The Webblog

Potty Training, Preschool, Kitty

2012-02-04T17:26:00.000-07:00

Aayla is officially potty trained!!  Yay!  Well, except for pooping.  She still doesn't quite know how to do that in the toilet.  She doesn't have any wet accidents though so I'm happy.  I'm impressed how quickly she picked it up and glad there are no more diapers, except when she sleeps.  Aayla thinks she's so big in her new panties.

Aayla was able to join us in our little neighborhood Joyschool last week.  She absolutely loved it.  It was funny watching her interact with the other girls.  She thought she was one of them and acted so big.  I've really enjoyed teaching them.  They are super cute and fun.  Here is them with the monsters we made.

Ellery lately has been back to being a kitty.  She's been going back and forth between a kitty and a wolf.  So now that she's a kitty she wears a little necklace that she calls her 'kitty collar.'  She also wears Aayla's shirt bib backwards and calls it her 'kitty cape.'  Some days she's a super kitty with special powers.  I have to laugh at her all the time because she is so funny!

Lastly, I just wanted to post this picture because it makes me laugh.  Their face's are just such different shapes.  :)

Marathon

2012-01-22T22:54:00.000-07:00

So...I obviously stopped posting about my training.  One, I don't really like sitting down and blogging,  I get too impatient and it's hard for me to put my thoughts down in words.  Two, I lost my running watch with all my run times and paces and that just really pissed me off.  I really wanted to see how my times have been improving (which they totally did) and when I lost all that data I just gave up on the whole recording thing.  Well I finished all my training and did the marathon last week on Sunday.  It was awesome!!  I really enjoyed it.  I ran with my sister Annie the whole time.  I wasn't sure I'd like that cause I'm not used to running with anyone, but it ended up being really fun.   I focused on all the positive things going on and how good I felt.  The time seemed to go by really fast the first 20 or 21 miles. It was about the last 5 that were killer.  I hurt so so bad and just wanted to stop.  The thought of running 5 more miles seemed so hard and overwhelming.  I remember thinking that I was not going to do another marathon every again.  But, I got through it and even ended up sprinting to the finish line.  That was really cool.  I didn't think I had anymore energy left, but when I saw the end I knew I had to finish strong and just go for it.  Annie followed my lead and we crossed just a second within each other.  My recovery was much quicker than the first marathon I did.  I was quite sore, but it was bearable.  By Tuesday my legs felt fine.  I will most likely do another marathon even though I told myself I wouldn't.  Thank you to everyone for supporting me and being there for me.  It was awesome to have all my family and Jacob's family there at the end.

Millie

Time 4:33:25

Pace 10:26

Annie

Time 4:33:26

Pace 10:26

Rob

Time 4:25:52

Pace 10:09

Katie (1/2)

Time 2:05:58

Pace 9:37

Millie & Annie crossing the finish line

Rob at the Finish line

Mile 7

All the runners.

Just kidding, I got 2:03:58

Playing Outside.

2012-01-08T15:35:00.000-07:00

It's crazy how just a few days ago, the girls were playing outside with their bikes and no jackets, and now they are bundled up playing in the snow!

Happy Birthday Aayla!

2011-12-31T16:06:00.001-07:00

Love this girl....

....and now she's 2!!!

We started her day by opening presents. She got a mermaid Mrs. Potato Head from Grandma Webb. We gave her a pooh bear potty chair, Lalaloopsy soft doll, pooh bear toothbrush, and little pooh bear books. She loved them all!!

The rest of the day she played with all her new things and napped while I made her cake. She wanted a Pooh Bear cake. I'm super happy with how it turned out. I'm surprised too because this was the worse batch of fondant I've made and up until right before my family came over I didn't have a Pooh Bear to put on top. It all got worked out though and here is the finished cake.

That night my family came over and she got even more presents. She got a baby stroller and pretend baby food from my parents, a Tinkerbell backpack from Katie, and a big full shirt bib from Abbie. She thinks Aayla's messy or something.

We dug into her cute cake afterward. I always feel bad cutting into cakes I spend all day making, oh well. It was cherry chip cake with vanilla buttercream frosting and was super yummy! I never make cherry cake and so forget that I like it. I think Aayla had a good birthday. She is such a sweet, fun little girl and we love her so much.

Merry Christmas

2011-12-28T11:47:00.000-07:00

It was a good year...

The girls were happy to get cereal in their stockings.

Ells was even happier to get a Mack truck with hot wheel cars to put inside.

And Aayla loves her new little ponies.

Princess Ellery

2011-12-28T11:26:00.000-07:00

I know...the words 'princess' and 'Ellery' don't really go together. She is not a princess girl. She likes cars and trains and tractors. But Ellery got invited to a princess birthday party for one of her friends. We had to borrow some dress-ups from mom because we don't have any. She was so cute. We don't usually see Ellery all girlied up so I thought I should blog about it. Here are the results.....

And of course here is a silly face.

2011 in Pictures

2011-12-07T22:08:00.005-07:00

This year I didn't make the slide show all that fancy. I just don't have the time. A few things I wasn't able to include (besides captions for the slides) Ellery learned to rider her bike never used training wheels, Millie is training for her second marathon in January 2012, I (Jacob) completed my first clinical rotation at Physiotherapy Associates of Scottsdale in AZ, and Aayla learned to talk finally!

It was a good and busy year. I had to sift through over 4,000 pictures that were taken in this calendar year alone, and the year is not even over!!!

We wish you all the best in the year to come! Merry Christmas and a Happy 2012!!!

Walt Disney World Preview...

2011-11-19T21:22:00.000-07:00

It's been so much fun so far!!!

Halloween 2011

2011-11-06T21:48:00.000-07:00

I love Halloween. It is so much fun. This year was the first time we had a theme with our costumes. Ellery was the big bad wolf. Aayla was little red riding hood. Millie was the grandma and Jacob was the woodsman.

The wolf scaring the grandma....

....and little red....

....and everyone!

Angry Birds.

Minnie Mouse.

Duct Tape man.

Hippie and super dog.

We all went trick or treating together.

Ells As loved getting candy!

Especially Aayla!!!

She's just so little and cute.

Candy candy candy!

Aayla had a second costume...the Coppertone baby!!

Happy Birthday Dad

2011-11-06T21:09:00.001-07:00

Happy Birthday to my Dad! We love him very much!

Best gift of the night.....Gallon Bottle of Smokey Chipotle Tabasco Sauce.

Second best gift....magnifying glass to help him see!

56 years.

Aayla just likes to lick the ice cream container.

The Dog Who Saved Halloween...

2011-10-29T23:04:00.000-06:00

Tonight was a special treat for Ellery. I told her earlier that if she took her nap then we would watch a Halloween movie later. I was very impressed because she said ok, went straight to her room, got in her bed, pulled the covers and went to sleep! (this is NOT like Ellery) So after trunk-or-treat with our ward we went to a local Red Box. The movie she wanted was a Cat in the Hat Halloween special but it was out of stock. I tried explaining this to Ellery but she simply did not care and starting crying and making a scene. Since there were people behind us in line we just left. Ellery finally calmed down in the car and said she'd be good and asked if we could go to another Red Box. I agreed and took her to another one. I'm pretty sure the first movie she saw was "The Dog Who Saved Halloween" and immediately wanted it. So this is what we watched tonight! I layed out blankets and pillows and we watched the movie while the girls scarfed down all of their candy. (Well mostly Aayla scarfed...Ellery would politely ask, mom may I please have another piece of my candy?) Back to the movie...It's JUST like a cheesy, bad-acting, kid-version of "The Burbs." The best part was one scene showing the moon and you hear a wolf howling. Ellery lit up and said, "Mom did you hear that? I'm in this movie! That was me!!" It was sooo funny. She makes me laugh. Yes, her costume was a wolf this year. It was a fun night.

WEEK 4: 3,5,3,8

2011-10-25T21:04:00.000-06:00

3) Didn't run!! Too busy playing in Arizona with my cute kids.

5) Didn't run!! Too busy playing in Mexico on the beach, eating paletas, cookies, brownies and tacos.

3) Didn't run!! Too busy in Mexico again, eating brownies, drinking coke, clamming, and relaxing.

8) Ran 8.04 miles in 1:18:55. Average pace was 9:49. Finally back into running again. I had a horrible running week, meaning didn't run at all. (although the week itself was awesome) So today's run was good. My left hamstring is really starting to hurt. I've been stretching really good after all my runs but is still hurts. I thought after not running all week would have helped it but it aches extra much today. My right hip is also starting to ache. It was hurting back when I was training for ragnar and now it's back. I think it's time to start icing after my runs. I did take some ibuprofen right before. During the run I tried being really positive. I ran on new roads and I think this really helps me. I kept myself curious about what was up ahead and what this new area looked like. I was excited to keep going because I wanted to see new places. I also took my running belt and drank about every 1.5-2 miles. I felt pretty energized and not exhausted at all.

WEEK 3: 3,4,3,7

2011-10-25T20:52:00.000-06:00

3) Ran 2.82 miles in 25:26. Average pace was 9:01. I did good today. I pushed myself to go faster. It ended up being fine because the weather was cooler. I'd like to try and increase my speed during my short runs.

4) Ran 4.07 miles in 39:12. Average pace was 9:38. Another good run. I felt good throughout it. I ate a nurtrigrain bar and a cup of water before leaving. No side aches.

3) Today's run was also good. Nothing special. I went at a good pace. I felt energized. I realized I stopped my watch during the run and never restarted it so I don't have a pace to record.

7) Ran 7 miles in 1:10:39. Average pace was 10:06. I felt great today. I took my running belt and drank water through out the run. I had a nutrigrain bar before. I really enjoyed this run. It was fun.

WEEK 2: 3, 4, 3, 6

2011-10-25T20:45:00.000-06:00

3) I went 3.24 miles in 31 minutes. Average pace was 9:34. I felt good during this run. I stretched and warmed up a little more before heading out. I started out strong but by the end I was definitely going slower. The wind was blowing which made it so nice. I wasn't as hot. I really kept focusing on relaxing my arms. I notice I get anxious toward the end and when I finish I'm so tired and feel I couldn't have gone any longer. I'd like to get to the point where I finish a run and still feel like I have a lot of energy and can keep going. It's probably more in my head.

4) I ran 4 miles in 40:26. Average pace was 10:09. I felt great today. Was I just complaining about the heat?? Cause it's so cold today! I think I run better in the cold though. I didn't get that weak feeling. I didn't lose like 7 pounds of water from sweating either :) It was great. I also took my time today. I didn't go as fast as I usually do. My hands were freezing though. I wish I had gloves. By the end my forearms were numb.

3) Didn't run.

6) Ran 6.04 miles in 1:00:44. Average pace was 10:04. I felt really good during the whole run. The weather was perfect...nice and cool. I took it easy for the first 10-15 minutes then got going a little faster. I never felt the need to stop and never got overwhelmed and anxious to finish. I think I do better with the longer runs because I know I'll be out longer and will just do it. Rather than 3-4 mi runs I think, "Oh this is so short and easy, I'll just hurry and get this done." and then I get anxious toward the end. I did feel like I could keep going when I finished! Looking foward to more runs!

A Day at the Phoenix Zoo

2011-10-04T23:18:00.005-06:00

We went to the Phoenix Zoo today. The weather was great for the kids (not too hot or sunny) and Ellery was having so much fun she didn't even seem to mind the wind that picked up in the early afternoon!

We got to see/pet the sting rays, feed the giraffes, and see pretty much all the animals in action. I think the slightly cooler temps brought them out of daytime sleep mode, so it all made for a good day! Plus, it helped that the kids were all pretty well behaved with no uncontrolled traumatic meltdowns. :)

The video should be fixed now.

Week 1: 3,4,3,5

2011-10-04T16:59:00.000-06:00

I just finished my first week of marathon training. That's right I am going to be running another marathon this coming January. It's a good reason for me to get into better shape again, mentally and physically. So according to my training it recommends me to write down how each of my runs go right after I finish them. It will help me reflect on what I need to work on and what has helped me get through some runs. So here is where I'd like to record this. I promise it won't be very interesting. I am doing this for me and to encourage me to stick with my training. Don't feel obligated to read on. :)

3) I ran this run with Esme in the stroller. I felt pretty winded throughout the run. My side ached pretty bad for most of it. Toward the end I had to briefly stop because the pain was so bad. I also felt like I was a little dehydrated. The temperature was fairly warm and I was sweating a lot. I finished but I don't think this was a very good run at all. I'd rate this run 4 RPE.

4) This was a better run. My side still hurt but not as bad. I never had to stop. I still got really hot and wished I had more water in me. I focused more on my form. My arms and shoulders were more relaxed. I tend to flex my arms more than 90 degrees which apparently you aren't supposed to do. I really concentrated on letting them be loose with my thumb and pointer finger just touching. This keeps my fists from clenching. I felt so exhausted at the end. This discourages me cause I feel I need to be in better shape and not have these short runs drain me so much.

3) So far my best run this week. Still had that same side ache but much less than both runs this week. Maybe its because I have so much on my mind but it went by faster today. Still focused on my form but for the most part I was distracted and just ran til I was done.

5) This was a good run. I never really got a side ache! I was focusing on my form and was deep into thought. I was really hot though. I really discovered how much I really don't like running in the heat. I get so hot and sweaty and start feeling weak. In my training it says to tell yourself it doesn't matter toward whatever element is bugging you. So I just said to myself a lot, "it is hot but it doesn't matter, I will keep running and finish despite how hot I am." I got through and felt good and relieved when I was done.

Havasupai 2011

2011-09-25T21:38:00.002-06:00

So, Millie has been bugging me to post about our Havasupai hike for the past few weeks now since I have the computer here in AZ with all the picts on it. However, since I don't want to write a long post about how absolutely beautiful it is down there since the reality is, words, and even pictures, don't do the place justice, I'll just say:

If you haven't been, go.

Also, here are a few tips:
1. getting a mule to pack your pack down and out is worth it.
2. don't bother bringing a tent.
3. have PLENTY of water for the hike out... at LEAST 3 liters.
4. bring a camera, extra battery and a memory card with space to spare
5. bring some cash. although the village takes cards, sometimes their machines can be down and/or will require you to purchase a minimum before you can use a card
6. bring a pair of hiking shoes for getting down and back out - but have a pair of water socks or water shoes with drainage in the sole for playing in the falls
7. there are no fires allowed in the canyon, so make sure if you need to heat anything you bring a small camp stove... and something to light it with.
8. Mountain House is pretty much the best backpacking food ever created.
9. check the depth of the water before jumping from any falls/rocks.
10. respect the land and make some great memories!!!

day 1 alone.

2011-09-09T17:17:00.000-06:00

Today was my first day at home alone. I stayed up late last night finishing Fable Haven 3. So because of that and since I am working tonight I was able to sleep in, yay! It's quite quiet in the house. I watered the garden and cleaned out all the rotting tomatoes. Then I did a little online shopping, pinteresting and facebooking. I went for a 3.5 mile run. It ended up being a horrible run. I had to stop twice. I don't think I drank enough water. Then i showered and went to the store. I had to buy more toiletries that I left behind in Arizona since I was flying home and they didn't meet the less than 3oz. rule. When I got home I picked some good tomatoes and made a bunch of salsa! mmmm. Whenever I'm at Tevia's it inspires me to make some salsa. So now I'm eating my dinner (with my salsa) and will head to work in just a few minutes. I'll hopefully be working a lot from here on out to make the time here alone go by faster.

Ellery's First Day Riding a Bike

2011-08-25T12:51:00.004-06:00

Millie and I differ on several things in life; then again, I probably differ with most people on most things about life. One of those things we differ on is the school of thought when it comes to learning how to ride a bike. I STRONGLY disagree with the use of training wheels. I absolutely hate them and the idiot that invented the stupid things. Millie, on the other hand, believed they were a safe means to teach a child to ride a bike. Instead of butting heads over the trivial matter, Millie turned to the internet for other alternatives. She discovered a method to train which includes removing the pedals, allowing the child to learn to walk, then run, then coast on the bike, then putting the pedals back on and letting the child take the next, natural, step to actually ride the bike.

The idea looked logical and most likely effective, so we decided (together) to give it a shot.

We bought Ellery a small bike for her birthday (in April) and removed the pedals. The weather here in Utah was less than conducive to bike riding (rain, rain and snow) back in April and May, so the bike hung in the garage for most of the summer. We got it out once or twice and had to force her to get on it (she insisted on only riding her tricycle). One of the reasons she didn't want to ride the bike was because it was Dora, and not Disney's Cars. So we compromised with her and I got her a Cars helmet to ride with. We put her on the bike a few more times (without pedals) throughout the summer for a total of maybe a few hours or so.

Yesterday, Millie got the bike out again and decided to put the pedals back on. She did, and within a couple of hours Ellery was not only riding her bike, she learned how to start and stop all by herself!!! She thinks she's so big.

Granddaddy Basin 2011

2011-08-24T21:15:00.006-06:00

Although the Walls couldn't make it up to Utah this year for the annual Uinta trip I decided to keep the new tradition alive since it's such a great trip! No, I didn't go alone; I don't think all the arguing in the world would ever convince Millie to let me do that - I might get eaten by an imaginary bear or something. No big deal, I'd rather have some company anyway so I invited a few friends. My brother-in-law Brandon was the only one of those friends that could make it and I was glad to have him along!

The hike in was great. We started the hike around 1030am on Monday; perfect weather. We took our time with the 2.5 mile hike to our camping spot on the west side of Betsy Lake and set up camp before heading out to "Walter's Hole" to get a little fishing in.

It was a good first day of fishing as I reeled in this BEAUTIFUL 21+ inch brook trout!! She was big, fat and feisty with teeth that matched her temper.

Although that was the only catch from Walter's Hole that day, I think Brandon was almost as happy to see such a fish as I was to catch it... well, maybe not quite as excited. Still, it made for a great start to the fishing trip. Oh, and for those of you that might be wondering, I let the fish go. Something that big and beautiful needs to all the chances it can take to pass on those genes and ensure good fishing for my children someday!

When we got back from Walter's Hole I was so exhausted (and a little dehydrated) from the day's activities that I got a killer migraine... so bad in fact it made me vomit - four times. Then I lied down and took a two hour nap. When I got up, we went fishing some more at Betsy Lake. That night, Brandon and I were exhausted so we ate our Mountain House dinners (delicious!!!) and hit the sack. The night sky was crystal clear and moonless so the stars were out in full force. I can't remember the last time I saw the milky way so bright, so vivid, all the way across the sky!!!! We couldn't figure out what it meant! :)

The forest was absolutely silent, so ANY noise we did hear tended to wake us up, it's hard to sleep soundly when you're that vulnerable to the forces of nature.

The next day we got up early (for Brandon) and headed Betsy for some fishing. I caught a good sized cutthroat trout but Brandon's luck wasn't making for much of a fishing trip still. I decided to take him to the ace-in-the-hole fishing spot of the Granddaddy Basin - Shadow Lake. It was everything I promised him it would be. We caught a fish with EVERY cast; lost count after 20 or so. A few of the fish we pulled out, gutted and fire roasted right there by the lake - can't get any fresher than that. It was Brandon's first time cleaning his own fish, and his first time cooking and eating one over a fire like that. The fish from Shadow aren't huge, but they're delicious and fun to catch!

After a few hours of catching fish after fish we decided to make the trek back to camp for a rest before heading back to Walter's Hole. On our way back to camp, we took a short cut up the side of a cliff on the way back to camp and, being boys, we could resist to roll a few boulders from the top. We got a few REALLY big ones to get some good momentum, but didn't think to video until after we had run out of the big boulders to roll - but we got a few vids of some of the smaller ones.

We got back to camp, took a nap, then headed back out to try our luck one more time at Walter's Hole. It wasn't looking very good as we could see ANYTHING surfacing or swimming around out in the crystal clear water. Then, all of a sudden, Brandon got a bite! I rushed over to help him land it and take pictures. Another beautiful big brook trout! Not quite as big as the one I caught the day before, but not much smaller either. After pictures, we let his fish go as well.

It seems Walter's Hole will only give up one fish per day, because the remaining few hours of fishing resulted in nothing.

That night we made a huge hot fire to celebrate as we talked about the trip's accomplishments. Both Brandon and I had caught more fish than we bothered to count AND our own personal record fish as well. We could go home happy.

Note: Just for an idea of how big my fish was, the Utah state record for a brook trout (catch and release) is 23" caught by Travis L. Clark on 12/06/97 at Boulder Mountain. Next time I go up there, I'm bringing a tape measure, not just my arm and a camera.

It was a good thing we had such a good day yesterday. This morning, we got up, went to fish at Betsy (because it's the closest in proximity to our campsite) but after a few hours of casting and reeling with no fish to land or release, we decided to call it a day, head back to clean up camp and head home.

