Wedding

Nothing much happened on Wednesday or Thursday. I went to work on those days and worked on some things for RiskMaster. I didn't feel that I got very far with it though. There will still need to be some stuff done there. I did give a date that I thought we may be able to bring all things over into test though. It is a really progressive date and I hope I can meet the deadline that I gave especially while my daughter is going to be here from August 1st through the 6th. It's going to take a lot of work from me and hopefully there are no major problems that I will have to contend with coming from the production side.

Friday, I took the day off from work. My mother-in-law came out to our house so we could drive her to the Timpanogus temple. Cosy was getting married there. While she was born in the United States, she has been raised in Italy. Her husband is Brazilian. She has been staying at her Grandmas house her in Utah. Anyway, she was able to have her mother come over from Italy to witness this marriage. Tony stayed back (but not being LDS wouldn't have been in the temple anyway) and his parents did not come to the wedding. There were a number of his family that showed up that were living in California though. It was a nice wedding and the sealer did a good job of giving advice to the young couple.

Of course, we hung around the temple for pictures. It was hot outside, but we dealt with it. They finally made it out to us. After our pictures were taken we headed home. We had about 45 minutes to be able to change and then relax before going to the Wedding Breakfast at the Golden Corral. Gladys (the grandmother) paid for it. It was pretty funny seeing Margaret trying to get Gladys to take a hundred dollars though. We watched as two ladies (who are in the late 70's and early 80's) fighting over this envelope and who wouldn't end up with it. I think Margaret finally lost.

We told Randy that we would drive his mother home so she could stay as long as things were going on at the Wedding Breakfast. We had a nice visit at the Breakfast as well as taking Gladys home.

Nothing bad happened by leaving our kids at home. My son had even had his friend Craig over for a sleepover the night before and he was gone when we arrived home. We took care of a couple of odds and ends, and the day was well spent.

Saturday was a cleaning day. I spent a lot of it trying to get my kids to clean their rooms. The vacuum cleaner made a really loud bang (and my son says smoke came out of it) and we decided that we had better go buy that vacuum cleaner today (my wife has been on me about getting a new one for about a year now). Well, I called a couple of places because we knew that my sister-in-law had one that she liked really well. It was a Hoover. Sears told me they had that model, and I went there. Well, they didn't have that model. It was very discouraging. They had one that was similar (and maybe it was the same thing) but it didn't have the same number. My wife called a few places while I went from store to store looking for it. Even the Hoover store said they had it and they were talking about a different model (although they could get the exact model). After a long afternoon of running around with this, I bought it from there. I was just glad to have this all over with. The kids were happy to vacuum with the new vacuum. That won't last long.

Nothing much to report on from today. I went to church, tried not to sleep through it, and came home. We did have to get my daughter to a kickoff fireside for her girls camp tomorrow. We also took over her stuff. I dropped the net that we had used for our ward party off to a ladies house who is in the stake. She of course, was disappointed about the terrible condition of the net, but we had told her that it was in terrible condition.

Ward Party and stuff

Once again, a week has gone by since my last entry here. I should be more diligent in writing, but sometimes I think that not too much is happening which would cause me to write. Another issue is that sometimes I feel that not enough has gone on to warrant writing a bit more.

Anyway, the end of last week my wife and I were working on getting various things together for the Neighborhood Pioneer Breakfast. We had to call people who said they would do various things and come up with the best possible ways to do all things. We tried to balance this with taking time out to see Casey while he was staying here in Salt Lake. There was also the issue of our son going to various parades. He had a parade on Friday evening in Bountiful, then on Saturday there was one in Murray, Monday there was marching at the South Town Expo center as a preview for the 24th of July parade that he was also in.

The Ward (Neighborhood) party seemed to go off without having too many hitches that could not be overcome. I think that it went quite well. There was plenty of food (there was a bunch left over) and the people dispersed to play the various games that we had going on around there. My wife didn't even sit down to eat though as she was just a bundle of nervous energy. I sat down to eat, but other than that didn't do much else than try to direct things. Without my wife it wouldn't have gone as smooth as it did. There was also some very good help from a few of the members of the ward. My wifes sister, as well as her mother and father also came. They brought Casey with them. When Casey asked me if they were charging for this breakfast I told him to divvy up his five bucks, and then I told him, wait, you're Lutheran, that'll be ten bucks. Of course we straightened him out on that and let him know that it was something that was being done for nothing, other than getting a group together to have some fun.

