Stress Test - Birthday

Not too much has happened since I last wrote here, but I thought I had better write something or I wouldn't write down things that at least have some significance.

I had the day off on Friday (like I do every other weekend), and in the morning had to head into the St Marks Hospital to take a stress test. I, of course, told our son that I could drive him to his high school (just like normal days, except he doesn't have early morning seminary on this day). After dropping him off, I headed into the hospital.

On the way to the hospital I was listening to the news and found that the Dow-Futures had been frozen having reached the ultimate lows they are allowed (I believe that was 500). That was a bit scary previous to the Dow opening on this day. The Dow ended up not losing so much as had been lost in the Futures which at least helped a little bit. But, it going down like it is certainly isn't good for our economy.

I was a bit early to the hospital so had to wait for the Heart Center to open up there. I was the first one in for an appointment so that was good. I had to fast before going in (only from midnight to when I was there) and I was a little hungry, but not bad. The worst part of the stress test for me was when they have to put the IV into your arm (I absolutely hate needles). They pumped in some Iodine or something so they could take some pictures of my arteries. I was then put into a CT Scanner and processed. This took about 15 minutes of just laying there watching this scanner move every now and then.

Next, I was taken into a room that had a treadmill. My chest was shaved and then all the probes were put on. Some kind of belt with everything attached was put around me and then the nurse (I'm not sure it was a nurse, but that is what I was assuming) grabbed the reins coming from me and I joked about being a horse. She told me that it wasn't that bad, and I said, OK, then I guess you are leading a cow. She just kind of laughed at my stupid sense of humor. I was put on the treadmill and watching my heart rate. They wanted me to get it up to 144. It started out somewhere in the 90's. Once it got up to 144 there was some more stuff injected into the IV and then I had to walk for about two more minutes. I was told that they would walk me and that I would be extremely tired. I didn't find that to be the case. It was a workout, but it wasn't as bad as I had been led to believe. I could've continued walking the way I was walking even longer than I had too. It was getting to the difficult stage though.

After that, I was taken back into the CT Scan room where they scan everything again. This time it was about 12 minutes. The pictures tell them if the blood is flowing through my arteries the way it should be and to make sure it is getting through those stents that were put inside me back in February. The nurse (maybe not a nurse) said that it wasn't official because he isn't the cardiologist, but it looked like things were going OK. I will probably find out about that next Friday when I go in to see the doctor.

I headed home and watched some television for awhile (after all, I did do my exercising for the day - I should do it every day). My wife and I headed out a little later to go to JC Penney to pick up some birthday gifts (shirts and hoodies that our son needs) but didn't find anything that really stuck with us good. We then went to Aeropostale to get the things we needed. With the sales that we got, we actually got a better deal there than we had at JC Penney. We arrived home after our son had gotten home, and our daughter had just arrived.

We did a few things and then a little later that evening, we took our daughter over to my sisters house so she could have a sleep-over with her cousins. We spent just a little bit of time over there and then came on home.

Saturday was a cleaning day, especially since the next day we would be having over guests for the celebration of our sons birthday which is actually on the 30th. We won't be able to celebrate his birthday on the 30th because he has a concert that night at the school. There was shopping to be done and then more cleaning. I had to go out and pick our daughter up from my sisters house, and she wasn't happy about that. They were having a better dinner than the one she would have at home.

It was nice to wake up Sunday to a house that was all ready for guests to arrive. There were still things to do, but the hard work (for me) was done. My wife still had the cooking to do and she was really a trooper about getting everything done. We went to church and left after taking the Sacrament because of a few things that needed to still be accomplished. It was the primary program at church and we probably should've stayed, but didn't.

Pam, Anne, Zach, my mother-in-law, my father-in-law and Melanie arrived about an hour early for when we told them to arrive. My mom and dad came in just a couple of minutes after they should've been there. They are so on time I was surprised that they were a couple of minutes late. They got thrown with the road construction going on at 10400 South and 4000 West.

Anyway, we had a chicken, broccoli casserole that is one of our sons favorite dinners, and along with that were rolls, and a Salad. My wife did a wonderful job of getting all of this done. She was concerned about it and was relieved when all went well as far as that goes. She had also made a cake that she had never made before. It was all good.

Travis opened his gifts (or his envelopes as it were) and then we gave him his shirts and hoodie that we had purchased. We just visited after that. They all stayed until around 8:00 PM or so, and then everybody left. There wasn't too much mess because Pam and Melanie had helped out in some of the clean up. It was a successful party and boy were we glad for that.

Well, that's the weekend.

Odds and Ends

Once again, I am getting behind in writing things down. As you can see by the dates some time has passed since I last wrote here. There are a couple of things to put in here though.

My wife's brother came into town with his wife. They live in Florida, and it was really good to see them. We haven't seen Kathy for awhile, but Steve has come in about twice a year. Because they came in, we headed over to my in-laws house Wednesday evening after picking up our daughter from Piano lessons and eating a small dinner. What we didn't know, is that Margaret was making dinner for us. There was a little bit of criticism over that to us. Once again, we thought we were doing the right thing, and it was absolutely the wrong thing to have done. We took over my cot with the mattress cover I put on it to make it even more comfortable. Steve didn't like the cot (he thought it too wobbly) but he did like the mattress cover for the uncomfortable hide-a-bed that he was sleeping in.

October 16th is my sister-in-laws birthday. We went back to my in-laws home the next night for that. This time we knew there would be a dinner. My mother-in-law was upset a little bit about the ham that she cooked in the stove downstairs which burned the outside of the ham. The ham was all right other than that though, so there really wasn't anything to worry about. I had taken off both Thursday and Friday because school was out for our kids because of UEA (Utah Education Association). I didn't need too though because my kids ended up staying with Aunt Pam. Actually, our son came home with us Wednesday evening and then Thursday evening went home with Pam. We had a good time at the birthday party of Pam.

Friday, we headed back to the in-laws house because we were going to go up to Park City with Steve and Kathy for the conference that they were doing up there. I didn't realize that Steve's line of work is still working with his church until I saw what was going on with the seminars they were giving. The Church of Scientology was all over everything. Steve and Kathy were a bit concerned that everybody was going up with them because they had to get work done. I told them not to worry, the work would get done. Everybody went up. We had Pam, Anne, Travis, Meghan, me, my wife, my mother-in-law and father-in-law, and Melanie. Of course Kathy and Steve were there too. Eleven people in all. We went up in two vehicles. In the long run, I think Steve and Kathy were pleased with how everybody went right to work and got them all set up. We also had to go pick up a few things at a couple of stores. After having a dinner, we headed back to Salt Lake (leaving Steve and Kathy there). We had to turn back around though because Kathy had left a notebook in our car. It was nice to get away from home for the day.

Saturday I took some weather stripping off of our two doors (front and back) and replaced it. Things weren't too difficult, but they weren't as easy as I thought they would be either. I don't think I even swore. My wife and I had a meal card to Pei Wei, so we went out on that. Other than that, we just stayed home and took care of a few chores around the house.

Sunday, we went to church. When I was in the Deacons Quorum, we found out that nobody had been told to do the lesson. I had my Palm Pilot with me with the manual, so I found out which lesson they wanted to be given and gave it. It actually went quite well. I then went to be with my wife in her special needs class. Anyway, it ended up being a normal day at church.

After church, we went went home and relaxed for a bit. We took the dog for a walk, and then we headed to Pam and Anne's to pick up our kids. Of course, Anne made a nice dinner for us as well. It was nice. Marie and Scott (newlyweds) joined us and Kiki was there as well. We usually don't have them there so much, and it was nice to see them again.

Our dog played with two of Pam's dogs (Max and Piccolo) but Indigo (the other dog) was not playing well with Lizzy. Piccolo is the best with Lizzy, and it was fun to watch those two. After an evening there, we headed home. Our son had made some money from them while he was there by doing some yard work for them (along side Anne).

The kids had Monday off school as well. I had to go into work. Our son spent some time with Craig and then they went to Bingham High (his school) to pick up the cookie dough that he needed to deliver. He delivered some of it out during the afternoon, and then came home. I got home and after we took Craig home, I went out with him to help deliver some of the cookie dough. My wife and I even went out after dinner to finish up about three more to get all the deliveries (but one) done. It was just nice to have it all taken care of. We are so proud of our son for taking care of this because he had to go out of his comfort zone in order to do so, and he put $200 into an account at school to help pay for some of his band things.

Tonight I went to a combined activity with the Young Men/ Young Women. They were tying a quilt for an Eagle project as well as going out trick or treating for food for the food bank. We got quite a bit of food and that was good, but I was a bit discouraged because they didn't even hit the whole ward boundaries. They missed my house for one of the houses that was missed. Oh well, that's the way it goes. I had a couple of the boys that were with me that kept on complaining about being out so long. I told them we had to finish up at least this area and then we could go.

Oh, there is one other thing I would like to mention here. My wife was worrying because there is a phantom going around the neighborhood. Basically somebody gives you a treat and a picture of a ghost (called phantom) and then a letter telling you to distribute treats to three more families. The reason my wife was getting concerned is because we weren't getting hit and the kids were noticing. We did finally get hit, so had to get out and do it. What I want to mention about that is that I got caught at one house, another house hasn't put the ghost in their window (so who knows if they were hit before or not) and another wasn't home and the treat got stolen (they left the phantom and the instructions) so we had to do another treat for them. Then tonight my wife is concerned about one other family that nobody seems to be doing, so she had me hit them with some treats as well. That's my wife for you. She is the most tender hearted person on things like this.

The last thing I want to do here is to put in a drawing that my daughter did free hand. She has done the Mona Lisa and I think it is a darn good depiction. This scanned in image isn't as good as her actual drawing, but it gets it pretty good. I can't believe what she can do with nothing but a pencil and a piece of paper.

Well, that's it.

Freezing Cold Camp

I had the day off work Friday. My wife and I just stayed home and really did nothing. I made a mistake when we were getting ready to go out to eat of going outside and cleaning up some stuff instead. This made it so we really didn't do anything, and it caused some contention. After the kids arrived home, I got ready to go to a camp so I am a trained Scout leader. I wasn't looking forward to this because all of the news reports were stating that we would have a cold weekend. It was also supposed to snow during the weekend. The news wasn't wrong.

We went to the Willows where I met for the first time my patrol. It was a team of six individuals. Glen wasn't able to be to the whole thing because he had a daddy daughter date with his primary aged daughter. He did surprise me however, by showing up both in the evening as well as in the morning. I helped a few people set up their tents. The tents were big enough that I was able to put up my bigger cot. I decided that I would be as comfortable as possible on this camp out (don't I always). The wind was blowing extremely hard and it was about 40 degrees outside. This made for the cold camp. After setting up a couple of tents and getting situated, I helped to put up a wind barrier under the canopy where there were tables and such. We had a dinner of Lloyd's barbecue sloppy Joe's. That was good and sloppy (and warm).

Friday evening, we all huddled around a camp fire that had been set. It was the only way to keep somewhat warm. The wind was blowing south and you could see that in the way the flames were blowing. It was a hard wind. The leaders of this event told us about building fires (the training segment) and told us what was legal and what wasn't legal within the BSA guidelines. We also went over skits and talking to the Scouts around a camp fire with some good stories. We were told to never tell them scary stories as you never know how well they would sleep after that. There were other tips given to us as well. We learned about the proper use of knives and axes in a Scout Camp (Glen taught this part) and then my patrol did a skit. I didn't have to help them out with that. There was just a bunch of chit chat around the fire then, and one of my patrol went home because he had to take care of his kids in the morning while his wife did some stuff for the Relief Society.

It was a cold night, and it was one that you really didn't want to get out of your sleeping bag from. I had a blanket in my sleeping bag. It was a bit colder than I had anticipated, and I woke up periodically in the night because of that cold. It wasn't overwhelmingly cold with the blanket, sleeping bag and long johns. I did have to get up for a nature break in the middle of the night. I considered not getting out of the bag though. Nature won out and I did get out of it.

