Cotton Pickin' Lillywhites

Much ado about ice fishing

2012-01-04T21:20:00.005-07:00

Unbelievable isn't it? Two posts in 30 days? It's becoming a rare occasion these days. As the title of the post implies, we have been ice fishing like mad. Our week between christmas and new years could be placed in 3 categories: ice fishing, ice fishing, and eating food. On Monday the 26th we had our much awaited Christmas party on Mantua. By some stroke of madness Sara agreed to come. We fished til about noon or so and Sara didn't catch any fish but she did stay very warm (see pic below).

I was able to ice a couple trout.

That Thursday I was going to go to Strawberry reservoir but after 4 doggers (also known as bail outs) I decided to postpone til Friday to go to Randolph. I went Friday with my old drafting buddy and his family. We must have caught over 100 fish between the 6 of us. I knew I wanted to come back the next day but needed more tempting bait to get Sara to take the hook. Thus came about the idea of making an ice hut. I took an old tent Mom & Dad had lying around from the 1800's and me & Dad welded some stakes and we had it figured out. Next day I came back with Keith & Danielle, Sara (a true miracle) and my buddy Frank and friends. It took about an hour and a half to set up that dang tent because it was so windy. At one point I had guys sitting on the corners of the tent just to hold it from blowing away. At long last we were setup and it was nonstop catching all day. I don't think we had a lull of more than 15 minutes. Sara caught 6 fish and I even recorded it for future generations and for additional fodder in arguments over ice fishing. Especially the argument that starts with "I've never caught any fish ice fishing". I think it will work well for both purposes. It was a hard obtained video - 10 minutes of nothing to isolate this one exciting clip.

Saturday night (New Years Eve) me & Keith pushed ourselves to stay up til 12:01 AM and then we were done. We were ready for sleep around 10.

Monday we went ice fishing yet again, this time at Hyrum reservoir. Fishing was about average there. Very slickery ice which Molly enjoyed.

In other news, Molly has become quite the little helper. She likes to help load and move the laundry, load/unload the dishwasher, and pretty much whatever dad is doing at the time. Sorry the sound is not working in this video.

ice fishing 12/17/11

2011-12-18T18:32:00.005-07:00

We just got back yesterday from our much awaited and long anticipated ice fishing trip. I may have been more excited about it than the whole Christmas schbang. We hit up Mantua since it is one of the first to freeze that I know how to fish. We brought along a fishing skeptic (a dude in our ward that almost doesn't believe in fishing) and he went home a skeptic. We all caught fish except for him. He got bites but was unable to bring them to the surface. We ate many sunflower seeds which I was expelling when this picture was taken.

We got to test out Molly's snow gear in full force - snowpant bibs, double layer coat, mittens, superman hat, and of course, moonboots. Her and Sara came fishing starting about 11 and did just fine for the hour and a half they were there. Her cheeks were a little chilled but she wasn't complaining and seemed to be having fun. She got to fish all by herself (with dad closeby)

got pulled in the sled by everybody, and had tons o fun with Jon (the skeptic).

Keith came and got a squirmy one.

And Dave who previously had only caught a bluegill that I would categorize as "fun size" was able to snag a couple 9 inchers.

Ice was about 7" thick and it was a new record for early ice fishing for me. In the past I have never gone before Christmas. We came back that afternoon and had a fish fry with Keith and nobody got sick. There will be many more ice fishing excursions and this was a good start!

Pink

2011-11-26T10:04:00.006-07:00

Holy man it's been a long time since I posted! But I don't feel like writing a ton so here's some interesting tidbits about the past few months:

1. We're having a girl! Since learning this, I've given Sara full permission to buy the pinkest, girliest clothes she wants because we are committed to it for the long haul.

2. We got iphones a few weeks ago and are loving them! I got a huge discount on phone service with verizon through my work so we made the switch.

3. Molly is very much into reading books. One night after scriptures she grabbed a book and plopped down on my lap with it. We've read book(s) every night since then. This picture is in one of the mercer meyer books we have. It's supposed to be a happy bunny but I'll let you decide...

4. We've taken advantage of every snowstorm we've gotten. So far we've made 4 snowmen with the 2 big snowstorms. This is all in preparation for ice fishing starting mid December. We got Molly some moonboots last week and I think we're all ready for some good times on the ice. Well, me and Molly anyway...

5. Sara went to see the new twilight movie and somehow did not barf at the cheeziness. Amazing!

6. I went pheasant hunting a couple weeks ago. Didn't get one but it was fun anyway.

7. Molly likes to copy everything Fred (me) does. EVERYthing. It makes tickling Sara twice as fun (and considerably more efficient!). I'm not going to ask her, but I think Sara likes it a whole lot too.

Disneyland

2011-09-25T17:03:00.004-06:00

We just got back from our much-awaited trip to Disneyland! We went with Frank and his family who got us an awesome deal on a Marriott hotel room and helped us get around in California. Getting to Disneyland was like an intense rollercoaster ride in itself. If I were to derive the rules for motorized vehicles solely based on those we met on the way there, these would top the list.

1. Blinkers are optional - maybe even frowned upon. (The few times I saw a blinker used it was for less than a second and half the time it happened AFTER the lane change.)

2. The 2 second rule between vehicles is non-existent. Since we were following Frank we wanted to be right behind him so we didn't get lost. If there was more than a 4 foot gap between the back of Frank's van and the front of our car then it was as good as a mile gap. The gap would always be filled by a blinkerless vehicle.

3. Motorcycles can do whatever the heck they want. They can go in between vehicles, lanes, etc. Turns out this is also legal.

4. The speed limit is a number you should always be 15mph over. Otherwise you become a dangerous obstacle for other drivers (not to mention the motorcyclers).

5. Parking spots are never open for more than 30 seconds. In order to park at Laguna beach we had to stake out a spot and wait for someone to leave. Then we were blessed to be able to pay 5.00 for it.

At disneyland we mostly did kid rides with a few exceptions. Molly was just under the 32" height for a few rides. She had a lot of fun at toon town which is where we took these pictures. We discovered that Molly has learned to smile on cue for the camera.

Sunday we hung out with my sister Mern and her family where Molly painted a lovely picture with fingerpaint.

Monday we finished up disneyland and watched the world of color at california adventure. It is music/picture/video show projected on large water fountains with the videos and pictures projected on the mist of the wide fountains. Who'da thought to use mist as a backdrop for pictures?

Tuesday we went to Laguna beach and Molly loved getting in the sand and feeling the waves crash on her feet.

We went to Vegas that night and ate in a casino buffet the next morning with my old buddy who lives there . We made it back Wednesday night about 8 just in time for us all to start our colds.

#2

2011-09-02T13:15:00.005-06:00

Here's a summary of what's happenin' around here:

1. Molly loves to wear this backpack that we've had for a while. We may have stolen it from an unsuspecting cousin but we're using it until it's reclaimed. She has us put it on her and wears it around like she's ready for class.

2. We went camping a couple weeks ago with Sara's family and Molly loved hanging out with the cousins and getting very dirty.
3. Fred found a really cool slug in front of our door that he had to take a picture 0f.

4. Sara is pregnant and is due April 6th.

Lagoon

2011-08-21T16:39:00.008-06:00

We have been having an awesome summer. In August freds company paid for us to go to lagoon for the day and even fed us dinner, it was awesome. Here are a fews photos to update:

Molly went on the boats and loved it. Especially because she got to ride with a complete stranger.

Molly also loved the Merri go Round. We rode that One a few times

She also discovered how to smile on que and gives us this awesome smile everytime the camera turns on.

We rode the train and had some fun waiting in line.

Molly Loved the train with grandparents:

After about an hour Molly was done and so she left with the grandparents while me and fred enjoyed a nice date night. It was fun to go on the rides without a kid but I have to say that the highlight of the day was seeing Mollys super excited face on the rides.

Update

2011-07-10T17:50:00.006-06:00

Wow we are really falling behind on this blog thing. I haven't given it up nor do I plan to give it up soon for something like a book of many faces. Since the last post we bought a new (to us) car! We had been watching for a CR-V for a while and almost bought a 2003 model. One day this 2004 showed up on KSL at a chevy dealer in woods cross. We went down there that day right after work. We had a list of things to check and features that were important to us. When we went to test drive it the salesman wanted to ride with us. I told him it would probably be 45 minutes or so because of my checklist. He was somewhat surprised but came along anyway and was a bit thrown around - literally. Here are some of the items on my checklist:

Performance at 75mph - observe rattling or veering
Air conditioning endurance - 10minutes on max through the front vents
Heater
Child safety lock
Radio (bring CDs)
Reverse
Cruise control uphill, downhill, and find minimum cruise control speed
Brake tests - gradual stops (squeaking), slamming(screeching)
Engine fluid colors or oddities
Idle for 5minutes after the drive

So we did all these tests with the dude in there. We got the car ice cold and then cranked up the heater and did some speeding. Then we got down to 25mphto test the cruise control. Went to a parking lot to drive in reverse (quite rapidly I might add). Then the brakes - that was the best. I announced that I would be testing the brakes and to hold on. Apparently the salesman didn't hear and he went flying into my headrest because he wasn't wearing his seatbelt when I slammed on the brakes. Then we did it again - he was slightly more prepared the second time.

Our tests were pretty exhaustive but I felt like we had a good vehicle. They let us take it home that night and had us bring it back in the morning for a checkup (the dealership had only got it that day). For the time they were doing the checkup they gave Sara this gangsta Cadillac to drive around.

The cadillac was cool but we were glad to get back to our new CR-V. It has a lot more room than the accord (which we kept) and is much more off-road worthy. The back seats tumble forward so we can fit long things even with Molly in the car because the back seat is split. It also has a fold out picnic table in the back. The only problem we are having with the car now is coming up with distinguishing names for the two vehicles. My accord has always been known as "the Honda". Now we have 2 hondas. Jury is still out on what to call the CR-V. All we know is that "the Honda" is out.

We have been spending a lot of time on our balcony. It fits 3 camp chairs nicely and is a good place to relax after work.
We spent some time with Becky and her kids catching carp by Willis's Pond and going to the lake. At the pond we hooked 7 nasty carp. Brayden and Ethan both caught 5 pounders (relatively big for the pond). I had forgot to bring my net so we had to use a pitchfork to get the fish out of the water once we brought them in. I think we all increased our spearfishing skills as well as our angling skills. Tons of fun.

Easter, Graduation, and fun with Molly

2011-05-10T13:28:00.012-06:00

We have a bunch of pictures that I have been meaning to post for a while.

FIRST: Easter Pictures
Our church starts at 9 am. This year because I was so excited for easter we got Molly up 5 mins earlier than her regular wake up time. This picture shows how she felt about that decision.

After a little bit she did warm up to the idea of cool presents.

This is Molly's Easter dress. The bunny she is holding was in last years easter picture when she was 1 week old. I thought it would be cute to continue the tradition.

Molly has started to like tv. We have one channel called baby first tv. Its great, and has a bunch of developmental programs for babies. It was created by the same people who made the baby Einstien videos. Molly loves it and its the only time in the day when she will sit down without being restrained.

SECOND: Graduation
Here is our happy family at fred's graduation. It was a great day.

Molly loved the end of the graduation when they called the names one by one. Everyone clapped over and over and she got a real kick out of clapping a bunch.

Here is fred and his parents. We were so glad to have them there to watch him graduate.

THIRD: Mothers day
We spent mothers day up in laketown with Keith and Danielle. Kathryn gave me and Danielle a pair of socks she got but didnt want. They were so soft I wanted to put them on molly so she could feel them. One thing led to another and thats hows this picture happened:

Molly loved those socks and kept them on most of the afternoon. There was a bunch of sliding. But that did not stop her.

Your might think Molly is mad in the picture. For those who see Molly a lot you know that she has many fake smiles that she uses. But this is her super happy genuine smile. It looks much cuter in real life.

Molly's Haircut

2011-04-10T15:48:00.004-06:00

Here is a picture of the after math of Molly's Haircut. It was intense because I wasnt really sure I wanted to cut it until afterwards. Plus Molly never sat long even to even up all of the edges. I do love it now because it really was a mullet before. Now its a cute little bob.

Picture Post of Molly's Birthday!

2011-04-10T15:15:00.009-06:00

Here is a picture summary of Mollys birthday. For her Birthday this year we took advantage of her interest in animals and had a zoo theme. As part of the birthday on saturday we went to the Hogle Zoo. It was so much fun and Molly loved every minute of it.

Here is Molly with her Cousins: Weston, Braxton, Boston, and Savannah with my Dad

Here is Molly and Fred Checking out the Giraffes. I love the way Hogle Zoo is designed. Almost all of the Habitats having an indoor viewing area. The zoo really seems get Utahs crazy weather.

Here is Molly playing in a giant egg at the zoo playground with her friend Kelby. They are really cute together. Me and fred always tell his mother how lucky she is to have a redhead.

Here is Molly with her aunt Katie playing the piano just before her birthday party. She had a blast at that piano and was very upset when her mean mom turned off the piano and forced her to a have a birthday party. But she did seem to get over it after she opened the presents.

Here is Molly's birthday outfit. I completely forgot to get a picture of the cake. But it was awesome and delicious.

This is the after party when molly got a chance to go wild with all of her presents. It was a great birthday! And I will make sure to tell her how much fun she had when she is old enough to understand the concept of a birthday.

Videos of Molly

2011-04-06T21:39:00.004-06:00

I guess it's about time to post again seeing as it's almost been a month! March was a lot of birthday power. Sara's birthday was last Saturday and Molly's was the following Monday (2 days apart). We partied hardy at Hogle Zoo and Kaysville. Molly liked the animals at the zoo and didn't get eaten by any of them. We went to Rodizio grill to celebrate Sara's birthday and then to a movie afterward. It's been a long time since we've watched a movie and it was pretty nice! (but we still dig Netflix) Sara turned a grand old 25 years old and I was able to find a 1986 quarter in her honor. This also begins the period of the year when I am younger than Sara. It's short-lived (2 months) but it's always a fun taunt til my birthday.

Molly got lots of toys for her birthday which were not quite as interesting as the paper they were wrapped in. In true fashion we reduced her to a diaper and let her dig in on her cake. Well, "dig in" is not adequate. She ate like she was at a fancy ball wearing a prom dress. It was about as girly as it gets and I think she was even lifting her pinky half the time. Not so exciting but a good laugh.

One of Molly's old toys has become her new versatile multi-purpose toy that occasionally doubles as fancy bracelets. She also likes to hold Mom's purse and strut around but we didn't have good video of that.

Molly got a block bucket for her birthday that is severely flawed in that the lid comes off way too easy. We tried to teach Molly to put the blocks in the corresponding shaped hole but she thinks that is silly and takes off the lid so she can put the blocks right in the bucket. She is definitely in control with that toy.

Molly also got a tea set from Frank and Amy. She hasn't figured out how the sounds work or what it is for, but she has figured out that the teacups and cupcakes fit very nicely into her ball popping toy. I found them in there today when the toy was all jammed up. Luckily we got them out and the ball popping toy is recovering.

Other than that we are lovin Cottonwood Heights. We are mourning the passing of the ice fishing season (Fred more than Sara) but excited for the resurrection of the golf season. Sara is loving the warm weather and thus the end of her boredom inside the apartment while it's so dang cold outside. We are also thinking about a summer (or any time of the year we want) vacation! (This sentence was followed by Fred's maniacal laughter upon realizing that the shackles of school are no longer binding)

Picture Update

2011-03-18T12:05:00.006-06:00

Its been awhile since we have updated with any pictures of molly. So here is a post full of them so we can catch up.

This is molly getting into her favorite cabinet at our old apartment. Suprisingly she was able to replace it rather quickly when we moved.

This is to show how long her hair is getting. And dont worry I didnt allow her to go outside looking like that.

One good thing about mollys hair is now I am able to do pig tails. Its hard to do because not only do you have to comb her hair and even out the pig tails, you have to do it while wrestling with her to stay still. They are really cute though.

And here is molly rocking a sombrero.

eye-kuh

2011-02-28T20:11:00.006-07:00

We finally have real internet! So much better than the ghettoness we had with our old internet. In celebration we're going to post a video of Molly walking! She's taking steps on her own now and is having a blast.

Sara has been loving being at home all day... not so much. It can get boring to be trapped in the little apartment. I come home for lunch most days to break the boredom and squelch the daily chaos. We were considering getting a car soon but decided to wait for a bit.

We've been watching 'hoarders' on TV. Very interesting show. You might check it out. These people have nasty houses because they have OCD for hoarding. Note to Frank L. this is not to be confused with CDO -(OCD in alphabetical order.) We've decided that we are a bit of packrats ourselves, well me especially. For instance I went through the bills before we left Logan and couldn't bring myself to get rid of my old bank statements from 2004 from a bank where I closed the account in 2007. So I watched hoarders and put myself through enough therapy to throw away those bank statements and some other stuff that was just plain junk. I have yet to throw away my old mission tracting shoes that had holes in the soles when I bought them. And for the record I don't foresee it happening in the near future. But throwing away some junk was nice. Especially when I realized that it would make room for storage of more junk!

Sara finally bought a new diaper bag from Babies R Us. We've cycled through a couple cheap ones and finally invested some dough to get a good one that we hope will last long. I would take a picture of it to show you but Sara is refusing to let me take a picture. Blame her for lack of a picture here. I guess I'll just describe it - it's black with some green on it. You'll have to fill in the blanks with your imagination.

