Wedding, Thanksgiving and other stuff

Another week has come and gone. It has been a pretty good week. There isn't a whole lot to write about though.

Last Tuesday, I finished up with my work for the week (minus a little bit that I have done Wednesday and then again today). After work, I went to Young Men. My son and daughter had theirs cancelled, but we met so the boys could finish up their Citizenship in the World merit badge. Brother Wallace did a great job in keeping the boys attention, in such a boring Merit Badge (I guess I shouldn't call it a boring merit badge, but I am telling the truth). It is good for the boys to get this Merit Badge.

Wednesday morning, I had to get up early to check on my jobs at work. I did get them all checked, as I promised Paul that I would. My wife and I then had to leave so we could get to the Salt Lake Temple for Tia's wedding. We got there in good time and on time. The guy that conducted the marriage did a good job, but I felt that he was turning it more into a lecture than simply giving the new couple advice. It was good, I'm just not certain of the timing. Of course, after they both agreed to marriage and after they were sealed for time and eternity, we went to meet them outside in the freezing cold. We got the pictures taken and then my wife and I went over to JB's so we could have a diet coke and talk for a bit before the wedding breakfast. We then went to the Joseph Smith memorial building and watched a couple of women putting up the Christmas tree. At the appointed time, we went up to the top floor and had the wedding breakfast. It was a great meal, and they even had some talk about the young couple as they were growing up.

We hurried on home from that so we could let our dog out of her kennel. The kids came home from school and then after a quick dinner, the kids and I headed out to Bountiful for the Wedding Reception. My wife stayed home and made a couple of pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving the next day. I visited with a few people at the reception that I knew from the time we lived in Taylorsville (we had bought my brothers house and it was his daughter that got married). It was good to come in contact with a few of them after all these years.

Thursday morning we got up and I helped to get some mashed potatoes done for the Thanksgiving dinner that was held at my parents house. Probably around 40 people showed up for that. After the dinner, a bunch of us headed to the park so we could play Ultimate Frisbee. As I looked around the field, I was the oldest person there with my brother who is five years younger than I. After that, the oldest was about 15 years younger than me. I did a lot of running and had a little bit of asthma from this. My son tripped me a couple of times and then there were a couple of other people I ran into. I guess I was one of the aggressive players that wasn't too good. I also hit Mike pretty hard when he went into the air to catch the Frisbee. I was only trying to catch it as well, but he went flying. It didn't look too good, but he said he was all right. We went on playing. From this game, I am still stiff and sore today (a couple of days after the whole event).

My family at this time left my parents house and went to Pam and Anne's house where they had had Thanksgiving dinner. We visited with them for most of the rest of the evening and then brought Zach home with us. We were all pretty tired and went right to bed.

Friday morning I got up and at around 9:00 I went out with our son to go pick up our daughters gift and to look into an Ipod ITouch for our son. We did end up picking one up for him, and since he now knows what he's getting for Christmas he wants it now. We told him he would have to wait for it. He's not too happy about that, but he has no choice.

The one thing I went to pick up at Best Buy wasn't in. It had gotten lost by UPS so we were given another day to pick it up. I did get a discount on a warranty that I bought because of this delay. It was really busy and it is terrible to shop on Black Friday, but we got some things accomplished.

In the afternoon, our daughter went to see Twilight with a couple of friends. She was a bit perturbed at us as parents because we wanted to know who she was going with. There was one boy in the group of girls, and we learned what we could and discussed with our daughter that we have responsibilities as parents and that this is all a part of it. While she was there, Zach played Mario Kart on the Wii and the rest of us didn't do too much. We then watched The Hulk in the evening.

Saturday morning we irritated Zach because we got up too early for him. It was 9:30 in the morning, but he was sleeping in our family room and we met in there and I had done the dishes as well. He then went into our sons room to sleep.

I headed out to return one thing that we had bought our son before the ITouch, and it was good that we had talked to him because he wouldn't have liked it near as well. He said that to him, Rock Band is the same as Guitar hero because he would only play the Guitar on it.

