Lurp's Lounge

2011 In Review

2012-01-26T23:59:00.000-07:00

I don't post much, but when I do... Following are the highlights from our adventures in 2011 in a mere 38 pictures!

January

The year started with a BOC (bag of crap, for the uninformed) from woot.com. As you can see from the picture above, it was a decent haul.

March

Alison had a little bit of Jimmermania coursing through her veins so we took a quick trip to Las Vegas to see the Utes and the Cougars play in their last Mountain West Conference Tournament at the Thomas & Mack Center. We used priceline to get a great deal on a 5-star room at the all-suite, non-gaming, non-smoking Vdara hotel at the new City Center resort on the strip. While the Utes didn't win the tournament, we still had a fantastic time.

The next weekend in March, I went to the first and second rounds of the NCAA tournament in Tucson, Arizona. As always, there was an overload of good food and basketball with my dad, brother, brother-in-laws, uncle and cousins.

April

In April we took a family trip in our new car (more on that below) to Bryce Canyon National Park, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Kodachrome Basin State Park, Escalante Petrified Forest State Park, Anasazi State Park and Capitol Reef National Park. We took advantage of an annual State Parks Pass and the free entrance to the National Parks during Earth Week.

Some phallic rock formation at Kodachrome Basin State Park.

On Easter Sunday, we made a visit to Grosvenor Arch where the Easter Bunny visited the girls. We had the arch to ourselves when I started putting out the candy as Alison and the girls walked to the arch, but before long there were a few other International visitors who looked at me like I was crazy tossing candy out in the sagebrush.

May

May brought Ada's first ballet performance with The Bountiful School of Ballet. She was very excited to be performing for us and did a fantastic job. It was often a struggle for Alison to get her to go to dance each week, but when she is there, she catches on very quickly.

June

In the beginning of June we took a trip out to Antelope Island. We had a picnic of crisp bean burritos and empanadas before we all waded out into the shallow water to a sandbar where the girls could play in the sand.

EDIT: Alison reminded me that we ate tacos and churros for our picnic. Oops.

Alison turned 30 and it was a big deal. She thought that she was going to the temple with the Primary Presidency, but the Primary President was a big help in delivering Alison to the party instead of to the temple. I think she was surprised, but if she wasn't, we were all glad for the Mexican food at Lorena's.

July

Ada and Kate had a Candy Land birthday party where we invited all of their cousins to come and play at Kangaroo Zoo before having pizza and cake at our house. They were spoiled rotten, the kids loved the bouncy toys and everybody did a good job sneaking our nephew Austin all of the candy that his little stomach could handle.

August

At the end of July and into August, we flew to Seattle for a little family trip. Alison has been obsessing about the Pacific Northwest ever since she first read the Twilight books so we decided to make it happen. We purchased the city pass in Seattle which allowed us to visit the Aquarium, take a harbor cruise, visit the Space Needle, visit the Science Museum and go to the Seattle Zoo.

The view from the top of the Space Needle. Ada was very sad because she had fallen face first into a fountain at the Science Museum when she wasn't watching where she was going. Luckily, she wasn't hurt even though the water had been drained from the fountains for maintenance.

Of course we went to a Mariner's game. It was the 14th different major league stadium for me and the 8th for Alison.

It was the night to honor the Seattle Supersonics who've gone missing in Oklahoma somewhere. All of the Sonics greats from the past were there including Gary Payton, Shawn Kemp, Detlef Schrempf, George Karl, Tom Chambers and quite a few others.

We stayed the night in Port Angeles. We drove out to some tide pools where we saw tons of crabs, mussels, anemone and starfish.

From the tide pools we drove to more than a mile above sea level in Olympic National Park in less than an hour (or at least it would have been less than an hour if we didn't have to stop for Ada to throw up and wait for Kate to do her business in a grocery store restroom).

From the Olympic Peninsula, we drove to Vancouver, Canada for a night. We went to the beautiful Capilano Suspension Bridge and park in the rain forest north of downtown.

Yo blog, I'm really happy for you, and Imma let you finish, but I just got to say that this picture of Alison with cocoa all over is one of the best ever.

To finish the month of August off, Ada started kindergarten at Foxboro Elementary in the French Immersion program. It is simply amazing how quickly she and the other kids in the immersion classes can pick things up.

September

Over Labor Day and for the week following, we were finally able to enjoy our Christmas gift from my parents from 2010. They had rented a beach house at Newport beach for the whole family. We drove down and had a fantastic week. There is nothing like walking out your back porch onto one of the most beautiful beaches in California.

Of course we showed our pride in our team. We lucked out that the Utes happened to play at USC the Saturday following our week at the beach house. We stayed down in SoCal for an extra day so that I could go to the game at the Coliseum.

In April we upgraded our car from our little 2000 Chevy Malibu to the 2008 Toyota Highlander Hybrid pictured. We love the new car, especially how quiet it drives and all the extra space. We're taking the 3-car ferry from Newport Beach to Balboa Island in the picture.

Of course we went to Disneyland and California Adventure Land. This was both Ada and Kate's third time at Disneyland. We've climbed up into Tarzan's treehouse for this picture.

When we got home, Kate was finally able to start preschool.

October

It was a beautiful fall in Utah and we tried to take advantage of getting out into the mountains.

The big news for October was the birth of little Lyla. Can you believe that she came into the world with all that red hair?

Alison was a complete champ. She birthed this baby completely drug-free, using hypnobirthing techniques that we learned from books and classes.

Ada and Kate with their new sister.

Lyla was a bunny rabbit for halloween.

Ada was Ariel and Kate was a giraffe.

The new Utah Museum of Natural History was one of the first projects that I worked on when I started my job. The building is finally complete and we were able to visit before it opened to the general public. It is an awesome museum.

November

On a bit of a whim, we decided to drive to Kansas City for Thanksgiving to visit Alison's sister Emily and her family and to be with her sister Angie and her husband who drove up from Houston. We had a blast visiting the Hallmark Crown Center, the model train museum in the beautiful historic Kansas City train station and being with family.

We love visiting presidential libraries (Alison and I have been to John F. Kennedy's and Lyndon B. Johnson's) and we were able to visit Harry Truman's library in Independance, MO. We also made sure to visit the local church historic sites.

Of course the highlight of Thanksgiving was the food (including Hyrum's grilled turkey) and 6 pies. Have you ever seen anybody so proud of their pie? I didn't think so.

On the drive home we stayed a night in Omaha. We took a quick detour to the Mormon Trail Center at Winter Quarters. Aside from the enormous meltdown that Kate suffered when it was time to take the pioneer clothes off, it was a fun visit.

We stopped for a break at the Cabela's store in Kearney, NE.

December

Lyla flashed one of her first smiles that we caught on camera.

The girls in their Christmas dresses.

Christmas Eve at my parents in their new Christmas PJs.

2011 was an adventurous year for the Squire family. Here's to many more adventures in 2012!

Winter Project

2011-12-30T12:42:00.001-07:00

One of our favorite things about this house when we bought it was the "crawl space" below the front living room. This is a smallish room (about 15' x 11') with a ceiling height of 6'. The previous owners of the home were in the process of finishing the room when we first walked through the house. We wanted the house badly enough that we told them to stop work on the room and we had big plans to create a playroom once we moved in.