Final note (this is getting long) we went to ikea the other day in hopes of getting a paper towel holder, curtain, and a crib teething protector. We spent 2 hours lost in the maze of ikea before we settled on a nasty sheer curtain and an okay teething protector. Paper towel holder was as hard to find as a drop of water in sawdust. I'm officially giving ikea two thumbs down until further notice. There will be no capitalization of ikea and I only pronounce it eye-kuh. Sara is undecided on eye-kuh.

We're still alive

2011-02-08T21:12:00.003-07:00

Yes indeed. As the title reads we are still breathing and existing in our new apartment in Cottonwood Heights. We were looking to rent a house for a while but a combination of no time, less than ideal houses we had looked at, and the thought of closing on a house in the future... we decided to save some money and get a 2 bedrooom apartment. We have an amazing walk in closet that could double as a 3rd bedroom if we consolidated our clothes more. We had a lot of junk that we put in a cheap storage unit in the complex. The complex has nice amenities - pool, hot tub, tennis courts, volleyball court, etc. We're digging the hot tub especially. Our washer and dryer are finally living together in the same closet. In our Logan apartment they were separated by a long skinny hallway about 20 feet long and tucked in a corner. Now I don't have to throw the wet clothes down the hall in a lame attempt to land it in the dryer! My work is a 5 minute drive from the apartments.

We signed up for this ghetto internet on our first day here. Internet speeds are usually measured in megabytes per second. I think ours is measured in millibytes per hour. The only thing that really works is facebook which is always a sore disappointment anyway.

My work has been great. I have my own office (with my own phone and personal extension!). We will have insurance kicking in on the first of May which is convenient because that is the time I was planning on having a severe debilitating injury! At my last job we could only afford free 2d drafting software but here all the engineers have a seat of solidworks 2011 which is about as good as it gets in drafting software these days. My computer has 2 large screens so I don't have to cram it all into one little window. My boss is a pretty decent guy and so far things have gone well. All this and I was just excited to get a decent office chair (one that didn't come from DI!). Oh one more thing the company has season tickets to the Jazz games and they are distributed to employees. Somebody didn't want their tickets for this Friday so we are going to the Suns game courtesy of the company!

Thanks again everyone who helped us move. It only took us a trailer, dad's truck loaded to the gills like we were picking up pigs, and Sara's dad's truck loaded so much Steve had to drive with a vacuum cleaner in his hair! But it all made it to our apartment in good shape.

Funny Laugh

2011-01-27T23:29:00.004-07:00

The whole moving thing definitely has its funny moments. Tonight was a funny moment for us. Our landlords have said in the contract that part of the cleaning process is to wipe down every wall with ammonia water. Well a couple nights ago we were chugging away and I started to notice that I popped a whole in one of my cleaning gloves. That was a sad but I pressed on and after a while I popped another whole in the other glove. Well I noticed that the ammonia water had no lasting effect on my hands so I decided to press on without any gloves.

Moment of Truth:

Tonight Fred and I were cleaning and I decided to read the instructions on the ammonia bottle because I was bored waiting for the bucket to fill up with water. And there on the side of the bottle it said: caution do not allow long exposure to skin or there will be burning. Yikes! I was a little freaked out so I turned to Fred for some comfort.

His exact response:

Wow! Well don't let your hands burn and dibs on the good gloves.

I probably would have been really upset if I wasn't too busy laughing.
Oh well no stinging yet so we're good.

new job

2011-01-19T21:36:00.002-07:00

For those of you who haven't heard (through the grapevine or through the book of many faces) I was offered a job down in Cottonwood Heights. I will finally have a job as a mechanical engineer! The company (Dynatronics) makes medical devices and I will be working on the new design and maintaining documentation for past devices. Some other stuff too but that seems like the main things right now. This job came at us like a freight train. I applied for it (online) about 3 weeks ago. They called me the next day for a phone interview and I had a site interview on Friday. The next week I had a 2nd interview and offer by Friday. I start on the 31st.

We haven't found a place to live yet and that has been frustrating. We spent all day today trying to find a house to rent anywhere from Lehi to Bountiful. If anyone knows of a decent house to rent let us know. We looked at one today in a place where my uncle said a lot of people get shot. The house looked really nice inside and out but I don't want to have to get a pressure washer to clean dead bodies off my front porch.

Once upon a time we had a routine that we tried to follow. We'd get Molly to bed around 8:30-9 and then we would be in bed by 10:30. Now that we are in cleaning mode our schedule has gone through the window and we are feeling the effects of it. Oh the joys of moving in a rush!

Molly is 9 months old

2010-12-29T14:14:00.013-07:00

Yesterday was Molly's 9 month birthday. We have been celebrating today by waking up with a stuffy running nose. Going to the doctor and getting a flu shot. Forcing Molly to eat spaghetti that she hated. Making Molly try drinking out of a sippy cup which she also hated. So far getting older means going to the doctor and having a hard day getting over shots. It makes me think that maybe her 1 year birthday should be a little more fun. I made sure not to schedule her doctors appointment on the 28th of march so she would have a HAPPY birthday for once.

Here a is a look back at the last 9 months:

1 day old:

1 month old:

2 months old:

3 months old:

4 months old:

5 months old:

6 months old:

7 months old:

8 months old:

And Finally Molly Today:

Its a little late but Merry Christmas Anyway

2010-12-27T10:59:00.002-07:00

Fall Semester 2010

2010-12-14T18:02:00.011-07:00

Fall Semester is finally at an end as of 12/16/10 18:55. Yay. Seeing as my (Fred's) last post was in August I thought I would update on the great events that have taken place this semester whilst I was a homework zombie (to quote Sara). Very few of the great events are school related.

Pheasant Hunt - I love to hunt little birdies like grouse and I used to hunt ducks but I'd never had a successful pheasant hunt. I went last year on public land with a guy in my ward and we saw one but I was too slow and he missed it too so we came back empty handed. This year a guy in my ward invited me to go on his land with his dogs. Let me tell you that is the way to hunt those creatures. The dogs would go crazy in the cattails and flush the pheasant out of there like they were flushing a toilet! I did get one (although I'm holding two). Best hunt I've had all year.
Ye Old Deer hunt - For some reason I did participate in this witch hunt. Me, the wife, Dad, and Frank searched in very egregious forms for a mythical creature. I expected to see a unicorn before an actual buck. We hiked mountains, ran through snow, froze our faces off on the four wheelers - everything short of rapelling - but never got one. We actually did see a male deer but he was very tiny. If he were a human I think we would call him a toddler. I could only tell he was a male if I looked through the 12x50 binoculars from a hundred yards away. I would probably have felt bad about shooting him. I'm still deciding whether I should pursue the creature next year.

Land Yacht - My senior design project was to build a wind-powered land vehicle - a land yacht. Please do not confuse this term with the wikipedia's definition of a landyacht. Our was basically a big 3 wheeler with a sail. Our front wheel came off a suzuki motorcycle from the 70's and the back tires are chevy cavalier donuts. It's a honey! We didn't get any good testing on it (yet) because the weather was extra calm after the great snowstorm of thanksgiving. Only this week has it started to pick up.

Christmas Tree - After two sad years of a fake christmas tree we finally got a real one! I'm so excited and love the pine smell when I come home. Molly has also been loving it too - tearing it down and eating the needles anyway (any ideas for keeping kids off the tree??). Plus there is a lot of room for loot underneath it.

6 hour final - Yes you read that correctly - a 6 hour final. For my controls class we have so much material and it's a long iterative process to get the parameters right that the professor let us take the test in the computer lab. Glad to be able to use the lab but 6 hours is a long time! My brain was more deep fried than year old okra (for those of you who've eaten okra).

Molly - Molly has learned how to clap, say da-da and crawl. I think she'll be walking pretty darn soon but we don't want to rush that. More details will come with our Christmas card so I don't want to spoil it for you. Too often I put stuff on the blog and have nothing to talk about when I see people in person.

Graduation - This is my last semester!!

Mars mission - For my dynamics of space flight class we created a mission plan of how to get to Mars. Very interesting project and it's been a lot of work but so much fun! I've probably put 40 hrs into it so far. If my initial flight plans were followed you would have smacked into mars 10 times over or miss the planet by 100 million miles (that's further than from the earth to the sun). Finally got it working today though!

Picture Update

2010-11-22T10:34:00.010-07:00

Well we have lots of updates and pictures. I thought I would just put up the pictures to update.

Molly has been loving our entertainment system. She loves to crawl inside and just sit there. I think its funny how she will push all her toys aside just to get in there and play with the walls.

Its become her own little condo.

Molly is holding her own bottle now which is great. She is also finally big enough to fit into the stroller we bought last christmas. This is her enjoying a little lunch in the stroller while we ate sandwichs at the park. It was also the first time we all sat and ate a meal together.

I took Molly out in the snow for the first time today. She went through many emotions sitting there.
First confusion, then uncertainty, warming up to contentment, then happiness, quickly followed by dislike, then ending with hatred.
All this happened in the space of 5 mins. This picture was taken in the contentment stage.

Here is a couple of random pics to end. This one I took because I love how cute she is in that suit.

Here is the last one. I dont think I notice enough but Molly is generally a mellow kid. Really her biggest problem that will always get her crying is be left alone. I can deal with that.

The Joys of Parenting

2010-11-06T15:38:00.007-06:00

Molly is crawling now and spends much of her time on the carpet. Its an interesting feeling to be so proud that your baby is learning new things but also so frustrated that your baby is learning bad things.

Example 1: Molly is learning to feed herself which makes me so proud. BUT she is learning by picking up gross things off the floor and choking on them. Gross!

Example 2: Molly is learning how to hold her own bottle which is so awesome. BUT she is also learning how to throw her bottle and wave it around her face so milk gets everwhere. Not fun.

Example 3: Molly is starting to laugh more. BUT when she is really happy she will scream at the top of her lungs. So you can try to make her laugh but make sure its not too funny or it will hurt your ears.

When I pictured motherhood I never did picture myself having to pick my childs boggers and search my baby's mouth with my finger to find nasty leaves, hairs, crumbs etc. But its all part of the job right? There is definitely a reason why children come out cute and learn to smile really fast.

Here's a video of Molly trying to walk along the couch. I think she is going to be a born boot-scoot-and-boogie-er because she keeps doing the grapevine.

Deer Hunt 2010

2010-10-29T13:12:00.010-06:00

So here are some photos from the deer hunt. The hunt was changed from a 5 day hunt to a 3 day hunt which was a bummer. Everyone still had a fun time on the four wheelers. It started to snow on saturday and continued til monday which made the mountains beautiful but the hunt was freezing.

Here is a fun "where's waldo" pic. Can you find keith in the sink hole?

If not here is a closer look at the sink hole with Keith in it.

Here is another picture of the guys falling in into the sink hole.

Here is a picture of Frank to show just how cold and snowy the hunt was.

A few deer were chased but no deer was caught. The lillywhite tradition lived on for another year.

And to end the post here is a pic of Molly. We grew this pumpkin for Molly and it turned out to be the same size as Molly's head.

White Tiger

2010-10-26T15:31:00.002-06:00

Sneak Peak of Molly's First HALLOWEEN

Interesting Things

2010-10-07T18:07:00.008-06:00

So its been a while for updates but I thought I would post about the exciting things happening in our lives. Fred is plugging away at school and is starting to apply for real jobs, it’s so exciting. Everyone asks where we think we will end up and right now it’s a total mystery. Every job we look at is in a completely different state. It reminds me of a game me and my siblings used to play where we would spin a global and where ever our finger landed was the place we were going to live when we grew up. But I think we can narrow down the possibilities and say we are not looking for engineering positions in Greenland, Iceland is still on the table but Greenland is completely out.

Molly is 6 months and is the poster child for average growth. She is exactly 50th percentile for height, weight, and head measurements. She is eating jarred baby food now three times a day and the adjustment to her digestive system is catastrophic. I think there is a definite need for a warning label on baby food jars.

WARNING: Giving your child this type of food on a regular basis will cause a huge increase in poo production. Please plan diapers and wipes accordingly.

Well here is a pic to complete the post and hopefully I will be able to post some movies in the near future.

wiggly

2010-09-12T10:34:00.007-06:00

We have been having fun with our little molly and all she is learning. She is now awesome at sitting up. She is now definitely in a wiggle stage, I have been reading some parenting articles that says kids her age are really into texture and feeling things with their hands. Well Molly loves to scratch at everything: walls, carpet, toys, peoples faces etc. Such an interesting kid. Molly also got her first tooth. Which is exciting and very sharp, she really digs being able to bite down on things. She has also developed a love for blowing bubbles through her mouth and this bizarre huffing thing that she does at random times. We found this honey of a snow suit at the DI and loved it.

Good Golly Miss Molly

2010-09-03T15:53:00.004-06:00

EVER HAVE A DAY LIKE THIS!

Some days you just have to laugh to keep your sanity.

mmm.... tasty paper

2010-08-22T17:06:00.003-06:00

Molly has learned how to suck on things and loves to do it all the time. By the end of church my tie, shoulder, and knees are usually soaked with slobber, drenched in barf, or just plain nasty! By the way, I get slobber on my knees from when I hold her face down and pat her on the back. Anyway, she was working on my tie today when she got distracted by the green rectangular subject of interest that Sara was holding (also known as an LDS hymnal). Molly then threw down my tie and turned to the hymnal with great anticipation. She reached for it many many times and started drooling over it like applesauce! Needless to say I was somewhat confused as we have never fed her paper... or hymnals... or anything of the sort although the events of today may change our future plans. We managed to persuade her to fast from the hymnal for the day. I just hope that she doesn't start craving books and paper instead of formula and applesauce!

Is That Rice Cereal?

2010-08-17T16:21:00.009-06:00

So I am (Sara) starting to get a little obsessed with updatingthe blog. Its just so fun to show off pictures and have a place to update everyone on the little happenings of our lives.

So here are a few of the updates:

1. Molly has started eating rice cereal and she is already a pro. Its so fun to feed her but she really does best when Fred is feeding her because he always makes the best faces and she just laughs and laughs as well as eats and eats. This pic is right after she took a big bite of food and then had a really big sneeze.

2. We are starting to get the hang of camping and every time we go we learn something new which usually involved us purchasing something new. Example: this last camping trip we realized that we needed a heater so Molly and Mom wouldn't be so cold at night (mostly MOM).
Here are a couple fun pics from our last adventure.
LOVE LOVE LOVE those cubby cheeks!

This is our way of calming Molly down when she is fussy for no reason and believe it or not it works like a charm.

Everyone always tells me that Molly looks so much like Fred and this picture is just more proof of that statement.

And here at the end of the post is a cute pic of Molly is my favorite dress.

Summer fun

2010-08-09T18:15:00.009-06:00

So summer is starting to slow down and school is approaching, me and Fred have been sending lots of our time outside soaking up every last minute of it. We went to my family's cabin this weekend and had a blast. Its still has one of the most beautiful views I have ever seen:

Fred is also getting pretty excited about our sunflower. Its over 9 feet now and still growing!

We also put up Molly's crib for the first time on saturday. Before we were using a bassinet and decided she was old enough for the beautiful crib we bought when I was 7 mos pregnant. We were really excited to see it put together finally.

Its a little big right now for Molly but she does enjoy having room to spread out.

And of course it wouldn't be a complete post by Sara if I didnt add the latest cute pic of Molly:

4 Months

2010-07-29T20:31:00.008-06:00

Molly is 4 months old now! So I thought I would post some pictures and some stats:

Weight: 45th percentile
Height: 60th percentile
Head Measurement: 80th percentile (That just means she is smart right?)

She loves to roll onto her tummy but can't figure her out how to roll back. I try to encourage her to roll back but usually she just cries til I move her with my foot (yes I do get lazy after awhile).

I usually don't see how small she is until she stands.

This is my favorite pic of me and Molly so far because of the look on her face. Molly may only be 4 months old but she already knows when mom had taken too many pictures and she is done smiling.

I saved the best for last. This is Molly's famous smile, when you see this one you know you have done something right and or funny.

Fish Tales and Ponytails

2010-07-21T15:01:00.014-06:00

Hey this is Sara updating the blog with our newest adventures. Me and fred went fishing up at Laketown where I caught the biggest, ugliest fish of my life.

This is the pic: the fish is a Carp and the weight was 4 pounds even.

The pond we went to is Freds absolute favorite place to fish - Willis's Pond. And here is the pic of his trophy fish.

Fish Type: Carp
Weight: 1/3 pound

I am also getting very excited because of Mollys hair. She doesnt have a ton yet but it sure is getting long. Today I was actually able to put her in her first ponytail.

She is also thrilled about it. ;)

Molly Squealing

2010-07-10T21:25:00.001-06:00

It's been fun watching Molly learn new things and see her personality develop. She is pretty mild mannered and doesn't get fussy much during the day. (The hour preceding bed time can be a whole different story.) We went to Kaysville for the 4th and Molly got to see her first parade. I'm pretty sure she got socked by the candy throwers a couple times but it didn't phase her. Sara also made this dress for her so she would match her cousin Savanna. In the parade there was this awesome dude that had converted his easy chair into a zippin' machine! Once we got over the shock of a cruising lazy boy we realized it was really awesome! Fred was lovin the parade because the missionary mall float was throwing out ties and I got one! So cool. Now I don't need to get a tie for 2 more years!

She was calm for the fireworks and was mesmorized by them. Tried to get a picture but it's hard at arms length - plus having to adjust to a high intensity flash while smiling is somewhat difficult.

Yesterday and today we went camping at Franklin Basin up Logan Canyon. We went with our friends Frank and Tawnia. We were pretty close to the road so it was really dusty but I think my favorite line of the whole night was when Frank said "The good thing about getting all dusty is you feel like you have a nice brown tan when you're done!". Truer words were never spoken. We had a blast and got to use the new dutch oven we bought at cal ranch. Getting that dutch oven was fun too! We didn't know where to get one so we went to Sports Authority. They had tents and sleeping bags but no dutch ovens. We talked to this one guy about camping in general and he pretty much determined that our method of camping was not actually camping but was in fact "caramping". Definition: When you camp a short distance away from your car. This was opposed to his version of camping which sounded much more strenuous. He would hike with a backpack for like 10 hours then camp at night then get up and do it all over again. I think the term is backamping. I've been since wondering who can officially lay claim to the term "camping". When we went there were tons of people who were caramping. And I don't think there are an equivalent number or backampers in the valley to compete with it. On the other hand, the sheer fact that backampers hike for 10 hours may qualify their species to lay claim to the term. I finally decided that the carampers could have the term camping because I am biased to that version and because caramping sounds like something that requires a doctor's attention. Case in Point when someone asks what I'm doing this weekend and I tell them "We're going caramping" I would expect them to say "Oh, are you going to get that looked at?". I don't expect that response if I said I was going backamping. It still sounds better than RVamping anyway.

On this camping trip Molly learned how to use her vocal cords. In the past her scream, cry, and yell has all had one monotone sound. Yesterday she started doing this squeal. I don't know where she learned it or what it is or anything about it's origins. It's pretty entertaining though.

Eskimo Baby

2010-06-30T16:58:00.014-06:00

Hey there, this is Sara adding a quick update: First is Camping We took Molly on her first Camping trip, Which was our ward camp out. We only stayed over night but Molly did really well. She slept the whole night and wasnt fussy besides the normal (when she wants a bottle, and when she is tired). We had a lot of fun and look forward to a couple more camp outs before summer is over. Here is Molly at the camp out: so fashionably dressed ;) in her eskimo suit I also thought I would put in this video of Molly. She is definitely an early bird. Every Morning she wakes up around 6:30 am so happy and ready for a new day. She is always smiling and I cant figure out why seeing as zombie parents take her out of her crib each morning. Here is the proof:

By the way that is Fred's most odiferous whistling in the background. Hope you enjoy it!

Molly has also been perfecting her smile

And her ninja pose....

Changes around here

2010-06-20T22:07:00.005-06:00

Since Molly joined us in March we have been making some necessary adjustments to our daily routines as well as gaining new skills. I've been trying to keep track of them because they are somewhat interesting. Here's my reader's digest version of this list so far.

1. We go to bed before 12:00 every night (usually around 10:30)
2. We give Molly a bath and put her to bed at 9-9:30
3. I have to admit that the main thing I used to detest about dvd players is now a common thing for us - subtitles. We always use them so we don't wake Molly! Perhaps that is why they were invented
4. My right arm is getting extremely muscly (mussely, musculuarly??) from holding Molly.
5. We can do just about anything with one free hand including
- using the computer
- cooking dinner
- write checks (a new development)
- carry a carseat, gospel principles manual, scripture case, folder, and diaper bag and somehow lock the car all in one shot.
- mini golf (still needs improvement)
6. Fred has become increasingly nimble with his big toes. Last night I successfully pulled the recliner lever on our couch with my left toe.
7. We change diapers faster than a cowboy can tie calf legs in a PRC rodeo.
8. We recently told comcast to take a hike and got on the netflix bandwagon.
9. My ears are becoming accustomed to loud screams so that I barely notice.
10. We can walk to the kitchen, make a bottle (one-handed of course), and be reclining in the couch holding Molly all within two minutes of having woken up.
11. We feel like moles with the time we spend in the apartment. Going outside requires at least 5 minutes of light adjustment time.
12. We have learned how to walk on a squeaky floor without waking a sleeping baby in your arms.
13. Fred has discovered that lifting weights are for people without kids. If I keep benchlifting Molly then by the time she is 16 my muscles will be nice and toned!

So that's my list so far. I'm sure more will be added in the coming months. Enjoy!

Molly's Smile

2010-06-04T22:21:00.006-06:00

Molly is learing how to smile! Its still a work in progress though. Sometimes she opens her mouth really big thinking she is smiling, other times she only lifts one side of her mouth making a little smirk. I didnt realize how much effort goes in to smiling. But molly does give it her best shot and it always brightens my day. I took a few pics for freds birthday and luckily I got a few where she showed a little bit of amusement.

adventures

2010-06-01T21:07:00.004-06:00

We've had some adventures since our last post! Just like last year, we are trying to enjoy every second of summer vacation. When a second goes by that I don't think I've enjoyed to the fullest extent, I waste the next second being sad that I wasted the previous second. That being said, we are trying to avoid "down" time. May 30 was our anniversary so for the 29th (saturday) we went to salt lake to party it up leaving Molly with Sara's parents. We ate and were stuffed at rodizio grill (very delicious). The first thing we took from the walking buffet people was this fried turkey wrapped in bacon. We got all excited thinking that everything would be wrapped in bacon (after double checking that we were not in heaven). Alas, that was not the case. The other meat was delicious too but we were watching like a hawk for more bacon goodness. They give you this doohickey that you turn green side up when you want food and red up when you don't. We sat and watched the buffeters walk out of their cave forever and when it was something we wanted we would hurry and turn it to green hoping the sweet goodness would come before the stewed pineapple. The bacon goodness finally came when we were so full I could barely move but still took 2 bacony things. Again very delicious but I could barely stuff it down. After that we saw robin hood and got a new fishing pole for sara and a reel for me.

We had a little family get together with Keith and Frank and fam. Molly sat by her first fire and went into a trance watching it. If you look close you can see the fire in the glare of her eyes.

Today was a monumental day for Sara. We went fishing and she ended her 3 week drought of no fish. Then to top it off she got up her courage and even took the fish off the hook! Molly had a blast and was my good luck charm. I hooked one while I was holding her and then Sara took Molly from me and the fish got off. very sad. but I think Molly will be an awesome fisherwoman.

goodbye old couch

2010-05-17T22:40:00.003-06:00

Two years ago when we were in the last few weeks before getting married, Tom and Dani gave us their most awesome couch. It was so soft and comfy and has been a great blessing for us the whole time we've had it. (Thanks Tom and Dani) However, it hasn't been able to withstand the abuse I put on it while playing some fierce super nintendo games. Remember how when you were a kid and you tried to turn left so you found your hands, your whole body, and especially your head turning? Me too! Now that I'm older I still retain that talent but I played donkey kong which requires lots of monkey-like jumping and running. So as you can imagine I have been mimicking those same movements in the form of abuse to our couch. I tried to repair the couch once with sections of steel angle iron

....and that held for a bit but we realized it was just time to get a new couch - especially when the couch starting eating people.

I think our hometeachers probably dread coming over because of the back pain caused by the couches gnawing. Molly was our latest victim that convinced us that the time was right.

Here's our new couch! We got it from edwards furniture and LOVE it! The reclining seats are most amazing. We weren't too sure about the "bucket seats" but we figured with reclining seats we won't be stretching out on it very much anyway. Our old couch has been great and we will miss it but we are diggin this new one.

We also went to campus on Sunday for a stroll with Molly. Campus is so nice in the summer! I almost (focus on almost) wish school was in summer because it would be significantly less depressing.

One more thing I've just got to add. We went fishing today and Molly started crying a little bit so Sara subsequently reeled in her line and set the pole down. I asked her why she stopped fishing and she said it was because she couldn't do both at the same time. I told her it was possible and she handed me Molly as I fished (with significant doubt I might add) and I actually caught a fish! I held Molly the whole time I reeled that trout in from about 400 yards out. Moral of the story: it can be done.

Pictures from the Blessing

2010-05-06T14:52:00.007-06:00

Our cute little family all dressed for church. We were really stressed that molly would cry through the blessing but luckily she slept through the whole thing.

Added this random pic because I think its really interesting how molly sleeps. This is her normal position and she will freak out if her arms are in any way covered by blankets.

This is a cute pic of molly with her cousin ava, aunt danielle and sleeping uncle keith.

The first picture of three generations of SUSAN. My mom Susan, me Sara Susan, and my daughter Molly Susan

Here is a sweet pic of molly in her blessing dress the same one I was blessed in.

FYI

2010-04-27T09:00:00.003-06:00

We will be blessing Molly this Sunday May 2nd. Everyone is invited. Guys who can claim relation to Fred, Sara, or Molly are invited in the circle. If you need directions, meeting times, etc. call Fred. After the blessing we will come to our apartment or the park next to us to eat the food.

fun

2010-04-25T19:34:00.005-06:00

On Friday we went out to Center Street Grill for some delicious greasy hamburgers. The place was pretty full and there was no way we were going to get a booth. We ordered our food (very delicious by the way) and went to sit down when we noticed a booth in the back that no one was sitting at. We went and hurriedly snatched it and soon found out the reason it wasn't taken was because it looked like someone had spilled a gallon of a ketchup/mayo/pickle juice mixture on the table, then barfed on it, coughed in its general direction, spat on it, and then spread it all around with a mop you might get from a gas station bathroom closet. Yes it was quite gross. We considered leaving or getting someone to clean it up but they were busy so we figured it would be a while. Then we realized that we were now parents and were prepared to clean up a much nastier mess if we needed to. So out came the wet wipes (it only took 4) and we had a clean table to eat off of. We felt a little like boy scouts whose motto is "be prepared".

We also went fishing at first dam with Molly. She was actually awake for a couple minutes and we caught some fish. It saddens me that it took 27 days before we got to fish together. Oh well there will be many more fishing trips to come.

I did catch a bigger rainbow trout than this minnow sized brown trout but I thought this brown trout was really colorful despite its size. Sara would not let me take him home as a pet or a snack. Very sad.

Oh one more thing I've got to put on here. The easter bunny was very "creative" in his gifts to our home especially this one to Molly....

Yes that's right... the bunny poops as he runs. Who wouldn't want to eat one of those?!

Fun with Molly

2010-04-23T16:30:00.006-06:00

Hey, this is Sara. A couple days ago I was home with molly giving her a bath and I decided to have a little fun with her hair and this is the result.

And to my suprise Fred hated it. I dont know why because I couldnt stop laughing everytime I looked at her. It really brightened my day :)

Fred also got a shoot of molly smiling. Which is amazing because her smile leaves so fast, Its really cute though.

baby lessons

2010-04-17T10:51:00.008-06:00

The past 3 weeks we have learned a lot about raising Molly as well as attempting to teach Molly some extremely important lessons. First thing we learned and have been force to relearn time and time again is that babies are supposed to sleep 16-20 hours per day. Somehow we misconstrued this statement to mean "babies sleep all day". That is incorrect as a 1st grade mathematician can verify. What that statement really means is "babies are awake 4-8 hours a day (and they WILL get it). So if you were to come by our house around 3AM you might think we are throwing a party because the lights are on, the TV is on, Molly is awake, and so are Mom and Dad. We've been trying to keep her up more in the day to reduce the duration of these "parties". Those of you on facebook may have noticed that Sara will occasionally post around 3 or 4 am - enough said.

Second lesson learned is that Molly loves sleeping on us. Gotta admit, we kinda like it too as the pictures hint at. And don't be alarmed by the scariness of Fred's face. He is NOT dead!

We have taken Molly for walks to willow park zoo, the park, and on campus. She slept through the whole thing. She may not even know she's ever been outside! Last Saturday Heidi came up with Logan to see us and we went to willow park. That was fun. Molly slept right through it and Logan was awake. However we learned tha willow park is not much to see. The animals there consisted of about a million ducks, peacocks, pheasants, lame eagles, and a coyote or two. Pretty much it was just a bird zoo and a couple other animals that look like they just walked in and were adopted by the zoo. The monkeys were not out yet.

We also took Molly for her first day (of many to come) fishing! We would have taken pictures but we didn't catch any and Molly slept right through it

And now to the good stuff - pictures of Molly!

HAPPY EASTER!

2010-04-04T09:29:00.000-06:00

Details as promised

2010-04-03T13:31:00.003-06:00

I guess its about time to release the previously undisclosed details of the birth experience. Saturday morning (27th) 10AM Sara started having contractions about every half hour and got progressively more intense throughout the day. We went for a walk, to the park, played frisbee, and tried to relax a little. At 10pm they were getting really heavy but still 15-20 minutes apart. We needed to pass some time so we started a new game of Super mario and cranked away. My job was to record how often and how long the contractions started. To the average bypasser it would seem like a funny sight. We'd play nintendo fiercely for 20 minutes til Sara started a contraction. Then I'd write down the time and time the length of the contraction. At the end of the contraction we'd hit the start button and continue fiercely playing mario til the next one. At about 3AM we were really tired and thought we would try to sleep - what a joke! Got up and continued playing Mario. We called the hospital and they said to wait til the contractions were 3 minutes apart. I thought the contractions would come pretty regularly. In fact I had hoped to plot the contractions using a sine wave. But alas, it seemed they came in more of a hyperbolic inverse tangent wave which is somewhat difficult to plot. Just looking at my chart here they came at 10, 15, 4, 8, and 12 minutes apart. In the meantime we got so close to beating mario, in fact Bowser was in sight! At about 4:30 they did come in 3 minute intervals to my mathematical joy and Sara's incomprehensible pain. Went to the hospital and she had dilated quite a bit more enough that we could stay. When she got it Sara gained a very strong testimony of the epidural in that she could sleep a little bit. At 7:56 Molly was born after 2 hours of pushing! When she came we both felt immediate relief but moreso on the part of Sara. I definitely gained a new appreciation for my wife and the pain she went through - UNBELIEVABLE! The end.

Molly Susan

2010-03-28T20:53:00.007-06:00

enjoy the pics. details to follow.

Wt: 7lb 6 oz. L: 19",TOB: 7:56PM,Hair: Brownish black

No baby yet

2010-03-27T12:05:00.004-06:00

That's correct - no baby as of yet. The day is still young though. Sara is getting over her cold just in time for Molly to get here too. She has had some contractions the past couple days but no baby.

My car has been nasty dirty since I went ice fishing with Keith. The dike road was really muddy and so my car got this nasty red dirt all over the sides and it would get dirt on your pantlegs. On Monday my boss asked me if I had gone muddin'. And as much as I would like to have said yes to that question I had to respond with a no. So I washed the car Wednesday night in a real 1.00 car wash (not just waiting for a rainstorm.) Thursday I got the rainstorm --kinda.... I don't think we got more than a cup of water that day, the rest was dirt. So my car went from medium dirty to dirty everywhere. It's just disgusting. From this experience I've learned that washing your car is a bad idea.

Spring Break: Post by Sara

2010-03-18T15:13:00.003-06:00

So I thought I would update on all the fun we are having on spring break. Basically Fred is working during the day and I am chilling at home. Its pretty relaxing except that Fred has caught some kind of cold. I have stopped working for the last two weeks of my pregnancy which turned out to be a very good idea because for some reason I can not stay asleep for long periods of time. So I end up taking lots of naps during the day and into the night. We are having fun doing some last minute before the baby comes date nights. Last night we went and saw Blindside as a last date night movie experience complete with drinks and popcorn which we never do because of the outrageous prices but luckly logan has a dollar theater so we were able to get 2 movie tickets, one large popcorn, two mediums drinks, and nachos for twenty dollars. What a deal! And the movie was awesome, I kind of expected a lot before hand because of all the oscar nominations and critic reviews but surprisingly (at least to me) the movie lives up to the hype. No baby yet the doctors have told me I am barely dialated to 1. Which is a little discouraging because I am ready to have this baby. I wonder if I have made life in the womb a little to comfortable for the baby because she seems pretty happy to stay where she's at. ;)

Ice Fishing, baby update

2010-03-13T15:52:00.007-07:00

The last few weeks I've been hitting the ice fishing pretty hard. I went with my brother Ted and his kids and had a blast. We fished like demons, had lots of bites, but never brought a fish out. Boy we drilled a lot of holes though. My ice auger was the new toy of the day. I remember being that way when I first got my auger. I just wanted to drill holes almost more than I wanted to fish. And in true red-head Lillywhite fashion I went home with a cherry red sunburn that felt oh so good the next day. We were out there til 1:00 - that's a long day when you started at 7:30.

Nevertheless, I had to get back out there the next week. I was by myself from 7am til about noon when Keith showed up. I caught 3 decent rainbows and even a dinky bluegill. All the fish seem like they died very horrifically but let me assure you they were not.

There were these guys next to me that had an underwater camera and they would just watch the fish come to their line and when it got close enough they would jerk up and snag it in the face. They caught 10 between the two of them (5 each). I did pretty well catching 3 myself. I don't need no stinking camera! (But if anyone is giving their underwater camera away I would be willing to take the stinking thing.) There were a couple goobers next to me that were there til about noon and they didn't catch a thing! I felt their pain (when I wasn't catching a fish that is). When Keith came we fished much but it had slowed way down. Towards the end of the day though Keith snagged a little trout. And let me empahasize the word SNAG in that sentence. If you look at the picture you can see the fish wasn't hooked in the mouth, belly, or eye. He was snagged in the side of his tail! Many laughs were had over that fish.

