The Good Life

June 22-27

2009-06-28T21:26:00.000-07:00

So I finally signed up for my first-ever triathlon. I've been a lot of talk and no walk for way too long and I decided that the only way to really get back into shape and start pushing myself how I would like to is to just pay the money, sign up and dedicate myself to the task.

While I looked through the list of triathlons happening throughout the state, which were very impressive by the way because they are happening all the time, I stumbled upon the Moab tri that includes trail running and mountain biking instead of road running and cycling. Immediately I knew I needed to do this one.

It is part of the Kokopelli Challenge, named the MXT - Moab Xstream Off Road Triathlon. It is a sprint comprised of:

800 Meter swim - Colorado River
10 Mile ride - Amasa Back trail
6 Mile run - Jackson Trail

This is a view of the course from the top of the bike ride.

I am uber-excited to finally be doing this and now I've just got to start training to make sure that I can complete this sucker. The elevation gain on the bike is approximately 1,000 ft.! From river to the top of the mesa.

Leslie spent most of the week (Tue - Fri) up at Young Women's Camp near Smith and Morehouse. She loved it and had a great experience... minus some minor details that I'll let her expound on in her own due time, haha.

Aubrey and I spent great time together swimming and at the park. The poor thing had to ride in my truck all week (top's off). Every where we went her hair ended up looking like a rag doll :). She is the greatest thing that ever happened to us! Such a doll!

We took a hike on Saturday up to the Albion Basin at Alta Ski Resort and completely enjoyed ourselves up there. Aubrey spent most of the time in her backpack, but once we got to the top her and I ran all over the place and in the snow. She just explores everything with such fascination. She kept bending over and grabbing handfulls of snow to eat.

Today was Michael's (lil' bro) farewell. He did such a great job and sounds so mature. I couldn't believe that I was watching my little bro standing at the podium in such boldness and calm. He will do an awesome work in Salta, Argentina for the next couple of years. He is scheduled to attend the MTC on July 22, but I'll be in Chicago for work and will miss him.

We ended the day by walking around the SLC Cemetery and checking out the various graves of LDS authorities. We then drove by Nana (Lila's) old place and it brought a flood of memories to me of the great time's spent at her house on the North-West corner of 9th and M Street on the Avenues. She lived across the street of Libby Garden Park.

Father's Day

2009-06-21T21:10:00.000-07:00

What a wonderful day to be a father! I woke up to my beautiful wife and daughter smiling like they always do. Leslie made a killer breakfast of Eggs Florentine... yum. We got to church where Aubrey finally embraced nursery, haha... she didn't fuss at all when I dropped her off and ran right over to the toys and the other girls to have fun. I love that little stinker. During the first talk of sacrament meeting she kept saying "Amen" and looking around.

There is a man in the ward probably in his 60s by the name of Jim Bleak (blake) who she just adores. While walking up to the church she says "Jim" over and over again. She just looks at him and smiles and will often run over to him and hop up on his lap and just hang out for a while. He and his wife Annelle are amazing people and we sure do enjoy their taking to Aubrey.

I taught the young men about clean thoughts and speach today... they are hilarious and total space cadettes. We had a great discussion and then one of the boys, Christian Correia, asks a question completely opposite of what we were talking about. Oh well, it happens too much to care, funny kid.

Leslie surprised me today with our first ever camcorder! I love it! She called my co-worker Nick Guido the other day and figured out what camera she should by for us. He is a smarty pants when it comes to technology and she was so smart to talk to him first and figure out what was worth spending that money on. Here is a pic of it:

Now all we need is a memory card to get this baby recording. I feel terrible that we have a bunch of short, low-quality videos of Aubrey and she's almost 2 years old. I need to get more action of her before the little stink bug grows up and we miss out on these memories.

I had a great week at work and it has never been busier. It was ARUP's 25th Anniversary and I had my hand in a lot of stuff including the ARUp yearbook, photo contest, award ceremony and other stuff. Friday night, June 19, was our work party/carnival and it was Aubrey's first taste of cotton candy and the giant bounce slides... she was ecstatic and we loved watching how happy she was.

