August is half over . . .

It's been a great summer so far as it draws to the end.

We got a good start on the deck refinishing. Matt and I have got all the sanding done and are mostly ready to paint. We had to replace a couple of 12' boards due to dry rot this year. They are $10 a piece. That brings the cost in lumber alone for the deck to over $2000. Knowning that makes me feel a little better about painting these old boards to preserve them a little longer. Last year's got rain before the paint cured and got all pocked up. We are hoping to paint on Labor Day weekend as a family. This year we are adding antislip strips to the high traffic paths that get slick when it rains, and also to keep Koda from scratching them up so much as he runs in and out. Its amazing what dog claws can do to a deck, particularly an old deck that is getting a little soft.

I helped with cub scout camp this year as a volunteer, going up on Friday, and then staying through the picnic at the end. It was very fun to see all the cub activities, like the water bottle rockets. They sure do make it fun for the boys. They also LOVE going to the trading post with a little money in their pockets to exchange for trinkets and junk food. Not much nutitional value there. We had a lunch packed, but Johnie left it on the kitchen counter, where I though it was in his backpack (teach me to double check), so at lunch, John and I abscounded to McDonalds (which I later found out is NOT acceptable without checking your cub scout out at the admin table). John tried to warn me, but I thought they couldn't have a problem with me taking my own kid to lunch . . . WRONG. I also found out that it is not acceptable to take a pocket knife and whittle on your walking stick at a cub camp. Something about blood circles, being a bad example for the boys, not displaying a toting chip, etc. I just put the knife away and smiled. The cubs all loved my wood spirit carved into my walking stick (at least as far as it was done to that point anyway). It is a work in progress I started on a slow fishing trip to Payson Lakes in the Utah Uinta mountains on the Mt. Nebo scenic loop. Fishing was great, catching somewhat less great. Appearently, only the very early or very late day fisherman catch there during the summer cause the shallow lakes get too hot and the fish pout in the deepest coolest holes they can find when the suns out. So, anyway, found this great stick that reminded me of Gandalf's staff in LOTRs Trilogy and just started carving a wood spirit into it, and that is the staff I was carving at cub camp.

Mom and Dad's 50th wedding anniversary at Bear Lake was awesome. Bryan created a very cool slide show that had pics of Mom's family I had never seen. Aunt Helen had shared some of her archives with us. There were also some great family pics of all the siblings as newlyweds (when we were all good looking and much more fit that we are now). Rodney and I got lots of hoot calls (I guess folks don't think we look much like those photos anymore).

I have now lost over 40 lbs. My lipids and thyroid all came back in normal ranges (thank you Dr. Aldanda and "The culprit and the cure"). I continue to loose about 2 lbs a week - more during vacation when we could exercise more (hows that for a switch).

Traci and I have been invited to hunt on the Navaho reservation with Bryan and DeAnza in October. We are SOOOOO looking forward to this. Our hunt will be with telephoto lenses, capturing the hunting action and the wildlife, and enjoying nature. Bryan and Dee did not draw tags this year, so will also be on the sidelines, but will still teach us about the hunt and how to clean and dress the game (we plan to hunt to eat, not for sport, when and if we ever get to hunt on our own).

Matt is going back to public school this fall. He wants to try out for the swimming team, and experience the social scene at Skyview. His education will not be as tailored as it have been at VHC, but, it will be good for him to see how the rest of his peers have been doing it. I am worried about the abrupt change in social environment, but Matt is now nearly my height, and trained in martial arts, so I think he will fair better than before in public school.

Kristi is finishing up her bachloriate from BYUi remotely. She moves to Provo in a couple of weeks and will be living and working there while she decides if BYU is the right place for her Masters.

Hazel Dell ward is starting to shape up. Most positions have now been called. Folks are learning their duty. Home teaching is way down, but will improve as folks get back from summer persuits. We couldn't even get appointments with our families in July. August is looking better already.

Elder's Quorum IceCream Social

Saturday we hosted the new Hazel Dell Ward's Elder's Quorum for an Ice Cream social. We've had two weeks of rain, pretty much non-stop. Enough to seriously injure (over watering) many of the veggies growing in our garden. The back yard was a little bit of a quagmire, with even the grass covered spots sinking into mud when stepped on. So, to prepare for the social and generally improve accessibility to the pool and the trampoline, we dug paths clear of the sod and then covered them with pea gravel that drains the waters more quickly (like a french drain).

Friday, the weather cleared and the yard started to dry out, and then Saturday was like we had custom ordered the weather for the party. It hit a peak of 83 degrees just in time for the party, and the pool water warmed up to 70 degrees. Not quite the 79 that makes for comfortable swimming, but tolerable for a short period of time. That didn't stop Anne from swimming most of the day.

