MyHeritage: Look-alike Meter - Family heritage - Family history
Monday, August 25, 2008
Emmy Update
The last pics/videos we posted of Emma are about a month old, so I decided to update a little.
Emma is a very serious kid...
...but when she smiles, she smiles with her WHOLE face! What a chubalub! She is in the top 90th percentile in height, weight, and head size!
At least she can still rock the swimmy! We love taking her to the beach pool!
Emma CANNOT sit still. She gets annoyed if she is awake and you are not talking TO her and playing with her. Obviously since she can't really DO anything or play anything, we are limited to teaching her new tricks. Here is her latest one. Her thunder-thighs definitely get a much needed work out!
Emma is a very serious kid...
...but when she smiles, she smiles with her WHOLE face! What a chubalub! She is in the top 90th percentile in height, weight, and head size!
At least she can still rock the swimmy! We love taking her to the beach pool!
Emma CANNOT sit still. She gets annoyed if she is awake and you are not talking TO her and playing with her. Obviously since she can't really DO anything or play anything, we are limited to teaching her new tricks. Here is her latest one. Her thunder-thighs definitely get a much needed work out!
Sunday, August 24, 2008
HILARIOUS!
There are only a few things that I find TRULY funny. To these things, I will usually laugh out loud and find myself giggling a few days later as I remember it. This article is one of those things. The other is always Jay Leno's Monday headlines. I do not like to read, but I LOVE the Olympics. I have watched them ENDLESSLY for the last 2 weeks and am sad to see them come to a close. This article by Joel Stein from TIME magazine (Ammon's bible) brings some much needed closure. I was offended by the first line, but once you get passed it and realize he's being sarcastic, you will LOVE IT!
Raising the Stakes at the Olympics by Joel Stein:
I hate the olympic spirit. No competition should be ruined by an undercurrent of peace and harmony. Would baseball be better if Derek Jeter hugged David Ortiz after every game and talked about how wonderful Boston is? If you want an endless event in which everyone pretends to respect everybody else, go to couples therapy. If I'm going to spend two weeks watching something, I want to see some people pouring Champagne on one another and some people crying at the end of it. That's why I watch the baseball playoffs and Girls Gone Wild. How damaging to sports is the Olympic spirit? After all these events, I have no idea who won. Sure, NBC sometimes flashes a "medal count," but that is the stupidest way of measuring victory since the Electoral College. Gold, silver and bronze all count as one point? Then why make different medals? Sure, it practically guarantees that the U.S. gets first place, but that's only in a system in which it's as good to be third best as actual best—and in that world, Ralph Nader would get to make presidential decisions. If you also gave a point in the medal count for fourth through 6.7 billionth best in each sport, China and India would be kicking ass.
So I've been working on a new scoring system to improve the Games. The first step is to eliminate all but one medal event per sport. You know why Michael Phelps won eight golds? Because they were all for the same thing. Turns out, he can swim fast when he does two laps and four laps — and when he's alone and when three other Americans go right after him! You want multiple medals? Do multiple sports. Phelps gets two medals only if he's the best swimmer in the world and the best Taekwondoist. For soccer, the most popular sport in the world, the Olympics give out one gold for men and one for women. That's fewer than go to race-walkers. Shooters get 15. Canoeists get 16, and that's assuming that the 14 rowing events are somehow different. To be fair, under the current system, the basketball team should be having competitions in three-point shooting, dunking, rebounding, passing, that halftime trampoline thing, T-shirt cannon-blasting and restraining Ron Artest.
In my system, overall points would be weighted by how popular the sport is, as determined by television ratings. You got a bronze in the gymnastic floor competition? That's 100 Olympic points. You nailed a gold in the modern pentathlon? (That's pistol-shooting, épée fencing, swimming, horse-jumping and a run.) You get two points and the right to keep whatever European royal title your family is holding on to. Boxing champions get only three points, since everyone would clearly rather watch ultimate fighting. Sports in which competitors wear makeup get a deduction, as do sports played in only one area of the world: badminton (Asia), water polo (California), field hockey (Smith College). I would also consider body mass index in the point system. Phelps is clearly in incredible athletic shape, so he'd get twice as many points for his wins as the table-tennis gold medalist would. In fact, if time allows, I'd have all the gold medalists, except wrestlers, wrestle one another in an overall 1,000-point super-Olympic event to determine the world's best athlete. I'd also make them all live in one house and complain about one another to the camera a lot.
