Eagle Court of Honor

I just thought I had better write a little bit about my sons Eagle Court of Honor. It was a long time in coming, and we were glad to get it done. Travis has had his Eagle since November. He didn't want a big deal made out of it and was more than willing to wait to have the Court of Honor when two others could have it with him. Well, today was the day.

I went to work as normal, but left work a little bit early to make sure that things at home were pretty much taken care of. There wasn't a lot I had to do at home because my wife pretty much had things in hand. She handled everything about this Court of Honor very well. I know she wishes I would have done more, while I thought I was doing all that I really could. But, I do appreciate her and all that she does both for me as well as our two children. When Aubree is here she also does for her. I guess this is all off topic though.

I helped a bit by letting her relax while I went to pick up our daughter and the other 3 girls in the car pool. That isn't too much to ask. We were then able to kind of relax until around 4:15. My wife did go in to start putting on some makeup before that a little bit. I filled the SUV up with the items that we had chosen to take to put on the table to kind of showcase for our son. There were also the two half sheet cakes (which feed about 48 people each).

By 4:30 we went on over to the church. Julie Sanford was already there (although it looked like she just barely had gotten there) and we went in. Of course the cakes went into the refrigerator and then we went into the Relief Society room to set up. In the meantime, Rhonda came on over to help. Glen and his younger son also came. He had a lot of the things that we wanted to put up around the room.

We had been pushed into using the Relief Society room from the gym because the stake has taken it over each and every Tuesday for a couple of months while they are getting ready for the Day of Celebration over the Oquirrh Temple activities that will be taking place. Anyway, it takes precedence and we lost out to that.

We just had a little table to decorate and Dee Anne had prepared some pictures and our sons badges that he had earned so far. We also had some odds and ends. We had some music from the piano, we had a picture of him in the Marching Band, we had some cub scout belt loops. We also had a couple of items from his Eagle project. Of course scholar certificates that he has received were also displayed. The table looked pretty nice.

While Dee Anne was doing the finishing touches on all of that (a man just doesn't do finishing touches), I went out with Glen and lined the parking lot with some American flags. We wanted it to look as good as possible for all of this to take place. We were hoping that it wouldn't snow as had been predicted.

At that point, we were able to go home. We finished getting ready and waited because our kids told us that Pam, and the Grandparents were on their way over. They got to our house at around 6:00. At 6:30, I had to leave for the regular Court of Honor. The rest of my family stayed home as the Eagle Court of Honor did not start until 7:30.

We had quite a few merit badges to be distributed to our Scouts and each of them had a rank advancement (or three). It was good to get all of those going. At one point, I had to get some keys to the kitchen to put some ice in there as well as I needed to go talk to a couple of people about our need of using at least one part of the Young Womens room for refreshments. Sister Lonni came in at around 7:00. She wasn't sure if the thing started at 7:00 or 7:30, so she sat through the end of the regular Court of Honor and asked me if Dee Anne would be there tonight. I assured her that there was no way Dee Anne was going to miss this. She also handed me a card to give to Travis. Inside that card she had given him some money to go toward his mission. That was really a sweet thing for her to do. She is a special lady. She had envelopes for the other two young men getting their Eagles as well.

I was able to run home before coming back and pick up my family. There was a little bit more setup to happen, and Dee Anne took care of a lot of that. Sister Lambourne also helped us out. She cut up the cakes for us, and we really appreciated that. In the meantime, there were Young Men and Young Women in the church doing their singing or dancing and other things that were to be done for the temple thing I talked about above. Meghan was one of those involved with this and she told us she would try to come in for at least part of the Eagle Court of Honor.

When we had set up for the Eagle Court, I counted chairs. There were exactly 100 chairs in the room, and then we had to go and get about 15 more chairs. But, just like always, there were a few scattered chairs that didn't have anybody in them. We probably had 100 people there though.

It all started at 7:30. My parents barely got there on time, and then a lot of my family ended up coming about 5 - 15 minutes late. We ended up having Zach and Melanie there as well as Pam and Dee Anne's parents. My parents were there, and my little sister came in with a few of her kids. Glen also came with all of his kids. Larry and Scott were also able to make it. It was pretty good representation of the family.

The program started with Ken Wood who gave a talk and talked a little bit about each of the three boys. He did quite a good job. The bishop got to stand up and give a few words (of course his son was one of the ones getting the Eagle in this case) and then there was a video presentation. We had selected 60 photos previous to this and gotten them to Glen Thorne so he could get the presentation going. He had done an excellent job. This made for about 5 minutes for each boy of video presentation. Meghan and Travis were a bit embarrassed by one of the pictures we had chosen of Travis changing her diaper. People seemed to enjoy seeing that though. It was a very good video presentation, and Glen gave each of us our own copy. We are grateful for all that he has done toward this.

Brother Ashton said a few words and then Glen gave out the Eagle awards. We stood up with Travis briefly while he pinned us for our help, and then he got to give Bill Ashton a mentor pin. We had a second mentor pin, but weren't able to get hold of Travis' sixth grade teacher to give that one too. Maybe we can find her later. I don't know. Glen forgot to present Travis with the flag that we had bought for him that had been flown over the US Capitol. I gave that to him before we went in for refreshments.

For refreshment we had the two cakes, water, and there were some mini sweet rolls and other cookies that sister Lonnie had thoughtfully provided. She did apologize because she had broken into it and ate a couple. I thought that was kind of funny. She didn't have to do it, but she is just a sweet heart. My wife has really enjoyed her quite a bit.

After cleaning up, we left. My parents gave Travis the book, "A Marvelous work and a Wonder" and he also received some cash from Pam and from his grand parents. It was a satisfying night. But, on the same token, we are grateful it is over with. We don't have to push and prod our son anymore about his Eagle. Now we just have to help our daughter with her Personal Progress.

That's my report, and I'm sticking to it.

It's been another week. Time flies by when you're getting old. Unfortunately, so does the memory. So, I probably won't remember enough to even put in here for the week.

I had a family home evening (actually just family games) planned for last Monday evening, but my son had a migraine and it was just better to let it go. Tuesday evening, my daughter went over to the ward house to practice some dancing for the temple youth stuff that is happening. That will be in place of our regular activities. My son refused to go because he isn't going to sing at all in this thing. He wants nothing to do with it (of course this is fitting into his personality from years gone past). I sometimes wonder how far to push it. I traded Glen Tuesday evening for Thursday evening. That is, he would get there and pass off a few merit badges and do Scout Master interviews before the stake thing on Tuesday, and I would do the same on Thursday. Then, it ended up that I didn't have to do it on Thursday evening because it all got canceled. It was too bad our son was home on Tuesday night because that would've been a perfect time for my wife and I to be alone, but that's the way things go sometimes.

Nothing of note happened on Wednesday evening nor Thursday evening. I did get our SUV in to have the safety and emissions done on it. It passed, so now I have to register it by the end of the month. Friday, I had the day off. So did the kids. My wife and I went to take care of a couple of things for our sons Eagle Court of Honor and then basically didn't do a whole lot. It was a relaxing day for me. Saturday, my wife and I did more of the same, running to Costco and a few other places so we could get cakes ordered and a few items to help display things of our son for all to see. The place has been changed from the gym to the Relief Society room because of this stake thing. It also means that we won't have the younger Scouts in order to have the flag ceremony that I was hoping for. Things seem to be falling apart a bit, and there isn't a whole lot we can do about it.

My daughters friend (Kiera) and her mother were able to score some tickets to the Conference Center for the General Young Womens Conference for Saturday night, so they invited my daughter and my wife. That was a last minute thing, but my wife jumped at the chance to be there. And, it was quite enjoyable to her to have that. I took my son out to the store and we got some frozen Orange Chicken and put it with some rice and vegetables for dinner. It actually turned out better than going out and buying dinner from any other restaurant. I was also able to get those Rotisserie Chickens for half price so I got three and skinned them shredded them and put them in the freezer for later meals that are done on the cheap. I like it when I get these kind of deals.

My wife and daughter got home from their conference and dinner at around 9:30 in the evening. They had a splendid time. I took care of the laundry while they were gone while I watched a movie called "Rocker". It was an OK movie, but wasn't great. It at least was one of those brain dead movies that you don't really have to think about.

Sunday came along, and I didn't realize that it was Fast Sunday. We didn't fast. We did get to church, and my wife and I were able to go to Sunday School (she was able to get to Relief Society too) because her student wasn't there. I know my wife kind of enjoys it when she can get into those classes. During Sunday School I had to take care of some recording of Duty to God for each of the boys that turned in their stuff to me. I participated though for the last half of class.

I took my wife home from church before Sacrament Meeting because she was having problems with her back and neck. She really worries me with these things going wrong for her. There really isn't anything I can do about it though. Fast and Testimony was good once again. At around 6:00 tonight I went to the bishops house with my two kids and we had a fireside over there. The bishop went through the first 17 chapters of the Book of Mormon for his text and really did a good job of it. He did have us create a boat first out of paper that could hold a penny and go across a bath tub full of water. I saw that my daughter came up with the sail boat that I make and my son was copying me as I was creating mine. The only other person that I saw that did this was Glen. Anyway we had some refreshments and then went home.

Tonight we also had some root beer floats. We had bribed our son that if he went to the fireside he could have both the ice cream at the bishops house as well as a root beer float at our house. I was on day 21 of no soda pop (work is having this challenge to not have soda pop or energy drinks for a total of 45 days that stared on March 9th through April 30th) and broke it with this root beer float. At least I have some lee way on the days for work, so it shouldn't hurt me on the challenge. I am still without any caffeine for those days and that is pretty darn good (I was drinking one diet coke per day on average before).

Well, that's about it.

Scout Camp - Willows

I guess I need to say something about an all employees meeting that happened at work last Thursday. They had breakfast at this meeting first and then we went in to hear about how the company is doing. It wasn't great news, but there didn't seem to be any cause for alarm. Then, near the end of it they gave us a proposal. It was mentioned that they don't want to lay anybody off, so what they are trying to do is get some people to voluntarily give up some of their work hours. What they are after are those who are close to retirement or those who are only working for the benefits. They will still receive full benefits as well as full retirement activity if they will voluntarily do this. They won't be the ones who would be included in the RIF (any more so) if it came down to that. If there aren't enough who voluntarily give up the time, and if the company feels it is in trouble then forced reduction in times would be the next step. So, I guess this bad economy is starting to hit where I work. I have been told by my co-worker who went into another meeting that the IT department seemed to be doing pretty good, and it sounds like we have so much work to do that we more than likely wouldn't be hit by all of this. Anyway, I am looking at this positively feeling that at least the company is trying to be pro-active on this to avoid lay offs. I hope enough people volunteer to reduce their time.

Friday was another day at the office. I left a little bit early so I could go to Costco and pick up a couple of needed items as well as get home early enough to get my stuff together for Scout Camp. My son had decided to come with me, so I had him put together his own tin foil dinner first. I used sausage for my foil dinner, and I have to say, it was quite tasty.

After getting everything loaded into the car, I headed out to Glens house. Nobody was there when we got there so we waited around. When most of the people were there, it was decided that I should head out so we could get a good spot out at the Willows. We got the spot we wanted and just barely before everybody else came along. I was glad for that.

My son and I set up our tent and he decided that the reason I had brought him along with me was so he could help me do this. I assured him this was not the case. Glen was surprised that one that was as old as Travis would want to come, but come he did. The scouts forgot to bring one of the sets of poles for their tents, so I had to head back with my son and the Senior Patrol leader to pick them up. I also picked up some anti-histamines for Glen (that he had forgotten). They had started the fire by the time we got back and it wasn't long after that that we were able to put our foil dinners in the coals.

We had a nice dinner and then had a campfire program so one of the scouts could get a part of his merit badge requirement done for the Communications merit badge. We then let the boys go out and play some night games in the field that was by the camp. My son went out there and enjoyed doing that. As adults we just talked around the fire for a bit. We pulled them back in around 9:45 so we could get ready for bed.

The night wasn't too cold, but it got cold enough that I put the second sleeping bag on top of me. I mentioned this to my son at around 2:30 AM and he decided that he would do the same. I had decided to see if I could go a full night with the humidifier on my CPAP machine or not, and that was a mistake. The 2:30 wake-up was because my CPAP hose had condensed enough that the water was gurgling in it. I shook it out and tried again, and it happened again at around 6:30 in the morning. I won't be doing that when it is a bit cold outside.

When we woke up, we put our sleeping bags together and cleaned up our cots. We then went out and spent time with the other scouts who were getting breakfast together. I had only taken cereal bars and chocolate milk for this, but was able to score a couple of sausages as well. After clean up, the boys got ready to do some things for their pioneering merit badge. Glen had brought up what we needed and I think they actually enjoyed that. My son enjoyed not having to do any of it, and just watched with us adult leaders.

We packed everything up, and then Dallas came to us with the problem that he had lost his cell phone. It was on vibrate, so to call it seemed useless. We swept the campsite for garbage (and the cell phone) and then sent them out on a nature walk of where they had gone earlier in the morning to get signs of life as well as native plants (for Josh's first class). They came up with nothing. We finally called the cell phone to see if we could hear vibrations in the truck. Sure enough, I heard it. The other two adults didn't, and after I heard it a couple of the scouts could hear it as well. I pulled a sleeping bag out of the truck when I felt the vibration in it. One of the other boys had it packed in with his sleeping bag. I was glad we had found it.

We got home with no further difficulties. We both had showers and did a few things around the house. I scanned a bunch of pictures into the computer for Travis Eagle Court of Honor and then Pam and Zach came home with my daughter. They had gone to a movie. We visited for a bit, and then they were getting ready to leave. We decided that our kids could go with them, of which they were grateful because this would mean they wouldn't have to go to stake conference tomorrow.

After they all left, my wife and I went out to dinner at Wingers. We shared the fajitas that we bought and they were good. We then went to the store to pick up some dessert and bought a few more things while we were there.

After arriving home, we were able to decide the order that we wanted the CD to be burned in, and I finished up some work and got that all ready to take to Glen.

This morning, we got up. I had a migraine during the night that I had gotten to a headache. This headache stayed with me all the way through conference and then just slightly after. During conference I had to go into the foyer for a minute because the lights were hurting my head. I closed my eyes out there for a bit, and then went back in. All of the speakers did a great job and it was an enjoyable conference. One humorous thing that happened was that near the end when the stake president was speaking, the fire alarms went off. The stake president said that he was sending a couple of men out to make sure there was no problem, and continued speaking. The voice came on telling us about the emergency and to evacuate and he joked that it was hard to speak above the racket (which it was). The flashing lights didn't help my headache. Nothing was wrong, but we stayed in there through it all. It was during the last ten minutes of the conference. The closing song was announced and just before it was to happen the sirens and the voice went off again. He came back to the pulpit and announced, "Sing loud". Which we did.

After arriving home from that, I took the CD I had made for the Eagle to Glen so he could come up with a presentation. I then came home and had to go online to take care of some work problems. After finishing that, I relaxed for a bit with my wife. We were finally called by Pam to go on over to the in-laws house to have some dinner and pick up our kids. We did that, and after visiting for a bit, left.

Well, that's the weekend.

What a day

Today was OK at work. There wasn't a lot that went on there out of the ordinary. But, there was not any time to sit around once I arrived home.

The first thing that went on was me helping our son out a little bit with getting those bad memory sticks ready to mail back to the company that sent them. Then, I ended up going to the store to pick up some needed items. I was also able to ask my son if he wanted to come with the Boy Scouts camping or not, and he said he would like to come as long as he didn't need to do everything that they had to do. I told him that would be fine. So, we need to get him some foil dinner stuff as well.

On the way home from the store, I saw my daughter walking with Cambry to the school for their concert that night. I hurried up and ate some dinner and then sat down to read the paper. Lizzy (the dog) wanted to play though, so I did some playing with her and then my wife informed me that I needed to leave to go to the concert. She couldn't go because she had a major headache. She did have a good day today when she went to the temple with Kathryn and Julie. It brought some sweetness into our home. You could just feel it. I then left to go to our daughters concert.

The concert was pretty good, but I read for most of it while listening to the music. After arriving home, I watched one program on TV (Life on Mars) and then went to see what I could come up with as far as printing some stuff on Travis' Eagle invitations. I ended up jamming the printer up really good, and it took me a full hour to get it unjammed. I was a bit nervous that I wouldn't be able to get the paper out of the printer. I finally did it with tweezers, and needle nose pliers. The biggest problem was that there wasn't any room to get my hands in there to pull any of it out. I was just glad to get it all taken care of.

Well, now I'm tired. I guess I'll head off to bed. Oh, and when I printed one of them up, it didn't work out as great as I had hoped. I'll have to talk with my wife tomorrow about what we want to do with this.

Homes for the Homeless

It's hard to believe another week has already gone by. Not too much has been going on to write about though, hence, you don't see me writing here everyday.

On Friday, my wife and I were able to go to a nice lunch and then headed out to Gilgal gardens in Salt Lake. It is a lot prettier when they can get the gardens there, and it is very small. There are some interesting carvings there to look around at. It's free, and we'll have to go back with our kids on another day in the Spring.

On Saturday, my wife and daughter went to Aunt Gladys' home to meet Randy's new wife. My son and I went to a couple of used computer stores to see if he could trade his memory sticks. None of them wanted that from him, so we ended up getting a couple of digital to analog converters for our TV sets. It was a lot of running around for not much. A few days before that we had run around to find some tan pants for our son to wear with a uniform for the Technical school he is at. It was some good times being with my son doing this stuff with him. I think he enjoyed it a little bit too. Our daughter stayed with Pam and Anne for the night, and our son was jealous, partly because our daughter would miss church because of this and he couldn't.

Sunday was the regular church meetings. We did leave from Sacrament meeting after taking the sacrament so we could meet up with the rest of the family because Allen and Libby were in town along with Casey who came to see his twin brother Zach. Of course Casey and Zach didn't show up at all, so we went to a dinner at Ruby River. It was more money than I really wanted to spend, but we did it anyway. It was nice having a visit with Allen and Libby. We talked about all of the years that they have spent being parents of children. I mean, raising your family and then having to raise your grand kids can't have been easy for them.

Monday, I went over to the tech school of my son to see what was going on. I got there near the end (he had been doing it from 7:00 AM until 7:00 PM. I stayed around for the award ceremony. He didn't get one of the awards, but he has informed me that he was in 5th place for his CAD design on a ceiling fan (they gave them what they were to do there and then gave them 4 hours to design it). I am so proud of what he has accomplished in this school.

Today was a busy day for me. It started out not too busy at work, but then at 3:00 I had to head out with Paul to our DR (Disaster Recovery) site. We were to go there to test our processes to see that they would all work if we had a disaster. We had called and they said they were ready for us, but they really weren't. We weren't able to get to the intranet that we needed to be too in order to run our reports. I wasn't able to run my jobs because there were some LDAP problems. We were able to fix those so I could run my jobs, and then we were able to run loss-runs, but all other reports we weren't able to run. I usually leave the office around 4:00, but with this, I left at around 5:00. I took Paul to the TRAX station and then headed home. It took me a full hour to get home. This is why I hate leaving during rush hour.

As I was almost home, I saw my kids walking over to the church for the Young Men/ Young Women activity. I hurried home, said hi to my wife and left for the church. I piled into Brother Beans car to go to the food bank. The roads were still pretty busy, but we got there in pretty good time. At the food bank we grabbed 20 boxes of goods (along with some bags) and then took them to an apartment complex. Once at these apartments, we went in and knocked on the various doors that we had assigned to us to hand them the food. They all got one box of canned goods, one grocery bag of refrigerated items, one grocery bag of frozen items and some apples and oranges. There was also a half gallon of milk each and one bottle of laundry detergent. I went with a group that had three doors to knock on. Two of those weren't in. The third door we had pulled the knocker down (it was pointing upward) and knocked. The lady was a little bit irritated with us until she saw that we had food. She seemed so grateful and happy for this food, and said she would forgive us for using the knocker on the door. They all said, "God bless" and we left.