We had most of the EQ Presidency from 3 to 5 PM, and some other families dropped in from 5 to 8. The missionaries even stopped by. We enjoyed root beer floats, watermelon, and when the YSA's Lake Merwin boat outing's boat broke, several of the YSA came to the party and brought hot dogs. Misti got some hamburgers and S'mores supplies and we fed all that were here at 7 PM. Then all gathered around the fire pit for stories and S'mores. We even got our new neighbors to come visit over some S'mores in the evening. All in all a very enjoyable evening.

Appologies for porn display

Appearently, someone had uploaded some porn pics mixed in with the nature pics that had not been caught be the Picasa filters in the nature keyword. I have removed the slide show that was based on this keyword, and reported the pictures for abuse of the policy.

Thanks for the comments that let me know about this problem. The Lord of Darkness and his minions strike again.

Keep lighting those candles and drive out the darkness.

We seek after these things . . .

BriAnne's post tonight on Bri Colorful about graduation plans and going forth to serve inspired me to post this.

Enya's "May it be" - what beautiful music. From the Lord of the Rings sound track

http://www.lyrics007.com/Enya%20Lyrics/May%20It%20Be%20Lyrics.html

These lyrics speak to my heart about the journey each of us is on, first to find the light ourselves, perfect ourselves as much as possible, and along that path, share that light by serving our spiritual siblings until they too have the promise (the new and everlasting covenant) living within them as well.

...

May it be when darkness falls (the light is vailed)
Your heart will be true
You walk a lonely road
Oh! How far you are from home (we are all away from our true home on this journey)

...

May it be the shadows call
Will fly away
May it be you journey on
To light the day
When the night is overcome
You may rise to find the sun

Darkness has come
Believe and you will find your way
Darkness has fallen
A promise lives within you now


It becometh every man who has been warned to warn his neighbor.

Once we have been given the light of the Gospel in our lives, what better way to honor the Light of the World than to light as many other candles as possible. Light is not the absense of darkness; darkness is the absense of light. We can best fight the Prince of Darkness by spreading light. The gospel's message is what people need to believe in to find their way through the darkness.

iPad is in the House!

WARNING: This post may be a little on the geeky side. I've done tech for the last 30 years, and am told I no longer know how to not use geek-speak, so bear with me, and Google the TLAs and FLAs for more in depth understanding.

As you already may know, Misti got an iPhone for Christmas, and I've been very impressed with how much it has become part of her every day life. She uses it as much or more than I use my Blackberry Bold. I have been very impressed with the app selection (particularly all the FREE ones) and Apple support (although getting the WiFi to work consistently has been an ongoing problem). 3G connectivity has been working fine, and she has an unlimited plan, so hasn't missed the WiFi much. I got an iPod Nano as my 5 yr commemoration gift with Akamai, so I have also tasted of at least some of the cool iPod content. I really like the Nike+ pedometer app as well.

KK got her new iPad WiFi/3G today. We installed the iTunes update, synced the iPad, and were off and running. We activated the 3G unlimited data access plan with ATT with amazing simplicity. The smoothest device activation on a cellular data plan I have ever seen! Then of course we HAD to do the obligatory speedtest.net visit. Turns out "they have a App for that" I think we may end up saying that quite a bit. With WiFi on, using our Comcast 12 Mbps broadband and a Netgear N router, we clocked 8531 kpbs D/L and 2456 kbps U/L. With ATT 3G, we clocked 1772 kbps D/L, and 355 kbps U/L. That's at least twice as fast as the speeds I got (from same location) with my Sprint 3G USB (Novatel) on the laptop - go ATT! No wonder Misti isn't worried about fixing the intermittent WiFi problem.

Kristi's excitement grew the more she explored. She loaded the iBooks app, and looked at the movies available for rent or purchase on iTunes. Then we decided to try the Netflix site. We have been able to watch Netflix (powered by Akamai now ;-)) on just about every computing device in the house (Wii, laptops, desktops, iPhone, and the Theatre+ HD from Seagate that my brother Bryan helped us get with his employee discount last Christmas), so we went to the site and tried it. Up pops guess what, yep, another App. So we downloaded the Netflix app, and were able to immediately stream an season 4 episode of Bones, and also tested a movie (Julie and Julia). Playback was smooth and flawless, with NO buffering. Website browsing was also lightning fast as we tried gmail, facebook, etc.