Leslie had a brilliant idea while we were leaving. We got Aubrey a snow cone without the flavoring so really it was a giant mound of ice that Aubrey just loved snacking on... all without the worry of staining, haha. Leslie is such a smarty to come up with little fixes like that.

Saturday morning I got up at 4:45 in the a.m. to head to Talons Cove golf course out by Utah Lake in Saratoga Springs. Jordan Bloxham, in our ward, has a brother that is the head pro there and he got us on for free, if we made it out there in time for first tee. It was earlier, but just awesome! I didn't have a great game, but we had a lot of fun. I shot an 87 and Jordan shot a 77.

Well, I'm going to hop off now, Leslie is wondering when I'm coming to bed since it's getting kind of late. She will be heading up to Young Women's camp as the director this week. So it's just me and the cutie pants this week. I can't wait to spend some quality time with Aubrey, though I will really miss Les.

Brother's Campout 09

2009-06-16T22:33:00.000-07:00

My brother's and I went on our inaugural Brother's Trip over June 12 - 14th down to Goblin Valley. I've decided to try to do a brother's trip every year from now on and this was our first attempt. I think that it was a smashing success and I loved the opportunity to hang with Russ, Robbie and Mike. Unfortunately Dad and Aaron couldn't make it... something about Dad having to shoot a wedding and Aaron being on a cruise in the Caribbean with Emily! Lucky punks!

So no pity on Aaron, however we felt bad that Dad couldn't make it. We drove down Friday after work around 4:00ish. Our stop in Price, UT was for very important items... hot dogs, buns, ice and a wiffle bat and ball (smart purchase, eh). :)

We ended up forgetting the ice... doh! But I'll get to that later. We didn't want to eat chain food for dinner, so we thought we would grab some local grub before the next 1.5 hour drive to Goblin Valley. Our choice was a place called Sherla's or some crappy name like that. It was right across the street from McDonald's (where we should've gone).

The food at Shmerloos was terrible! I got the supreme burrito and it ended up tasting like cheap store tortilla wrapped around old lettuce and cheese with some refried beans out of a can. And it was small... never going there again. Sharla's was gross! As you can tell I can't remember the name to the place... nor do I care to remember.

I drove the rest of the way to our camp site and we rolled in around 8:50 pm... right before dark, phew! We pulled off towards Little Wild Horse Canyon and found a side road leading to a few hoodoos where we dry camped for the weekend. This was the coolest camping spot ever. Nobody around us, loud as we wanted and plenty of room for the dogs to roam. Oh yeah, we took Alta and Mocha along for the ride. This was Mocha's first trip and campout and she did awesome. I felt bad leaving Lucy behind, but I didn't want to deal with three dogs.

We had a huge fire that night and sang some church hymns together. It sounds corny, but we had a great time and the spirit was really strong. That next morning we spent running around Goblin Valley. It is such a neat place and there are so many places to hike and explore. One could easily spend days there and not see everything.

Alta tried to be brave and jumped off a hoodoo that was pretty high and took a nasty spill. She ended up limping the rest of the time. Mocha, aka rugged-mountain Chihuahua, did great and this was a perfect little playground for her.

We needed ice badly to save our milk and hotdogs so we jumped in the car and drove the 20-something miles to Hanksville where we got ice, goodies and dog food. Alta needed it... fatty pants.

After spending a few hours back at camp and shooting Robbie and Mike's .22s we headed out to the slot canyons.

Alta is still limping. We didn't remember how long the loop was but we found out soon enough. It ended up being an 8-mile loop. We began going up Little Wild Horse Canyon which was a long uphill hike full of fun. We waded through water (Alta knocked me in the deep end and got me super wet) and climbed tons of big obstacles. Many of which we had to lift Alta up because it was too high for her to jump.

We came down Bell Canyon and that went really fast. Good times for sure. Alta and Mocha were so tired that they hardly could move back at camp. We played with the wiffle ball and bat by hitting up a hill by our camp and it would roll right back to us... simple pleasures, eh.

That next morning we jumped up and packed pretty quickly to get on the road and head back to SLC. Mike had a meeting at noon and so we had Russell (led-foot) drive home and we pulled in around 11:30. Perfect timing.

