Fathers & Sons campout (minus a father or sons)

Man, I've really been slacking. Might be time to get back to my 30 post challenge...

In any case, I did take some pictures of something this month, so I figured they might be worth sharing.  In the ward I'm going to, I'm in charge of activities for the Elders Quorum. And our bishop assigned a "Men's Outing" aka "Fathers & Sons Campout" to the Elders as our one ward activity for the year.  So a lot of that responsibility fell to me. Thankfully our Quorum President took it on himself to make a lot of it happen, and that took a big load off of me.  And in the end, I pretty much just showed up. We were able to find guys in the quorum who could do most of what I couldn't do or didn't know how to do.

The bishop wanted a place that was close so people could come up and not stay the night if they didn't want to. So we got a campsite at the Spruces in Big Cottonwood Canyon, about 30 minutes from my door. So that was nice and convenient.  And a less active member of our ward is a chef and they got him to cook us dinner.  And it was one heck of a dinner.  A gigantic ham, several large turkey roasts, corn on the cob, both roasted red potatoes, and sweet potatoes, pasta, rolls.  We ended up with about 30 men and boys altogether and we made ate 1/3 or 1/2 of all that he brought up. The camp host came by on his golf cart at least 3 times to fill up a plate of food for himself or someone else.  In the morning we cooked eggs along with leftover red potatoes and ham.  The potatoes were so good. I ate all I could fit in me.


Brian cutting up ham and turkey


Sweet potatoes around the fire

Dinner time!

Some of the guys enjoying our feast

Wandered down to the river for a minute to take some nature shots

After dinner, we had spiritual messages from the Young Mens president and then from the long-time gospel doctrine teacher. I really enjoyed his thoughts on manliness and how being a "real man" is mostly about putting others' needs before your own.


Lesson time


More of the guys

After dinner, we had three different types of dutch oven cobbler to choose from, as well as stuff for making s'mores. 

I bought my first very own tent for the campout, but when I got up there there wasn't a ton of space for tents and one of the other guys offered me space in his tent along with two of his boys (aged 5 and 3 approximately). So I didn't even get to set up my tent for the first time. Guess I'll have to find another excuse to bust it out soon.

I was kind of looking forward to having my own tent and some privacy and not having to worry about whether or not someone would complain about my snoring.  Turned out to be just fine in the end. The boys slept most of the night and if they woke up I didn't hear it.  It was actually kind of fun hanging out with some kids.  As usual, I couldn't make it through the night without having to get up and use the bathroom (pretty much a guarantee every time I sleep in a tent), but it was fairly warm when I got up in the night and the stars were beautiful.

In the morning, we ate our aforementioned delicious breakfast, got cleaned up, packed up and headed home.  In the process of packing up my stuff, I came across a young moose picking its way through the brush off to the side of the main road down to the highway.  It came up close to the road a few times, spotted me, and shied away. Eventually it did cross the road not too far from where I had stopped to watch it. Always fun to see animals out in nature.


The moose

All in all I thought it was a pretty successful event and I was relieved to have it over with. :)

A few more photos here.

Newbery Foray #5: The Story of Mankind

I recently "finished" reading "The Story of Mankind" by Hendrik Willem van Loon, the very first book to win the Newbery Medal.  And I have to be honest, if more of the books are like that one its amazing the award has lasted this long.  I mean, it's a book written for children, but I don't know if the children would appreciate it. :)  Basically the author decided to write a book giving all of known history, for his children or grandchildren, maybe.  And it doesn't exactly end up being a history of all the world, mostly just the Middle East and Europe with a little bit of America thrown in.  But yeah, it was long, and for the most part slow moving, as history tends to be.  And I say "finished" because since the book won the Newbery Medal back in 1922, the author and then his son and now another guy have kept adding history to the book to keep up with...you know...history. Except that all of recorded history up to the 1920s took 500 pages, and then the last hundred years took another 150 pages. Since my main objective was to read Newbery Medal winners, and all that was added after the book won the award, and I'd already been slogging my way through it for 3+ months, I didn't feel too obligated to finish the additional chapters.

In any case, this was by far my least favorite of any Newbery Medal winner I've ever read. I would NOT recommend that you read it unless you have some kind of weird goal to read all the Newbery Medal winners.  I guess I should say that I did learn some new stuff about pre-20th century European history, seeing as how that's something that I've never known or learned much about.

A few photos from Utah's Red-White scrimmage

Took these photos just over a month ago, and since I haven't really posted anything since then, I figured today was a good a day as any:




It was kinda fun to capture both ends of this TD pass from Jordan Wynn to Dres Anderson so well.


I mostly liked this picture because it was a nice view of the west side of the stadium where we sit, but it also got a fair number of view on Flickr because someone posted it on BYU's fanboard as a look at how many people showed up for the Spring scrimmage. Our season tickets are way up there below the word "THE", in the shady portion.


Because our seats were pretty good for the scrimmage, I was able to get some nice shots looking down the line-of-scrimmage.

More photos here.

Looking forward to the season. Its only a couple months away  now.

Who is Ken Jennings?

A couple weeks ago, I went to my first ever book signing.  Ken Jennings (of Jeopardy! fame) has a new book out ("Maphead") and he was in town to read a bit of the book and then be available for signing of said book.

My friend Kathryn agreed to accompany me to this nerdapalooza and it was kind of fun to hear part of his book and then participate in a bit of a geography trivia contest.  He threw out Smarties to whoever yelled out the correct answer first and then after a while had some of the top Smartie gatherers come up for a one-on-one-on-one faceoff with the winner getting a free book.  I got 3 packages of Smarties and was probably on par with whoever the last one he asked to come up was, but I can afford to buy a book, so not a huge loss, I guess. :) And when I finally got to the front of the book signing line, he did mention that I had done pretty well and maybe he should have had me come up.

Anyway, I am not the proud owner of a (yet unread) signed copy of Maphead by Ken Jennings.

It feels like he's looking right at me!

with Ken

Family Staycation 2012: Day 3

Our third (and sadly, final) day of staycation started with Natalie heading down to Provo for some work and housing-related stuff (she's moving back to Utah!).  So we had to get by without her.

We ate breakfast and cleaned up the house and packed up our stuff and then we headed down to the Gateway to spend some time at the Children's Museum (or Discovery Gateway or whatever it's called).  With 3 small children and a baby, it was probably for the best that we had 5 adults on duty.  Can't imagine being a mom taking the kids there alone.

Anyway, I spent most of the day playing with Austin.  His favorite part by far is the ball tubes right when you come in. You can drop balls through tubes, send them up through tubes with air power, crank them up a hill into more tubes, etc, etc.  Elise and Lucy joined him for a while, but eventually headed off to other parts of the museum. And after a good long time, I finally convinced him to check out the other parts as well.


Elise enjoyed gathering bins of balls of all the same color. In addition to this orange one, she also did purples, and maybe yellows.

He enjoyed working at the construction site, playing in the water area, hauling hay on the farm, driving the jeep, and loading his cart with groceries.


Driving the jeep


Hauling some hay to the farm truck

Then it was time for another trip back to the ball tubes, and finally I got him to go upstairs with me (mainly because I wanted to see what was up there) with the promise that there was a helicopter to look at.  But really the balls were his favorite. :)


He just has so much enthusiasm. Watch his fingers and tongue.


More of the same :)


Flying the helicopter

Family Staycation 2012: Day 2

For our 2nd day, we decided to give the zoo another shot. And while it was still pretty crowded, we were at least able to find parking in or near the zoo parking lot, so I guess that was an improvement over Monday.  Mainly because we got there a little earlier in the day.

It had been a couple years since I was at the zoo last, and I was a little disappointed in some of the animals that seemed to be missing. No bears, no lions (there were tigers, but they were sleeping).  And of course the sea lions and penguins I remember from my childhood have been gone for a long time. There was a fair amount of construction going on, so maybe that was to blame for some of the animals being missing.  Just this morning I checked the zoo's website and it turns out that a new exhibit is opening in June that's supposed to have polar bears, penguins, seals, and sea lions. So I guess we just weren't there at the best time.

All that said, we still had a good time at the zoo.


These colobus monkeys were probably the most entertaining part for me.  They'd climb the net surrounding their pen and then swing on it until they could get close enough to the trees outside the net to grab some leaves or buds or whatever they were trying to eat.

They still have some good gorillas, which the Phoenix zoo didn't have any of.

Got good pictures of an elephant eating.

Saw a rhino up close.

Rode the zoo train.

Finished the day off with some artsy reflection shots on the waterglobe

After the zoo, we headed back up to Draper for sandwiches for lunch, and then had a fairly lazy afternoon, playing games, watching cartoons, Easter egg hunting, and just relaxing.


Austin hanging out on the back porch

George made some tasty pork steaks for dinner and then we spent a little time in the hot tub, before calling it a night.

