Parade

Not too much has gone on this week. At least not much to write about. My son was getting used to Marching band and I think he is enjoying it. He says not, but it seems different. At some point he may question if it was worth it to give up piano lessons for this, but for now he is moving forward. It should also be good for him to have something like this under his belt.

This morning, we got our son over to the Equestrian Park so he was ready for the parade. We were a little bit early, so we went to McDonalds to have a little bit of breakfast first. After dropping him off we went to the end of the parade route so we could sit and watch for him. Thank goodness there was a breeze. It helped out with the heat. The parade was enjoyable, and I thought the band did a good job. We picked up our son and watched the rest of the parade. We finally headed home.

When we got home we noticed a smell of smoke. We kind of looked around and didn't see anything that looked wrong. We kind of left it at that. We did call out to Pam and Annes house and then, in the long run went out to their house to visit with them. The kids had taken their clothes because they are asked to stay quite a bit of the time and today was no different.

Before we left home, we noticed that smoke smell again. It seemed stronger, but this time we saw smoke coming from our neighbors yard. Looking over the fence, we could see some dry grass (cut) that was at least smoking. I went and knocked on his door and told him about the fire. He went out to put it out. It had blackened a part of his vinyl fence, but no real damage had taken place. I guess he poured some coals from his barbecue from the previous night today there. We were just glad that we had seen it.

We went to see one of Annes sisters home that they are redoing. They bought a house out of foreclosure and have spent a year fixing it all up. When they finish it looks like it will be nice. We then went to dinner and then sat for a good portion of the evening at Pams house just visiting. It was a nice day.

Smoke Detectors

Yesterday morning my wife and I had to get over to the church a little bit early so we could talk to the Welfare committee (since most of them are in correlation as well) about our plans for a summer activity on the 21st of July. We got there in time to hear some stuff with Welfare through the church that was important to us. They talked a little bit about having some of your high school get you as far as an associates degree in college. I need to get on that and see what we need to do in order to get our son into that program.

We gave our thoughts and heard a few other thoughts coming from the Welfare committee. It has put us a little bit closer to a successful breakfast for our first ward activity.

When we arrived home, our kids told us that the Smoke alarms had been going off. We were home about 5 minutes when they went off. It was like somebody had hit the test button on one of them. I looked up in the attic and looked around the whole house to see if I could find the problem. There was no smoke anywhere. I had to go to the store to buy batteries to place in each of them. When I was done with that, I hit the test, and that was the last we heard of the Smoke detectors (which had been going off about every 15 minutes) for a bit.

My son had to tell a little bit of the Trek experience in priesthood meeting. He also got to give a talk on it in Sacrament meeting. I thought this was kind of funny. The bishopric had some assignments that they thought they had given out for Sacrament meeting talks. When somebody told one of the people that was allegedly going to speak that they were looking forward to hearing it, it was news to them. Both families that had been set up for speaking hadn't heard about it. So, they had to draw back and punt. They ended up having the youth all tell their experience on Trek as well as a doctor and nurse that had gone up to help them with any medical problems. This made for a better meeting.

We arrived home soon after 4:00. My son and I went hometeaching at 4:30 and then came home. Around 7:00 the smoke detectors started to go off. This was longer blasts and the time in between went between 5 minutes to about half an hour. I tried to call a couple of electricians. When they all called back, it was decided that I would start taking off the smoke detectors one at a time until we found the troubled one. I started with the basement. That wasn't it, so I grabbed the kitchen one. That was it. We haven't heard a peep since. I think I will get one smoke detector and one smoke/carbon monoxide detector for the basement.

Because we weren't sure if they would go off during the night, my whole family chose to sleep outside (minus me). Of course no interruptions happened during the night, so that was a good thing.

Today was the first day for my son in the Marching band. He is playing the Melophone, which is an oversized trumpet. He has to learn new fingering from the French Horn, but the instructor thought he transferred over easily. He seems to enjoy the marching band (at least on the first day). Hopefully, that will keep up as his whole summer is filled with this thing.

Trek - Coming home

There isn't a whole lot to tell about things that have been going on. My son, of course was not at home as he was out on Trek. We went to pick up Zoe (my niece) from my sisters home on Thursday evening. We were planning on returning her on Friday evening.