I really look forward to next years trip!

Other trip highlights:

There was snow up there this year! Quite a bit. I went sliding down it on West Granddaddy Mountain.

The bugs were RIDICULOUS!!! The past two years I don't remember then being ANY bugs. This year the mosquitoes and mutant flies were out in full force. The mosquitoes wouldn't leave Brandon alone and the flies seemed to think my head was some sort of playground. So annoying!

Rolling boulders was great, a first time experience for Brandon, and something that never gets old for the boy child in all of us!

The Basin was pretty much empty. There were only two other cars at the trail head when we came in - camping in that much solitude is something everyone should experience at least once in their lifetime.

The weather was PER-FECT!!! An occasional puffy cloud during the day to keep the sun at bay, temps in the high 70s - low 80s, and the clearest moonless nights at night with lows in the mid 40s. We took the fly cover off the tent last night and slept "under the stars" since Brandon's tent is full mesh from about 8" off the ground and all the way around without the fly on.

It's always fun to see big game in the wild. We saw several deer (mostly does - female deer, not "does" as in "that does it") and a fawn and one big buck.

I hate the English language.

Anyway, a great trip! Looking forward to next year!!!

Camping, Derby, Chalk

2011-08-23T23:14:00.000-06:00

We finally went camping this year! We realized we hadn't gone all summer and since it is coming to an end, decided to go. Katie, Brandon and Esme came with us.

Jacob and I found a nice camp ground up Hobble Creek Canyon. It was nice to get away and have fun. The girls playing in the stream and attempted to fish early on in the day. Katie took them for a little walk. Dinner was hot dogs, then the kids went to bed. I'd like to say it was pretty uneventful from there but....well, we heard Aayla crying in the tent after being in there a while. Jacob checked on and found she had opened a brand new tube of A&D diaper rash cream. More than half was gone. It was smeared all over the blankets, sleeping bags and all over her mouth. If you don't know Aayla, she loves to eat creams, lotions, soaps, etc. You have to be careful with that girl. I knew she had eaten some. I figured a lot since she was very pale and started choking and crying and acting like she was going to throw up. I held her and she eventually calmed down. I got really paranoid and worried what it would do to her. There was no cell phone reception in the canyon so I couldn't just call Poison Control. I finally decided to drive all the way back down the canyon to call. They told me she would could be nauseous, vomit, or have diarrhea. Great. Back to the canyon we went and she was fine. By then it was dark. We stayed up by the fire talking and laughing, then went to bed. Breakfast was our traditional biscuits and gravy made by Jacob. Yum!

Before we left I took the girls down to the water to play some more. Ells didn't want to get her clothes wet. NONE of them! She just loves to be naked any excuse she can find.

This past weekend we were able to go to the Demolition Derby with Brandon and Katie. Why haven't I ever been to one of these before?? It was so awesome!! Who knew a bunch of old beat up cars crashing into each other until they no longer can run could be so entertaining? Did I mention it was awesome, cause it was. I just need to remember to bring earplugs next time. Don't make fun...I just want to protect my hearing. I'd like to keep it when I'm old and decaying.

Jacob caught a T-shirt. He was very happy.

The girls lately have been really into side-walk-chalk. Ellery loves drawing 'stories', or 'parties'. She is so funny. I can't remember what kind of party she had the other day, but it was some theme party she had drawn. Here is a picture of her drawing the story of the 3 little pigs. It's hard to tell but the yellow is the straw house, the black is the stick house and the blue is the brick house. She drew the 3 pigs in pink and then started drawing the big bad wolf in black on top of the pigs because he was chasing them, and then blowing on their houses. Note the eyebrows on the wolf. They are angry eyebrows.

Aayla loves the chalk so much too. She pretty much likes to draw on anything. I keep having to tell her to just draw on the ground. She goes for the front door, patio pillars, retaining wall bricks, siding of the house, etc.

The Dumping Place

2011-08-19T10:30:00.005-06:00

I know the vast majority of the few posts I have done in the last year have been about our home/yard; this one is no exception.

Our grass and gardens have been doing great this summer, with only a few unfortunate exceptions. Millie decided to have a slip n slide party a few weeks ago and left the plastic tarp out way too long on a day that was way too hot. Needless to say, there is a nice 8'x 10' dead grass burn mark in the back yard. Honestly though, as frustrating as that is, the remedy is simple enough: remove plastic, water frequently, mow out dead grass as new grass grows. However, shortly after the burn, another spot appeared in one of the nearby corners of the yard. Literally, a spot.

My first thought was something along the line of "that's a strange looking dead spot." It just appeared out of nowhere and almost a perfect circle. I thought for sure this was the result of another one of Salisbury's lazy ass waste management techniques which meant I was probably going to have to break out some more concrete to save my lawn.

I was right.

It was impossible to tell just how deep the round of concrete waste was, but I took my 16lb. sledge hammer to it for about three minutes without making a scratch. It was a hot day, so I decided to give it a rest for the time being.

This morning I decided to have another go at it. I beat at the concrete again with the sledge for about 5 min. and it cracked - not much, but enough. I started to pry at it with my shovel and was able to remove a piece. With each piece that came out I thought to myself how I'm rescuing my lawn. However, with each piece that came out I had to tear more lawn up to remove more and more concrete. By the end of it all, that small spot of dead grass was just the tip of the concrete waste pile that was lurking under my lawn, waiting for enough dry hot days to kill my beautiful green carpet!You can see the dead spot from the slip n slide in the back ground of this pict... it is getting much better than it was originally.

It's a comforting to know all that concrete is now out and will be one less thing I'll have to worry about while I'm away on clinical rotations this fall, but it frustrates me to no end to think about how careless Salisbury was with our yard during construction. Oh well, it's done.

Blogging

2011-08-07T23:31:00.001-06:00

I have mixed feelings about blogging lately. Sometimes I feel it is stupid and pointless and a waste of time. It takes me away from more productive activities. I don't really feel I can justify taking time to sit down and blog when we have been living out of a laundry basket all week, or there are dishes in the sink, or I just want to take a nap. (cause who doesn't love naps?) Besides, who really cares if I blog or don't blog? It's not like our lives our so interesting that people are sitting on edge wondering what we have been up to. Plus I don't think many people even read it or are heart broken when I stop blogging. If there are no updates here, there are plenty of other blogs that people can waste their time with reading. (Don't worry, I'm not looking for any compliments or a status on who actually looks at this blog.)

On the other hand, I'm not a total Debbie Downer when it comes to blogs. I would like to keep it updated. If only for me to document our lives or write down some feelings or funny things that the kids do. It's fun to look back and remember fun times. So...despite how I think blogging is kind of stupid, I feel the need to do it. I'm going to try and update more often.

Since it's been ages since I've written anything, here is a brief update of the last 4 months...

In May, Jacob and I took Ellery to Disneyland and it was awesome! Ellery absolutely loved it. Her favorite ride was "It's a Small World." She still sings the song almost every day.

Jacob's birthday was in May. We had a pinate that everyone pulls a string and there is only one that will open it and let the candy out. Ellery went first and it so happened to be the string that opened the flap. It was a little disappointing but Ellery loved it. Here's all the kids rushing in to get the candy.

Aayla's just cute on Memorial Day.

In June I went to Girls Camp for a week and it was a lot of fun! I love all the girls in our ward. The following week I ran in the Ragnar Relay with a group of 12 people I work with. We ran 192 miles!! It was a hard but a lot of fun. I love running.

Katie and I took the girls mini golfing. Bad idea... Aayla running all over the place, Ellery taking FOREVER to hit her ball in, Esme crying, too many bags, balls, clubs, to hold, and the heat, oh the heat. We stopped after hole 8 or 9. The racetrack was a lot funner.

Fourth of July is one of my favorite holidays. I pretty much missed it this year. I had to work the night of Stadium of Fire Fireworks and on July 4th. My family got together with my cousins and had a barbeque and fireworks. I was sad to miss both nights of fun. I did, however, get to participate in the Freedom Run. It was my dad's idea to have the whole family run in the 5K on the morning of July 4th. It was really cool. I think we'll do it every year!

My birthday was in July. We had a cake decorating contest with my family. It was fun. I made a bunch of mini cakes, fondant, and frosting and gave everyone 1 hour to make a cake. Everyone did a really good job. Abbie was the winner though with her Nemo cake. It was a good birthday, I got a lot of fun gifts too!

Annie's birthday was the next day and we spent the afternoon at my house playing slip n slide! Ya I know that's a total kid game, but it was so much fun. We've pulled it out a couple time since and let Ells and A's play on it. Aayla mostly liked to drink the water.

Abbie and I had a contest who could make the ugliest face....you decide the winner.

Ellery still thinks she is a kitty.

Aayla has been eating Otter Pops all summer.

Brinley and Meggie spent a few weeks here. Ellery was in heaven. She loved having them to play here to play with. She usually ends up in a fairy or princess dress when they are here. She looks cute, but totally our of place.

Our garden is getting so big. We've been eating a lot of squash, zucchini and tomatoes lately.

Jacob pulled out a huge chunk of concrete under our grass. The grass wasn't growing and turning yellow so he found the problem.

They are cute girls and like their big Teddy Bear.

Home

2011-05-31T18:10:00.004-06:00

Words can't express how good it feels to have a lawn, green, lush, beautiful. The yard isn't finished but it's definitely coming along! We even got a peach and a nectarine tree planted this weekend!

The Yard

2011-05-10T19:02:00.003-06:00

So, we got the sod down just before our Disneyland trip. It looks great, but the rest of the yard still needs to get finished. Hoping I can get it done before I start school back up again next week!!

DESERT TRIP 2011

2011-04-26T15:36:00.000-06:00

Desert Trip this year was fun. Much less windy than 2 years ago when we went, although it was quite windy the first day and very cold the last. The kids had a fun time being outside. Ells loved playing with Enok. It was fun to see our family and friends. We have no pictures for the last day due to our camera breaking because of all the sand. The same thing happened to our camera last desert trip. I was even more careful with it and it still broke. :(

Face Change

2011-04-18T20:36:00.008-06:00

Sometimes, a face change is good... sometimes, not so good.

For example:

Good Face change - the recent work done on our yard

Before:

After:

And of course, there are bad face changes... for example:

Before:

and After:

Yes, Aayla tried to pick a fight with the concrete steps and patio at grandma and grandpa Roper's this last weekend... She lost.

Despite the changes, good or bad, life goes on. We're excited for the other changes that are to come soon around the house! We'll be posting them shortly!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ELLERY #4

2011-04-04T21:38:00.000-06:00

Happy birthday to Ellery!! Yesterday we had a fun birthday for Ells. She woke up to see that her 'angry bird' had flown out of her room leaving little white dots that led down to her presents. She thought that was pretty funny. We got her a new bike, fishing pole, glow in the dark stars and bubblegum. Since it was conference Sunday, we went to my parents house and had a yummy breakfast. After conference Ellery got some presents from my family...Tangled, Just Dance for kids, dress, shoes, new outfit, and a remote control truck. I think she loves all of her presents because every time I ask her what her favorite one was she says something different. We played her Just Dance game and oh my goodness, she is so funny to watch dance!! She chose her birthday dinner which was chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, broccoli, and refried beans. To end the day we had birthday cake. She wanted an Angry Birds cake, so that's what we made her. Jacob made the birds and the pigs, and he helped me assemble it together. I liked the way it turned out despite how bad the frosting job was and the fact that the cake broke while I was getting it out of the pan. I can't believe how big she has gotten. Ellery is so silly, crazy and funny. We love having her in our family.

Cloth diaper and pre-birthday dinner.

2011-04-02T22:58:00.000-06:00

The other day Aayla had a really bad diaper rash. She kept waddling when she walked and when I held her she wouldn't let her bottom touch me at all. Poor girl. I wanted to let her bottom air out for a while without her diaper, but I didn't want her peeing all over the carpet. So I grabbed a cloth diaper that has never been used as a diaper but rather a burp cloth, and pinned it on her!! I thought she looked so funny, and she even thought it was a little weird and kept grabbing at it.

Tonight we all went to IHOP to celebrate Ellery's birthday (which is tomorrow). She has been asking both Jacob and I to take her there ever since we moved to Springville. Since her birthday is on Sunday we decided to go today. Ellery makes me laugh. She is the silliest, most grown up girl. She had no problem talking to our waitress and telling her what she wanted. She is much braver than me when I was younger. She ordered her food but instead of her eggs scrambled she ordered them poached. What 4-year-old asks for poached eggs??? Mine does!! Then after our drinks were brought to us, she asked our waitress for a lemon. When we were getting ready to leave, she again blurted out to our waitress, "Can I get a box for my food?" Nobody even asked her if she wanted one, she just asked! Seriously, she makes me laugh.

Here she is drinking her yoke from her poached egg that was very runny. Eww eww eww.

Aayla was on the naughty list though. She is starting to be pretty picky and particular about everything. She wanted to drink all by herself and eat her food and everyone else's food and who knows what else she wanted, but she wanted it and she let everyone know. Oh well, we still love her even though the sweet little happy baby she once was is turning into a tantrum throwing, whining, crying toddler. :)

Celery and the Jedi

2011-04-01T08:54:00.001-06:00

Sometimes I wish I carried around a video camera and/or a voice recorder whenever I'm around Ellery and Aayla. El's has been saying more and more funny things lately, especially her nightly prayers - they're much less repetitious and much more... well... heartfelt I'm sure, at least in her eyes - but she does pray for some funny things. The other night for FHE she prayed that we could go get ice cream afterward. A's is getting so big - I guess that's a normal part of life. But it's nice to see her learning and growing. The past few days she's REALLY seemed to start using more of her sign language and even seems to try to verbally communicate more too... although, everything still just comes out as a series of babbles, at which she just laughs.

I wanted to just post a couple recent picts of each of the girls. It's difficult to get a picture of Ellery with her clothes on so here's one of her showing off her leprechaun socks grandma and grandpa Roper gave her.

As you all know, Aayla LOVES to eat, so I had to throw an eating pict in.

Today we all had a picnic in our neighbor's yard (it's okay, we know them)... we don't get grass for another four weeks. That can seem like a long ways off, but when there's still SO much to get done before it gets here, I'm almost wishing I had a couple extra weeks!

Aayla is a pretty smiley baby.

My baby is all grown up....

2011-03-30T16:50:00.000-06:00

....Her first piggies!!!

Aayla eats. She eats and eats and eats and eats and eats.

2011-03-11T21:24:00.000-07:00

(think theme song to Martha Speaks..)

Oh my goodness does this baby love to eat food!!! She definitely has discovered the joys of eating. Hence the chubby cheeks. I had to record her last night eating hers peas cause she just makes me laugh!!

Through The Eyes of a Three-Year-Old

2011-03-07T09:05:00.005-07:00

Every now and then Ellery gets a hold of our camera and I usually just delete the hundreds of pictures she takes. However, the other day I was about to "permanently" delete some of her photos when I realized - what a great opportunity to see the world through her eyes! These are not the best pictures she's ever taken, but they're ones I was about to delete. Enjoy!

Owl Mail

2011-03-03T16:32:00.000-07:00

If witches and wizards can learn to do so much magic such as: fix broken glasses immediately, grow new bones in their arms, unlock doors, command an object to fly into their hands, even apparate their entire selves somewhere in a matter of seconds, you would think they could come up with a better way to deliver their mail other than owls! I mean even us in the muggle world have better way of delivering our messages via email, text, blogs etc. But these witches and wizards have to wait for an owl to fly and deliver their mail! Just a thought..... Plus I don't think it's very nice to interupt their sleep.

I'm not old yet...

2011-02-28T17:34:00.000-07:00

Ellery asked how old I was and I said 26. She then asked, "why 26 is a lot mom?" So I told her because I was really old. She then replied in her sweet voice (which doesn't come out that often), "No mom, you're not old yet. My Grandpa and Granpmas are old, but you're not!" Ha ha, that made me laugh!!!

The Bathroom

2011-02-26T21:02:00.003-07:00

Ever since we moved in our new place we (okay, mostly just me) have had a list of "projects" to do on or around the home. Some are pricier than others and so, they'll have to wait. Some, it's just a matter of time and energy. However, regardless the project, I do enjoy doing them and it's fun to see the final product!

The most recent was the half bath remodel. We talked about doing beadboard pretty much since day one... but those of you who have done it or have looked into it know just how ridiculously expensive it is! So, we looked for alternative options. One thing we found (or was shown to us, I don't remember anymore) was paintable textured beadboard wallpaper. By coming up only 33 inches from the baseboard and putting a 3 inch moulding on top it works out to be about $1.00 per linear foot for the beadboard.... which is amazing because the rail moulding alone is almost that same price! Way cheap!

We were a little hesitant to try the wallpaper since we heard a few bad stories from others who tired it. However, I did some pretty thorough research (as always) and decided it would be worth a try... especially since my sister-in-law gave me a gift card to Home Depot for Christmas that would cover the wallpaper and shipping exactly! Thanks Annie!

After I got around to ordering the wallpaper it sat in our bedroom, unopened, for quite a while. The paint was purchased MONTHS ago and has been sitting in the closet ever since. Finally, last week Millie gave me the push I needed to just get it done. She offered to tape off and prep the ceiling if I would paint the walls and hang the wallpaper. Deal.

Basically, I LOVE how it turned out. This was supposed to be the trial run for what we want to do for the girls' rooms upstairs (different colors for the walls above the beadboard though, of course). Anyway, one more project down... only hundreds left to go!

I'm crafty.......

2011-02-19T14:51:00.000-07:00

Ok, so no, I'm really not that crafty. But my sister Katie is. Especially now that she's almost about to have a baby girl. She's been making lots of cute stuff for her. One of the many things she has done for her baby is making cute onesies. Well, not MAKING them, but ironing on cute cut-outs. So the other night I bought some of my own onesies and headed over to her house. Oh my goodness, it was so easy and fun to make these cute onesies. I had only bought a pack of 4, but I cut out some more patterns to make more. So I need to go buy more and more cause they turned out really cute!! My favorite is the flowers one and Jacob really likes the elephant one.

So after making them, it got my teeny tiny eensy weensy creative bone working. I wanted to make something to hold all of Aayla hair bows. Up until this point you could find them stuffed into her diaper bag, my bathroom drawer, her bathroom drawer, I think there were some in her sock drawer and so on. I went to the craft store, bought a wood board, fabric, batting and ribbon. I even borrowed my dad's staple gun. It was super easy to make and I'm happy to finally have a spot for her bows. I'm probably going to switch out the pink ribbon sometime though because it is too dark of a pink. Her bathroom is white, brown and light pink, so it doesn't really match.

What You Might Not Know

2011-02-16T21:13:00.005-07:00

It's been months since I've blogged. Literally months. I had Millie check for me the other day, I haven't posted since October 5, 2010. So much has happened since then, some of which Millie managed to blog about already. I started working for Intermountain Healthcare in the registration department, we had a great Halloween, Turkey Day, Christmas and New Years. We celebrated Aayla's first birthday and we've done a few more projects on the new home. I've also moved into my third semester of grad school and it has been a cold, cold winter.

But this post isn't about any of that really.

I've been thinking about how all our lives are connected sometimes, which can often go unnoticed, or at least not acknowledged. Over the past few months I've had time to observe many things around me in a way that I usually don't notice, either because I'm not in a position to notice them, or because much of what goes on in the lives of others is not necessarily common knowledge or publicly available. I think some people experience that same effect (of disregard) by being on the other end of the spectrum of individual privacy and public domain. You know what I'm talking about, where every waking second of life is publicly posted on Twitter, Facebook or your own blog. No, I'm not bashing you if you are one of "those people." This is just an observation - a hypothesis.

Over the past few months of PT school, being married to a NICU nurse and myself working in health care, compounded by a flood of news from friends and family around me (some good, some heartbreaking) I have noticed how easy it is to get disconnected to those around you, even those closest to you. What I mean is, EVERY day there are people struggling just to make it another minute, while there are others at the top of the world celebrating all that life has given them. Sure most fall somewhere in between, but we all fit in there somewhere. There are those that struggle or celebrate as a result of themselves, and there are those that experience a magnified version of pain/joy through their children. Those of you with children know exactly what I mean.

Every night that Millie works she tends newborns that have come to this world with a slew of maladies that have each one of them fighting for life. Some aren't as severe as others and go home in a matter of hours or even months, and some, even after weeks or moths of truly intensive care, never get to leave the NICU alive. Millie doesn't get to share a lot of what goes on at work, mostly because of HIPPA laws, and I share the same constraints, but she shares enough. Enough to see what a great nurse and caregiver she is. Not only to the tiny ones she tends all night, but to the mothers and fathers that come in to spend whatever time they can with their own child. Some of you know what it's like to have a child in the NICU, or even the hospital, or even just in need of help - medically, physically, emotionally, etc.... Many of you know the feeling of being willing to give whatever you can, and even barter with God or the Devil just to keep your child from suffering anymore - or prevent a future suffering.