Family Staycation 2012: Day 1

As we've sometimes done in the past, we recently had a family vacation to....Utah. :)  Kimi was coming into town with the kids for about a month for a bunch of family stuff, and the George was coming out for a week, so my mom found a nice place for all of us to stay for a few days out above Draper (near Suncrest), and Natalie was able to come out as well, so we were all together (minus Elder Ben) for the first time since last July.

We started off Monday morning at the new City Creek Center mall downtown. I'd been there once before (the night it opened) but I think I was the only one.  We wandered around for a little bit (Elise pretty  much wanted one of everything at the Disney store) before getting an early lunch at Kneaders.

Was just trying to get the temple in the shot, didn't realize George and his family were showing up at the time

Not sure what Kimi and Lucy are talking about, but it seems pretty intense. :)

Most everyone finishing lunch while Lucy and I were getting warm on the sunny side

With the nieces

After lunch, the plan was to hit the Hogle Zoo, but when we got up there the parking was overflowing and even street parking was hard to come by, so we decided to go bowling instead (originally planned for Tuesday) and try the zoo again on Tuesday.

Bowling was fun, with bumpers and whatever you call those metal ball launcher things for the kids.  I remember being pretty young and bowling at the 49th Street Galleria and just kind of running up there and falling down and letting the ball go.  Today's kids have it so much easier. :)

We ended up bowling two games a piece (though Elise let people bowl for her most of the 2nd game), with Natalie barely edging me out (132-131) in the first game, and mom dominating the 2nd game.  I probably finished with the best overall score, but mostly we were just there to have a good time.


Austin found some other ways to have fun while waiting for his turn to bowl


And soon everyone wanted in on the fun


Look at the form! :)

After bowling we headed up to the house and settled in a little bit, and then we were back in the cars loaded up to meet up with the Hardens for dinner at Chuck-a-Rama.

Elise showing her affection for Col-ay

View from the back porch

After dinner we headed back up to the house, got the little kids and grandma off to bed and then the rest of us stayed up playing Dicecapades.  Lucy was on my team until she had to go to bed halfway through, but we still ended up winning.

Phoenix in February is Fun: Day 4

Monday was to be the last day of my trip to Arizona and as it was yet another fantastically warm and sunny day, Julie suggested we head to a nearby waterfowl refuge/walking area/there's a library there too/ place, called Riparian Park (or Riparian something or other).

Anyway, it was great to enjoy the nice warm weather, and we also got to see quite a few cool birds. My favorites were the great blue herons, who we saw several of. The first one flew right near us and landed in a nearby marsh.  I thought it would be fun to get a picture of one in flight, and Julie was a good enough host to walk around to where it was and make it fly. :)  Thankfully it didn't come to having to throw pebbles at it to get it to fly, as that might have been frowned upon at a refuge, I imagine.  We spent a while there walking around, seeing the herons, ducks, egrets, etc.


Pre-Julie's visit to its neighborhood


Post-Julie's visit


Pretty looking duck

Afterward we grabbed some lunch at Jack-in-the-Box (since we don't have those in Salt Lake), and then hit up the yogurt ranch so Julie could get some nutella fro-yo. 

After lunch and dessert we drove out to an outdoor shopping area where we just window shopped and enjoyed more time in the nice weather.

Then Julie drove me back to the airport which was a little busy with youth soccer teams heading home after what must have been a huge weekend-long tournament, but I had no problems getting through security and to my gate in time for some Wendy's dinner.

Got home on time, and took the shuttle back to my car.  It had snowed while I was gone, but only a tiny bit remained on my dashboard. Just enough to remind of how nice it was to be somewhere warm. :)

Thanks again to Julie for hosting me. :)

Phoenix in February is Fun: Day 3

What's that you say? I went to Phoenix over a month ago and I still haven't finished blogging about my trip? Well I guess its a good thing that I haven't done anything else interesting since then. :)

Sunday of my trip, I didn't even take my camera out, so you'll just have to bear with me as a paint a picture for you with my words.  I apologize in advance. :)

It was a pretty typical single Mormon Sunday, really.  Went over to Julie's house in the morning. Ate some cereal.  Went to her singles' ward.  Mix and mingled, lingered longer, etc.  Then back to her house where we ended up having people over to play games (Kinect mostly, plus puzzles).  At this point, that's all I really remember from Sunday.

I'm an efficient word painter, ok?

Phoenix in February is Fun: Day 2

Despite my rough draft being finished a week ago, last week was still full of revision writing for my paper, and no writing for my blog.  Hopefully this week I'll have a little more writing energy left, though I still probably need to read through my paper one last time before submitting it.