Sara is unmistakably pregnant and is very excited?! for Molly to get here (her excitement level depends on the day - it's especially low after our weekly labor class). The baby showers are over and we were richly blessed by everyone's generosity. We have lots and lots of girl clothes. If the baby comes out a boy then that is just too bad because he will have to wear pink, be in a pink bouncer, wear pink diapers, and sleep with a pink sheet.

Molly

2010-02-25T21:25:00.003-07:00

Since about the first month we knew we were going to have a baby we've been toying with baby names. When we found out it would be a girl we tried to pretend we were deciding between names but in my opinion we were just deciding whether we would name her Molly Pollanthropa or Molly Verionionica. So technically we haven't decided on a middle name but we have decided to call her Molly. Not sure where that name came from as its not a family name and we don't know anybody named Molly but it has stuck out in our minds and emerged as the winner.

This week we attended our first pregnancy class at the hospital. Pretty interesting and good to know information although I kept falling asleep lots. They wanted the husbands to learn how to give their wives exceptional hand massages at one point. I am no missoose but I do consider myself somewhat skilled in the art of hand massaging so I thought it would be all good until they came around and put massage lotion on the wifey's hand. Nastiest smelling stuff ever! I think it was expired vegetable oil and it even rubbed in that way (I know how that stuff rubs in because I've eaten lots of fries). Other than that it was a pretty decent class.

To celebrate President's day I went ice fishing at Mantua with my good buddy Dave. I was blessed with a lovely trout that was significantly larger than the baby one I murdered last time. And yes, I did eat peanut butter cups. Perhaps the fish wanted to eat them too and decided to come to the surface for them. Here's a picture.

Sara had some back pain the other day making dinner so we used the computer chair to make things easier for her.

Baby Update

2010-02-13T15:39:00.003-07:00

Hey There, this is Sara updating the blog. We are now in the countdown til the baby comes and the doctor has been saying that this little girl is probably going to be coming right on time. We are really hoping that she will decide to come a week early because then fred will be on spring break. But I know that all doctors in logan will not induce early with a first pregnancy and my doctor has already said no. So here is hoping and wishing. That also means that our plans for spring break will probably include: spicy food, jumping on trampolines, lots of walks and anything else recommmended to induce labor. Its weird because Febuary is suppose to be the shortest month of the year and it already feels way to long.

Ice Fishing

2010-01-24T13:56:00.006-07:00

The past two weeks I mustered up the courage to do one of the most mannifying (the act of making one a man) things a person can do - ice fishing. I guess muster is a bad word to use because I really dig it. It's by far my favorite type of fishing. Ever since Mantua froze over I've been dreaming of the time I would go, despite my unsuccessful attempts two years ago. But the most mannifiying part of it all is that I actually asked my 7 month pregnant wife to go and she said YES! Quite a surpise. We went that Saturday the 17th and it was fun but we didn't catch anything. Mostly we were bored and ended up doing the following:

Which as you might imagine did not result in us catching a fish. However, I got a bite and that was enough to motivate me to celebrate Dr. King's Birthday bash by trying it again. I got my good buddy Frank Smith to go with me and lo and behold I actually caught one! A puny 9 inch or so trout, but it was fun nonetheless.

I was just ecstatic the whole day that I had actually conquered Mantua. The next Saturday the ice fishing desire was burning quite hot in my soul. I specifically wanted to go dipnet cisco at bear lake but it turns out all the ice got blown off by a storm and had even affected the cisco's movements and slowed things down. So I decided I would go to Mantua again. It was supposed to snow really bad but I still wanted to go. I tried to get some friends to come with me but they all had other things going on. So Friday night I got up the guts to ask Sara. Initially she said no way jose so I got her to come to walmart with me while I bought some gear with my wal-mart gift card. Little did she know that she was also being baited... I tried offering to buy her some new snowpants because her current ones don't fit. No Go. Then I tried offering to buy her a big poncho so she could stay dry. Nope. Then I think I offered to buy hand and feet warmers for her. Not even a nibble. After that try I was pretty disappointed and accepted my fate to go fishing alone.... until I walked past the candy isle. I slowly gazed over the candy whilst watching sara's eyes until they rested on a 6 pack of peanut butter cups. I got them and as we were checking out I informed her that they would only be eaten by those who chose to go ice fishing the next morning. And then I got a bite. It seemed to have changed the whole ball game. Within an hour she decided she would in fact be going fishing with me. When we got to Mantua it was a blizzard. The snow was deep, we got the car stuck and had to be pushed out, and ended up not even going out on the ice at all. But I still feel I had a successful fishing trip. I never knew peanut butter cups could be such good bait.....

Also, there have been a lot more non-engineering classes being held in the engineering building on campus. I can usually tell if the class before me was engineering or not simply by the number of girls. For example, 2 of my 5 classes this semester are all guys. The others have maybe one or two in them. So if I see 5 girls leave a classroom as I'm about to go in, or if it has any hint of perfume (as opposed to the pleasant scent of BO) then I know it is not an engineering class. The other day I was given another clue which I'll share with you below:

That's right, they are pistachios. Not only did someone have time to eat pistachios, they also took the time to draw faces on them. Sounds like someone has a little too much time on their hands.

Quotes, road testing

2010-01-11T21:44:00.004-07:00

We ordered the carseat online from wally mart and got it Saturday. It went together a lot easier than the dang crib. Disappointment has been expressed over the lack of pictures of the actual crib so we are attempting to make up for it with these honeys. It also seemed pretty robust too so I did some off road testing... on the stairs. During the test I discovered that the little stops on the front shopping cart type wheels (that force the wheels to go straight) don't hold very well under mountain use. They just came loose and so the wheels went everywhere and made it really hard to hold. Someday I need to test it in a river to see how it does as a boat (or possibly a very expensive floating donut apparatus).

I discovered a lot of quotes either by chance or as a result of my mouth saying things without my brain giving it permission. These are from Sara's scriptures which I discovered in church. They're funny but still pretty good. "Not forgiving is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies" "The best place to find a helping hand is at the end of your arm" "The church is not a museum for saints but a hospital for sinners" This next one deserves some background. We were playing rook with some friends - boys vs. girls and the boys were getting killed badly. Then we pulled some magic out of our hat and started winning. Then somebody said something about what should you do when you get bucked off a horse and then my mouth went into autopilot and I finished the sentence with " you just get back on until the quarter is through". Remember when you could go to wal mart and ride the horse for a quarter (and it was cool, not weird)? Yeah that's where that came from. Anyway, the full quote is thus: "When the horse bucks you off, you just get back on until the quarter is through" Now that I'm thinking about it, that may be one of those experiences where you just had to have been there. But I was there, and it was funny.

good times

2010-01-05T21:19:00.004-07:00

We bought a crib and carseat the day after christmas but couldn't bring it home that day. Wouldn't quite fit in the car. We ended up coming back to get it later after Sara's parents picked it up with their truck from the store. Anyway, finally got it home and started putting it together. I didn't think I'd need instructions but wanted to have them anyway (in case the room got cold and I needed to start a fire of course). It didn't take long before I kinda woulda liked the instructions. If you've put one together you know there are these little threaded studs that go in a hole which you then have to stuff a long bolt into. Well that wasn't working very well. I ended up having to turn them over so they were totally upside down. A couple other things seemed a little goofy too but I just kept going. We were just going to put it together for the day and then take it apart til mid march or something. After about an hour I got the thing put together and was ready to put the spring in the bottom. I had just finished telling Sara how stupid it was that the directions weren't in the box. I even mentioned how stupider it would be if they were in the box with the spring - the last thing to go in the crib. Hopefully that will explain this picture. Stupid huh?

Sara has been making and fixing things with her new sewing machine. One is this apron. We were making spaghetti or something and she put her shiny new apron on so I threw one on too (not to be outdone).

On new years we went and saw sherlock holmes. Good movie. I have been thinking for weeks that school started back up again today but last week I was pleasantly surprised to learn that it doesn't start up til the 11th. I feel like a prisoner whose been given a week extension on his execution date! Yay.

Christmas time

2009-12-22T19:28:00.003-07:00

Man it's been a long time since I posted. We got our Christmas cards out but ran out of color ink at about the 3rd card. So I think maybe two people got nice color ful cards, some got streaky ones, and some even got black and white on regular paper. So for those who have suffered this injustice of black and white cards we're posting it here for your viewing pleasure. For those who did not receive a card from us, consider this an e-card to you.

Also, Sara has wanted me to post this 3d picture from the last ultrasound.

I also recently had a disastrous run in with some delicious taco meat the other day. Sara made some tacos on Wednesday - ish and on Friday I took the leftover meat to work and had tacos for lunch. That was quite delicious but I didn't finish the taco meat so I took it home and put it behind our counter.... and left it there til Monday morning. Monday I found it and it was luke warmish because all the ice in the cooler had melted down which became justification # 1 for me because hey, they were probably coolish (not cold, though) all day on Saturday. That brought me to my next point of reason (#2) that on Sunday of all days the meat wouldn't go bad. So I figured the only time it could be bad was from midnight to 8am monday. My next reason (#3) was that I have eaten dirt covered fruit loops off the floor as a kid which I cleaned with adequate frust (the act of blowing really hard on something to disinfect it - those of you who have seen paul blart mall cop know what I'm talking about - when he eats the sucker off the floor). Either way I am still alive today and don't recall getting sick from the fruit loops. So in the end I decided to just blow really hard on the taco meat before I ate it for lunch.... and dinner. I ate dinner at 4 and then about 10 when we were driving home from kaysville I started to get dizzy and had a hard time staying on the road. We had to pull over and let my mind calm down. Finally made it home and I felt sick like a dog for the rest of the night. In fact I felt like I was gonna die. I learned a valuable lesson - blow harder on old taco meat. I only blew on it once - twice probably would have cleaned it better.

Funny week

2009-12-01T19:22:00.003-07:00

We all know that Sara is getting more pregnant every day but last Sunday it reached a peak. Her belly is quite noticeable visibly but moreso with movement. As an example you know how in church you have the other person lean over a bit to give them a backscratchin? I told Sara to lean a bit and I'd give her a scratchin' and so she did.... but I couldn't tell. She probably tilted a half a degree outside of sitting straight up. I told her to lean and she said she was. Oh golly. A good laugh was had when that happened. I guess she really is pregnant! And the size of the belly is a strong confirmation that it is indeed a healthy Lillywhite.

Sara also made some oatmeal cookies this week using a recipe in the Laketown Cookbook. She made it up and the mixture looked closer to soup than dough. So to remedy the situation she added another cup of flour (being as the mix already called for 2, another won't hurt right?). She put the stuff in the oven and it came out as this sugary bready cake!

It's not too bad with some butter but I have yet to dare adding jam. We're wishing we would have added some bananas so it could be banana bread. It was fun anyway. Lesson learned: not all recipes (even in the Laketown cookbook) are trustworthy.

Weirdness

2009-11-21T18:20:00.004-07:00

We've had some weird stuff happen lately. First off, my windshield exploded the other day. Okay so it didn't exactly "explode" - but it didn't get hit or anything either. And to my credit, it actually did bubble out. Check it out. At first glance it looks like ice but the sun is shining. If you click on the picture you can see it better. At the same time my car stereo started working because the antenna is in the window like the line heaters. It just happened all in one day when the temperature dropped really fast. It ws in the 50s the day before then it snowed and froze that night. Not sure if that's the root cause or not, but it makes me feel a little better. If you poked it with your finger you could poke all the way through.

Sara signed up for part-time substitute teaching here in Logan. Her first assignment was this week and she subbed for home ec at Logan HS. That was her major when she was in school so its cool that she can try it out. She had quite a day and said it was funny to see how little things get blown up so they are so important. Which when I reflect back on my high school life I can totally relate. My #2 .7mm techniclick pencil (with removeable eraser) was the coolest thing ever. Wait a minute, that might not be in the past. I'm still jealous about (and have) that pencil. It's the bom-diggity.

In other news, we have been playing a lot of street fighter and mario kart. One of my study buddies is becoming an expert at it too so we have lots of fun. Oh and speaking of studying, I am finally reaching the end of my art symposium class. So boring! This week I ( and sara too I couldn't stand to suffer alone) went to an undergraduate art exhibit of pictures. Oh the pictures were so pretty, especially the 5 pictures of corrugated pipe. I don't know if the people taking the pictures were from africa where corrugate pipe is rare or if they really had no imagination. The pictures were even blown up to 24 by 36. What a waste of ink and a waste of my time. Last night we went to a string chamber recital and that was a nice nap except for when the performers kept waking me up. I decided that the only type of classical music I like is oldies.

Girls!

2009-11-14T11:03:00.002-07:00

The doctor says we are having a girl! I think everyone probably knows that by now except for the people we just forgot about or the people who secretly stalk our blog. I was really really hoping for a boy so I could have a little golfing and huntin buddy. That still might happen with her anyway. Sara thought it would be a boy for the whole time and then last week she had a dream it was a girl and changed her vote ever since. From talking to other women it sounds like that is a pretty common thing. That's a bit interesting. I wonder if the spirit comes into the body when gender forms. any thoughts? Sara is getting pregnanter every day and she can't hide it anymore. She has become good at acquiring more maternity clothes either by convincing me to let her buy something at the store or getting things at the DI or there is a place in logan that gives away maternity clothes. We also bought the first set of clothes for our girl. We bought them at Macy's from a gift card we got for our wedding (Yes that's right - our wedding - the one back in May 2008). We just got the card, though - things like gift cards have a very short life expectancy around here. We took the clothes to Sara's parents and had them open the bag it was in and that's how we told them it was a girl.

My work has been busy we just got a new batch of speed controllers in and have been working to get them ready to ship out. They look dang good. School is slowly coming to an end. We have 4 weeks left til the semester ends and most of one of those weeks is thanksgiving break.

At home we borrowed street fighter 2 (not the turbo edition, though for you snes buffs) from Sara's brother. We are also borrowing mario kart. Awesome awesome games that provide a needed distraction from homework.

We got our first real snow of the season. It has actually snowed twice but it didn't stick. We have about an inch of standing snow. So sad. We haven't even had time to rake the leaves and our garden is still a mess.

Pumpkin carving

2009-10-30T23:35:00.003-06:00

Figured we ought to get a picture of our pumpkins up before halloween passes. We found some cool patterns this year. I think next year I will use a dremel tool or a drill to do this. I carved almost all of spongebob with a 1/8 or 3/16 drill bit I had hanging around. A bit sharp and hard on the fingers but it worked so good.

We also went up to temple flat and had a blast on the four wheeler. Didn't get a deer (how unusual) but had fun anyway.

I went fishing with Sara's brother a few weeks ago. We were hoping to catch a monster tiger muskie but this bass is all I caught.

Thanksgiving is coming up in a few weeks. Can you believe it? We're going out to Denver and pretty excited about it. Plus that means I'll be 2 weeks away from the end of the semester.

DEER HUNT EVE

2009-10-15T23:04:00.003-06:00

Oh its finally here THE DEER HUNT! Right now on the Deer Hunt Eve the house is all a bustle with last minute preparation. Packing the guns and clothes, making sunflower seeds and checking to make sure we dont leave anything. Its almost here and while most people are counting down to Christmas, our Christmas is already upon us for tomorrow is THE DEER HUNT! :)
(This Thought was submitted by Sara Lillywhite)

WarP-Drive

2009-09-29T18:09:00.003-06:00

The project we have been working at for my work is a speed controller for an electric motor. I haven't really been able to post many pictures about it because it wasn't released yet, but today I noticed the company we are working with posted a picture on their website. So, if it's on the world wide web then ya'll can see it too! Go to this link www.ngcontrols.com and it is the red thing on the side. I helped design all the red aluminum and the lexan cover. Fun project and its good to see it finally getting somewhere. The controller's name is the WarP-Drive (catchy huh). Our next controller we plan to call the starship enterprise.....

Today when I came home there was a huge bug meditating on our patio so I took a picture of his worship. Enjoy!

By the way, I ate some of those red bell peppers we have growing in our garden and they are HOT HOT HOT! I thought I was eating a jalapeno when I ate it in a fajita! I can handle a jalapeno when I'm expecting it but not when I'm expecting a bell pepper.

We went to Sara's cousin's wedding this week and got pictures of who? Ourselves.

This is a dart that I threw so well that it actually got stuck in another dart. I felt like Robin Hood after doing that although I have not started wearing tights.

September 18, 2009

2009-09-19T10:45:00.004-06:00

Now that school is back in session we have missed being able to spend time together at night. During the summer we got to spend at least Saturday and/or Sunday together. Homework has overtaken that time together. I go to school at 8 and then at 10 at night I'm done with work and homework. Usually we spend that time watching a TV show like operation repo. Funny show by the way.

A couple weeks ago Sara went in for the first doctor visit at 12 weeks. They did an ultrasound and the baby is just fine. Can't tell the gender yet but I think it's a boy. Time will tell on that. She's nauseous every morning til around 11. The up-throwing has subsided for now. She's trying out some little breakfast shakes because she gets up and doesn't feel like eating but that's the only thing that takes away the nausea.

On Wednesday Sara accused me of spending more time with my study buddy than I do with her. To that accusation I plead guilty as charged. We spent 12 hours on one homework assignment this week. I invited her to come study with us and then we could spend LOTS of time together but she has politely declined.

Sara has gone through another job in the last week. She quit convergy's because they wouldn't let her reduce her hours then worked at a sushi place for a week and then they decided not to hire her (she wasn't even done with training).