Picasa Web Albums and Silver Fork Canyon

2009-02-08T13:57:00.000-08:00

Saturday, Jan 31 Greg and I toured from the base of Brighton to Silver Fork Canyon and skied a couple of runs there. It was beautiful! However, because of playing basketball both Friday night and that Saturday morning, my legs were dead... the hiking was fine, but while skiing my quads cramped up on me three separate times!

One run I had to stop and sit down because they were cramping so badly and every time I lifted one leg up to relieve the other, the leg I was standing on would start screaming at me. But I love it :)

The skiing was beautiful and the five-hour tour well worth it. I've changed from Flickr to Picasa Web Albums. Here are my pics and the pics of that day: http://picasaweb.google.com/skibjork

2009-02-08T13:18:00.000-08:00

We finished with Canned lighting... kind of... just in Aubrey's room and the Living room, but it is wonderful to have some light in the house now and it get's me more excited to continue with the rest of the rooms, i.e. kitchen, hallway and master bedroom. Here's the play by play:

1) We found out where the center of the ceiling joists were and measured to make sure the light fit. We then took a 6" template from construction paper and drew a circle on the ceiling:

2) Chiseling out the cement "poops" to allow the can to sit flat against the ceiling above:

3) Using the keyhole saw to carve out the ceiling:

4) View of cut hole from the living room:

5) View of the cut hole from above in the attic:

6) Here is the can inserted into the hole w/out the trim:

7) View of light with trim w/out electrical connected:

8) The view from our front door:

The view from our kitchen:

More pics of Mineral Fork

2009-01-25T21:03:00.001-08:00

Here is the URL to my Flickr page of more pics of skiing Mineral Fork the other day. Hopefully it works.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/15286794@N02/

I've also got an exciting post coming soon about how crappy I am at installing canned lighting and doing electrical work! ugh.

Mineral Fork

2009-01-19T19:47:00.000-08:00

Wow it felt great to get up above the smog or as the news calls it "the worst air in the nation." Four of us toured up Mineral Fork in Big Cottonwood Canyon. It was so warm that we were in shirts half-way up. The sun felt amazing hitting my face and the air was pure and clean.

It couldn't have been a better day at a better time. We began at 6,000-ish feet at the street and toured up to the ridge at 9,000 feet overlookoing Lake Blanche in Mill B. Starting at 8 am was a little late, but we summited, ate food, relaxed and began the descent around 12:30.

The snow was crisp on the hike up and we didn't know the pitch or angle to take for the best snow. It was a strange feeling having toured many different aspects and not finding a pitch that the snow felt best. However, when we dropped in and made a couple ski cuts, the snow felt great. It was like nothing I'd had experienced.

We called it Corn Flake snow. Each turn cut through this thin layer of sun crust with a foot or so of pow underneath. There was no grab. Turns weren't effortless, but there was no struggle either.

At one spot we all stopped and looked around in awe of the environment around us. The snow at the bottom apron was glistening in the sun and it looked like water. You could see reflection on the top crust layer, but the skiing was perfect. Definitely different and worth noting in my eyes. Here are some pics of the day:

Slacker!

2008-12-26T21:45:00.001-08:00

I am so bad at posting on this site. Anyway, tonight - Dec 26, we had our annual friend party including 8 couples and too many kiddies to count. My one kid was handful enough for me and Leslie and I spent a good deal of the night just watching/helping her go up and down the stairs at the Walton's household.

Aubrey is such an amazing girl and I love her more and more every day. She is so excited about life and adventure and pushing her limits. I know that is the definition of most little kids, but she just lights up my life.

Tomorrow morning we are playing b-ball, all the family boys are getting together to test their out-of-shape moxie on the court, haha.

Time to go to bed, I'll update later.

Time to Build

2008-10-18T22:45:00.000-07:00

I'll go back and add photos to all my posts later I swear, I'm just to lazy right now to upload them. Today, Saturday the 18th of October was a great day. In the bathroom saga I did a deep clean to the gutted room, replaced the two hardwood floor pieces that will sit under the door threshold.

After that I tackled the window. This I thought was going to be tough, but with the right attitude, I know that sounds corny but I decided to have the right attitude today, it turned out being no problem at all. The right attitude by the way included these rules. 1) Work patiently 2) Work cleanly 3) Work Smartly 4) Do it correctly. So with the correct tools and taking my time to do things right it was pretty fun and surprised me how easy it was.

