Break Dancing

I remember the days back in the 80's when I would go over to my friend Brad Nolte's house and we would lay out a piece of cardboard in his living room and "break". Ahh those were the days. I was never really good, but Isaac, Jack and I have since been practicing. Take a look below. Not sure what happened to Isaac's arms. I guess we forgot to wash them or something after he was out playing in the dirt.

Where were you?

So I'm sure the passing away of Pres. Hinckley all sort of caught us off guard. We knew it was going to happen sooner or later. I found out during a stake priesthood meeting Sunday night. The funny thing was that the Stake President was speaking about distractions and that in a conversation with Pres. Bateman (Provo temple president), he said that the #1 problem they have right now in the Provo temple is cell phones, especially in the locker room. Then at about 8:00 pm, when the breaking news of Pres. Hinckley was first aired on TV, a few cell phones went off in the audience. You could see some of the people on the stand sort of rolling their eyes, but then my cell phone went off too. Luckily I had set mine to silent, but I noticed it was Tami. Tami and I have a rule that if I'm in a meeting and she really needs to get a hold of me for something important, I tell her to call me twice in a row. She didn't, so I didn't bother. The Stake President finished and we began to sing the closing hymn when the 1st counselor in the Stake Presidency was called off the stand and out the side door. I thought that was strange. He came back pretty quickly and mentioned something to the Stake President, but I didn't think anything else of it.

Suddenly a text message buzzed through from my sister-in-law Stephanie stating that President Hinckley had just passed away. I still remember the sinking feeling in my stomach and the immediate sadness that swept over me. I was sitting next to the Bishop and I showed him the message and I'll never forget his reaction. He closed his eyes very tightly, looked for a moment upwards and then bowed his head and began to weep. At this time it was getting difficult for me to even finish the song we were singing. I looked up and saw that the Stake President was now weeping as well. However, only a handful of people in the audience probably knew what had happened. I was very much expecting one of the members of the Stake Presidency to get up after the closing prayer and make an announcement, but he didn't. Immediately after everyone began to migrate to the back of the cultural hall for refreshments, people were on their cell phones. I tried calling my parents in San Diego and couldn't get through due to busy circuits.

Anyway, we will all miss President Hinckley. It's strange though because after the initial feeling of sadness I first felt, it was quickly replaced with a feeling of concern for President Monson and what he is now going through. The passing of a dear friend is one thing, but the weight he must feel on his shoulders for what will be coming next is something I can't even imagine. I am so grateful though for the order of the church. It's such a good feeling to know that the Lord is very much aware of every single facet of this church. Prophets come and go. New leaders are called and released. But the work of the Lord continues uninterrupted. What a marvelous work this is!

Lemonade

As we were driving this weekend, we stopped at Arby's to get some lunch and Brooklyn had some lemonade with her sandwich. Not thinking about the context of the question, Brooklyn asked us, "What does 'aid' mean?" We responded that it's another way of helping someone. Her reply was classic, "Then that means I'm drinking lemon-help"

13.1 Miles - Painter's 1/2 Marathon

Well, we did it! Tami and I successfully ran the Painter's Half Marathon in St. George this past weekend. Tami's brother Brian also ran it with us as well as Tami's cousin. The picture above is a before shot. As you can see, the weather was beautiful. We all left Friday afternoon to St. George and carbo-loaded at Fazoli's. We then headed to Littlefield 30-min south of St. George) to stay at Marva's place (Tami's grandma). We were all feeling pretty good about the race and slept pretty well. We were a little worried on the drive back in Saturday morning though when the thermometer on the car read in the 20s. But we were prepared for cold weather. This really was my first big race and as we all huddled (the three of us and about 1500 other runners) we tried to keep warm. The race kicked off at 9:00 and it was slow going until I was able to weave around all the other runners and find some open space. I had my iPod loaded with music this time. I figured the Ensign recordings could wait for another workout. With gloves, hat, running pants and windbreaker, the cold really didn't bother me. The course weaved through neighborhoods and also along a paved parkway trail that really was nice. Quite a bit of up and down, but nothing extreme. Tami said she was able to see me for the first couple of miles but then lost track of me. I had no idea where Brian was. It's so interesting to watch other runners and what they wear especially. I'll bet there were people out there that were easily wearing $150+ worth of brand-name running clothes. Lots of spandex.