Our garden is quite fruitful. We have tons of tomatoes. So much that we took a basket full of them to our neighbors. Our bell peppers are growing well but they look funky. A normal bell pepper is like 3 inches around and 3 or 4 inches long. These ones are 3 inches around but then an inch or two long. They look like little stubs. Our watermelon is probably 6 inches but we picked it today because it has stopped growing. We're planning to eat all 2 bites of it tonight.

Pregnancy woes

2009-08-26T21:28:00.004-06:00

Sara has been feeling the nasty effects of pregnancy over the past few weeks. She has had to come home a couple times from work so she could barf her guts out. She is in the process of leaving convergy's because they just won't work with her wanting to work 20 hours. We waited so long for her to get a good schedule and now that won't work either. She went to see the nurse and they told her the baby is the size of an olive. I never knew an olive could cause so much trouble!

School has started back up again and I'm really diggin my schedule. My classes are Monday Wednesday Friday from 9:30-12:30. I have more credits than that but one is my internship which is a humungo paper due the 8th and then Fart symposium - such a waste of time. I did well with book purchases and selling this semester. I had to buy one book for 145.00 off amazon and that was a good deal. The bookstore is selling it for 188.00. To make up for that I sold a bunch of books and an i-clicker so we came out 20 bucks on top. One book I put on the tsc board last week because the bookstore website said I had the right edition. Then when school started 3 days later they changed the edition. I got 3 calls for my book and had to turn them all down. I was so mad that I came home and put the book on amazon at the cheapest price available. Then an hour later it sold! We got 30 bucks out of it after shipping. Seems like a raw deal except that it is a chemistry book which neither of us can even read. I'd rather take 30 bucks than 0 bucks.

At work my boss has had me help him out with some circuit board design. So far I've only made the board outline and component footprints but I think someday I'll get to actually help design the traces on the board.

Our sunflowers are going crazy! Each sunflower has reached 7 feet but then the flower got humungo so the head tipped way down. Now they are about 5 feet tall and about to break their necks. It looks kind of sad.

Sara "adopted" a stray cat yesterday. It was nice enough and would even let you hold it and pet it. But turns out it was really stray and a hobo at that because it sat outside our window last night meowing and meowing. If I didn't know better I would think he was trying to say some passcode which would magically open the door and let him come in. Anyway, this video is from when he was mister nice cat.

Camping, Garden Update, Tangly limbs, missing sun

2009-08-09T22:00:00.006-06:00

This is our pumpkin plant. I suspected it was growing crazily so I measured it and it grew 22 inches in 2 days so 11 inches a day! It loves the hot weather.

Well it looks like all these pictures are in reverse order than what I had hoped. Oh well. There used to be this huge tree by our apartment that had really tangly limbs in the power or telephone lines. I have noticed it getting worse for a couple years and apparently someone else did too because they finally took the tree out. But the limbs were so tangly that they couldn't get them all and there are these logs hanging from the line up in the air. Very strange but funny.

Wow these are really out of order. This is our pumpkin that last post I thought I might have to carve with toothpicks. It's freaking huge now!

Our sunflowers have reached their full height of 8 feet and are just barely starting to tip their heads. It is a little annoying that when we walk onto our patio we pretty much have to shake hands with the entire family of plants which reminds me sara is pregnant due mar 26 because they guard the path.

he other day a bunch of smoke from the tooele wildfires blew into town and blocked out the sun (like I imagine it will be in the 2nd coming). This was taken at 5:30 PM. Sun should be considerably brighter then. It also dropped a bunch of nasty ash on the car.

We went camping last weekend. We had wanted to go for some time with friends but they were too flaky so we just went by ourselves. It was tons of fun. We didn't get the best campsite (yes that is the road 30 yards from our firepit) but we could get the car in and out of that site.

That awesome little cooler was our utility bench. It was our table for putting stuff on hot dogs, our beverage holder, and just about everything else. Very handy.

Mom and dad let us borrow their tent. It set up in like 10 minutes.

Getting a fire going went smooth on Friday night but Saturday morning just barely. We got it started with the last match.

ugly fish, suspicious plants, mini golf

2009-07-29T22:17:00.006-06:00

I went to L-town the past two saturdays to go fishing with the nephews (and Brooke). We caught quite a few carp and catfish in Willis's Pond. Ugly, ugly fish but tons of fun to catch. I forgot to take a picture of when we went the first saturday with riley and brooke.

The sunflowers are going crazy. This is right by our patio and I'm not crouched down to that level. They are just really tall.....

Suspiciously tall......

On the other hand our pumpkins are incredibly small. If they don't hurry up and grow we will be carving pumpkins with toothpicks.

One for me and one for Sara.

Something has gone to war on our green beans and eaten all the leaves off a few plants on the north end of the row. The plants on the south end are just fine and have all their leaves. I suspect it is the cat that used to hang around here. He's been looking quite fat lately.

I guess last saturday we actually went to cherry hill and went mini golfing (and swimming). I don't think cherry hill is an all day thing. It's only got 2 slides, a lazy river, and a tube run that just traps you in lame sauce pools. We did that for half a day and it actually wasn't that bad and a good relaxer. The mini golf was pretty cool though. This was one of the cooler holes I've seen.

funny song

2009-07-22T22:47:00.002-06:00

I didn't know this was a real song! It's even funnier if you read the lyrics as it goes along

I dont want to work
I want to bang on the drum all day
I dont want to play
I just want to bang on the drum all day

Ever since I was a tiny boy
I dont want no candy
I dont need no toy
I took a stick and an old coffee can
I bang on that thing til I got
Blisters on my hand because

When I get older they think Im a fool
The teacher told me I should stay after school
She caught me pounding on the desk with my hands
But my licks was so hot
I made the teacher wanna dance
And thats why

Listen to this
Every day when I get home from work
I feel so frustrated
The boss is a jerk
And I get my sticks and go out to the shed
And I pound on that drum like it was the bosss head
Because

I can bang that drum
Hey, you wanna take a bang at it?
I can do this all day

peeling skin

2009-07-15T23:27:00.002-06:00

Seems like its been a while since I posted anything so let me try to recap without much boredom or ado about what we've been doing. We went to the family reunion over the 4th. I got lots of golf in that week. I went Thursday morning and then went with the fam on Friday. It would appear that was about my last good round of golf too. Since then I haven't done so well. I went with a friend the next couple weeks and couldn't keep it together. I'm going in the morning with the hopes of doing better.

Fishing has still been really hot at 1st dam. I caught a few and gave them to my boss who digs them. He ate them all (6) within a day or two of me giving them to him. The fishing is still good there now but there are a bunch of goons who fish there to the side of me who don't know how to fish. Last time I went I had a mexican guy cast over my line 11 times. And 11 times he reeled it in thinking he had snagged a fish. One time I really did catch a fish and got it close to the bridge I fish off of. When the fish was probably 30 yards away this guy came over right next to me and I said "Hey hang on a minute - let me bring in this fish first before you cast out." I totally wasted a breath of air saying that. I think it would have been more productive for my fishing soul for me to yell "FIRE!" and point far away in hopes of distracting him for a couple seconds. My reason for that is because the guy didn't catch a word. He cast right over me (and 2 other lines) and of course he caught my line. He did a fake-out cast where he looked straight but cast way left. And since I had a fish on when he felt my line with weight on it he got all sorts of excited, starts reeling as fast as he can, then starts yelling to his other friends something in spanish to which all his friends come over to watch him reel in the fish. Really man? really? Needless to say the fish got off and I was so mad I had to leave. I haven't been back since.

So I have started taking up mini golf. I went the other day and was digging it up so much that I am actually going to enter a mini golf tournament here in Logan. Mini golf is a blast but 5 bucks a pop.

Sara's work has just gone downhill. She's been actively searching for a new job for the past couple months but now that search has intensified. It's just a bad time to find a job, especially in Logan.

Oh and I forgot to mention when we went to Bear Lake for the reunioni on the 4th I took great precautions to not get a sunburn. I was lathering up every hour on the hour. I think our sunscreen only lasts 59 minutes so in that minute between the sunscreen fading out and my new application of sunscreen I ended up getting burned on the top of my head and the bottoms of my ankles. Sara on the other hand is refusing to accept her Lillywhiteness and tried to tan a little. She burned her legs above the knees pretty bad. But it actually turned out to be quite entertaining too. We went swimming the other day and when we were going down she started peeling some dead skin off and got this piece (all one piece by the way) that was probably as big as a slice of humungo pizza! I thought she was going to peel off her whole leg! I wish I had a picture because it was amazing. I bet she could get in the guiness book of world records for it. Very exciting.

Sterling!

2009-07-06T21:34:00.003-06:00

Hey everybody, We just got the sterling kit car we've been working on in the cache valley cruise in. The work I have done on it is mostly mounting brackets that you don't see. Except for the aluminum dash in this picture. I did that on the mill. My main project is the speed controller so when we can get pictures of that I'll direct you to it. Here's the link to it on ebay. We are going to have to sell it on ebay because the buyer most likely is bailing out. So check it out and if you have 45K floating around place a bid!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Other-Makes-Custom-Battery-Powered-Sterling-Electric-Vehile-FAST_W0QQitemZ140331096566QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUS_Cars_Trucks?hash=item20ac6299f6&_trksid=p4506.c0.m245&_trkparms=65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C72%3A1171#ebayphotohosting

2009-06-27T21:55:00.003-06:00

We are trying real hard to take full advantage of every hour of summer vacation that we have. I've been going fishing almost every night this week. Last night I caught 15 in an hour and a half! Tonight we went and caught 7 and are eating a couple for dinner. (We don't usually keep the fish. Mainly we like to catch them.) We were catching them about every 3rd or 4th cast.

Today we went boating with the Majors at Willard Bay. It was a blast. Fun to just get out and ride a boat and also fun to ride the tube they had. Sara got pretty good at hanging on to it. This is one of the few times she fell off

I also got the news back from my FE test. I passed! Turns out spending 135.00 on that wasn't a waste after all! Sara is searching for a new job. Convergy's was great for a while but in the end it is still a call center and there is no changing that.

I've been getting into golf more than usual lately. In fact I go every week now. The golf course here has a discount for students so I can go for 10.00 if I walk. I usually go with a guy in my ward who also golfs. I'm getting so much into golf that I took to watching it on TV. Never thought I'd get to that point. Hopefully I never feel comfortable watching hours of fishing. Unless you are using a fly as bait fishing is one of the most lazy sports I've participated in. Somehow being too lazy to actually do something lazy (watching fishing on TV) doesn't sound socially appealing.

California

2009-06-20T13:25:00.004-06:00

I'm back to the blog with our pictures from our California Adventure (pun intended). First I wanted to share a great bargain we got at DI. We sure love fried potatoes. Or as burger king calls them- french fries. Well anyway, I hate all the work that goes into preparing them. I wish we had something to peel the potatoes too but we have this magical thing to slice them into fries. Cost us a buck fifty and we love it!

We got sweet tickets for disneyland, californa adventure, and even universal studios. A guy sold his to us for way cheap 40 buck for a 1 day park hopper and a free day at universal studios. So total it cost us 80 bucks. We figured if we had paid regular price for all that it would have cost us 250.00. Good deal eh?

Of course not trip to Hollywood would be complete unless you stop on the freeway and take a picture of the sign.

At California adventure waiting in line. A bit nervous I might add because we were worried our tickets weren't 100% legit.

Another classic picture from disneyland.

Sara was all pumped about going on the tea cups. We also learned an important lesson about pictures of ourselves that is that pictures that you take of you and someone else usually include nothing more than your face. We have a bunch of pictures that I took at arms length with our faces all scrunched together. I would include them but they are all the same. You can't see anything but Lillywhite face.

And what a bitter cup of tea it was!

Kade may enjoy this- it's a rapala that is 28" long. we use ones that are 2 inches long. cost: 56.00.

We went to the park with hunter and Mern. Look at all that red hair!

We stayed with Mern and Steven while we were there and got to see their new house as well as help them move some stuff.

Fred's unruly children

2009-06-06T22:14:00.005-06:00

Over the last couple months you've heard me gripe about making the plexiglass covers at work. Today I did more of that and wanted to show you my "boneyard" of past failed covers. These are only the most recent (as in the last 3 weeks). I would bet I've gone through upwards of 30-40 covers.

This is what happens when the lexan sticks to the pan it is heated on. There is a point somewhere in between 9 1/2 and 10 minutes of cooking in the oven that it reaches this point. At 9 1/2 the stuff is not quite rubbery enough. At 10 minutes it becomes liquid in places. It's ruined as a liquid but not easily formable at 9 1/2 minutes. This was probably the worst sticking one.

The Lexan bubbles if you don't "predry" it in the oven for 4 hours at 250 F. That adds a lot more time to making these covers-it takes 4 hours to dry them then about 40 minutes to destroy them if you failed.

This is my family of failures. Some of them may look okay but they are bad because the radius isn't close enough to the exact size on thecorners or because one edge bowed up or down too much. It's been the biggest waste of time I've ever experienced. Waste of money too.

Thursday I went golfing and we found this duck walking with a bunch of babies then they hopped in the water. I took this picture planning to count them later. I think this mama was trying to populate the duck colony all by herself. There may have been more ducklings but I just missed them in the picture. I counted 11 in the picture.

We ran into a bunch of groundhogs there too. They were as abundant as chipmunks at yellowstone. And I'm convinced they took one of my golf balls too.

Went fishing with Keith today in honor of free fishing day at first dam. We each caught 2. I caught one pretty good sized one. Keith caught a bunch of weeds with his second fish.

Guess who got a new camera for their birthday!

2009-06-03T22:04:00.005-06:00

Yep it was me. I got a new sweet camera for my 23rd birthday today. Its a canon powershot a1000 IS and it is wonderful. It has a feature so that it looks for faces and focuses on them. Plus, we can hook it up directly to my printer that I bought a year ago. It was the cheapest printer I could find so it is a happy coincidence that it works with it. We've been on picture drought for so long I think I may have gone crazy taking pictures and movies. I had Sara be my Vanna (Lilly)white for the day for product demonstrations. She did a swell job at that.

Sara's KitchenAid Mixer that we got from Mom and Dad. This saves so much time (especially making cookies)

Even though this might look like a grapevine, it's actually a tree that is tipping over. I'm hoping that it will someday be as cool as "the bouncy tree" at Temple Flat. I was going to test it today to see if it is ready for bouncing but the ground was muddy.

We went up to Logan Canyon and met mom and dad in the trailer. They are staying the night at Franklin Basin so we met them for dinner and cake.

And what a cake it was courtesy of Sara's cooking skills.

Before going to see Mom and Dad we went mini golfing and I had one bad shot shown here which allowed me to practice my rock climbing skills. This is my actual shot by the way I didn't just act this one out.

This is my whiteboard upstairs with one of my favorite mind boggling "equations". Thank you Vanna.

Sara gave me this nifty watch for our anniversary on Saturday.

Our crops are coming up too. Last year when I planted Sunflowers only a third of them came up so this year I planted them 2 seeds to a hole and 8 inches apart. I'll be danged if every seed came up! They are supposed to get up to 8 feet tall!

The most delicous cake and beautiful cook. That card she gave me was awesome as well.

The camera does really well at close up pictures and our roses are blooming.

This rose is my favorite.

I gave Sara this ipod station for our anniversary. 25 bucks at Wal-Mart.

This is my dart board which if you remember is directly opposite the wall where the whiteboard hangs on. I think I may need to improve my aim. You'll notice there is a rug behind the board to prevent people who have a lack of skill from damaging the wall behind.

When I woke up this morning Sara had already been up for a while decorating the house with signs to help me remember that today is my birthday. By the way our camera does have sound I just didn't say anything when recording. She also made me a delicious traditional Lillywhite breakfast with pancakes, eggs, hashbrowns and lots of it. So delicious.

Upgrades, downgrades

2009-05-19T21:59:00.002-06:00

So I have had some thoughts and revelations since the last post. I really don't get on the internet much when I'm not already on the computer doing homework. Hence the long absence of posting over the last couple weeks. With school being out (no guilt) and the summer here (fishing is back in season) there are so many more exciting things to do than be on the internet dreaming about a new coin on ebay. So, all that being said you can expect posting over the summer to be less frequent. The posts (when they happen) will be considerably more exciting though and hopefully we will have a camera for pictures.

In other news, we have both received upgrades recently. My best friend Frank is getting married in August and asked me to be his best man. I consider that an upgrade - going from involved with every decision of a wedding to a bystander who is occasionally in goofy pictures. On Sunday Sara arose out of the depths of ward athletic director with me to the relief society secretary. Tons of fun. Softball season starts in 3 weeks and I will be the sole person overseeing that. It's not a hard task though.

We got our garden all planted last week. We were able to convince all our neighbors that they really weren't going to have a garden. Last summer they all swore they would have a full garden and spoke of the things they would grow. All it turned into was a bunch of balogna and a huge pile of weeds. Now that we have the whole plot we have 20 plants of potatoes, lots of corn, some watermelons, pumpkins, sunflowers, and even tomatoes and bell peppers.

Saturday we went to see Star Trek. Good movie. In its own respect it was as good as batman. I never got into the whole star trek series but they explain everything so you aren't left out anyway.

Summer is here!

