The "Dirty Room" finally clean

Ever since we refinished the basement, but left the one bedroom unfinished, Brooklyn has nicknamed that room the "dirty" room. The picture above is what the room looked like shortly after the demolishion crew came through. Both Brooklyn and Isaac know that room is off limits. Well, we have finally finished the "dirty" room. It's been a long project with laying the tile and putting up the beadboard, repainting the room and of course all of the little touch-ups. I've had to repair huge cracks around the window frames where the corner bead was pretty damaged when the demolishion crew tore out the old drywall. I've had to re-texture several areas as well, but you would never know now. If I could count all of the cool new skills I've learned working on that room and this house in general, I'd practically need a book. We cut the red ribbon on the room last night and the kids were finally allowed to play in their new room. Of course the floor is a little cold with it being tile, but it finally looks complete again. Brooklyn will still sleep upstairs in her bed, but this room is now the play room. Let's just hope that covering up the hole in the corner where the sump pump was doesn't come back to haunt us. Actually it won't haunt us. It will haunt those who move into the house, so why do we care!

The Alpine Slide

What a wonderful Saturday it was yesterday. The weather couldn't have been better. As a Christmas present from last year, Mike and Marinda decided to treat the family to a ride on the Alpine Slide in Park City and then a picnic afterwards. We headed up to Provo Canyon and met everyone there at about noon. Brooklyn had been on the Alpine slide at Snowbird but didn't remember it, so it was a first for the kids. They have actually added two more lanes to the slide there in Park City to make a total of 4 lanes. The chair lift up to the top was nice although Isaac's little heart was pounding the whole way up. He wanted so badly to stand up in the chair and look around. Tami rode down the slide with Isaac and I rode down with Brooklyn. The kids sure loved it too. Isaac thought it was fun but "a little bit scary."


After the slide we found a nice little park in town and had a lovely picnic. With BBQ'ed shish cabobs including various marinated types of chicken, fresh peppers, onions and tomatos, all fresh from Mike and Marinda's garden (except of course for the chicken). I love this time of year, expecially with all of the fall colors. The trees up the canyon were absolutly vibrant with bright reds, yellows and oranges. You can catch just a glimpse of that in the picture below. Imagine the colors you see in the picture below, but everywhere!

Spanish Fork 1/2 Marathon

Tami is the running maniac these days. She compteted in the Spanish Fork 1/2 marathon on Saturday the 10th of Sep. She did surprisingly well. By far the longest run she has ever done. Her finishing time was 1 hr 53 min placing 6th out of 13 in her age group. She even won a Nike duffle bag. She ran it with her brother Brian and her dad. All three of them did very well. Her goal is to ultimately run a full marathon sometime next year. I've thought many a time that I should join her, but my aspirations aren't nearly as high as hers. We'll see.

First day at Pre-school

Tuesday was Brooklyn's first day at pre-school. She was so excited. We went out and bought her a little backpack and some pencils. She takes classes 2 times a week at a place that also offers gymnastics classes. They do academic activites for part of the time and then spend some time doing gymnastics type of stuff. She really enjoys it. Trying to get them to go to sleep early is the only hard part now.

The Healing Field

Happy September 11th, everone. This morning was Stake Conference, which is always enjoyable with two young children. After getting home we went up to Sandy to be with family for Stephanie's birthday. On the way up we stopped at The Healing Field in Sandy. We've made this a yearly tradition ever since 9/11. For those of you not familiar with this, go to www.healingfield.org. Sandy was the first to do it, but it has since spread nationwide. Basically they have put up a flag for each of the 3,031 people that died as a result of the crashes of 9/11. Very cool to see that many flags. The kids sure enjoy running through them too.


