My 33rd Birthday!!!

Barkley wishes me a happy birthday:

On Jeff's birthday eve, I stayed up until 4AM re-working all my network backups. I moved Backup Exec to a bigger drive, upgraded it to V.12, and upgraded the clients all to V.12 as well. Very Nice. In the morning, I spent a couple hours preparing a report of all the projects I was working on. It was massive. At noon, I met with Jim Jensen for lunch and gave him my report. It went well so I came on home for some birthday fun. On my way (in the Lexus), I listened to both 1010AM (The BBC) and 100.3FM (Easy Listening) and I liked it. It is now official: I am OLD!
At home I flew my new R/C chopper a couple of times and then went out for my annual birthday dinner at Tucanos. You see, Carter and I are members of the Tucanos birthday club and we eat free every January. Byron and Rachelle Martin came with and we showed them how to do Tucanos right.
Finally, right before bed, I saw the two packages from my and Amber's parents. I got a couple notes, a funny card, a little dough, and some sweet hair! I have always wanted to be salt and pepper gray! What a great birthday!

My first Car

SWEET!

Nuclear Sunset

Grandma

Today we traveled up to Aunt Pam's chapel for Grandma's funeral services. As always, it's great to see all of my family. We spent an hour at the family viewing mostly greeting those that we haven't seen for a while. It makes me really miss those yearly trips to Grandpa's farm so many years ago. Without those trips, I doubt I would have any real relationship with all of my cousins.

Unlike most viewings, Grandma actually looked really good lying there in her coffin. She looked just like I remember her, beautiful as ever. Only this time was very different because she was not talking.

I remember once at the farm when I was around 8, I walked into the kitchen looking for food and she started talking to me about something or other. About 15 minutes later she was still talking but hadn't turned to look at me for quite some time so I decided I would just wander off and pick up the conversation whenever I passed by that way again. I wonder if Grandpa ever did the same thing.

Mark, Dave, Pam, Dad, and Chuck all spoke at the funeral and I actually took some notes. But for the most part they agreed on the following: Grandma loved and lived the gospel for her entire life. She was always found reading the scriptures until the day she died. She was the driving force that got her family to the DC temple to be sealed. She was as thrifty as the day is long. She farmed and canned and preserved and prepared so that a family with so little could feel like they had much. She made do with what she could find, often making clothes and blankets out of feed sacks and factory scraps. I am not sure if she was the first but it appears she was definitely the one who passed the love of reading down to her children.

At the end of the service the area 70 said a few words calling the service "a sacred moment". He said that he always tries to take one lesson from events like these and this was his for today: "The lives of faithful parents will bless their children for all eternity." It's easy to agree with such a statement when you walk into a room of over 150 of Grandma's decedents and feel the love, respect, and happiness that we've been so blessed with. Thank you for your fine example and we look forward to our next reunion.

Ellie's Baptism

This morning we got to go to Ellie Laws' baptism and then to a waffle breakfast at Dru's moms house in Provo. Ellie and Elaina were as happy and as goofy as ever.


It's fun to have both sets of girls together again.

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: