To Bone and Back

Today, Amber is in a race called from bone to back. She and some girls from our neighborhood decided several months ago to do this relay race. They are five-mile segments that take them through a course of about 40 miles to bone, Idaho and back to Idaho falls.

Amber is running two legs of the course in a row. That means she'll be running 10 miles overall.

I am on my motorcycle following her along the route. She is almost to the halfway point and is looking really good.

Prepare for John Jr's Ordination

I just wanted to let everyone know that we are hoping to have John be ordained a Deacon on July 8. Our church starts at 11am here in Woodville. I imagine the bishop will have him be ordained right after church at 2pm.

You all are welcome to come and join John on this special occasion. I'm sure we'll also have some food to feed you all as well. :-)

We would love to see you there if you can make it!

Ambushing an Elder

The other day we had the missionaries over for some pizza and breadsticks. The dinner was not quite ready when they arrived, so I sat down with them in the family room to chat. As we sat, one of the missionaries picked up a photo album from our coffee table. He commented on how creative the cover was and asked if he could thumb through it. Without thinking, I told him that was fine.

I kept talking with his companion, but in the corner of my eye, I noticed that after a page or two of turning in the album, the missionary quickly, but quietly set the album back on the coffee table and joined the conversation. I thought it odd at first, but then realization set in.

I apologized to the missionary. I didn't think about that album being our Hawaii photo album. It was chock full of photos of a beautiful Amber Andersen in her swim suit. The missionary had obeyed the rules as soon as he saw the pictures and had quickly closed the book.

Way to obey the rules, Elder! We had a good laugh about it together. But I was impressed that he closed the album so soon.

Ninja shirts

jace continues to be on a ninja kick. Over the past three weeks he has been wearing his shirts on backwards. It doesn't matter whether it his his regular day shirt or his pajama shirt.

He gets this idea from the ninja Lego people that he plays with. They all have plain colored shirts in the front to help them hide.

I thought this was something that would pass in just a few days. But after several weeks of this, I wonder how long he is going to insist on wearing his shirts backwards.

At least we have him convinced that he needs to wear his church shirt the right way.

Yellowstone with the Kosmicki's

Ken and Ellen Kosmicki spent the weekend with us. On Saturday, we went up to Yellowstone National Park. ken had never been there before.

We got to the park at around noon. We visited the traditional sites of Old Faithful and the various hot pots and geysers. We then went up the north side of the park and saw some very cool things that we have never seen before. One such place was Mammoth Hot Springs.

We spent all day at the park and got home at around 130 in the morning that night.

It was fun to spend some time with them and their two little dogs. We all had a great time hiking around and seeing the sights. We saw more wildlife on this trip to Yellowstone park then we have ever seen in prior visits to the place.

Ken and Ellen will leave later today. We will miss having them around. It was very good to see them and enjoyed our conversations with them.

Hair gel makes me horny

I was in the bathroom putting hair gel in my hair and combing it. Alayna and Jace were both in the bathroom with me as well. Alayna said, dad did you put hair gel in your hair?

Jace responded quickly, "I know when Dad puts hair gel in his hair."

I asked him how he could tell when I had hair gel in.

He responded, "because when you have hair gel and it is all horny. "

Amber started to laugh in the other room, and I quickly corrected Jace by saying, "you probably mean my hair gets spiky."

"oh, yeah", Jace responded.

So if Jace happens to tell anyone that I know that dad gets horny when he has hair gel, you can all understand what he really means.

Sent from my iPhone

New trailer for the four wheeler

Last week Amber and I went hunting for a good quality trailer for our four wheeler. I had the experience of using a variety of trailers a few weeks ago for a service project. I noticed very quickly that there was a large difference in quality between the different types of trailers.

Amber and I found a trailer that we thought would work and be really tough. However, the trailer was not in stock and we had to order it and wait for a week for it to come.

Tonight, Amber and the little ones went to Sears to pick up the trailer. When the older kids and I got home from shooting with our neighbors, we all got together and assembled the trailer.

We are excited to put the kids to work gathering up sticks, logs, and other debris to help clean up our area. I think the best part about it, is the fact that the kids will probably have a good time driving the four wheeler and picking everything up as well. I call that a win-win situation!

New Job

For the summer I wanted Aylee and John to have the opportunity to have a job. I didn't have enough money to pay them for their work, however, we figured out a good way to do this.

They are each required to work for me for about two hours each day. We meet at about 7:30 AM to get their assignments.