On each of the flag poles there is a laminated card with the names of each person who died including a small excerpt about who the were. There is also a ribbon tied to each flag pole with the name of anyone that has since been killed as a result of the War on Terrorism after the 9/11 attacks. Anyway, hard to believe it's been 4 years since that happened. I recorded some video footage on the one year anniversary in 2002 and took some time to watch it last night. I also ran across a very cool website with several slideshows put to music. The slideshows are all very well done and are put to some great music. The producer must be LDS seeing that there are several songs from the Brigham Young choirs and even Kurt Bestor. Please check it out by clicking HERE. Among my favorites are "Untill Then..." and "9/11/01"

Finally home

So, the plane ride home wasn't nearly as bad as I was expecting. I was told that the best way to overcome the jet lag is to force myself to stay awake on the plane, and that I did thanks to a few movies on the plane and Season 4 of 24 (the TV series). I actually watched almost 7 episodes, which about used up my 2 laptop batteries I had with me. My plane left at 3:30 pm on Sunday and arrived in Salt Lake at 2:00 pm on Sunday. Kind of cool to experience Sunday morning twice.

After getting to the airport in SLC, Tami and the kids met me there and we drove to Temple Square and walked around a bit to take advantage of gas prices since we were down that way already. Once home, we opened gifts I had brought back from Japan and enjoyed the afternoon and a BBQ together. It's really good to be home. I didn't actually go to bed until about 10:00 Sunday night (awake for almost 30 hours), but after an 11 hour night's sleep, I actually felt pretty good Monday. I swear that the kids look older. Especially Isaac. I think most of it though is from the nice tan that the kids got while down in California at the beach for a week, which they thoroughly enjoyed.

Coming Home!!!!

Well, the 2 weeks here in Japan have come to an end. It has been a very neat experience. Once in a lifetime. Tokyo is a fine place. Dang expensive but fine. I have gotten use to the hoards of people going every which way. Coming back home to Utah will be a change. I'm so looking forward to the dry climate though. I'm ready to get out of this humidity and "sticky" heat. It is Sunday morning right now, still Saturday night back home. The plane ride home will be long and tiring. I'm going to try to stay awake as long as possible so that I can get rid of the jet lag quickly. Maybe I'll come back someday to vacation. I'll have to be a millionaire though to afford vacationing in Tokyo. Maybe it's cheaper in the outer cities.

Good news. There have been about 5 people that have come to see the house while Tami was gone in California. Only 3 people left their cards though. They were concerned about the hole in the basement floor though, so I think we'll be covering that up soon. It will be nice to get home and get into the "buy/sell" mode again and be able to focus on the months ahead. If anyone wants to see a cool virtual tour of our home, click here.

I hope you have enjoyed the blog I've kept while here and have been able to experience a little of what I have over the last two weeks. Its been fun posting it.

So, from Tokyo, Japan . . . Sayonara!

More thoughts on Japan

I'm going to continue my thoughts and observations I've made over the last week. I appologize if some of them are pretty random.

1. Wendy's Frostys are not the same here as back home. They remind me more of a weak soft serve chocolate ice cream.

2. Most restaurants have two floors here. The second floor is normally just for eating. Most have a plasma monitor screen on the bottom floor with a video camera of the 2nd floor to give people an idea of how crowded it may be.

3. It amazes me how some of these women can actually run in their high heels. Some of these women are practically sprinting to catch a train. Very talented.

4. There's a lot of bowlegged people down here. Not sure where they get it from, but it's all over the place.

5. Every car has a GPS/DVD system. If it isn't built into the dash, it is mounted on the dash itself. I've actually seen some of these cars look like they're pulling TV signals too.

6. Cell phones are crazy here. And they are all the flip phone (clam shell) type. Each cell has a camera too which is at least a 1.3 Mega pixel camera. However people don't use their cell phones on the Subways and trains. It's an etiquette thing. For this reason, inside the subway and train cars, you could almost hear a pin drop. It's surprisingly quiet at least when the recorded announcer voice isn't playing. However as you look down the car, probably half of them are staring at their cell phones either chatting, surfing the web or playing a game or taking candid pictures.

7. Umbrellas are popular here even when it isn't raining. Most women use umbrellas to shield themselves from the sun.

8. They're pretty environmentally aware down here, so each fast food restaurant has a separate trash can for the plastic items, the cups and then the paper items.

9. Tokyo is a very clean city. Cleaner than the States. The subway and train stations are incredibly clean. You never see any trash anywhere. Makings traveling via the rail very nice.

10. You can only take so much of CNN! Too bad it's the only tv channel in English down here. I definitely have gotten my fair share of Hurricane Katrina new coverage.