We didn't do too much on Thursday. Like I said, we went to Highland to pick up our niece for a sleepover. We stopped off at Wingers for a nice dinner. Since they no longer had the special on for an asphalt pie, we went and made one ourselves. That was every bit as good. Since Zoe had never seen "Bridge to Teribithia", we went out and rented that DVD. My wife and I hadn't seen it either. We enjoyed the movie, although, I still don't see why the girl in it had to die.

There wasn't too much to do on Friday either. We finally found out that Zoe had brought her swim suit, so we took her and our daughter to the swimming pool. They just had to be home by around 3:00 so our daughter could go babysit at the Mordens house. I called to see if Zoe could be with her for a bit, and was told that was OK as long as the focus was on the children. We were also told to have them come over just a bit later than we thought. Anyway, my daughter was supposed to be there from 3:30 till about 8:30. She got there at 3:45 and was told that it would be about 9:30. The Mordens didn't show up at home until about 10:45. This was a bit concerning to us, but it is something that we will live with. Zoe stayed with her most of the time. She also spent a little bit of time with us. We were going to drive her home when our daughter was done with the babysitting, but that happened too late. I finally called my sister telling her the problem. We decided that Zoe would stay the night and go traveling with us on Saturday (it was also Zoe's decision).

We were supposed to be in Evanston at about 10:15. We left our home around 8:00 AM to get there. Since we were there early, we went to breakfast at McDonalds. In the meeting for the parents, they told us of a few things that happened on Trek. Then we went back about 11 miles so we could be at the end of the trail and wave white hankeys as the kids came in. They all had come in and we didn't see our son anywhere in the line. We just missed him.

When we asked our son if he enjoyed Trek he told us that he didn't. However, he talked so much about it that we know he did enjoy it. On the first day, they were supposed to have the hardest part of Trek. They pulled the handcart 11 miles. Each family consisted of ten children and a Ma and Pa. The Ma and Pa were not allowed to do anything with the handcart. They got their sleep and were supposed to have an easy day on Thursday. From my understanding, there was a brand new mission couple (older) that saw a shortcut to the Trek and told the Stake President about it. They took that shortcut. Birds eye view, it would've worked. In reality, it didn't. Instead of going six miles they ended up going another 11 miles through rough terrain. This wore out a lot of the kids. Since they missed the games they were supposed to do that evening, they split Friday into two parts. Friday was supposed to be the Sabbath, but they let them do the games in the morning and then did the Sabbath stuff later. The priesthood went to their meeting and the Young Women to theirs. The priesthood got to watch a dust devil come up and go through the Young Women taking some bonnets that were never to be seen again. They also had Sunday School. Later, in Sacrament meeting, my son tells me that some girls were sitting on a bench and there was a huge crack and a whole bunch of girls ended up on the ground from the breaking bench. He thought that was pretty hilarious. Anyway, they broke up into companies and had some testimony meetings. Today was an easy day for them where they were able to travel a short distance to where we were. There were about 230 youth there, and from my understanding they only had to hydrate using IV's on six of them. One Ma and Pa went home because she picked up the flu and they had to be replaced.

After we picked up our son, we went back to Evanston to have some lunch at Wendys. We then headed home (or rather to Zoes home). We had to go through Heber City, and decided that we were close enough to my in-laws cabin that we would go up and see how Jeff was coming along on that. When I walked in, he hurried and hid his beer cans so my kids would not see them. The cabin was a mess, but we didn't expect to see anything different. All of the tile is laid in the cabin, and he was working on the lights. He would finish installing hardware for the bathtub later, and still needs to get the cabinets back in. There wasn't too much left to know that the cabin had been in a fire a few months ago.

We left there, and headed through Provo canyon. We got into a traffic jam in Orem because they were doing construction on the main road in. Anyway, we finally got Zoe home. We got home at around 5:00 in the evening. I was tired from a whole long day of traveling. My wife was tired as well. Surprisingly, our son didn't seem to be too tired. And, he continued to talk about the Trek.

Trek time

There isn't too much going on, but I thought I would write anyway.