Fast forward 3 1/2 years and after another Christmas and lots more toys from Santa, we figured that it is finally time to get to work on our playroom.

So, below are the 'before' pictures, hopefully it won't be another year before the after pictures are ready...

The Pacific Northwest

2011-08-23T09:13:00.002-06:00

As a wrap-up to our trip to the Pacific Northwest, I wanted to share our tips and tricks.

CityPASS Seattle

We highly recommend this pass if you are interested in doing more than three of the included attractions. For $59, we got entry to the Seattle Aquarium, a 1-hour Argosy Harbor Cruise, The Pacific Science Center, The Space Needle, Woodland Park Zoo (or Museum of Flight) and the Experience Music Project (which we did not use). The adult admission to each of these attractions is around $20, so we saved $40 each on our visit.

We felt that 2 1/2 days was plenty of time to spend in Seattle. We could have filled additional time if we had it, but we were satisfied.

Olympic Peninsula

This is a place that we would love to visit again. In fact, I could easily spend a week in the area and I would still probably wish for more time. I would have really liked to visit other parts of Olympic National Park, especially the rain forests along the western edge.

Twilight has been pretty big here in Utah, but it does not compare to the obsession that Team Edward and Team Jacob have inspired in their supposed stomping grounds. The Twilight Series has obviously been a major contributor to the tourism in the area.

Vancouver, Canada

Once again, this is somewhere that I would like to spend a whole lot more time. We gave ourselves a little taste of the area and now we would love to return. Both Alison and I were amazed by the multi-cultural makeup of Vancouver. In our few minutes walking along the street, we heard quite a number of different languages and we were both surprised with the amount of French that we heard.

All in all, we traveled:
By air - 1,374 miles
By car - 634 miles
By boat - 13 miles
By foot - Who knows?

The Pacific Northwest - Vancouver, Canada

2011-08-22T20:00:00.006-06:00

We really only had plans to do one thing while in Vancouver.
We took a short drive through Stanley Park on our way to Capilano Park.
This park is home to a 450 foot long suspension bridge that sways 230 feet above the river below. By the end of the bridge, your legs and ankles feel like jelly from having to maintain your balance on the swinging bouncing bridge for so long. The park is a nature preserve of rain forest just minutes from downtown Vancouver.
We also walked on the Treetops Adventure, a series of 10 or so treetop suspension bridges up to 100 feet above the forest floor.
Lastly we walked on the cliffwalk, which is a series of cantilevered suspended walkways high above the river below. This park is not for those afraid of heights. We wrapped up our visit to the park by sharing some delicious chocolate and maple swirled fudge.
After our time at Capilano Park, we begrudgingly had to jump back into the car for our drive back to Seattle, where we would catch our flight home. Luckily it only took us a couple of minutes to cross the border back into the United States.
The girls once again were champs on the flight home and it was sure wonderful to be back in our own beds. It was not nearly as wonderful to be back at work though.

The Pacific Northwest - The Olympic Peninsula

2011-08-22T17:04:00.008-06:00

We started the morning out by heading to the Salt Creek Recreation Area. I had read about some tide pools at this Washington State Park and we were not disappointed.
This is Ada and our trusty rental car at the parking lot for the tidepools. There is a little piece of land that sticks out a couple hundred feet into the ocean. We scheduled our visit to coincide with low-tide so that the entire rock outcropping was above water. During high tide, I believe that the entire tongue is under water. This is the perfect setup for all sorts of marine life. Under every rock were many, many little crabs. It was fun to try and find the largest ones.
Kate walking along the mussels.
We hadn't planned on picking up any of the delicate wildlife, but some boys had pulled this one out of the water and let us hold it.
A couple more large starfish. No two were the same color.
This place was absolutely beautiful. We all enjoyed seeing the crabs, hermit crabs, anemone, starfish, etc. It was a wonderful place to spend a quiet Sunday morning.

We left the tidepools to drive up to Hurricane Ridge at Olympic National Park. The plan was to go from sea level to about a mile above sea level in around an hour. Instead, we had to stop a couple of times for Ada to puke. The drive up to the ridge was beautiful as the road wound through a couple of tunnels and through some of the densest fog and clouds.
Unfortunately we didn't have much time to spend at the National Park. This is the view looking south towards the Olympic mountains and the main area of the National Park.
This is the view to the north. On a clear day you would be able to see the strait and the Canadian Island of Victoria.
We were here on July 31st (which incidentally was our 8th anniversary) and there was still a ton of snow on some of the trails.
We then drove about an hour to Port Townsend on the northwest corner of the Olympic Peninsula. We caught a ferry across the Puget Sound to Coupeville and were on our way to Vancouver, BC.
Late the night before our ferry journey I decided to make a reservation for our ferry trip and as I logged onto the Washington State Ferry site, I realized that there were only a couple of spots left on the ferry. They leave every 45 minutes and I had expected to just go standby, but we were sure glad that we made a reservation because there were probably 50 cars waiting for the few standby slots. We would have been waiting for a long time.
The ferry was brand new and although the crossing only took around 30 minutes, the girls enjoyed some treats and being on the boat.
The longest delay of our entire trip was when we were trying to cross into British Columbia. It took us around 70 minutes to cross the border. August 1st is British Columbia Day or something and apparently everybody was trying to get there for the festivities.

We stayed in a Holiday Inn right downtown and we went for a stroll that evening along Granville Street (much of which was shut down for the holiday celebrations). The crowd was getting to be a little non-family-friendly, so we returned to the hotel for a late dinner.

The Pacific Northwest - Seattle and the Olympic Peninsula

2011-08-21T22:17:00.001-06:00

We began the morning Saturday with bagels from Safeway and a much needed haircut for me before making our first stop at the Seattle, Washington Temple.
The temple was very crowded so we took our first picture from the rear of the temple near where we parked.
Ada and Kate were happy to see a bride and her groom out taking pictures in front of the temple.
This was our attempt at re-enacting this sculpture. Of course Ada had to be the baby.

Our next stop was to another included attraction in the Seattle citypass, the Seattle Woodland Park Zoo. The zoo is smack dab in a residential area of the city, with very limited parking. Once we found a spot on a narrow street a few blocks from the zoo we were on our way.

The zoo reminded me quite a bit of the San Diego Zoo, with large animal exhibits and beautiful, dense forests, although the zoo itself is not nearly as large. We only wanted to spend a couple of hours at the zoo, so we picked and chose the animals that we (and the girls) wanted to see the most.
The girls' first choice was the flamingos.
They each took turns sitting on the flamingo nests (they are keeping the eggs warm under their bums).
It was good practice milking the cows.
Going for a hippo ride.
Kate's favorite animal is the elephant.

After another lunch of chips and snacks it was time to hit the road to drive to Port Angeles on the south edge of the Juan De Fuca Strait (or the northern edge of the Olympic Peninsula). We opted to take the driving route through Tacoma and Bremerton rather than one of many ferry shortcuts across Puget Sound. The drive was fairly uneventful aside from a 45 minute delay for a drawbridge that slowed us down.

Once we got to Port Angeles, we ate at a pizza joint before heading down to the waterfront to walk along the bike/walk/running path.