NBC highlights only the top few competitors in most sports, but the winners would look a lot more impressive if we also got to see the worst. So I'd give the last three places anti-medals, all made of a decreasing quality of chocolate, starting with Russell Stover and working down from there. Then we would use the European soccer system, in which we'd kick out the country with the most anti-points. Not just out of the Olympics, but out of the international community. The country would lose its seat at the U.N., the little stamp it puts on passports, all its welcome to signs and whatever war it's currently waging. Also, the country that comes in first should get something real: maybe some extra carbon output, four years without tariffs or the right to put its flag on all the world's airplanes.
The stakes need to be raised. We can't continue to have every gymnast hugging every other gymnast when her floor routine ends, and not just because it's bound to be used as bait on To Catch a Predator. If the purpose of the Olympics is to make the world more peaceful, maybe the reason it hasn't succeeded is that the Games aren't warlike enough. The ancient Greeks got themselves oiled up to wrestle for a good reason: to channel their bloodlust into something meaningless. Also because they were crazy gay. Globalization has made getting along with countries we've never heard of more important, and the best way to do that is to beat the crap out of them in sports we've never heard of and then rub their faces in it. If we're going to get along, we're going to have to learn how to hate each other when it matters the least.
Raising the Stakes at the Olympics by Joel Stein:
I hate the olympic spirit. No competition should be ruined by an undercurrent of peace and harmony. Would baseball be better if Derek Jeter hugged David Ortiz after every game and talked about how wonderful Boston is? If you want an endless event in which everyone pretends to respect everybody else, go to couples therapy. If I'm going to spend two weeks watching something, I want to see some people pouring Champagne on one another and some people crying at the end of it. That's why I watch the baseball playoffs and Girls Gone Wild. How damaging to sports is the Olympic spirit? After all these events, I have no idea who won. Sure, NBC sometimes flashes a "medal count," but that is the stupidest way of measuring victory since the Electoral College. Gold, silver and bronze all count as one point? Then why make different medals? Sure, it practically guarantees that the U.S. gets first place, but that's only in a system in which it's as good to be third best as actual best—and in that world, Ralph Nader would get to make presidential decisions. If you also gave a point in the medal count for fourth through 6.7 billionth best in each sport, China and India would be kicking ass.
So I've been working on a new scoring system to improve the Games. The first step is to eliminate all but one medal event per sport. You know why Michael Phelps won eight golds? Because they were all for the same thing. Turns out, he can swim fast when he does two laps and four laps — and when he's alone and when three other Americans go right after him! You want multiple medals? Do multiple sports. Phelps gets two medals only if he's the best swimmer in the world and the best Taekwondoist. For soccer, the most popular sport in the world, the Olympics give out one gold for men and one for women. That's fewer than go to race-walkers. Shooters get 15. Canoeists get 16, and that's assuming that the 14 rowing events are somehow different. To be fair, under the current system, the basketball team should be having competitions in three-point shooting, dunking, rebounding, passing, that halftime trampoline thing, T-shirt cannon-blasting and restraining Ron Artest.
In my system, overall points would be weighted by how popular the sport is, as determined by television ratings. You got a bronze in the gymnastic floor competition? That's 100 Olympic points. You nailed a gold in the modern pentathlon? (That's pistol-shooting, épée fencing, swimming, horse-jumping and a run.) You get two points and the right to keep whatever European royal title your family is holding on to. Boxing champions get only three points, since everyone would clearly rather watch ultimate fighting. Sports in which competitors wear makeup get a deduction, as do sports played in only one area of the world: badminton (Asia), water polo (California), field hockey (Smith College). I would also consider body mass index in the point system. Phelps is clearly in incredible athletic shape, so he'd get twice as many points for his wins as the table-tennis gold medalist would. In fact, if time allows, I'd have all the gold medalists, except wrestlers, wrestle one another in an overall 1,000-point super-Olympic event to determine the world's best athlete. I'd also make them all live in one house and complain about one another to the camera a lot.
