Celebrate Independence Day 2009

Once again, Independence Day is upon us. A time for friends, food, and fireworks.. and food!

I've been wondering now for a few years why I continue to put myself through the irritation of planning a 4th of July event.. as most years it has resulted in countless disappointment and irritation. This year was looking to be no different. My friend Kristen and her husband weren't going to be able to come, and getting a committed yes or no from some of my other friends is starting to seem impossible now days.

Add to this, that our traditionally "friend only" event somehow picked up countless family members - parents and siblings - and you have a recipe for suckage of epic proportions.

Or.. at least that's how I thought it was going to turn out. I'm not sure what it is about me or if its something that happened in my childhood to cause this, but I've always been of the opinion that if family is involved, the event or get-together or whatever you want to call it is automatically going to suck. I have to be honest, at first I wasn't the least bit looking forward to spending the holiday this way... in-laws, my friends parents, my friends in-laws, the parents kids... I read this sentence and it sounds something akin to waterboarding to me.

However, I honestly ended up thoroughly enjoying myself... probably for the first time ever at something like this. I'm not sure if it was the combination of friends and family or maybe, just maybe, that I can in fact really have fun with my family once I let go of the "uggggh this is going to SUUUUUCK!" disposition.... Madness, I know.

Everyone seemed to have a really good time, and I guess in the end that's what this day is all about. Being able to get together with friends... and family... and celebrating our freedoms and what makes this country truly great.

Less text, more pics!

The little ones having a great time together


The barbecue hard at work! Delicious!


Kaleah's first Independence Day!


I can neither confirm, nor deny, that this was ours...
(but it was awesome)


Children love holidays even more when they're cracked out on sugar!


The "finale" fountain in progress
(yes, those are fountains stacked on top of each other)


The 4th Division of the Tank Army lies in wait, prepared to strike!


You know you've put on a good show when all that's left is
piles upon piles of burning firework remains.

Scenic Evanston, Wyoming

Today in preparation for the 4th, Jeff and I made a run to Evanston in hopes of procuring some good fireworks at a fair price. My store of choice was always Porter's, dating back many years into my youth. Porter's has since been converted into the TNT warehouse, so that was naturally the first stop.

Living in Utah, it really sucks trying to find fireworks. What little fireworks are sold here are not impressive, and usually very expensive to boot. One of the greatest things about the store was just how obscene the size of some of the packages were. I was really tempted to buy one of these, but previous run-in's with the county sheriff made me decide to not test my luck.


On the way back to the freeway we passed one of those adult novelty stores. Normally, this isn't really my thing and I just drive on by, however I couldn't help but laugh at the last item on the sign. I felt compelled to take a pic so that I had proof I wasn't just making this all up in my head.


Somehow I don't think "I swear honey, I was just getting my Pac Man on" would cover me from my wife's wrath...

Christmas Reflections...

Well another Christmas has come and gone, and this year has given me a lot to reflect on and think about as we head into 2009. Its been a Christmas of ups and downs... and I think I've learned a lot about myself and my family this holiday season.

Firstly, I've definitely learned to appreciate all of the hard work that goes into preparing Christmas dinners and events. Heidi and I have been going pretty much non-stop since the 9th and its definitely taken its toll on our energy levels. Today is the first day we've had to pretty much sit and do nothing in almost three weeks.

Still, I wouldn't trade any of the events over the last three weeks for extra rest or relaxation. For the first year in a long time we've been in a position to have dinners, buy nice gifts, and have a wonderful home to entertain in. 2008 has definitely been a year of blessings for me and my wife. I got to experience a lot of joy just having family and friends around, and how exciting it was seeing the children enjoy the holidays.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, and that the good times continue in 2009!

Sibling Christmas Dinner!

With all that we've been able to do this Christmas, we thought it would be a great new tradition to start having a 'sibling Christmas' dinner. Our idea was to have a nice Christmas night with just the kids - myself, my sister and her husband, her kids, and my foster sisters. I also wanted to invite my good friend Jeff and his family since we've been friends since third grade and he's more a brother to me than a friend.