All was going just peachy, until she tried Google Docs. The read-only nature of her book on gdocs was a disquieting and tearful event. Apparently, the mobile browser "Safari" that ships with the iPad does not support a key HTML attribute "contentEditable" which Google Docs uses:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Docs/thread?tid=621ad46f8aa70336&hl=en

http://developer.apple.com/safari/library/technotes/tn2010/tn2262/index.html#SAFARI_ON_IPAD_READINESS_CHECKLIST-6__USE_TEXTAREAS_INSTEAD_OF_CONTENTEDITABLE_ELEMENTS

This setback took a lot of wind out of her sails, as one of the key reasons she got the iPad was to be able to use Google Docs on her writing for her upcoming novel "Eye". I did some quick research on the subject (I too was very surprised that this did not work already, and found the limitation noted in the Apple Developer notes, and several blogs. Luckily, I found references to an App in iTunes store called "Office2 Pro" that looks like it may do the trick, but only time will tell. Sounds a little buggy at present.

All in all, the device is very sleek, and will work very well for consuming media in many formats, and may eventually be a laptop killer when the office productivity apps are ready for prime time.

Now then, what does all this have to do with the theme of this blog? Well, there's an App for that! Actually, several. My favorite is the "LDS Music" app, which allow you to have the hymns and primary children song book (words and music and graphics) with you on the iPad. Having the free www.lds.org internet version of the scriptures is pretty awesome too. Imaging being able to fully prepare a lesson for sunday school, priesthood, or primary from any location or at any time, including the online reference to all Ensign, New Era, Friend, and other gospel library resourses. Imaging being able to show the latest lds.org videos at church from your iPad hooked to a library TV. Any where access to www.mormonsmadesimple.com is pretty good for missionary work as well, to explain the LDS church in a non-threatening third party perspective with simple illustrations/animations in a video format. radio.lds.org is also highly recommended!

Podcasts on a variety of interesting LDS subjects are available as well. My favorite so far is the History of the Hymns.

I'll be trading up from my Blackberry to an iPhone very soon now. We will save $15 a month on the difference on the data access plans from ATT (as if that were the only incentive). Blackberry's App Store is growing, but will have a long way to go to equal what I have seen on the Apple App store.

To my mother, and the mother of my children - Happy Mother's Day

Today is Mother's Day, and I want to take the opportunity to thank my mother and my wife and the mother of my children for all they have done, are now doing, and will do to help me and the children live a better life. Its amazing to me the influence a mother has over her family. This year, my wife Misti has gotten serious about improving her health, and by extension, the whole family has benefited tremendously. I have had some pretty crazy diet ideas in the past (Dr. Atkins, South Beach, etc. that I never really felt were following the Word-of-Wisdom counsel to eat meat sparingly. But, as my last post explains, the Culprit and the Cure, Food, Inc. (the DVD), and most recently, a book specifically about the Word of Wisdom have helped me realize my mistakes and set a new course (much less meat and dairy and fat, much more whole grains, fruit and vegetables). Weight loss is naturally following, and I have lost 27 pounds so far. Misti has lost even more with less to loose. She is rigid about counting her daily calories and is much better at it that I think I ever was when doing the LA Weight Loss program. I am very thankful for her good example and support in fixing low calorie low fat meals for the family. I think we are eating now very similar to what I remember my mom doing when I was a kid. Lots of home made whole wheat bread, granola, skim or soy mild, etc. We haven't quite gotten to making our own sprouts, or downing shots of wheat grass juice, but we are making progress. Happy Mother's Day to both of the mothers in my life.

This also happens to be the first day we or any one else has attended the newly reorganized Hazel Dell ward. Last Sunday at Stake Conference, the Stake Presidency announced that the ward boundary lines in most of the wards in the stake were being redrawn to more evenly distribute the membership and help the stake grow. During that meeting, we found out that our home address was now on the boundary line, with our house falling within the Hazel Dell ward, instead of the 1st Ward. Several other families from the old first ward were also impacted, including a major portion of the choir members, so now Hazel Dell ward will have a strong choir member base (when it gets re-organized). Because of the change, the primary had not yet had a chance to practice together for a Mother's Day number, so for the first time I can remember, the primary did not sing to their mothers. Misti was a little sad about this. Brother Miles had prepared a treat for the mother's and gave them all (including all females 18 and older) a package with candy bars in it (diet sabotage - don't know if Misti is going to eat hers or not). She said she would have rather had flowers or a plant this year.

The Hazel Dell Ward Bishopric was also reorganized, with the old bishopric members release, and the new ones sustains and set apart following Stake Conference. All previous ward callings were released, so there is much reorganization going on currently. Today, a new financial clerk was sustained for the new bishopric, and I was sustained and set apart as the Elders Quorum Secretary in the new Elders Quorum Presidency, with President Mark Brogan, Corey Johnson 1st Counselor, and 2nd Counselor still to be named.

Our corn is all planted at the Stake Center Garden, and we have some of the backyard planting, but still have a fair bit to till. Elms just got their tiller back from the shop, so we need to arrange with Trent before the elementary school plant order comes in.

We found out today that Johnny's cub scout camp in the Hazel Dell ward is right in the middle of our planned family vacation. We are checking into if he can still attend with 1st ward.