NBC highlights only the top few competitors in most sports, but the winners would look a lot more impressive if we also got to see the worst. So I'd give the last three places anti-medals, all made of a decreasing quality of chocolate, starting with Russell Stover and working down from there. Then we would use the European soccer system, in which we'd kick out the country with the most anti-points. Not just out of the Olympics, but out of the international community. The country would lose its seat at the U.N., the little stamp it puts on passports, all its welcome to signs and whatever war it's currently waging. Also, the country that comes in first should get something real: maybe some extra carbon output, four years without tariffs or the right to put its flag on all the world's airplanes.
The stakes need to be raised. We can't continue to have every gymnast hugging every other gymnast when her floor routine ends, and not just because it's bound to be used as bait on To Catch a Predator. If the purpose of the Olympics is to make the world more peaceful, maybe the reason it hasn't succeeded is that the Games aren't warlike enough. The ancient Greeks got themselves oiled up to wrestle for a good reason: to channel their bloodlust into something meaningless. Also because they were crazy gay. Globalization has made getting along with countries we've never heard of more important, and the best way to do that is to beat the crap out of them in sports we've never heard of and then rub their faces in it. If we're going to get along, we're going to have to learn how to hate each other when it matters the least.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Preview
I have had many comments about my dad's book. Quite a few people want a sneak preview. Here is the rough draft of the first chapter that my dad sent me a few months ago...
The early years in Hyrum
I am told that we moved to Hyrum when I was two years old or in 1960. The first memory I ever have of myself was on one of my early birthdays living in our single story 1800 sq. ft. house in Hyrum. I recall crying a lot over some issue related to my birthday and my neighborhood friend, Bruce Miller, who was a couple of years older than me trying to comfort me. There would be plenty of more memories from this house and neighborhood I would live in until the age of 15 and my departure to Hawaii to pick pineapples.
The house was a flat roof home with a pretty large front and back yard. It had a sizeable tool shed in the backyard where we stored all sorts of junk form lawnmowers to spare furniture. The home was built as a three bedroom with one bathroom which had a single toilet, sink and tub-shower combination. The peak of the family size and demand for space would have been when I was about 9 years old and my oldest brother McKay was 18, just before he would go on his mission to the Japan north mission. You can do the math, but seven children and two parents in a three bedroom single bathroom house took a lot of creativity.
Initially mom and dad had the largest bedroom and the three boys slept in one bedroom and the four girls in another. As we all began to age, Dad exercised his neophyte carpentry skills and converted the two car garage into two bedrooms and they moved to an attached workroom that was attached, but just behind the two car garage. This left one bedroom each for Mckay and MaRee, who were in their teens and the final bedroom for Karma, Gwynn and Bonnie to share.
Living in the garage of a home in Utah is not so bad until winter comes. There was no heating vent into that garage and no insulation and I learned to waste no time in putting on my clothes in the morning and get my fanny to the breakfast table. There was no carpet initially in these converted bedrooms but they gradually improved. I remember having three metal bunk beds stacked on top of each other and I slept on the top one for a while, about 2 feet from the ceiling. One night I woke up with a thick bloody lip, having fallen off the top bunk onto the garage floor. We call these safety violations at work today.
From these converted bedrooms I recall hearing the Afghanistan and Pakistani war of the seventies. Kirk listened to the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith and many other 60s and 70s rock groups and my familiarity of rock music took off here. I even remember putting a mouse that I trapped in the house on MaRee's dresser, having cut a hole in the top to make sure it didn’t die of affixation. The girls in our family went totally crazy when they saw a mouse, largely from the signal of fear they inherited from Mom. I will continue with a further story on that. We use to like hamsters as a family. We once bought a pair of them in Ogden and got them out to the car fine. Somehow one of the little creatures got away in the red Volkswagen bug mom was driving. She went crazy, screaming and crying until we got the little sucker back into the box. That is when I first heard the phrase “Don’t ever do that again.”
