10 October 2010 - Las Vegas/St. George

This week was my annual conference that I attend each October. While I was gone, Joanne took the girls to the W&J football game on Saturday. Madeline was in heaven because she likes watching football, the other two girls were happy because they could read their books and each nachos and cotton candy from the concession stand.Mommy bought Madeline a giant novelty foam finger. It was Madeline's turn with her class's teddy bear for the weekend, so he got to go game too.
The teddy bear also helped the girls decorate the front yard a little for Halloween/Fall.
This year, my conference was held in Las Vegas. We were at the Golden Nugget, which is in the downtown Fremont Street area. They've remodeled and updated this area of Las Vegas a lot to make it very walker friendly.
I thought this photo was very interesting. There is a high roof over Fremont Street, which I'm sure provides some much needed shade in the summer. The weather was very pleasant, sunny and mid-70s all week while I was there, so we didn't much need the roof, but it's a permanent installation. In the evenings once the sun goes down, the casinos have lasers and video projectors and they shoot advertisements up on the roof above the street. I stopped to take this picture of a Christian group holding their sign protesting drinking, gambling, and basically everything else most people go to Las Vegas to do. It wasn't until I downloaded the photo that I noticed the ad for Jack Daniels Whiskey projected on the roof behind their sign.
The swimming pool at the Golden Nugget has been ranked by some travel and leisure magazines and publications as one of the best in the world. It has an integrated shark tank that separates the sharks from the swimmers with panels of plexiglass. It's pretty cool.
I decided I couldn't get that close to St. George and not go to see Angie and Darin and their family. The weather there was equally perfect, and my mom and dad were able to come down for the weekend. I miss the mountains in Utah.My dad took the opportunity while he was there to tune their piano. I told him he needs to work on mine when he comes to visit too.
We also decided to hang a giant clock in the entry way of Angie and Darin's house.

On my last day in St. George, I was able to attend Brandon's jazz band concert. They did a four song set right before I had to catch my shuttle back to Las Vegas so that I could fly home the next morning.Here is Brandon with a solo on 'Zoot Suit Riot'.

3 October 2010 - General Conference

I'm sure there are people in the world who *don't* love general conference, but I'm not one of them. For me, it's a highlight every time. I especially like it when my former mission president, Claudio Costa, is invited to speak.

Unfortunately, I missed part of the last session on Sunday, because I had to do a funeral in West Virginia. It was for the spouse of a member of my ward. He was only 36 years old, but died from severe complications from alcoholism. The funeral was in Fairmont, WV. I had never been then, and being the edu-geek that I am, I took a few minutes to drive around the campus of Fairmont State University after the funeral before driving home. Here is the plaque at the campus entrance.

This gate marks the south entrance of the fairly small campus.
This is the one-room school house where the University began operations in 1865. It has been renovated and preserved.
The campus administration building.

26 September 2010 - Swim Team

This week was mostly uneventful. The girls decided they didn't want to do soccer this fall, so they tried out for the swim team. Jessica is on the team now, and Emily and Madeline are going to take swimming lessons and then decide if they still want to pursue being on the swim team. I didn't get much in the way of pictures, but Jessica is the one on the second diving block in the pink swimming suit with the blue bottom.

19 September 2010 - Weekend in Delaware

This weekend we decided to go to Delaware to hang with Karl and Jolene's family. We actually went by way of Washington D.C. so that Joanne could participate in a Relief Society temple trip with Jolene and women from their stake. While they were doing that, Karl and I were on kid duty and we took in several soccer games (this one's Kurt's) and ran kids to a variety of other practices too.Later Saturday evening, we watched the BYU game (which wasn't so great), and had a barbecue (which was so great). This is our nephew Trevor watching sports with us.
The girls were less interested in football, but had fun playing games. I think Emily spent most of her time on the trampoline.On Sunday afternoon, around 4:30, we hit the road to come back home. We arrived at about 9:30, and put the kids straight to bed so they could wake up in time for school the next day. It was a quick trip, but lots of fun and worth the effort.

12 September 2010 - Fall Motorcycle Ride

With the number of nice days for motorcycle riding dwindling, I decided that I needed to take advantage, so I've put over 200 miles on my bike in the past week. I took a ride to West Virginia with two friends from church, Matt Lindley and Cliff Bergmann. This is us at a "ski resort" (bunny hill with lift) in West Virginia.We went to Cabela's near Wheeling. I'd never been to Cabela's before.
We saw elephants and zebras there, among many other animals. It was a nice ride and the store was pretty cool too.On Friday evening we had an Apple Harvest festival at the church. There was a dinner and make your own caramel apple table, followed by a talent show that feature mostly children singing along to Taylor Swift or Demi Lovato. Madeline and her friend Emma sang some primary songs, which were a nice break.

On Saturday I took each of the girls for their own long ride. Madeline rode around a lake south of Washington with me, Emily rode to Mingo Creek county park, and Jessica rode out a stretch of the old Cumberland Road with me. Each girl got about 25 miles of riding.

Sunday afternoon was a picture perfect fall day, so I went home after church, took off my suit coat and tie, and took the motorcycle to do my various visits around the ward, putting on another 55 miles in about four hours. Afterward, I picked up my home teaching companion, Jalene (JAY-lyn), and took him to a kickoff meeting for the church's new Duty to God program. Jalene's mom is not a member of the church but his grandma Wanda is. After the activity, we had banana splits (hold the banana for the bishop) and I took Jalene home about 9 PM. It was a long sabbath, but it was an excellent weekend.

5 September 2010 - Labor Day

Labor Day isn't much fun when you work at W&J, because every fall, that's the first day of classes, followed by convocation and an all-campus picnic. Here are two of my faculty friends, Scott and Buba (I'll let you guess which one's which), along with one other faculty member, Lynn at convocation. Instead of going to the all campus picnic, we went to a ruckus at the Larson's house (the Larsons are friends from the ward). We learned how to play Drakkon, a very geeky but kind of fun medieval game.
They have a great backyard that's on three tiers -- a back deck, a grassy area with picnic tables, and a fire pit below that.
Madeline got a kick out of playing in the fire. In this picture, she's with Seth, one of the Larson's six kids.
The swing set is on the lowest level near the fire pit and in front of a small stream.
The ruckus was a fun way to spend Labor Day afternoon.

29 August 2010 - School!

As summer wound down and the return to school appeared on the horizon, we took a couple of our young men from church for a field trip to Google's new Pittsburgh location (our young men's president works there). Google is perennially a Forbes Magazine top five company to work for -- probably because they have a place to play dodge ball with giant yoga balls in a cargo net. Here's a view of urban Pittsburgh from the second story window of Google's new building, which is actually an old Nabisco cookie factory.
With the girls back in school (sorry, no pictures), I had a few free hours to finish up the wishing well I built for them. This is just after paint.
I added a roof and bucket, then we put it under a tree in the backyard near the playhouse.