They get paid eight dollars an hour which is the going rate for farm hands of high school kids around here.

Instead of getting money directly, their money gets applied directly to the purchase of the calves that we bought earlier this year.

By the time we sell the calves in the fall, they will get a percentage of the profits equivalent to the percentage of ownership that they have in the calves through their work during the summer.

They have done a lot of good work for me so far this first week of this arrangement. Today their job was to paint the cement collars around our buried sprinkler heads in the pasture. I am hoping that we can get our little ranch looking spiffy and organized with their help.

Half Marathon

Yesterday morning, Amber got up bright and early to head up to Idaho Falls to inflict pain on her body.  She and her friend, Tia Rickabaugh, were excited and set to run their very first Half Marathon.  

The race was called the "Personal Best Half Marathon".  The course was near the airport and was sandwiched in between rolling green fields.

Amber and Tia ran the race together most of the way.  Amber finished the race with a great time for her first half marathon:  2 hours 17 minutes and 43 seconds.  Tia was announced as the third place winner. Amber had two runners between her and Tia so it looks like Amber came in 6th place overall for the women runners.

The kids and I waited at the finish line and were excited to see Amber cross over.  She looked strong and had a great time.  She has been worried about IT-Band issues with her knee lately as well as some foot problems, but her body held it together for the race.

Way to go Amber!

Early Mother's Day

We ended up celebrating Mother's Day a week early this year due to the fact that this Sunday afternoon I fly off to New Orleans for our annual conference for ServiceNow.  

We all worked together and created a fun meal Sunday afternoon.  We marinated some steaks for half the day.  They were so tender and delicious.   We also gave Amber her gifts.  It was a Running mother's day as most of Amber's presents were to deal with her new running addiction.

Amber has her half marathon coming up in less than two weeks and already she is starting to study up on running a full marathon.  It is pretty amazing, especially at her age! ;-)

Rube Goldberg Show

Aylee and her lab partner, Mark Crandall, have been spending their time in their GT (Gifted and Talented) Solutions Science class building a Rube Goldberg machine.  These types of machines use gravity and other objects to perform unique functions that all contribute to an end goal.

For their machine, they had a marble roll down a foam tube where it landed on a plane of dominoes.  The dominoes would knock each other over successively until one would fall into a weighted box.  This would cause the box to fall and alternatively raise up the other end of the string that had caused a switch to touch a sprocket.  The switch allowed electricity to flow from a battery that caused the sprocket to turn.  The turning sprocket would light up a small light builb.  She then had part of our NXT (lego robot kit) positioned such that its light sensor would react to the lit light bulb.  The light from the light bulb would signal the NXT to turn on it's motor which then would pull a toy fish out of a small tank of water.  It was a pretty amazing machine!

They had a science fair at the middle school.  We took all of the kids to look at the various booths.  Mom had wanted to come but has been sick for quite some time, so Dad made a special trip up to see the science fair.  We enjoyed all of the booths and cool demonstrations.  Even the youngest of the kids thought it was an amazing event.

New herd of calves

On Thursday, for better or worse, I made some phone calls and ended up purchasing 18 holstein-jersey calves (with a few beef mix as well).  I ended up paying more per calf this year than I did last year, and these calves are a bit smaller as well.   We are getting in earlier than last year, though, so hopefully we can make it up with a couple more months of feeding.

I made a gamble and bought a lot more calves than last year.  We are hoping to fence off a neighbor's 22 acre field for some extra feed this year.  I had hoped to use the pasture on the other side of our property, but the people that kept their horses at our place last year beat us to the punch and got their horses in the other pasture before we approached our neighbors about doing the same.

Aylee and John have the responsibility of keeping the calves watered.  They also work together to grain the calves as well.  They have each put some money into the investment.  We are hoping for a decent return when we sell the small herd this fall/winter.

Our Last Supper (Day 7)

For the last evening of our 15-year anniversary getaway, Amber had hoped that we could do a moonlit picnic on the beach. I wasn't convinced this would be the funnest activity, but I was willing to give it a try.

We grabbed the lantern, some towels, and jackets at the apartment. We then went to a nearby deli and purchased some food and walked out onto the quiet Kailua Beach. The environment was fabulous. We didn't see anyone else on the beach. It felt like we had the peaceful scene to ourselves. We spread out our beach towels, turned on the lanterns, and laid out our little feast in front of us.

We had a great time sitting next to each other and sharing the food while talking and enjoying the constant sound of the surf as it washed up within a few feet of us with its never-ending, calm rhythm that makes the ocean beach such an amazing destination.