We all slept in Saturday morning, to the point that we really didn't have the breakfast they had planned on. Instead we had a bunch of leftovers that were around as well as a Muffin. It was enough for me. We took down the tents so all we had left was some training. It was still cold even though the wind wasn't blowing as hard. We were given information on things like first aid, orienteering (once again this was taught by Glen), plants and animals (we had to go out and find signs of animals as well as find various plants in the area), and other things. There wasn't a lot that I hadn't heard before. It was a good review though I wouldn't have come to this cold of a camp for this kind of review under normal circumstances. It didn't rain or snow on us during the night, and the only times we had that moisture coming out of the sky was when we had to find the animals and plants and when we did the orienteering (isn't that the way it goes). Thank goodness that there wasn't a lot of snow though (and yes, it was snow). I was grateful to be able to leave around 12:30 in the afternoon.

I went to Lowes to pick up some weather-stripping that we need on the doors to our house. I knew I wouldn't be able to put it in yet because it was unseasonably cold during this weekend, but at least I have it all so I can put onto the doors when the weather is a bit better.

My wife told me a little bit about the wedding reception she had gone to in my absence. I wished I could've been there because I would really like to talk with the Nielson family from our old ward. But, I wasn't able to make it there.

This morning arrived early and I found that I was a bit worn out from the weekend. I did get up and go to church after starting a crock pot dinner. Everything went normal in church and we had a fairly normal Sunday.

One thing that I was grateful for was that our kids decided to work together on a homework project our daughter. They built a version of the Eiffel Tower out of K'nex blocks. Our daughter started on it and admitted to me that if her brother hadn't of stepped in it wouldn't have been so good. In fact she said that it would've been awful. I am so proud of my son and all the good things that he does. I am also proud of our daughter. They are both great kids.

My son got honored in priesthood meeting for going on Thursday evening with one other person in the priests quorum to help move things at the food bank. They each moved over 9,000 pounds around in under three hours. He has been the only one to do all of the service projects. He also helped James with his service project on Saturday. He is certainly getting in the service he needs to get in.

Well, that's all I have to say.

Jealousy

This past Monday, my parents showed up at my office at lunch time. They were hoping I could take them to Sams Club so they could look at 26 inch TV's. I told them I am no longer a member of Sams Club, but we could go to Costco down the street. Before we went to Costco, we went to see how much they would be at BestBuy. The only ones that BestBuy had that were in the right price range, were cancelled out because they were open box items. We sent to Costco, and didn't see anything else there to compare with one that they had seen at Walmart. The thing that's interesting about this purchase is that it isn't for them, but for my sister. I have to admit that there is some jealousy there in what she is getting from my parents because her husband chose to do things I think are wrong and that he is in prison for. But, my parents justify the purchase because my sisters children don't have a TV to watch DVD's on. My sister can't afford cable or Satellite either (but then neither can I) so in the area she lives there is no reception. The TV would be solely so the kids can watch DVD's. While I wouldn't trade places with my sister (having your spouse in prison is no picnic), I still felt a twinge of that jealousy. However, my parents have the right to do with their money with whatever they choose to do. In the meantime, we are still trying to scrape up the money that we need for my sons trip to Florida. This is part of the reason that things are frustrating to us. I think if it were my sisters child, the money would be forthcoming (but then, maybe not). Both my wife and I have similar feelings on this.

Monday evening, I ended up at Target looking at some crock pots. My wife had brought one home that we didn't like when it was taken out of the box, so I had to go back and get a different one. The crock pot we had my wife has been scared (especially after we cracked the porcelain insert) that it may have lead poisoning as has been found with a lot of those things. I also had to go to the store a bunch of times because we needed various supplies for our son to get his homework done. It was an expensive day.

Tuesday evening, after arriving home, we headed to Chuck-A-Rama for my Father-in-laws birthday. My Mother-in-law covered the bill for all nine of us to eat there (that cost her a pretty penny). We later went over to their house to socialize for a bit. Then we headed home so we could watch the second presidential debate between Obama and McCain. I was glad that we didn't watch it at the in-laws because I differ from them in my politics.