I like to believe that most people are grateful for people like Millie, but recently, I'm not so sure of it. And it may be a result of what I just explained - most of us, if not all of us, are living our own lives and fail to truly notice what is constantly going on around us. Every individual is the star of his or her own show in life and if ever they step outside their own limelight it is only for their children - and even that is temporary. I have been amazed to hear and witness some of the judgments that Millie has received lately for what they think she does. I think in the midst of being wrapped up in their own lives, many people have mislabeled what it is she does; whether it is intended to be hurtful or not, I know she suffers for it. This is not a post to defend only my wife but everyone in her situation and everyone who wishes to be be like her.

Many people see only the fact that she is "putting her husband through school" or "working" or "missing time being a mother" or "neglecting her 'eternal' calling" or "failing in the home" or "not being a 'good' mother".... unfortunately, the list of things I've heard goes on. Millie worked hard through nursing school. She chose that career because it was what she actually wanted to do - despite whatever other monetary benefits accompany being a nurse, the act of being a nurse compelled her. She loves what she does and she excels at it! Yes she is awake and away all night (while the kids sleep) and she loses sleep during the days following, and sometimes the kids get a little neglected by her now and again, and she can't do some of the things other "stay-at-home" moms can do because of her schedule. However, these few facts remain:

1) She loves what she does.

2) Whether you realize and accept it or not, she (like SO many others like her) is sacrificing for your loved ones, your children, your mothers, fathers, etc... She has earned the education and puts in the hours to ensure care is, and can be, given when it's needed the most.

3) If anything ever happens to me, I have absolutely NO doubt in my mind that she, and our children will be cared for (financially and maternally) - because she's been proving that every day for at least the past two years.

4) After I graduate, she will continue to keep up her license, work and continue her education, because she loves what she does, and frankly, there is a need for more people like her.

So this post is also in defense of those who wish to continue their education and be in a position to help others. And not just nursing, but any profession (educators, public safety, health care, heck - pretty much anything really) where self (and family) sacrifice means a better life for others - others like you and your children.

I don't really want any comments to this post, I only want the bad judgments to stop - not that the majority of those who need to read this will ever read it. I hope that those that are "blessed" enough to have a life that allows them to stay at home all day don't forget that there are those like Millie that are sacrificing 'that life' for a greater good, for your good. And please, support those that desire to do the same!

Thank you for all you do Millie!

Ellery

2011-02-14T22:36:00.002-07:00

Ellery says funny things ALL the time. I need to start writing them down because I forget what she says. She makes me laugh everyday though. Here are a couple things she said today:

(background note: Aayla was in her high chair eating beans and she started gagging and coughing on them.)

I say: "Oh, no Aayla are you ok???"

Ellery: "Oh mom, she's just choking!!!"

(another background: We were eating soup. I looked up at Ellery and she was looking quite distressed/ shocked, and holding onto her mouth.)

Ellery: "Oh no, I think I accidentally swallowed something."

Me: "What did you accidentally swallow?"

Ellery: "It was something green. What was that?"

(It was a green chille)

Me: "Those are just like seasonings to help make the soup taste good."

Ellery: "I don't like seasonings. I don't like me soup to taste good."

Ellery: "Mom, when Aayla gets bigger and gets long hair, and I get big, then I can cut her hair for her!"

Me: "Oh no, you can't cut her hair. Only big people can cut hair like me or Abbie."

Ellery: "Ya mom that's what I said, when I get big!"

Ellery: "Abbie likes to have her hair long mom."

Me: "Yes, do you want to grow your hair out long like Abbie?"

Ellery: "No, I want to grow my hair out long like RAPUNZEL!"

Ok, so those aren't really that funny. I can't think of her funnier quotes. Maybe my brain will work better a different day.

The snowman who layed down and the kitty who ate snow.

2011-01-10T20:53:00.000-07:00

Ells has been wanting to make a snowman all winter. I haven't really wanted to and neither has Jacob. Well last night was a rough night for her. She told me she was just having a bad day. I told her she needed to just go to bed and tomorrow we'd start over and try to have a good day. She agreed and immediately said she wanted to make a snowman to have a good day. Even though I knew the snow isn't good for making a snowman, I told her we would make one. First thing this morning she wanted to make that snowman!!! So after b-fast we bundled up and went outside. The snow was just powder. After attempting to make a ball and realizing there was NO way of picking it up without it falling apart, I had a brilliant idea!!! Dum dum du dum......a snowman laying down! We made him on our patio. Ellery was just as thrilled and didn't care it wasn't standing up. She REALLY wanted to decorate him with M&M's and a carrot nose. That made her happy.

After we finished our snowman, Ells stayed out for a while to play in the snow. For those who don't know Ells, she thinks she is a kitty. So her playing was mostly crawling, meowing and eating the snow because "that's what kitties do!"

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AAYLA!

2010-12-29T14:05:00.000-07:00

I can't believe Aayla is already one!! Wow, this year went by fast!!!! I didn't have much planned because Jacob had to work until 8:30. Well, we ended up having an eventful day!! My mom called me up around noon and invited us to go see Yogi Bear. So me and the girls, Katie and my mom and dad went to the Provo Mall theater. Ellery liked the movie. It had some funny parts, but it's definitely a one-time, dollar theater movie. After the movie we stayed at the mall and waited for Abbie to get off work. Brandon ended up getting off work early and joined us. When Abbie got there I gave Aayla her gift from me...pierced ears!! Poor girl didn't know it was coming, and wasn't very happy. She cried of course, but only for a couple minutes and then recovered. They are little pink flowers and super cute. We decided to go back to our house and have pizza. We stopped by Little Caesars for their Hot-and-Ready pizza. Apparently everyone in Springville decided to have pizza that night. The place was packed! We ended up having to wait over 30 minutes for our pizza. We made it back home with everyone starving. Jacob got off work early and so was home when we got there. After we ate, Aayla opened her present from Grandma and Grandpa Webb, which was a little cute cheetah that rolls on the ground and wags it's tail. Her and Ells had fun with it.

I didn't have a cake for her since I wasn't planning on having anyone over. I was actually going to make a Winnie the Pooh cake on Sunday. But we wanted to sing her Happy Birthday, so K, B and A went to Dairy Queen down the road and got an ice cream cake. The frosting was hot pink and made quite a mess, but Aayla liked getting to eat ice cream.

Jacob blew the candle out right before her little fingers grabbed the flames.

I think it was a good birthday. By the end of the night she was SOOOOOOOO ready for bed. It's hard turning 1.

Maybe these teeth aren't so good after all...

2010-12-23T14:23:00.000-07:00

Not that anyone wants to hear about my breastfeeding stories but.....so ya, I'm still nursing Aayla and have been planning on it until she turns one, which is next week by the way. Lately, however, I decided to keep on nursing until after flu season gets over, probably March or April. Well today Aayla bit down REALLY hard on me!!! It hurt SOOO bad! Of course I totally screamed and pulled her away which made her start bawling. Then she refused to get back on and eat. Looks like I might not make it til March if this keeps up. And to think I was so EXCITED about her teeth....now, hmmmm not so sure!

Roper Family Christmas Blog

2010-12-20T15:47:00.001-07:00

My family did a Christmas blog this year instead of mailing out a letter. Here's a link if anyone is interested in reading about my family this year!

http://roperfamilychristmas.blogspot.com

Aayla's 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th teeth

2010-12-20T13:56:00.000-07:00

yup that's right, aayla's been busy busy busy growing teeth!! I was afraid they'd all come in at the same time once the first one finally came in! I noticed the 2nd bottom tooth had come through her gum just last week and then on Saturday Jacob found one of the top ones had already broken through her gums! Her other top tooth and the one next to it look like they are about to break skin, so she will have 5 teeth!! Yay! Surprisingly she has been really good. Sunday she was a little cranky but she has been fine every since!

Aayla's First Tooth.

2010-12-06T22:11:00.000-07:00

It's finally here!!! Aayla's first tooth!!! It's about time too! I mean she's 11 months and hasn't had any teeth yet. Jacob and I have both been saying, "Oh she's probably teething," whenever she's fussy or is having a bad day. But no teeth come popping out of those little gums of hers...until now! I'm so excited for her! I am a little worried now that since it's taken so long, they are going to all come in at once. We shall see....but for now she's working on just one.

Christmas Time

2010-11-30T22:40:00.000-07:00

Thanksgiving was great and all, but now it's officially Christmas time!! I love having our Christmas decorations up in our new house. (they've actually been up for a while) We have an actual board for our village now thanks to my dad. Last year it was just on the ground. We also have a few more buildings, there are people now, trees and snow! It looks good! Jacob spent a lot of time putting up lights on our house. It was probably best I wasn't home when he did it because I probably wouldn't have let him on some parts our steep roof and risk his life just for some Christmas lights....but he didn't fall and all is well. I spent the evening stringing lights around a garland that is draped around our window curtains. Our front archway into the family room also is draped with a lighted garland. I love having just the Christmas lights on. It feels very Christmasy!!

Silly Baby

2010-11-12T15:26:00.000-07:00

Aayla does some strange things sometimes. Like today, she was eating lunch and kept leaning over and resting her head on her high chair, but kept eating. I guess she was tired and needed a rest, but didn't want to stop feeding her face! Silly girl!

What do YOU want for Christmas??

2010-11-09T21:43:00.001-07:00

Tonight I was thinking about Christmas presents and asked Ellery what we should get people for Christmas. Her answers made me laugh so I continued and asked her about some of our family members. Sorry we missed some of you. Some of them were just random answers or what she was looking at at the time, but some I think have some true meaning behind them...

ABBIE- some cute makeup

GRANDPA ROPER- a big motorcycle to ride outside with

GRANDMA ROPER- a new game to play

KATIE- a new not Frankenstein balloon chair.

BRANDON- a big frog

ANNIE- a big pumpkin

ROB- nothing, he already has lots of little things at his house (sorry rob)

GRANDMA WEBB- a super special zebra

GRANDPA WEBB- a spider

TEVIA- a cute sparkly animal pillow

RISA- a cute bicycle

ENOK- a cute pumpkin

JAREK- a plum tree

MALIK- also a plum tree

BRANDT- a little baby hippo

HAZEL- a little toy pumpkin

AAYLA- a little spongebob toy

DADDY- a new robot on his ipod

BRINLEY- a butterfly costume

MEGGIE- a butterfly costume

MOMMY- a halloween light to put in my room

ELLERY- a christmas bed to sleep in.

Halloween Party

2010-10-31T21:06:00.001-06:00

This year we celebrated my dad's Halloween birthday party on Friday since Saturday, which is his real birthday but was our ward's Trunk or Treat. We all dressed up. Ellery was a green butterfly, up to the sky. Aayla was Winnie the Pooh on Friday and on Saturday was a little black raincloud. My mom made mummy cheddar brats, swamp monster mac and cheese, red cabbage, swamp green drinks with frog eggs and bugs, and I made halloween cupcakes. We ended the night carving pumpkins. Ellery wanted me to carve a kitty. My dad was the first to finish his but that was because he used a jigsaw. My cupcakes were quite tastey. They were pumpkin with cheesecake filling, all from scratch! Fun night...Trunk or Treat picts coming soon...

4 years ago....

2010-10-29T11:41:00.000-06:00

That's right, baby....HONEYMOON.....at DISNEYLAND!!!!!!!!!! I really miss this place.

Halloween Is In The Air

2010-10-05T16:32:00.003-06:00

Millie and I are excited about having a home. One of the major reasons is the opportunity to decorate! What better way to make a house a home?!

Halloween is technically the first major holiday we're getting to decorate for (I did hang my huge American Flag for the 4th of July, but other than that, we were too newly in our house and didn't have time or means to do much more than that).

So, we're going all out (as much as we can) for the next few months of holidays!

Here's to Halloween - Millie's favorite holiday!

No, it's not much, and we'll probably add to it before the big day arrives, but we're excited nonetheless!

Our Family... Through Ellery's Eyes

2010-09-29T11:44:00.002-06:00

The last couple of weeks Ellery has been on a kick where she says she's a kitty. She goes around the house meowing some of her communications and refers to Millie as "puppy." I have no idea where she got the idea from, but curiosity got the best of me - trying to find out what's going on in her little three-year-old mind, so I asked her the other day, "what am I?" and "what is Aayla?"

Apparently this is how Ellery sees her family. Psychologically, I doubt it has any significance (me being the king of the jungle), but I think it's cute to see her imagination at work!

By the way... I had Ellery choose the pictures that she thinks best represents each of us.

Daddy:

Mommy:

Ellery:

Aayla:

Probably just as funny, if not more so, whenever Ellery talks about her being "the kitty" she refers to herself in third person as "the kitty." In fact, Millie mentioned that the other day she noticed Aayla had some wet spots on her head so she asked Ellery what happened. Ellery said, "the kitty just wanted to taste Aayla." What a weirdo. Must be a Roper thing. :)

AAYLA...A'S...NUMBER 2...

2010-09-22T22:28:00.001-06:00

Aayla is growing up so fast. She changes everyday is seems. So I'd better post about what she has been up to lately.

She is crawling really well. She finally picked it up about a month ago. I haven't had her try the stairs yet. I don't really think she could go up them yet but ya never know. I might try putting her on them soon. I had to take her bassinet out of her crib just a couple weeks ago. I went in to get her up in the morning and she was standing up, holding onto the edge. So out it came!

Her eating habits have been improving. She is eating more solid foods now. When we first introduced her to baby food, she didn't really like it. She now can finish a whole jar of baby food if it's bananas, applesauce, squash, or sweet potatoes. Her MOST favorite things to eat though are Doritos, Cheetos, ice cream, yogurt, toast, popsicles, saltines and pretty much any other table food we give her. I'm being stubborn though and will still give her the baby food to eat.

As of lately, she has been sick. She woke up Friday with a fever and it continued until Sunday. She was between 101.1 and 102.3 for pretty much 3 days straight. No stuffy nose, runny nose, cough, or any other symptoms other than fussiness, not eating as much and a little more lethargic. I thought either she is teething or has an ear infection, although, she wasn't drooling or pulling at her ears. So I took her into the doctor on Monday. Her temp had gone down to 100 by then, but I still wanted her to be checked out. Turns out her throat was red and inflamed. The doctor said it's a viral throat infection. I didn't even think about her throat! Well she's almost over it. No more fevers since Monday. Today she just sounds a little raspy. Katie and Jacob both said she sounds like a smoker baby! Poor thing! We are still waiting for some teeth to come in. She's almost 9 months old so I'm guessing pretty soon they'll be popping out!

She has been interacting more and more. She babbles a lot, mostly saying da da da da. I'm working on ma ma ma, but she doesn't get it. She can click her tongue and blubber her lips at you. It's really cute. She knows her name now and turns when you call her. I'm also working on sign language with her like I did with Ellery. It will probably be a while until she does it back, but I'm still doing it. With more time there is more changes but that is all for now.

DINOSAUR MUSEUM

2010-09-09T21:19:00.000-06:00

We recently went to the dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving Point because Jacob had a couple free tickets. Otherwise, we probably wouldn't have bothered driving all the way up there and spending more money. Overall I'd say it wasn't a very good experience. First of all, it was PACKED! We couldn't even find a parking space. When Jacob went to get our tickets he found out it was $2 Tuesday, hence the mass amount of moms, kids, and strollers everywhere. Since it was cheaper to just pay for all of us ($2 each) we saved our free tickets for another day....which will NOT be a Tuesday! Secondly, Ellery was just afraid of almost everything there. Plus I think she was a little intimidated with all the people. She doesn't like large crowds. We came here when she was about 1 1/2 years old and she quite liked it. This picture shows how she feels about the shark. She wouldn't get any closer. We found a little dinosaur that Jacob and Ellery had their picture taken by last time and so we got another shot with it. Aayla's dang hands are in the way though.

We looked throught the gift shop before we left but ended up not getting anything. The only thing Ellery really wanted was an overpriced stuffed alligator. We didn't come to the dinosaur museum to get an alligator!!! So we would't let her get it. She got over it quickly though when we decided to visit my dad at his school since it's quite close. Ellery was happy to visit her grandpa at his school, so that made the trip worth it I guess.

Uinta Trip 2010

2010-09-04T12:30:00.004-06:00

We had our second annual Uinta Trip this year Aug 25-28th. Only Don and Jacob Wall and I went but it was a great trip!

The hike in seemed a bit quicker than last year, maybe since the weather was a little more cool and I think our packs weren't AS heavy.

We got in around mid day on the 25th and set up camp. While hiking along Betsy Lake to our camping spot, we saw SEVERAL fish swimming the shoreline and feeding throughout most of the lake - a good sign!

Got camp set up and headed to Betsy for fishing. We all caught a few pretty quickly - and good size too, for the Uinta lakes (about 9-10 inches). Took the fish back and fried em up, SOOO good!

Next day we went to one of our favorite lakes for fishing, you're sure to catch a lot, even if they're typically smaller (6-8 inches). We caught quite a few, pretty quick and Wall (Jacob) and I built a small fire right there and cooked em up and ate em. Don came over after a while with a fish of his own and cooked and ate too. Then we moved down the lake a bit and fished some more... it was HOT fishing. EVERY cast I was pulling one in... LITERALLY! It helped that I was using worms. Wall got his dragonfly hook caught about 25ft up a spruce tree and I scurried up to get it out for him... he didn't really want me to or care that he was going to lose it, and after I did, I wish I hadn't bothered... my hands were covered in sap the rest of the day. After a few hours of catch and release fishing, we decided to head back to camp for a nap. We took the long way back (for reasons still beyond my capacity to explain - guess the Walls didn't want to scale the cliff we came down to get to the lake). But eventually, we made it to camp and had a good rest.

The weather was holding out wonderfully!!! We were certain we would be getting stormed on every afternoon and freeze every night, according to the weather reports, but the nights were warm (probably high 40's) and the days were pretty warm (mid 70's at least) and sunny.

That afternoon, Wall and I decided to head out to my favorite like - we've named it "Walter's Hole" - in honor of the 18" trout (Walter) I caught there this year. I would have probably released him, but we didn't have a camera with us at the time, and knew no one would believe me that I caught him, so I cleaned him and made the long walk back to camp for pictures, and to fry him up and eat him!

Next day, Friday, was much cooler. We started up West Granddaddy Mountain in the morning and made the LONG hike up to the peak. It was a fun hike and at the top, and we complemented the hike with an ongoing (shouting) argument about where Shadow Lake was... even with maps of the area, since it's the only lake you can't see from the top, the three of us all had our own idea about where it was in the valley... Needless to say, it's impossible to convince the three people on the face of the planet that are NEVER wrong, that they're actually wrong. Fortunately, I WASN'T wrong... as always. And even after I proved it indisputably, Don still disputed me. :) I guess next year we'll have to have one person hike to the top and another hike to Shadow with a flare gun and settle it once and for all. :)

At the top we built a monument creating the actual peak of the mountain... there were several other man made peaks up there, but ours was the highest.

On our way down we rolled some rocks cause, boys never grow out of that. We got a few big ones to go - it was great!

The hike down was FAST... for me. I pretty much ran, hopped and skipped down the rocky 60%+ grade face of the mountain. The next half hour or so I watched as Wall and Don slowly made their way - hoping I didn't have to hike back up if one of them got injured. Wall, being as accident prone as he is, did get injured, but it wasn't too bad, just banged up his shins, and he was still able to walk. That night we caught our last fish (Don and I) as the rain and hail started to fall. The clouds kept coming in darker and thicker. By 10pm or so (maybe it was even earlier), we decided nature won, and we turned in for the night, hoping to get some sleep before our hike out in the morning.

This was that afternoon, during the rain and hail:

The night was brutal.

The lightning kept getting closer and closer and the thunder was literally earth shaking as it echoed between the mountains we were camped at the base of. We had some VERY close strikes, but the closest must have been maybe 20-30 ft away, we were in the tent and it blinded Wall and I for probably a minute - I've never seen anything so bright in my life, brighter than staring at a welding arch, or even the noon day sun!!! It was a BIG bolt, and what was worse, it sent three, almost simultaneous, bolts that shattered the night sky and shook the earth around us. It echoed a good minute of the nearby mountains and left us wondering if a tree would be coming down on us, or if another bolt was on its way even closer. Fortunately, although we did have a few more blinding close ones, that was the worst of it. We made it through the night and were able to break camp and hike out without getting rained on.

The hike out was nice. I'm pretty sure our packs were actually lighter going out than coming in this year (unlike last year), and at least we didn't have the fate of two hikers we saw on our way out. There were two guys, looking about as miserable as drowned rats, holding waterlogged socks over a sterno can, maybe 10 feet off the trail. They must have tried hiking in the night before and got caught in the storm - I wonder if they even bothered going through with their trip as planned.

