Halloween

I am finally all ready for halloween. Finished my pumpkin this morning and then got my big bowl of candy all ready. Last year I ran out of candy twice and had to run to the store to get more candy. This is a fun neighborhood because we get a lot of little kids trick or treating here.

Welcome Baker City, OR

Well, we have entered Oregon and are having pizza at the local pizza hut.

At about Boise we hit some heavy rains that have followed us into Oregon. We are wondering if we will be wet for the rest of the trip!

Modesto Storm

We are currently having a big storm passing through town. We typically don't have storms like this until after all the leaves have fallen off the trees. But due to the high winds and the sail in the trees, this is what I came home to. The picture above is the house right across the street.


This is the house next door to mine. The other house next door to mine had a limb break and land on my power line. My landlord was able to get the power company over here within a half hour to chop up the branch and get it off my power line. I am now left with a mess in my back yard.
The thing that I love most about where I live are the great big Ash trees in the neighborhood. Any more big storms like this and there wont be many left.

Heading to Seattle - finally

Due to throwing up issues we left 5 hours later than we had planned but, Jace has not thrown up for 12 hours.

Jace looks like he's doing well so we are going to try it out.

From A's

Time to pay our respects

We have been hosting Ashlee and Brett's kids this week.

While I was off to work today, Elyvia asked Amber where I was. Amber told her that I was working. Since Brett works from home, working somewhere besides a room in the house is foreign to their kids. When Amber claimed I was working, Elyvia knew that I wasn't in our office room of the house. Instead, she shook her head sadly and concluded, "No, I think John-Daddy must be dead."
Sent via my blackberry

Jace gets a Promotion

These last few days we have been having Elyvia and Gretchyn staying at our house.  Today, Gretchyn kept asking Amber where "Jesus" is.  Amber worked on trying to answer her to a level that would satisfy Gretchyn's question. After a few minutes, Amber realized that Gretchyn was really trying to ask where "Jace" was.

Man, that cousin sure has high esteem for little Jace :-)

Pine Wood Derby

We just got back from our very first pine wood Derby where someone in our family was a participant. Johnathan did a great job on his pine wood Derby car. I started him off with some basic cuts. Johnathan sanded the car and painted it himself. The design was one that he created on paper and we tried to match the best we could.

The name of his car was the "dragonster".  It was painted with the head of the dragon. John came up with the name himself. He combined the word "dragster" with the word "dragon". He actually got an award for his creative naming scheme.

John's car did very well at the racetrack. They did not keep time nor did they do placing. But, John's car was almost always first or second place. It was fun to see it do so well.

Aylee wanted to be part of the fun also, so she bought her own wooden car kit earlier this month and has assembled her own car. She took it with her to pine wood Derby. After the race was over, she was able to race on the track with other people who brought their own cars.

We were pleased that they did not take score at this pine wood Derby. Our Ward used to do scoring and places for the races. However, when you get 15 kids, and you have to race every car in every lane, and you have to race every car against every car to make sure that everything is exactly fair, it makes for a long evening.

Before I had to attend as a family member, the pine wood Derby's were known to go to at least 10:00 PM at night. That was way too long for nine and 10-year-old boys. By the end of the evening nearly everyone would be in tears.

Doing it this other way was much better. I did not see one kid upset about their car. And even the best part is that the event was kept within a one hour time frame -- and that included the regular scouting merit badges and awards.

You're not supposed to be here!

Today Aliece refused to go to school because she still claims she is sick (she threw up one time Sunday night and has been fine ever since). 

I kept telling her that she was going to school, but in the end, she breaking down about it that Amber suggested she stay home.  We realized that at this point she would be useless in the classroom.

I told Aliece that since she was sick, she would need to go to bed and rest for the day so that she could get better.  She did not want to hear that.

We sent the kids to school and Aliece stayed in her bed reluctantly.  It is now 8:25AM and Aliece called from her bedroom, "Mom, can I get up now?"

I am working from home this morning so I responded to Aliece, "No, you are sick, you need to get back to bed." 

To that, Aliece's response was, "Dad, aren't you supposed to be gone by now?"

Thought she could come on down stair when the big bad old man went to work...think again! :-)

Canned Meat - Oh Yeah!

I just wanted to give a quick shout out to Mom and Dad for the wonderful, early Christmas gift of canned meat. Not only was it a fun day to go and can the meat as a family, but we have been loving the meat that we received. Amber has opened up a can of meat pretty much every day this week for our dinner. It has been awesome!

I've never had canned meat before, and I think I am hooked. Thanks so much for the thoughtful gift. Hopefully we still have some by Christmas!

Unexpected Fall Cleanup

A couple of weeks ago, on Saturday, we were going to go hike up in a canyon near Pleasant Grove. Amber and I had planned a bunch of activities for the day which also included going to the library and going out for ice cream as a family.