After delivering the food we were given a tour of the place. These apartments had been open for about a year. In order to live here one has to have been homeless for at least 365 days first. They also need to have a disability. Disabilities include mental, physical and substance abuse. They need to pay at least $25 a month to be there, and if they are out working 1/3 of their paycheck goes to the place, but they can't be making more than just over $600 (I don't remember the exact figure but it was in the 600's). Anyway, we were taken upstairs to a library. Of course there are books in this library and a computer. They can get on the Internet in their and some of them had found their families with the use of the computer. The books they can take if they want (there isn't a checkout of the books). Some people come in and replace more books periodically to keep the library full. We were told about the courtyard outside with barbecue grills so they can socialize since most of these people aren't used to normal socializing behaviors. They also had an exercise room with about 5 treadmills, and a game room that had a couple of billiards tables and air hockey tables. The rooms themselves were quite simple. We went into an empty one. It had a kitchen area and then the living area. It is just a studio apartment. There is a single bed in there and a little bit of furniture. Of course they also have their own bathroom area. It is small, but I'm sure for somebody who has been on the street it was quite nice. They can stay there as long as they like. It was interesting to see how some of these people live. I asked a couple of questions because I can see this as something similar to what we may have to do with my sister-in-law. Of course, she hasn't been homeless for a year and that would disqualify her right there.

Well, that's the week in summary.

Court

Well, today I went to court. I, of course was nervous because I don't like to be in front of authority like that (even though I was not the defendant). At work they had an employee appreciation breakfast. I was able to go to that, and then about an hour and a half later I left for the West Jordan Courthouse. I left early because I was not going to be late to something like this when I have been subpoenaed by the court. I got there early, so sat in the hall and read some books on my palm pilot.

I went into the courtroom ten minutes before I was supposed to be there. There was no judge, just a couple of people scattered about the room. After 11:00 came, they called the judge and told him "we are ready to play" (I wouldn't have worded it that way, but those whose job this is must feel that way).

I had been pulled out by the prosecutor to make sure what my story on the case was. I told him, and he told me to just be honest. I think I would've been the first one up, but the defendant wasn't there. They gave him time to get there.

The first guy got up and was complaining about the court process saying that he hadn't been arraigned or anything else like a regular court would do. The judge told him that he had gone before the traffic referee and decided he wanted to come to court. He claimed that he wasn't given enough time to prepare a defense because he thought there should be all this other stuff that happens first. The judge asked what he thought the paperwork was sent to his home for as far as the court goes. He kept on whining about this and that. He never got to his case. The prosecutor told the judge he was fine with a continuance because his witness had called in five minutes before sounding very sick and said he was sick. The defendant was still complaining about not having time, and the judge asked him why from October 21st until today wasn't enough time? The judge did dismiss the case though, but only because the witness who had been subpoenaed did not show up.

The next case is the one that took up the time. A woman had turned out of a side street onto a four lane highway. It was rush hour and she was turning left. Two lanes of traffic stopped for her, and let her through. When she was in the center median, a guy in a truck with a trailer tried to avoid hitting her by swerving out of that center lane, but his trailer hit her car in the front end totaling her car. He claimed he was trying to turn into the McDonalds there, but she said he was going too fast for that. The people in a building across the street from where she was also made the same claim. I wonder if he was in the center lane and since he had a trailer he knew he couldn't hit the breaks and speeding up may have been the best choice to trying to get around her (although it didn't work). Anyway, that is speculation. In her case she got out of the traffic ticket but not because the judge didn't see her as guilty. The problem was all in the fact that the police had charged her with the wrong crime. The judge told her that she had to make sure all lanes were clear before doing that and this included the center lane. Since the speed limit was 45 miles per hour on this road, he could've been doing up to 45 miles per hour in that lane. But, she did get it dismissed. This is one of the reasons I go to court most of the time when I get a ticket. I didn't the last time though because I thought it was a fair one and charged correctly (what I don't know hopefully didn't hurt me on this one).