Anyway, by the time that was over, my wife and I were completely wiped out. We went home and just vegged. We had to go out and get a silly movie so that we could just forget about everything.

Sunday, our ward had a different sort of Sacrament meeting. It was kind of done testimony style, but people went up to the pulpit and told us what their favorite hymn was, and why and then we sang the appropriate verse(s) from that hymn. This went way over time, but was very good.

After arriving home, we hurried out to my in-laws for some roast and to visit with Casey. Casey left with a couple of the other guys to watch a movie, so we didn't get to visit with him as much as we would've liked too. We did get some time with Ben and Chris though, and that was good.

I took the day off on Monday. Of course I had to run my son over to the one parade, and my wife went out shopping for a wedding shower gift for her cousins daughter (Cosy). She was a bit perterbed (and I was too) that she was doing this without her mother because her mother had been complaining about having to go all the way out to Bed, Bath, and Beyond for the gift and we had taken time to get her some information and she was going to go shopping with my wife today. Instead, plans changed and she did it with Pam. We did meet up with them for lunch.

After lunch, we came to our place so Casey could be with our son and daughter, and we just visited. I tried, unsuccessfully, to read some of the Harry Potter book. Anyway, there was another issue with Casey staying with us or going to Pams place. We had arranged for him to be with us, but my mother-in-law kept on asking if he really wanted to do that until he decided he would go to Pams house. This was very discouraging for my wife and there was a slight altercation (words - or no words as it were and feelings). Well, Casey did stay the night, and we had our son play with him on the computer till around 11:00. He then stayed up quite a bit later than that.

We woke up in time to get our son to the school to catch a bus to the 24th of July parade. I then went home, read the paper and started the Harry Potter book. We watched the parade on TV and then my wife, daughter and Casey all left to go to the wedding shower. They stayed there until after 6:00 PM because my wife wanted to chat with her cousin from Italy. My son and I went out to KFC for some lunch and just to talk. We then came home and did basically nothing.

Anyway, that is a summation of my week.

Casey is in town

Zach stayed up talking to his girlfriend on the phone till it was quite late last Wednesday evening going into Thursday. My wife tells me that he woke up that next morning just in time to be able to take him out to his plane. I'm glad that we were able to have that time together.

I was busy all day Thursday and Friday at work trying to get things ready for our next date that we have picked for our test conversion. It is looking like we will not meet the next date we had picked. There wasn't a whole lot of chance of getting there that fast anyway, but we at least were able to give it a shot. As it sits, we have had to change the way that we were planning on doing it. It looks like I will have to be the one that extracts the data from Pinnacle (which is in Oregon) and then update their system with what we have as far as the Policy information goes. That's just the way it is, I suppose.

When I got home Friday evening, my wife informed me that Sister Lonny wants me to give my testimony of the atonement of Christ while telling the group in gospel doctrine at what point I gained my testimony and how. It took some contemplation on my part, but I came up with a basic idea of what I would say and of course it was refined as I felt necessary during class time on Sunday. I was told that what I said was good, although that wasn't what I was after. I was just filling an assignment to the best of my ability with the help of the Holy Spirit. I do believe that is where the trust had to be put.

I can't think of much to really write about. Casey came into town today, so after work I headed over to my in-laws to visit with him. I went on a walk with my son and the dog and it rained on us. It wasn't too terrible of a rainstorm though.

A couple of people played with my cell phone, and I found Anne was sending herself some pictures from it. I haven't paid for that service so will have to pay for those per message I guess. Tonight I found that the phone had no service. When I tried to make a call it said something about it being strictly for emergencies. I didn't know what to think about that, but the phone did work later.

It has been hot around here for a long time now. We have been over 100 degrees for over a week. Today, we even got some humidity along with that. Even at night it doesn't cool down much. This has caused for some big fires in the state of Utah. One of those fires burned about 500 square miles. They do have it contained now, but it took some doing.