We did a few things on Saturday, and then Zach headed over to my in-laws so he could meet with one of his moms friends for lunch. She has been a good friend through the years, and I'm sure that Christine was happy that Zach could meet with her and discuss things. The people that knew his mother and father are all he has to try to keep them in his remembrance. Anyway, we sent our son, our daughter and Zach to their grandparents home.

My wife and I watched a video that we had and then got ready to go to Gladys house for a party. We had our son and daughter meet us there, along with the grandparents. The party at Gladys house was great, and we had a light dinner and then just visited with various people in the extended family.

Today was church. The Young Men met with the Young Women. I went to that and listened to Brother Medierous on free agency. He did a great job and I know I got something out of the lesson. I don't know if my kids did or not, but I certainly did. I then went and helped my wife out with Ally. Sacrament meeting was kind of testimony meeting, but it is where you tell of a favorite hymn and then the congregation sings one verse of that song. As usual (when they have a meeting such as this) we were late getting out.

There's not that much more to tell. I'll call it a day, and quit writing.

Financial Advise - 2008 Christmas Concert - Christmas Tree

On Thursday evening, my wife and I had Wes Hall come over to discuss some of the financial things that we have set up in the past. He spent a couple of hours with us explaining things so we understood and gave us some advice as to what we should be doing. We are already putting some money into some retirement accounts that are also life insurance policies. On one term life insurance policy I have he would've had us renew that if I hadn't had a heart attack this last year. And, he told us that unless work is matching what I am paying on my 401K there are better uses to that money. The first thing, he told us to do was to get working on a "rainy day fund". He received nothing from us to help him out other than we can give his name out if people are interested in getting their finances in order. He was more like a friend to us, and we felt really good about him. I may need to look into what I am putting into my 401K and transferring that money into another area. We're still considering our options there. I also had to check on one of the accounts that I put some money that came from ZCMI when I left there.

I didn't go into work on Friday. It was my normal day off. Instead, my wife and I had a day to spend together. We were able to get out and get a little bit more of the Christmas shopping done. Now, we just have to hope that our kids don't look too much around the house to see what they have. I also had to meet with Wes again in order to pick up tickets to "With Joyful Ring" - the 2008 Christmas Concert done at the Tabernacle in Salt Lake and it was the bell ringers.

We got our kids a fast dinner and then headed out for downtown. We were going to go find a good place for dinner before, but weren't so sure we would be on time to the concert. The concert started at 7:30 but you really should be there by 6:30 since it is General Admission (that's when the doors open). As we were passing temple square, we saw a car pull out from the curb at the Church Museum. I flipped a U-turn and grabbed the spot. It was just before six so we put a quarter in the meter which would last us the whole time. It was a great spot for parking and we felt lucky. We walked a couple of blocks to go to Crown Burger for a quick dinner.

It was cold outside as we found out by standing outside of the Tabernacle for about half an hour. They didn't open the doors until around 6:40 PM. We had some conversation with the female cop in front of us in line. That helped to pass the time. We then went in and got our seats. While we were sitting there, the Lems came in and tapped us on the shoulder. They sat right behind us. As we were passing time, we saw the Kays as well. We went and talked to them briefly. Of course, I also saw Wes, although we didn't go up and talk to him.

The concert was enjoyable and relaxing. It was nice to just sit there and hers beautiful music. About an hour and a half later, it was done. None too soon because the seats were getting a bit hard. It was an enjoyable evening.

Saturday, I slept in. That felt nice. My wife informed me that we had to get the tree out, and our son was the one that had pushed her into it. She said she would decorate it later if we got it out and set up. We carried the tree upstairs and then I put it together making sure everything was spread out in the way it should be. I then went to play that addicting game Mario Kart. I did finally get through what I wanted to get through. Now, I just have to go back and take first place in all things. I also stayed away from my wife while she was decorating. I would only get in the way.

Sunday morning came along, and our daughter had been sick through the night. I stayed home with her from church. I just had to do a couple of things for her, but she was getting better by the time Sunday evening came along. We were grateful for that. Since I didn't go to church, I watched "Emma Smith: My Story". I quite enjoyed the look into her life that this gave me. I watched a lot of the extras from the movie as well, and that took a couple of hours to do. In the meantime, I would check on my daughter about every 15 minutes.