2009-05-06T18:13:00.003-06:00

Summer has finally arrived! In my opinion summer starts after my last final of the spring semester. I made it through finals alright. I had 3 classes I knew I could do well in and 2 that I was doubtful about. I was just hoping that the 3 good classes would outweigh the other 2. I need a 3.50 GPA to keep my scholarship and last night I checked the grades and all but one class had come through bringing my gpa to 3.49. If my last class was an A (which scores did not indicate would happen) then I would get a 3.50. Anything less would be an A-. Well the curve did me well and I pulled off an A in that class so my scholarship is good for one more semester. If I can keep the 3.50 I get it for next spring then that 's the end of the scholarship. I also took a big chance in one class that paid off. The teacher gave us the option of not taking the final if we took the average of our last 3 test scores and apply them to the final. My would be grade came out at B+ and I almost took it. That was my thermodynamics class which has been hard material. I figured if I got a 92 on the final I could bump my grade up to an A-. I took the chance and the final was a piece of cake. I'm sure I got 100 on it. So my grade actually went up to an A. Oh and I forgot to mention that taking the final was not a no risk gamble. If you took the final and did bad your grade would go down. 3 of my friends who I've studied with all year opted to not take the final and ditched me to study by myself for the test.

We are lovin the spring weather. Last night we went out and bought seeds and plants for the garden at Lowe's. We wanted to get a white lilly in honor of the family name but couldn't find any. Lots of pink ones but no white. Sara works full time at convergy's still. Some days its really busy with angry people but a lot of times she just talks to old ladies who freak out when you say things like 'TV', "input", or "cable". My work is a blast. I love being able to work 8 hours a day and am usually able to accomplish what I want to in a day. I talked to my advisor before I left and she said this job will also count as an internship. Bonus bonus. At work I am making a new plexiglass cover but this time it is out of lexan which is harder to form than acrylic. I did 2 experiments in the last 2 days with the stuff but it never formed right. It either had bubbles in it or wouldn't sit right. So I made some modifications to the mold and found a tip online that said to reduce bubbles you should heat it at 250F for 3 hours. I tried it and it worked. No bubbles and the cover molded just right. Always a good feeling when things go the way you want.

We went to Kaysville to hang out with Sara's parents and to hone in our skills on the Wii. My skill is in golf and sara's is in bowling. It really made me itchin for golf in real life. It was so nice to not have to leave at 8pm so I could hurry home to do homework.

We need to do something funner than tell knock-knock jokes to eachother at night so we are going to go to california this summer. Of course we'll see and stay the infamous hotel goldthorpe as well as see mickey and goofy. Super pumped for that. Besides going to disneyland and maybe the beach we have no plans for that week. In talking to Mern we learned great wisdom "If you plan to have too much fun, you might not have too much fun."-Fred K Lillywhite

1 day weekend, finals

2009-04-27T18:03:00.003-06:00

Wow that FE was a beast! I know I was pretty unprepared but not that much! The morning test (4 hours) wasn't so bad. The questions were straightforward for the most part and I was a little bit ahead of schedule so I could check some of my answers. The one mistake I made during that time was trying to learn chemistry during the test. I only took 2 semesters of the easiest chemistry known to man back in 2004. And that was all I could take. I was happy to get a passing grade and get out of there. So I tried to teach myself chemistry for a bit during the test because they give you a reference book that just has equations in it. Bad bad idea. I wasted probably 1/2 an hour doing that. I guess I was fooled because that worked a little with Econ. I've never taken any econ and I don't think it's required as a mechanical engineer. There were some questions that were straight out of the book. I was on top of my game with math, thermo, strength of materials, and statics and dynamics. I didn't do so good in fluids. So the morning test gave me a warm fuzzy feeling then I came back for the afternoon session and it was horrrendous! I think we all know how application questions can be bad news bears and that is all they were. I probably guessed on 30% of the questions. Hopefully everyone else is in that range. It think I passed anyway. I'd hate to suffer through that again.

Oh, and to make things a little more tense for me in the test. They assign you a seat in a specific room. I was seat # 1 in room # 1 right up front by the proctor. You also have to put your driver's license and exam authorization on the table by you. Well they announced that they would be checking our id's and our calculators to make sure we were using nothing but crappy computing machines. Since I was right up front every so often the proctor would just get up and check my id and calculator then sit down. He didn't check the goober next to me's id. Just mine. It was like he felt a need to do something and hey since I'm right in front of him then why not bug me a little. Both proctors in the morning session checked my id and calculator twice. The first proctor almost didn't let me in the door because my photo id was taken when I was 16 and I look like a little kid in the picture. She held it right up to my face and I felt like Harry on dumb and dumber when he scrunches his face so that his face looks like the picture. Then she said "Ok Mr. White you're sitting up front". Sheesh. At least I got in.

So that was my weekend. Every spare minute I had I spend studying for that test. I took work off on Friday to punish myself a little more. I felt like those kids on major payne where he teaches them to take a slap in the face or a yelling by answering back "Thank you sir may I please have another!!". I would spend hours studying one subject and want to relax but then I'd feel guilty for not studying the next subject. Saturday I took the test and felt like dying in my sleep when I got home. We did got to formosa and get some chinese. That was about it.

I spent a guilt-filled hour or two last week waging a war on the grapevine next to our garden plot. I pulled a grapevine out of a huge tree that must have been 30 feet long. I bet there will be some angry squirrels as a result of that action. But they would also be fat squirrels who never had to leave their branch because grapes always used to grow outside their front door. So I'm not too worried about any vermin attacks. They probably can't walk over here anyway.

Finals start on Wednesday when I have 3 of them. Shouldn't be too bad since I just endured an 8 hour beast. I'm so excited for this week to be over so the summer can begin!

cram jam

2009-04-21T12:13:00.002-06:00

This saturday I have to take the FE. I'm totally unprepared for it too. It's really hard to study when I'm the only one of my friends taking it. I think it would be easier if I had a group who was taking it. Oh well. It cometh anyway.

Friday we went to see "Knowing" in Layton. I thought it would be an amazing mystery type film like indiana jones or national treasure. Instead it was really creepy. At first it seemed like it was turning into The Ring with that creepy girl. It finally chilled out and turned into aliens. Aliens! that's right. I don't think I'd go see it again. Just a one time thing.

I also reranged our attic. Since I'm not working from home I don't need an "office " per say up there. Me and the dudes used it last week to study for tests. Which reminds me did I mention that we got a whiteboard? Well whether I did or not tell you I'm going to tell you right now-- we got a whiteboard. It was really handy when we were studying for the tests and is also especiallly useful when I'm upstairs just dreaming of an equation and feeling an intense urge to write that equation down somewhere but don't want to waste a sheet of paper. Directly across the room from the whiteboard we put up an old dart board that tom and dani gave us when they moved out. I put it up just the right place that if you are working on the whiteboard and happen to have a dart in your other hand (marker is in the other) and then you get stuck in a problem you can take advantage of a stress reliever by throwing the dart from where you stand to the dart board. We also have a table where fellow students sit that is in between the dartboard and the whiteboard. So far we have had 0 casualties. My goal is to keep the human casualties less than or equal to 3.4 per million.

Spring has come again for another week or so (maybe). I got to wear shorts and flip flop it up on campus. In the process I relearned a lesson I experience every year. And that is that you need to give your feet time to adjust to being outside the shoe. First I had to relearn how to walk in my flip flops, then I had to endure the pain caused by not having calluses on the bottoms of my feet where the plastic strap attaches to the back of the flip. Or maybe it attaches to the flop. Regardless, I have nubbins on my feet from the traumatic experience. Also my feet dried up quick and feel funky again. I wish I didn't have to relearn this every year but I doubt that will change. Hopefully someone will learn this by having read this blog and not have to suffer. As for my feet, I have them strapped in sandals (no flipping or flopping) and I'm not so sure they will come back out to flip flop land for a while.

By the way, I hope y'all like the chuck norris facts. I considered putting a game or something on it instead but I like chuck. I have a small insignificant infatuation for episodes of walker texas ranger (every monday night at 11 pm!).

Old Main Beach Bums

2009-04-14T12:02:00.002-06:00

Sometime over the Easter weekend Old Main Hill on campus turned into a beach. It's a fun place to go sledding in the winter and it always looks really nice in the summer when the grass is green etc. We take the bus up to campus and walk the steps down it every day. It is usually a nice relaxing walk home but over the weekend a bunch of seagulls invaded the entire hill. Their attach was not uninvited, though, as I soon discovered when I walked home. I understand people having easter egg hunts on that hill but it looks like maybe a whole stake or something had an easter egg fight there! There are thousands of colored, boiled eggs on the hill -- all smashed. And it really stinks too. Especially today since it rained. Anyway, the smell, the colors, the entire atmosphere has prompted millions of our state bird to come and turn that place into a beach. It sounds just like it and they are everywhere. I've almost stepped on a couple birds and am surprised I haven't been poo-bombed yet. I'm so disgusted.

We tried out our kitchenaid mixer last week to make bread. It was a good try. Now the bread is a tad moldy because it didn't cook all the way. The loaf was huge though. I bet the bread outside the pan was twice as big as what was inside. And the bread we did get smelled like yeast and resembled pound cake. We'll try again later.

Finally finished the puzzle. We made good headway over conference weekend and decided to finish it the Monday after. We were a tad worried that we would have some pieces missing (always aggravating) since we got it from DI. In fact the reason we got it from DI was because the box had a big note that said it was "certified" to have all the pieces there. And we were not disappointed. All 1,500 pieces were there and contrary to our beliefs at the start of the project, they all did fit someplace.

The day before Easter we went to Wal-Mart to get some Easter candy. Sara loves those cadbury eggs and we went to get some but everyone kept saying they were gone. We got to the easter candy isle (which was packed) and occasionally someone would find a little treasure trove of the eggs and they would be gone in seconds. I'v never done the Black Friday shopping thing but I think it may have been similar. We found our own little treasure of eggs. I'm pretty sure we go the last package too. It was all by itself hidden behind some other stuff. I think that is Wal-Mart's way of creating an easter egg hunt for adults.

interesting stuff

2009-04-06T21:28:00.004-06:00

I finally got all the data transferred to our new computer. I think we ended up having like 30 GB to transfer so it wasn't so bad. In the meantime we have re fallen in love with Pandora now that we can actually listen to it (and use other programs). I also discovered a very interesting bug/phenomena associated with pandora. If you have the time to do it I'd be interested to see if it happens on all computers (xp, vista, hp, dell, etc.). Okay you open pandora in one tab in internet explorer then let it load up and start to play. Then in another tab (same browser) open gmail and log into your account. Let your gmail load up then click the x on the gmail tab. When I do that internet explorer freaks out and starts bringing up new windows that log me into my gmail account. I thought it might have an end but it will just continue bringing up new windows forever. I tested it out at work and it does the same thing (that one has xp and my computer has vista). Here is a screen shot of it happening (29 windows opened up). It actually may be just google apps (which is what we use for my work) that does it.

Conference Sunday we went to Laketown to see Mom and Dad. It was good to just be away from Logan and the demands of homework. Amazingly, I still got it done (most likely thanks to my new 10 key numbers on the computer.) Mom and Dad gave us their old KitchenAid Mixer. Sara is going to make some bread and is excited for it. I'm pumped to get homemade bread. We've wanted a mixer for a while but would never feel justified in buying one used or new right now.

I went to my 1st mission reunion in Bountiful on Friday. It was a blast! It was like a family reunion just the way it should be. Everyone there was someone I wanted to see and just about all of them were there too. Quite an experience, too, to see my mission president talk about politics and the economy and how he likes to watch the 9:00 news. My mission president's wife, however gave a talk just like she used to give back in GA.

stalking the fedex man

2009-04-01T14:03:00.002-06:00

Well we finally got our new computer from HP. We figured it would come on Monday (we were correct) but the fedex man didn't know where our house number (4 1/2) was. I don't know why, I mean I found the place as soon as our landlord showed it to us. Well, anyway he came at 11:45 but came to the wrong door. Sara was in the house and never heard him either. I figured he would have left a note on whichever door he figured was the right one but I checked the other apartments in the house and there was no note on their door so I wondered if he went to our neighbors who aren't connected to the house. So, Tuesday, as soon as I got back from class I began stalking the fedex man. I waited by the big front window with the venetian blinds and every revving engine I heard I would slowly peek out one of the blinds (a different blind every time to avoid detection). I was also sitting by the puzzle and for a split second I got distracted by it. Then I heard a BANG BANG BANG! holy man I thought someone was using a battering ram on our neighbors door! Looked outside and lo and behold it as the fedex man at our neighbors door. I just barely caught him before he ran away again. I had this thought in my head that they walked at a "brisk pace" but I have since learned that is UPS. The fedex man has more of a "olympic jog" speed. Lucky for me I did speedwalking in 5th grade with Mr. Willis so I was able to nab him.

The computer is great. The cadanswer computer has 1.50 gHz frequency and our new one has 2.20 I think. We couldn't even listen to pandora on that thing and the fan would turn real fast and eventually the whole computer would turn off because it gave up. This new one though has no problem and has a bigger screen and to my great joy has a numeric keypad (10 key). That is so nice. I wasn't expecting it but extremely delighted. I hated doing things in AutoCAD or the other cad programs we used at cadanswer and not having the 10key. Especially painful was having to do my numerical methods homework which on one assignment we had to have accurate to 13 decimals. What a pain! As soon as I got the computer going I opened up the calculator and did some calculatin' just to feel the rush the 10 key gives. Yea.

Now that we have the computer we have a problem-- transferring data. I have no clue how to do that. I got a crossover cable from work but I couldn't make it work. (Meaning I plugged it in and it didn't bring up any boxes or anything). I really did some research on the internet and it was talking about fixing the ip addresses and setting up a network and enabling file sharing. I got the file sharing turned on but have no clue what to do with the ip configurations. Shoot, I barely know what that means anyway. I also tried to setup an ad-hoc network but got the same results. If anyone knows how to use either of those please let me know! Right now I'm using an 8GB flash drive and that takes forever! I've probably got 1/3 of our data switched over in the last 24 hours.

I'm also having a dilemma with facebook. People are inviting me as their friends who I really don't know. They used to live in Laketown but I never hung out with them (some because they are older than Tom & Frank). They seem to be "friend collectors" who only want to stalk others who they can claim a remote connection to. I'm thinking facebook was a bad idea, especially after reading the news article frank sent. Waste of time. I really don't need to know what someone is thinking or doing every second of the day and sometimes it gets annoying to know it anyway.

Post Mortem birthday

2009-03-30T14:01:00.003-06:00

Well Sara's birthday went just fine. I got her the office season 4 that she has been coveting for quite some time not knowing I'v had it since mid-February due to a delicious deal on ebay. I also scared the heebie jeebies out of her relationship with her car. Thursday she had to work for 2 hours so I went to her work a little after she started and stole her car. I replaced it with mine but then went and got a new car stereo installed in her car. I have never done it myself so I had my friends help me do it and it was really easy -especially with the wiring harness. We had a hard time finding the plastic dash replacement but it was also really easy to put in. I think when I got my stereo installed it cost me like 60 bucks for installation. What a waste! I could do it myself for nothin. Plus when circuit city did it they took an hour because they were busy. Anyway, back to sara's car. We got it installed at 2:00 and then Sara called to say she had lost her car. I tried to play it off by answering "at work" when she asked where I was. True, I was working (on her car) but not at my usual place of work. I told her to just wait a minute and I'd come over to pick her up. But my plans were nearly foiled when she said she would just walk. I had to really press to let me pick her up. She finally gave in but I knew the cat was pretty much out of the bag. She knew something was up. So anyway I picked her up in her car but the cd player didn't work. We just had to reset it and then it worked for our ride down to Kaysville. Good story huh?

Someone also gave her twilight and mexi-train dominoes which we played with Danny and Jen to the great enjoyment of all.

This weekend I tried to get some sleep. I feel better today. I hope it lasts for a while. I don't have as much homework because I finished a test today (bad news bears by the way). And just had a test last week. My math teacher, however, is ruthless on homework and quizzes every week.

I also discovered Facebook last week as I think everybody knows. I was wondering where all my friends have gone and I discovered they are all on facebook! I still prefer the blogging system and as you may remember from my recent cell phone purchase, I'm not one to easily change systems. Plus, I took a quiz on facebook today and it was stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid. I'm never going to take another one of those silly quizes again. I answered all the questions of the quiz 'what drink are you' fully expecting to get a real beverage like dr. pepper or mr. pibb or as a last resort dr. thunder. But you know what it gave me? Rooster's Hiny! If that ain't a slap in the face, I don't know what is. I have no intentions of ever drinking a rooster's hiny (hereafter referred to as RH) or getting close enough to one that some RH might slip in my mouth. I wonder if I changed my answers if I would get something like gerbil foot or lizard tongue; I wouldn't put something like amoeba silicate past them. Cocktail... that just preturbs me.

Sara's Birthday, waking up tired

2009-03-26T11:58:00.003-06:00

Sara's birthday has arrived. We are going down to kaysville to see her parents and then friday keith and danielle are coming by then I think we may be doing something saturday too. not sure. I would tell you what her presents are but I haven't given them to her yet.

In my last post I forgot to mention that I'm officially done with my old drafting job at CADanswer. EVsource offered me a raise and more hours so I took it. CADanswer hasn't been steady enough work so I had to let it go. It also means we have to replace the computer but we've known that for a while so we have a new one coming anyday now. I don't know what to do with our upstairs now since it won't be much of an office anymore. I am thinking of actually making it a game room or getting a whiteboard and making it a pre-test study area. Usually the night before a test there are 3 or more people who come to study.