I'm glad we got out of there when we did because the rains kept coming and the clouds seemed like they'd be rolling in for at least the rest of that day.

Favorite quotes of the trip:

"It's just one-hundred, maybe two-hundred, yards up ahead."

"I gave Walter a nice final resting place on the mountain, he can see his home from there."

"I see you brought a luxury item." - "I see you brought one too."

"The clouds are moving that direction, towards Shadow."

Looking forward to next year's trip!!!!!!

MOVIE OF ELLS AND AA'S

2010-08-27T20:53:00.000-06:00

Hugs

2010-08-09T11:57:00.002-06:00

A dear friend of mine sent me this youtube video link today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=hN8CKwdosjE

Many of you have probably already seen it, as I'm usually behind on these things since I never surf youtube and I'm not up with the latest viral videos.

But for those of you who haven't, and I guess even those who have, I want to share how this touched me. I literally sit here, just finished watching it, on the verge of tears.

If you know me, I can have a jarring personality at times, but if you REALLY know me, I'm a sentimental schmuck that gets choked up at the silliest things (still can't make it through Disney's "Cars" without tearing up).

Perhaps this video was particularly touching because I grew up in a very "huggy" family - especially the Borrego side. Since moving to Utah, I feel I've become more and more distant from those around me. I used to have friends and roommates that I would hug all the time - male and female - and now, hugging my own wife has become peculiar sometimes.

As a physical therapist (student) we often talk about the power (healing power) - and importance - of touch. Not only does it create a physical connection between people, but there is also a social, an emotional - and I would personally say even a spiritual - connection.

I did volunteer work at the Utah State Mental Hospital this last semester before starting PT school, it was always interesting to me how the majority of the patients were non distinguishable in appearance and comportment than any other person you might meet in society (especially among the teenage patients). However they were there for a reason - clinically, mentally. I think there are so many - perhaps EVERYONE - who could just use a hug sometimes. Just think what it could change if we all were more willing to (and did) give "free hugs."

Aayla The Shirt...

2010-07-26T12:20:00.003-06:00

The other day Ellery turned to me and said, "Aayla's just a shirt, huh daddy?"

I wasn't sure what she meant, so I asked.

She repeated, "Aayla's just a shirt."

Ellery was struggling with the word "shirt" and it took me a second to realize that's not at all what she was TRYING to say.

Although, yes, Aayla is a "shirt" sometimes, Millie seems to think I need to be more selective with my language (or what "pet names") I use around Ellery's ears.

Kids. :)

Summer Update

2010-07-09T23:04:00.002-06:00

Pictures, and music, are worth a thousand words.... rather than read, just enjoy! It's been a busy summer for us!

Ellery's New Look~

2010-06-17T09:48:00.000-06:00

Ellery recently got a new look. Let's see if you can tell!!!!!!!!

Before.....

After.....

That's right, Ellery had to have her teeth pulled. I'm actually SO SO sad about it. Her teeth were so cute and now, well, she just looks different. She looks, talks, sounds, and eats different now.

So here's the story......She was in nursery when it happened. Apparantly they were blowing bubbles. Ellery and another boy were going after the same bubble when they ran right into each other which caused Ellery to fall and hit her mouth on a chair. They came and got me out of Relief Society. Her bottom lip was bleeding and she was crying. I tried calming her down and when she kept pointing at her teeth I took a closer look. I noticed her top 2 teeth were bleeding slightly and they were angled backward. I felt them and yep, they were loose. So we got Jacob and left church. (unfortunately only 10 min early.) Dentist offices are closed Sundays so we decided to wait and take her in on Monday. By the end of the night her top lip was getting pretty swollen. We tried icing it, but she didn't like holding cold against her mouth. The next morning, she looked awful!! Her upper lip had swelled SO much during the night. She seriously looked like a hoo. I got her a dentist appointment that afternoon. He said the swelling was one of the worse he's seen. The teeth were pushed back and the roots were angled forward which caused all the swelling in the lip and gum area. He explained how tring to fix it and push everything back into place could cause damage to the permanant teeth that are forming right now. There was also a risk of infection. SO, he said the best thing was to just pull them and start her on antibiotics. She handled everything ok up until the point they numbed her mouth. When he pulled the teeth out, she SCREAMED!! It was awful. They said she was all numb, but it makes me wonder cause she was acting like it wasn't. I felt really bad. She screamed and screamed. She was still crying and upset when we got home. Jacob held her and she eventually fell asleep. When she woke up she was much better and she's been fine ever since. She hasn't complained of much pain except when I brush her teeth. It's amazing how fast the swelling went down. It was much better even right after we got home from the dentist. It bled a lot and I think that helped with the swelling. Now we just need to let the holes heal all the way and learn to eat and talk better!!

Day Out With Thomas

2010-05-29T13:10:00.001-06:00

On Friday we took the girls to Heber Valley Railroad for their annual 'Day Out With Thomas.' Ellery LOVES trains and Thomas, so this was for her. It was fun and I think Ellery enjoyed it. I really don't think it was worth the huge, large amount of money we forked over for it, but it was nice to get out and do something for Ellery. The first thing we did was a little miniature golf course. Jacob helped Ellery through it and she actually did pretty good. Then it was time to get in line for the train ride. As we were getting on they stopped us and told us Aayla's car seat carrier couldn't get on the train. Well, she was asleep in it so we had to take her out and wake her up so Jacob could run it back to our stroller. That was kind of annoying. Oh well. The train ride was about 25 minutes or so, it went out a little and stopped then reversed back to the station. Ellery liked it, especially when it blew it's whistle. After the train ride we waited in line for a balloon animal. She wanted a kitty made with green and silver balloons! She knows what she wants! They had a booth with temporary tattoos, so Ellery got a Thomas one on her hand. Then she ran through a hay maze a few times. Sir Topham Hatt was there taking pictures with the kids but there was a big line and we were all getting hungry and ready to go so Jacob just took a picture of him in between kids. On our way out Ellery posed in front of some posters of the engines. She especially like Emily because she is green- her favorite color.

What The?!?!?!?!!!???!?

2010-05-24T21:36:00.003-06:00

Woke up this morning to SNOW!!! I hate the snow more than the next guy, but make it fall in town this late in the spring and words can't describe how disgusted I am with it.

It was coming down so hard, wet, thick and fast this morning when I was leaving for school that I couldn't even wipe it fast enough from my windows. The drive down to school was... not fun... either. On my way my car started jerking and the "check engine" light came on. Wonderful. One more warm memory to make me "love" the snow. Bleh.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JACOB WEBB!!!

2010-05-21T00:15:00.002-06:00

Happy birthday to Jacob! As many know, he turned 30 years old on Wednesday. What a dinosaur!! (sorry to everyone who's thinking, 'I remember when I turned 30...')

We had a Japanese themed party! It turned out to be a lot of fun. I moved the table and chairs out of the dining room and we sat on the floor with pillows. We all dressed up in Asian clothes and Katie made everyone head bands.

I made food I've never made before. I even had to shop at an Asian Market to get some of the ingredients! I made my mom go with me though. For the appetizer I made miso soup with tofu and green onions, and pork gyozas with ginger chilli dipping sauce. The main course I made at the table (floor). It was beef sukiyaki with chinese cabbage, shitake mushrooms, enoki mushrooms, bean sprouts, green onion, and cellophane noodles all cooked up with a special sukiyaki sauce. Served on the side was raw egg to dip in. I'm not sure everyone really liked the idea of raw egg except Jacob and my mom. There was of course a bowl of rice on the side as well. The food turned out good...for my first try with any asian food. The gyozas were the best, they ALL got eaten.

Jacob got a lot of presents this year. Mostly stuff for our new soon to be yard, a knife, school supplies, gift cards, wii remote battery chargers, and Dominion- (we were having withdrawals since the Walls left to Arizona.) I think Ellery had more fun opening the presents for him! She loves presents!

We ended the night with fresh strawberry pie that my mom made! It was so good! Ellery helped Jacob blow the candles out...otherwise I don't think he could have gotten them all in one blow! :)

I'm not sure what happened....I was upstairs putting Ellery to bed. But Abbie, Jacob and Brad got into a little food fight. Sorry, I didn't get a picture of Brad...but I'm pretty sure he was involved too.

It was a good party. Happy 30 years!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Thirtieth Year - 2009-present

2010-05-18T21:41:00.002-06:00

Last December, 2008, I FINALLY graduated from college - "hey, a lot of people go to college for ten years; yeah they're called doctors." No, this was not a doctorate, this was my bachelor's degree. I graduated from Utah Valley University with a BS in business management. Although the road was excruciatingly long, and I was glad to be "done" I never felt like it was any big accomplishment. Maybe it was because I knew it was just a stepping stone in my education; the beginning, not the end. I didn't even bother walking at my graduation, I was too busy diving into the next phase of my education - prerequisites for physical therapy school. Part of me wishes I had walked. I think there is something I missed in that rite of passage. I graduated college, and it took a LONG time. I worked and paid my way through, and I did it with minimal student loans (less than 10k). That sort of accomplishment and investment probably deserved a capstone celebration. Oh well.

When I started at ASU (with some coaxing and direction from Bret and Tevs) back in 2001 I had NO idea what I wanted to do or what I wanted to go to school for. While I was in Texas I met a physical therapist from Chile. As missionaries, we ate dinner at his home EVERY Sunday for ten and a half months. In that time I had several conversations with him about his profession. When I started school at BYU I decided I wanted to go in to physical therapy myself. However, the program was at least a masters' degree at the time. At 22, almost 23, years old and only having one semester of schooling behind me, I thought doing a bachelor's and then a master's degree would just take too long; so I found what I thought would be the next best thing: occupational therapy. Occupation therapy was still being offered as a bachelor's degree at the time (but only at a few schools, one of which was the University of Utah). After being in the exercise science program at BYU for three semesters I transferred up to the U, hoping to get into their OT program. As luck, or fate, would have it, the semester I transferred was the semester they did away with their OT program.

So there I was, faced with the fact that no matter what, I needed to get my bachelor's degree in something other than what I wanted to do for a career. At that point I like to think I had matured, a little, and understood better that life is not as much of a race as it is a journey. I took some time and weighed out my options and decided that if physical therapy was what I wanted to do, then that's what I was going to do - no matter how long it took. I just needed to figure out what to get my bachelor's degree in. After a bit of research I learned the profession was heading in the direction of physical therapists being doctors of physical therapy. Such a change would mean that therapists could receive patients to their practice without a referral - which meant the way PTs could run a practice would be changing. With that in mind I wanted to be diversified in my education and learn skills that I recognized many people I knew lacked and suffered for - business skills. Even though I knew it would take more time to graduate I made up my mind and started business school.

This last year I spent picking up the last few prerequisites (anatomy, physiology, chem, physics, biology... all the fun stuff) needed to apply to physical therapy school. I started applying to schools last fall and this year I was accepted to the entry-level doctorate of physical therapy program at Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions in Provo, UT. Classes stared last week - I'm a student in the inaugural class of the program, which will graduate December 2012. It's a great feeling getting up every morning, dressing in slacks and a button up shirt, putting on a professional appearance and preparing for my career. In just this past week I think I've finally started feeling like an adult. Before, I've always just felt like a college student. Although they said it all the time in business school, "dress for the position you want, not the position you have," I never really felt like I was ready to 'grow up' and accept that kind of responsibility: to be the professional I would become. But now, it's a great feeling.

This last year, other than my schooling, we spent a LOT of time on camping trips and at Seven Peaks. Our blog over the last year has been kept pretty well up to date; with the exception that sometimes I've left my feelings and inner thoughts out of the blogs I've posted.

The reason I've been writing a blog a day for the last 30 days is that I wanted to capture memories, thoughts and feelings otherwise lost over the last 30 years of my life. Yes, 30 years in 30 days - Tomorrow (minutes from now actually, and probably before I finish this blog tonight, I'll be 30 years old). Obviously I wasn't able to get everything in. Every night for the last month I've gone to bed with memories swimming in my head - many I got up and wrote on lists with the intent to blog them. I ran out of time. This last week, starting physical therapy school has made things challenging. But it's been a great experience for me. I've enjoyed the trip down memory lane and I've realized a few things about my life that I probably missed along the way. I look forward to the next 30 years.

In just a few weeks Millie and I will be closing on our first home.

Less than three years from now I'll be Doctor Webb (but I'm not going to make anyone call me that).

And life will only move faster and faster. My children will probably never understand the childhood I experienced - in some ways it makes me sad, in other ways they can never thank me enough for that. Already Ellery's and Aayla's life histories are being written and recorded. We had more photos of Ellery by the time she was out of the hospital than I think I had of me by the time I graduated high school - same story with Aayla. Life is different for the generation being born. I hope they learn from the past, especially my past, and avoid some of my mistakes and take advantage of some of my successes.

I never understood why my dad used to say he wasn't the best parent and that he wasn't perfect. I think as a young child I never realized he was once a child himself. The stories I remember my parents telling me of their youth are few and far between (not that they didn't tell them, I just don't remember many). It's easy to forget that everyone has a different perspective of you. There's so much even close family members probably don't know about each other. Some things are better left unknown, but some things open up a window that could help generations understand one another and become better for it. As I think back on those I've lost in my life, there's not one person that I wish I hadn't spent more time getting to know as a person - not just as my grandma or grandpa or aunt or uncle or cousin or brother or even my friend - but as a person, an individual with a story.

There are so many people I've lost contact with that have affected my life, both for good and for bad. These past thirty days of blogging have been less than a snapshot of the many people that have been a part of my life (including myself) and there are several more that I didn't get to blog about or even mention; but I think about them. They may never know that they meant anything to me but there's not a single person I have called friend or family in my life that I wouldn't give "the shirt off my back" to.

Thanks to everyone for being a part of my life and making me, me.

The Twenty-Ninth Year - 2008

2010-05-17T21:55:00.004-06:00

As I go back and look at the thousands of pictures I have that document just the last few years of my life I'm amazed. It difficult to view my life as my own anymore - in fact it's impossible. The majority of pictures I have are of my wife and children - okay, mostly Ellery, and much of these last few years have been relatively well documented in previous blogs; post by myself and Millie.

As I was talking with JoLynn today she mentioned something I had been thinking, and even originally set out to do when I started this recent run of blogs - to document my thoughts, feelings and maybe even emotions of the events I've experienced; things that even the best photos just can't capture and convey.

In my (futile) haste to finish some of my blogs recently, I failed to record (or fully record) some of the biggest events of my life. One of those events was the morning of September 11, 2001. The date lives in infamy for all - never to be forgotten for sure. Perhaps the events of that day did not impact me quite as bad (or at least the same way) as it did for some. Not to say the events were not tragic to me or caused me great sadness - but rather, I can not compare myself, or how it impacted me, to how it impacted the lives of those who were there, the families of lost loved ones, or those that had visited or held a special place in their hearts for the city of New York, its people and those buildings.

I woke up the morning of 9/11 and started to get ready for work. I was living with Bret and Tevia at the time and Tevia turned on the news - Good Morning America, I believe. The first plane had hit the first tower just moments before, there it was the unforgettable image of black billowing smoke rising from the WTC. I was in absolute shock, but I'm sure it didn't compare to Tevia's emotions. I think she started to cry - Bret was from New York and they had just recently been back to visit (and went to the towers) the year before. I remember wondering what could have caused the plane to hit the building in the first place - the news was still speculating on it, terrorism was an idea but not confirmed. Everything seemed so unreal to me. I sat there unable to peel my eyes from the images on the screen - only half hearing what was even being said. Before I knew it, in the corner of the camera's view the second plane hit the other tower - there was no more doubt - terrorists. My heart sunk. I have a graphic imagination, perhaps too graphic at times - one I usually just keep to myself - I could envision the hundreds of people who were on that plane and in the building where it hit - their lives instantly ending. I continued to sit in unbelief of what I was seeing, and worse, what I was imagining. I called into work - told them I wasn't coming in - and sat there the rest of the day watching, almost unblinkingly, the replays, images and speculations on the TV.

News reports came in of the plane crash in Pennsylvania and another hitting the Pentagon. Was this real? Could this be happening to the country I grew to love during my recent time in Ecuador? And again, the images in my mind of the people who were there, on the planes, in the buildings, or on the ground below.

My heart continued to sink even deeper as the towers came down one by one - knowing crews of firefighters (just like my dad and uncles) were in there. Even now, I get teary eyed thinking of those that so unselfishly gave their lives in the line of duty.

I couldn't stop watching. I couldn't stop playing out the events in my head, in my mind's eye, seeing what it might have been like to be inside and thinking about what I would do in their situation.

I think many people questioned God that day; questioned His existence, His love, His plan, His willingness to let THAT happen - but not me. Not once did I think, why? Not once did I wonder where would be His justice, and where is His mercy.

All my life I was taught, and came to believe (and realize) for myself, that God does not typically intervene in the decisions and agency of man. This was simply one of those times. "Simply" - what other word can I use? I had just spent almost the entire day envisioning the events from the eyes of those directly impacted. Despite my deep empathy for everyone involved, I remained unchanged in feeling almost nothing but acceptance, and even gratitude, towards God and His choice to allow all men their agency - agency that is eternally tied to inescapable consequences. And yes, some consequences that I have had the unfortunate displeasure of knowing first hand.

Memorial Day 2008, just like every Memorial Day before and since joining the Roper family, we each put together bouquets of flowers from the yard to take to the Provo cemetery. But even the simple act of placing flowers on the graves of relatives turns into a competition in this family. Who can make to prettiest bouquet. Unfortunately, when the judges are the competitors a clear winner is rarely crowned - as far as I was concerned I never lost.

Bret and Tevs came up to visit with their boys that month too. Millie and I were still living in Pleasant Grove at the time. As one of our activities, to prevent a day of just sitting around staring at and talking to each other (which Millie really does not like) we decided to go to the dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving Point. I think everyone enjoyed it. Ellery had just turned a year old was just at that stage of really starting to interact with her surroundings. It was a lot of fun and I wish it didn't cost so much because I would like to take her more often.

In June, Brandon officially joined the family by marrying Katie, Millie's older sister. Although Brandon and I don't have tons of interests in common, I was super excited to have him finally officially in the family, and why not, he had been around much longer than me. The added bonus, we both finally had someone who got each others Dumb and Dumber quotes! There were times, during the wedding day, that a part of me was a little jealous - they were having the wedding that every LDS couple, and really EVERY couple should, aspire to, and I could tell Mom and Dad (Kim and Rhonda) were just as excited as (maybe even more than) the bride and groom. I have to admit, there was a part of me that kept hating myself that day as I looked at what I deprived Millie of. She deserved a wedding like that - granted, ours was MUCH less stressful than Katie and Brandon's, but still, all my life I looked forward to my wedding day, stress and everything that comes with it. We didn't have that. To combat my selfish feelings I did everything I could to help make their day less stressful.

I love the Fourth of July with Millie's family. The previous year (2007) we sold pies at the Freedom Festival to raise money for our upcoming family trip to Mexico. Kim planned the heck out of that event - in his signature style of planning - and we ended up not doing too well. Lost money in fact, I think. But the experience was GREAT. I was even willing to do it again this year (2008) - but apparently, I was the only one, and instead we spent the fourth enjoying the festivities as spectators. We went to one of the Provo Canyon parks and the kids played in the river. Ellery sat in the freezing water (yes, the Provo River is freezing, even in July) and she didn't even flinch at the cold. Her diaper swelled right up and caught her interest - she was such a funny baby. We spent the night of the fourth letting off fireworks at Millie's parent's with her uncle Paul and his family. Millie kept worrying I was going to blow myself up.

That July we (Kim and I) started the big kitchen remodel. Kim spent months planning out the new kitchen, it desperately needed to grow to keep up with the family. Finally, July 11, 2008 we started the project by busting out the concrete patio in the back yard to make way for the addition. By October, we were basically done. I loved, and still love, working with my father-in-law. It reminds me of working with my dad when I was younger. The harder the work the more I like it. Most of the time I'm working with Kim I think about how much fun it'll be to do some of the same projects on my own home someday. I've learned a lot from him - sure my dad taught me how to work, work hard, but Kim has really taught me how to plan through projects and direct my work ethic to be more efficient.