My son and wife got home from church, and the meal that my wife had started in the crock-pot was smelling good. We had to wait until around 3:00 to eat that meal. It was tough because the smell was permeating the house. It was a wonderful meal when we finally got it.

My wife did a few more decorations around the house. She likes for things to be done in a particular way, so I am best off if I try to disappear. The house is getting all kinds of decorations. She both enjoys doing this, and hates it at the same time. She is a bit of a perfectionist as she does all of this. In the long run, it is a love of the season that pushes her to do it, and she is happy with the results. But, she is also bone tired.

Work - Sick - Scouts - Young Women - Cell Phones

Monday, when I got into work, things were a mess. It looked like most of my jobs through the whole weekend had worked, but there were no logs from Saturday night through that morning. In looking around, I found where there were errors in writing to the log files. This was a problem because I knew that there was some things that simply didn't look right. I was able to finally figure out that Sundays run did not happen because I found where the whole data warehouse went down Saturday evening and then came up on its own Sunday morning. We had to redo the log files to get them working and then, I had to go back a day to run Sundays stuff. It was a pain, but I got through it.

I started to feel a bit ill as my day at work was winding up. When I got home, my wife and I went out to get a couple of things. We did a little bit of Christmas shopping as well as getting some groceries that we needed. When I arrived home, I started feeling absolutely terrible. My stomach was just churning. I never had to throw up and I only had one small bout of diarrhea, but mostly my stomach hurt and I was extremely exhausted. I went to bed early.

All night, I kept on getting up because my stomach hurt. I would go into the restroom because I felt like I had to go, and then things just didn't come out easily. I still have no idea what was going on. It certainly felt like the flu, but didn't act like it.

Tuesday morning I was tired and feeling a little bit better, but not good enough. I woke up around 8:30 so I could call in sick to work and then slept until noon. I was feeling completely restored by that time. My wife and I went out and did a little bit more with some shopping for a couple of items and then came back home.

Tuesday evening, my wife got to go with my daughter to Young Women where they were having their Personal Progress night. I didn't get to go in there because I had to be with the Young Men as they were starting their Citizenship in the World merit badge. Glen wasn't there so we didn't have the flag that he usually brings and no flag ceremony. I'm sure that will be rectified next week. Brother Wallace taught it. It was interesting because he is one that actually had to gain his citizenship to the United States. He also has a good way with the boys, and for such a boring merit badge he made it interesting for the boys. He would be a great Scout Leader.

I did go into the Relief Society room after we were done for some of the refreshments that the Young Women had. My daughter was making a little bit of fun of my wife because she cried when she was talking about our daughter in a minute presentation. From what I gathered from all the Young Women, it was a good spiritual meeting.

Wednesday I had to get back into work. Most of the things went OK, but at noon there was a problem with the file that Zions Bank sent to us. They had one bad record and it made it so I updated just over 700 records that it shouldn't have updated in the RiskMaster system in Washington. I had to call out to Doug and have it taken care of. It took awhile for me to figure out what had gone wrong though. Unfortunately, I forgot that the job runs again at 6:00 in the evening, so tomorrow morning I am going to have to get a new list for Doug to fix. It's only while writing this that I figured out that I forgot a piece. At least it doesn't take long for him to get through that because I send him the exact records that he needs to fix. That's one of the problems of updating things remotely.

After arriving home I was able to talk with my son about him getting a cell phone given to him by T-Mobile (or Samsung) at the college. Everybody in his class got handed one with a $30 card for the prepaid phone. My wife and I had decided to add one cell phone to our plan for Christmas (because both of our kids are needing cell phones more and more) and buy two cell phones so they both have something new. Now, that doesn't make sense since our son already got one, which in essence will give our daughter control over the existing one. Of course it is a prepay so we will have to do what we can to keep minutes on it. I talked with T-Mobile, and the plan seems to be pretty good, and it will be cheaper for us to do it this way because our son is not a talker nor a texter. We'll have to see how it goes, but we have three months free. That $30 bought 150 minutes of cell phone use (plenty for our son) and then we got a text saying that the first installment of $10 had been added, adding 50 more minutes to the plan. I called T-Mobile and asked about this and it is a promotion they are having where $10 is added to the account each of the next three months (so he will be getting 50 more minutes each month for the next two months). If we keep the phone active (by buying another block within that 3 months) the minutes will roll over. Well, that made for an interesting night.