Yesterday, after I arrived home, we had decided that we needed to get our son some buttons so his suspenders would work when he was on trek. My wife was going to go to the store for these, but she was having a hard time finding the time. I told her that I would like to go to the Deseret Industries to see if I could find a little bit warmer suit jacket that my son could use because it is supposed to get down into the 40's over night in Evanston while they are on this trek. She was a bit upset at me because she felt like she had wasted her time the day before getting all the stuff she had gotten.

Well, my son and I went, and I did find a little bit warmer jacket for him. We also went to Walmart and found some new suspenders (we no longer need the buttons) that he could use for this experience. We came home with those and a couple of bandannas. This was everything that we needed. Of course, my son packed it all into a duffel bag and is ready to go.

Work has had a bit more for me to be doing lately. Both yesterday and today I was frustrated with some of the data we had received from Pinnacle. I am having to find some work arounds. Overall, it will work, but there are plenty of bugs to be worked out. I also had to find out what it is that I need to finish up to get policy going for pinnacle. They need our data there, and we need to put it there. They have some different ways that they look at data that is a bit confusing to me. I need to come up with some flat files that will take care of the problem and then remotely load their data into their structure. I keep on asking, "Are we having fun yet?".

Another thing about being at work these last couple of days was that my processes did not run. Resources were all used up. They had to bounce the system two days in a row and the resource usage went from 100% to around 50%. It was holding that many temporary files to make that huge of a difference. We did find the culprit of the problem and hopefully it is all resolved.

Fathers Day

Well, yesterday was Fathers Day. I woke up and puttered around the house for a little while. My daughter gave me a card with some chocolate in it, and my wife also gave me a card. I had already bought my weed whacker that was needed for the gardening for Fathers Day. Church came along and we all went there. Nothing extra-ordinary happened in church to bore anybody with any kind of details.

Of course, my wife planned on a roast for the Fathers Day meal. She had crockpotted (I don't even know if that is a word) it all day long. It was quite tasty. My daughter created her version of an asphalt pie (chocolate pie crust with mint ice cream, and then some whipped cream topping on which you put hot fudge over and some oreos). It was quite tasty.

We finally headed out to my dads house. Not too much to talk about there, but I heard my little brother talking about his new job (he quit the one he had after just a few weeks), and he hopes that the new company will do well for him. If it does, he may soar into some real money. I hope it all works out for him.

We also popped into my father-in-laws house to say hi. We stayed there for a bit and then came on home.

Late that night, Aubree gave me a call. She has told me that she can come on out and visit me at the end of July to the first week of August for about five or six days. I have set the date with the airline reservations to August 1st through August 6th. It will be nice to have her come out and visit with us even for this short period of time. There really isn't anything else to report at this time.

Family Reunion

Not too much has gone on in this week. That gate that we have has a problem still. Some of the hardware hits together making it difficult to open. I have made calls to the company, but so far have heard nothing from them. It's like my wife says, once you pay them, they are done with you. It really ticks me off because I thought Vinyl Industries would be better than this. They claimed they were.

Really, the first thing of note for this week was Friday evening. I took our daughter over to one of the ward members (well, our old ward) house so that she could be with all the Young Women when they went on a walk to prepare for the Trek that happens next week. If they were 14 or older, they were supposed to wear clothes that would fit the 1840's era and women pioneers. My daughter was happy that she didn't have to dress up that way, and who could really blame her for that.

With her gone, we went out to my Father-in-laws house because we had some chocolate covered strawberries and raspberries to give him for Fathers Day. We knew we couldn't get them on Saturday and so our time was limited and they really need to be delivered fresh. We just spent a little bit of time there and then came on home. We also had spent a little bit of time getting things ready for the family reunion that was to take place the next day.

This morning came, and after getting a few things ready, I went and picked up our daughter. She, of course, needed to shower and get ready. Being a girl it took her some time to do that. Anyway, we left our home too early. We got to the gate of my uncles cabin at 9:30 (they weren't supposed to be there until 10:00). Luckily, my cousin, Don, was going in the gate at the time of our arrival. I just followed them up. Of course, they were surprised to see me there so early. My wife had stayed home and told me she would be coming up at the 2:00 time.

I talked with a few of my cousins up there and had a good time before everybody else arrived. I don't know why, but the wife of one of my cousins (I can't put names here) told me all about her prescription drug addiction that she is working on overcoming. It was interesting talking to her about this. She said it is even harder because her husband is the bishop of the ward, and she is a bit uncomfortable with all of that. She is currently finishing up group therapy, and getting ready to get on the 12 step program to help her out in this. She talked of what has been destroyed by her dependence, and her wanting to make things as right as she can. In this, I wish her luck.