Well, with Casey in town, I guess we will spend a bit of time with him over this next week. We, of course, also have the ward party that we need to finish up. I sure hope it all goes well.

Harry Potter

I worked all day on issues at work. In some ways I felt that a lot was accomplished and in other ways very little. I am having problems with fitting into the time-line that we need to fit into for our conversion test. I'll just have to wait and see what happens there.

My wife called me at work and asked if I could get one more ticket to the Harry Potter movie in the same theater that we are seeing it in. I called back and found that if I could get more than one that would be nice. I found three seats together, so, I purchased them and made it so Zach, Pam and Anne could all come to the movies with us.

When I arrived home, the new phones were there, so I unpacked them and started charging them up. I noted that both were "gold" rather than one gold and one black as I ordered. The reason I say gold is because they really look more silver than they look gold. Oh well, we'll think of something to tell the two apart.

We left our home around 6:30 to get our tickets (it is reserved seating) and then sat down and had hot dogs and other junk food at the theater. The movie started at 7:30 and went until 10:00. I thought it to be an enjoyable movie, and it kept our attention. My son pointed out that they had left a part out of the movie that was in the book, and that was the book has Ron Weasley trying out for the Quidditch team. I guess they decided that was adding too much time to the movie to include it.

After we all arrived home I went to get gas in the SUV. I had an anxious moment when I couldn't find my credit card in my wallet that I had used to get the movie tickets. It ended up being tucked in my pants pocket along with my Palm Pilot so I didn't realize it was there. I was thinking of the cancellation that I would have to do, and was a bit nervous for five minutes (which seemed longer than that when you're panicking).

Soon after I got home, Pam and Anne left and I called to get the phones activated. After you call the number they give you, you have to turn off the phones for 20 minutes and then it takes 5 more minutes after you turn them on before they are ready.

My wife wanted me to talk to Zach about blessings within our church, and I was having a hard time trying to figure out which aspect she wanted me to talk to him about and if it was a specific type of blessing. Anyway, we started there and he asked a lot of questions about the beliefs of the LDS church. It was a pretty good conversation.

At around 11:15 he decided that he should call his grandparents (who have been his guardians all these years) and wanted to use our cell phone because of the long distance of the call. He then called his girlfriend in Reno and is still talking on the phone now. There was still more to talk about, and I am sure we will talk a bit more as he comes here to Utah for his education in August.

Frustration with AT&T

This morning, I called AT&T to see about my phone order. I spent about half an hour on the phone with a lady there. She told me that it looked like the phones we had ordered were back ordered, then, when she looked closer, they were not only back ordered, but they were not going to be receiving any more of that kind of phone. She was apologetic and said that we should've been called about this issue. Since this had happened she is going to waive all fees (particularly the having to spend $36 for activation on one of the phones) and she is going to overnight two phones to my home. The two phones I am getting are better than the ones I was going to get, and they are phones that you should have to pay $50 in order to receive them with this damnable two year agreement. She can knock off $25 immediately, and the other $25 on each phone she will make a credit to our account. It was a pain, but we they are trying to make it up to us. I just can't believe that they didn't call us up when they knew this was an issue. Well, at least I won't have to pay that stupid activation fee.

Work is getting a bit busy as we are gearing up for another test coming from Pinnacle. Hopefully, we can get everything in place for that. It is better to be busy than to have to look for things to do around the office.

Tonight, my kids went to the church for Young Men/Young Women. Janine McIntosh came over to our house to get her hair done. I talked with her and with my wife for most of the evening both during the procedure and after. She was telling us about her one daughter and the boy that she will probably marry. We have talked about it all before, but from what she was saying, it would make me nervous if my daughter were to marry under the same circumstances (not that a parent has any control over that), but it didn't seem that she shared the same issues as I do (she, of course, knows her daughter better than us).

My wife and I went for a nice walk tonight.

Days off

Since I had the fourth of July off, and I would be taking my normal Friday off, I chose to also take off Thursday from work. We really didn't do anything, but it was nice to have the time off. Thursday was simply a day of rest and relaxation, although we did go over and mow the lawn of the Srey family while they are on vacation in Cambodia.