However, and as we had the kids gather their books for the library that morning, we were missing several books. We searched the house and could not find them. We already had a $25 fine haunting us from one of the books that we could not find several months ago. Amber and I got fed up with this situation. It was amazing that it was so hard to find some library books. Our kids have so much junk lying around the house that it was hard to find books amidst it all. So, Amber and I canceled our hike and we declared that Amber and I would go up into their rooms and clean their rooms for them.

Aylee and Johnny were not missing books, so we let them be part of the cleaning session for their own rooms. Amber and I came out of this activity with several big garbage bags full of stuff, not to mention boxes of items that we are giving away to the DI or to the local school library. It was hard on some of the kids to see so much of their stuff be thrown away, or packed up. However, we only threw away things that they had not touched or played with in the last month or so.

Their rooms are all so much cleaner now. It took us about three or four hours to do the cleanup. During that massive de-junking event, we found the missing books as well is the book that was threatening to cost us $25 for replacement. So many people in other countries get along with so little. It is amazing that us, here in the United States, can collect so much stuff. It is refreshing to go through things and throw things away.

Johnathan even caught the spirit of it.  When we were throwing things away he was nearly in tears.  However, as the day progressed, I overheard him tell Amber that, "this started out being the worst day of my life, but now I think it is the best day of my life!" 

Wow...there you have it!

Our Budding Young Author

A couple of weeks ago Aylee brought home a letter inviting those that were interested to take a test to determine whether they would be accepted into the gifted and talented writing program for the Provo school District. Aylee thought this was something that she would like to do. She got on the phone with her aunt Ashlee, who has been working on writing some books, and got all kinds of tips and feedback for her own submission.

The kids were given a choice of three different options of essays that they could write about. Aylee wrote some ideas for her essay topic and sent it to Ashlee. Ashlee looked over at and gave her some suggestions. Aylee made her corrections and adjustments for her thoughts. She then went to the school and took the test and wrote her essay on that topic. When she went in for the test she had all sorts of ideas come into her head for what she could change and add to her essay. She came home really excited about the essay that she had written.

On Friday of this week, I got a telephone call from Aylee. She had called me from home to let me know that she had received a letter in the mail from the Provo city school district. The letter stated that because of the exceptional scores on the "Writer's Symposium Writer's Assessment" that Aylee was qualified to participate in the Provo accelerated learning services writers symposium series. Fifty 6th graders in the entire school district were chosen to participate in this program.

Their first activity will take place this week where Aylee and other students will be able to meet Brad Wilcox who is a local author and professor at BYU.

These symposiums are daylong events held at the Provo city Library. Aylee is really excited to be chosen for this program. We are looking forward to seeing the different types of things that she learns as well as see how her writing grows from this experience.

Way to go Aylee!

Day at the Cannery

On Saturday morning, I took Aylee and Johnathan to Preston to meet up with the family to can some beef that mom and dad butchered. We made it really fun. 

Friday night, I put the DVD player and extra screen on the backs of the two front seats. I then popped a 5 gallon bucket full of popcorn. I got the kids up at six in the morning and they quickly ate some breakfast and hopped into the Van. They each had their personal DVD screen. We stopped at a red box and let them pick out to movies. They had a good time munching on popcorn and watching movies all the way up to Preston.

It took us about 2 1/2 hours to get up there. We had a fun, but very busy day there is cannery. By the end of the day we were all totally exhausted.  We were all done by about four clock p.m. Everyone else headed to Arbon, except for me and Aylee and Johnathan as we headed to Provo.

I made them do their reading for the night, and then we stopped at an Albertsons and bought a container of ice cream for them to eat on the way home. I know that sounds terrible -- a whole container of ice cream for two people. However, it was cheaper than buying them a milkshake somewhere and I just encouraged them not to eat the whole thing. They didn't, so no one got really sick. :-)

Visit from Geronimo

Just a few days ago, we hosted the other international worker that I have here in the US working on a transition for us. Our group is actually closed our Mexico operations and so he is here transferring his knowledge to the Provo team at Novell. This kind of a sad deal, because he is transferring his knowledge and then will no longer be working for the company. However, he has a great attitude about it.

Just as we had dinner with Manjul, Geronimo came over for dinner with our family. We let the kids barage him with questions and then Amber and I visited with him while the kids went to play in the other room.

He is really a great worker, I hate to lose him. I hope that he and I can keep in touch after he finishes up his time here at Novell.

Wow, our first pine wood derby - Preparation time

Well it is here, the official Cub Scout pine wood derby is coming to our scout troop. Johnathan received his pine wood derby kit at his last pack meeting. We have spent a few days now, prepping up the car, working on a design, cutting the wood, and sanding it. Now it is up to Johnathan to paint the car before we leave it up, weighed in, and give it to the officials for the big day!