It was a beautiful evening and we enjoyed the chance to admire some sand sculptures from the previous week. These were quite impressive and the sculptors were from all over the world.

Kate climbing the stairs to an observation tower on the pier. She plans on being a plumber when she grows up.
The south view towards the beautiful Olympic Mountains.
As I mentioned earlier, we were traveling in this part of the country in the very height of tourist season. When we checked into our hotel, I overheard the attendant saying that our Days Inn only had 3 rooms left. We had to book our room in this 2-star hotel for over $150, as many of the other hotels were selling out and I didn't want to be stuck sleeping on the beach.

The Pacific Northwest - Seattle Day 2

2011-08-20T10:23:00.007-06:00

The second day (Friday, July 29) began with me and the girls running to Safeway for some doughnuts and other essential snacks. We ate our doughnuts at the hotel before getting ready for another big day.

We started the morning off with a gorgeous picture of pregnant Alison in front of her favorite skulls - those of the infamous Tyrannosaurus Rex, aka T-Rex, Rex, etc. Obviously, our first attraction of the day was the Pacific Science Center at the Seattle Center.

Our visit to the Science Center started off in the dinosaur room before moving to the...
Space and astronomy area. The girls enjoyed the planetarium show geared specifically for preschoolers. After that, we spent some time in the kids play area before making our way over to...
The bug and insect area. One of Ada's favorite attractions of the day was the...
Butterfly House. We got to see a ton of beautiful butterflies. Unfortunately none of them landed on Ada, but she was able to catch this great shot of one of them on me. Good balance, great composition, decent color - well done Ada.

We had a picnic lunch of potato chips before watching the lovely documentary Born to be Wild in 3D IMAX, after which we headed over to the Space Needle. We were walking through the plaza of the Pacific Science Center and many of the water features and little pools were drained as they were being worked on. There was a loose-chain barrier around the edges of the walkways and Ada was walking with us but staring up at an exhibit on the upper level. She didn't see the loose-chain barrier before walking right through it and falling face first onto the concrete about 30-36" below. Luckily she wasn't hurt, just extremely embarrassed more than anything. It made a loud crashing noise as the loose-chain posts and everything tipped over and crashed to the ground. We felt so bad for the poor girl.
Ada was still a little sad from her earlier mishap.
The line to go up the Space Needle was just over an hour, which is surprising considering the Space Needle is only the 7th tallest building in Seattle anymore.
We enjoyed the views from the top, but in my mind its one of those things that you've only got to do once in life. After the Space Needle we had dinner at McDonald's before driving across town to Safeco Field to watch the Mariners take on the Devil Rays. We had planned on just scalping cheap tickets to the game, but this strategy was deeply flawed. I had expected there to be a glutton of tickets as the Mariners had lost the previous 17 straight games. But, the cheapest three ticket levels were all sold out, the scalpers were not selling anything cheap and we were stuck paying face-value for much better tickets than we had planned on (to add insult to injury, the scalper said if we came on Monday night he could get us $20-$30 tickets for $5 each). The crowds must have been drawn by Sonics Appreciation Night.
They had all of the Sonics greats back to celebrate including Lenny Wilkins, George Karl, Detlef Schrempf, Gary Payton, Shawn Kemp, Tom Chambers, Nate McMillan, Dale Ellis, Hersey Hawkins, etc. It seemed that half the crowd was there wearing Sonics jerseys in celebration.

Kate and Ada do well at the ball games for the first inning or two (then we give them our cell phones to play with...).
We sat high up in the upper deck directly behind home plate.
This was Alison's eighth MLB stadium and my fourteenth. We hope to add one more each before summer is over.

The Pacific Northwest - Seattle

2011-08-20T09:23:00.009-06:00

We wanted to take a family trip with just the four of us sometime this summer, but we didn't really get around to planning one until late June or so. Add to the mix that we didn't have any particular place where we wanted to go and we probably could have thrown darts at a dartboard and ended up happy. Instead, we used some online price tracking tools to find the cheapest flights to anywhere from Salt Lake City. After throwing out Vegas and Boise (we've visited Vegas a number of times, and Boise...), flights on Southwest to Seattle came in on the lowest end of the spectrum. We checked the Mariner's schedule and picked a weekend when they would be in town to set up our visit.

It was fun to take the girls on the airplane. They both were champs and seemed to enjoy themselves. It was also nice to not have to pay for any checked bags because between the four of us and our carseats and stroller, we had a bunch.

The weather was absolutely perfect for our entire trip. The temperature hovered around 80 degrees and we didn't get a lick of rain. Every day in Seattle we had gorgeous views of Mt. Rainier (at 14,411 feet the mountain is the second tallest in the lower 48, but it is one of the most topographically prominent mountains in the entire world).

The first thing that we did once we landed in Seattle was to gasp at the greenery all around. Coming from the uber-dry state of Utah, the dense foliage and beautiful trees are always amazing. Once our gasping was completed, we jumped in our rental car and headed over to Pike's Place Market. I wanted to visit a small Russian bakery, Piroshki-Piroshki, for lunch where Ada and I shared a cheese and meat piroshki (a small meat and cheese filled bun). Alison grabbed lunch at a French bakery before we headed over to watch the fish-throwers. This was Alison's first meat in over four weeks (I had broken my vegetarianism earlier that morning with my favorite Caesar salad bagel from the Salt Lake Airport).

Waiting for Alison and Ada taking a bathroom break.
Apparently she is storing some lunch in her cheeks for later.

We lucked out and didn't have to wait long for the fish sellers to start throwing their wares. They really rocket those things. I almost felt bad for the lady standing behind the fish catcher. She about had a heart attack because she almost got a face full of cod. Luckily, the fish was caught.

Ada was a little nervous to touch the fish, but I convinced her to do so. Before long she started hitting and pounding on the fish on the tables like crazy. It took all that I had to restrain her because I was laughing so hard.

This bronzed pig just outside the market must be a popular icon in Asia, because the whole time we were there, even when the girls were climbing on the pig, there was an Asian reporter and camera crew doing some sort of feature story on the pig.

Our biggest fight the whole time was who would get to sit in the back of the stroller. We did out best to have the girls take turns, but neither one wanted to sit in the front of the stroller. Of course, we bribed whoever was sitting in the front of the stroller with extra treats, fruit snacks and candy.

Next we headed down to the waterfront, but on the way we made the obligatory stop at the bubble-gum wall. We had to take extra care to keep the stroller away from the wall because both Ada and Kate were grabbing for the chewed gum specimens.

Our first Seattle attraction was the Seattle Aquarium. We opted to purchase Seattle City Passes to save on admission to 5 of the 6 included attractions that interested us.

The aquarium was fun for the girls. They enjoyed touching the starfish and seeing the various marine animals.

Our next attraction was a 1-hour fairy ride (oopsie, I meant ferry ride) around the Seattle harbor and Elliot Bay. The girls enjoyed being on the boat and we got some great views of the city. One of my favorite features of our camera is the panoramic pictures, so I'll have a post of just those pictures (but don't expect them for another 6 months or so...).
The Space Needle from the harbor.
Mommy and Kate.

We stopped and ate dinner at some seafood place on one of the piers on our way back to our car. Alison and I had hamburgers (we forced Ada and Kate to share some fish and chips at least).

