25 October 2009 - Aunt Jennifer's Visit

Aunt Jennifer came for a visit this weekend. It was a quick trip and she had a lot of things she wanted to do, but the girls still got to spend some time with her.
With Halloween arriving, it's time to carve some pumpkins. Jennifer and Brad Kita came over to the house to help out with the project.Here is a princess pumpkin that didn't get carved, just decorated.Madeline and Emily were champion helpers in getting the pumpkins ready.Emily learned about Christopher Columbus last week, and she got to bring home her craft of the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria. She was very proud of her work.
On Monday, I went to help Opal Shriver at her farm. You may remember that her husband Bill died about a month ago. She and her son Billy decided to auction off their farm equipment and a variety of tools Bill had accumulated over a lifetime of farming. As you can imagine, it was a big job. Many people from the ward helped, and on Saturday, they held an auction which raised thousands of dollars to help secure Opal's future, at least for the next several years. One thing they didn't auction off though was the farm land and house, which Opal will continue to manage for now.

I wasn't able to attend or help with the auction on Saturday, because I went with several of the youth and other leaders from the ward to Washington D.C. for a temple trip. It was a long, tiring day, but it was a blessing to be in the temple. While I was there, I ran into Joanne's cousin Jeremy and his wife Rebbecca. We didn't get to talk much but it was fun to see them and we'll be with them again in a couple of weeks when their son Trenton is baptized. When we returned from the temple trip, we learned that that will be our last temple trip to Washington D.C. Our ward has been reassigned to the Columbus, Ohio temple district, which makes us happy because that temple is and hour and a half closer to us.

18 October 2009 - Fall Break

I was able to paint my new tailgate this weekend, largely because we had a couple of days off school for Fall Break. I thought it turned out pretty good, given that I'm no professional auto painter.I got the bumper too, so a picture with that in place should be coming in short order, once I find some time to get it mounted.

This is a picture of some of my students in my IT & Society class at the college. The little machine they're working with is called an XO laptop, a type of childrens computer designed at MIT for use in third world countries for education. Our college has a few of them, and we like to let the students see how they work, compare them to regular laptops, and decide if how they think they'll work for educational purposes.
The girls had a break from school on Friday for a teacher improvement day. We let them have a movie night and sleep over. We went downstairs to exercise, and when we came back up, we found Jessica and Madeline asleep on the same couch.

11 October 2009 - Fixing the Truck

I spent most of my free time this week working on fixing the atrocities I committed against my truck. I ordered a new tailgate and bumper. The white one is the old rusty one I took off. The black one is the new one, ready to go on.
It took a little time, but I got the new tailgate on and the fit was very nice.Unfortunately due to time limitations, I had to drive around town with a black tailgate and no bumper for a week. My next update will have pictures of the truck with the paint done.

4 October 2009 - Conferences

This week was a week of conferences. Every year I attend the conference of the International Association for Computer Information Systems (IACIS), and pretty much every year, it's on General Conference weekend. This year it was nice because I did not have to travel -- IACIS was in Pittsburgh for the first time in its 49 year history. So I commuted into the city Wednesday through Saturday to attend. It is always excellent to see my old grad school professors and friends.

I'm going to confess to something, so that you can all learn from my mistakes. On Friday night I was leaving the conference in downtown Pittsburgh to go to an area just outside the city where some grad school friends and I were going to eat Chinese food. Traffic was bad and the narrow road I was on was under construction, and it was rush hour. I was late for the dinner appointment, and I took a wrong turn and got stuck in traffic going the wrong way. There was no traffic going the other way, all I needed to do was make a quick three-point turn to get headed the right direction again. In my haste (and admittedly a little frustration), I swung my truck around as far as I could (did I mention the road was narrow), and then threw it in reverse to get turned around before traffic from the other direction arrived. As I quickly backed up, I failed to see a low, but *very* firmly planted guard rail behind me, and I smashed into it with my back bumper. If you click on the pic, you can see the damage even better.

Now, you probably noticed that in addition to a smashed bumper, the tailgate of my truck is pretty badly rusted. That's been happening for a while now, and I've been thinking about replacing it anyway.So I went ahead and ordered a new bumper and tailgate and took the bent bumper off for now. I'll put up some new pics once the little truck has had time to heal. It's 17 years old now, but never costs me a dime (except when I wreck it), and it runs too well to consider getting rid of it!

Since IACIS is only a half day on Saturday each year, I usually get to catch some of the Saturday sessions of general conference. Since I'm the bishop, I get to go open the church for those who don't have it at home (even though I do and Joanne stays home and watches it with the girls).
While I was over at the church for many hours on Saturday and Sunday, I took this picture of the bishop's office door. The door isn't what's remarkable, but rather, the six plaques on either side of it are. We have six full-time missionaries from our ward out right now. From left to right and top to bottom they are:

Devin Young, Long Beach CA, June 2008-2010
Will Urban, Provo UT, January 2009-2011
Kevin Moorehouse, Buenos Aires West Argentina, September 2009-2011
Robert Ealy, Bakersfield CA, November 2007-2009
Calvin Bergmann, Salt Lake City South UT, June 2008-2010
Robert Smith, Santo Domingo Dominican Republic, September 2009-2011

We are very proud of each of these young men and their dedication to the gospel of Jesus Christ.