Breakfast was a lot of hotcakes, cereal and other standard items. We had few pre-packaged or prepared food; everything seemed to be made from scratch. This changed a little later as making pizzas at home out of a Gino’s box was all the rave. I was also a great cookie maker and enjoyed doing that after school. I was also a cleaner and often organized Mom’s kitchen cupboards, especially the spice cabinet, which was my favorite.
Trying to get ones place in line for the bathroom was entirely a different challenge. Being younger, and a boy at that, meant I was the last all of the time. I had two very memorable experiences in that bathroom if you would indulge me in sharing them. The first one was quite embarrassing and a mischievous event on the part of McKay. I was probably somewhere around 5 or 6 years old and taking my bath. I don’t recall exactly why but for some reason got out of the tub for a moment and when I came back saw a twisted brown log in the tub. My brother was laughing and accused me of dropping a turd in the tub. Mortified and crying, I denied it, knowing that if I would have done such a dirty deed I surely would have remembered it. It turns out that he took large tootsie roll I had been chewing on and shaped the evidence to look like a log and was having a lot of fun with me. A similar gross gag was played on me a couple of years later when one of Kirk’s friends partially urinated into a coke drink and passed it off to me as a tasty drink. Can you say white trash? The neighbor Helen Brown came over and tore Claude Williams head off when she heard about that one.
Another experience in that bathroom is one that I didn’t recognize at the time but have since seen it as my first promptings of the Holy Spirit. I would bath in the tub and as I got older enjoyed music form the radio. We had a portable radio which we would plug in from room to room as we traveled about the house. I liked listening to it while taking a warm bath. The bathroom was so warm as the heat vents ran under the floor and the tub and it was heaven in the winter months. I decided to put it closer to me while in the tub, choosing the edge of the tub as the location. This did not feel good to me I was prompted to put it back on the bathroom vanity, which would require getting out of the tub to change channels or volume adjustment. I complied with the prompting. Later in life, I recognized the physics of water and electricity and saw how easily I may have been electrocuted had the radio teetered on the side of the tub and fallen into the water.
Gradually and by 1972, Dad left the family, McKay, MaRee, Gwynn all got married and left the house. Kirk went to diesel mechanic school in Denver leaving, Mom, Bonnie, Karma and I as the entire household. Change continued for the next two years as I left for Hawaii and Mom married Darwin and the remaining family ended up in North Logan.
My work responsibilities at home consisted of mowing the lawn, tending the garden and shoveling snow. The yard took about a solid hour or 90 minutes to complete. We had a heavy motorized mower, but required pushing to mow the lawn. I was only about 98 lbs by the time I hit the 9th grade so mowing the lawn took a lot out of me in the early years. There was no edger or other implements so the goal was to cut the grass and dump it into the garden as mulch. The good thing about this is it was only about a 6 month job from May to October, with the winter snow and spring rains giving me a seasonal break. The garden tending was actually more fun in my mind. I would rent or borrow a garden tiller (we never did own one) from the neighbor and would then plant rows of peas, carrots beans, corn, potatoes and other vegetables. One of my favorite dishes growing up was carrots cut into rounds, steamed and with butter. I called them wagon wheels.
Shoveling snow was a task that was hard but sporadic. When the big storms came I would go out after school and clear the driveway. The drive and parking area was approximately the size of seven parked cars. The snow was heavy and wet and it would usually take some time. It was here that I would keep shoveling, subconsciously awaiting my Dad to come home and praise me for the efforts. He liked a well mowed lawn and shoveled walks, but was not too interested in gardening. I was often disappointed because my work was not often verbally recognized since he was out gallivanting around, as I later learned.