I played Mario Kart on the Wii. Just another addicting game for me, but I couldn't win what I need too to unlock a few more things.

Anniversary Number 19

This weekend, my wife and I celebrated our 19th anniversary. On Friday and Saturday, my stake held a Little Philmont which I was supposed to go to because of being and Assistant Scout Master. Being that I like to spend a whole weekend with my wife around our anniversary, I didn't go to that. There is nothing that is going to interfere with the anniversary with my wife.

I took Friday off of work so I could spend the whole day with my wife. Of course, the necessary things were taken care of like taking my daughter to school and picking her up from school, but other than that, it was just time I was spending with my wife. We did take care of a couple of Christmas gifts (we always do a little bit of that during our anniversary) on Friday and that felt good to get rid of some of that.

Friday evening, Pam and her mother came over to our house to pick up our kids and take them off our hands for the entire weekend. We kept the dog with us, but that was about it. We usually like to go out to a hotel for our anniversary, but money kept us from that part of it, as well as a few other issues. We did choose to spend a little bit on going out to dinners for the night and spent the nights at home (away from everybody and everything but ourselves). We got a couple of DVD's and called that good. We also splurged and I didn't let my wife know that we were going to Desert Star to watch "Miracle on 42nd Street". The mystery of it to my wife added to the romance and we did that Saturday afternoon. It was an enjoyable day together.

Sunday was spent just being lazy and being together. Sunday, was the actual day of our 19 years of being married, and we just enjoyed that time being together and in love. I can hardly believe it's been 19 years.

Sunday evening, we headed out to Bountiful to pick up our kids, but we were asked to pick up Zach on our way. We figured that it took us longer to pick up Zach than it would've taken us to get out to pick up our kids had we not gone to pick him up. Then, after spending a little bit of time there we found that Zach had left his stuff in our car so we had to drive half way back to their home so he could get his stuff from us. What a pain. We got it all done though.

I was also able to talk to my daughter in Florida today. It had been 3 weeks since I heard from her. She is distraught because her boyfriend is moving back to Ohio after having lived in Florida for threee years. Anyway, that's all there is for now.

Missionaries - Church DVD - Sand Dunes

Over a week since I last put anything here. That is getting more and more common for me to do though. I did decide that I had better write something in here because a couple of things worth noting have happened.

Wednesday evening, our family had the missionaries over for dinner. It is something that the bishop decided to have the missionaries go to dinners at the homes of the priests. They were able to come over for about an hour. We visited while we ate, and then a little bit after eating (just around the table). Then they left us with a message and left. They also let me know that Tom Biesinger (my dads first cousin who they are living in the basement of) has remarried. He is 74 and she is 69. It has only been about 6 months since his wife died. That was fast, but I guess at their age you better do things fast.

The LDS church is making a DVD for New Years Eve 2009. With the making of this DVD, they have invited various Young Men/Young Women groups to go to the Conference Center and participate in the DVD. We were one of those stakes. We had to have tickets to get in, and we met at the church on Thursday at 5:00 to get there in time for this whole thing. The bishop also had enough tickets for four cars to get into underground parking at the church office building. He decided that we should take the cars that take the most people, so I was one of the drivers.

My group was the last group to leave because Bill Ashton decided to go and pick up a couple more of the priests. In my vehicle we had Chris, Austin, Travis, Bishop, Bill, Sister Kelly, and me. We could've fit one more but there was nobody else to take. We left about 20 minutes after everybody had left for the Conference Center. Because we stayed of the freeway when we saw it was a bad rush hour traffic, we beat all of them to the Conference Center. I let everybody out of the car before going to park it because we would've all been late, and it would be hard to find a place without doing this. It took another 15 minutes to park the car. I felt like they were taking me deep into the bowels of the earth underneath the Church Office Building, but in reality, I was only 3 levels deep.