Friday, we had a few errands to run to get some things for our ward activity coming up on the 21st of July. We then went to my moms house so my wife could cut her hair. We left our son at home, and our daughter at her other grandparents. We had a good talk with my parents during and after my moms haircut. It was interesting. We talked a bit about free will and how families can still lose somebody because of somebody else's freewill. We talked about prayer and how it doesn't work at times the way we ask for it to work despite everybody doing the right thing.

Later, we went and picked up our daughter and the gift that my in-laws had given me for my birthday. We also picked up a couple of more things on the way home from there. It was a full day.

There really isn't too much else that went on Saturday or Sunday. I did get a few things straightened around at church for people to help us out with the Neighborhood Breakfast that is being planned.

Sunday night, we went to my in-laws house because Zach had come in for orientation at the U of U. We had an enjoyable time over there, and found that he would be going to the orientation today and tomorrow with a sleep over today.

Today was my works party day. I worked until around 12:30 and then headed home. Pon was in our home and was thanking us for taking care of his yard while he was gone. He paid my son about $50 for doing what he did and gave us a couple of gifts. I got a golf shirt and a card holder from Cambodia. That was nice of him.

For the work party, we went to Snowbird. We got there just after 2:00 and were able to get on the Alpine slide almost immediately. We next tried the zip line (a 45 minute wait) and then went to the Tram. Once on top of the mountain, we looked around and then hiked down to the "Peruvian Lift". It was a nice trip back down the mountain.

We talked to a couple of people from work and then went to dinner. I got in trouble at dinner because I saw some people forming a third line when I thought they shouldn't be. My wife tells me that I was making a jackass out of myself and she was embarrassed to be with me.

After dinner, the kids went one more time on the Alpine slide and then we headed home. We arrived home around 7:30.

When we got home, we found that our cell phones weren't delivered by Fed-Ex as promised. I called AT&T to see what was going on with that. The first number I called said that there was no order. I then called Customer Service. I was told that our order had not been processed although all the information was there. Would I like her to send me my order? I told her yes, and then was told she could not send the second phone. It was a different department that did that, and I needed to call them tomorrow to take care of that. I told her I would do so. I am frustrated that I had to make this call. We should've had our new phones and been on our way to our new phone plan with these people. I guess I'll find out more tomorrow.

Fourth of July

Today is Independents Day. We just had to get up in time to get my son over to Bingham High School in time to catch a bus at 7:00 AM so he could go march in a parade in Murray. He told us that he would be doing that until 12:30. He was back to the school by 11:30 and gave us a phone call informing us of this. We went and picked him up.

We mostly lounged around the house for most of the day. We did finally leave around 4:00 so we could go and get something to eat and then head over to the Sandy City Hall for his next marching band parade. After dropping off our son, we went and parked by city hall. Right after I parked a cop moved her vehicle to block anybody else from parking there. I was concerned enough that I asked her if I was OK there. She told me that I wasn't supposed to park there, but I would be OK.

Well, we walked on over to an area that we could watch the parade (near the end). We got some shade. I went to Target to get us some water so we would be able to make it through the heat of the day. While in the store, I ran into Mary Fletcher (from my ward) and she told me that the fireworks at Sandy City were the "best in the state". I went back and informed my family of this.

In the meantime, Pam and Anne were on their way to where we were so they could see the parade, and more importantly our son in the parade. They brought a cooler with more drinks. We told them that we had decided to stay for fireworks as well.

The parade went by and we tried to distract our son. He did a very good job of ignoring us. I went and picked him up and then came back to finish the parade. We saw that people were starting to get their places in line for the fireworks. We wandered across the parade in order to secure us a place on the grass. We got a good place too.

We then stayed at the park and a little later, my wifes parents and her nephew came to watch the fireworks. They started at 10:00. I had talked to a cop about where I was parked and he advised me to park closer to his car because the fireworks could strip the paint off of a car. We were supposed to be in a safe zone, but his care had more protection coming from the building. I did that.

The fireworks were great. We really enjoyed them, and Margaret kept on talking throughout them saying how great they were and she was the talk of the people around us. She was just like a little child.