Probably the most memorable piece of the Hyrum home was “The Hut” behind the large tool shed was a 20 x 10 foot space where my friends, Todd Williams, Greg Smith, Ted Miller and I decided to build a hideout. We weren’t really sure how to do it but gathered a lot of wood from everyone’s backyard and starting nailing it together. My brother Kirk educated us on how to build a floor and studded walls and before long we had ten foot by ten foot hideout. It had an escape trap door, 5 bunked beds, a ceiling made of egg cartons, pictures clipped from magazines on the wall and lots of empty liquor bottles. We had a fascination to collect empty bottles of from the Hyrum junkyard. They were appealing cause of their colorful and fascinating labels, and we were looking for that kind decorative collateral. We even went so far as to add color water to some of them to make them seem real. We were trying to be tough guys.
Through my seventh and eight grade the whole neighborhood and gradually the entire junior high school was aware of the Hut and I enjoyed the popular notoriety that came with it. We would have sleepovers during the summer months and boys from other communities that attended the same school would show up. There were even some makeout sessions for some hot couples that were going out during their fourteen and fifteen years of age; I was not part of any love nesting at this age and wouldn’t even go on my first date until North Logan at the age of 16, but this was an interesting experience none the less.
I was in the Hyrum 3rd Ward during my entire 13 years in Hyrum. The membership rose from three wards to now about 3 stakes I believe.The meeting house was memorable and fascinating to me to this day. None of the earlier church houses were the same. They were all architected uniquely and very large. This church had three stories and a host of large classrooms ornate decorations and hidden closets. To this day, I can walk through that entire church house in my mind and recall all of the experiences I had in church from primary to court of honor dinners, my baptism, Sunday school classes, Sacrament meetings, etc. When I was growing up, there was not yet a three hour block. Church started at 9 or 10 in the morning. This consisted of priesthood meeting and Sunday school. Following that we made a trip to Dave’s drive in and bought candy or an ice cream. I know… but we did it. We would then return home for lunch and would return for sacrament meeting again at 7pm. Sacrament meeting alone was 90 minutes and would often go two hours if the Dry Council spoke or a missionary reunion.
There was plenty to do in Hyrum. I loved to fish each spring and summer. We would catch trout at the dam or in the spillway which was a large concrete bowl that collected water that was released out of the dam. This spillway was also a fun place to slide down in a mock demonstration of surfing. The dam also provided fun in the winter as we walked across the solid frozen ice that came with freezing Cache Valley winters. I remember one year that it was 20 below zero for two weeks straight. The uptown area included a movie theatre, diner, Lincoln Elementary where I went to school, gas stations and a doctor’s office. I use to peddle myself around on my bikes and we rarely got a ride anywhere within the city.
I was a pretty safe kid, having never experienced a broken bone or a hospital stay until I was 47 years old. I did have a couple of minor experiences with the doctor in Hyrum I was knocked down a coal chute and had to get stitches in my head. I fell off the handle bars of my friend’s bike. We use to carry or “pump” each other around on a bike. In this accident, apparently I was unconscious for a few hours before coming to again. I got the name “Goofs” after this incident since I apparently would go looney every now and again following this accident. I was almost hit by a car once by mindlessly meandering around the road on my bike.
The total Hyrum experience was not unlike many other kid’s youthful ventures.
I learned how to work, play, be creative, and grow up amongst friends and family. It laid a strong basis of my religion and need to care for others and build relationships. Small communities have a lot of merit to share in building these experiences Up till the age of fifteen; I had never yet been on an airplane. I had only been to three states, Utah, Idaho and Wyoming. I hadn’t experienced seafood other than the fish I had caught in Hyrum Dam. Little did I know how dramatic of a global view of the world I would begin experiencing in four short years.
The early years in Hyrum
I am told that we moved to Hyrum when I was two years old or in 1960. The first memory I ever have of myself was on one of my early birthdays living in our single story 1800 sq. ft. house in Hyrum. I recall crying a lot over some issue related to my birthday and my neighborhood friend, Bruce Miller, who was a couple of years older than me trying to comfort me. There would be plenty of more memories from this house and neighborhood I would live in until the age of 15 and my departure to Hawaii to pick pineapples.