Anyway, my case was next. They called for the defendant who wasn't in the courtroom. That is kind of irritating to me partly because I was subpoenaed and had to be there, and partly because it caused me to stress where I really didn't have too. The prosecutor went ahead with the case and described what happened. The officer who was there was asked if she were put under oath if this is what she would've testified too and she said that it was. The judge then asked about the second part of the ticket which was about not having insurance. I spoke up in the back of the courtroom before I could think about it, and the judge asked who I was. The prosecutor let the judge know who I was, and then I could proceed. I begged the judges pardon and told him that I knew he had insurance because after I had gotten the subpoena, I went through my things and found his insurance agent (who had written me about the accident) and that I had called her to see if he was indeed insured at the time of the accident and I had been told that he was. The judge wondered if he had put in the proper stuff but said that based on the evidence that I had, he would not charge the guy with having no insurance. On the other count of failure to yield when turning left, he was found guilty. I was then told to go to the clerk and file that I was there so I could be paid. I asked the clerk (just a teller in the window) how much I would get, and she thought it was a check for $18.50 for being subpoenaed as a witness. That was unexpected on my part, but it will be nice to receive something for it.

Anyway, that's my day at court. I stressed for no good reason.

The day did continue. I went to Young Men tonight where we were doing more on the Physical Fitness merit badge. Brother Bean was there with the boys and we sent him and Brother Olsen over to the park for the running part. They then came back to do the rest of the exercises. In the meantime, Glen and I worked with one of the boys in trying to help him get up to his second class (he already had the physical fitness merit badge). We gave him a few assignments and joined up with the rest.

When I got home, my son pulled me into the computer room and we had another virus on the computer. This one makes the speakers sound like a radio. I shut the computer down and then ran a full scan on both of the computers. I'm pretty certain we found the offending problems and I took them off the computer. My work computer was completely clean, while my personal machine had 2 viruses and 31 adware things that were screwing it up. I also took care of getting rid of MSN messenger (we had tried before but it was still in memory) and another program called Spiral Frog. Hopefully, that will free up the computer to do what we want it to do. I also got for my son Windows 2000 for a PC in his room that he decided to do away with Ubuntu (a Linux operating system) even if he had to get an old copy of something. Well, old copy is what he got. He is satisfied for now. It will be interesting to see for how long.

Odds and Ends

It's been over a week since I last wrote here, so here goes nothing.

Last Tuesday the Scouts started to work on their Personal Fitness Merit Badge. They had forgotten to get a counselor, but we had the boys start working on it anyway as a group. We can vouch for them as the leaders. Hopefully, tomorrow they will have a counselor as they try to do a few more things on this merit badge. The boys got a bit unruly, but were mostly good. After that, we went into the gym and played some basketball. That just lets me know how out of shape I am.

There really isn't much else that happened this week out of the ordinary. I mean, there's piano lessons for our daughter. Our son has been messing around on the computer (and he purchased some RAM for my one computer through some online wheeling and dealing. He put some RAM into the computer and it already runs a lot better. I hope the other RAM he is getting will let the game he wants to run on it go better. Time will tell.

Really, when I say not much is going on, I mean it.

Tomorrow, I have to go to court over my car accident. I was subpoenaed by the City of West Jordan because the other guy is fighting his ticket. I am a bit nervous about that.

A Trip to Rush Valley

Well, it's been another week. So, I find myself trying to stretch my mind out to figure out what happened during the week.

On Monday, I got things figured out that caused the problems over the weekend. Everything stayed up and running without any further problems. That was all good.

