California... Here We Come!

Well it is time for Marching Band tour again. I didn't know if I was going to be able to go, but it looks like last minute I was able to go. We aren't leaving till Wednesday night, but I have a lot to do to get ready to I figured I would drop this in while I was avoiding my homework, oops!

I went last year for the first time and it was a blast. Mostly because I had great kids that I was in charge of (some may argue that the drum line guys are difficult... Not last year! They were great) and because of the other great chaperones that were able to come. This year will be a different crowd, but we should still have a blast!

Itinerary:

• Disneyland (of course) from 8:00am through 12:00 am (midnight)
  
• Disneyland parade performance (Small World to Town Square)
• Universal Studios (haven't been there in a long time?)
• Riverside Community College Big Orange Classic Competition
  
• Medieval Times dinner and show (this will be a first)
• And of course one hell of a bus ride (with tons of high school students...)

So we should have a good time, and I hope to get some pictures posted this year. I am really excited about the Riverside College Competition. They did an incredible show. Check this out:



I was there to see that show, it was an incredible show. So many talented students out there. I guess this is the marching band that it used in movies quite often since they are so close to Hollywood. It was fun to see and I can't wait for this year's show.

Happy Halloween!!!

Well today after visiting with my dad and helping my brother move a bunch of pre-wedding gifts to a storage facility, I went to visit my old adopted high school family! They were so good to me while I was in high school, and still continue to dish it out today, THEY ROCK!

Anyway, I was invited to a Pumpkin Carving party, how cool is that? Since I had another friend that gave me a couple tiny pumpkin plants earlier this spring, I was even able to supply my own home-grown pumpkins, I just brought two (but they were among the largest pumpkins at the party).
I carved the "Egg Head" on the left, and my friend Bobbie carved the crazy design on the right there. You may notice that there is a cool little mouse character in her design, that could be why she choose it? ;)

Oh yeah, Daisy was a great help too with the pumpkins, not Daisy the Dog (she helped with the door bell though)!

And the Final Product of the night. A new design that I had never seen is that of the pumpkin on the top right. It was really tough, so Art used a drill to drill a bunch of holes in it and called it good... They were thinking of calling it a Disco Pumpkin, pretty creative though!

Thanks to my Adopted High School Family,
Love you guys!

My Front Yard

So I mentioned a long time ago that I was working on my front yard landscaping. Well here is a shot of what I did with the help of my dad and my younger brother Brad.

I did this all over fall break weekend when I didn't have to do homework. =0) Who needs free time anyway...
And if you look closely you can see the pumpkins that I grew in my garden! =0) I know, I am a geek...

Utah Shakespearean Festival

This week I was able to spend a week out of the office.


I spent the first three days down in Richfield, UT on Snow College campus with the UEN UtahSAINT (Utah Educators Network - Security Advisory and Incident Network Team). I went down with a couple guys from my office. The conference covered most of the network security issues that educators are seeing in the state. There were several proposals of what can be done to help protect UEN Networks and prevent unauthorized access to networking devices.


Now for the fun part... =0]

Thursday morning I met at Pleasant Grove High School with the Shakespeak Drama Team. We gathered and jumped on a charter bus and headed to Cedar City, UT for the Utah Shakespeare Festival High School Competition. we went down with some great scenes from some of the great Shakespeare writings.

We actually ended up taking home only one trophy (Duo Dance I believe), but we should have taken several other awards, but the judges were on LSD (we just don't have proof), and we were outscored by some freaking weird ensemble scenes that had nothing to do with the competition. It is sad, but the judges do what they want.


While we were down there though we were able to go to two of the current shows. The first show that we went to was Moonlight and Magnolias which is a hilarious play about the writing of the script for Gone with the Wind. The second show that we went to was Gaslight which is a suspenseful show full of mystery, murder, and memories. They were both great shows and I think that all of the students had a great time.

Something really cool the the group had the opportunity to do was talk with Fred Adams, the founder and executive producer of the Utah Shakespeare festival. we met in the Randall L. Jones Theatre, in a room that is seldom visited by High School Students. I don't remember the name of the room, but it was incredible, usually only reserved for VIP high donors. The items in the room were several hundred if not thousand of years old. It was immaculate!

Fred was great with the students, sharing stories and life long lessons that he has learned and lived. He was fun to listen to and gave a great presentation to the students.

Overall is was a great opportunity for the students and chaperones alike. I think that we all had a good time even though we didn't win everything that we were planning and hoping to win.

Kaiden

Today I made a fun little trip to Spanish Fork for the baptism of my oldest handsome little nephew, Kaiden.

I don't have a lot of time to write because I have to finish landscaping my front yard (check back later) before classes start on Monday. Here are some of the pictures, there are a lot, but I was asked to document the services for family living far far away. We missed the family, but are glad to share through my blog.

Congratulations once again to a Great little guy!