July was a BUSY month. At the end of July we went to AZ and Mexico (Rocky Point) with my family for my mom's birthday. It was a great trip. We drove the entire way down and back, but Ellery did great and we enjoyed the time with my family. We were able to stay in the home of a friend of my parents - it was just about a mile from the beach. On our way into town (Rocky Point) my dad ran a stop sign right in front of a Mexican police car. Yes, he got pulled over. Fortunately 95 percent of his wardrobe consists of EMT and Firefighter T-shirts and the cop recognized he was a firefighter so he let him go with a warning - I don't think it hurt that my dad speaks Spanish. I think it was a good birthday for my mom. It seems in these later years of my life that she wants nothing more than to have her kids around - even me sometimes. We spent most of our time playing on the beach body surfing and boogie boarding and of course sitting and talking. and I can't forget eating at Mexican food vendors. We ate a small taco stand one night, got real fruit paletas at another (every night) and we ate at a chicken restaurant that made Bret pretty much pee his pants with excitement - I have to admit, it was dang good, make my mouth water just thinking about it. We walked the boardwalk and just enjoyed our time together. It really was a great family trip. Except when Millie got sick on the home.

We spent August keeping cool by going to Seven Peaks (season passes) and also down to Mona (Burraston Pond) to swim and swing on the rope swing. We went with Jeremy and Abbie and although I was a little bit afraid to go from the higher platforms, I could never let on that I was - since Jeremy was doing it I HAD to too. Later I felt like I would have been an even bigger wimp if I didn't go when I saw little twelve or fourteen year old girls going from the high platforms. Sometimes, I think that pond was even more fun than Seven Peaks, if for no other reason, no lines. August was also when we hiked Timpanogos Caves. Ellery was too young to remember - or be afraid, I think we need to do it again this year. While we were in the cave a lady offered to take a picture of us (on her camera - because she had a really nice one) and she said she would email it to us. I gave her my email, but we never did get it.

September we went to the State Fair. I like going to the fair. Makes me feel better about myself - less white trash than most everyone else there at least. Plus, Ellery liked to see the animals. We never spent any extra money while we're there, but it is always fun to go out and do something different with the family.

October was a month we waited for for years to come. Like I said, my father-in-law is a master planner, he could plan a horse to death... whatever that means. He had been planning the family trip to Mexico (the Mayan Riviera) since before I joined the family I think. We went down and stayed at the Iberostar just outside of Playa del Carmen - actually it was about halfway between Playa and Cancun. It was an amazing trip. We went to Tulum and the beach, ate all-you-can-eat until we couldn't eat anymore (not the best food, but edible). We even planned an excursion to Chitzen Itza. The day before we were supposed to go to Chitzen Itza I got WAY sick. I told everyone to just go without me and I would stay in the hotel and rest. Millie refused to go with everyone else and stayed with me. Probably best she did that. She forced me to see the resort doctor who in turn referred me to the hospital. By the time I got there (by cab) I couldn't even stand in the ER. I was so dehydrated that I could almost feel myself leaving my body... maybe it was the drugs they gave me in my IV. I remember laying on the ER "bed" and the doctors asking me questions but I couldn't respond. I think I saw Millie's face (with Ellery in her arms) in the corner of my eye and I thought, "I can't leave her like this." But at the same time I didn't feel it was up to me, and I felt fine with it. A few IV boluses later, I got my senses back. They admitted me to the hospital for "observation" and $2500 and one day later, we headed back to the resort. Kim and Rhonda offered to pay for Millie and I to go on a Chitzen Itza excursion the next day, but I know how much it would have cost to book last minute and for just two people - so I decided it would just be incentive for Millie and I to make a trip down again someday. The next day we went snorkeling across the bay off of Cozumel. The Ferry ride over was SO choppy, pretty much everyone got sick. Ellery threw up several times - ever since then she has been very prone to motion sickness, even in the car, and she's never been that great of a traveler since either. But the trip was all worth it.

Shortly after we got back and returned to our daily routine our lives were shaken - looking back now, probably for the best. One afternoon Millie headed to work and I went to class. It was a Wednesday, back then Millie worked pretty much every Wednesday and I had class until 8pm. Millie's parents watched Ellery. This Wednesday I happened to get out of class early. I swung by the Roper's to pick up Ellery and I headed home. I pulled into the garage and got Ellery out, just a normal everyday thing. This time, however, when I went inside the house from the garage something was different. The lights were on for one, my first thought was Millie left the lights on, again. but then I heard a noise just around the wall inside the living room. I froze. Absolutely froze. I tightened my hold on Ellery preparing to bolt back into the garage to duck bullets, or blunt objects or a wild animal - who knows what, but my mind was racing as I envisioned the possibilities. Just then I noticed the homeowner's HUGE safe was not against the wall where it normally stood and I ruled out the now welcome possibility of a wild animal being in the house. Once again my imagination started to roll out the worst scenario - I could just see a couple of armed men come around the corner and put a bullet through my head, leaving me to drop limply to the tile floor I was fixed to. I could see my lifeless self as Ellery cried out not understanding what had just happened and left all alone as the men ran out of the house. Ellery would be left there, crying, next to my lifeless body in a pool of blood until Millie came home from work the next morning. I could see it all play out, all for the worst. Fortunately, the people who broke in were true cowards and they fled out the front door. As soon as I heard the door shut I felt my self unfreeze, just enough to pull my phone out of my pocket and dial 911. I went back into the garage and waited for an officer to arrive. He cleared the house and asked me to come in to help assess the damage and what was taken, if anything. I called the homeowner (who was living in Hawaii) to inform her of what just happened. She was always a frazzled person to begin with and this made dealing with her even worse - I hated giving her bad news. By this point, all of her animals, except her horse, had died. As old and decrepid as they were they had been living on borrowed time for the last five or six years, but there comes a point when all the doggy meds in the world can't keep a pet alive. I'm sure in her eyes those 18+ year old dogs were as healthy as an ox when she left and I'm sure she blamed us for killing them. Perhaps she's just a crazy old b**** who has to find someone, anyone, to blame for anything that goes wrong in her life, but whatever it was, she hopped on a flight that night and came back to UT to see for herself. When she arrived, I did everything I could to comfort her for the condition the intruders left her house - yes it was her house, but for the last two years, it was our HOME. She went through all of her belongings, all her "stuff" that she loved enough to pack in a giant safe and leave in Utah, but didn't seem to need it bad enough to take to her new home in Hawaii. That safe was full of sports memorabilia (her husband played for the Oakland Raiders) and it had guns, and jewelery, and art, and coins, and documents, and it was just packed to the gills with crap. After going through everything, piece by piece, she determined not a thing was stolen. Although the intruders had the safe partly cracked (and it only took the cops another 30 seconds to finish popping it open) they didn't even get a hand inside to take a single thing. Instead of being grateful that nothing was taken the homeowner turned on me and my family. She blamed us for the break in. She went off the handle about Ellery living in her home because she "wasn't in the contract" we signed when we moved it. It was 11pm and Mary, the homeowner, told Millie and I we had to get Ellery out of the house, that she couldn't be there anymore. I had Millie take Ellery to her parent's house and I told Mary, we'll be moved out by tomorrow. That night I spent the entire night packing and moving our stuff to Millie's parent's. The next morning her dad and our brothers-in-law came to help with the last of it. Mary didn't like how Rob, one of my brothers-in-law, looked at her and she called the cops. The psycho called the cops. I tried to keep everyone calm, to this day I have no idea why I still tried to comfort Mary, I can't believe I actually was empathetic towards her, I held her as she sobbed for her precious (dilapidated) house even as she kicked us out in the same breath... why the hell did I care what she was going through? I may never understand. But the ungrateful selfish evil woman will probably never know, and will definitely never understand, what me and my family went thought that week, it was all about her and her damn "stuff." The worst part of it was, the next week I had a meeting scheduled with my stake president to be re-baptized and get my membership back in the church. When we moved, the new stake in Provo refused to even consider looking at my records from Salt Lake and refused to "deal" with my reinstatement. So much time and effort - for lack of a better word - wasted.

I don't think I've ever expressed, especially not in writing, what I went through that week and how I felt about her. There isn't another human being on earth that is as heartless and selfish and evil as her - and the sickest part of it all, she still considers herself some sort of saint for "letting" us pay to take care of (and make improvements on) her house the previous two years. It always sickened me to think about how long the people who broke in must have been surveying the home to know the safe was there and what mine and Millie's schedule was. And some days, I can't help but wonder, what if I hadn't come home early from school that day? What if they had come while we were in Mexico just the week before? Not only would I have gotten to miss the terror of walking in on them with Ellery in my arms, but Mary would have lost all her precious crap that she holds so much more dearer than human life.

The Twenty-Eighth Year - 2007

2010-05-16T22:18:00.003-06:00

I got into trouble for my last post by Millie for not mentioning enough about her. In my defense, it was almost 2am by the time I finished and I was absolutely exhausted mentally and physically since I started the day going for a run with her and then helping her parents do yard work the rest of the day. I've been getting these posts done so late I haven't been proofreading them before posting. I even forgot to mention my trip I took to Orlando (Disney World, Bush Gardens and the beaches) with some friends that summer. Besides, My life from this point is all about Millie and our daughters.

In June, Tyson got remarried to another girl from Peru. Millie and I went to the wedding. It was the same day as her cousin's, Jessica, wedding too.

In July, we went down to AZ to celebrate my mom's birthday by going on the Grand Canyon Railroad. It was a fun trip. I think it was the first time I had ever been on a "real" train, not a light rail commuter train or subway. We spent most of the trip (at the Grand Canyon) sitting around and talking. One day, no one really knew what they wanted to do, so Millie, Ellery and I went and sat on a swing by one of the buildings on the rim. After a while everyone else in our group came and joined us, and we spent the rest of the day there talking. I don't think it was the kind of trip Millie was exactly used to, but for my family, those have been some of our best times together; talking. On our trip back, after getting off the train (which got in late to because there were delays due to a rain storm) we ended up getting in after dark and the train station was closed in Williams, AZ. Ellery needed to be changed before hitting the road so we changed her in the trunk of our car. When we got on the road to head back to UT, it started to downpour (rain) again. So Millie called her cousin that lives in Flagstaff and we stayed with them that night, then drove back to UT the next morning.

After Millie graduated in nursing (but before she got her RN) she was offered a job with Talecris Plasma Centers. As part of the job she was to do three weeks of training in Lake Charles, Louisiana. We ended up going the end of July - first part of August, my work allowed me to as well to help out with Ellery (who was about four months old at the time). It was a great trip. Millie did her training each day while Ellery and I hung out at the hotel (all expenses paid by Talecris). I spent my time working remotely - I was a project manager for Trophy Homes at the time, working on the new database). After Millie got off work we usually went swimming in the pool, or drove around to find authentic Louisiana food. One night we went to a buffet in a casino - they had quite the spread. All the Louisiana classics: fried alligator, frog legs, crab, and plenty of unidentifiable goo (unfortunately it wasn't crayfish season).

One of the weekends there we decided to drive out to New Orleans to go to the D-Day Museum - I've always loved museums and if there's one about war history, even better. It was neat seeing all the items on display, especially the letters home from soldiers. It was also amazing to see how outnumbered our troops were. It was a great trip but I came to this conclusion - other than that museum, there's not a damn thing worth saving in New Orleans and it would have been better to be completely wiped out and abandoned after Katrina.

We spent another weekend going the other direction, to Galveston, Texas to go to Schlitterbahn water park. It was a great drive out. Ellery used to travel so well - she slept most of the time. On our way there we even road the ferry to Galveston and passed by the USS Selma - I thought it was so cool to see, but I'm kind of a geek like that. When we got to the park everyone kept staring at us - I'm pretty sure it was because we were the only ones dumb enough to bring a four month old to the park - apparently, only in Utah is it normal to 1) have babies and 2) bring them with you to a water park. I think Ellery did well and I only remember her freaking out crying a little bit, but Millie I'm sure remembers it quite differently. We took turns watching her while the other of us went on some of the more "fun" rides. But even the lazy river was pretty awesome - Ellery liked it. I think Ellery had a hard time that day just being pretty much naked and wet and hot all day, so she refused to eat until we dried her off and got her back to the car. We took a different way back to Lake Charles and I remember it being a good drive - again, I think Ellery slept most all the way back.

I was only able to stay two weeks - so at the end of that time I packed up an took Ellery back to Utah while Millie stayed to finish her last week.

Later that summer Millie got her RN (before the new Talecris center opened in Provo) and she got a job with Intermountain Health Care as a master float nurse based in the Newborn ICU unit. Although I'm sure she felt bad for the free trip to Louisiana and the wasted money on her by Talecris, the NICU was where she really wanted to work. Besides, when she went for her interview when she was first applying to Talecris her then future boss hit our then new car and they never paid for the repair - hosers.

The rest of the year consisted of school, work and family - and lots of all three. January 21, 2008 was the first blog of our new family blog. Back then it was "webbpartyof3." Millie created it just playing around with the idea of a blog - we never intended to actually use it, but shortly after the first post we had people commenting on it -- how in the world they found it, we may never know. But rather than changing it we just kept it and started to blog. Most of my life since then has been documented in our blog - so I'll refer back to old posts for the most part and just stick to highlights and flashbacks from my childhood.

By April the housing market was falling fast. I knew my job was at jeopardy - the entire company was. Sure enough, April 11 I was laid off, along with everyone else in the single family division. However, rather than morn the loss of my job, we celebrated by going on a previously planned trip to Disneyland. Yes, a few weeks before we booked a trip to Disneyland and ended up leaving the day after my layoff, it was perfect. We were able to enjoy the trip not thinking about whether or not I'd have a job when we got back. From that point on, Millie and I decided that it would be best if I loaded up on my school credits and focused on my degree so I could get moving on my career.

The Twenty-Seventh Year - 2006

2010-05-15T22:11:00.003-06:00

I should have included this in last post, but I didn't - so here it is.

In February 2006 my friend Tyson lost his wife during the birth of their first, and only, child. If you remember, Tyson was engaged to a girl from his home town (Deweyville) by the time I came home from Texas. He couldn't wait for me to meet her and see what I thought of her. As soon as I moved up to Utah in January of 2003 I went up to meet her. Later that night, I told him, Tyson, you are not supposed to marry this girl. It as more complicated than that and we discussed it extensively. I guess he was thinking the same thing because later that week, he called to tell me he broke off the engagement. Later that summer he went to Peru with a friend of his (who served his mission in Peru) for a study abroad program. While he was down there he met the woman he would later marry, less than a year later - Jenny.

I blogged about Jenny's death on the All That is Wall blog, here's the link: All That is Wall: The Unimaginable. That blog only covers my thoughts on the events. I got the call from Tyson early in the morning. He sounded choked up and I knew something was wrong - he said baby was fine, but Jenny was "gone." I didn't know what to tell him, there was nothing I could, except that I'll be right there. Tyson never had much experience with babies - and his parents were a little rusty themselves - they had two boys twenty something years earlier with no other grandchildren. I was more than willing to help them get their feet wet again. I stayed with him at his parent's house in Deweyville a couple of days then had to check in at work before heading back up for the funeral.

At the funeral I put together a slide show on my laptop of Jenny and Hayden (their new baby) - Tyson didn't want to take the newborn out in early March, that was a good idea. the funeral went well - as well as a funeral of that nature can go - and after wards the crowds left and even I had to go back to life, leaving Tyson alone with his newborn. I called him everyday for a few weeks, just to check in on him and let him know I was there if he needed anything - even though he had moved back in with his parents, so his temporal needs were pretty much getting met. One day, maybe a couple of weeks after the funeral Tyson called me pretty upset. He was still working in Deweyville (where he was working and living before Jenny passed away) - and he was on his way home from work. He told me he just left his old apartment. He didn't mean to go there, he was just headed home from work listening to the radio not thinking about anything, and he completely spaced out. As he pulled up to his apartment he looked for Jenny's truck in the drive and wondered why it wasn't there - it was as if the the two or three previous weeks never happened - then, it ALL came back, and HARD. He said he sat in his car and sobbed for a good half hour or so before heading back to his parent's home and calling me. I didn't know what to say to him. But that night, we both decided he needed to take some time to himself and get away, so we planned a trip to San Blas - it was a location we both wanted to visit from a Spanish song by Mana, "El Muelle de San Blas." We planned to go the end of June.

In March, Chris and Marie Cool invited me to go to Rocky Point with them and their family. They used to take Shane every year, and with his death just a few months earlier, they wanted me to come in his place - it was me that introduced them and they took Shane into their family and he became closer to them than I was. I enthusiastically agreed to come. I told Brad about the trip and invited him to come - it was a road trip we both needed, and will never forget. We left early in the morning the week of spring break. It was SO cold still in Utah and we were looking forward to the warm beach. On the way down we stopped in Flagstaff to visit my friend Kelly and I took Brad to the Lowell Observatory (that I went to in my Horizons class in mid school). The tour was pretty much the same. It was a great way to kill an hour or two.

We left from the Cool's down to Mexico after doing some last minute repairs on one of their friend's trucks, who was also coming down with us. There were a few families going. We rented a big house on the beach for the week. It was perfect. We spent the week relaxing, playing games, talking about our memories of Shane and just enjoying our time together. One night we went and bought a bunch of Roman Candle fireworks and had a "war" with them. It was great; I got hit and burned my shorts. One night when we were sitting around the outdoor fire, Chris hit the top of Jesse's Corona, causing it to foam over all over him. Jesse got mad and went inside, we all laughed about it, until he surfaced on the balcony above and started shooting at us all down below with one of the Roman Candles - you'd never seen a bunch of guys scurry so fast, over walls, behind trees, wherever we could get away from his fire balls.

The ride back to AZ with Brad was great. Somewhere between Beaver and Provo, Brad and I got cabin fever from being in a car for so long that we started singing along with my ipod - I have video of us singing somewhere, maybe someday I'll post it.

I took summer classes at UVU, as usual, that summer. One of my classes was English 2010. First day of class I sat down with my laptop - it was in a room with large tables in a square pattern, so there was no "back of the class" seat, like I normally take. A moment later a girl came in and sat at the table next to mine. She was cute. I couldn't stop looking at her from the corner of my eye. I did so almost every class period. One day I forgot a pen to write with so I turned to her and asked for a pen. She let me use a pen, it was covered in glitter. When I returned it at the end of class I told her, "uh, your pen has glitter on it." I never got up the guts to talk to her again until the second to last day of class. I waited for her in the hall and asked her out. She hesitated but said yes. We ended up deciding to go out right after our in class final. I finish my final before her and told her to just call me when she got out - I even gave her the "hand to the ear gesture and mouthed 'call me'" thing was I left class. I waited and waited and she never called. The next day I waited and waited - she never called. Finally I decided to call her to see what was up, obviously I was never good at taking hints. I called her, she didn't answer - should have been a clue. I left a message anyway. A few minutes later she called back. She said she was actually really glad I called because her "phone broke" as she was leaving the English final and she had to go buy a new one and all her contacts got erased so she didn't have my number and couldn't call me. Honestly, I didn't believe her one bit; but she was still willing to go on a date with me, so we planned for me to pick her up after work on June 20th - the date, dinner at Red Robin and miniature golf at Cascade golf course. Both were fun. After wards I had to take her back to her car at her work where she left it. We sat in my car talking for a while; somehow the conversation got to Spongebob. I happened to have a few episodes on my ipod so we watched some. I couldn't stay too late because that night I was heading up to Centerville to stay with an old roommate of mine for the night because Tyson and I were leaving for San Blas early the next morning. After Spongebob got over I got out of my car and let my date out to give her a hug goodnight. The hug was okay, I didn't think I would be getting a second date from her either, but as I pulled away to get back in my car, she slid her hand down my arm and held my hand, just for a second. I gave her one more hug and something just clicked. I don't know why but in that instant I could see myself marrying her.

The next day, on our flight down to Mexico, I told Tyson all about my date the night before with - yep - Millie.

I couldn't talk too much about her on our trip though because it was supposed to be a guys trip, one to help Tyson get away and escape the reality of not having Jenny with him anymore.

The trip was great. We didn't plan anything other than we knew were were headed to San Blas. We flew into Puerto Viejo and booked a bus to San Blas. The bus didn't leave for a couple hours so we decided to grab a bit to eat - yep, street vendors, it's the best thing to eat in Mexico. We had a few tacos then made our way to the bus terminal. A LONG three hour bus ride later, we were in San Blas. We had no idea where we would stay - neither of us had ever been and we did no research on the place - that's just how we wanted our adventure to be. We walked around the town for a bit until we found a hotel we liked. It was Casa Maria, a small hotel not too far from the beach or town - and at ten bucks a night, no complaints. It was great, we spent a few days in San Blas walking around the town and eating at all the little stands. We went to the old fort and church ruins on the hill over looking the city, we visited the famous muelle and of course La Tovara (a natural spring deep in a mangrove forest). There was a rope swing at La Tovara and when Tyson went on it, he face planted into the water, I think that was his only attempt, rope swings are not his forte. But the boat ride in was cool and the views and fresh water were amazing. After a couple of days in San Blas we decided to start our way back to Puerto Viejo; we both wanted to stop and check out a place we passed on our bus ride to San Blas, a small "town" (a few building) called Playa los Cocos. We got off the bus WAY too early and ended up walking about five miles (with our packs - again, good thing I travel light) until we found a hotel. It was fifteen bucks a night and right on the beach. There was a lunch stand next door to the hotel that we ate at every meal we were there - it was the ONLY place to eat for miles. The owner of the hotel was an old guy who had his (I'm assuming) daughter visiting along with his grandchild. The owner spent all day, almost every day, in a hammock in by the beach - one day he feel asleep with his little grandson asleep on him, I took a picture I'll have to post later, it was adorable. Across the street from the hotel was a mango forest - yes, an entire forest of mango trees, I'm sure it was more of an orchard, but Tyson and I decided to go for a walk in it and pick us some mangos to eat along the way - which we did, and they were delicious! After a couple of days at Play los Cocos we had to head back to Puerto Viejo. We had one last night in Mexico and we decided to go all out and get an expensive hotel, expensive for us, it cost us like 20 bucks each for the one night, but the hotel was actually pretty nice and view was amazing, plus it even had A/C! Our last day/night/day in Puerto Tyson and I walked the shops and took pictures. Our flight back went well. We had a layover in San Fransisco and I called Millie from the airport to say hi.