There was more talking with people and then lunch time came. Of course, after eating there is volleyball and basketball and all kinds of activities. I went and played volleyball. My mom was really out of form, and that was sad to see. She has always been good at volleyball, but it seems that her age is finally starting to catch up with her. She did terrible for who she is, but did wonderful for a 77 year old lady. It was discouraging to me though watching some of the deterioration of a person as they age.

My wife came up while we were playing volleyball, and she talked with a few people while watching some of the other things that were taking place. When some more of my cousins showed up, I was able to talk with them as well. I particularly needed to catch up with what is going on with Kurt (who is about my age). He is enjoying his job at Wendys as a manager working in Ohio. I guess he is a bit concerned about his job because Wendys isn't doing so well at the moment. They may be selling out to new management, which he feels may put his job in jeopardy. I certainly wish him well.

We played some basketball, and being old, I kind of wore myself out. Later, I went up and talked with Mick and my wife. Mark joined us. Mark is hard to understand. Around16 years ago he was in an accident and is in a wheel chair because of this. He also has a hard time with his speech although he is still witty and charming. My wife thinks she frustrated him to the point of tears because she couldn't understand what he was saying at one point. She felt lousy about that. There really wasn't too much to do about it though.

Well, dinner came along and then there was a small program. Chris's string broke on his guitar on a song he had written. He was playing along with Adam. They had Adam play his violin (he makes his own violins) while he was turning two hula-hoops. One fell near the end, but other than that he did well. There were a few odd jokes (and I do mean odd), and then my brother got up and told us all about a CD that he made for each grandchild of my grandparents that has their voices on from some old 78 records that he found. They were voice recordings from 1949 (just a bit before my time). He also put other songs on of the time period that he thought may be fun to have on a CD. I thought this was really a neat thing to have.

After a long night, we all went home. My wife and I made sure to stay together because she has a hard time traveling at night.

Just Stuff.

It's been a fairly normal week for me. On Thursday, the fence people finally brought our gate. Unfortunately, there was a big dent in it. They tried to fix it with glue and by filing it down, but that wasn't going to go. They told me that they would be out to our house on Friday afternoon with the new and improved gate. This was a bit frustrating as we were hoping to have this whole thing all finished.

On Friday, I was home from work. My wife went out to run a few errands and buy a few things for a baby shower. It's a terrible thing sending your wife to a store for a few things. She came back home with over $200 worth of things. They were all on $ale. Well, she actually bought some things that she has been wanting, and we should be able to handle this one.

The gate came back and was installed at our home. It finally looks good, and the workmanship seems to be great. It's too bad we had so many difficulties with the final product.

Saturday, my wife and daughter went to my nieces house for the baby shower of another niece. While they were there, my son and I did some cleaning up of the house and took care of a few odds and ends. Thankfully, before my daughter left for this she had helped with the mowing of the lawn and a few other things like that.

Around 1:30 in the afternoon, I received a phone call from my wife telling me that she was going to Liberty Park because that was where Pam and Anne were. We arranged to meet them. It took a little bit to get there, but we had a good time out in the park. On the way home, we stopped at Wingers for dinner. That is my wifes new favorite place to eat.

I woke up early this morning. My son and I were supposed to go to a stake priesthood meeting at 7:00 AM. As it was, I was dragging. I went into my sons room and asked him if he was going. He told me he didn't know a couple of times. I went and showered just in case he wanted to go. He didn't. I went back to bed as I was more tired than normal. My son came in later and told me that he was getting ready to go to a leadership meeting (that started at 8:00). He also had BYC this morning and I thought that was a lot of meetings for a 15 year old, especially when you add on the 3 hour block and then after that he had a presidency meeting. Poor kid.

My wife wasn't feeling too well today. We didn't really do anything else of note.

Family

I didn't write down the other day a bit about me calling my daughter who lives in Florida on Sunday. When I called her cell phone, she picked up almost immediately. This is a rarity. I usually have to leave a message for her to call me and then wait for that phone call.