I found my way to the Conference Center, and my daughter told me that she had seen me and yelled at me, but I basically ignored her. I don't remember doing so, but have no reason to disbelieve what she says on that. I was focused on trying to find my group. I did finally find them, and was told about the difficulties of others trying to get there. I know that at least one of the groups wasn't able to be inside the Conference Center, but had to go to some annex to watch the program.

The program was done in three segments. They opened the first segment with a prayer, and then Elder Holland spoke to us. Of course there was a musical number as well. They then closed that segment with prayer. The next two segments seemed to be fairly similar. They had youth who would do some singing and some simple dance steps and tell various stories about the church and missionary work. All in all, it was a good program, but talking to some of the youth later, they were a bit bored. It was kind of like a glorified fireside. We got home pretty close to 10:00 in the evening. I felt good about the program, but my son didn't think it was all that great.

Friday, I had the day off of work. I picked up a few things for the Scout Camp that was to start that night, and packed the car. My wife and I then went to lunch together. We had a good time and then went to walk around South Towne mall for a bit.

On the way home, we noticed Janet Chidester outside of her home taking some things into her house. We decided to drop in. We helped her unload some of the stuff from her car that was for a stake activity she had that night. We then went in to talk for a bit. Her son was there, and had some huge tattoos on his arm that were made to look like leather on his arms. I didn't think they looked that good, but he seems to like them. We had a pretty good visit.

At around 4:00 that day, I headed over to Glens house for this camp out. Nobody had let us know what time they were all meeting there. As it turns out it was 4:30 that we were supposed to meet. It was a good thing that I showed up because nobody told me about the foil dinner I was supposed to make. Glen said that it was his fault. He got me the fixings and we made up the foil dinner.

Around 5:00 we left for the Sand Dunes at Little Sahara, Utah. They were about an hour and a half drive to get too. The kids in my car played on their Nintendo DS's all the way down there. We were listening to Tomita on the CD player and it was an enjoyable ride. It was dark when we got there though, and we had to set up our tents in the dark. Of course, the stakes didn't go in that well because it was too sandy. I had my tent all to myself and it was pretty darn good. There was a lot of room in there. We had our dinners around 8:30 and then let the boys run out and play as long as they were with a Buddy. Around 10:00 we all hit the sack. The boys didn't want to sleep, but we got them quieted down after a bit and then went to sleep ourselves.

It was cold. I brought two sleeping bags so I would stay warm. I had a warm and comfortable sleep all night. I did wake up a couple of times, but that is common for me to do.

In the morning we had a breakfast of Sausage, Eggs, and bacon. It wasn't exactly fat free, but it was quite delicious. We got camp mostly cleaned up, so all we had to do was to take down the tents after they dried out a bit, and then we let the boys run around the Dunes for awhile. We packed up and left by about 11:00. I think the boys had a good time. I had a pretty good time as well.

After arriving home, I had to put up my tent again because it was still a bit damp. I got things dried out while I was taking care of a few other things, and then put them away again. I also got the front room windows caulked (I am trying to do a little bit at a time). Nothing else really happened Saturday evening.

Sunday came and went. It was the usual thing at church. Allie didn't show up for my wife to spend time with, so we talked with Sister Wade for a bit. She was telling us about her father-in-law who is in prison for tax evasion. She was wondering if he had gone to any seminars of my brother-in-law who is also in prison for some of that same kind of thing. It was interesting talking to her. That's what my wife and I did rather than go to Sunday School.

Nothing much happened on Monday. Tonight, my daughter went to play her instrument with the school band for the school board. Because of this, she was a little bit late to Young Men/Young Women activity. My son came in with her. They did a Mormon ad. The bishop told them all about advertising and told them how to do it and then split everybody up into three groups. They all did their ad, and then we watched them. It was kind of fun.

Anne and Kiki came over to our house tonight to get their hair done. My wife was busy doing their hair all night long. She was exhausted when she was done. I felt bad for her.

Anyway, that's the week in a nutshell.

Election 2008

Today is the day of the elections in America. This is a bit scary to me as the one who is most likely to be the president, I don't trust. Barak Obama is running against John McCain. My hope, and my vote has gone for McCain (and Sarah Palin VP) over Obama (Joe Biden VP). Why is it that I am worried? I am worried about Obamas friends. I am worried about Obamas policies, and I am worried about Obamas lies. I don't think McCain is lily white or anything, but he certainly seems the better of the two to get things done.