Apple Harvest

The other day, we took a look at our apple tree and realized that it was time for all the apples to come off the tree. They were to the point where the weight of the Apple was causing them to fall off the tree on their own. Amber and Aliece grab some boxes and teamed up to harvest the apples off of our tree in the backyard. Aliece took it upon herself to climb up the various branches of the tree and pick apples and give them to Amber who transfer them to a box.

It didn't take them too long to go through the tree using this process. We got two nice sized boxes of apples from their labors.

We have some great plans to make applesauce, Apple crisp, and just plain apples in the coming weeks. It's kind of fun to have a fruit tree and be able to enjoy the fruits in the fall. This is probably the best year we've had for apples. Surprisingly, there have not been very many wormholes in this harvest.

Flash Cards with a Twist

Johnathan is at this stage in school where he is bringing home flash cards for multiplication. His daily assignment is to practice flashcards for 15 minutes every day. This can get to be a little tedious, so Amber made it fun or by creating a game out of it. On the days that she does flashcards with Johnathan, they have a contest to see who can do it the quickest. She gives him a one or 2 second head start before she answers. The winner of that flashcards gets to keep the card. When they get through the pile of flashcards they count them to see who got the most. The second around continues with the cards that Johnathan lost to his opponents. The game continues until Johnathan has won all of the cards. If the time is not yet up, they restart the game.

I decided to up the ante a little bit on the game that Amber and Johnathan created. Now, when I do flashcards with John, the loser has to do 10 push-ups. I usually win the first few rounds. However, as the cards get fewer and fewer in number and more repetitive, Johnathan starts to win me. (I still have to wait the 2 seconds before I answer each card)

This way both Johnathan and I get a little workout along with our mental math exercises.

The Yankee Date

Amber and I try to schedule in personal time with the kids each month. We call these are dates with the kids. Sometimes these dates are very simple -- they entail going to the store or run some errands with me.

I had to run and purchased something to the store and so I decided to take Jace with me for a date. Amber told Jace that he was going to go with me on a date. He got excited and the first thing that he did was run over to the hat rack in the entryway and point up at his little Yankee hat.

I couldn't let the little tyke out do me so I grabbed my Also. We went to the Home Depot together. We got lots of stares from people as they pointed at Jace's little Yankee hat and told me how cute he looked. It was pretty funny that he associates our dates with wearing Yankee hats. 

Hosting Manjul Verma

For the past few weeks I have had a few employees, and coworkers who worked internationally come to the United States to transition off some information and work responsibilities. The first one to arrive was Manjul Verma. Manjul lives in Bangalore, India. I have worked with Manjul for several years now. I first met him last year when I traveled to India.

He has been here for three weeks and he just barely left this morning for India. A couple of weeks ago he invited me over to his hotel for lunch on Saturday afternoon. He made me some Indian food. It was yummy and we had a good visit. About nine days ago, Amber and I invited him over to our house to meet the family and to have dinner together.

Amber cooked a delicious meal. We had asked the kids to prepare some questions that they might have for Manjul fall he was here. The dinner went off very well -- the kids were very well behaved and kept their voices down. While we were eating dinner, each of the kids asked him several questions about his family and about India in general.

He really seemed to enjoy himself with our family. He thought Avary was just too cute. He held her and even got his picture taken with her. He thought she was very sweet.

When he left our home, he was very touched that he was able to meet our family. In India, they have a heritage of large families. However, with the current population issues there in their country the government has in place several incentives for families to only have a maximum of two children. He thought it was great to be surrounded with so many kids.

It was great to talk with him and learn more about his culture, his religion, and his family. I am grateful that are kids were able to be a part of this.

Jace turns Two!

On September 17, 2009, Jace had his second birthday party. Actually, this is really his first birthday party. Last year, on his first birthday, we were all sick. Since he really didn't understand birthdays, we stuck a candle in a pancake in the morning and that was about it.

Amber made it right within this year and had a great production for him to celebrate. He really got into it, and knew what it was all about. He even took my hand and led me to the pantry and pointed up on the shelf where we have the lighter and many pointed to hit the candle on his cake. He knew that it needed to be lit and he knew how was to be done.

We had a fun little party for him and he enjoyed the day full of presents and fun.

Resurrection!

Several weeks ago, Amber had been biking with the kids to school each and every morning. For a few days in a row, there was a dead bird on the side of the road. They just rode by it everyday.  One afternoon when Amber was picking up Alayna and riding back home with her from school, they noticed that the bird was no longer there. Alayna exclaimed to Amber, "look mom! The bird isn't there anymore. It must have gotten resurrected!"

I have always wondered what happens to the bodies of road kill along the sides of the street. I guess the mystery is solved!