Well, one of the first questions I asked her was when it was that she would be able to come out and see us. I have offered to pay the whole expense of the plane tickets out here from Florida. She started to tell me that she wasn't sure she could make it out in July as we were kind of planning on. This was very discouraging to me. She is telling me that she won't be able to work for the week so that is about $500 that she won't have. She might be able to come out the first couple of weeks of August though. That is, her lease is up and she is expecting to have a security deposit back, so money shouldn't be so tight. I forgot to ask her where she was going to live. I am assuming that she will live with her mother for a month or so at that time.

While I was talking to my daughter, I could see the anger on my wifes face over this. I mean, at one time she was going to be coming out with her friend in July and I would only need to fly her back. That fell through and now we have talked to her about flying out. One option was that she would cover half the expense of the flights to and from. That didn't seem feasible on her end because of finances. Looking at my own, we decided I could fly her both ways. Now, of course even that is going away. It's like I am not that important for her to come out and visit.

Well, my wife was going on about the importance of our relationship as father and daughter, and not knowing what may happen which there would be regrets that we hadn't seen one another. I brought some of this up to her and she sounded a bit upset with what I was saying over the phone, so I didn't push it too far. My wife didn't think I pushed it hard enough because I am her father after all. I don't know. It's difficult when your daughter is an adult and has a life of her own that is different from what it was before adulthood. I haven't seen my daughter for quite awhile. It has been a couple of years at least. The last time was at Christmastime, but for the life of me I can't remember which year. Anyway, I need to see what I can do to get her to come out and see us, even if it is only for a couple of days. Hopefully, she will let me know about a time in August when we can finally see each other again.

Enough of that rant.

Nothing much happened yesterday. I guess that is true of today as well, but today I did leave work early so I could go to the Middle School of my daughter (and son) where she was receiving an award for being an exceptional student in band. She has excelled in playing the flute and we, as parents, are quite proud of what she has been able to accomplish.

At the school, we sat through a slide show. The kids were mostly cheering as various class members and school administrators were thrown onto the screen. Of course, then there were the boos. That wasn't good. My wife was quite distressed over this kind of behavior because of what that can do to ones self esteem. One teacher even stood up and told the students to quit booing. That did nothing for what was going on.

We came home from that. Soon after my daughter came home, I took her to her orthodontist. That appointment didn't last long, but it was difficult to get there. We even had to wait for the TRAX train for about ten minutes. It was awful.

Since our son is at the Lagoon, we decided to go out for dinner with our daughter. We went to Wingers and had a good time there. Because we spent over $20 we got a free Asphalt pie. It was a huge piece and fed us all to the point that we were uncomfortable.

My daughter went to Young Women tonight, and of course our son stayed at the Lagoon. I will be interested to hear what rides may have been shut down because it was extremely windy. We have a major storm that should be here tomorrow. It is really weird. We go from 90 degrees down to about 45 degrees tomorrow as the temperatures. Anyway, my son will be sleeping over at my brothers house tonight and we will pick him up sometime tomorrow.

Oh, I called on the gate (for our fence) today. They said that they will be out tomorrow to put that into place.

Sitting on the Fence

I know! I was glad that all was going well with the fence the last time I wrote. Currently, that is not there, but at least I think we have come to a consensus and the problem I have will be fixed.

Last Thursday, I received a call from my wife telling me that the guys doing the fence had moved one side of the gate down about an inch and that it looked awful. She had tried to talk to them, but was having some trouble. Would I talk to them? I told her yes. I started to talk with the foreman of the job and was told that the solution we had the day before on the gap in the gate wasn't going to work out at all. It was going to look terrible. He started in on telling me about the slope of my driveway at the point that the gate is. I didn't get that far when my wife got back on the phone and thought she would be able to handle it. Before the phone was hung up, I heard my wife telling them that they could leave the 3 inch gap. I heard Jade (the foreman) say that this isn't what your husband said. The phone went dead, and I had to find out what had happened.