In any case, I definitely need to finish recapping my trip to Arizona before I've forgotten everything that I didn't actually take pictures of...

Saturday morning, Julie came and picked me up at her friend Steven's house, where I was staying for the weekend, and we headed to the store to buy stuff for breakfast burritos.  After breakfast, we brainstormed ideas of things to do, and eventually I suggested the Phoenix Zoo and she was kind enough to be excited to go. :)

On the whole, I thought the Phoenix Zoo was pretty good. Felt like they could have done a little better in the primate category (no gorillas or chimpanzees or gibbons as far as I could see).  They had a fun "monkeyland" place where you could go inside with little monkeys (but don't touch them!). They had a whole area dedicated to this one South American bear (they're rare, I guess?). There was a giant anteater that was really cool to look at, but kind of far away and hard to take good photos of. There was a nice big white rhino. And they had a really nice big open African area with giraffes, ostriches, watusi cattle, and other stuff all together.


A monster! Ok, just a Gila Monster. But kind of cool that it has "monster" in its name, right?


Maybe the elephant hears music that we just can't hear

The warty pigs had fun haircuts

Felt like these bald eagles were appropriate to photograph as it was President's Day weekend.

They had a couple Galapagos Tortoises. And this one was even doing something!

Me and the rhino (The Rhino and I?)


Just the rhino

Lions laying low in the afternoon

Oh the ostrich! So dainty!


From the African exhibit

After the zoo, we were pretty hungry (having had only our burritos to eat so far) and Julie took me to a place called Sauce where I got a pizza and she got some salad.  That night, we ended up playing games at a friend's place, and I had a surprisingly good time playing sedarahc (backwards charades), where the whole team acts out the clue at once while just one person guesses.

Phoenix in February is Fun: Day 1

I know I'm a little late getting around to posting about my President's Day weekend trip to Phoenix. I'd been procrastinating a paper I'm writing for a conference, and because I knew I was supposed to be writing that, it was hard to feel OK about writing something else. If that makes any sense at all.  Anyway, I finally got a rough draft done, and I'm waiting for feedback from my co-authors, so I feel okay about doing a little recreational writing today.

I flew down to Phoenix on Friday afternoon of President's Day weekend to hang out with Julie and enjoy some warm weather. It would take a lot to get me to go to Phoenix between June and August, but February was just about perfect. Highs in the 60s and 70s all weekend. Plenty of outdoorsy things to do. Definitely a nice change of pace from winter here in Salt Lake, even if it has been the mildest winter I can remember.

Anyway, Julie picked me up at the airport and we meandered our way back toward Gilbert where she lives, making a pit stop at Tempe Diablo Stadium, Spring Training home of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.  As we pulled into the parking lot, we could see a gate was open, so we got out and went up to check it out.  We walked in, and as far as we could tell the only guy there was down painting something on the top of one of the dugouts.  We checked out the field and then went through a door that led up some stairs to the press box and other offices.  The drink machine wasn't working and we decided against taking any Shasta from the fridge, but we did get in at least one good rendition of "The Jet stole home!!!"  We wandered down a hallway and greeted a few people who actually were there working, before finally heading back to the car.







After the stadium, Julie gave me a tour of more of the greater Tempe area and described a variety of options for where we might get dinner. We finally ended up at a Mexican place called "On the Border", that turned out be positively delightful.  They had an "All You Can Eat Enchiladas" special going for like $8, which Julie ordered, and I settled on "The Big Borderito".  Our server (also named Julie) was so nice to keep bringing more enchiladas all night. Even when Julie said she was full, she said "well don't you want some to take home with you?" Way to earn that tip, other Julie. :)

After our retirement-community appropriate early dinner, we stopped by Julie's place for a bit, worked on a puzzle, cruised to an outdoor shopping area to enjoy a free band playing outside situation (and also found some potential family reunion shirts for Julie's family), and finished the night about by watching Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

Because Julie said so

There are six rules.
1. Post these rules.
2. Post 11 random things about yourself.
3. Answer the questions set for you in the original post (i.e., Julie's for me).
4. Create 11 new questions and tag people to answer them.
5. Go to their blog and tell them you've tagged them.
6. No saying, "If you are reading this, you're tagged."