It took a long time to get out of our parking area. The fireworks ended around 10:20 and we got home finally about 11:30. It was a long, but fulfilling day.

Birthday

Today is my birthday. I came into work and found that one of the jobs had crashed. I had to take some measures to fix it. It wasn't a huge deal, but had to be fixed. I also had to run the monthly jobs today.

I finally broke down today and decided to get a real cell phone plan. We have been on a very inexpensive (and cheap) plan with AT&T. It was only $15 a month (this year it jumped to $20 because of some fees the government added in because of the old technology of my phone). It only gave us 60 minutes of airtime and 250 minutes of nighttime and weekends. The lady I talked to said that this was a very old plan (which it was) and was surprised that I still had it. Anyway, they gave me a bonus 200 minutes per month on the family plan that I chose. I took the smallest family plan which was 550 minutes for just two phones for $60. I hate having a two year contract, and that has been the biggest barrier for me in getting a real plan. I'm sure I'll like the plan, I just hate the contract and having to pay that much more for it (yes, I am a cheapskate). Anyway, we have to wait for a few days to get our two phones.

I left work a little bit early today because I was having a hard time concentrating on things. I had also worked a little on Sunday, so it really wasn't a problem.

Soon after arriving home, I was asked to take my son to find him some white white shorts for the marching band. We went to JC Penney, Sports Authority, Ross, Kohls, Sears and finally Walmart where we found some shorts that would fit him. He is in an awkward size. He is at the top of the youth section and the bottom of the mens section. Plus, finding completely white shorts was difficult. I should've bought two of them, but I only got the one.

After stopping off at KFC and getting mashed potato bowls for the kids we hurried home. I had to change and then my wife and I headed out to the Great Salt Lake for my birthday thing. We went to a place called Salt Island Adventures. We had a pretty good time. We got there a little early and an older gentleman came over to talk to me while my wife was talking to some people in his party. He was watching her flit around and talk with a lot of different people.

When we boarded the boat, we were placed at a table at the front of the boat with a family of four. They were from Wendover and we enjoyed their company. He is only my age, but is the stake president of his stake and he said this is the third time he has been in the stake presidency. We did tell them that I would email him about what was done on the Trek that the youth took.

Sunset was beautiful and I took a few pictures of that. The dinner was pretty decent too (not great, but decent). Anyway, it was a good birthday surprise.

Aubree called me while we were on the cruise to wish me a happy birthday. It was nice to talk to her for a short time.

Alarms

This morning, my wife and I got ready for church. We had worked on our activity for the ward the previous night. We are getting ready for a Ward Breakfast on July 21st. We got a few things together so we could try to get some help from the ward. There is only one other couple on the committee and they have just had a baby and haven't been of much use yet. This is a bit frustrating to us.

Anyway, we got a few people to sign up for some of the things that we need to help make this thing a success. Hopefully all will go well with it.

When we were in Sunday School, we were grabbed by Brother Wahlstrom in our ward. He told us that there was some kind of emergency at our home. Bishop Mangum (the Bishop of the old ward we were in) was called by somebody, but he didn't know who. We were nervous and ran home. The alarm had gone off in our home. It was right about the time that we had left, and from the door that we had left through. Basically, it seems that when I had run back inside the house, I had probably done something wrong and left. The alarm went off. I don't know if Police came and looked or not, but we cleared the Alarm and went back to church for Sacrament meeting. It was there that we found out that it was my father who had called them since he was on the list from the alarm company. Thank goodness nothing was wrong.

After we got home, we prepared some brownies (for my birthday) to take over to Pam and Annes house. We went over there and had a wonderful hamburger meal (it didn't really taste like a hamburger, and was quite yummy). We visited with some of Annes family, they all sang happy birthday to me, and then we came home.

My wife has been doing her best to keep what we were doing as a surprise to me. I figured it out tonight without trying too. I was doing my best to not listen in, but at one point my wife said something out loud that made me think about what it is. We will be going out to Salt Air and going on a boat there and have dinner for a sunset dinner. I'll have to remember to take the camera. My wife wasn't upset that I had found out what it was we were doing.