Obama was a bit clearer than McCain was in the way he described things. But, I thought they both did well in the debate and nobody really won nor lost this one. They both had false things to say about each other. I wish they would cut that out because it makes it harder to decide (although I am already pretty much decided on who I will vote for).

Our son went out tonight to the Church Dairy to do some charity work. He tells us that it was only the Bishop, Chris and him that were there. But, they did quite a bit over a three hour period of time. Our daughter made some Amish Friendship Bread tonight, and that was a tasty treat.

General Conference

I really don't have a lot to say, but thought I would write here anyway.

General Conference has come and gone, and I just thought I would write to say that it was a good conference. They announced five new temples including one in Rome. That was a pleasant surprise.

Saturday morning, I got up around 5:00 AM. Our son had to be to the Conference Center by 6:00 AM so he could be an usher for this conference. That was a long day for him, as he was to stay until 9:00 PM. As it set, he was able to leave around 8:15.

It rained all day Saturday. At times it got a little bit heavy. We watched the morning conference together. That is, I watched it with my wife and daughter. She actually watched all of the sessions of conference because she had to fill out a paper for seminary. I think this is the first time for her to watch absolutely everything. I know I never watched it all when I was her age (let alone at the older ages that I am now). Between the two conference sessions, I headed to the store to pick up some groceries for a homemade beef stew on Sunday. I got home in time to take care of a couple more errands before sitting down to the next session of conference.

For the priesthood session, I had two tickets to get in (compliments of my son by being an usher). I had asked Lance Abplanalp if he would like to go with me, but he told me Friday evening that he needed to go out of town. I was kind of disappointed because I was looking forward to spending some time with him again. I left home right after the afternoon session ended. I wanted to make sure I could find some parking downtown.

Parking downtown is a real pain. Especially with all the construction going on around the area temple square. I was a little bit frustrated with the church not letting me park under the Conference Center. The ushers all were able to park under there because their name tags allowed them in. When I had dropped off my son, I asked if I would be able to get some kind of pass to park there because it was for him that I was coming to pick up. I was told no. It seems to me that they should've allowed for something like this, as I was not taking up any extra space under there, but rules are rules. I was a little irritated though. I mean, after the hours of service to not allow this seemed kind of crazy to me.

Downtown was busy. I got there in good time, but then getting up to the Conference Center took a long time in backed up traffic. I was glad that I had left as early as I had. I was seeing all the parking for $5.00, and hoping that I would not have to do that. I drove up West Temple (crawled is a better verb here), and then turned on the street right behind the Conference Center. The south side of that road was reserved for emergency vehicles, and I watched as a parking space got taken on the North side just before I got there. I decided to turn around at the top of that street and go the other way. There is a stake center just North West of the Conference Center, and they were only allowing people from that stake to park in their lot (I'm sure it was because of the Satellite feed going there). But right out on the street in front of it, a young couple left. I got my free parking, and it was closer than any paid parking I could've done. Of course it was raining pretty hard. I brought an umbrella and a jacket for my son.

I had to be in my seat by 5:30. Since it was raining anyway, I decided to go in instead of seeing what was going on around the building. I didn't see any protesters, and I really think most protesters were fair weather "friends" as I was told by a group behind me that they had seen only one. They wondered if they shouldn't have dropped him a couple of bucks because he was out in the rain and they thought he looked homeless. It was 5:00 when I sat down. Around 5:30, my son had somehow seen me from clear across the Conference Center and up one level from where I was. He has good eyes, because it was hard to see any kind of details of people that far away. I tried after he had come over to talk to me for a minute. He said it was easy because he knew I would probably be early and he knew that would mean I would be sitting near the front of my section (which he knew where that was). I don't see the simplicity of it, but he did.

Before the Priesthood session started, I talked to a guy that sat next to me. He was from Argentina and didn't speak English very well (but then who does). We were able to get some basics out, and he told me how wonderful it would be to have one of those new temples in his neighborhood. I never figured out how close it was to him, but it sounded like the closest temple to him was about 6 hours away and he said they were lucky to get to the temple twice in a year. I haven't been to the temple as often as I should and this was one of those times when I realize how much we take having the temples right in our neighborhoods for granted. I watched as they got some machines that hook up to an earpiece so they could listen to conference in their own language. It was kind of neat to be in the Conference Center for this session. There is a whole different feeling of being there in comparison to sitting in your own Stake Center. I did miss having my son sit next to me though.

