Happy New Year

I hope everyone has had a happy holiday. We have done a few fun things - see Nicole's blog about the Jazz game - we had a really fun time with the boys. Work has been sort of interesting. This last week I ran into Bob and Claudia Fisher at a funeral. It was for Bob's Aunt and I had met with the family to make arrangements. The other sort of interesting thing was we had a funeral for a guy that always wore bow ties. His family showed up for the services with a handful of bow ties that they wanted to wear, but no one knew how to time them. It has been at least 10 years since I had tied one of Grandpa Glade's bow ties, but I gave it a go and it only took a couple of tries, but I was able to remember how to tie them. It was neat to remember that and sort of recall Grandpa wearing them.

Afton stayed the entire time in nursery today. We changed times from 9:00 to 11:30 and we were worried as that is right in the middle of Afton's nap. She fell asleep at 10:30 and woke up right before we left. It is fun to see her getting so big, but it is sad at the same time. She likes to be in the middle of everything and is always getting in anything and everything that she can. We have had lots of fun.

Christmas lights at Temple Square

Last night we took a trip down to Temple Square to see the lights. We usually go earlier, but found time to go this year. I thought it would not be too busy as everyone has had a chance to go, but it was really crowded - almost as crowded as the night they turn them on or when they have the First Presidency Devotional. As always they were very pretty and between the lights and the cold puts even a grinch like me in the Christmas mood.

I have been fighting flu like symptoms the last couple of days and it has not been very fun. I hope I am on the tale end of it, but now I have a cough that has caused my ribs to ache from coughing so much.

Our family is getting ready for the big day to come. They are talking about what they want and Santa coming, hopefully they won't be disappointed.

Mom mentioned that she had talked about everyone going up to their new place for our family reunion this year, and I got really excited. Mom had mentioned the June for kids out of school and such , but I think that will need to change with the post on Matthew and Diana's blog. That is a great reason to have to change time windows. Just thinking out loud, but anyone coming from our direction, I was looking at either stopping on the way to or back at Mt. Rushmore. It is about 10 hours west of Farmington, MN and 8 hours from SLC, so almost in the middle of our trip up there. Anyways, hope we can all put our heads together and work out our schedules so that we can spend some time together again.

Well hope everyone has a great Chirstmas, we sent our presents out last Monday, so hopefully Mom and Dad, Michael and Heather and Matthew and Diana should be getting some boxes of have received them.

Duck! for a new found enjoyment

Last spring I did my hunter's education through a guy at work and so I always see him. A week or so ago he asked if I wanted to go out for the opening day of Duck hunting season. I decided that should be fun, so I took yesterday off of work and woke up real early to head out to Farmington Bay just west of our house. We got there at about 6:10 and joined 300-400 other hunters that were out for a good time. We walked a till we found what looked like the perfect spot in the pitch dark, to slay some ducks. The season didn't open till 8:00, so after waiting in the marsh for an hour the season opened and it sounded like the start of the civil war. Despite the number of people there was plenty of room for that many people, and there seemed to be enough ducks to shoot at. The first two I shot ended up in the frag weed that is really tall and dense and so they were lost, but I dropped two right in front of us and went out and got them. After about 1/2 hour of endless blasting the ducks decided to hide for a while and the shooting tapered off, so at about 9:30 we packed up and left, with the promise to return and have some more fun! I am addicted. I brought them home and fried them and Carter really liked them, but they mostly tasted like some creature that eats crap off the bottom of lakes. I will look for a few other recipes to cook them up. If you have any send them my way. Nicole can't wait till I get my first duck call and go around the house learning that fine art.

Maiden voyage in Utah

Well after a few hundred miles and a few days we got the canoe wet in some Utah water. She still floats great. we ran down to Cabela's and got some life jackets and then came back and took her to a local pond to take her for a trip around the pond. Afton was really tired and she hated the life jacket, so she was sort of grumpy. We went around once with her and then Nicole got out with her and I took the kids out around one time. Anyways, it was a good time and it brought back a ton of memories for me.

NEW PHONE NUMBER

Just wanted to let everyone know that my cell phone number has changed it is now (801)913-3400. It is a cell number for Rocky Mountain Cremation Service, so if I answer that chance are it is me. (There is a chance on long weekends or vacation that someone else will have it, so if someone else answers, I am off and try Nicole's cell phone. If you call my old number you will get a grouchy old guy that I work with, so BE CAREFUL. Just kidding, you will get someone else, he's older and can be grouchy

Fun Day

me in one of Mustangs that you can use if you wanted to go to driving school

Saturday Nicole and I went out to Tooele County to the Larry H. Miller raceway. It is a road coarse where they race motorcycles and road courses for grand am cars. They were having a 30 year anniversary party for Larry H. Miller's company. We had a special passes and were able to go to that and they fed us lunch and then we got to watch some races. It was really neat. I guess you could say that grand am is sort of NASCAR for more sophisticated rednecks. It was the first time I have ever been to a motor sport race. It was neat to be able to go see all the team trucks and see the mechanics fine tuning the cars for the race. Some of the crews would set some of their used tires out so you could see them and touch the tires and be part of the event. I have watched NASCAR races and have them talk about how the tire rubber gets so hot that it melts and will roll off the tires. It was neat to be able to see some of that on the tires and you could see how the rubber had melted and then pushed to the edge of the tire. It was really fun to be with Nicole and we had a great time. The sad thing was that the entire time we kept saying how much fun the boys would have had. It was sort of like being in the middle of the show CARS. Here are some of the pics from th9at and a video of the cars shooting by during one of the practice sessions. If you ever get the chance to go to a race like that I would go for it!

This is the team trucks (Ferrari of Houston)

I'll Still Around (and still round)

WOW it's been a while since I put anything on here. Things are going good for us. Nicole does a way better job of updating everyone on how are family is doing. I check everyone's blog's regularly, but have not put anything new in a long time.

So Landon is going to be baptized on June 6th. Everyone is welcome to come. He turns 8 on Saturday and Afton turns 1 on Tuesday.

We have been trying to get our yard in shape. The front yard is in OK condition, but our backyard needs some attention. Last night we got one of the side yards cleaned up and looking better, so we will keep plugging away at that.

Well I wish I could write more, but I can't think of much. See Nicole's blog for more intersesting stuff about our family