We cleaned the window mold out and slid the old window in for the time being until we can order our new window on Monday. Leslie and I then focused on the floor. I went to Home Depot and grabbed some Backerboard. We spent the next couple of hours laying that down and making the cuts for the toilet and tub plumbing. It looks pretty good if I might say so myself. Leslie screwed everything down with the driver while I made the cuts.

It doesn't sound like much work, but it took me all day, however we did it right and it was fun. Our next projects will be setting the tub, tiling the floor, fixing the roof in the corner where the old water heater vent traveled, setting the new window in and doing the drywall.

Hopefully these next tasks will be complete by the end of October/beginning of November. Peace out!

My girls

2008-10-07T20:42:00.000-07:00

Well, it's true the bathroom is gutted, well everything but the dirty floor stickers, aka linoleum and a light that I'm reluctant to take down because we need the light in there as long as we can. The Jazz are playing their first pre-season game of the year right now at the Lakers and it's kinda weird thinking that b-ball is about to start up again. I'm not even close to seeing football finish and although there is 3/4 of the NFL season and 1/2 of the college season left, I still feel like it's going way to quickly.

It'll be good though when football season is over so that Leslie and Aubrey can have me 100% back. I'm doing good though right now I think... that is... I think. Aubrey is such a joy right now. I love her soooo much and she is my little beacon of joy and light that I get to see everyday amidst my crazy schedule. Just to get home and see her smile is such a blast.

Aubrey is so pure and full of love, hope, faith and peace. She has her future all before her and I hope that I can be a guide she needs to live a wonderful life. Her mom loves her and takes such great care of her everyday. Leslie could choose no better place than to be with Aubrey taking care of her. I'm such a lucky guy to get such beautiful and happy women in my life.

Funeral, Furnace and Football

2008-09-28T08:09:00.000-07:00

Saturday the 27th of September was a drainer. Well, to start things off I played football Friday after work with some of my work buddies and this was my first sprint/stop sport I've played in a long time. So my legs are fried right now... Sunday morning. I am so sore that it's sad. Oh well, I'm just glad that I was able to get out and run. Anyway, Saturday was Mary Ward's funeral. I have only ever known her as Maudy, but I found out a lot about her that funeral service.

She lived nearly 40 years with Sherry Wasden (Hal's sister) and their late cousin Laura. Sherry is Hal's sister. Maudy is Hal and Sherry's mom's sister... so their aunt... and we call her our aunt as well.

I have known Maudy for nearly5 years and knew a different Maudy than was discussed at the funeral. The Maudy I knew, I loved... and I love her even more after hearing about her yesterday. I knew a Maudy that was tiny and feisty. She told it how it is and never sugar-coated anything. She called our dog "the beast" and hated the fact that we had it and sometimes brought it by. She was bitter, so I thought, but I loved her still. She was a huge BYU fan and I owe her despererately for the tickets that she and Sherry let me use the last few seasons.

The talks that were given talked of a lady that devoted most of her life to service, motherhood of others, to cleanliness, tidyness, spirituality, the lord and her friends and family. I went into the funeral thinking that it would be a sweet, somewhat emotionless funeral but I was very wrong. She died at the age of 77 to cancer and I cried through much of the funeral of the remarks given of her and the stories shared... both scriptually and personally. The hymn, "How Great Thou Art" sung by one of Maudy's ward members powerfully erupted a slew of emotions and made me realize how great our saviour really is.

It was a great funeral service and I'm so glad for people like Maudy and Sherry and the love that they give.

Furnace -

As for the furnace my dad and I spent the mojority of the two last days ripping out the older furnace and installing the new and improved high-efficiency furnace. I am excited to get it done, but we still have a lot of work to do on it.

Burnin' the candle on both ends

2008-09-05T23:26:00.000-07:00

I am tired! It's now 12:30 am on Saturday September 6 and I am calling it a night. I've been caulking the basement molding and trim and I still have a good couple of hours to go before I'm done with this tortuous task. Everything has run so smooth until the caulking, however I do have to admit after hoping on thisoldhouse.com I learned how to do a great caulk bead and it's taken a lot of time, but it definitely is the best caulk I've ever done.