A few days after I got back I took Millie to Park City to meet up with Brian and JoLynn, who were in town on vacation. When I picked up Millie at her house (her parent's house) I brought her flowers. Her dad answered the door and I handed him the flowers saying they were for him, then pulled them back and said I was just kidding, then I saw her mom and said they were actually for her - just kidding again. I know, I was a dork, especially for just meeting them in that moment. Millie came down and I gave her the flowers - Gerber daisies (her favorite) and some regular daisies. As we were leaving the house another car slowly passed us going the other direction and the people inside stared us down - I was asked Millie if she knew them and she said, "uh, no." I later found out the passenger was the boy she was dating at the time - I found out a few weeks later when he called me one morning. It was actually kind of a funny call - he told me he and Millie had been dating for the past nine months and that she is just playing me and I should dump her, I told him thanks but I wasn't really worried about it. Shortly after I got a call from Millie and she and I met up to talk, then I got the whole crazy story of how he couldn't take the hint, or direct statements, the she didn't like him and they were over. We hadn't made our relationship very official at that point so it really didn't bother me if she was dating someone else at the time. After that talk we decided to make it official.

A few weeks later I had to go down to St. George to help set up a new office for Trophy Homes, southern Utah division - I was the office manager of Trophy Homes at the time so, I was the lucky one to get to set the new site. While I was down there I had to run to Costco to get some supplies - in the parking lot, on my way out, I ran into Bethany - my old girlfriend from high school. I was shocked to see her. Over the years I had heard things about her whereabouts and what she was up to, but I never heard from her directly. The last thing I heard about her was just after I got back from Texas. Tevia told me that just before I left to Texas Bethany called her house (where I was living at the time) looking for me. She was married and going through a hard time and wanted to talk to me. Tevia told me she told Bethany that she was a married woman and to never try to contact me again. It was probably a good thing Tevs never told me that until after I got home from Texas, because otherwise, I probably would have tried to get back with her. Bethany ended up getting divorced and remarried by the time I ran into her at Costco. We said hi and hugged and basically just did the quick, "how've you been" kind of a passing - although there was SO much I wanted to say and ask her, but couldn't at the time.

Later that week I got a call from her - apparently she tracked my cell phone number down through a number of connections, I'm still not sure how come to think of it. She and I talked for hours - just like we used to back in high school, there were SEVERAL nights either she, or I, or both of us would fall asleep with our ears to the phone talking all hours of the night (again, that was before cell phones, so it was all land line conversations). But WHAT we talked about this time was different. Yes, we caught up on how we were and what's gone on over the years, but most of all she apologized. She apologized for how she treated me while we dated and for how things ended. She explained the bad situation with her ex and how it effected even her sibling's lives. We talked about everything that had been bothering me and hurting the previous six years, then we said goodbye.

It was shortly after that I found out Millie was pregnant. The day she told me, I somehow already knew. We planned a day, a Sunday afternoon, to tell her parents and let them know we were going to get married, a little sooner than expected. The day we planned for came. She showed up at Jacob and Cari Wall's house (where I was living at the time) and told me she couldn't go - she didn't want to go - and asked me to go by myself. I had still only met her parents a few times before and thought she was absolutely crazy for asking me to do that alone - but, I went. The drive over was too short. My heart was racing the entire time. I knocked on the door and Millie's mom answered and told me, "Millie's not here right now." I told her, I knew because she was at my place. I asked if I could talk to her and Kim (Millie's dad). She went and got him and we sat down in the living room. I didn't know how to begin. I sat on the couch across from them just trembling. Then, I said, I love your daughter, and I want to ask you if I can marry her. They said of course and actually seemed happy, then I had to drop the other news, I told them they have another grandchild on the way - and I did phrase it something like that. Disappointment flooded their faces - but at the same time, I could feel they loved their daughter so much and respected me (as much as a parent in their position could) for coming to them and loving their daughter too. My fear was gone - well, the fear of telling them was gone, my fear of how my life was about to change had only just begun.

Making things right with Millie's parents was only part of what lay before me. I also had the religious concerns as well. The church looks down on premarital relationships and even more so if a child is involved - compounded by the fact that I was in a ward in Provo. I went to my bishop to get things taken care of - he said it was beyond his ability to deal with and sent it to the stake. About a week later I was excommunicated from the church. I couldn't believe it. In less than a year I lost one of my best friends, another of my best friends lost his wife, I was on my way to becoming a father, and I had lost my membership in the church of my faith. With every trial over the previous year I thought, no way can things get any worse, yet they had.

Shortly after Millie and I got married. It was a simple, yet wonderful ceremony. We got married at the Alpine Art Center in Alpine, UT. Her parents were so helpful and supportive through it all. We kept it small and just invited family (including Brad, who we found out was Millie's cousin, after I realized her last name was Roper too) - and we invited a few close friends. My family came up from AZ, it was great to have them there. Right after the wedding Millie and I went to Disneyland for the weekend because we had to be back to school on Monday - getting married mid-semester was crazy.

We moved into a home owned by a lady I used to work with at Trophy Homes. She was fired the previous year, basically for clashing with the boss too many times. She had a home in Pleasant Grove with a HUGE yard, two OLD cats, two even OLDER dogs, and a horse - and she needed someone to take care of them all, and the house, while she lived in Hawaii. It seemed like a good opportunity at the time. Taking care of those nasty rotting dogs and the sickly cats was a chore. By mid winter one of the cats died. By late winter one of the dogs followed.

On April 2, 2007 Millie started to go into labor. She was in a lot of pain pretty much the entire afternoon. The contractions were pretty far apart but her pain wasn't going away between them, we didn't know that wasn't normal so we just waited til they got closer before calmly making our way to the hospital - where we preregistered earlier that day. When we checked in, the nurse there asked a few questions about the contractions and said they would monitor Millie for a bit and see if anything progresses and said, "you'll probably just end up going home, you're not that far along," and she was right, Millie was only 36 weeks at the time (four weeks early). The floor was pretty much dead and the nurses that were there slowly moseyed about whenever we asked for them - until, that is, Millie's water broke. She was in the hospital bed and had just changed into a gown. I called the nurse in to let her know the water broke. She came and looked at it and she went pale - the water was filled with blood. In that instant the quite hospital floor came alive. There were four or five nurses and a midwife in in a matter of seconds. Both Millie and the baby (in uterus) got hooked up to monitors - they told us the placenta had been tearing away from the uterus and they would have to perform an emergency C-section. Moments later the doctor arrived and they were suiting me up in OR clothes so I could be by Millie's side. I remember feeling detached from the entire situation, like, all this wasn't really happening to me or my wife - but it was. I got out our camera so I could take pictures of the new baby when it came - what an idiot, I left the battery at home in the charger. No problem, I brought our video camera - oh, crap, the battery was dead. Thankfully the hospital gave us a disposable camera to take some pictures.

The staff was great and in seconds Ellery Jane Webb was cut from her mom at about 4am on April 3, 2007. Aside from the birthing complications Ellery was healthy and strong. She could stand, with a little help by holding her arms, that same day. She was a solid and rigid baby from day one. After a couple of days in the hospital we were able to bring her home. Millie finished up classes at UVSC later the next week and graduated with her nursing degree. It was a heck of a year for me, but I was thankful for my new family and for the chance to be alive and turn twenty seven.

The Twenty-Sixth Year - 2005

2010-05-14T21:50:00.002-06:00

Turning twenty-five was bitter sweet for me... but mostly just bitter. According to the culture I was living in at the time I had become a "menace to society." Personally, I don't think it was an accurate descriptive title - I was working full time and enrolled in school at UVSC working on my business management degree. Hardly a menace.

I think this was the summer I went to the Jack Johnson concert with G Love and Special Sauce. It was a good concert - held somewhere out in West Jordan I think. I can't remember who I even went with but our seats were pretty good. I also went to a Tim McGraw concert at that same venue. One of my co-workers used to call in to local radio stations and she seemed to always get through and win free stuff. Once she won Howie Day concert tickets; she had already bought tickets too so she gave me the ones she won. I took a friend from FoxWood. It was a great concert, Anna Nalick opened. Speaking of concerts, I think it was in 2006, I went to the Fall Out Boy concert (with All American Rejects and Hawthorne Heights) at the McKay Events Center at UVSC - NOT a good venue, in fact the WORST sound quality ever... but it was still fun to go.

The year was not all fun though. September. Shane Sirois was killed September, 2005. Back then I used to write all my blogs on the All That Is Wall blog (Bret's blog). I recorded my thoughts shortly after getting the news of Shane's death here: All That is Wall: Farewell to a friend. I just finished reading it for the first time since I wrote it. It's interesting how many of the stories I shared there are the same as I've written in these past few blogs here.

Shane was working as a stunt man for a touring show of Pirates of The Caribbean in China at the time; he came home (to Tucson) for a week or so to visit his grandparents for his birthday (September 11). On the 17th Shane and some friends put on a benefit car wash to help victims of Hurricane Katrina. After helping at the car wash he went with some friends to a gas station where one of his friends was getting a cell phone he had loaned to another friend (or something like that). While they were there a young male in a car started arguing with one of Shane's friends over who knows what. The guy in the car drove off, only to return a moment later showing a gun. Shane and his friends took off running on foot. One shot was fired hitting Shane in the back. The bullet bounced around the inside of his thoracic cavity until coming to rest lodged in his heart. One of his friends ran to him and held him - Shane knew he was gone.

Shortly after my dad called me with the news I got a call from Shane's younger brother Eric. Eric asked me to be a pole bearer at the funeral in Tucson - of course I agreed. I cried good and hard that week. Only a week or two before his death I tried to email him. He must have changed his address because it came back undeliverable. Words can't describe how much I regret procrastinating tracking down his new address - or some other means of getting in touch with him. I just wanted to catch up with him, say hi, and see how things were going for him. The last time I had seen him before the funeral was at Chris and Marie Cool's house in Show Low, the same one Shane and I helped paint. Shane was there finishing up some odd job for the Cools - it must have been a year or so earlier (2004).

I helped track down a few of Shane's childhood friends to give them the news and invite them to the funeral - including a girl he and I both dated in high school (at the same time - yes all three of us knew about it, but we didn't care). I felt a little out of place there, most (okay, all) of the people (friends from high school) I hadn't spoken to since graduation - except for Kelly, she and I actually rode down to Tucson together. The funeral was all wrong. His mom had it in an LDS church building and all the songs and even the eulogy were things Shane was probably rolling his eyes about. The guy that gave the eulogy was probably the bishop in his grandparent's ward... I'm pretty sure he never met Shane and who knows where he got his words from. The best thing said was by his mom, "if Shane were here right now, he would be wondering why we're all a bunch of 'sad sacks,' cheer up, you'd think someone died or something." His life ended far too soon, but, ironically enough, Shane did (accomplished) everything he ever set out to do.

At the graveside ceremony one of Shane's friends sparked up a joint and blew a last puff into the grave... the rest of us just shared a memory and tossed in a handful of dirt.

I spent the rest of the year listening to Green Day's "Wake Me Up When September Ends" song - over and over and over again.

The Twenty-Fifth Year - 2004

2010-05-13T21:58:00.002-06:00

During the summer of 2004 I was offered the opportunity to earn more money by working nights as a security guard for the company I was already working for, Trophy Homes. I would drive to the various construction sites and keep an eye on things to prevent job site theft and vandalism. Even though I was working nights, I kept my day hours as well. There were a few of the nights I would bring friends along to keep me company, and sometimes I would watch movies on my laptop. It was exhausting (staying up all night and then all day) at times but I needed the money.

Looking back, I can't think WHY I needed it so bad, I didn't have a lot of expenses; if only I could go back and save some of that disposable income - rather than spend it all on dates and having fun. Okay, maybe I don't regret it all that much. I had a lot of fun, and sometimes I actually wish I had myself a little more fun.

Winter 2004 came early that year - come to think of it, it comes early every year in Utah. By early November I had already had enough of the cold, gray and gloomy weather. I got online and started searching airfare prices to pretty much anywhere south. I quickly found a cheap ($240 round trip) flight to Cancun. I had never been before so I booked and got ready to go. One of my roommates that summer, Brian Whittaker, worked a summer on Cozumel (selling Del Sol T-shirts) and he suggested a small hotel for me to stay at in Playa del Carmen - La Maya Bric. I didn't want this to be too planned out, so I decided to just go down and play everything by ear. My flight left the Monday before Thanksgiving - just about a week after I booked it. I remember getting off the plane in Cancun and just breathing in the moment. The air was warm and humid with that slight acrid smell of mildew - common for many parts of Mexico. It's a comfort smell to me, that reminds me of my childhood trips to the homeland.

It was already getting late when I landed, about 8pm, so I didn't waste much time finding a bus to Playa del Carmen - about an hour drive south. When I arrived in Playa the town was hopping. The bus terminal is right on 5th ave., which is the main street for shops, tourists and restaurants (for the tourists). I walked pretty much the entire street (with my bag - which wasn't bad because I travel so light). After looking over my options I decided to go with La Maya Bric. It was a hole in the wall hotel, literally, the entrance to the courtyard is a hole in a wall on the street. Since it was the week of Thanksgiving I was able to get a room for $10 bucks a night - a steal, since the room was really pretty nice. No roaches at least... well, not that I ever saw, and it was less than 50 yards to the beach and it had a pool.

There were only a few things I knew I wanted to do while there. 1) Go to Tulum, 2) Go to Chitzen Itza, 3) Eat street vendor food, 4) Relax and enjoy the experience. I did all but one of those things - I didn't get to go to Chitzen Itza due to time and money constraints. However, Tulum was amazing - I remember thinking over and over again, the entire time I was there, that I could not believe I was actually there. It was a place I had only seen in pictures and dreamed of going. The stairway down the side of the cliff that lead to the beach was closed, so I found another way down the side of the cliff. I had the beach all to myself. It was great.

My flight home was Thanksgiving eve, so I wasn't there very long. However, every morning I woke up and ate street vendor food, usually a torta and a coke - the breakfast of champions. Since 5th ave. is so touristy it was hard finding much else in the way of street vendor food. So one day I hopped on an inner city (colectivo) bus and started to ride. I had NO idea where I was going to end up or what I would do. The bus wound through many of the poorer parts of town - it reminded me a lot of the areas I lived and worked in Ecuador. The bus went past a dirt field with some guys playing soccer - so I told the driver to stop and I got off. I joined their game of soccer and played until it was almost dark - probably not way smart since I had NO clue where I was in the city or how to get back to my hotel, but I really didn't worry about it much - I could speak Spanish and that was good enough for me. The buses had stopped running already so I asked the guys I was playing soccer with how to get back to my hotel. They gave me directions and I started to walk. It was a good, but long, walk. On the way I found a few vendors that I was more than happy to exchange money for their food - tacos!

The next morning I woke up, packed my bag and got my breakfast torta and coke. I headed down to the beach for one last relaxing moment (since I didn't think I'd get a chance back in Cancun). I sat on a beach chair under an umbrella and called my dad to tell him where I was calling from and wish him an early happy Turkey Day. Then I headed to the bus terminal and rode back to Cancun. It was still a few hours before my flight was going to leave - planned that so I could check out the city - and that's just what I did. I had NO clue where to go or what the city offered so, again, I got on a city bus and started to ride. I saw a street market so I got off and walked around. I ended up buying a Puma's soccer jersey. Then I decided to head out to, and walk, the beach. I took a bus out to the end of the strip of big resort hotels and walked the entire strip, on the beach, back to the main land. On my way I realized I never used a waterproof camera I bought for the trip, so I gave it to a newlywed couple that was there on their honeymoon. It was a nice way to end the trip.

I got back to the airport and checked in. The flight was delayed, and delayed, and delayed. Apparently the plane that was supposed to pick us up and take us to Houston was coming out of Houston and it was raining pretty hard there so I couldn't leave. A few hours later, it finally came. We boarded and the flight went without incident. However, when we landed in Houston, the plane was so late, I had missed my connection to Phoenix (I was flying to Phoenix to spend Turkey Day with Bret and Tevs). I went to the airline counter and they looked up my flight information. They were able to get me on a new flight to Phoenix the next morning, Thanksgiving Day, and they put me up in the airport Marriott with a free room service dinner. To this day, I don't know what made me think it would be good - since I really don't like pizza that much - but I ended up ordering a pizza. I couldn't have been more disappointed when the pizza that arrived was a Pizza Hut pizza... quite possibly the world's NASTIEST excuse for pizza EVER! But, I was hungry so I ate it... some of it. I got about half way done when I couldn't eat any more (and it was a small, individual size, pizza). About halfway through the night, the pizza came back up - a few times. I didn't sleep much the rest of the night and the flight to AZ was pretty miserable. Thanksgiving wasn't that fun either because I couldn't eat much - but it was great to be spending it with family at least.

Later that year, for New Year's, I ended up going with a few of my new friends (I moved into Parkway Crossing that fall for school at UVSC) up to Salt Lake for "First Night," the SLC New Year's party. That night I met Brad Roper. He was one of the guys - come to think of it, the only other guy there besides me - that we met up with when we got to Salt Lake. He was eating at ThaiFoon with a few other friends. I don't know why, but we decided to head out to the festivities together in his car with a few of the girls. We got there before them and I remember he and I complained about how slow everyone else was being - it's funny, but our cynical attitudes sealed a pretty solid friendship that night. I later found out he even lived just down the hall from me at Parkway Crossing.

It was nice having Brad around since my roommates were absolute (insert your own expletive here). Brad and I ended up spending a lot of time together, usually complaining about girl problems and playing basketball. One of my favorite things we used to do was play Mafia in the church building late at night with a huge group of friends. Those were some pretty good times.

The Twenty-Fourth Year - 2003

2010-05-12T23:35:00.003-06:00

During the summer of 2003 Matt and I had a great time working together. There were several weekends he and I would cut out of work on Fridays and head out to California to surf in Carlsbad. Matt had a few friends that were working selling pest control there so we had a free place to stay when we went down. Matt had just gotten a new Honda Civic too, so gas was pretty cheap. I never got super good at surfing, but the trips were great. My first time out it was FREEZING. I remember shivering so hard in my wet suit that I couldn't even hold on to my surf board. The next few trips were much better. On one trip my younger brother Brandt came with us. On the way back, I was driving, only going maybe 95mph (with the flow of traffic that day). Unfortunately, the road up ahead was lined with state patrol cars pulling over speeders right and left - it was by far the most expensive ticket I have ever gotten... I think that was that last surfing trip I took - couldn't afford it after that.

Later that summer I started the hunt for a car. I searched every listing, in print and on line, for weeks. I knew I wanted a Honda - best car maker ever. I found a '93 Accord that I went to test drive. I didn't LOVE it, but it seemed like it would be an okay car - but I wanted to sleep on it. The next day, I found a '97 Civic. The ad was posted just moments before I found it. The seller lived just down the street. I contacted her and JoLynn drove me over to test drive. I fell in LOVE the first time I got in. She was perfect - she was "precious to me" (Gullom). The seller said she had just gotten a job out east and was not taking the car with her. It had 133,000 miles on it - most of which were open highway miles from going between AZ and Cali. She was the car's second owner and was asking $5,500. I told her I have $5k, I'll take it right now. She accepted and I drove Precious home.

At the end of the summer I headed back up to BYU. Everything I owned fit in that car - in fact, up until I got married everything I owned still could fit in that car.