We stayed the night at Red Lion Hotel in Bellevue. We had wanted to stay closer to downtown (or even in downtown), but all of the hotels were surprisingly expensive this entire trip. We apparently picked the very height of the tourist season for the Pacific Northwest to visit.

Favorite Song

2011-08-02T22:32:00.009-06:00

Ada and Kate are simply obsessed with the following song. Every time that we get in the car, they are begging to hear it on the radio. As you can imagine the radio rarely obliges, but late last night as we were all returning from the airport the song came on the radio and the girls were so excited. Ada knows a good portion of the words and Kate is always begging for the "I won't let you choke song." I love when they just start singing the chorus as they're playing throughout the day.

I present to you Mumford and Sons - The Cave:

Phone Camera Dump #2

2011-02-28T12:10:00.000-07:00

This is the second and final batch of random photos from my phone camera.

I don't recall the specifics of this picture, but it was taken April 11, 2010. Amazingly, today (February 27, 2011) Kate is wearing the same dress.
My good friend Dan took me to a Jazz playoff game. In the lower bowl. We got free shirts. I've always been jealous of the fans at the playoff games (for any team) that get the free shirts. Now I'm one of them.
This is our new playground set. We spent a weekend last June putting it together. The girls absolutely love it.
Bear Lake = cold water, choppy ski. But I love it.
Ada and Kate.
Kate driving the fire truck at our ward summer breakfast.
Kate taking her cousin Max on a drive. She especially likes him when he's shirtless...
Niagara Falls to visit a lighting factory in Canada.
I got to control the lights of Niagara Falls while everybody was watching the fireworks. Ada and Alison were able to pull up a webcam of the falls and tell me what colors to change the falls. It was awesome!
Ada and her cousin Ella.
My Sunday lunches after church are the best - especially in the fall when there is football involved.
This is a politicians graveyard near RES.
Sleeping Beauty wearing Cruella DeVil's beau's jacket.
Gameday at RES. Go Utes.
Kate loves her chu-law-ket.
Ada was looking forward to telling Santa what she wanted for Christmas. She was excited when she finally got the chance.
Kate, Alison and Ada on the Mickey Ferris Wheel at California Adventureland.
As the title suggests, this is the "World's Largest Golden Nugget" housed at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas Nevada. We stayed here for $30 on our way home from Southern Cal (priceline.com).
Grandma holding Brynlee at the Utah-BYU game at the Huntsman Center.
Sundays are tough days.
I take Alison out to a nice restaurant and this is what I get?

10 Years Ago...

2011-02-27T15:49:00.004-07:00

January 2001

I didn't think that there was very much that went on during the month, but after making a list this may turn out to be a long post. After returning from Germany, that same night I took the train to Smolensk to be reunited with my companion and district. For the next few weeks I was especially grateful to be able to continue serving as a missionary.

Every week I felt like I was beginning to understand the language better and better. The understanding certainly came more quickly than being able to speak well. A new group of missionaries from the MTC came to our mission this month. I was excited to no longer be the greenest of the elders in the city. Unfortunately, the new elder that was assigned to Smolensk had studied Russian in high school and spoke pretty well. I then had the members of the branch asking me why the new missionary spoke way better than I did.

A couple of times during the month we took the night train to Moscow to attend zone leader meetings and zone conference. It was always exhausting to spend two short nights in a row on the train. I always really loved returning to Moscow in those early days of my mission. It was a magical city with so many amenities. I loved serving in the city of Smolensk with its small branch, but I envied the missionaries that were in Moscow. On one of the visits to Moscow, I made a stop at the Church doctor's apartment for him to look at my eye. He treated us to McDonald's for the first time while in Russia.

My companion was the group leader for the small branch so we spent a lot of time visiting and interviewing the members. There was a lot of contention in the branch and we were trying to figure out why. One single sister that we visited a couple of times lived a 1 1/2 hour bus ride from the city (right near Russia's border with Belarus). Her small log house was another hours walk on a little trail from the bus stop. She did not have running water, electricity or gas. We would help her carry water up from the river a couple hundred yards down the hill as well as chop wood for her stove. It was such a humbling place to visit. Right in the middle of her one-bedroom house was a huge wood-burning stove (built right into the house). During the winter everybody slept on top of the stove. I remember once waiting for my companion while I was up on top of the stove and falling asleep. I'm embarrassed to say that I actually fell asleep a few times at member's houses. Not understanding the language with a companion that could talk for hours, would just lull me to sleep.

The members were often so kind and would feed us from their scarce supplies. During the month I had the chance to eat calamari for the first time, sugared-liver, kholodets (a cold meat jelly) and salo (raw pig fat-and often with the hairy skin still attached). Aside from the calamari, which was surprisingly good, I would not recommend any of the other dishes.

I had been on my mission for 4 months. In that time I had now read the Book of Mormon 4 times. I don't recall if I had any intention of reading it 24 times during my mission, but I don't believe that was the case. Regardless, I gained a deeper testimony of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon. I realized that it was the keystone of our religion and much of the truth of our religion hinged upon whether or not the Book of Mormon was true. I knew it then and I still know it today that the Book of Mormon is true!

This month was also the first time that I was able to be a pall-bearer. A young member of the branch's grandmother had died. I believe that many Russians have a superstition against family members carrying the casket so we were asked to help. The lady had died on the fourth floor of an apartment building and we had to carry the casket (with her body in it) down the four narrow flights of stairs. It was a miserable feeling maneuvering the casket down the stairs, but we were on our missions to serve and we were always glad for the opportunity to help.

I started teaching piano lessons to a couple of the members of the branch who were interested. I played the piano every week in sacrament meeting, for the choir and any other time that an accompanist was needed. During this same time we went from having a two-hour church block to trying out a three-hour block. It was amazing to see the branch grow together. We had some difficulty registering The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the city. The mission accountant from Moscow had to come and help us work through the red-tape and pay a significant amount in taxes.

January in Russia is obviously a cold time of year, but it is also very icy. As all of the snow falls on public sidewalks or in front of apartment buildings, nobody has the initiative of clearing it off in front of their buildings. I knew that I would succumb to the slipperiness of the ice and I went down a couple of times during the month. Luckily I was not injured badly, but branch members and even a missionary in our zone were knocked unconscious after falling on the dangerous ice.

On one p-day my companion and I were walking to the internet cafe. We took a shortcut across one of the streets and were whistled at by a policeman. He ticketed my companion for jay-walking (15 ruble fine - which is less than $.50). He then turned to me to ask if I had any money. I told him I didn't (I lied...) and so he decided not to ticket me. The money would have only gone into his pocket anyways, but I probably should have been more honest. :)

Phone Camera Dump #1

2011-01-30T22:03:00.007-07:00

I oughta make this a habit more often, but this is part 1 of the photos that were taken with my phone in the last 18 months or so.

Ada and Kate rocking at Cracker Barrel.
SLC Farmer's Market
Me and Coach Boylen
Kate and her cousin Grace
Ada at Applebee's
Kate at Applebee's
Alison with some random dragonl
Our cruise ship from 2009

Ada and Kate - Halloween 2009
Utes Blackout 2009
Model of Station Park in Farmington, UT
Utah State/Boise State game
Celebrating Real Salt Lake's national championship
Ada - Christmas morning 2009
Having a good time at Lowe's
Ice cream at Baskin Robbins
Our living room wall
NCAA basketball tournament 2010 in Salt Lake City at EnergySolutions Arena
Ada stuck in the kindergarten playground toy

Don't fret, there are more to come.