11 random things about me.
1. Have never broken any bones or had any stitches.
2. Lived in the city furthest south in the world for a few months as a missionary.
3. Love to do the quizzes on sporcle.com
4. Feel naked without a watch.
5. Was tallest in my class all through elementary school, which mattered because I got to stand in the middle of the back row for class pictures.
6. Am a completer, i.e. often have desires to see every one of a type of movie, read every book by an author, etc. Rarely reach these goals.
7. But I do have a complete collection of DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince albums.
8. Once wrote a paper about "alphabetic discrimination".
9. Have always loved the library.
10. Was 20 years old when I peeled an orange for the first time.
11.  Am thinkin' Arbys.

Julie's questions for me.
1. What book section is your favorite at Barnes & Noble?
   Large format photography/coffee table books
2. Who would you want to play you in a screen adaptation of your life?
   George Clooney. He is the gosh-darn paterfamilias!
3. What's your shower routine?
    Wow, Julie. Don't you think this is a little personal? :) I get in, stand there in the water for somewhere between 2 and 15 minutes, depending on the day and how awake I am, wash my hair, wash everything else, get out.
4. Where is your favorite place?
    Rice-Eccles Stadium.
5. Why did you choose where you're at right now in life?
    A long process of making decision and seeing them through til the end and then finding out what's next.
6. Are you ticklish?
    Yes, but I have diarrhea.
7. What's your favorite piece of art?
    Hard to choose. I really like a lot of M.C. Escher stuff.  But at the Salt Lake Arts Festival last summer I saw some stuff by a lady who had taken pictures of lots of old signs from around Salt Lake and then made collages with them.  There was one I really liked, kind of like this one but with a map of Salt Lake underneath.
8. Which store would you spend the most money in?
    Not really a big spender. Graywhale CD?
9. What makes you find joy in the journey?
   Good conversations and good tunes along the way.
10. If you had to punch a family member in the face where would it be and why?
   Like where would we be when I punch them in the face? Or where on their face?  I've punched George in the face way more than any of the others (a 10 year age gap provides some protection from face-punching), so let's go with him. He's probably used to it by now. Why? For old times' sake.
11. What is your favorite joke?
      "What did the zero say to the eight?" "Nice belt!"

My questions for the friends I tag.
1.  What's your favorite Will Smith movie? Why?
2.  Describe a birthday party from your childhood that stands out in your memory.
3.  In your opinion, how many dates into a relationship is it safe to start using coupons?
4.  If asked/forced/given opportunity to karaoke, what's your go-to song?
5.  Do you ever wear clothes more than once before washing them? If so, how many times would you say you re-wear the same thing, and where do you put it in the interim? Just back where it was before you wore it?
6.  What's your fitness goal? If you exercise reguarly, is there something you're working toward? a state of being you want to achieve? 
7. What's your favorite website (Facebook and Pinterest excluded)?
8.  Do you listen to Christmas music before Thanksgiving? Why or why not?
9.  What's your favorite cartoon?
10. Growing up we played a lot of four square at recess. Which of the following would you be most likely to disallow prior to serving: slammers, siders, babies, wallers, sliders,  liners, or haystacks? Why?
11. What's the nicest hotel you've ever stayed in?

I hate tagging people, but I love reading blogs, so I'm going to tag some people who haven't blogged in quite a while and see if I can't get them going again. :) Then again they're probably less likely to respond. Oh well... I tag...Chelsey, Laci, Erin Z, Eric H, Alicia, and Tandy.

Random Thoughts on the English Language #22: Too Many Cheves Spoil the Soup

One leaf. Two leaves. One elf. Two elves. One chef. Two chefs? C'mon English. Make up your mind.

More random cellphone pics

Sometimes I take pictures of things that I think are interesting or funny or whatever. Here are some of them:


Every time I go through the Drive-In at Carl's Jr. I see this sign for "All You Can Eat Biscuits-N-Gravy" and at the bottom in the fine print (probably not visible in this photo) there's a line that says "Please one order per customer". Which always made me laugh because who's going to order 2 orders of All You Can Eat?  Only after taking this photo and posting it on Flickr did I realize that its actually saying that if there are more than one person, that they each have to pay for an order. So I guess the joke's on me?


I always enjoy browsing TJ-Maxx to see what random stuff they have for sale.  This University of Utah track jacket seemed like a relatively decent find (I don't remember the price), until I looked at the back...



I guess its for the person who loves Utah and Nebraska and can't afford two jackets?


Swastika Donut? My boss said its turned the wrong way. Why would he know that?


And finally, was at an acquaintance's house the other night and saw a Skyline yearbook from the early 70s and wondered if that's when my mom was in high school (maybe I should know when she graduated, but I don't).  Lo and behold! There she was.