my home. I get these notifications every few days or so and it is fun to ready about them and see where they are on the map.

As I read this one, I found that this person who placed the cache had a prize in there for the first person to find their cache. The prize was two movie tickets to the expensive theater. My heart started pumping, and I knew that this was a sign that Amber and I could still go to the movie she wanted. I hurridly grabbed some clothes and kissed Amber and took off. The cache was on my way to work, so I thought I would swing by and snag it and then get to work.

I arrived at the location and took about three minutes to find the small green geocaching container. The morning was pretty frigid, so I took it back to the car to open it. I opened the container and sure enough, I was the first person to find it - there lay the movie gift card. I was elated!! Our evening was saved, due to geocaching! I wrote a thank you note in the cache and left a little Novell pin. I stashed the cache back under the bush where it was placed and headed off to work to brag to my coworkers about my quick find.

Amber and I ended up going to the expensive theater last night and enjoyed the two hour filmed love story. I knew that GPS unit would come in handy!

The Sky Is Falling!

Star light star bright,
First star I see tonight.
You're up so high,
O're my head
But I still see you
From my bed!

Early this morning at 2 AM, Shantell woke me up to tell me she just felt a drip of water. I decided to get up to turn on the light and as I was doing so, my hand went down to feel a wet bed. Oh, boy. When I turned on the light I saw something that made my heart drop. I saw a couple of paint bubbles, the size of golf balls, hanging on the ceiling with water dripping out of the very bottom. Being 2 AM I figured that I'd have to wait until 8 or 9 to get anyone hear to look at it. So Shantell and I grabbed some blankets and slept in the living room.
Slept....I'm not sure that should be the word to use. I couldn't sleep all morning. I just kept thinking of how little money we had for something like this to happen. This was the MOST inopportune time. Then my thoughts turned to insurance. Luckily I bought insurance on the condo the month before Shantell and I were engaged, but I couldn't remember how much I had set the deductible to be. On our new house I had struggled on the decision of whether to have a $500 or $1000 deductible. I bought the policy with the $1000 deductible. I was really hoping that I hadn't been cheap when purchasing condo insurance. I got up at 4 AM and looked for my policy papers on the condo but could not find them. I tossed and turned until 7 AM when Shan got up and went to work.

At 8 AM I was finally able to call my Allstate insurance agent. They looked up my policy and to my surprise it had a $250 deductible. Wow! That was much better than I had thought. While I was on the phone with them explaining the damage that I was seeing, my ceiling in my bedroom came crashing down onto the bed along with all of the insulation. This insulation is not the orange/yellow kind in rolls. This looked more like popcorn sized balls of fiber glass. I knew Shan and I would be in for a long morning.

I skipped work for the day and monitored the emergency cleanup crews that worked on my house all morning. Half of my ceiling was completely removed in the master bedroom and part of the ceiling in my other room was removed and 3 industrial fans were placed in the rooms to dry them out. We then awaited for the insurance adjustor to arrive at 8:30pm to tell us the fate of our next two weeks.

When he arrived he told us what we had already been made aware earlier in the day. Our house wouldn't be repaired for 2 weeks due to the recent disaster demand in the area. We were told that if we found someone who could do the job (licensed or not) then Allstate would pay them. When the adjustor was there, the temperature was very cold due to no ceiling and all of the fans running. He told us to book a hotel and we'd be reimbursed. Shantell and I have booked 6 nights at the Sleep Inn close to Novell. It is a very nice budget hotel. I think if we had kids this would be a nightmare. However, we don't :), so we are having a lot of fun in our hotel.

As an added note: We are spending all of our evenings at our new home trying to get it ready for us to move in by the New Year. And to add a tad more complication to the mix, our renters for the condo are hoping to move their stuff in next Tuesday (5 days away). Yikes!

**I will add pictures to this blog at a later date.

A familiar face

While the Bishop and I were geocaching on Saturday with Johnathan and his daugther, he had mentioned to me that a woman at his work told him about her sister in law that would be moving into our ward from Seattle. He told me that according to his coworker, they would be attending our church this Sunday.

Well, Sunday had come and I had nearly forgotten what he had told me. However, as we were sitting on the stand waiting for the meetings to begin, I was scanning the congregation and saw a small family seated in the middle of the chapel - a couple with two little children. I thought to myself, that must be the new family.