Back at BYU, I got a new apartment with the same roommates I had the previous semester - Will and Buddy. They also brought with them another Canadian, Jason Low. the four of us lived in FoxWood Apartments, unit number four. I loved living with those three Canucks. We spent almost every night watching Sports Center on ESPN. We also played BYU intramural basketball together. It was always fun playing with Will, he was tall, but lazy, and refused to jump because it was "a waste of energy." Buddy's laugh was infectious. He used to get a kick out of mine and Will's long toes - sometimes when Will and I were laying on the floor watching TV Buddy used to try and get Will and I to "hold toes." Lord of The Rings, The Two Towers came out in 2002. The four of us loved the movie (Buddy and I used to talk like Smeagal and Gullom to each other). The movie had finally gone to dollar theaters and we went to see it - at the WORST dollar theater in the world. I think it was in American Fork (the only dollar theater showing it at the time). Half the chairs were missing from the theater and it was flooded (hopefully just with water) down by the screen and the chairs had NO padding... literally. Despite all that, we stayed the entire three plus hours to see the movie.

I think 2003 was the year I spent Christmas alone. I had just started a new job (quit my remote job with PracticeMax) in October. I started working as a receptionist for Trophy Homes. I didn't really have time off, or the money, to make a trip down to AZ to be with family. So I stayed in Utah and just spent the holiday alone. It was interesting being the ONLY person in the entire two buildings at FoxWood for almost two weeks. I went three days straight without leaving my apartment or seeing another human being. I basically spent the time watching Finding Nemo (my parents sent it to me for Christmas) and all my other Disney animated movies. As sad of a Christmas as it could have been, I actually liked the experience, but I would never want to do it again.

During the winter semester of 2004 (January - April) I started looking more into the idea of going into occupational therapy for a career; even did some job shadowing. The University of Utah was one of few schools that still offered OT as a bachelor's degree so I decided to transfer to the U to try and get in the program. Of course, physical therapy was actually my preferred choice, but I really didn't want to sacrifice the time to get a four year degree in something else in order to try to get into a master's program for PT. So I decided to settle and make the move. After winter semester ended I started my applications to go to the U.

The Twenty-Third Year - 2002

2010-05-11T21:02:00.002-06:00

After Tyson left my next companion was Hyrum Hibbert. He came straight out of the MTC - yes, I was a trainer. I was pretty sure that President Tanner (the mission president) was never going to have me train, but there I was.

Hyrum was a good kid. He had good intentions and desires, but I think he was the most difficult for me to get along with. I sometimes think the situation wasn't much different than with me and my first trainer in Ecuador. I think Hyrum had a certain idea of how things would, or should, be in the mission - so learning the reality of things was probably a difficult adjustment. I'm pretty sure Hyrum struggled with a bit of a learning disability or a social disorder as well, so all things considered, he really was a good kid and a good missionary.

He and I were together for a couple of months and he was transferred. My next companion was also new to the mission, yes, I trained again; Ian Bates. Ian was so much fun. He and I decided to ditch the car (as much as possible) and bought bikes. What ever happened to my bike?... I think I might have sold it or given it away when I left... I think. We also bought Camelback backpacks - anyone who has ridden a bike (all day) in Texas, in the summer, would understand why they were necessary. Most of our area covered low income neighborhoods, predominantly Black and Hispanic populations. The Black kids would always stop us in on our bikes and ask us what were were selling, if we were "pakin heat", and "why you got that hose comin outta you bag, you not gettin enuf air to breef or sumfin?" They would get a kick out of the fact that there was water in that hose, not air, and they would all line up to get a drink out of it - of course we wouldn't let them put their mouth on it, we just held up the pack and let the water flow out.

After a month with Ian, we got another missionary added to our companionship. He was supposed to be headed to South America but had visa problems and was sent to Texas to wait it out. The three of us had a lot of fun together, even though we couldn't do bikes much after that.

When my time had come for me to go home, December 5th 2002, I ended up spending ten and a half of my twelve and a half months in the same area in a small branch in Arlington. I really grew to love that branch and all the families I worked so much with. The branch (church group) that I worked with was composed of Hispanics from all over the world, from Acuna, Mexico (just across the boarder from Del Rio, TX - to Costa Rica, El Salvador, Peru, Chile and all over Mexico. It was great to learn about so many different cultures, accents and vocabulary uses - not to mention how fun it was to listen to the Chileans talk about how "everyone from Peru is a drug addict" and the Peruvians would claim, "all Chileans are drunks." Yes, the rivalries among the Latins is great - especially around the World Cup.

I miss everyone I got to know and love during my service as a missionary. But when it was my time to be done, I was ready.

I came home and needed a place to stay for a month (the month of December) while I waited for the winter semester to start at BYU (I had applied and been accepted during the last couple months of my mission in Texas). Tyson (and my mission president) convinced me to apply and go there. Tyson was all set to attend and we were planning on being roommates. He arranged housing and everything. When it came time for the semester to start, Tyson bailed. He ended up getting engaged to a girl from his hometown. Now, not only was I going to be attending BYU, but I wouldn't know a single person up there - and I still needed a place to live for a month.

Brian and JoLynn Hutchinson was an older couple who lived in my Scottsdale ward before I left to Texas. I never really knew them before I left, but they offered their home to me for that month of December 2002. The month with them was great. I learned JoLynn a lot about both of them including the fact that she is Jeanie Day's aunt (my middle school music teacher). Another great thing about my coming home to Scottsdale was I got my old job back at PracticeMax. In fact, when it came time for me to head up to Utah for school, my boss let me take my work with me and work remotely correcting billing errors.

The housing Tyson had secured for me was - not the fanciest place in Provo, but I was poor so, I didn't care, it was a place to live. It was an apartment for four guys, but since Tyson bailed, there were only three of us - me, and two Canadians: Buddy Beazer and Will Petersen. The three of us got along great and became great friends. Halfway through the semester we came home to a new roommate. Matt Mendenhall. Imagine Kramer from Seinfeld, then give him a Macbook computer and a guitar - that was Matt. He was a character. The four of us melded well as roommates. We went to more social events that semester than I think I ever have, Matt had that influence on people - to just get out and have fun. Before the end of the semester, just as he came, Matt left. He was from Scottsdale, AZ and I was able to get him a job with PracticeMax back in AZ. After the semester ended, I too moved back to AZ, back in with Brian and JoLynn. I still had no car so I bought a pair of rollerblades and would rollerblade to work - thank goodness the office was only a few (3) miles away. Yes, I used to rollerblade to work in Scottsdale in the summer - so what?

Like I mentioned before, when I went into the MTC in October 1999, that was really only the third time I had ever even been to Utah. The first time I went with my family when I was much younger - maybe eleven-ish. We made the trip to visit some of my mom's family and to visit temple square and a few church history sites. The trip up took two days... somehow. We took it slow stopping at sites here and there - in the old copper van. The stop I remember the most was at a KOA where we stayed the night - somewhere in Utah. There was a small store that sold some random crap and candy. In all my trips to and from Utah since then I've tried to find that KOA, but I never have, I think we must have gone a different way, or it's just not there anymore.

In Utah we visited my aunt Dona (my mom's sister) and my uncle David (my mom's brother). David was married to Sherri at the time, an older woman who had a son about Nephi's age from a previous marriage. Chad had rollerblades, I had never seen them before and I was jealous he and Nephi got to use them, my feet were too small at the time. David and Sherri also had some black chow dogs - pure chows, with purple tongues. I thought they were the coolest dogs ever - probably just because I knew they were expensive.

At temple square we toured the tabernacle and some of the other buildings around. We also went to the beehive house and I remember I bought a copper post card with a picture of temple square on it. I kept that for years - in fact, it may still be in my box of stuff at my parents house, unless they threw that box away.

The other trip up to Utah was when we dropped Nephi off at the MTC. Pretty much the only thing I remember about that (if it was the same trip) was we visited Bret and Tevia in their tiny basement (bottom floor) apartment, and Tevia was still learning how to cook. She made spaghetti, I think, and I remember the mountains looking SO tall and close from their place. It looked like the mountains would fall right on top of me. I also remember Nephi wanting to eat at [Up] Chuck-O-Rama for his last meal before going into the MTC. I actually thought that place was good back then.

The Twenty-Second Year - 2001

2010-05-10T22:04:00.002-06:00

I had been living in Scottsdale with the Walls for about seven months by the time of my 21st birthday. I had made some new friends and was working to get back out to finish my mission.

Working for PracticeMax had its advantages - I got to use my Spanish daily (with the Hispanic collection calls) so not only was I not losing it, I was learning new - non gospel related - vocabulary.

One day on my way home from work I stopped at a red light. A few seconds later I was in the middle of the intersection with a truck attached to the back of my car - luckily the traffic moving in the other direction hadn't quite started to move yet. The truck that hit me was pulling a trailer loaded with a commercial size street sweeper. The idiot drive was talking on his cell and didn't even notice the light change OR see me stopped in the lane in front of him. My car was a total loss. On the bright side, just a few weeks later I got a couple grand for the lost car (surprisingly more than it was probably worth) and it just happened to be the amount I needed to pay for the rest of my mission - which I also got called back out on. I was reassigned to the Texas Fort Worth Spanish speaking mission. The call came by phone on a Thursday afternoon in November. I was at work, just getting ready to leave for the day. It was my stake president that called me with the news. He told me, "well Jacob, pack your bags - you leave Monday morning - now, would you like to know where you're going?" I was shocked to say the least. That meant I basically had two days to buy all my stuff I needed - most all of my original belongs I gave away to locals in Ecuador when I left. But I was excited to for the call and accepted. I told my boss (who was actually in my ward at the time so he understood and was fine with it) and I spent the next two days buying my stuff and saying goodbye to the friends I had made there over the previous year.

Monday morning I boarded a plane headed directly to Texas. I got there and was put with Jason Hoppie. He too had been reassigned from another mission. He originally was serving in Bolivia (he was only there a couple of months) before he got sent home stateside. He and I got along great and had a lot of fun. There were, however, several missionaries in that mission that did NOT like me. Apparently I didn't fit the mold that the previous mission president set for that mission. One of those missionaries that really didn't like me was Tyson Knudsen - he was in the same district as me. I was only with Hoppie a month before he got moved out west. My next companion was... Tyson Knudsen. I was honestly happy with it because I thought he seemed like a pretty cool guy the few times I had met him at district meetings. However, it wasn't until after a month or two with him that I learned he said "oh shit" to the mission president on the phone when he heard we were going to be companions.

The companionship was inspired. Tyson happened to have only four months left in the mission when we were put together - and he STILL had the proverbial "MTC stick" up his butt. I pulled that thing out and gave him the beating of his life - kind of like Hendrickson did for me back in Quevedo. Tyson learned how to enjoy the work he was doing and love, truly love, the people he was serving. We had great success and fun together. Tyson was a year younger than me but he looked like he could be my dad. He was... portly... and quite bald - balding at the very least. Every Thursday night he and I would have "Thursday Night Smack Down." It was a great way to get any frustration out - which he seemed to have a lot of some days. One time, and I have no idea to this day HOW I did it, but I lifted him up almost over my head and slammed him down on my knee - breaking one of his ribs. For the rest of our time together he snored.... LOUDLY. Probably served us both right.

I used to tie my tie like a "waterfall" - I wouldn't put the long end through the hole at the last part of tying the knot, so it just hung over the top and lay flat from my neck down. Anyway, several missionaries had conniption fits over it. I loved doing things that pissed off the uptight elders. It never ceased to amaze me how some missionaries got SO caught up in the "letter of the laws" that they would miss the most important parts of serving - enjoying what you're doing and loving those you serve.

Tyson finished his mission and went home just after my birthday. We had some of the best times together and after he went home, even now, we keep in touch.

When I was younger, my family used to go crawdad hunting at Rainbow lake. One time we went with my mom's cousin Lois and her husband Jim. We caught SO many crawdads that we filled an entire five gallon bucket. I remember going home, cooking and eating them all. Crawdads were a treat growing up - it was the closets thing to shrimp we got all year - except for on New Year's Eve. Every New Year's my mom would buy us shrimp, smoked oysters and kippered snacks - I think we loved them so much because it was such a rare treat!

My family used to do a lot of camping. We camped out at Green's Peak one year and my dad taught us how to carve a ball inside a cage out of a single piece of wood. He also taught us how to carve a chain out of a single piece of wood. I attempted both. They weren't as good as his by any stretch of the imagination, but they worked.

We used to camp at lower log (or was it upper log?) on the way to Sunrise. There was a natural spring that we used to fill up water bottles with near there too. One camping trip I remember playing Mexican Train (Dominoes) pretty much the entire time. Those were some of the best camp outs, when we would sit around outdoors playing games, talking and laughing with one another.

We went camping up past Sunrise with my aunt and uncle, Aaron and Deanne Webb, shortly after I came home from Ecuador. They brought their horses and we went riding out in the meadows there. It was the first (and last) time I had ever actually rode a horse at (or close to) full speed. It was SO much fun. I've always wanted to do it again, but I've never had the opportunity.

For a Webb family reunion one year (when I was probably around seven or so) we camped out at Los Burros. There was an old barn out there (not sure why there was a barn in the middle of the forest). My uncle Karl brought out his Clydesdale horses he used to have and he took us on hay rides.

Years later, we went on a scout camp to that same place and Shane and I made our first (real) attempt to go cow tipping. It's not as easy as some people make it sound - especially since the cows we were trying to tip weren't asleep yet, so they kept running away from us. When we finally caught up with one, we found that two boys whose combined weight was probably under 180 pounds, had NO chance to even budge a half ton (or more) cow.

We went on several camp outs to Brown Creek - the same spot I got lost at. My cousins, siblings and I used to catch small frogs and put them on pieces of wood to have races floating them down the stream that ran through the camp. I remember we had one we named Herman. There was also a bigger pool of water that we (or someone) had dug out up stream a ways. It wasn't very big, or deep, but I remember being afraid of it for the longest time because I couldn't swim.

Not all our camping trips were in the forest. One time we had a Webb family reunion at the church baseball field in the middle of town. It was kind of weird camping in town like that, but I couldn't complain about the fun we had playing ball.

Whenever we would go camping it was a guarantee that SOMETHING was going to get cooked in a dutch oven. My favorite was biscuits and gravy and my mom's dutch oven pizza (not all in the same meal - but... you know what I mean).

The Twenty-First Year - 2000

2010-05-10T20:58:00.002-06:00

The new millennium came without a hitch - for the most part. My twenty-first year started off where my twentieth left off, in Quevedo, Ecuador. I was there for a few more months with Jorge Mogollon (from Guatemala) after Hendrickson left. Mogollon was a tiny little guy. He probably didn't weigh more than 90 pounds and came up to my shoulder, if that... but he was the only companion I had that could keep up with my walking pace or my appetite. In fact, that little guy out walked and out ate me - to this day I have no idea where he hid his food.

We did a service project for the stake center building that sat at the top of a very steep (maybe 20 foot) hill - we cut the weeds. In order to do it we had to tie ourselves off with rope and hang down while we cut out the weeds with machetes. Yes, the machete, the Ecuadorian all purpose outdoor tool - every missionary had one. It was a fun project - but I still have scars on one of my hands where giant fire ants had their way with it during that project. I only had one glove because another missionary that was helping forgot his.

One of the families I got to know in Quevedo decided to get me a gift - a monkey. They went out to the jungle and caught one, brought it home and gave it to me. I LOVED it! It was way cute - unfortunately, there was no way I could keep it, so I told them, "thank you" and asked them if they could just keep it for me. So they did. Kerli, the little girl of the family, used to bite the monkey's tail to make it made... it was kind of gross, but funny.

One day we went to visit a family, and as we approached the door two women came running out of the house screaming. They said a big iguana just crawled in the house. I went in and found it, caught it, took it back to our place, left it in the shower, then we went back out for the day. When we got back that night I took it over to a friend's house and they cut off it's head (with a dull knife, while I held it down - the head kept biting long after we cut it off) and then they prepared it for lunch for us the next day. It was actually really good! Tasted like a mix between fish and (of course) chicken - everything tastes like chicken.

After four months in Quevedo I was moved to Porto Viejo. It was a great city. We lived just down the street from a pizza place that had the best (Ecuadorian) pizza! We would get one almost every night, some of the toppings available were pretty strange. For the life of me, I can't remember what I would get on mine, but I know I loved it.

We lived in the city but the area we worked in was beyond the outskirts - out in "el campo" or the jungle basically. Sometimes we would hitch hike to get there and sometimes we would just walk. The "houses" (cane shacks) were built basically one on top of the other on the side of a hill. Down in the valley there was a man and his wife who lived in a cane shack (housing options where either cane or cement). The man did all sorts of things to earn money, whatever he could really - one of those things was leather work. He made me a pair of sandals out of leather and an old tire (for the soles). I still have em, uncomfortable as heck, but I'll never get rid of them.

One time my comp and I were walking after dark out in the outskirts of town and we saw a bright green light streak across the sky then disappear behind the hill - then a bright green flash lit up the entire sky. It was probably a meteor or something, but I thought it was really cool at the time - actually, I still think it was pretty cool.

I loved my time in Ecuador. We would go out early every morning, walk ALL day in the sun - teach the gospel message and come home late at night - more often then not we'd fall asleep on our knees praying for those we were there to help. Some nights we would be so tired, even the one praying would fall asleep mid prayer - we'd usually wake up in the middle of the night (2 or 3am) and wake up the other companion and tell them to get in bed - then we'd start the day over again, bright and early.

I think, other than the people there of course, I miss the food most of all. Every day we could expect a hot bowl of "caldo" (soup) with a nice hot drink of something usually thick and creamy, and a plate of "arroz con menestra" (rice with goo) and a side of s meat (usually thin flank steak or some fish or chicken) and some "patacones" (fried plantain bananas). I know you probably think I'm being sarcastic about loving such food - especially when the temps was always about 95 degrees and 150% humidity, but in all honesty, I LOVED it. I can't wait until I can afford to go back. But the best dish of all was encebollado. It's an Ecuadorian fish soup. It has yucca, fish, onion, chifle (basically plantain chips) and a bunch of other yummy stuff that you just can't find in the states. I'd give my right kidney for a fresh hot bowl of it right now!

The LDS mission is usually a two year commitment. I had every intention of serving those two full years. However, after being out a year, and doing the work I was there to do, I couldn't deny any longer that I shouldn't be there - not until I took care of some things that happened before I left to serve. I went to the mission president and talked to him about the issue. He did all he could to keep me there, but in the end the decision wasn't his - I had to return home to take care of things there. The next day I was on a plane for home.

The flight home was the longest, most humiliating, and LONELIEST flight ever. My plane landed in Phoenix late on a Monday night; my parents were there to pick me up - probably not AS disappointed in me as I was, but I don't remember much of anything being said the entire four hour drive back to Lakeside.

The next morning I woke up and called Bethany to tell her I had come home - but I was planning on going back out to finish no matter what and that I would't see her until after I finished my service. She kind of freaked out and was in shock and started crying. She told me she had just had a dream that I had come home. She told me (through tears) she couldn't talk to me right then and she would call back... she never did. I got a letter in the mail a few days latter explaining she was sorry for how she acted on the phone and that she understood why I had to come home and that she still wanted to "wait for me." Three months later I found out through my friend Christina that Bethany had gotten engaged.

During those three months I went back to work for Kirby Karkula. He and I, along with one other guy he hired while I was gone, built a house. It was a pretty nice house if I do say so myself. We even made the custom cabinets and everything. We only subbed out the painting, plumbing and electrical - I think. It was a great project and kept my mind off things those three months, but after getting the news of Bethany, I decided I needed to get off that mountain.

I moved down to Scottsdale with Bret and Tevia and I enrolled in classes at ASU. I got a job for a custom cabinet maker in Mesa and I bought a new (used) car - because the car I had before I left on my mission was given to my brother Quentin and, although I bought it and it was technically mine, my parents said I couldn't have it back since I wasn't even supposed to be home yet - rather than arguing, I let him keep it (a '92 Ford Escort). I bought a POS Plymouth Sundance - It got me from point A to point B, but that was about it. I got it for pretty cheap because the front suspension was shot. A few hundred dollars later it was on the road. The car had pretty bad leprosy so for a few hundred more, I got a Macco paint job.

I finished up my semester at ASU and ended up getting a new job (closer to Scottsdale) with a company called PracticeMax - a medical billing company.

Cute Girls

2010-05-10T10:32:00.000-06:00

I took some pictures of the girls this morning. Ellery's hair wasn't done yet, but she was cooperating so I just took them. I'm going to have to do some more when her hair looks cute.

Catch Up Picture Post

2010-05-09T10:58:00.006-06:00

This is the cabin my dad, brothers and I lifted up and moved... What? I'm just scratching my eye - at Nephi.

Here's an older picture of the home I grew up in. That juniper out front was what we used to always use to climb up on the roof. That copper Dodge van took us on SO many trips all over AZ and Mexico. As ugly as it was, I loved it as a kid!

I wanted to set the high jump stand to 6'10" for this picture, it was my best mark. However, it made the picture too tall and the photographer wouldn't let me. Sometimes, I can't believe I could ever jump that high. Wish I had video of me doing it!