10 Years Ago...

2011-01-23T21:24:00.000-07:00

December 25, 2000 - January 3, 2001 (Warning - Looooooong Post about an eye problem)

This is when things started to get very interesting... I woke up on Christmas Day and my eye was still killing me. I couldn't see anything out of my right eye and it hurt to keep it open. Light was especially painful. As early as we could Christmas morning, my companion and I went to an eye clinic to get my eye checked out. The doctors took a look at it and decided that I had bacterial keratitis as well as some sort of infection in the back of my eye or in the fluid in the eye.

We returned back to our apartment and called the President Romney to find out what we should do. He suggested to us to get a second opinion and to then call him back. We went to the nicest hospital in Smolensk and had my eye checked again. They came to the same conclusions and gave us a list of medicines that we should buy from the pharmacy. We returned to another apartment in our district (where the rest of the district was celebrating Christmas) and called President Romney. He told us to wait while he contacted the church doctor (a missionary stationed in Frankfurt, Germany). The doctor finally called us directly and we spoke on the phone about my condition. He advised us to sit tight until we heard back from President Romney.

When President Romney called us back, he was crying and having a hard time composing himself. He advised us to get the shot that the Russian doctors had advised and that the Church would be air evacuating me from Smolensk to Germany. We sent some other elders to my apartment to pack my bags while I went to get a shot (we had to bring our own needles and drugs to the hospital. That's the only way that you know that you're getting sterilized equipment). We returned to the nicest hospital in Smolensk for the shot. My companion had to stand behind me as the eye doctor injected me right into the eye by going through the fleshy spot right in the outside corner of my eye. This was about as painful as anything I have ever experienced. After the shot, I was quite woozy and tried to lay down, but a nurse walking by freaked out and made me sit up and was slapping my cheeks and waving smelling salts under my nose. I was close to passing out but I just had to get out of there. The place stunk like pee, rotting wood, and everything else (remember, this was the nicest hospital in the city), but there were still people walking through the halls moaning, with dripping, infected sores stinking up the place. It has never felt so good to get out into the cold, fresh air of the December evening.

It turned out that the medical evacuation company was unable to evacuate me from Smolensk (in breach of their contract with the Church; I heard the Church was going to sue...), so we had to take a taxi from Smolensk to Moscow. My companion and I left Smolensk at 7:30 PM and took the most frightening drive of my life. It was snowing, it was a two-lane road and our driver was not pleased to be driving to Moscow. We arrived right at 1:00 AM and slept on the floor of the office elders' apartment. After two hours of sleep we were back up and on our way to the Moscow International Airport at 4:00 AM. My Lufthansa plane ticket to Germany had inadvertently been purchased for January 26th instead of December 26th so President Romney had to come along to approve paying whatever the cost to have the ticket changed to the first flight this morning. The whole time I was in a daze, because I just couldn't imagine that my condition was as bad as everybody was saying it was.

The flight was uneventful but when I finally landed in Frankfurt, Germany, I was unable to find the mission doctor or his wife. The only phone number I knew was my parents, but I didn't even have any money with which I could call home. The only thing that I could do was stand and wait, which I did for 90 minutes before the doctor's wife finally found me. It turns out that they were only used to picking up people who had flown in from within the EU and did not have to go through customs like I did. We went straight to the eye doctor.

The mission doctor was angry when he found out that I had had a shot in my eye. Apparently it was supposed to go in my thigh, but that information wasn't passed on to me. He also said that if I had what the Russians had diagnosed me with I would be the first known case in the modern world to have whatever it was I had been diagnosed with (unless my eye had ever previously been punctured, not including the Russian shot). I was diagnosed by the German eye-doctor and given some topical antibiotics and other creams that had to be put on my eye every couple of hours. For the next 4-5 days, I just spent time with the mission doctor and his wife.

As soon as we got back to the mission doctor's apartment, his wife advised me to call home to let my parents know that I was ok. I was a little hesitant as it wasn't Christmas anymore and I had missed my chance to call home. My parents and family had been waiting for me to call home on Christmas Day at around 7:00 AM Utah time. I was somewhat preoccupied at this time (getting a shot in my eye) so my mission president called my family at about 10 minutes to 7:00 and let them know that I was being medically evacuated to Germany. I can only imagine what was going through their minds at the time. Anyways, I called home and was glad that I did because my mom had stayed home from work waiting for my call and my family was fasting and diligently praying for my speedy recovery.

Staying with the doctor and his wife was easily the most difficult part of my mission up to that point. I was bored, I was lonely, I was homesick (for the first and probably last time) and I felt like I was wasting my time for a little eye problem. While in Germany, though, I was able to have a bunch of great experiences. We spent a lot of time with the Area Presidency because they lived on the same street and in the apartment above us. We were able to do a session at the Frankfurt Temple and visit McDonald's. Best of all, for three days I was able to join a couple of Frankfurt elders and go tracting (for the only time on my mission) and go to a New Year's Eve party at the Frankfurt, Germany's Mission President's house. We had to spend most of New Year's Day indoors as the streets were full of celebrating drunkards, but later in the afternoon we went caroling with the district and met people from Kazakhstan, Africa, Afghanistan, China, Great Britain, Turkey, etc. On Sunday we went to the International Ward and met people from Sweden, France, United States, Germany, Poland, etc. It was amazing how diverse the place was.

I originally thought that I would be going back after I had only been there for about 4 days, but my eye wasn't healing as well as they wanted it to so I was forced to stay the weekend. After my visit on the Tuesday following the weekend, the doctors recommended surgery which meant that I would probably have to return home to have it done. I was devastated. I'm not sure that I've ever prayed so hard as I did then. I wanted nothing more than to be able to return to my mission in Russia. Not too long after I had finished pouring my desperate heart out I went out and heard the doctor talking on the phone to Salt Lake City. I thought that they were making flight plans for me to return home, but instead he asked if I was ready to return to Moscow.

I flew Aeroflot back to Moscow and was very excited when the turbulent flight touched down. My heart was in my throat most of the flight from the turbulence and as soon as we were safely on the snowy ground in Moscow, the whole plane erupted into cheers. It's a European thing, but it still made me laugh. I was thrilled to be back in Russia and late that night I was alone back on the overnight train to my home in Smolensk. It's hard to explain how relieved I was for the opportunity to complete my mission as planned. I'd like to think that from that day on I was an especially diligent missionary, because I knew just how quickly the tides could turn.

I also made it a point to always carry a temple recommend with me throughout my mission (and the rest of my life...) even though I was nowhere near a temple. Without it I would not have been able to attend the session in Frankfurt which was something that I sorely needed at the time.

I wore glasses for the rest of my mission and for a time once I was home and after I had gotten new contacts, I would take out my contacts every night just as I was supposed to My eye problem may have been caused or at least exacerbated by me sleeping in my contacts for days on end. Now, I'm back to my old self and tend to leave my contacts in for 2-6 months without taking them out at all. the next step is to save up for Lasik and I won't need contacts at all.

