How Great Thou Ark!

So we had a fun night with my sisters kids last night while she went and watched the batman movie. We wanted to help them out because they are in the midst of remodeling their house and their living room recently got thrashed in preparation for the additions to the house. We had a Noahs ark theme night. We bought a load of ice cream and animal related candy and decided to build an ark...

We started out with a graham cracker floor with frosting to hold the pieces together, katrina just couldn't help but taste our ark glue!

This was our ark building crew consisting of clockwise from katrina....Gabe, Payton, Talia and Jared.
Payton building the roof. You'll notice it has a pointed roof just like Noahs ark!We had the animals entering the ark two by two. We had gummi bears, animal cookies that had elephants and lions and tigers and bears, we had gummi worms, humans named mike and ike and mr goodbar... who we used as noah.
After careful construction with a team of experienced builders...

Voila! an Ark to survive the chocolate flood! We couldn't help that it looked suspiciously like a house. But you'll notice the deck, the pointed roof, the walkway into the ship are all pretty much exactly like what is described in the bible..ok not really but there were some similarities to the ark that was in EVAN ALMIGHTY which we watched to complete our ark evening of fun.

The chocolate flood couldn't bring down our ark!
We then had ice cream and used the destroyed ship to top our ice cream as we watched the rest of Evan Almighty. All in all it was a fun fun night. We added in guitar hero. Payton said it was related to the theme because Noah was a hero. We also played taboo with names of animals...Talia was able to get people to guess animals the fastest. We also did a name an animal game through the first couple letters of the alphabet! So yeah... use our idea for a family night and see if you can build a ship mightier than ours!

Happy Canada Day!

This post is to commemorate my time spent in Canada to honor Canada day which is today...July 1st. As we used to sing in our mission song.... Oh Canada I long for thee, Oh Canada so dear to me, no matter where I chance to roam of thee I sing...I'm coming home.

Rolling with the homeys in Hamilton.

Devils Rock, Temiskaming Shores 6 hours north of Toronto.

Temagami Tower, where we read King Benjamin's address.

The greatest picture I ever took on my mission!

The Toronto temple in Brampton!

I had the police called on me for this picture

Highway 11 runs north and south through the forest. I nearly died on this road many a time in the snow! The trees the lakes...take me back!

Hockey Night in Canada!

The trees! Bless the trees!

The first day in my first area in the cottage town of Bracebridge Ontario. Love it there!

two weekend trips

I was in san francisco a couple of weekends ago. I figured to pass the time inbetween seeing friends and going to a wedding that I would take a little boat tour of the bay. Its amazing how different the weather can be from one hour to the next in san francisco. It started off foggy like in the picture and by the end of the tour it was sunny. San Francisco is such a different city with its narrow and steep roads. I would kill myself if I had to drive a stick shift there.
You can see the clouds starting to break up already on the other side of alcatraz. I wish i would have done the audio tour and gone on the island again cause i enjoyed it so much a couple years ago. I loved hearing the stories about the prisoners. I've always been fascinated by the criminal mind. And i mean that in the least creepy way possible.
Lane Larson a good friend of mine got married in sacramento. I had to make the trip out because i didn't have many friends left that aren't married so I made the trek over there. I had a great time. They were so happy and it was great to see the Larsons who were like a second family to me in the years before and after my mission. And it was a great excuse to see my friend in dental school in san francisco. Next up is a washington trip. Havent been home since 05!
This was one of the houses we were looking in to buying in columbus. We are just hoping to get katrina a job first out there! This was one of our favorites. Very homey!

Its hard to tell but the columbus temple is tiny!!!!!!!! but its nice to have one close by!

All that Jazz!

Katrina and I at the Jazz-Rockets game 6 in the first round of the playoffs. The Jazz clinched the series that night and destroyed the Rockets in the second half. Since the Sonics are toying with moving I've somewhat adopted the Jazz for now as my basketball team. Katrina got the sweet hookup from Fed Ex cause she works in a shipping department. We got to eat in the sponsor room...and we stuffed ourselves silly and went out to some great seats. It was a fun night because they had a contortionist who fit himself into a box and they set the world record for the worlds longest trampoline dunk. There were lots of fireworks and balloons and people cheering like crazy. I will miss having salt lake so close. We love going up there. We even went up to a Salt Lake Bees baseball game last night with some friends who are also going to Ohio State.