The house was a flat roof home with a pretty large front and back yard. It had a sizeable tool shed in the backyard where we stored all sorts of junk form lawnmowers to spare furniture. The home was built as a three bedroom with one bathroom which had a single toilet, sink and tub-shower combination. The peak of the family size and demand for space would have been when I was about 9 years old and my oldest brother McKay was 18, just before he would go on his mission to the Japan north mission. You can do the math, but seven children and two parents in a three bedroom single bathroom house took a lot of creativity.
Initially mom and dad had the largest bedroom and the three boys slept in one bedroom and the four girls in another. As we all began to age, Dad exercised his neophyte carpentry skills and converted the two car garage into two bedrooms and they moved to an attached workroom that was attached, but just behind the two car garage. This left one bedroom each for Mckay and MaRee, who were in their teens and the final bedroom for Karma, Gwynn and Bonnie to share.
Living in the garage of a home in Utah is not so bad until winter comes. There was no heating vent into that garage and no insulation and I learned to waste no time in putting on my clothes in the morning and get my fanny to the breakfast table. There was no carpet initially in these converted bedrooms but they gradually improved. I remember having three metal bunk beds stacked on top of each other and I slept on the top one for a while, about 2 feet from the ceiling. One night I woke up with a thick bloody lip, having fallen off the top bunk onto the garage floor. We call these safety violations at work today.
From these converted bedrooms I recall hearing the Afghanistan and Pakistani war of the seventies. Kirk listened to the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith and many other 60s and 70s rock groups and my familiarity of rock music took off here. I even remember putting a mouse that I trapped in the house on MaRee's dresser, having cut a hole in the top to make sure it didn’t die of affixation. The girls in our family went totally crazy when they saw a mouse, largely from the signal of fear they inherited from Mom. I will continue with a further story on that. We use to like hamsters as a family. We once bought a pair of them in Ogden and got them out to the car fine. Somehow one of the little creatures got away in the red Volkswagen bug mom was driving. She went crazy, screaming and crying until we got the little sucker back into the box. That is when I first heard the phrase “Don’t ever do that again.”
Breakfast was a lot of hotcakes, cereal and other standard items. We had few pre-packaged or prepared food; everything seemed to be made from scratch. This changed a little later as making pizzas at home out of a Gino’s box was all the rave. I was also a great cookie maker and enjoyed doing that after school. I was also a cleaner and often organized Mom’s kitchen cupboards, especially the spice cabinet, which was my favorite.
Trying to get ones place in line for the bathroom was entirely a different challenge. Being younger, and a boy at that, meant I was the last all of the time. I had two very memorable experiences in that bathroom if you would indulge me in sharing them. The first one was quite embarrassing and a mischievous event on the part of McKay. I was probably somewhere around 5 or 6 years old and taking my bath. I don’t recall exactly why but for some reason got out of the tub for a moment and when I came back saw a twisted brown log in the tub. My brother was laughing and accused me of dropping a turd in the tub. Mortified and crying, I denied it, knowing that if I would have done such a dirty deed I surely would have remembered it. It turns out that he took large tootsie roll I had been chewing on and shaped the evidence to look like a log and was having a lot of fun with me. A similar gross gag was played on me a couple of years later when one of Kirk’s friends partially urinated into a coke drink and passed it off to me as a tasty drink. Can you say white trash? The neighbor Helen Brown came over and tore Claude Williams head off when she heard about that one.
Another experience in that bathroom is one that I didn’t recognize at the time but have since seen it as my first promptings of the Holy Spirit. I would bath in the tub and as I got older enjoyed music form the radio. We had a portable radio which we would plug in from room to room as we traveled about the house. I liked listening to it while taking a warm bath. The bathroom was so warm as the heat vents ran under the floor and the tub and it was heaven in the winter months. I decided to put it closer to me while in the tub, choosing the edge of the tub as the location. This did not feel good to me I was prompted to put it back on the bathroom vanity, which would require getting out of the tub to change channels or volume adjustment. I complied with the prompting. Later in life, I recognized the physics of water and electricity and saw how easily I may have been electrocuted had the radio teetered on the side of the tub and fallen into the water.