While I thought of how crappy I am for not spending Leslie's b-day night with her... I started thinking, "but I'm finishing the one thing she wanted for her b-day... the basement." I still have to paint the trim and get things put away before it's done and hopefully I can do that tomorrow while I'm watching football. Cougs v Washington baby!

Anyway while feeling bad that I wasn't with Leslie I started thinking about how I am so behind in school right now and how I have a ton of church stuff to do. And how there are a plethora of other tasks around the house that I want to get to. I still have a month or two before it starts snowing again, but there's so much I want to do, and the time will fly.

I have Regional Conference for our stake tomorrow at the Conference Center. Normally I'd drag my feet to go to these, even though I'm Young Men's Pres, but this time I'm really excited to sit down and enjoy the fine talks and messages of the brethren that I know will make me feel better and rejuvenated.

Also tomorrow night I will be visiting the temple with Russ for stake temple night. (Russ and I are in the same stake). We will be doing initiatories and then show face at the chapel session before returning to our homes to see the rest of Utah v UNLV.

TaTa for now... good night.

The Basement

2008-09-02T22:45:00.001-07:00

Well, I just finished putting the molding up along the wall and the floor. We are doing a two-tone paint job with green above and white below with white molding running horizontal through the middle of the wall. This was Leslie's b-day present and I'm almost done. She was pretty tired tonight, but I'm sure she is loving that it is coming together.

Tomorrow night I will finish caulking the cracks and nails and will hopefully be able to paint before Thursday, which is when the family is coming over for a BBQ. I'd love to have it done for everyone to see, even though the walls are all still naked and our furniture is, well, non-existent or terribly unwanted and unattractive.

This should definitely help the resale of our house though one day and soon Aubrey will have a place to play downstairs. Maybe if we're still here in a couple of years we could frame off a section of the basement and create another bedroom, but we'll see.

Personally I would love to be working outside and putting a roof on our awning and tile the concrete of our porch, but I know how much Leslie wants this basement to be done, so I'm gonna push through and finish it. I'll post pics as soon as I get some put together.

Oh, and we now have cable... yikes! I don't know if I should be happy now or not. This means I can watch all the sports I want, i.e. ESPN... and I don't think that's a good thing. Oh well, we are getting it cheap for the first six months and I definitely plan on canceling after that. Leslie wanted the cable so that I could watch the games at home instead of at friend's or family houses. But, I'm pretty sure she pushed to get it for her TLC fix. :)

2008-08-31T19:37:00.000-07:00

This has been formally my ski blog, however, I am now changing this to my blog of everything I'm lucky enough to do and enjoy. From gardening to home improvement to recreating... this will be my blog of stuff I love to do and how it happens. Let's just hope that I continue posting... which means I'm doing stuff I love. So if you read this, I hope you enjoy it and get some fun ideas for yourselves and if you ever have suggestions please post them. I love trying new stuff. I am now 28 years old and I feel I'm barely beginning to do, experience and enjoy life. There's a lot out there and I hope to it with my family and within the minuscule budget we have.

Red Baldy

2008-04-05T15:15:00.000-07:00

My alarm clock didn't go off this morning! My fault though, I forgot to set it for the weekend, so instead it's set for 6:00 am weekdays... oh well, Gregor knocked on our door at 6:30 on the money and I shot up with the sounds of Alta and Lucy barking... terrible guard dogs.

Steph Cook, old Solitude patrol friend, came with us today and met us at the house just a few minutes later. She is a lot of fun and it was great to see her again. She drove up to the parking lot below Snowbird by Scotties Bowl and we began the trek from there.

We started skinning at about 7:30-ish and got to the base of Red Baldy around 10:00-ish. However, the fun just began. We followed iron-woman Steph, who broke the whole way up, and summited around 10:45-ish.