Kaiden getting ready for the service


Uncle Clay, Kaiden, and Kelly

Kaiden with grandma and grandpa Creer

Grandma and Grandpa Liston

My Back Yard

Well, I just got tired of doing homework, so what better way to waste time and still be productive? POST a Blog!

In this blog I will travel to my back yard... to pick dinner.

Here is a shot that I just took of the corner of my little garden.  If you look close you will see some pretty huge tomato plants, jalepeno & bell petters, corn, and the hidden sunflower plants.

 

Here is the first ear of corn out of my yard.  MMMmmmmm

And here is the cleanup of the fresh home-grown corn (which was delicious by the way).  Daisy decided to help make sure that the cob was clean, Good bird!

The Subway (Zions National Park)

Well some like to call this a "hike" but it is so much more than a hike.  I would consider it a slick-rock, repelling, swimming, rock-climbing, awesome, obstacle course that you have to climb 500 vertical feet up a mountain to complete.  I had no clue what to expect, and it wasn't what I thought that it was.  The description said that it was an Extreme hike, and that it was.

You start off by following a "trail" (slick rock with karens leading the way) to the bottom of a canyon.  Once you get to the bottom, that is when the fun begins.  

Obstacle 1 - Huge boulder:

On one side there was little trickle of water falling 20' into a slimy pool of water that we had no intention of getting into (we were still dry).  On the other side there was a cliff and a space set where you could repel 18 feet to a sand bar.  The repel was not vertical though, it was more of a horizontal repel.  Well Jennifer went first, and then we all followed in suite making it over the first obstacle.  (the easier way would have been to repel down the front of the boulder, perhaps next time...)

I didn't have pictures of these obstacles, so I am using the pictures off of the Zions National Park web page and photo album, just imagine my face in there somewhere... =0)

Obstacle 2 - Short swim through two long pools:

Did I mention that I didn't bring a dry bag like the instructions recommended?  Well I made the swim with my backpack, and everything actually seemed to stay pretty dry.  Oh, and the water was super cold, which felt good because by this time we were all ready for a nice cool refreshing swim.

Obstacle 3 - Keyhole Falls:

This one was interesting because the falls is just the first part of the obstacle.  You have to repel down a 10' water fall, navigate deep water holes, then swim through a deep pool, slip through the "key hole" (I had to take my pack off to even fit through, hence the name), swim around a corner, slide up a slippery rock like a seal, and then carefully walk to the beach (Oh and the water at this point was past the refreshing point, it was just damn cold).  

Oh, and once again I did this all with my back pack and it just so happened that as I got out of the water my bag weighed about 50 pounds heavier than it did before I made the swim.  I drained the water though, and everything seemed ok, a little damp, but ok.

Obstacle 4 - Second and larger water fall (decaying log)

This one was actually a little scary.  The trail ends at a cliff, and hikers are required to crawl over an old decaying log that looks like it could fall any second.  We opted to crawl over the slick-rock above the water fall (over a 30 foot drop).  I was the first in our group to go this way, and I found out that it was really slippery while wearing wet shoes, Jen did it after I did with no problems, but I ended up sliding down a bit.  Good thing I was wearing my swimming suit that would wash out!

Once we were over on the other side of the waterfall, there is a hook in the rocks that we hooked the rope to that would allow us to repel down a 30' cliff with wet rocks waiting at the bottom.  In the end we all did it without major  problems, but it was interesting trying to make it all work.  Once again, quite the experience!

Once we were done with this obstacle we were done with the difficult obstacles, well at least until the last one...  Once we were done with these though we should have started to enjoy the water a little more than we did.  We found some of the fun cascade falls and slid down them like water slides.  We took pictures of this, but Jennifer had those pictures and I will add them later.

One of the famous items of this adventure is the dinosaur tracks just along side the river after all of the obstacles.   The tracks reside in two huge slabs of rock.  I have seen dinosaur tracks before, and you usually have to look for a while and spray them with water to see the imprints, not these tracks.  They are as obvious as if the dinosaurs walked across it yesterday.  The detail was so fine that you could see the claws at the end of the toes.

From this point all we wanted to do was get to the car, little did we know that we should have been hoping for death...

Well this nice little diagram shown above, depicts the altitude change of the entire hike/course.  If you will examine it carefully, you may notice that most of the hike is downhill except for one little tiny little quarter mile part of the trail.  Well it just so turns out that in the little quarter of a mile we climbed up a 500 wall of fallen rock to get up on top of the cliffs where we parked.  This was basically like climbing a 500 foot vertical cliff with only your legs, OUCH!  

Well, we finally all made it to the car that was sitting 500 feet above where I think it should have been.  Even though we had to hike out of the canyon, this adventure was incredible.  I plan on doing it again, but this time we are going to enjoy some of the water features a little more.  Oh, and I will bring a dry bag for my back-pack like they recommended on the web page... =0)

Great experience!  Must do if you are the adventurous type.