Me and two elders from Armenia (one with a tumor and one with a kidney stone) at the Frankfurt Temple.

At McDonald's in Germany. If you look closely, my right eye is half full of blood from the misplaced shot into my eye.

10 Years Ago...

2011-01-16T22:26:00.002-07:00

December 14, 2000 - December 24, 2000

We continued to teach my first investigator, Lilia (our landlady) and she continued to progress in the gospel. We were able to teach first discussions to her daughters and many of their friends. I compared one of the girls to my younger sister Rachelle, until she started smoking (at 16 or 17). We often saw kids of 10 or 11 years old smoking. During our 2nd discussion with Lilia, we were able to commit her to be baptized on January 6th, for which I was very excited. She was a fantastic first investigator for a green missionary. She was always encouraging me in my Russian and never faulting me for my inability to speak.

About every two weeks I would wash my clothes in the bathtub. Some of the apartments that we would live in would have small washing buckets, but because we were in a new missionary apartment, many of those types of conveniences were not yet available.

I was still new enough in the mission field to make a big deal about every piece of mail that I received. To those that ever wrote me while I was on my mission I am very grateful, but by the end of the mission, the letters from home just remind you that your time there will someday have to end.

We also continued to get to know the members in the small Smolensk branch. One of the young men, Max, was in the hospital and we visited him there. From my journal: "This morning we visited Max at the hospital. I am not sure why he's there but he looks fine. He'll be there for two weeks or something. I don't ever want to go to a Russian Hospital. We brought him some fruit and juice. (Emphasis added)"

A couple of days later (12/18) my companion decided to go to the doctor's office because he had been sick for quite a while. Another entry from my journal: "This morning we went to the doctor's office. (Elder Rudenko) has been sick lately. He's got bronchitis. They took x-rays and just checked his breathing. The clinics here are horrible. Russia never was America's equal." We continued to go to the hospital for him to get checked every day for about the next week. One day we went to 8 pharmacy's trying to find one that had the drugs he had been prescribed, but we never found them.

A journal entry from another one of our visits to the hospital for my companion: "Hello. Today was a really good day. It was a little strange though too though. This morning we went to the doctor's office so my companion could do "inhalations." When we got there they couldn't do them because the hospital didn't have any water - hot or cold. It was all turned off. --> Only in Russia...

On Christmas Eve, Sunday December 24, 2000, we had our regular Sabbath meetings and were lucky to have President and Sister Romney in attendance. From my journal: "This morning after my shower my eye really started hurting. I washed it under filtered water but it still really hurts. All day long it has really bothered me." I wore my contacts to church, but had to leave right before sacrament meeting to run home and take them out. We came back to church and I was able to play the piano for all of the meetings. That night we had a discussion with Yuri, another one of our investigators: "The whole time there [at the discussion] my eye was hurting so bad. Tonight I called Sister Romney and we think that it's pink-eye. I even went to bed early."

I was excited to call home to my family the next day (Christmas) at 7:00 AM their time, which would have been around 5:00 PM Smolensk time. Sometimes, things don't go as planned.

AM Radio

2011-01-13T00:10:00.002-07:00

I'm sitting here in a hotel room in Riverton, Wyoming having just completed the 5.25 hour drive from Salt Lake City. Most of the drive was done in the dark and the skies were cloudy but not snowing. This all changed when I crossed the continental divide and began climbing up to South Pass (interestingly enough, you cross the continental divide long before the summit because there is a bit of a basin where the water flows neither to the Atlantic (Gulf of Mexico) or the Pacific (Gulf of California)). I didn't expect the weather to be any different at the mountain pass, but the wind kicked up, it was snowing and it must have been well below 0 degrees Fahrenheit (considering it is 1 degree here and I'm a few thousand feet lower in elevation).

As soon as the blowing snow started coming, I immediately couldn't see anything, not from the whiteout conditions, but because my car couldn't keep my windshield warm enough to keep the blowing snow from turning into ice on my windshield as soon as it hit. Luckily, the roads were generally pretty empty and I was able to find a place to pull over and defrost my window before continuing, although the problem never completely disappeared with the blowing snow.

I've always wondered why I-80 and other roads in Wyoming are often closed during snowstorms, because there never seems to be that much snow on the ground. Instead, what happens is that the snow blows so hard that you simply cannot see the road. I had no trouble seeing the marker posts on the side of the road, but the blowing snow made it virtually impossible to see the lines on the road. It was a beautiful sight, because the snow appears to just be flowing from one side of the road to the other. There is nothing that a snowplow can do in conditions like those. Luckily, as soon as I came down the mountain into Lander, the snow stopped and it was back to the beautiful, cold evening that it had been before.

I passed most of the time in the car listening to a biography of Albert Einstein, but I also passed the time trying to find the Jazz game on the AM radio. Instead, while driving on the plains of Wyoming, I was able to listen to radio broadcasts from Wisconsin x2, Illinois x3, Indiana, Texas, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado x4, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Southern California.

I was able to listen to the Spurs-Bucks game from Milwaukee or San Antonio, the Lobo game from Albuquerque, the Husker game in Lincoln, Northern Illinois, DePaul, Kansas State, Colorado State or Wyoming basketball games but not the Jazz. Go figure.

Back in the day, many AM radio stations were Clear Channel Stations where nobody else in the country was allowed to license the same frequency, which allowed the stations to increase their power after dark and thus reach audiences far away (Many stations still are clear channel stations, but radio stations further than 750 miles away are allowed to broadcast on the same frequency). Most of the stations that I was able to pick up from locations afar is because during the nighttime, the AM radio waves reflect off the ionosphere rather than dissipating out into outer space. The reflected wave can then be picked up much farther away than the daytime signal. Couple that with an increased transmission power and you can hear news from San Antonio, Los Angeles and Chicago in the middle of Wyoming during the early winter nights.

10 Years Ago...

2011-01-02T16:29:00.006-07:00

November 14, 2000 - December 13, 2000

As you may recall from the last installment, I was just leaving the MTC and flying out to Russia. We made one stop in New York City before landing in Moscow, trudging through customs and meeting President and Sister Romney. There was a bit of culture shock, one of the things that I remember most was how cold it was, but that all of the girls and ladies were still wearing these short skirts.

I spent two days in Moscow before taking an 8-hour overnight train ride to Smokensk, Russia near the border with Belarus. We took a Taxi from the mission office to the train station late that night and the Taxi driver gave me a taste of Moscow driving by driving up on a sidewalk and honking at the pedestrians to get them out of the way. We made it to our train with plenty of time to spare... Smolensk is an ancient city (first mentioned in 863 AD) with about 325,000 inhabitants. The city is surrounded by a very old wall that is still standing in many places. It's a very interesting mix of old and new (new being built in the last 80 years). The city was opened to missionaries in 1998 and had 16 members when I arrived, including 2 temple-endowed and 1 holder of the Melchezidek Priesthood.

My first companion was Elder Rudenko from Kiev, Ukraine. He spoke Russian and Ukrainian and was learning English (but luckily spoke quite well). We spent a lot of the first few weeks trying to get me registered with the government and looking for an apartment. When we first arrived in Smolensk, we didn't have an apartment because we were opening a new area in the city (and increasing the number of missionaries from 6 to 8). We entered the apartment on Lenin Street that we would be sharing until we found our own and the first thing I saw was a huge poster of Britney Spears on the wall. I wasn't sure where I was.