Dinner, I must say, was excellent. We had a glazed ham, yams, green bean casserole, jello, and some tasty rolls. Heidi also wanted to take a shot at making her grandma's sweat mustard sauce for the ham. Everything turned out perfect, although space was pretty tight during dinner.

After dinner we had a small present exchange and then it was time to break out the band! We had a great time rocking out in small groups and even the children were able to get into the act thanks to what we've deemed "Guitar Hero Retard Mode." I guess we could have named it "Child Mode" but it just didn't have the same ring - besides, Jeff could only hack it on the drums at that skill level, so "Retard Mode" seemed a lot more fitting.

While we were busy rocking out, the children took shifts decorating sugar cookies. This sounds like a disaster in the making, I know, but I had the foresight to cover the entire kitchen floor with tablecloths! I'm glad I did because sprinkles were EVERYWHERE!

HOT PIX!!!

Karek and Jackson discuss their haul. Four year olds
reading packaging is a little scary...

Kian thrashes on the guitar. He was averaging over
90% notes hit every time.

Kiera impresses her new boyfriend, Karek, with her
mad drumming skills. She's even got the headbang down.

Jackson and Kian hard at work on the sugar cookies
while Heather supervises.

Cookies manufactured by my beloved niece.
(yes, there are cookies in there somewhere)

The boys at about 1:00am. Too bad we didn't have
any chalk to outline them with lol

A Candlelight Christmas

On the way to work this morning, I saw a billboard for A Candlelight Christmas being held at This is the Place Heritage Park. Having never been to this before I thought it would be something fun that my wife and I could enjoy. Even though it was very, very cold, we braved the trek up 8th South to check it out. I also thought this would be an awesome opportunity to test out my new camera!

The idea of the display is how Christmas would have been back in the days of the pioneers. Odd, I thought.. here all this time I've been thinking the pioneers didn't have electricity.. but I digress.


Our first stop was their recreation of the Nativity, complete with the Star and bed in a manger, or in this case a barn. Have I mentioned how awesome I think my new camera is? I must admit I had a difficult time getting the right shutter speed so that it didn't look like these pictures were taken in the middle of the day with flash grenades going off in front of you, but once I got it down I think they turned out great.


Another really neat thing they did was pioneer type crafts. With your admission, you got to build any three crafts of your choosing, and the different crafts were scattered throughout the many buildings of the park. We built a paper Nativity, made a copy of the first commercial Christmas card using a printing press, and made our own jingle bells. It was pretty cool to see how all these things were done 'back in the day.'


Speaking of the printing press, as we were walking through the printing building, I took out my camera to take a picture of a printing machine. I didn't notice until after I'd taken the picture that a slight amount of fog had built up on my lens due to coming into the warm building from the frozen tundra. I think it turned out pretty awesome with the fog effect.


One final thing that caught my eye is we were leaving was a candy display in the window of an old original ZCMI building. It occurred to me that a lot of the children walking around probably wouldn't even realize that the display is something that was a tradition in Salt Lake City for hundreds of years, only to be brought to a dead stop thanks to Macy's purchasing ZCMI a few years ago. Brought back a lot of memories of my brothers and sisters going downtown to see the beautiful candy displays at ZCMI during the holidays.

Pre-Christmas Goodness

Tonight I got my first Christmas present from my dear wife, the above-shown, very hot Nikon CoolPix P80. Sporting an 18x optical zoom, a huge array of features, and 10.1 megapixels of photo taking goodness.

I waited two hours after opening my camera for the batteries to charge so I could play around with it. One of the only complaints I found about this camera online was that it takes poor pictures in very low light, so I decided to put that to the test right out of the gate while I had my 15 days to return the camera if I didn't like it.

These pictures are of our Christmas tree from across the room. It should be noted that the Christmas lights were the only light source in the entire room and I didn't use any flash. I think I can say with safety that the people making the complaints about low light had no idea what they were doing.