At the end of conference, I called my son to see where he was and what he was doing. I couldn't understand him too well as there was a lot of noise. We both hung up and then he was right in front of me. He saw me just as we hung up and joked about us being five feet away from each other when we talked (I'm sure it was more than that, but not by much). He was able to leave then. He asked me how I had gotten his jacket in there in a Walmart bag because they usually took those kind of things from people and checked them in. I did get stopped on my way in because I forgot about my Palm Pilot in my jacket pocket and I beeped getting through the security gates.

Getting home was kind of a pain. We got stuck trying to get out of there for about a half hour of just sitting there (oh we moved about 15 feet in that half hour). We did stop in at Wendys in order to get a shake on the way home (that's kind of tradition for going to the Priesthood session that I got from my father).

We arrived home and then he went to bed. He had a slight headache from the whole days events. They did feed him a pork lunch and a chicken dinner while he was there. He also said they had all kinds of soda pop including Coke although it was caffeine free. He said that some of the older ushers brought in their own soft drinks because they didn't' feel they could go the whole day without getting a headache from caffeine withdrawals.

We were going to let our son drive downtown for Sunday, but because it was raining hard we decided we had better drive him. I'm kind of glad that we did because it wasn't easy when I hit a couple of places where there was standing water. The rain was hard and furious (just the same as it was on Saturday when I headed downtown). Anyway, I dropped off my son and headed back home. I was able to go back to bed for a little while and got up in time to watch conference. Both sessions were good. I actually thought all sessions went really well. There are a couple of the apostles that I have a harder time with, but I won't get into that here. For the most part I really enjoyed what was said. I was told to come pick up my son at 5:30. I got up there by 5:15 and my son called a few minutes after I got there.

This time, downtown had been cleared out by the time I got there. I saw a few of the protesters walking back to their cars with their signs under their arms. One simply said "Mormons are not Christian". My son tells me that when he was coming to the car, one protester was in a red cape and started to scream at him about the "stupid Mormons" that are going to hell and that he was going to heaven. He said that it was at the top of his lungs that he was yelling all of this while dancing around. I have never understood why people think they need to dress up like Satan to tell us that we are going to hell while they are going to heaven, but to each his own. My son had also noticed a whole lot of protesting outside while he was taking care of things. The favorite job my son had was to be in the area where they have peoples belongings. He mentioned to "old" guys that were a part of the ushers who started to have a contest to see who could get the things back to the people at a faster rate at the end of conference. Of course this was running the boys around a bit. At one point the one said he was giving the other an Indian curse and started to do some kind of war dance with Indian sounding lyrics. This set the other guy off and they were in each others faces doing this stupid "war dance". My son said it was funny because one of the volunteer sisters saw them doing this and looked at them like they were off their rockers (which I suppose they were). But it was pretty funny. I guess men always remain competitive and do stupid things for their whole lives!

Well, we got right home. The rest of the time at home was just spent in relaxing around the house, and enjoying our dog and family.

It's time again for me to write a bit about things in general. I really don't have a whole lot to say though.

Thursday evening my wife and I attended a scholarship meeting that was put on by the LDS Employment services of our church. I had invited Pon to come to the meeting, but he didn't come. We did take him over some material that night so he can get started looking for scholarships for his daughters. I also need to start in the search for my kids (especially since we are pretty darn late for our son). It was a good meeting and because we went up and talked to the missionaries that talked to us, we were given some material just for being in the right place at the right time. Nobody else took the time to do so. That is how some scholarships work also, evidently. So, I guess I had better get busy in getting some of this money for our children. Who wouldn't want free money. They did say they would send us some material via email if we left our email addresses at the door. We did so, but I haven't seen anything on that yet. I gave them two email addresses, and haven't seen it at either one. It's a whole week later now.