On top of Red Baldy we found ice, blistering wind, ice, rocks and ice. It was so wind-blown and crusty, but the view and satisfaction of getting to the top made it all worth it... like every tour we do. :)

After grabbing a few Wheat Thins and chuggin' the rest of my water we took the skins off and got off that peak a.s.a.p. Once we slid past the top rock field of icey goodness, it was nothing but smooth, and I mean smooth skiing! We had a ton of vert to ski to the bottom of Baldy and the entire apron was about shin-deep powder. It was heaven! Each turn effortlessly cut deep into the landscape and left an imprint of satisfaction. My quads, as amazingly huge as they are, still shook from the hike and screamed at me to stop... so I did. About half-way down I pulled off to the side and watched the other two glide on by. The sun peaked out just enough to break the fog and allow for some great vision for the next half of the run. I simply loved it and am so lucky to have friends that push me to experience such fun little adventures.

The ski out was a mix of crust and some soft pow, but once we hit the road (traverse) out it became interesting and comical. The last few turns were "character building," as Greg put it. Translation: ACL tearing... yet we did survive with but a few blisters.

Quick hike... quick run

2008-03-22T12:29:00.000-07:00

So today I had to finally get out and get my legs burning again... it's been nearly a month and a half! I couldn't find anyone to go with me on the late notice so I kept it safe and short by skinning across from Alta for a quick run.

As you can see it was a bluebird day and the snow at the beginning was rock hard... not fun for the skins once I got on some steeper terain.

Almost there! The sun was beautiful and warm and the snow was ripening up just right for some corn/sugar in spots. It definitely felt great to get the skis under me again and hopefully it won't take me another month to post. :)

-peace out

Highland Park ski night at Brighton

2008-02-01T23:00:00.000-08:00

Since I don't know how to post a youtube video, I have put the link to it here... so hopefully it works. This was Feb. 1 at Brighton and was put together by our elder's quorom president, Jason Frazier. We had a great time and didn't see too many other couples, mainly because we were shreddin' the bunny hill all night. I wish I would have grabbed our camera, because Leslie was looking soo hot in her lil' ski outfit and her sassy Line skis. :)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=tcG_bPU36Ds

Alta 1_26

2008-01-29T21:37:00.000-08:00

Oh baby what a day! Here is a shot of Superior from the top of Summit lift... you gotta love my papas new camera, it's soo cool. If you look closely there are two tracks off the peak... luckys. Wow, what a peak! One day...

Robbie and I had the best day Saturday together. We, unfortunately didn't get there until around 10:00-ish, but that's when the best skiing was to be had. Here's a pic of Robbie standing on top of the cliff he threw a huge lincoln off... well... not really, but you can imagine! We did ski off to the side and hit somethin' not as big, but fun nonetheless.

Ballroom opened right after we got there and we got a sweet run off Baldy shoulder and as we headed back to do it again we noticed the apron above the Sugarloaf to Collins trail had just opened. So we got up there as soon as we could and got some fresh turns... beautiful!

Here's Robbie smokin' the bowl under the cliffs of Devil's Castle. We took the 45-minute traverse to get these goods since we were one of the last in this long line of dedicated rippers. So we trekked to the end of the traverse and it was incredibe!

Robbie in Catherine's Area on our way out to Sunset Peak where we made a lap. It was great back there as was everywhere this day. Doesn't he look hot in his new goggles and helmet. Oakley should hook us up for this sweet shot.

A few more good memories of the day... Robbie's in uhhh... white and I guess I am too.

Tourin' up Maybird Gulch

2008-01-12T19:57:00.000-08:00

This is a shot near the end of our tour in Maybird Gulch. You can see the top of the Pheifferhorn up to the right. It's an amazing peak and it was fun being so close. I'll have to get back in the summer and get a closer look. These trees made me feel like we were in BC or something with all the ice caked on them.

Here's Greg, the fearlous leader near the top of the tour. He was ticked that his gps was running out of battery.

This is a pic of us about to start skiing the woods down to the road. My legs were mashed potatoes at this point. Greg on the other hand was just gettin' warmed up. This was the toughest part because I felt like my quads were about to explode after a few turns and I'd have to stop and get my strength back. The skiing however... stellar.

This is where we took the skins off and started the desent. We were very conservative in our skiing since we heard of a hollow layer underneath. We didn't want to tempt the avalanche gods today.

Here are a couple videos of the two of us... nothing spectacular, but fun nonetheless. Moellmer's is on the top and mine on the bottom.