We finally found an apartment right next to the Smolensk wall but it was on the first floor of the building and it didn't have a steel door so we had to wait for the door to be installed as well as bars on the windows. Our new landlord was our first investigator. I was very excited to be unpacking my suitcases 3-weeks after I had packed them.

The first couple weeks were cold and snowy or drizzly, which I would soon become quite accustomed to. The first time that I saw the sun in Russia was 11 days after I arrived. I remember that when we would be walking somewhere early during the winter, it wasn't uncommon to see stray cats and dogs frozen stiff next to the sidewalk.

We were able to receive mail and/or packages from home about once a month when we (the entire district) would travel to Moscow for Zone Conference. I was very grateful for the opportunity to send and receive emails to my family. We also loved going to Moscow because you could often find decent American food.

Thanksgiving morning we got up at 6:00 AM and met in a turret of the Smolensk wall. We would have watched the sun come up if it hadn't been so cloudy but we took a few minutes to think about the things that we were grateful for and to have a little Thanksgiving devotional as a district. It made the Thanksgiving very spiritual.

In Smolensk our main methods of finding were by teaching English classes, street contacting and sports nights (where we rented out a High School gym each week to play games). One week I was teaching shapes to my intermediate English class and we covered squares, pentagons, sexagons, heptagons and octagons. It wasn't until a few days later that I realized that there was no such thing as a sexagon. No wonder the class was laughing so hard.

Smolensk also has a very large, beautiful Russian Orthodox cathedral, the Cathedral of the Assumption. We visited it one day to take some pictures and I found it interesting that baptism was 100 rubles (about $3.35), marriage was 200 rubles (about $7.70) and repentance and forgiveness for 1 year of sins was on sale for 90 rubles (about $3).

The Smolensk Wall

My first companion and I visiting the wall on my first day in Smolensk

Those first days in Russia were long days...

2010 Books in Review

2011-01-01T21:47:00.003-07:00

In 2010 I read 53 books that I reviewed on my book review blog and I just completed a quick rundown of the genres I read and my favorite books. Read it here.

10 Years Ago...

2010-11-26T10:13:00.005-07:00

Just over 10 years ago I finished my 2-month stint at the MTC and flew out to Moscow, Russia. A few final stories from my time at the MTC.

Probably the best two days of my time in the MTC were during General Conference. It felt like all that we did was sleep, eat and watch the prophet(s) and other general authorities. Most days at the MTC were so busy that it was difficult to keep up (some days we would be in class for 13+ hours), but on conference weekend we were able to catch up on studying, writing letters home and general rejuvenation. While I was at the MTC, a missionary choir from the MTC sang in General Conference. The one week that my companion and I skipped choir was the week that they invited everybody there to sing at the Conference Center (which was being dedicated that October). I was pretty disappointed to have missed out, but it was nobody's fault but our own.

Our district in the MTC probably had the best service assignment. We were placed on a special committee to taste-test food and test laundry detergent. The Mission President's wife as well as the food services people from BYU would give us food to taste-test and then listen to our opinions. We tasted/tested a bunch of chicken cordon bleus, brownies, spaghettis, macaronis and other foods and desserts. I was already gaining weight while in the MTC and this service did nothing but expedite the weight gains.

The last few weeks of my time in the MTC my companion and I were called to be the APs (Assistant's to the President). This was a tough assignment for me to fulfill because I always felt that I was already struggling in my classes and learning the language that this was just one more thing to take care of. We had some Spanish speaking roommate companions that were so different from each other. Late one night one of them sneaked out of the bedroom and pulled the fire alarm. The whole building of 400 sleepy missionaries in pajamas had to stand outside on the cold October night to wait for security to clear the building.

We finally flew out on Monday the 13th of November. It was so exciting to be embarking on another leg of the missionary journey.

Ada's Letter to Santa

2010-11-25T12:09:00.005-07:00

First off - Happy Thanksgiving! There is nothing I'm more thankful for than Al's girls and Alison, Ada and Kate. See Alison's post about the girls here.

Ada figured that she needed to send a letter to Santa this year. She suggested to Alison that she should just take it outside and let the wind carry it up to the North Pole. I countered that suggestion be telling her that we should mail it to the North Pole (I hope she doesn't find her letter in my work bag. I'd better hide it)...

Here is her letter to Santa (we try and help on the spelling, but she often just tries to wing it on her own):

Translation:

Princess makeup

Princess instrument set

Sleeping Beauty house

Pillow pet

Rainbow dash pony bicycle

I also had her address an envelope to Santa:
To Santa

From Ada Squire (notice the Squire reads right to left).

Let's just say that Santa got the message and it should be a good Christmas for little Ada.

Student Loans

2010-11-14T15:42:00.004-07:00

I completed my Bachelors degree without us having to take out any loans. For my Masters degree Alison and I took out $10k in loans. We've been paying for around 2 years and have around $8,000 left. We have been feeling very strongly that we need to get these loans paid off as quickly as possible. In order to focus on getting these paid off, we cancelled our home phone and cable in August.

It wasn't a big deal for us to cancel either the home phone or cable because we felt we were overpaying for both. The last month that we had our home phone, we used it for maybe 40 minutes (we would go 4-5 days without even using it). Our per minute rate was probably around $1/minute. We have virtually unlimited minutes on our cell phones, so it seemed like a no brainer. The cable was a little more difficult decision. We really watch very, very little TV. There is no sitcom or similar show that we watch, we don't watch the news and I've watched only 7 or 8 movies so far this year. We have dozens and dozens of children's shows recorded on our computer, as well as about 100 movies, many of which we have never watched, so Ada and Kate haven't had to suffer.

The one thing that Alison and I do watch, though, is sports. We are dying not being able to watch the Jazz during their amazing come-from-behind win streak. We've been tracking each game using gametracker, but it's obviously not the same. Same goes for watching the Utes (for me) and the Cougs (for Alison). Luckily, I get to watch half of the Utes games in person, but Alison isn't so lucky and is feeling the pain more than I am. Sidenote: We are able to watch many sporting events on ESPN3.com, but if the game isn't on an ESPN/ABC network or they decide not to stream it online (such as Monday Night Football) then we are out of luck.

What this has really done for us, is to motivate us to get our student loans paid off as soon as we can. As soon as they're paid off, we'll reinstate our cable and once again be able to waste away in front of the boob tube as is our pleasure.

STUDENT LOANS

Start: $10k

Current: $8,000

20%

START

END

TCU 47, Utah 7

2010-11-08T08:16:00.001-07:00

TCU 47, Utah 7

The Horned Frogs knew the Utes better than the Utes knew themselves. They enacted a gameplan that exposed the Utes weaknesses in every area. The Utes were outcoached and outplayed from the first minute to the last. Coach Whittingham has typically been a solid coach in big games (he is 5-0 in bowl games after all), but he team looked unprepared and shocked from the very outset.

