My Christmas Snowman

I was very naughty this Christmas.

Anybody who knows me will most likely be shocked by this entry. For my entire life, I have worked and saved and worked and saved and then worked and saved some more. I work for the love of work and save for the love of money. Not what money can do necessarily, but money in and of its self.

When I was 10 I would mow lawns for $10 and $20 a pop. Instead of running out and spending it, I would iron it on the ironing board and stack it in a neatly pressed piles along with all its friends I had collected. Before I was even twelve, I can remember counting up into the thousands, only to put the stacks away again, eager to make it even taller the next week. When I had to give away some of my prized green possessions, I always made sure that I was somehow making money or getting something for half of it's actual value. That way I could sell it later and be better of than when I started.

My cars have been that way for the most part. Each car I have owned, I have either sold later for a profit or driven them so long that the price over time has become next to nothing. This car, I hope, will be no exception.

So here is how the current story goes: In addition to money, I have loved cars my whole life. Unfortunately, cars have always taken a back seat to money so I have only owned older, less expensive ones that get me from A to B. I often hear people of my grandparents generation talk about that one car they had when they were young like "the first convertible in town", "the '65 Rambler" or even "the '63 Stingray split window coupe". I wanted to have a car that I could look back on with that type of nostalgia. Don't get me wrong, I have a special place in my heart for all the Acuras and Jeeps that have treated me so well over the years but it was time for that one car!

So I started looking and probably looked too much. In fact, that's why Amber finally said go ahead and do it! It was to get me off of the car web sites and back to reality. When all was said and done, I found a nearly brand new 2007 with 6,000 miles on it and paid $10,000 less than book value. In fact, the dealer I bought it from willingly lost $5K on the sale because they couldn't sell summer sports car in the mountains in the winter. Well let's hope it holds its value as well I've planned. So without further ado, here she is, the 2007 Lexus IS250:

"Will you play cars with me?"

Riding in the foothills

One of the things I really like doing is hopping on the bikes and running up the street to the PG/AF foothills. For the most part it's wide dirt trails and access roads but if you get closer to American Fork and clime a little, you can get in to some pretty technical single track riding. Today Darren Krutzinger and I spent a couple hours exploring some very tight deer paths and had a great time.

We also hit some massive mud puddles and got pretty soaked and dirty. At one point Darren didn't see a set of triple puddles coming up right before a turn and launched out of the third puddle (at full speed) down a pretty steep hillside. After separating early, both he and his bike tumbled about 50 feet before coming to a stop. Luckily, Darren was find and the bike was just a little tweaked.

Here they are all cleaned up after a hard day at work (Yamaha YZF426):

Arctic Circle

One of our fun trips to Artic Circle. I think this time we rode our bikes and just had ice cream.

Jump On What?

Just 4 minutes away in Lindon is the coolest place called Jump On It! It's a warehouse with wall to wall trampolines; probably about 75 of them. There are even two of the walls that have trampolines mounted at 45 degree angles. Amber missed out on the fun but I am sure she had a great time at Cindy Lynn's bridal shower.

I think Elaina is tired.

Carter's Entourage!

Any time we return home from a family outing, these kids come running. Who are they? Carter's Entourage! Sam Sutton, Tristan Wamsly, Braden and Logan Hall. Without Carter, they mull around the neighborhood watching our house for a sign of #9.
Here they are checking Carter's chore chart in the morning. They all know that Carter can't play any video games until he earns his 6 stickers so they all pitch in & help him out.

New Tie-Down rails in the trailer.

I am not much of a project guy so when I actually accomplish one, I need to document it. Per Dru's recommendation, I mounted SuperStrut upside down with hidden bolts. That way the floor is still smooth for sliding stuff across it.
Here we see Ben's & my YZ426F's and Jenny's TTR230. Sometimes we'll throw the kids quad in as well.

Jet Ski's on Utah Lake

I woke up with a wild hair this Saturday and ran out to play Paintball. Well I couldn't get my tanks filled so I decided to make good on my threat to rent some Wave Runners and spend a day on Utah Lake. We invited the Suttons to share the cost and the fun. Unfortunately, their costs went way up when Robbie sucked up some rocks and ruined one of the impellers.




Even with one ski, we had tons of fun and got to go out plenty of times. These things are so stable that I was able to crank the handlebars all the way while going full speed. That's pretty fast on these 1400's.

Fathers and Sons 08'

So this is Carter & my 4th Father's & Sons outing. The first was pretty bad because they had it in a very fresh cow pasture, SICK! The second two were at the Lindon Stake property up past Heber which was a very nice facility. There we got to do a lot of canoeing, hiking and ride a couple zip lines. The only downfall was the frigid water. A 4 year old carter was very surprised when he jumped in from the zip line.

This year the outing was at Burriston Ponds in Mona. We didn't even think about dinner until we were already there so we ate at one of the only 3 businesses in Mona, the Big Burger. The food there was actually really good and we got to soak up some small town livin'.
By the way, Carter just lost his first tooth.
After dinner, I took Buster out for his first shooting lesson. The .22 is still a little heavy for him but he did well and really enjoyed the experince.
Yeah, I guess I am a little bit Redneck.After shooting, we ate S'mores at the campfire and finally got around to putting up our tent. There was a kid in the tent next to ours with hooping cough and a bunch of loud drunks across the pond so we decided to pick up and move campsites. We finally settled in about 11:30 and both slept like babies. It was a nice warm night and we barely needed sleeping bags.
The next morning we barely made it to breakfast so they had to cook us up a special order of pancakes, sausage, eggs, and hash browns. After that, Carter went fishing, canoeing, and then fishing while canoeing. Bad Idea. His first cast while in the canoe included his entire pole. It took me a bout 15 minutes and 5 dives to locate and save his brand new pole.
In true Carter style he said he didn't want to swing on the rope but ended up doing it and having a great time.
I had a lot of fun as well with stunts like this sweet back flip. My next stunt was not so great though. I decided to swing back in to get a better position for a flip and nearly got impaled by the tree the rope was tied to. Well that was over a week ago and I still have some pretty gnarly scratches and bruises on my back side. We'll just chalk that one up to experience I guess.

Anyway, this is becoming one of my favorite events of the year and I am looking forward to the next one.

Family Reunion - Holden Beach NC

Link to Cindy's description:

It was cool to fly into Wilmington which was only about a half hour away. This was the sweetest airport, complete with rocking chairs.

Last second trip to Logan

So Ambers parents took off at about 8:00 to see Will & Hillary's baby blessing in Logan. As it got closer to 9:00, I started to think how nice it sounded to take a nice drive to Logan and be with her family and maybe visit my Dad and Ramona in their new Smithfield house. So after tying up a few loose ends in our ward, we were off. We had a rushed drive to Logan but got there in plenty of time to participate in the baby blessing.

We enjoyed a nice luncheon in the park with the Smith's and Hillary's family. Then we spent the rest of the day at Dad's house. He let us ride his new motorcycle around so I gave both the kids and Amber rides around Smithfield. We had dinner, threw rocks in the stream, but mostly just sat and talked. We finally got home around 10:30 with both kiddo's asleep in thier car seats. It turned out to be a very fulfilling day.