Kristi and Traci will now be attending the Clark Ward (YSA). Looks like a good plan for them, there are very few YSA in Hazel Dell ward.

I've tried to call my mother several times today, but each time, the phone is busy. Guess they don't have call waiting. I'll keep trying.

Changing lifestyle for the better

I didn't realize how bad my personal lifestyle (diet and exercise) had gotten until I recently read a book that my sister Heather recommended on nutrition called "The Culprit and the Cure." I was addicted to the "western diet" without a clue as to what the "prudent" diet was or how to pick foods to achieve it. All I really knew before was that whole grains, and fruits and vegetables, were good for you cause mom and the scriptures said so, but now I feel armed with the why and the how, and a sense of relative importance of these foods over previous bad choices (Krispy Kremes and Cinabons were literally killing me early - "the whiter the bread, the sooner your dead").


This book, written by a BYU professor while on sabbatical, is the "tour de force" in current scientific research on nutrition and disease prevention. Amazingly, modern science again confirms the revelation given to the prophet Joseph Smith as recorded in The Doctrine and Covenants, Section 89, commonly referred to as the "Word of Wisdom." This time however, the emphasis is on the positive admonitions, rather than the restrictions that are much better known and followed within the membership of the church. If you have not yet read this book, I highly recommend it. The Holy Ghost and my personal life experience bore testimony of it as I read it, and I have now implemented its recommendations for lifestyle in my own life. By following its simple advice on nutrition and exercise, I am already feeling much more energetic, healthier, and have shed 15 lbs over the past month. I have a dietary and exercise direction now that I feel like I can truly exercise faith in, as it has motivated me to action. Johnny keeps telling me he wants his "sugar daddy" back, but I think having me around for a few more decades is a good tradeof to a few sacrificed donuts, cinamon rolls, and Big Macs in the short run. At least I won't be eating these things in the place of proper nutritional food. Sugar and white bread are the occasional treat now, instead of the staple at the bottom of the pyramid.

This book can do more to improve well-being, now and for years to come, than the best available medicines."

Walter C. Willett, M.D.
Chair of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health

See also www.theculpritandthecure.com

and www.fastfoodbook.com

Thoughts on time . . .

“Time is an illusion. Lunchtime, doubly so”
– Douglas Adams – Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”

Faster and slower time spans exist in my reality. By the clock or timer, such spans should be equal, however, I’ve noticed that great expectations and rapt anticipation create slow spans, sometimes painfully slow; and correspondingly, any time your having so much fun that you forget to look at a clock, the hours slip by at hyper-speed. Slow time events in my memory: waiting for spaghetti or eggs to boil, The last five minutes of school before the release bell for recess, or going home time (and if there is a father & sons outing after school, the slow time span is magnified exponentially). Fast spans include family walks in nature, fishing, camping, golfing, video gaming, programming a computer, singing in a choir, the span of time in my children’s lives between birth and baptism, and baptism and college, and college and marriage, and dates with my wife — all these events go by way too fast! When we get to rewatch the great video recording of our lives (except for the parts edited out by repentance), I will have my finger on the rewind button for these fast spans of time, and expect to have proof that playback time for these is much faster than for the slow time spans.

What makes time fly for you, and what makes it feel as if the clock hands are moving through thick molasses?

To Busy to blog?

Guess I really got out of the habit, since I had a half year lag between posts. Anyway, time to do a little repentance.

Today I trained two members of the duties of the Ward Web Admin and showed them the ropes on lds.org's admin interface. It is amazing sometimes how obvious the generation gap is between the old and the young. The younger admins take the technology for granted and it seems second nature to them per their experience, whereas the grandparent generation have a much harder time, and rely much more on precedural documentation.

We have some new neighbors we helped move in yesterday. They are moving down from Battleground, and their previous place was 6 acres. A city plot should be a little easier for them to handle. One of the boys looks to be about Matt's age, so that might be fun for Matt to have another friend so close.

We got a day of sun after nearly two months of rain and overcast skies. We took advantage of it and dug the holes for two peach trees, northern variety. We are going to see if we can't get some peaches to can, in addition to the apples, plums and two cherries we already have growing. I love fruit trees. They are somewhat easier to maintain than gardens, and keep giving year after year.

Kristi, my second oldest, in living at home now and working full time preparing to either go on a mission or perhaps go back to school. I think she is done with BYU Idaho, and might try BYU now that Grant and BriAnne are living there. Jobs are more plentiful and cost of living is lower than Idaho, according to Bri, so well see . . .

Somethin Fishy going on here

Here is a new flash game Matt turned me on to. So simple in concept, so difficult in execution. I have a new appreciation for wart, when he turned into a fish. It's not easy to survive level 5, and Matt has made level 7.

Play Fishy