Note: these pictures are at 25% of their original size. The originals were 3648x2736 resolution. You can click on the pictures to view them larger.



Love this camera already.

MoTab Christmas Concert!

Last night, my wife and I had the opportunity to attend the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas Concert. This is probably one of my favorite Christmas traditions, and for us always marks the traditional beginning of the Christmas season.


The theme of the concert was "Ring Christmas Bells," with many of the musical numbers featuring the bell choirs from Davis, Fremont, Jordan, Murray, and Riverton High Schools. The special guests were Brian Stokes Mitchell, who has been in more Broadway productions and received more awards than honestly anyone else I can name, and Edward K Herrman, who is well known for his portrayal of FDR in "Eleanor and Franklin" and more recently as Richard Gilmore on CW's "The Gilmore Girls."

The concert featured many, many un-traditional Christmas songs, some of which weren't even really Christmas songs. One thing I immediately picked up on was how prominent Brian Stokes Mitchell was in this concert - largely featured in about two-thirds of the overall performance. At many times I felt like I was at a Brian Stokes Mitchell concert with the Choir in the background.

It should be noted that this was not a bad thing! Mitchell has a powerful, amazing voice that completely blew me away. He was absolutely fantastic in all aspects. My favorite peices of his work that evening were two songs: "Through Heaven's Eyes" from The Prince of Egypt and "New Words."

A trend I've noticed in recent years is that the Choir will do a peice centered around a story from history. This year the story was told from the Civil War, and a man named Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It was during this timultuous period in our nation's history that he wrote four stanzas of a poem which would later become the Christmas song "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day." Edward K Herrmann narrated the story, and did a fantastic job. He has a really awesome story-telling voice.

Overall, I felt the concert was one of the best in recent years, mostly because so much new material was performed. It didn't feel like the same old rehashed Christmas concert, something unique and wonderful to experience! I hope the Choir keeps this up in the coming years ahead.


Here's a shot from the final song, "Angels from the Realms of Glory" - my favorite Choir Christmas song ever! Sweet, sweet forbidden pictures!

Wheeler Farm Party

This evening was the Christmas party for my mom's church, courtesy of the fine folks at Wheeler Farm. Even though we don't attend the same church as my mom, she was kind enough to extend an invitation to my wife and I as well as my sister's family and my grandmother.


It started off with a great country fried chicken, mashed potato, and stuffing dinner with more bread than should be allowed under state law. All the butter and jam currently in circulation couldn't have covered the demand of these rolls. Thankfully, only a small portion was eaten. This was pretty much my nephew Scotland's first major major event but he seemed to handle it really well.


The majority of the night's entertainment was provided by the a cappella group Hangtime. One of the highlights of their show was a funny as hell rendition of Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer. Prior to the show, they asked people for various nouns, verbs, etc and ad-lib'd key parts of the lyrics. They also roped my foster sister Tiffany into helping with the act by playing the part of the poor embarrassed reindeer (see the above pic)

There was also a reading of the biblical story of Christ's birth and a silent auction to benefit their church. Last I checked I was the high bidder for a pair of Phantom of the Opera tickets for a show this coming March. Hopefully my bid held out because its been forever since I've seen Phantom live.


As usual, I was a complete and total sucker for my neice Kiera. I couldn't help but snap pic after pic and she was more than willing to give me all the photo shoot time I asked for.

Overall the evening was a lot of fun and everyone I talked to had a great time. The entertainment was fantastic, and this was a great way to kick off our fifteen days of action packed Christmas hell... I mean joy. Christmas joy!


This is what a total sucker looks like, right here. I'm still kind of a noob at this self-picture taking thing though.

Kickin' Off the Holidays

Tonight officially kicks off the Christmas season for me and my wife. Thanks to Lu at my office, the finishing touch was put onto our Christmas tree this evening (the bow on top of our tree) I'm really quite pleased with how it turned out.

Unlike most years, the two weeks before Christmas are going to be jammed this year with all kinds of events with friends and family. The good ol' blog should see a multitude of updates over the next two weeks. So, until the next post, have a merry Christmas!