Problems right now are the economy. Obama is a bit stronger on seeing the economy, but I don't trust his policies in order to fix it. McCain doesn't seem to know enough about it, and it is because of that, that I believe he will find those who know more about it that will do what they can to fix it. Obama would turn the United States more into a Socialist government rather than the Democratic government that we are now.

There is also the problem of having so many democrats in the high offices that the republicans will not have the capability to even filibuster. This is dangerous grounds as it makes it so the democrats can get almost anything through that they desire. It is too close to a one party system, and we need some checks and balances. I guess I am just a bit nervous about what is going on, and hope for the best for this great country of ours.
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The above were my thoughts early in the day today. Now it is night, so I am going to put a little bit more here.

I got home from work, and my wife wasn't home. I did a few odds and ends, and then at one point turned on the TV. Of course, all of the channels have Election Day news. At the time I looked, McCain was ahead, but the votes also had just barely started to come in. I watched for about 10 minutes and then turned off the TV.

After my wife came home, I had to go back to the store with her to return an item that wasn't good enough for the price she paid. It was a mirror that was beautiful, but it had something on the glass that looked like smears that could not be washed off. We went back to Ross and I ended up getting some shoes (that were much needed).

We arrived home from that, and I turned on the TV briefly again. I then turned it off. Obama was ahead in the polls coming in. They were predicting (rightly) that he would easily take it. I didn't want to watch any of this because I knew I would only get irritated as the night wore on. Even if my candidate would come ahead, I knew I would be irritated. I asked my wife if she wanted to watch a movie instead, but she didn't. With nothing else on the TV, I went into the den and played Mario Kart on the Wii. I played that all night.

At one point, my wife came into the room and told me that Obama had won. I thanked her and continued to play my game. She later came in and told me I was moping because my candidate had lost. I wasn't moping, but that is what she perceived that I was doing. I told her I really wasn't interested in watching. She got a little upset at me and told me that it was history in the making (the first black president). I told her that either way it would've been history in the making. Either a first black president or a first woman Vice President (of course I had hoped for the latter).

I can't say that I was ticked off or anything. I was, and am a bit scared as to what this will bring. As mentioned above, I am worried about the filibuster free senate along with the Democrat president. Looking at the news way late tonight, it isn't looking like they will pull that one off (although there are a few states to come in). I certainly hope that this doesn't happen, as I think our government needs the checks and balances. I mostly watched sit coms late into the night tonight because I really don't want to deal with emotions going up and down. I will know soon enough what I need to know. My wife thinks I am being hypocritical because I have been giving her political information throughout the last couple of months, and a lot of it has been anti-Obama. She is wrong in what she is thinking, but has the right to have those feelings. It's not that I don't care, its that I think I care too much, and am concerned too much.

Will America pull through this? I'm pretty certain it will. How much closer to Socialism (or Marxism) will we go with this presidency? Hopefully, not too much.

America is a great county. The fact that there will be no major marches and that the government will shift over to this new president is a testament to Americas greatness. We have our differences, and we get through those differences. Hopefully, we learn from our mistakes of the past and continue in a forward manner. Hopefully, Obama will do things that are great for this great nation. My prayers are with him as he leads this country along.

Cardiologist - Eagle Board of Review

I'm still not great at writing here. A little bit has happened that I need to write about, so here I am writing.

Last Tuesday, for Young Men, our 12-13 year old boys met at the Thornes house with the 12-13 year old girls. They were there to make a dinner. I have to say, it didn't turn out that badly. We had three groups of 4-5 people to make the dinner.

The appetizer was cinnamon stacks, the dinner was chicken Alfredo pasta, and the dessert was brownies. Each of these turned out to be quite tasty (though the appetizers didn't come out until almost everything else was cooked. Everything was quite edible, and enjoyable. I dare say though that it wasn't exactly heart friendly.

Since we had my sons concert to go to Thursday evening (his birthday) we went out to dinner to celebrate his birthday. We went to the Golden Corral, and had a good evening. We also stopped off at a couple of stores on the way home to look at certain Halloween decorations, but didn't end up getting anything. We gave him Mario Kart for the Wii, and that has been a good game to give him. I have also enjoyed playing that one.