It was the perfect way to conclude our vacation together.

I'm so lucky to have Amber as my wife. With her at my side, I feel like I can take on the world. It was so good for us to spend that week together in Hawaii.

We are grateful to Jen and her family for taking care of things at home so that we could spend this much needed time together.

Mahalo and Aloha!

Lighthouse Hike (Day 7)

On our last day in Hawaii, we decided that we had had enough laying around and soaking up sun. We got our tennis shoes and donned the backpack and took up a nearby hike that overlooked an old lighthouse on the shore.

On the way up, we had to make sure to grab a geo-cache so that we could count Hawaii as one of the states in which we have found the hidden treasures. There were a number of them along this hike, but we only took the time to find a few of them. Earlier in the week, I climbed out on a rocky ridge above a wild shore and got yelled at by Amber as I retreived the cache. I figured that we should probably do a more calm geo-cache so that the memory would be a nice one rather than a more violent one ;-), so we grabbed these together on the hike.

Once we got to the top, Amber was a bit weary about the height of it all.  We decided to snap some pictures of the two of us on the summit. We were able to see a lot of different sites from the island from this vantage point. It was a beautiful perspective and were glad that we did the hike.

After the hike, we started to head back to our apartment but decided to stop off at a beach that is informally known as "from here to eternity beach".  The beach actually has an official name, however, many of the locals call it this as a famous movie scene was filmed on this beach for the movie, "From Here to Eternity".  The mid-20th century movie involved a steamy love scene of the stars rolling around and kissing on a small sandy shore of wild beach where the surf pounds the nearby rocks with its fury.

Amber and I had the beach to ourselves. So we took about 20 to 30 minutes setting the camera on auto shoot mode and doing some fun "From Here to Eternity" poses at the beach. I guess we were not the only ones having a good time, as after a while we looked up on the rocky cliff above us and found several people at the Lookout watching us set our camera and run into position to create comically steamy shots of two lovers on a wild shore.

Sunrise, Sunset (Day 5)

We wanted to make sure that while we were in Hawaii we would catch at least one sunrise and one sunset. On one of our days, we got both ends of the spectrum.

During our stay on Oahu we rented a small apartment in a small town called Kailua. He was a quiet town that had a beautiful long sandy beach that was not overcrowded. In the morning, we got up and rode bicycles provided by the apartment to the beach. There we walked along the shore talking and waiting for the sun to rise above the ocean horizon.

It was beautiful to see the sunrise above the water and to have the two of us on the beach with few other people.

We were the only ones on the beach, however, as it had been a windy morning several man-of-war jelly-type fish had washed up on the beach. Unknowingly, as we walked with her feet in the water one of them was washed across the top of Amber's feet. He gave her a good sting and left some welts on the top of her foot. Luckily it subsided after 10 or 15 minutes. However, we decided we would walk higher on the beach for the rest of the morning.

Later that day, we were on the North Shore of Oahu.  As the day drew to a close, we parked at Sunset Beach to watch the sunset. It had been difficult throughout the week to find a good sunset because at night we had several clouds come in and it would cover the sun. This was probably the best sunset we had on the beach. We wanted to make sure that we had a picture of the two of us at Sunset on Sunset Beach. We grabbed a passerby and asked them to take her picture in the waning sunlight.

Sea Turtle Visit - (Day 5)

Before we had left for Hawaii John asked us to take a picture of a sea turtle if we encountered one while we were there. Our fifth day in Hawaii we decided it was time to search out the elusive sea turtle. We got out our tour book and found some of the best beaches for sea turtles. We hit this beach on the North Shore and we were lucky enough to have a visit by an old sea turtle within 15 minutes of our stopping the beach.

It was fun to see this turtle swam up to shore and then climb up on the beach and just rest in the sun. There were some biologists are on the beach the rope had often talked a little bit about this particular sea turtle as well as the sea turtles in general. It was fun to learn a bit about them.

Snorkeling in Oahu (Day 2)

Our second real day in Oahu and make sure that we got some snorkeling in. The apartment we stayed at had snorkeling gear there that we could use. We threw it into the convertible and headed off to the nearby Hanauma Bay that is a nature reserve dedicated for snorkeling enthusiasts. It is a nice place to snorkel. There are tons of reef and fish. The only downside to this day was the number of people that were there. The good thing about snorkeling, however, is when you're inside the water everything is peaceful and quiet. It is amazing how the fish are so used to people swimming by them. We will swim right next to you at often follow you as you go along looking for the different varieties of life under the water.