Even though the Utes were utterly destroyed in this game, Saturday was a fun day. I arrived up on campus just before 8:00 AM to watch College Gameday with Chris Fowler, Kirk Herbstreit, Lee Corso, and Desmond Howard. One of my favorite things to do on a Saturday morning is to watch the show which culminates with the announcers picking who they think will win the game, with Corso wearing the mascot's headgear as an indication of who he thinks will win. Throughout the show, they were very civil to the Utes but Howard and Corso wisely picked the Horned Frogs to win the game. Just before Corso donned the Horned Frog headgear, he turned around to the large crowd and stated "You know, this place (Salt Lake City) is almost as nice as Provo!". Ouch. That's some major smack to a Ute fan...

After Gameday we had a couple of hours to kill before we went to the Ute Walk, which is where the fans can high-five and cheer on the team as they walk from the team buses to the stadium. Just like as at Gameday, there were thousands of fans lined up to cheer the team on. It was great, but just one more way in which the team was pressured.

We arrived to the stadium 60 minutes before kickoff and 30 minutes or so before kickoff the stadium was full, 15 minutes before kickoff the stadium was packed. Never before has a home game at Rice-Eccles Stadium filled up so early with a tension-laced crowd. The atmosphere throughout the day was simply amazing. And then the kickoff happened.

It became apparent pretty quickly that the Utes were once again unprepared for the Horned Frogs speed and gameplan. Without getting into the details, it seemed as though the Horned Frogs knew the Utes better than they knew themselves. The Utes gameplan was to try and get TCU's QB Andy Dalton rattled, but the TCU defense was able to quickly rattle the Utes' QB Jordan Wynn and the Utes became just another team for the Horned Frogs to easily steam roll.

Obviously, the Utes were overrated. They have since dropped to 14th in the BCS standings, which I believe is a fairly accurate ranking of the skills of this team. Boise St. TCU and Oregon just seem to be in a class of their own. Possibly Auburn can be included in that group as well. I'm pulling for the Horned Frogs to have a chance to play in the National Championship game - even though Boise St. killed the Horned Frogs in their BCS game last year. It would be an awesome championship game if the #1 offense (Oregon) met the #1 defense (TCU).

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I think Utah somewhat suffered from all of the hype that surrounded the game. The blackout, the butt-ugly wounded warrior cam jerseys, College Gameday, 2nd largest crowd in RES history, etc. That being said, I think that Utah could have played their best game of the year and still lost by 3 touchdowns. The Utes are just not on the same level as TCU. /EDIT

I believe that the Utes will be able to regroup and head into South Bend next week ready to take on the mighty Notre Dame Fighting Irish. Whittingham was outcoached this last Saturday, but I believe that he is still a good enough coach to get his team back into shape by this next weekend. Sometimes, it's good to be humbled.

Go Utes!

10 Years Ago...

2010-10-03T21:44:00.006-06:00

Let me preface this post with a bit of a disclaimer, the biggest reason I started this blog was for me to have a place to document my own thoughts, impressions and memories. I realize that posts about my mission 10-years ago will probably be interesting to very few visitors, but this is as good of place as any for me to document my favorite stories and experiences. Now on with the show:

Just a hair over 10 years ago (September 13, 2000) I entered the MTC to begin training to be a missionary in the Russia Moscow South Mission. I've been reading my missionary journals and the letters that I sent home from my early days in the MTC and thought it might be fun to share a few things.

The first day of the MTC you meet your companion, branch president, district and have a little time to get acclimated to the new environment. I also had to have a couple of vaccinations. No offense to the family, but as I've always been one up for an adventure, it wasn't too hard to walk through that door and leave them behind to start my life as a missionary.

The second day in the MTC found us in a full day of classes learning Russian and studying the gospel. We spent a large part of the day learning the Cyrillic alphabet. By the next day, we had moved on to reading Russian and other topics, what amazed me was that if you didn't grasp the full 32 letter alphabet in the first day, then you were already behind by the second. The whole time in the MTC was spent studying and learning at the same pace. The gift of tongues is real, but don't ever doubt the hard work that is put into learning the languages at the MTC.

Each day in the MTC my district was allowed a bit of time in the gym. One funny comment I made in a letter home was that the gym had "more rules than missionaries in Michigan." If only I was still such a clever lad...

Lastly, I loved reading my testimony in the letters that I sent home to my family during the first 3-4 weeks of the MTC. I don't remember sharing it as much as I should have with my family while I was on my mission, so I was glad that I tried to share the powerful spirit of the MTC with my family at home.

Utah 56, San Jose State 3

2010-09-26T15:27:00.004-06:00

The Utes are now 4-0 on the season and have moved up to #12 in the USA Today poll and remained at #13 in the AP poll. As they game wasn't televised, there was a lot that you missed if you weren't up at Rice-Eccles Stadium on the beautiful Saturday evening in late September.

Offense:
All 8 touchdowns for the Utes were scored by different players. They had at least one touchdown run in each quarter (Reggie Dunn, Eddie Wide, Matt Asiata, Tauni Vakapuna and Beau Burton). In addition, starting quarterback Jordan Wynn threw two touchdown passes (Shawn Asiata and Dallin Rogers) in the second quarter. All three Utah quarterbacks saw some playing time and the Utes finished the game with 9 players having gained yardage carrying the ball. The offense had little resistance from the Spartans defense as they moved the ball for 427 yards in the game (playing a fairly conservative gameplan, as they only threw the ball 24 times).
Grade - A+

Defense:
The Utes' defense played equally as well as the Utes' offense. The Spartans ran the ball 32 times for less than 100 yards. They passed the ball 13 times, once again finishing with well-under 100 yards. The secondary did a nice job of keeping the plays in front of them as San Jose State only attempted 1 deep pass downfield.
Grade - A+

Special Teams:
The only blemish on the Utes in the game was a 60+ yard kickoff return given up to the Spartans which led to their lone field goal. When you're kicking off 9 times during a game, the other team is bound to get at least one decent return, right? Special teams made up for any blemishes by blocking a punt and returning it for a touchdown and then blocking the Spartans' next punt attempt as well.
Grade - A

The Utes finished the game without any turnovers (for the first time this season) and had their lone penalty on a false start with about 5:00 to go in the ballgame (they did have two previous penalties declined by San Jose State, 1 off-sides and 1 delay of game, but neither of those show up on the statlines). The fans at the stadium stayed to watch the blowout game longer than I expected that they would. It's a lot of fun to watch your team play clean, crisp football under the lights.
Overall - A+

Looking ahead the Utes continue to have an easy road. They have a bye week this week and will return from the bye week against Iowa State before returning to conference play against Wyoming and Colorado State. We probably won't know if the Utes are any good until they finally play Air Force in the end of October, although they are in the top ten in the nation in scoring offense and scoring defense.

Judice

2010-09-13T15:25:00.000-06:00

Sometimes you need a little Judice...

Where Are They Now?

2010-09-11T09:06:00.003-06:00

In the beginning of August, Sports Illustrated (Yes, Alison subscribes to SI) had an issue of "Where Are They Now?" One of my favorite parts of the issue was the section on old youtube videos. I enjoyed re-watching them and wanted to post them here.

1. Autistic Basketball Player

2. Michael Jordan vs. CEO

3. Boom Goes the Dynamite

4. Mo Cheeks National Anthem

5. Most Amazing Basketball Shot