Tuesday, I went with the Scouts (the two other groups were included) to Life Flight. It was kind of interesting seeing how they do things. We went into their dispatch area and talked to the people in there with what happens with procedures and then went out to the hangar. We were allowed to walk into one of the planes to see all the dials that mean absolutely nothing to me, and to see how cramped it can get with a patient or two. We also looked at the helicopter and then were able to look (from a distance - we couldn't go up into it) at a newer plane that doesn't have all the dials. It is more computer controlled. Anyway, I think the boys all enjoyed that. Unfortunately, my son was not able to make it to this one (he would've enjoyed it) because he had to do pep band at the school. My wife was able to go to Young Women with our daughter and have a small dinner with a yearly thing that happens with the Young Women program.

The next day that I can think of anything worthy to report would be Friday. I wasn't at work, and just kind of did a few things around the house. Then, in the afternoon, we decided that we would go for a drive up into the mountains and go into Heber City to eat some lunch. On the way there, my wife mentioned that it would be kind of fun to go see J.J. and Laurie out in Rush Valley in their new home/business (a country Store they have opened). We had no idea where it was, but decided that Rush Valley wouldn't be so big so we couldn't find it. The only problem was, we didn't know where Rush Valley was. We knew it was out around Tooele somewhere. We turned the car around and headed out for our adventure.

We went down I-80 and then passed Tooele. We were a bit concerned with the nothingness out there, so turned around on I-80 to go back to Tooele. We went into a gas station to ask about Rush Valley and the attendant there was kind of like, why would you be going there? She said it was 20-30 miles down the highway that was there. We got back in our vehicle and headed out. As we pulled into Stockton, we weren't sure what it was we were looking for. We stopped into the post office in Stockton, and asked a lady there about the Country Store. She knew the place well, and said it was a beautiful place. She told us to keep heading out. Had we not talked to her, we would've turned around and called it a bust.

We finally got to the Country Store, and had made an invalid assumption. We assumed that they would be in the store running it. Instead we found a couple of other ladies who were running it. Plus, the lunch for the day was a burrito which we didn't feel like we wanted. They said the J.J. and Laurie were out at their new place (Pennys - I'm guessing on the spelling). They said that it was between the railroad tracks and Stockton. So, we headed there.

The Country Store was just that. It was an old home renovated so it could be a store with their home upstairs and the store downstairs. They also had a mini restaurant in there to eat. It looked like a cozy place.

J.J. and Laurie hadn't answered their phone when we called so we didn't know what we would find. We did find the place (though it isn't marked yet) and Bill (we don't know him) was working in there. He told us that this was the place, but we had missed them by about 15 minutes. He told us we could come in and see what he was doing. We talked to him for a little bit and then he called Laurie's cell phone. My wife talked to Laurie and they said they would be right over. To hang tight. We had a nice, but brief meeting with them and found out that they will be opening Pennys in about two weeks. It looked like it needed a bit more work than that, but they probably know what they are doing.

Pennys is an old auto shop. They are converting it into a grill which is going to be called Pennys after the old owners of the place. They also own about 7 acres of a lot where it is with a small apartment on the back side of it. They are renting out that, and I thought they mentioned that there was another apartment, though I didn't see that. Anyway, we will have to head back out there in a few weeks to see about this new grill they are setting up. We finally headed back to Tooele and found a hamburger joint and ate there. We then got home from all of that.

Our son told us on the way home that today was the last day for him to register for the ACT tests to be taken in April. We had him do that as soon as he got home.

Saturday was mostly a cleaning day for us. We just stayed home and didn't do too much.

Today, we headed to church, as we do most Sundays. The first two meetings were the same old stuff. In Sacrament meeting (Fast and Testimony) we had a new member stand up and bear his testimony. He had the audience kind of in stitches in explaining what he thought about the LDS church before ever stepping into one. He then told us that the MormonAds make the LDS church members look about perfect but he has found that we are just as screwed up as everybody else out there. That all got a good laugh. My kids said, you mean all we have to do is make fun of our church for a laugh? I say, we should laugh at ourselves periodically just to keep some form of sanity in this insane world. My daughter liked Brother Wallaces dads testimony the best because of his heavy Scottish accent. In her words, "That is so cool!". Anyway, the rest of today was pretty mundane stuff in our mundane little lives.