This was our first time snorkeling in many years. We are both a little nervous so we thought it would be fun to hold hands under the water. If one of us started to swallow water or otherwise need to resurface we could squeeze each other's hand and pop up out of the water. This worked for a little while, however, as we got our bearings and felt comfortable with the masks were able to do this without keeping so close to each other.

One downside to snorkeling trip is that I lost my wedding band. I wore in the water because I have never had it slip off of my finger in the almost 15 years we've been married. The only thing that I can figure, is that while Amber and I were holding hands under the water swimming that maybe one of us yanked our hands free in order to maneuver and it must've pulled the ring off. I was quite bummed about losing my wedding band.

Snorkeling ended up being one of our favorite activities while we were on the island.

Lost

At the beginning of the year, Amber let me talk her into getting started with the TV series, "Lost".  We have really gotten into it and have enjoyed the series. For those of you familiar with the TV series, it is about a group of people that are involved in a plane wreck in crash on a deserted island. Some people thought it was a little funny when they saw us watching movies on the airplane about people who crashed while in flight. But it sure helped pass the six-hour flight between LA and Oahu.

We had read that the series was filmed on Oahu and we wanted to find at least one of the sites were some of the major scenes were filmed. We did a little research and found that the beach where most scenes take place on the TV series were filmed on a secluded beach on the North Shore of the island. In order to get to the speech, we had to park a ways down at a public park and walk along a rocky beach line to get to the popular scene.

On our way Amber and I were talking and I was ahead and she was behind me. While we were chatting, Amber screamed all of a sudden. I stopped dead in my tracks wondering what the world went wrong. She then indicated to me that within a few feet before I was walking there was a large seal resting in the sand. We had originally mistaken it for a piece of large driftwood, and I probably would've walked right up to it or even stepped on it. I was glad the Amber realized what was before we found out what it feels like to run away from an angry seal but was woken up from its nap.

We found the beach and took some pictures of it and the surrounding area. We had fun messing with the time delay function on our camera and we took some shots of the two of us.

As we started walking back to our car, Amber asked me to stop for a moment. She said that she had purchased a gift for me that she wanted to give to me on our trip to Hawaii. She had purchased it a few months ago and was waiting to give it to me while we were on the island. I open the small block house that she put into my hand and found a brand-new wedding band. She has wanted to give me a new wedding band for quite some time. 

I had lost my wedding ring a couple of days earlier when we had been snorkeling at Hanauma Bay. She thought that was quite ironic that I would lose our wedding band on the same trip that she had planned to give me a new one.  For added emphasis, or irony, she waited until we are on the beach where they filmed "lost" to give me my new wedding band to replace my lost one.

Perl Harbor

One of the things that Amber and I wanted to do while we were in Hawaii was to visit the Pearl Harbor Memorial. We've talked to several people that have done that before and they mentioned that the worst part about it was getting there early and standing in lines in order to get tickets that were at assigned for a certain time later that day. It really tied you up to be in that part of Hawaii for most of the day.

On the Saturday that we were there, we were nearby Pearl Harbor and so we decided to take a gamble. It was in the later part of the afternoon so we had no idea what to expect as far as crowds. When we went to the desk they told us that there were no more tickets for the day and that this was the last session that they were allowing through in the Memorial. They suggested that we come early the next day or go online and order tickets a couple days in advance.

We were turning around to leave when Amber suggested that we just try to make our way in with the last group regardless to see if they would let us get in. The last group had just gotten into the auditorium so we had to run to get over there. When we got there we asked the park rangers if there were any extra spaces and they said that there was. So we were able to hop right in without getting any tickets or without having to wait in line to do so.

They showed a good film about the events surrounding Pearl Harbor in the attack. And then they put you on a boat and ferry you off to the Memorial that they have erected above the sunken ship, the USS Arizona.

It was a good thing to do, and we were glad that we are able to get it for that day. We were especially glad that they were able to fit us in at the last moment.

Being a Big Helper can really Suck!

Amber had a neighbor coming over to our house today to work with her on some wood working.  The neighbor, a friend of ours, had just bought some tools and was wanting to learn how to use them.  We had the same tools, so she asked Amber if she could come over and help her with a project so that our friend could learn how to use the same tools.

In preparation for the visit, Amber was tidying up the garage so that they could have plenty of room to work.  Jace wanted to help, so he got out the ear muffs and the shop vac and went right to work.  It was funny...he took his job very seriously and did a tremendous job!