Puzzle update. We are about 1/10 done with it. I thought we could maybe crank it out in a week but I think it will be a month or two before we get it done.

I have tried to make a better effort at studying for the FE. Last week I studied 8 hours. Woo hoo. I really need to get going on that. There are guys who have been studying an hour a day since January for this test. That's hard core. I'm more soft core.

Things have been going really well at EVsource. I finished putting together the controller we have been working on since I started. It looks really good. I finally got the plexiglass to form just right and it fits in the other parts I made and it is just really shnazzy.

One more thing I'm going to mention. Every day the past 2 weeks I have been waking up tired, being tired all day, then going to bed dead tired. This isn't just your regular Oh man I don't wanna get up tired. It's the kind of tired where I wake up and feel like I've been up all night. I can't stay awake in my classes and can barely function during the day. I told my boss about it and he said I might have sleep apnea. I don't think that's my prognosis but I told him thanks anyway. Does this happen to anyone else?

over the sickness

2009-03-23T12:15:00.004-06:00

Well for the past 2 weeks we have been down really bad with the flu. We were quarantined the entire spring break and most of last week. I had to skip a couple days of school because of it. But we are in good shape now. We still have what seems to be a bit of a cold or something but it might just be the weather changing on us.

Weather has also been a crazy ride. The foot of snow we got for spring break disappeared and the sun even came out. Our Landlord got ambitious and started cleaning up the yard and trimming bushes. I thought about raking the garden to get it ready for May. It got so nice that I even wore flip-flops and shorts on Saturday. Then today it snowed. Not much- probably like an inch or so but it will probably be gone as soon as the sun comes out.

My phone has been freaking out lately. It will just turn itself off at random times. I think it had a short circuit in it or something. Well I hate getting a new phone because you have to relearn everything and I don't use it enough to justify relearning a new phone or paying the money to get a camera phone or anything. So I went to ebay and got the exact same phone I already had for 8 bucks. Sara has been giving me grief over that but man I love it. It is exactly the same except it works and doesn't short out at weird times. It also came with a ring tone of the song "bad to the bone". I subsequently made that the ring tone for when Sara calls to spite her dislike of my new phone.

While I was on ebay I looked up indian head pennies. I've always considered myself a raging numismatist and as such I like having indian head pennies. Mern gave me one one time and I was so happy to get it because it's in a special case to protect it. Anyway to make a long story a bit longer, I wanted to have a lucky penny that wasn't in a case that I could flip and put in my pocket and pretty much get dirty. So I bought one off ebay for cheap in the last 10 seconds of the auction.

Sara's birthday is coming up this week on Thursday and from what I've heard we have a lot of plans surrounding that day or this weekend to celebrate the event. So far Sara hasn't found out all of her presents hopefully it will remain that way for a few more days.

Saturday we went bargain shopping at DI. We went in there to get a cheap speaker for our kitchen. We got one for a buck but of course we looked around and decided to get a puzzle. Me and Mern used to crank out puzzles back in the glory days but.... those days are past. In fact I think it was more Mern doing the puzzle as I got a couple pieces in then she would say "Look we got it done". Anyway, we were feeling ambitious and got a 1,500 piece puzzle. We set it up on the Kitchen table and worked on it for 3 hours that first night but only got the edges and a little bit here and there done. The puzzle is 3 feet by 3 feet so it takes up a ton of room. We had to move it to our counter/table right in the kitchen. It's a fun distraction but would probably have been better started in the summer or at the start of the weekend. We just don't have 20 hours to sit down and do nothing but puzzle ourselves. Plus, we like to eat, so taking up the kitchen table didn't work so well.

the flu

2009-03-12T16:01:00.002-06:00

Oh man we are so stinkin sick. Sara just went to instacare and she has the flu. So that means she can't work til Monday and has to stay home and try to live. I'm pretty sure I have it too so I'm foregoing work for today at least. I also discovered that we do have a fire extinguisher. Guess where it was? right by the oven. Sara made sure to point that out as soon as she read the last post.

spring break

2009-03-11T19:46:00.003-06:00

This week is spring break for us (me). If what I've heard is right a lot of other schools like Weber and BYU are taking next week off but we are stuck with this week. Monday was great to wake up to a foot of snow. I initially woke up because a snowplow went by but I had no idea it would be so bad! I went out and shoveled our driveway and then went to work and by the time I came back we had 2 or 3 more inches. I wish the snow would've come more at snow time rather than at spring time.

Oh and speaking of time.... I really hate daylight savings. It always messes me up. Last October we went to church an hour early. This Sunday we went an hour late. It was so odd too because we got all ready and were thinking man this is great we have so much time left. Usually we are rushing to get to church so we just chillaxed and listened to Q92 for a while. At least we tried. Sunday night I also got a cold and on Tuesday Sara was blessed with it only hers is like ten times worse.

It's been really nice to take a break from school (kindof). I may not be going to campus everyday but I have been trying to study for the FE that I'm taking in April. In the meantime I'm learning how much I've forgotten since my mission. My teachers also gave me plenty of awesome homework. One even gave us a huge project which is just what I wanted to do over the break.

Since our last post about growing lemon-limes I have been thinking to myself "Self, What other unconventional things can I create with conventional items?" So today I brought home a piece of plexiglass from work and put it in the oven. The goal was to get the plexiglass to mold to this form I had made for work. Which reminds me I wasn't cooking just plexiglass I was also cooking about 3 feet worth of a 2 x 6 (wood) and a layer of sheet metal with a few shop towels stapled to that. The plexiglass didn't form quite right, turns out it couldn't do the radius I thought it could. But it was fun anyway. It also helped me learn that we do not have a fire extinguisher anywhere in the house. I was a little worried cooking plastic and all that water just may not put out the fire but I had no need to worry. There was no fire and it didn't even make any funky smells.

penguin diner, sprite

2009-03-02T22:24:00.004-07:00

For family home evening tonight Sara introduced me to a wonderful new internet game. I have had a recent splurge of internet games starting with hangman on Frank's blog which led to word whomp which led to text twist which led to avalanche. Now we have found penguin diner. In the game you are a waitress and you have to seat, take orders, bus tables, etc. in order to win the game. Quite addicting. http://www.2dplay.com/penguin-diner/penguin-diner-play.htm

Check it out.

Also, for the sprite-drinkers who read this, remember the old sprite logo with a lemon-lime?

Ever wonder where lemon-limes grow? Well we found out today. They grow in your fridge! We have had this old lemon in the bottom drawer of our fridge and let it ripen? there for 6 or so months until now it has become a lemon-lime!. Cool huh? I had to hold it with gloves because I just pulled it out of the "rich" soil it was in. I haven't done it yet (and may not have the time to do it, but I'd like to taste the juice to see what real sprite tastes like straight off the vine.

Sara's new haircut

2009-02-28T16:32:00.007-07:00

Sara got a new haircut a and despite my insistent offerings of my own hands cutting her hair, she decided to have someone in Kaysville do it. Her haircut looks good and I must admit it is slightly better than my wal-mart clippers could do. She says its a little shorter than she wanted it but likes how fast it is. By the way sorry about the picture quality we lost our digital camera so we are using this handy dandy webcam on my computer.

And not to be outdone, I also made a change to my appearance through the use of a common pair of lineman's pliers. I was tightening a nut on this baseplate I've been making and slipped and gripped the end of my thumb really hard. I'm surprised it didn't just cut my thumb open but it did leave a nice juicy blood blister which I'm including as a source of your own personal enjoyment or mental pain if you've ever had a delicious blister like this one. The first day I had it I considered naming it because it was so huge. I was thinking something on the lines of "Mario". And in posting this picture and text I'm going to make a prophecy with no intentions of discourageing anyone from posting about it, but that someone will have had a bigger better blood blister to top this one. Kind of like when you try to tell a group you had 2 wisdom teeth pulled. It is a guarantee that someone will cut you off midsentence and say " Oh that's nothin' I had 4 pulled out".

Last night we went to see Brian Regan our favorite comedian. He actually came to Logan. We bought tickets the first hour they were available in Logan but we still were on row L in the theater. Man it was a great show I was dying from laughin so stinking much. Actually I think my little wisdom tooth story up there was entirely plagiarized from him but that doesn't make it any less true. I was a little worried in going to his show that he would tell the same jokes I already know but he didn't he had a lot of things he was testing and then at the end he told some of his classics. One is this evil kenievieleveileviell posting from youtube. Hope you enjoy that. Good show. I 'd definitely go again and it was worth the money for tickets.

Valentines, President's day

2009-02-19T08:17:00.002-07:00

Last Friday we went to our ward's Valentine's ball. They gave us free food and then had dancing afterwards. The food was good and we stayed after for a little dancing but then decided we didn't feel like dancing to what they were playing. It's hard to explain, the music was just goofy. If you've ever tried to dance to something like freebird you know what I'm talking about.

On Saturday we went to the Olive Garden and used the gift card Becky gave us for Christmas. (Thanks Becky).We both got their new shrimp and Ravioli which was delicious! I can usually pack down the food there but I think good shrimp fills you up. When we go to sizzler I can eat a ton of the baked shrimp and it's good too but I think when there's not much juices in it you can eat more. Anyway, I highly recommend that deliciousness.

Our Presidential celebration consisted of sweet, sweet homework and then movie and ice cream at night. We watched madagascar 2 which is such a funny show! The first one was pretty funny in itself but this second one has more penguin antics and is hilarious!

I also got some new pants finally. Now I have no excuse for having holes so big my whole leg slips out of my jeans when I walk. Of course being the packrat that I am I will still use them at work until I catch them on something sharp, hot, or otherwise dangerous resulting in severe injury to myself as I fall on this object. Then I will throw them (that pair only) away because hey, who wants bloody pants?

Lean mean green milling machine, fortune cookie

2009-02-09T21:46:00.002-07:00

I finally got around to getting a picture of the mill. Enjoy. Also, I found this old fortune cookie we've been hanging onto for a while. So long in fact that I wrote "when?" on it. Not saying that's why we were blessed with the money but a funny coincidence.

Money from Heaven?

2009-02-06T20:30:00.003-07:00

This week has been nice for both of us. Sara is enjoying her job at Convergys. She finishes up training this week and then next week she officially starts. Luckily that training has all been paid too. I finally got the mill going right at work to make the parts I was supposed to. There was some backlash in the screws and so I had to tighten a pulley on it to make it work. That pulley was a bear to get tightened just right but it was worth it. Then I made 8 resistors for my boss and he was pleased. I did it all in an hour too. We have lost our camera so it may be quite a while before I post any pictures of the lean mean green milling machine. It's a lot of fun to work with.

I had a test this week in my Material Science class and it seemed to go well. He threw in one trick question on it but I think I'll get some partial credit for it. I'm worried about the tests coming up this week in Numerical Methods and Thermo. The teacher for numerical isn't so much concerned about whether you know how to use an equation as he is that you know how to derive it. I think deriving an equation is something mathematicians should do and no one else. (What else are they doing anyway?) My test in Thermo is given by a good teacher but the material is just hard.

Last night we got a wonderful surprise in the mail- a check for $2000.00! I guess that since we applied for financial aid and I am in engineering with a GPA above 3 that I qualified for the SMART grant. I had no idea what that was. SMART means Science & Mathematics Access to Retain Talent. Basically it is for people who have or want talent in a set of majors but don't have access (money) to keep it. Since all my fees were paid 2 months ago the 2000 is ours to use. We finally got to free up our credit card that I had to use at one-way transmissions. It also means I can afford to take the Fundamentals of Engineering Exam this April. I would have been able to afford it without the 2 grand (the fee is 135.00) but it's nice to not have to scrimp so I can register for it. And finally, it means I can get some new pants. I consider that money straight from Heaven.

Speaking of heavenly things, I think it is a daily miracle that I'm not swamped with homework now. This week I did work for CADanswer and EVsource and somehow had time to do all my homework. It seems like when I don't have time to do homework either something happens (due dates change) or I just understand the material and can get it done faster.

asdfghjkl;

2009-01-24T13:48:00.002-07:00

Last Saturday we went down to K-town to see Keith and Danielle and to drop by Sara's parents for a minute. We saw K&D's new house and it's got a lot of cool stuff. We hooked up their washer and dryer but before doing so we had to clean 3/16" of goop off the floor. I have no idea what it is. It was like a mixture of old gum and motor oil - and about that wonderful to clean up. Keith put some supposedly amazing soap-like substance on it and rubbed it in real good but that was about useless. It may have taken off less than 1/16th but in order to do more it would take for ever. So being the ingenius fools that we is, we deduced that an old movie theater gift card with a few cents left on it and my industrial safety training card worked wonders for scraping it off the floor. Then the soap helped us out to finish the job.

They also showed us a creepy room that has a tree root growing in it. There was a bucket in one corner that had a pump thing in it. I played around with it and figured out it turned on when the water level reached a certain height. Genius! It works like a toilet only instead of the float reaching a certain height and water turning off, the float flips a switch to turn the pump on which sends water through a one-way valve in the drain in the ceiling. If you didn't think that fact was exciting well that's too bad because I thought it was.

I was glad to get civil rights day off so that we/I could ....... do homework. Yes folks, that's what I did. In my defense I'm not the only one who thinks like that. Most engineers seem to think the same thoughts. In fact I remember asking people what their plans were for thanksgiving last year and just about all the engineers said they planned to use the spare time to catchup on homework. One guy told me a horror story about how he got up at 7 on Thanksgiving morning to work on a project, then he stopped for an hour to eat dinner, then got right back at it til he went to bed a night. What a life! I can't wait to be out of school.

Sara's job has been pretty chill for this first week of training. They seem to have done a lot of personality tests so everyday I hear stories of some new self experiment she has had to conduct every day. One day she drew a happy little pig, one day she did a bunch of puzzles, etc. Sounds like a fun job to me. My job of working on the mill is going well. Last week tried to drill through a copper bar but the bar just heated up and made the bit slip. We figured it was probably because we didn't have the coolant setup yet. But, since we don't want the coolant to make a big mess we needed to make some type of enclosure to stop us from getting unwanted showers when the mill runs by computer program. So we extended the drain table my boss made for the mill and then basically put a shower curtain around it. We painted the table and pvc tubing that holds up the curtain so I have affectionately dubbed it the lean green milling machine. Catchy huh? When it's all done I'll post some pictures.

A Job For Sara

2009-01-16T15:56:00.002-07:00

BIG NEWS, after lots and lots of job applications Sara (me) has found a full time job. I am now employed by Convergys. Its another call center job which I am fine with. Funny story, after the interview they said they would get back to me within two days. But they didn't call for a week, they called on the very day I decided that I wasn't really interested in call center jobs anymore. But I wasn't going to pass on a job opporunity so I said yes and I think it will be a really good thing. I get to be around people again and helping customers which is what I really enjoy. I am excited to have work and this will be the highest paying job I have ever had and the most hours. So we should be just fine with money from here on out. Its great news for us here in Logan.

sweet sweet hangman

2009-01-13T18:39:00.002-07:00

Yesterday we had a delightful family home evening courtesy of Frank and Amy's blog. I have secretly played hangman on their site for quite some time but last night Sara busted me. So we decided to play it for fhe on www.hangman.no. I would highly recommend playing it. There is a two player option which we liked but the one player 'frequently misspelled words' is great as well. Although, I would turn off the music if I did it again. The eep! gets annoying when you retype a letter you've already entered.

Sara almost helped a kid file a claim with his insurance for personal bodily injuy. She was driving down main street and turning into wal-mart (so she was in the middle turning lane) and this kid thought he was the bomb and walked right in front of her. Of course he had to jaywalk across 2 other lanes first. She had to slam on the brakes to not hit him and when that happened the kid just looked at her and laughed. What an idiot. I hope he gets hit someday... by me.... accidentally.

Last Tuesday I setup our new email accounts for cadanswer. Up til now our emails have been yournamecadanswer@gmail.com ie: mine is fredcadanswer@gmail.com. It looks a lot more professional to have fred@cadanswer.com. Since we own cadanswer.com we could do that using google apps. I got it to work and everything but about half the company is refusing to use it (I can't come up with any other reason for them never having logged in.

Other than that it's just the same old thing around here: work, school, work, sleep, and occasionally eat.

Untitled

2009-01-06T18:52:00.002-07:00

School is back in session for me. I am still doing both jobs for the time being. Sara has an interview tomorrow for a full time job. I think she will probably get it. We were worried when school started that books would be out of control. We calculated 750.00 if we got all of them used. Somehow I got them for a lot cheaper. A couple of my friends let me borrow their book for free and one guy sold me his thermodynamics book for 40.00 less than the used price at the bookstore.

Last week we went to Mom and Dad's for the first and had a traditional Lillywhite New Year's. The one difference was that we stayed up til midnight. I personally am just about as happy only staying up til 10 or 11 most of the time but the midnight experience was fun. When it turned to midnight (we almost missed it because of an intense game of muggins) we looked towards the church and they fired off some fireworks and that was about it. Keith and Danielle were also there too. In the morning we went Rabbit hunting (not Sara or Danielle of course) and got 4 bunnies. I have yet to cook them because I haven't decided which recipe sounds most delicious to me. I know this is highly unlikely but if anyone has a rabbit recipe send it on to me.

Saturday and Sunday we went to Kaysville to see the Major's. We had a sushi party at Sara's aunt and uncle's house and other relatives. I had already tried wasabi once in my life and didn't want the headache I remembered but Sara tried it and was on fire for a bit. Her aunt and uncle's house was huge. Amazingly huge. I would compare it to Batman's mansion.