Our view. We could hear players and coaches. We could see facial expressions. It was awesome. But the greatest part of all was that we got them for free!

in case you missed it

So over the past year I have spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars flying out to do my interviews in exotic places such as columbus ohio, memphis tennessee, portland oregon and ft lauderdale florida. I figured since i had never been to some of these places that I should try to make the best of my trips so i tried to a little fun stuff. But not too much to make the wife who paid for the trips jealous. The picture above is Elvis Living room in Memphis at Graceland. I had a blast here. It was really really cool. Its like what super rich people lived like back in the day...and its nothing compared to what stars do today with their homes! Don't spill on the white carpets or elvis ghost will come.
What can I say. I want this bed. Elvis you are the man.
Is it too much to ask that my house be modeled after graceland? I think this is exactly what I want!
Katrina performed her senior recital last year in front of her fans!
Katrina graduated last year with a degree in media music. Way to be kat! Shes been moving up in the world ever since...though not quite in music yet. But the ward uses her talents in conducting and singing and directing the ward choir. She also has played the organ. She can sing she can dance after all this is...(france?) She does already have her own office...moving up that corporate ladder baby! She knows how to shake her money maker!

Can you believe i turned down going to a school down the road from here? (not a fan of high cost of living or hurricanes)
This was an air boat in the Florida Everglades...way way fun if you are ever down there. You get to see alligators and birds.
This is mostly what the everglades looked like. I don't know exactly what I expected. Its beautiful in its own way.
Yup, that is yours truly holding a baby alligator! paid five bucks for that picture. Hopefully this alligator does not have a vendetta against me that he will carry out when he is older and bigger!

Take my word on this one...if you are in nashville tennessee you got to stop by the loveless cafe! They make homemade biscuits and jam on site. And their food was really good. Its the coolest country ma and pop restaraunt in the world!

Annoying Commercial Jingles

So I've been watching a lot of TV in the evenings because my wife takes the car to go play piano and I don't have the ambition to walk anywhere. So I have become indoctrinated with some annoying commercials that get stuck in my head...here is my list of the most annoying... ATT's mothers day commercial is quite possibly the most brain infecting song on television. "Daydream I fell asleep beneath the flowers....for a couple of hours" If I hear this one more time I am going to bash my head in with a baseball bat til my temperal lobe stops regulating my

ablity to process what I hear.

Five....Five Dollar....Five Dollar Footlooooooong! (is that even a good deal?!?)

The Closer. I will never watch this show. TNT tries to make it sound like its the greatest show ever created. Kira Sedgwick sounds annoying to me. The "Aint No Sunshine When She's Gone" commercial is grossly overplayed...and the newer ones with everyone lying to her are lame too. Give it up. Stay at home with Kevin Bacon, kira.

These commercials are all on TNT...which tells you i've been watching lots of nba playoffs. hoping for lakers celtics, but realize that i'm probably going to get hornets pistons and that will be LAME!!!

I Graduated with a Degree in Exercise Science from Brigham Young University on April 24th and 25th. These were the dreaded steps to get up to campus...so this picture has some meaning to it. Can't put my finger on it, but theres some meaning.
My gorgeous wife katrina. She ran and ran to make sure I had my tassel on graduation day. We found out it was missing an hour before showtime and she ran home and looked for it, couldn't find it and then she parked her car by the tennis courts, ran to the new hinkley center to buy a new one and ran back down to the smith fieldhouse to get me a tassel. Thats a long way! especially in sandals with short legs. and it has those nightmare stairs! She went the extra mile on that one. And I was the only one with balloons. Somebody loves me.
The after graduation dinner at Janice's. The little ones are my nieces and nephews. They are a riot to have around.
I gave my dad the sash of appreciation. I cried when I gave it to him. What a pansy eh?

Our Friends the Grimmets also graduated and this was right before they moved to oregon. Game nights will never be quite the same.

The night of graduation we went up to salt lake to watch an nba playoff game. There were seven of us. And yes that is the very last row behind us! But we made sure we were heard. Especially because my father in law was with us. No one can question that guys fanhood. My dad was a trooper and hiked up the stairs for us. And having nephews Noah and Gabe added to the fun. It was nice spending time with my brothers allen and ricky. We also did some paintballing with my cousin Matt. Glad they didn't send our family to war because we didn't fare to well in trench warefare. The jazz came up short in the end, but it was an entertaining game and an entertaining finish. Daren Williams could have delivered me a great graduation present but got blocked in the final seconds. But ...I found out today that katrina got much better tickets to friday's jazz game from her work. 15 rows from the court...with a meal. I saw tickets being sold for 500 bucks that are 14 rows behind us!!! But we can't sell cause its a business thing. So D Will...I'm still accepting graduation gifts so you better deliver tomorrow night.

Graduation 2008

It was super nice to have family in town in honor of my graduation from BYU. It went by way too fast . The thing that struck me was how good of people I have around me in my life. I have some very strong and very good people in my life who have been a real source of strength to me. I will have several lasting images in my mind from this last weekend. Hopefully pictures can share that with whoever looks at this.