As the meeting continued, my eyes kept falling on the husband in the family. Something about him was strangely familiar. As time passed my mind started to put a name to the face that my eyes kept focusing on. I kept telling myself, no, that is not very probable. However at the end of the meeting, I leaned over to the bishop and asked him in a whispered voice, "Who is that family sitting in the middle of the chapel?" He responded that he thought it was the new family. I then replied, "Your friend didn't happen to mention that he was a plumber did she". Suprised, he said, "Why, yes, I think she did." I said, I think that guy is from Idaho. Again, Bishop remembered, "Oh yes, I think she mentioned that to." I finished, "I know that guy, I dated his sister about ten years ago!"

Sure enough, Trevor Griffiths and his beautiful wife, Jill are the newest members of our ward. For those of you still not connecting two and two, it is Jessica Griffith's brother (Parents are Alan and Sheila in Chubbuck). When I had been dating her he was fresh out of high school doing an apprentisship in Plumbing. I guess he became a plumber, found his wife at LDS Business College and then moved to Seattle where they have been living for a few years.

When I walked off of the stand I went up to them and he had recognized me. He asked if I knew who he was, and I replied that I did, however, I couln't remember his first name. He told me and we talked a bit about his family. It should be fun to have them in our ward.

I remember laughing at Mom's luck of having one of her old boyfriends as our Stake President a few years back, I guess it is coming back around to me. It is funny how small this world can be!

What about me?

Yesterday Amber was sitting down doing something intense - she knew it because she found herself biting her fingernails. While she was in the process of masticating that nail, Aliece walked in and observed for a few seconds before asking, "Mom, when you are done with your's can you do mine also?"

I like that town!

As many of you know that Jake and Shantell have purchased a house in Provo. It is situated just a mile or so from Novell on the side of the hill.

Jake employed Aylee last night to pull staples out of the floor since he had just yanked out all of the carpet in the house. We were getting Aylee ready to go and help Jake when Aylee asked about their house. I was being a little bit funny and I said, "Yep! Jake and Shantell bought a big house on the hill. They are going to be living in Luxury!"

Thinking that Luxury was a city, Johnathan's face brightened up and he said in a hopeful voice, "Is Ashlee and Brett going to be moving there too?!?"

Geocaching with Johnathan

Johnathan and I spent a few hours together on a Geocaching date. We invited one of the neighbor girls that is in his class at school and her dad. I selected a bunch of caches near Alpine just north east of us by a few miles. Despite the cold weather we all had a great time. It was so cold that our pens were freezing up. It was almost dark before we decided to head back. The kids were having so much fun they didn't want to leave.

Aliece and Dad

On Saturday morning, Aliece and I had a bowling date. The bowling alley has a neat feature. You have set it to have rails come up for some players so that they can never get a gutter ball. The rail will go down for other players. So, Aliece got the rail and I didn't.



Man, it was a close game. Aliece got 101 and I think I got a 103. I started the game off well with a strike on my first bowl, but then I realized that my back was not going to be feeling that good if I kept bowling that intensely, so I had to let off a bit.

We had a good time. Our date consisted of bowling, ice cream at McDonalds and a shopping trip for Aliece to pick up an item at the dollar store for her secret friend in Preschool.

Amber and the Forgotten Carols

Amber has a visiting teacher that is currenlty performing in the "Forgotten Carols" play here in Provo. I guess it is a rendition of Michael McClean's "Forgotten Carols" book and music. His son recently made it all into a play. Her visiting teacher, who plays Constance, got us a couple of Complimentary tickets.

After my date with Aylee on Thursday, Amber and I headed off to the play in Provo. It was in a handsome theatre in Provo that neither one of us had been to. The play was incredible. I have been tired of the book and music for the forgotten carols, but the play was very good. Her friend did a great job of playing "Connie Lou".

Golfing with Aylee

On Thursday I had the chance to go out on a date with Aylee. She got a coupon for miniature golfing at Trafalga. So, she and I spent a couple of hours there. On the first nine holes, I blew her away. However, she smarted up and on the second set of holes she beat me by a point. She also got the only Hole-in-one of the game. Pretty savvy little girl when it comes to clubs and balls.

After golfing we spent some time on some of the arcade stuff. She let me whip her at Air Hockey so that I would feel better about myself.