Sunday we just hung out and played some games and I had sugarplum dreams about school not starting the following day. And that's about all I have to say about that.

Christmas fun

2008-12-27T15:29:00.002-07:00

The last couple weeks have been fun and great being out of school. My new job has been busy and I enjoy what I'm doing so far. They have me converting a Mill so it will run by computer (CNC). I got the motors installed on the leadscrews that lift the head that has the drill bit on it but I'm having a hard time figuring out the software to run the motors. I like the people I work with and so far it's been a good venture for me.

At the end of last week I got "called up" to work in Rock Springs for Exterran. Sara had work off so she came too. We lived the high life for a couple days. The weather wasn't too bad getting there but was horrible coming back. Anyway, in rock Springs we were allotted so much money for food and the hotel. Our hotel had a hot tub and swimming pool which we've missed sorely ever since Sara moved out of Oakridge apartments in logan. Then we ate out at Applebees and gorged ourselves. I actually got to do some design work for exterran the next day so it was sad to leave (I won't be going up there next semester). But I definitely won't miss the bad weather. The usual 3 1/2 hour drive took 5 hours because we averaged about 45 mph the whole way. A good trade off for not ending up in the snowbank, though. Finally made it to Kaysville and had the same feeling as getting off the airplane after our cruise -- just good to get on solid ground and not be moving.

When we arrived in Kaysville we endured an hour and a half of intense anticipation for the event of the year -- Neil Diamond in concert! We took the trains to Salt Lake and had to wait in the cold for 30-40 minutes because the train was late. Finally we got the the energy solutions arena and Neil sang his old heart out and we all enjoyed it. I had a pretty bad cold and so the noise was less than desirable for me but Sara thoroughly enjoyed it and she even got a shirt with Neil's 25 year old face on it. I thought there was a snake under her seat one time because she got up and scrame (= screamed) really loud. But it was just Neil's aroura overpowering her with "Forever in Blue Jeans". Good old Neil.

We came back the next day and the next 3 days dragged on until we headed back to Kaysville for Christmas. Christmas was a blast. Sara got a cd, cd holder, ipod, and other music accessories from me and her parents and I got a new backpack. Then today I bought some songs off the internet I've been wanting for a while. Sara played Knights of Catan with Danny and Jenn and myself and she layed a whoopin' on us all!

After a terrible ride home on I-15 we got home to a new 15 inches of snow which we had to shovel off our driveway before we could pull in. I've spent most of today attempting to clear off the rest of the snow and ice from the driveway and sidewalks. It's good to get back home but it also wasn't fun to leave the fam.

Big Changes, Jimmy 5

2008-12-13T10:15:00.009-07:00

Winter is upon us. There's no use throwing temper tantrums about it anymore. I've enjoyed having warm weather as long as we have. We had one day of snow but it didn't last long. Today we have probably 6 inches which all came last night. If I had to choose a way for winter to come it would be just like this, though. I hate when it's just bitter cold, icy, and wet. I wish it would just snow instead of that. So I guess I got my wish. We have had pretty nice weather for all of fall semester. Which brings me to another point of great excitement: school is out til January! We made it through finals at last.

This next semester will bring lots of change to our home. Well actually it starts Monday. I applied for a second job here in Logan doing drafting and mechanical/electrical engineering type work. The company is called evsource and they make all the parts you'd need to make your car run on battery power. They're not mass producers though and the cars they've made so far are for small trips ie to and from work if you live in Logan. They run for like half an hour on an 8 hour charge so it's not a replacement for your car more of a commute car that doesn't need gas. Anyway, I emailed the guy Monday and Tuesday, interviewed Wednesday, and on Friday he offered me the job! I'm committed to work 15-20 hours a week and I'm really excited for the job. It will be hard to work both this job and cadanswer in the school year but this job is only a 2 month project. It could be more but it's not a guarantee at this point. I can't believe how everything just fell into place so quickly. It will be really nice to work in Logan and not go to Big Piney or Rock Springs all the time. I already had things in place to not go up to those 2 places next semester because I have to take a class Tuesday and Thursdays so I can't take a day off to go up there. But that means less work for me so this job came at just the right time. My current drafting job (Cadanswer) is really slow right now. I've just been doing sales calls because there is nothing else to do. And there is no drafting work in the future til mid-January. Well that's probably enough about that, let it suffice that I'm really excited and we are really blessed that everything came together like it did.

Also, next semester Sara will be taking off from school to work full time so we can pay off some bills and get more caught up with our finances. She may or may not return to school next fall. We will figure that out when it gets closer to the time. It's a big sacrifice for Sara and I'm glad I have a wife who is willing to do that to put me through school.

In the drafting class I took this semester we had a final project to draft this robot in 3d and make it work in the CAD program SolidEdge. When I got the thing drawn in CAD it looked pretty good but when it actually runs it is pretty skwirly. (However you spell that I'm not even gonna try.)So I'm posting both movies - one made in SolidEdge and the other of the robot in action.

He mostly walks in circles on a level surface. He can run on battery or solar power. I once thought I'd set him free on main street and just let him walk to salt lake or something. He could just walk when it's day and sleep at night wherever he is when the sun goes down. That may not be so bad as long as he doesn't spend the night on a crosswalk. But anyway that plan won't work because he just goes in circles. And plus, he can't take terrain changes very well. He just bellys up when he sees a little rug in our kitchen. But we are taking a liking to him and have decided to name him Jimmy 5 in honor of his great-great-great-great-great grandfather Jonny 5 from the movie Short Circuit. Oh and by the way our camera doesn't record sound so there is nothing wrong with your computer.

Mini honeymoon, weekend adventures

2008-12-10T19:05:00.003-07:00

Well finals week is almost over and we are making it through. Last weekend we wanted to do something together that was extremely cheap (free would be nice) and fun. So after much deliberation we went to Willard Bay to see the lights. On the way there we figured we'd need some hot cocoa so we stopped in at the flying J in Brigham city only to be disappointed - no hot cocoa machine in sight. Then we googled 7-11 and finally found it only to discover another disappointment - Hot Cocoa Machine out of order. As a last resort we went to the Chevron and were pleasantly surprised. They had a hot cocoa maker and it was delicious. Maybe even better than 7-11 though not as delicious as QT in Georgia. I learned a very valuable lesson - the saying "Oh thank heaven for Seven Eleven" is no longer true. And I'm going to have to eliminate that phrase from my vocabulary. Eventually we got on the freeway and headed to willard bay and then missed it. Turned around got there and discovered it wasnt' free. They wanted 9 bucks! 9 bucks! and I bet they didn't even have free hot cocoa. We were enraged so we turned around and departed from thence. Then on the way home we thought it would be fun to rent WALL-E from redbox for a buck. But when we got into the canyon we hit a wall of red taillights

from a head on collision that just happened. Bored, we took some pictures. So our adventure was delayed even longer. We finally got home and watched Wall-e. Kind of a hum-ho movie. There's no talking til halfway through the movie and then the plot isn't very enthralling. I'm glad we only spent a buck.

Saturday, however, was a delightful adventure. The manufacturing company in Rock Springs invited us down for free steak and fun with them. The food was delicious and afterwards they gave us a set of heavy duty aluminum LED lights. They are small but really cool. Then the plant manager asked if we had a hotel for the night. We didn't and he offered to pay for a hotel for us. We took advantage of the offer and stayed in the Super 8. So that was our mini honeymoon because we won't be going there for a week like we thought. On the way there we saw the huge windmills.

I was telling Sara how the last time I went up I saw a truck carrying one of the arms for the windmills and just as I said it a truck came by with the huge arm. Total we saw 4 of them. Man they are big.

Christmas 2008

2008-12-03T19:18:00.004-07:00

Well it looks like the Christmas season has arrived yet again. We decorated the house yesterday with the few decorations we have. We are very grateful for the decorations Dani gave to us before moving out to Denver. That's pretty much all we had. Over the break Sara's parents let us use their fake tree. I once swore I would never have a fake tree but alas it sits in our living room. It was weird setting it up and not smelling pine (or getting pine sap all over your hands). But the tree worked wonderfully. At first it wasn't very sturdy. I thought about flinging more scrunchies on the ceiling and then tying a rope onto the scrunchies then onto the tree to make it more secure -- but I had doubts about the integrity of the rope. So the we found this 'spare part' that we discovered is not so spare and we put that on the stand and the tree became really sturdy. It's a little short so we put it on this big present to make it taller (and so we could fit more loot under there).

We also had some white lights left over so we tacked it to the wall with thumbtacks and it looks pretty shnazzy. I also found a power outlet timer so we hooked both the cords up to that so we don't even have to worry about turning lights on and off. So, around here Christmas starts at 6:45 AM and ends at 11:00 PM. (Anytime between then is St. Patrick's day as far as I'm concerned.)

Sara has an extremely nasty cold. She is down for the count! She tosses and turns all night and coughs and sniffles all day. Our cold medicine drugs are useless against it. Hopefully it will go away before finals. Plus -she is not the only one who ends up losing sleep.

Our dishwasher has been having problems. Namely the dishes are not getting cleaned. It's really old and crappy to begin with so I figured it was about to bite the dust but then I got looking closer at the water-shooter at the bottom and discovered pieces of glass..... glass!, plastic, and candy wrappers in the holes in the shooter. So I got to work and tried to pull them out with pliers, tweezers, fingers but nothing worked so I resorted to breaking the glass into powder and then I would turn it on and blast it out. (The real problem is I couldn't get the shooter to come off the thing it's mounted to.) At the last minute I had my good buddy Jon come over and look at it. He looked at it for 2 seconds, turned this, lifted that, and vuala! the shooter came off and we got the glass out like a dream. And this is what came out.

I pulled the big piece of glass out from underneath the shooter but everything else came out of the actual shooter-arm. It seems to work considerably better now. We had some problems with our glasses breaking in there but had no idea what it was doing to the dishwasher. At least we got it out now.

And it looks like we won't be having a second honeymoon in rock springs. The company I do drafting work for out there hasn't got word on whether they got their bid for the new project. Even if they did get it by say next week they wouldn't have enough time to get the drawings setup so I could draw them before I go back to school. Too bad so sad.

Our pets, interesting details

2008-11-24T19:02:00.005-07:00

Ah. Finally I update the blog eh? School is nearing a grueling end. We only have one more week and then finals til the semester's end and the beginning of our 2nd honeymoon in Rock Springs. I have done slightly better on my tests than the last ones. Hopefully enough to keep my GPA up so my scholarship is still in effect. Sara's job is not turning out as amazing as we had hoped. She is always scheduled for 20 hours a week but rarely is able to get more than 8 or 9. She goes to work on time and everything but then a few hours into the shift they send everyone home. So to make up for it, I've been trying to work extra hours whenever I can. We're lucky to be in a position where that is possible. Last weekend Sara saw twilight with some friends and I stayed here to do homework with a short break in between for a ping pong tournament. Sara enjoyed Twilight, homework was awesome as usual for me, but the ping pong was terrible. I got beat so severely by a kid that it looked as though I had never played ping pong in my life. Then on Saturday I went fishing on Bear Lake with my friend Kade. We borrowed Uncle Bob's boat in Fish Haven and had a blast. No fish though. On our trip up to get the boat we saw a huge flock of grouse. I can't hunt them in Idaho but it was enough to inspire me to take time off tomorrow to go hunting at temple flat. Thanksgiving will be a nice break for us and a good time to relax and forget about school before we get worked over by finals week.

And here are some random pictures that I took and/or edited of some of our more mundane experiences. We have discovered that we have a lot of creatures lurking around our house. You may remember the ducks I spotted back in July or something. Now we have 2 pheasants, a cat, and a few squirrels too.

Once upon a time we were chilling in the living room. Sara was immersed in Twilight, I was sitting on the couch when I found a scrunchee. Being fececious I thought I would fling the scrunchee up in the air so it would land on the pillow by Sara's head. Well that didn't work because the scrunchee got so high up in the air that it got scared and hung onto the ceiling instead as shown in this photo. Some may argue that I was in fact aiming to land the scrunchee on Sara's head but as the picture shows if the scrunchee had followed its desired and expected parabolic trajectory then it would land 4 inches away from her head. Sometimes you just can't count on physics. The scrunchees are still hanging there too.

And lastly when it rains here the roof and gutter system isn't so hot so we have setup a system to catch most of the water. We call it "The 3 bucket system" Unique huh? They range in size from an ice cream bucket to a dish detergent bucket to a 5 gallon bucket. I'm still considering using the grill. Enjoy!

down with the sickness

2008-11-15T15:40:00.002-07:00

Monday this week I got some sickness that has been working me over all week. Monday afternoon and Tuesday I only went to the classes I absolutely had to and the rest of the week I've been weak or achy. I still have it but it's not half as bad as it was. We also registered for classes for Spring semester. Last semester I worked my schedule to have every thursday off so I could go to Wyoming to do on-site work but I have to take a class before I can continue in my major and it's only offered 10:30 on Tuesday and Thursday. If it was at 7:30 I could do both but not 10:30. And that's the only class I have on Tuesday and Thursday. I may have to retake a couple classes too. We had a test in one of my classes and when I left the test I was feeling pretty good about it but then I got the worst score I ever have in that class. I had the same experience with my last math test too but I think I will probably pass that one. Which brings up another problem. If my grades aren't so good I lose my scholarship and have to fork out an extra $700 a semester. Sweet. Work has been really slow this week for me. The architectural firm didn't call me back on Tuesday as they supposedly "promised". I wil try one more time then give up on them. I finally got some work to do today. The only reason I did okay last week was because I got work from when I went on-site. So I'm not sure what's going to happen next semester when I don't have that work to fall back on. We will get a bonus over Christmas break. If one of the on-site companies I work at gets a bid for a new project they are planning to use us for their drafting work and that will happen over the break. We will pretty much live in Rock Springs for 2 weeks. One week before and one after Christmas. Sara will work 1 or 2 days Monday -Tuesday, then come up with me the rest of the week. But, again, that's all dependent on whether this company gets the contract. I will still try to work full time over the break but there's never a guarantee that 40 hrs will be a possibility.

The Adventures of Fred and Sara

2008-11-06T23:30:00.002-07:00

A lot has happened since the last update. Mostly positive. We got the Honda back from the transmission place and to our joy it goes in reverse..... and forward! It wasn't half as expensive as it would've been if the dealer had done it and I think we got a good deal. My work became extremeley busy over the past 2 weeks -- so much that I ened up having enough overtime that my paycheck coming this week will be the equivalent to how much we would get if we were both working. So it's like we're not even missing a beat with our income(s). Definitely a blessing of paying tithing. I also made a sales call this week to an architectural firm based out of Logan and I think we have a really good chance of getting the job. It would be so nice to not have to always go to Wyoming to do drafting work. And, having more customers decreases the likelihood of company "slow time". It will still occur, though. If this firm decides to use us for their drafting work then I will get a lovely commission check which makes it well worth all the time I spend soliciting to companies. Today Sara got an interview with a call center that does surveys out of North Logan and got hired starting Tuesday. I think this job will be a lot better for her personality. Payday loan companies make their employees into a different animal. You either have to be really agressive (or mean) or quit. Whereas asking someone to take a survey is a friendly conversation. She also won't have commission hanging over her head. And from initial appearance it seems as though she sets her own schedule. She has to work 4-10 but she can pick 2 of the 3 or 4 days she works (reason: if you work 3 days a week one of the days has to be Saturday -- not so if you work 4 days). She never has to work Sundays either

Tomorrow we are going to the Augustana concert at Weber as soon as I get out of my test at 3:30. We figured we ought to do something fun together while Sara isn't working. Woo hoo!

pumpkin carving

2008-10-28T14:06:00.002-06:00

The deer hunt over the weekend didn't go as planned but it was exciting nonetheless. We didn't see any more bucks but did see quite a few deer. Friday night we hunted up Mill Canyon where we saw the buck on Monday but didn't see any deer there. We did see some grouse and I got one to bring home. I realized that I like to hunt grouse just about as much as I like to hunt deer. I'm still trying to convince Sara to try it whenever I cook it.

Sara went down to Kaysville and chillaxed with her sister and threw a baby shower for one of her friends. Seems like it went well. They were worried that the mom-to-be wouldn't make it to the baby shower but she did although it sounds like she may have had it the next day.

While I was in L-town mom and dad mentioned they had a ton more pumpkins than they needed so they sent me home with a couple which we carved Monday night which brings me to the next item of interest: Sara was at home on Monday night so we go to have FHE for once. She was forced to quit on Thursday from her job so she has every night free. But that means getting back to the grindstone of looking for another job. I got a raise last week but unfortunately it just isn't enough to cover all the bills while I'm not working full-time.

Also, around the same time the reverse went out in my car. I took it to Honda to have them look at it and they glanced at it ( really, that's all they did they didn't touch anything) and said it would cost 720.00 to look at the transmission. And for that useless information they charged us 50 bucks. How nice. So we took it to another placed called one-way transmissions and he glanced at it for free and will take the transmission apart for 600. Much more reasonable. But in the meantime we are down one car. Good timing though because Sara isn't using her car. I got a good vibe from the transmission mechanic (despite the fact that he used the back of a paper towel to write down my information) but I'm concerned with the company name/output. One-Way Transmissions? The car already goes one way! I made sure to specify that I would like the car to go both ways - not just reverse or forward. Hopefully I made that sufficiently clear to him. More news to follow on that possible adventure.