I waited for a little while and then my wife gave me another call. she was upset because she felt that Jade was trying to work us against each other. He was telling her that I would be mad about the 3 inch gap that she was telling them to go ahead and not worry about. He also went into some fault finding saying that since we weren't home at the time they placed the posts, it was all our fault. All because my mother-in-law was there instead of us. From my wifes perspective, Jade was too hyped up on caffeine at the time she was talking with him. I guess it got a bit out of control. She didn't know what to do, and asked if I could call out to a supervisor out at Vinyl Industries. I did so. I talked with a guy by the name of Nate who said that he would go out and take a look at what had been done and try to see what kind of resolution needed to take place. I called back and told her to tell them not to touch anything, but was too late. They had already taken the gate down. After some consideration, I decided I had better leave work and get home to see what was going on.

Of course, by the time I got home, they were packing up. Our gate was not on, and was on their truck. I went in and talked with my wife and then we went outside. The blame game seemed to be over (I wondered if it was because Nate had talked with them) and they told me that they would fix the gate to the slope of the driveway (this was what I was after in the first place though initially I did not understand that). I pointed out to him that I had asked that there not be a three inch gap on the one side while the other was at less than 2 inches. It was him that had told me they could put on a filler to take care of that and I told them that was acceptable. That was as far as our conversation had gone. He was done saying that my wife and I couldn't agree with anything, and realized that I had not been given all the options when I made my decision. He, however, then tried to put some blame on me because I had told them to call me at work if there were any issues since my wife would not be home when they were working on it. He said he had called my work and that I had forwarded my work phone to my home phone. I told him that I have never done that. He must've called my home phone. He had the proof in his call log on his phone. Sure enough, he called my home phone. My wife was glad I called him on that one because it was just another way of putting blame on us. My wife gave them a lecture about listening to what the client (us) want. They were uncomfortable with that. Anyway, we were told that they would take the gate in, get it fixed to the slope of our land and then they would put it on again. My wife was a bit upset because this means that we won't have a gate on there until they get back. They should get it back to us sooner than later, as we have the final payment on the fence and they won't get paid until that final payment is in the hands of Vinyl Industries. They are concerned of losing some money on our job, but that really isn't our fault (at least the way I see it).

Well, these things too, shall pass.

I still wasn't feeling completely well from the flu bug (or whatever it is that was plaguing me) but thought that was handled pretty well. Since I was home, we both went to pick up the kids from the school and used the time to talk. We had a good talk.

Friday, I came really close to calling in sick again. I didn't though, and it was a good thing that I hadn't. I came into a mess at work. The whole process had died. I had to get the servers restarted and then after all that was up, had to get my stuff run. That took some effort, but we got it all done in a fairly timely manner. There was then all the monthly stuff that needed to be run.

Saturday came along and I headed to the store to pick up a few grocery items. After arriving home, and finding that the kids were done with their chores we had decided that today we could take the kids out to the Daybreak community lake and see about kayaking there in Pam and Annes kayaks. We only blew one up so the kids could do it. We had some lunch and then went there. It was hot out there. We just had the kids kayak and enjoy their time. They didn't stay out on the lake too long, and then we decided to come home. I put the kayak upside down on the top of our SUV and that was a mistake. The wind picked up underneath it, and it was standing straight up at the point that the rope was holding it. We had to pull over and take care of that. At least it wasn't something major.

We didn't do too much else on Saturday. I picked up a few videos and then I watched The Work and the Glory III. It was pretty good (not great). It's too bad they are not going to finish out this work. I think it would be good to see the films just because of the church history that is mixed in with it all.

This morning I had to go to a PPI. I was to be at the church at 10:45. My son was supposed to be with me, but he had to collect fast offerings. While I was waiting for my turn, my son showed up and asked if he had to stay (he hates meetings). I told him that I didn't think it was necessary for him to stay and that I would take care of it all. He was grateful to go home. It wasn't too bad.

A little later we were called so that my daughter could go to an interview with a member of the bishopric. She was called to be the second counselor in the Beehives. That went OK with her, but she thinks she should be the First Counselor.

After church was over, we came home and had some dinner and then decided to go see my father-in-law who is alone at home while his wife is gone to Las Vegas for the twins graduation. He is doing well, and we just had a small visit with him. He told us that Anne had come over and taken him to a wild party on Saturday. Talking to him we found that he had been taken to the Pride Festival (which is a gay pride thing that happens in Salt Lake). He then said that he was going to have to compare that to home-teaching this week which he as been asked to do by Bud Bay. It's been years since he has done any home-teaching. That should be interesting. He struggles with a belief in God.

Anyway, not too much more to say.