Friday, we were all at home, so we took our son over to his Grandma Wachs home so he could do some work for her to help earn some money toward going to Florida with his school this year. We are so broke, we don't know where we're going to come up with the money for this. He is going to have to help us by earning the extra money to do it. It is going to cost $1100, and we need to put down $500 now. Unfortunately, that $200 that our son will get isn't there yet because we have to get the cookie dough out to the people first. Of course, as soon as its here, we will be out delivering that and collecting the money for it. We have cut down everywhere that we can think of cutting down. For the past month I have been telling my wife that we need to be careful with our spending, and we have. When we have gone out to dinner, we have gone out on gift cards that we have had. We have only been buying the essentials, and even with doing that we are spending too much. I am sure a part of this is because of the high gas prices that have raised the prices in the grocery stores. I am hoping to be able to start catching up on everything soon. And then there are these huge amounts coming up just to give our son the opportunities that high school are affording. Thankfully, our son is stepping up to the plate and giving us what he has. He gave us the money that his Grandma gave to him for helping her out.

We left our son at Grandmas house (along with our daughter) and we went for a drive to look at the changing leaves in the mountains. My wife and I had quite an enjoyable time together doing this. We then had to go back and pick up our daughter (our son slept over) so she could do some baby sitting that night for the Nielson's.

Saturday, we headed back to Grandma Wachs house so our daughter could stay that night and we had to get our son up to the Conference Center to be an usher for the Womens conference. When I called my wife up from there she said that Pam, Anne, Zach, Melanie and Meghan were going to a movie. I showed up at the movie as well, and we watched Eagle Eye. I hated spending the five bucks for the picture, but we need to have some kind of relief. My wife was at my moms house giving her a haircut. While I was in the theater, my son called and told me that he would be done at 6:30 instead of 8:00 like he was originally told. After the movie, I headed back downtown to pick him up. I was there a little bit early, so went to temple square. There were two kids out in front of the Conference Center who were passing out some anti mormon literature, but that was all I saw for this event. I wasn't there very long when I was called and told to pick him up. We went back to Grandma Wachs house and had a nice dinner there. We left both of our kids at the Wachs and went home.

Sunday, I had the lesson to give to the Deacons quorum. It was on Celestial Marriage - A Preparation for Eternity. It was probably a good lesson for me to give because I can use some of this within my own marriage. I then went in and helped my wife out with the Special Needs class. The only one in there was Allie. My wife wasn't feeling very well after this, so we skipped out on Sacrament meeting and I had to help her out with her back. She was in a lot of pain. I hate the way that she is always in pain. I wish I could do something for her. She does really well considering the pain that she is always in.

Once again, we headed to the Wachs to pick up our kids. They weren't happy to have us there, but we did need to get them home. They thought we were there too early. We stayed for a little bit and there were some pretty good conversations that we had.

Tuesday evening, we were all split up as a family. My wife had to go to the school to learn some things about the band trip. That's where she found out that money was due yesterday for that first $500. We have the next $200 installment and then there are two more installments of the same. I went that night to a Court of Honor that was held over at the Ashtons house. This was the yearly "big" Court of Honor that they try to make special. It actually was too. We had a fire pit there and Glen set up a slide show of what the Scouts have been doing over this past year. There were a ton of merit badges given out (partly because of the Summer Camp we had this year) and of course there was a nice dinner. The dinner was a breakfast burrito. There was more than enough for everybody there. Of course, our daughter went to Young Women and also had a good time. Travis was with me.

Tonight is a night that we were looking forward to seeing the debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden (our vice presidential debate). People were concerned about Palin because she has had some bad interviews with a few people. And when I say bad, I mean terrible. However, she did a wonderful job and I was quite proud of what she said. Biden has had 35 years in the Senate so he had the definite advantage, and he knew his material well. Palin didn't have that experience, but she held her own in a regular person sort of way. Biden probably did a little bit better job because of his senatorial position, but I think Palin won because she wasn't expected to do as well as she did. It was an interesting debate. Of course both people said false things about the others campaigns.

Well, that's about it for this one.