This was my senior year soccer team.

This was my senior year track team.

My parent and I at my senior graduation.

Me Dessi and Heather at graduation. The three of us went through school together from day one - we had several classes together including Horizons and all the clubs (science, Spanish, etc...)

This was on the Spanish club trip to Mexico. This was when the little kids were trying to teach us how to throw the yoyos. I never did quite get it.

Pyramid of the sun. There were SO many tourists there for the holy week. That's the pyramid we got in trouble for climbing up the side (out of bounds from the crowds.)

This was the group of students that went on the Spanish club trip that year. It was such a great group!

This was when we stopped in a small town on our way back to Mexico City to eat lunch and some of us played some soccer with the local kids in a park.

A group of kids in the same town we were learning how to throw the yoyos. The kids had just finished a soccer game and wanted their picture taken with us.

This was the courtyard of the second hotel we stayed at (in Patzcuaro). It was SO beautiful there! The entire town smelled like fish, but I loved it!

The Twentieth Year - 1999

2010-05-08T21:08:00.001-06:00

It was good to be graduated. I actually turned nineteen just before graduating, I was old for my grade because of my kindergarten year(s). Under normal circumstances I think most LDS males at that time would be packing to head off on a mission; but not me. I still wasn't even sure I was going to go at all; the prospect of getting on with a married life seemed much more appealing. I remember my dad sitting down with me one day and telling me: it's your choice, you need to figure out for yourself whether to go or not - but make sure you study it out and pray about it. I did just that, and decided I needed to go.

I hadn't prepared for a mission in any form; except maybe some spiritually by graduating from seminary - in fact I was actually voted most likely to become a seminary teacher by my seminary class, I think it was because I had so many of the scripture mastery scriptures memorized and kicked but at scripture chases. My biggest concern, although it probably shouldn't have been, was how I would pay for the mission. I ended up having the opportunity to help a guy start a business and he paid me well for it. His business was janitorial work - cleaning the Northland Pioneer College campus in Holbrook and Winslow, as well as a few residential carpet cleaning jobs. I set him up with all his computer and billing systems as well as some hiring and training. The work was at night - all night - and it was rigorous. He and I would drive up to Holbrook every night to clean, then out to Winslow to clean. Then during the days, most days a week, we'd have a residential home carpet cleaning job - anywhere from Show Low to St. Johns. I worked for him and got him all set up to keep his business going right up till I left to enter the Mission Training Center (MTC).

I also did some work building houses with a man named Kirby Karkula. He had his own business doing remodels, home repairs and even building custom homes. The summer of '99 I helped Kirby do several remodels. It was always fun working with him (just he and I) and I learned a lot. One home we remodeled (and repaired) was an OLD home in the outskirts of Show Low (headed towards Globe). The house was built out of timbers from the local forests. The walls were solid 6x12s stacked side by side. It was just a small single level home but it weighed so much it had started to sink. We had to dig under the home and raise it up with jacks to put it on new foundation pillars. It was a heck of a job.

Speaking of moving lifting houses - I also had the opportunity to lift, and MOVE an entire home with my dad and brothers. I can't remember if it was the summer of '99 or another year, but it was around that time. It was a two story cabin and I can't remember where it was - I think somewhere on the Apache reservation - but we moved it into Pinetop (I think). It too was a learning experience, and a bonding one too. It was a good time for my brothers and I. Nephi had just gotten back from his mission in Japan, and I was getting ready to leave to Ecuador. Raising the home to get it up on the special truck wheels was a SLOW process and required a lot of patience and ingenuity. We used large jacks to raise each corner at the same time, usually just a few inches at a time, to build up temporary supports until it got high enough to roll the wheels under. It seemed like a two steps forward one and a half steps back kind of a process. Once we finally got it on wheels we SLOWLY moved it down the highway and had to get highway patrol and police to close roads - getting through a few of the stop lights was a trick - I still can't believe we did it sometimes.

I think that was the summer my dad, brothers and I took a job clearing trees (stumps) from a huge lot of land. There were hundreds of stumps we had to clear. We used four of my grandpa's backhoes and an OLD dump truck. The four of us made the job into a contest (competition has always been pretty big in our family) - to see who could get the most stumps out the fastest. Pretty sure my dad won, but excluding him, I think Quentin and I were next best. We even switched up which hoe we used to keep us on our toes - one of them had backward controls from the others (I think the John Deer was backwards from the Case and Cat). There's no doubt in my mind that Quentin would kick my butt with a backhoe and give my dad a run for his money.

October 25, 1999 Bethany came over and we said goodbye. The next day I drove up to Utah with my parents to go into the MTC. The night of the 26th we stayed with my mom's cousin Lois in Orem. October 27, I was dropped off at the MTC. I guess it wasn't much different than most missionaries experiences - we went in, watched an orientation movie, said goodbye and left through separate doors. I think one difference I had than a vast majority of missionaries that go in to the Provo MTC is I knew NO ONE there. I've since realized most of the missionaries there had friends, even relatives, enter the same time and sometimes even get called to the same missions. Everything was new for me - even the mountain scenery - I had only visited Utah twice before, once to drop Nephi off in the MTC and once just to visit when I was like eleven or twelve years old (maybe younger).

Bethany wrote me EVERY day while I was in the MTC. My MTC comp was from Lompoc, CA and was a pretty weird kid, but he was laid back and we got along great. He and I used to have contest of who could eat the most mashed potatoes and gravy every night. There was a companionship in my district (a short firefighter from Washington state and a big Polynesian from Oklahoma) who got into an argument about whether or not it was appropriate for a girl to fart in front of a guy, or if they even fart at all - ever. Quite possibly the DUMBEST thing to argue about, but one of them ended up punching a door over it (so he wouldn't punch his companion) and he broke his hand. We spent two LONG months there, so I blame the cabin fever for the door punching. Yes, two months, I spent Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas there - and if it weren't for the Y2K scare, I would have been there for New Year's too, but all missionaries that were close to ready to go, got shipped out early to miss the chance of having problems getting out of the country.

I was one of three missionaries that got sent to the Guayaquil, Ecuador mission, my comp was sent to Quito. I remember arriving in the country late at night and going through customs. I was certain I had the language down pretty well - I was WRONG. All I can say is, deer-in-the-headlights-look. To make matters worse, I had forgotten to fill out the paper work required to get into the country while on the plane so I had some problems getting in. It was okay though, while I was waiting I got to listen to No Doubt's "Don't Speak" - it was the first "real" music I got to listen to for two months. We loaded up in the mission van and were driven to the mission home. On the way we swung by the newly built Guayaquil temple - we came up over a hill and it came into view, all lit up - it was beautiful. Just then, it turned 11pm and the temple lights went off. But it was cool to see for a second. I slept like a rock that night and met my new comp (trainer) the next day. Elder MacMullen. He and I were in a threesome with an other kid (because I came early - so they weren't having changes yet). **I know a lot of this lingo may not make sense to some people reading this, I'm sorry - I'll explain upon request**

My first area was Vinces. I LOVED it there. We lived in the top (third) floor of a building right in the center of the small city. I arrived December 27, just before New Year's. For New Year's, Ecuadorians make paper mache effigies of people and object representing the old year and then they fill them with fireworks and blow them up for the New Year. On New Year's night, we went up to the roof of our apartment building and dropped water balloons on the people below - yeah, it probably wasn't the best idea, and not very becoming of a missionary, but... we were still human and 19-20 year old boys - what do you expect? It was fun until one of us hit the wrong guy down below and he came up - needless to say, we spent the rest of the night in our apartment where we belonged.

We used to play Rook almost every night - Nielson, Lenhart, MacMullen and I. I loved that area. I was only with MacMullen for a couple of months then he got moved somewhere else. My second comp was Elder Gardner - a RED head from Utah. He was a lot of fun. MacMullen was a LOT of fun too, but I think sometimes I didn't realize that because I was a little to uptight when it came to rules and regulations of the mission (with the exception of New Year's night, I was still coming off the cabin fever effect from the MTC). Elder Gardner was a little more straight arrow and he and I got along great. After just a month together, I got transferred to another city, Quevedo. My new comp there Sean Hendrickson. He was from Phoenix, AZ and he and I got along GREAT. He took the *figurative* MTC stick that was up my butt and beat me with it until I remembered how to have fun again - how to enjoy what it was I was out there to do. Even though we had fun we worked hard. He used to play his guitar for me some nights. It was just he and I in an apartment to ourselves - this was a new thing for me. Every morning a bread vendor on a "triciculo", three wheeled bike, would come by our window (we lived on the second floor) and he would whistle and yell "cara sucia!" Cara sucia means, dirty face, it was a kind of small bread roll. Sean and I would buy and eat almost a dozen of them each almost every morning for breakfast.

While we were together in Quevedo, Sean and I put together a lot of athletic activities with the other missionaries in the area. One we played a huge game of Ultimate Frisbee. It was one of my best games ever. I remember getting SO muddy and being SO sore after that game. There was a national soccer stadium in the city that I wanted to play in so much. I went and found the owner of the stadium and asked him if we (missionaries) could use it for an afternoon. (Yes, my Spanish was coming along nicely by this time). The owner asked me what I'd give him in return - I told him we were a bunch of church missionaries and we had no money - and not much to give other than our message of Jesus Christ. He told me that if we got him a soccer ball, just as a token of "thank you" to show our appreciation - like a transaction - he would let us play. That afternoon I went out bought a soccer ball (they're for sale EVERYWHERE down there) and sent the word out to all the missionaries that we would be playing soccer in the national stadium there. When we all showed up to play, I had the missionaries all sign the soccer ball and I gave it to the owner along with a Book of Mormon. It was SO much fun playing in that stadium!

I turned 20 in that area. Our "momita" family - the family that cooked lunch for us every day - made me a birthday cake. They had some of the cutest little kids. They presented me with my cake and sang happy birthday - at the end of the song they told me to take the first bite out of the cake with my mouth... when I went down to take the bite they slammed my face into it. The kids tried to blame the other missionaries that were there, but someone captured a picture of the culprits - I'll have to get the picture out and scan it and post it tomorrow -- that's where the twenty first year begins.

I have a list of memories written down I'm trying to fit in all of this - the more I think about my life, the more that keep coming to mind.

My granny Borrego taught me a lot of things, I used to spend a lot of time with her and around her house. She used to set up a slip-n-slide in her yard in the summers that Quentin, Brandt, our cousin Chris and I used to play on. We also used to go crawdad hunting in the irrigation ditch that ran at the edge of her property. She taught me how to iron shirts (my grandpa's shirts) when I was very young. I remember her teaching me every aspect of it, including the yolk of the shirt (the section at the top of the back between the shoulders) and how to iron it correctly. She also taught me how to cook. As a Mexican, she made some of the best Mexican food. I wish I would have learned more from her. When I was a teen, she became a 4H instructor and had a few of her grandchildren (my cousins and I) as her students - or whatever we were called. We learned about gardening (which I already knew about) and we made food. I think that was when she taught me how to make her green chili chicken enchilada casserole. She and I also made a jeans quilt together. I still have it. One time I drew a swastika on the side of her sand box, I was pretty young, and I had no idea what it was, I think I was just trying to draw a pin wheel, but she chewed me out pretty good for that one - never made that mistake again. I also learned the hard way not to say just anything to her that my uncles would tell me to say. One of them told me to ask her was "mierda" was - I got smacked, then my uncle did.

My great grand parents (my mom's grand parents - her dad's parents) lived next door to each other. We used to go do service for them randomly as a family - and ALWAYS got fed whenever we showed up - it was LITERALLY impossible to drop by their home without getting fed, and not just a snack, a full Mexican style meal. My great grandma had an old wood burning cook stove in her garage where it seemed she was always cooking tortillas on. My grandpa also made her a big rotating basket she would roast green chilis in - I LOVE the smell of roasting green chilis - always reminds me of her and that house. My great grandma let me have sleep overs when I was very young and I remember her telling me stories of her working in hotels when she was younger and she taught me the "correct" way to make up a bed. She had fake spiders on her fireplace chimney (inside the kitchen) that I used to be afraid of when I was really young, it took me a few years to realize they were fake. She also had a round table in her dinning area that looked like a lemon. I loved eating at their place, I was sad when they moved away. They moved somewhere between Show Low and Mesa, to some trailer park. I remember visiting them once and they made microwave popcorn for us, they burned the heck out of it and every time I smell burnt popcorn I think of them.

The Nineteenth Year - 1998

2010-05-07T23:04:00.002-06:00

The summer of 98 was a good summer. I became a cashier at Megafoods and enjoyed what I did. All the other cashiers (a bunch of old ladies) loved me. Every week we had produce quizes we had to pass off (basically showing we knew what the produce was and then for a bonus what the UPC code was for each item. I was proud of myself for never missing a name and rarely not knowing the code. Of course now, I'd be hard pressed to identify half of the produce I once knew and the only code I remember now is bananas - 4011. I was fast too. I would still step down and help with bagging when needed, I was probably the best bagger that store has probably ever seen. I'm sure not everyone would agree with that analysis, but from a strictly logical standpoint on efficiency and the ability to bag like items - there's no arguing those facts - I was the best. One of my favorite things about being a cashier though was getting the money that came through. Not just money, rare coins and bills. I used to go through every quarter and set aside and buy the silver ones. I had quite a few come through. I also ended up getting a mercury dime, and a few buffalo nickles. One time I helped a customer at the video counter and he paid with a five dollar silver certificate. I couldn't believe it! I asked him if he knew what it was and he said, "yes, but I don't have any other money and I want to see this movie." Fine with me. I bought the five out of the till right then. My biggest purchase was a 1947 one hundred dollar bill - it kind of sickens me to say that I don't really know what ever happened to that. I'm sure - just like all those people that I got their rare money from - a greater need came up that I HAD to spend it... probably on Bethany.

My mom never liked her really. She says now that she never had a problem with her, but back then, it was clear to me she didn't like her. I didn't care much because her family loved me and so we spent all our time at her place. However, by the time school started up again, she and I were not supposed to be seeing each other anymore - but we still tried. One time when I was at soccer practice at woodland lake park, she drove by in hopes she'd get to see me out there. She was looking back and the road turned, but she didn't, and she crashed her car into a tree. Her brother came running up to me on the field - I was completely shocked to see him there - and he told me she was just in an accident down the street. I was expecting the worst. I ran to the wreck site to find her bleeding on her face. She cut her nose - but mostly wounded her pride I think. It was probably a good thing she wrecked that car, an old Ford - something - I don't even know if it had a name, it was a boat - but she ended up getting a newer little car after that.

Soccer was great. I played all four years in high school; and all four years we went to the state tournament - I think we were conference champs all four years too. We never did win state though. Our team was consistently cursed with the ability to play great soccer, without the ability to finish - score. Most of our games were won by defense - and I owned the field when it came to defense. In AYSO I always played in the forward position, but as I got older and the game progressed and the coaches got better, I was moved further and further back on the field - every good soccer player knows your fastest and best players play defense. My sophomore year I played a wing halfback, then junior year center half, then my senior year I was co-captain and the center full back - last line of defense before the keeper. I loved that position. I controlled the entire field from there.

In junior high, eighth grade, I did track and field - mostly just field - high jump. I LOVED it. However, in high school I worked year round - but I cut hours to make it work for me to play soccer, there was no way I was going to give THAT up. Every year I wanted to try high jump again - but my money needs always outweighed my "wants" to do track. My senior year I said, "to heck with it... it's my senior year, I'm livin it up!" I went out for track and made the team. We didn't have an official high jump coach because the coach that was doing it left the year before. One of the coaches knew a bit about it, but for the most part we were on our own. I used to watch tapes and highlights of Olympic high jumping and tapes about form - plus I remembered a lot of what my jr. high coach taught me. Before long I was kind of coaching the high jump teams - male and female. I also did long jump, triple jump and for one meet I did the 110 hurdle relay and the pole vault relay (because the kid that was supposed to compete walked off the team at the start of the meet and I volunteered to fill in). High jump was by far my favorite, and best, event - I won several medals that I want to put on display... someday. In all honesty I never really was able to jump that high, it was my form that got me over the bar. My best jump was six feet ten inches. I cleared that mark both on grass and during an indoor event. I'm sure if I would have lifted weights and trained a little better I could have done better. I was stupid. Looking back I had amazing talent and I probably could have gone to college for jumping. I always thought about trying to walk on to a college team, but my knees got pretty bad after high school - and I was afraid of failure, so I never did. If I have any regrets in life - not pursuing high jumping is definitely one of them.

Graduating was great. I never really thought I'd go off to college - I was pretty sure I was going to marry Bethany and stay on "the mountain" for the rest of my life. In my future plans announcement I wrote to be read during my acceptance of my diploma at graduation I said I was going to serve a mission and go to college - in all honesty, I didn't really think either of those things was going to happen. Technically, at this point, I'm into my twentieth year - so, I'll pick up on that story tomorrow.

Back to when I was much younger. I think I must have been about five or six. My Whatcott cousins and I (and probably my siblings) went down to Rainbow Lake to play. We were playing around the area where the lake flows under the highway. I was trying to catch small fish with my bare hands and I accidentally grabbed a piece of broken glass instead. I cut my middle finger on my right hand pretty bad. My cousin, Brian - who's about Tevia's age, wrapped my finger up with a cattail leaf and carried me all the way back to his parent's house to get it fixed up. To this day, I have a big scar on that finger where I cut it - it forms a double print on that finger, half arch, half loop.

We used to love to go (and even get) toilet papered. I'm pretty sure it was mostly us and our cousins that would just get each other, but really, that's what my world consisted of for most of my childhood (my cousins and I). One time, in high school, I think it was Shane and I, toilet papered Christine Webb's house - they were living just across from us at the time. There was a big willow tree in their front yard and we got it good - must have used at least 48 rolls! The next day I saw her grandpa, my great uncle, Ray (who must have been 90 at the time - or seemed like it) cleaning up the mess. I felt SOOO bad. I went over and helped him clean it up, and pretended I had no idea who did it - but they sure should be ashamed of themselves, whoever they are!

Uncle Ray. He was always my favorite of my grandpa's brothers. My grandpa, my dad's dad, was the youngest of his large family - and most all of them still lived within a mile radius of him (and me for that matter). As a result I had a LOT of cousins around growing up. As uncle Ray got older, even older than he was when I was born, he ended up getting his car taken away - he kept wrecking it. Instead he got himself a three wheeled bike and he kept on working. That man worked himself - well, to death really. I don't think he was super educated, I don't think any of my grandparents or their siblings went to college (I could be very wrong about that, but I've never heard otherwise so, that's my guess). I remember I would love to sit and watch my uncle Ray sit down with a pencil and a piece of cardboard as he did his math to figure out how much wood he needed to cut - not length, how many cords (amount). He did a lot of logging and wood cutting in his day. In fact, when I was in jr. high, I think, he cut one of his fingers off, well, smashed it off with a splitting maul. Accidents happen in that industry. His brother, my uncle Jay, who lived just down the street from Ray, broke his neck in a logging accident when I was in elementary school. I remember him wearing a halo for months - it kind of scared me, to see that contraptions bolted into his head. But he ended up being okay.

Ray had a son named Meb. Meb Webb. Meb was an inventor, I guess. I don't know how else to classify him. He created a device to roast corn nuts. He claims he invented them, and he very well could have - but I doubt it. I remember going over to his shop and eating them hot off the conveyor belt. They really weren't as good as the ones you can now buy in the stores, but back then, they were all I knew. I used to eat bags of them. Meb also invented a way to remove moles. Yes - this is the story of how I went from the Cindy Crawford look to the scarred up face most people know today. I had my mole pretty much as long as I can remember. As time went on and I got bigger, so did my mole. We never had health insurance, a family doctor, or even a dentist - so it shouldn't be surprising that I had no idea there was even such thing as a dermatologist - much less that I had ever been to one. So when Meb came to me one day claiming he could remove the bane that was on my face, I was interested. Meb showed me some indistinguishable scars on his face and body where he said he had removed moles. I bought in. He gave me some mixture of - something - and told me to apply it for a day or two and the mole should fall off. He said I may feel a little burning too - and burning I did feel! It felt like battery acid on my face. It burned the area pretty good. Sure enough, the mole came off - along with a good portion of the skin above my upper lip. To this day, Quentin gets a kick out of my experience with "Meb's Remove-A-Mole." The scar has softened, but is still pretty obvious - I'm sure I put too much on - mostly because I hated that mole so much I wanted to make sure it came off and I thought more would work better and faster - plus, for some reason, I thought it would only affect the mole, not the surrounding skin. What can I say, I was an idiot - this was the summer between my freshman and sophomore years, I think.

It's already almost 1:00am now. This post was supposed to be done yesterday (May 7). I do have picts that need to go with this, so I'll post them later after I get them scanned in.