Gradually and by 1972, Dad left the family, McKay, MaRee, Gwynn all got married and left the house. Kirk went to diesel mechanic school in Denver leaving, Mom, Bonnie, Karma and I as the entire household. Change continued for the next two years as I left for Hawaii and Mom married Darwin and the remaining family ended up in North Logan.
My work responsibilities at home consisted of mowing the lawn, tending the garden and shoveling snow. The yard took about a solid hour or 90 minutes to complete. We had a heavy motorized mower, but required pushing to mow the lawn. I was only about 98 lbs by the time I hit the 9th grade so mowing the lawn took a lot out of me in the early years. There was no edger or other implements so the goal was to cut the grass and dump it into the garden as mulch. The good thing about this is it was only about a 6 month job from May to October, with the winter snow and spring rains giving me a seasonal break. The garden tending was actually more fun in my mind. I would rent or borrow a garden tiller (we never did own one) from the neighbor and would then plant rows of peas, carrots beans, corn, potatoes and other vegetables. One of my favorite dishes growing up was carrots cut into rounds, steamed and with butter. I called them wagon wheels.
Shoveling snow was a task that was hard but sporadic. When the big storms came I would go out after school and clear the driveway. The drive and parking area was approximately the size of seven parked cars. The snow was heavy and wet and it would usually take some time. It was here that I would keep shoveling, subconsciously awaiting my Dad to come home and praise me for the efforts. He liked a well mowed lawn and shoveled walks, but was not too interested in gardening. I was often disappointed because my work was not often verbally recognized since he was out gallivanting around, as I later learned.
Probably the most memorable piece of the Hyrum home was “The Hut” behind the large tool shed was a 20 x 10 foot space where my friends, Todd Williams, Greg Smith, Ted Miller and I decided to build a hideout. We weren’t really sure how to do it but gathered a lot of wood from everyone’s backyard and starting nailing it together. My brother Kirk educated us on how to build a floor and studded walls and before long we had ten foot by ten foot hideout. It had an escape trap door, 5 bunked beds, a ceiling made of egg cartons, pictures clipped from magazines on the wall and lots of empty liquor bottles. We had a fascination to collect empty bottles of from the Hyrum junkyard. They were appealing cause of their colorful and fascinating labels, and we were looking for that kind decorative collateral. We even went so far as to add color water to some of them to make them seem real. We were trying to be tough guys.
Through my seventh and eight grade the whole neighborhood and gradually the entire junior high school was aware of the Hut and I enjoyed the popular notoriety that came with it. We would have sleepovers during the summer months and boys from other communities that attended the same school would show up. There were even some makeout sessions for some hot couples that were going out during their fourteen and fifteen years of age; I was not part of any love nesting at this age and wouldn’t even go on my first date until North Logan at the age of 16, but this was an interesting experience none the less.
I was in the Hyrum 3rd Ward during my entire 13 years in Hyrum. The membership rose from three wards to now about 3 stakes I believe.The meeting house was memorable and fascinating to me to this day. None of the earlier church houses were the same. They were all architected uniquely and very large. This church had three stories and a host of large classrooms ornate decorations and hidden closets. To this day, I can walk through that entire church house in my mind and recall all of the experiences I had in church from primary to court of honor dinners, my baptism, Sunday school classes, Sacrament meetings, etc. When I was growing up, there was not yet a three hour block. Church started at 9 or 10 in the morning. This consisted of priesthood meeting and Sunday school. Following that we made a trip to Dave’s drive in and bought candy or an ice cream. I know… but we did it. We would then return home for lunch and would return for sacrament meeting again at 7pm. Sacrament meeting alone was 90 minutes and would often go two hours if the Dry Council spoke or a missionary reunion.
There was plenty to do in Hyrum. I loved to fish each spring and summer. We would catch trout at the dam or in the spillway which was a large concrete bowl that collected water that was released out of the dam. This spillway was also a fun place to slide down in a mock demonstration of surfing. The dam also provided fun in the winter as we walked across the solid frozen ice that came with freezing Cache Valley winters. I remember one year that it was 20 below zero for two weeks straight. The uptown area included a movie theatre, diner, Lincoln Elementary where I went to school, gas stations and a doctor’s office. I use to peddle myself around on my bikes and we rarely got a ride anywhere within the city.