Of course, Thursday evening was the concert. My wife and I were asked to be ushers there so had to get there early. Our son had driven there on his own, and then we showed up. With the ushering, you just don't let anybody come in and discourage them from going out while the bands/orchestras are playing. This doesn't make one real popular with some of the people, but it is proper etiquette. My wife was tired, and I told her to go home after our sons performance and I would finish out the evening and catch a ride home with him. That worked out great.

Friday was Halloween. I only worked in the morning. There was soup provided to us by our company and then I worked for a little bit more. I then had to leave to get to my cardiologist to see about the stress test from last week. As expected, it was good news. My blood has been flowing the way it was expected too and, my health seems to be relatively good. My cholesterol is looking good as well since I am taking drugs to effect that. The one thing that has me concerned is that my blood pressure is a little bit high. The cardiologist told me that my heart attack would've happened almost no matter what I had done as long as I wasn't a vegetarian. He also said that I seemed to be doing the right things.

Anyway, I headed home after running an errand or two. My wife had been making stew for us to eat for our dinner and then we had a couple of our daughters friends over for a Halloween Party. It really wasn't a party. It was more that the girls got together so they good giggle and then watch a movie in our home. We had offered the same for our son and his friends, but that bombed out. We turned our lights off at our house around 9:00 in the evening, and then after taking home our daughters friends we watched The Haunting so we could have one good scary movie for the evening. The movie we watched was a little scary, but nothing really.

Saturday morning, as a family, we went to the church to do our duty as far as cleaning our section of the church. We were there with the Thorne family. That took about an hour. I also headed out to get a couple of things that we needed for our home and then I had to take care of some of those things. I bought some faucet covers for our outside faucets to make sure they don't freeze up and break, and I bought some things for the hot water pipes downstairs. Hopefully, this will help us on our hot water bill (I haven't yet put those on).

My wife's big complaint has been our window in our door. People can see into the house too easily, so she wanted something to help that out. I bought a film for that and put it on. I then started to caulk around our windows. That still needs to be finished. I got our sons room and our daughters room. I'll have to do more as I get some time to do it. It was a pretty busy day for me. My wife and daughter went to a shower for my niece (Tia) and came home around 6:00 in the evening.

Today was a rainy day (not too bad though) and it was a bit colder than we have had. Of course, there is all the church stuff that we have to do, and then my son and I had to meet with the Elders Quorum for PPI's. I arranged for that to be right after church was over. At 2:00 I was supposed to go to a presidency meeting, but when I did that, I found that the president had cancelled that meeting. I just wish I would've been called and not wasted the time to go over there.

At 4:00 was our sons board of review for his Eagle. We didn't know that they preferred to have us there, and as per our sons wishes, we didn't show up. He really didn't want us there at all. I knew that parents are not required to be there because of some of the scout things I have gone too, but I didn't know that at least our own troop desires them to be there. We got a call from Brother Bean to come on over to the church. We hurried and got on appropriate clothes and then went to meet in the bishops office.

The Board of review started with a prayer. Then there was a little bit of discussion and they had Bill Ashton tell a few words about our son. Then, my wife got too and then it was my turn. By the time it got to me, everything had pretty much been said. I added my two cents worth, and then they asked our son to tell some of his favorite things in Scouting. He mentioned that the biking merit badge was quite fun and camping. Both of these had to do with spending time with his friends. That was all he said. I was glad that Brother Bean mentioned that he also didn't do much talking at that age. I think it put our son a little more at ease. My wife and I (along with Bill) then left and they gave a review to our son. He then came out while there was some discussion going on in the bishops office. We were brought back in and told the good news that it is all done. Now, it just has to go to the National board and we just have to wait to get a card back saying it is over. Our son is an Eagle Scout, effective today. That should be a huge sigh of relief for him.

We discussed briefly that we may try to do his court of honor after a regular court of honor and do it with Josh Gustavos, and possibly Sanford. They would really have to hurry up with his stuff to get it there though. It could happen. We don't even know if we will get the paperwork back in time for a December 2nd date on that or not. Time will tell.

Well, that's the week.