At about mile 5 began to realize I had a long ways to go still. I was feeling good and I don't want to say I ever hit "the wall", but I thought about it. After about mile 8, things started to go pretty quickly and before I knew it, I had hit mile 12. Surprisingly all my joints felt good the entire race. I made an effort to walk through the thirst aid stations rather than run through them. I also made sure to drink at every one. I didn't even get blisters on my feet. I was pretty excited to hit the finish line. In my mind, I couldn't imagine thinking that the finish line was just the half way point of the marathon. One thing at a time though. I ended up finishing at about 1 hr 45 min which is an average of about 8 min. miles. My goal was to finish under 2 hours, so I feel good about that pace. Tami's time was 1 hr 56 min, which is under 9 min miles. She felt good about her time too. And Brian showed us all up by finishing in 1 hr 36 min, but for a guy who has run 10 marathons already, I wasn't surprised. The kids were excited to see us at the finish line too.

The worst part about the whole experience was having to sit in a car for 3 1/2 hours to drive back home, take a 45 min break and then drive 3 1/2 more hours to a cabin in Idaho where we spent the weekend. I'll blog about that soon. Let's just say that I was not able to walk upstairs very well Sat. night. Was doing OK on Sunday and by Sunday afternoon was feeling pretty recovered. Today is Tuesday and I plan on running about 3 miles. Can't stop training now. It's hard to believe in about 2 1/2 weeks I'll be running 15 miles just as a training run. Here's some pictures from the race.



This picture of me was at about mile 8.



This one is about 100 yards from the finish line.

One week and counting

Well, I did something today that I can say I have never done before in my life. I ran 10 miles. Sure, I've hiked further than that but never continuously. Tami and registered for the 26th Annual Painter's 1/2 Marathon in St. George next weekend. It's just a small checkpoint race in our training for the Ogden Marathon in May (yes it is 26.2 miles). Tami ran the 10 miles with me this morning as well. It's too cold outside right now, so we headed to the indoor track at BYU for the run. Tami doesn't ever listen to music while running but I have my little iPod Shuffle and which helps me from getting too bored. However, call me crazy, but this morning I actually put the January 2008 Ensign on my iPod and listened to it for the 90 minutes while we ran this morning. Each article is narrated by various people, one of which is a very familiar voice from the temple ceremony and of course Lloyd Newell from Music and the Spoken word usually narrates a few articles.

First ski lesson

Yesterday the kids had their first experience skiing. Novell offered a deal this week to employees and their family for an all day adult lift ticket and lunch for only $22 at Sundance. That's a steal when the normal price for an adult lift ticket is $35. Sundance is just up Provo canyon. It's a much smaller resort than the ones you'd find in the Salt Lake area, but it's close, which is nice. Mike and Marinda came along with us and we received some money from Adele to go towards ski lessons for the kids, so we figured we'd get it all done in one shot.

The kids did wonderfully. They had a private 2 1/2 hour lesson that with "Mike", one of the resort instructors. He gave them a glowing report card. They were going down the little tow rope slope like pros by the end of the lesson. He mentioned that both kids had a lot of stamina and where most kids their age would get tired easily and want to sit and rest, Brooklyn and Isaac didn't stop for one moment. That's what I call dedication. Now if we could just get some of that dedication to trickle over into their household chores, we'd be in business!

Sundance was beautiful and we couldn't have picked a better day to go. It was all of our first time at the resort. We're not going to jump out and buy skis for the kids however. This was just an introduction. Skiing is an expensive sport as we realized between ski rentals, ski lesson costs and the lift tickets. But the pictures are priceless. Follow the link to see some cute videos and clips. You'll also notice some pics of our snowman that we built a week ago. The snow was the perfect consistency for snowman making. Gotta love Utah in the winter!

BE SURE TO CLICK THE PICTURE BELOW, WHICH WILL LINK YOU TO THE FULL ALBUM.

Skiing and Snowmen

Jack's tongue clicking

One of Jack's recent mimics that he loves to do is tongue clicking. He is pretty good at it too. Both Isaac and I are in the background trying to get him to do it.