I was a pretty safe kid, having never experienced a broken bone or a hospital stay until I was 47 years old. I did have a couple of minor experiences with the doctor in Hyrum I was knocked down a coal chute and had to get stitches in my head. I fell off the handle bars of my friend’s bike. We use to carry or “pump” each other around on a bike. In this accident, apparently I was unconscious for a few hours before coming to again. I got the name “Goofs” after this incident since I apparently would go looney every now and again following this accident. I was almost hit by a car once by mindlessly meandering around the road on my bike.
The total Hyrum experience was not unlike many other kid’s youthful ventures.
I learned how to work, play, be creative, and grow up amongst friends and family. It laid a strong basis of my religion and need to care for others and build relationships. Small communities have a lot of merit to share in building these experiences Up till the age of fifteen; I had never yet been on an airplane. I had only been to three states, Utah, Idaho and Wyoming. I hadn’t experienced seafood other than the fish I had caught in Hyrum Dam. Little did I know how dramatic of a global view of the world I would begin experiencing in four short years.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Smiley Emmy!
Emma has just started smiling. It's absolutely adorable. She's completely camera shy, so the only way we could do this was to be animated ourselves. I apologize ahead of time for my annoying voice, and for the video being SIDEWAYS! haha!
Smiley Emmy
Smiley Emmy
Scuba Time!
So I must be retarded... I cannot seem to post this video any other way than this. Click below to see Ammon, Ty, Dad & Mr. Turtle.
Scuba Video
Scuba Video
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Hawaii
Here are a few pics from our family trip to Hawaii. Thanks again Mom and Dad Brown for taking us! It was SO much fun!
First official family picture at the most gorgeous spot in Hawaii... the national park on Maui.
We really look nothing alike. If I wasn't the one who pulled her out, I would have thought that the nurses switched babies on me!
Famry Foto
Looking smashing in her ruffled swimmy!
How amazing is this shot? Thank goodness Ty, Jen, and Dad are amazing at taking pics! We owe half of these cute shots to them! Thanks again!
Looking for coral with Mads and Jen. It's freakin freezing... until you get used to it! Not exactly the bath water of Phoenix's pools. :) Look how pale I am compared to Jen and Mads!
Snorkeling with Mads.
The Navy Seals
Getting ready for a day of scuba diving!
The sexiest scuba diver I've ever seen!
Mr. Turtle
Ammon & Ty
Extremely exhausted with cousin Cambryn... so cute!
Cambryn... the ultimate Gerber baby!
The cutest couple! Thanks again! Next time we can babysit Madi again "all summer" while you two enjoy Hawaii!.JPG)
Showing some Hawaiian spirit!
Isn't it gorgeous?
I miss this place already!
Picture perfect!
Photo shoot...
I'm shocked!
I'm so cute!
First captured smile! :) You can't really tell in this picture, but she has 2 adorable dimples! Melts my heart!
First time swimming in the pool with mommy and daddy. We forgot her suit... oops! She LOVES water! Such a happy kid... unless of course she's hungry or tired!!!
Monday, August 4, 2008
YAY for family!
Ty, Jen, and their lil Cambryn came down from Utah so we could all go to Hawaii together. Ammon, Emma, and I finally got to meet Cancakes! Cambryn and Emma couldn't be more opposite! Cam has NO hair, the CUTEST personality, and a fabulous tan. Emma has TONS of hair, is completely serious, and is so pale she's see-through! This probably means they'll be best friends. Afterall, opposites attract? :)
After some much needed catching up, we had a book signing for the book my dad wrote about his life. I'm not quite done with it, but love it so far! He's inspired the rest of us to do the same. What a fun way to journal!
Cousin time!!! So these matching outfits were not planned... cute, huh?
Book signing party!!
Ty & I with our crazy kids!
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