miracle chip

Over the weekend following Christmas 2012 a small miracle occurred.  It took me these past two months to finally get around to taking this picture so I could post about it properly.

After a good day of skiing at Snow Basin, I sat with Maddeline at the bottom of the hill waiting for some of our other siblings to finish their last run.  We found some chairs and we sat down and relaxed a bit, loosened our boots, took of our gloves.  ....

Thirty minutes later we were in the car driving home when I realized that my wedding ring wasn't on my finger!!  Freaking out I soon realized that it must have come off when I took my gloves off there at the base.  There was zero chance of just looking around and finding it since I had taken my gloves on and off several times at the end of the day.  I resigned my self to just crying over it and telling myself that we'd check the lost and found the next day.

Well the next day we didn't actually go to Snow Basin, but to Powder Mountain, which was a really awesome ski day.  So the following day we were back at Snow Basin and as the day ended I went over the the lost and found and asked if they had my ring.  The conversation went something like this;

"Was there a men's wedding ring turned in here a couple days ago?"
"A silver one?"
"Well it's actually cobalt, but it looks like silver."
"When did you loose it"
"uh... 2 days ago"
"Yeah, I saw it here earlier today"

at this point I got really excited, but then he spent like 4 minutes rummaging through boxes and lost items saying, "I thought I saw it here...."

Finally they found the piece of paper they had taped it to, told me that someone found it on the ground near the base lodge.  The base there at Snow Basin is not just snow like many other resorts, but paved with bricks, so my ring picked up a souvenir of being kicked around on bricks, and I call that souvenir my miracle chip.  You can see it on the rim at about the 8 o'clock position in this picture.

On a slightly related note, my ring is made out of Cobalt, not as ridiculously hard as tungsten or as strong as titanium, but still hard and very strong, and it has a more silvery color that matches white gold well.  On the inside is lightly etched 'Cobalt 24" which you can partially see here:

I love my ring.

Ducks

Saturday morning we were camping near Provo with the Herds, and Saturday night we had dinner plans with some friends in Payson.  Naturally we didn't want to drive home so we decided to pass time hanging out at my Grandma Bu's house.  I hopped on the computer for a minute and on twitter I saw that BYUSA was holding a Ducky Derby that day.  What is a duck derby you ask... well, we didn't really know, but since we had nothing to do we decided to go.  

We arrived south of campus and began to under stand the meaning of Ducky Derby.  The stream that runs along the south edge of campus has been rehabilitated to be a beautiful walking path with rocks, waterfalls, and wonderful flora.

Also of course some wonderful fauna

So BYUSA was selling jDawgs and rubber ducks for eating and decorating.  People bought the ducks, drew on them, and then raced them down the river.  It was amazingly fun!!

Raphael and Polka

The racing was surprisingly exciting, everyone cheering on their ducks, getting excited as they passed others, and crying when they got stuck in a slow spot.  

placing the ducks

The Start 

Raphael in 1st pace...

eventual winner of our heat, The Cheat.

The Cheat, Polka, and The Missionary

Stephanie actually came in 2nd.  So we got a FREE Jamba Juice, and a chance to win again in the winners round at the end of the day for a BYU Bookstore gift card (and trophy)

Winner's Round

Movin' Groovin'

Real ducks getting in the way. 

Stephanie actually led the race in 1st place for most of it, then got stuck and fell to last place (about 14th)... but then came back to 5th place by the end.  Her duck must have been pretty stelar.

We then took our ducks back to the beginning of the stream and let them float along.  It took half an hour to do half of the stream... so we stopped there.

our ducks are amazing

curling dreams

So this past weekend Stephanie and I lived out a dream and went curling.  Ever since the winter olympics two years ago (when we were just dating) we watched several curling matches and decided that we would someday go curling.

The Utah Olympic Oval in Kerns, UT offers curling classes and open curling times in the evenings so we went with some of my siblings (and my dad) and curled!  The most interesting part of living out this dream is that the night before I had had a dream about going curling.  And as with most dreams, everything was just a little strange...


Instead of curling with nice, rounded curling stones like this:

We were using unnaturally tall and awkward stones like this:

And instead of curling on a nice long sheet of ice (about 120 feet)

We were throwing stones on a rather short and boxed in sheet and I kept hitting the back wall, no mater how soft I did it (typical dream frustration).

The dream was further crazy by the random appearance of Stephanie's former roommate (a totally crazy, and really creepy person) who was not only in the dream, but wouldn't stop talking to me.

Hopefully I'll post some pictures soon (when I get them from my dad) of us actually curling.  I hope to go again soon, and I just might be the next world champion curler.  (Okay, not really next, but future... the national championships are actually happening right now, fyi.)

PS. since things in dreams don't really exist I did quick mock-ups of them using Google SketchUp.

photography

Sometime I just like to post pictures.  For more details about our trip to Moab and Arches National Park, see our family blog post.

Delicate Arch

Alex is in the picture if you look carefully.

Fly

The Balancing Rock

The background is really amazing in this photo... as is my beautiful wife.

a shoe print we followed for almost 6 miles

... talk about blue.

Bank of ***** or why I hate Wells Fargo

(insert your own pluralized inappropriate word into the space above)

Apparently Wells Fargo's Car loan department does not accept a legal contract as proof of residence.  Instead I had to call Rocky Mt. Power and have them fax over my account statement, proving that I do live at my apartment.

Then an hour later they said that Stephanie also had to have different proof of residence (even though they had previously said that her pay-stub would be fine, since it did in fact have her address on it)!  The branch manager was apologetic and helpful in suggesting a credit union where he knew a manager who was really good.  It was actually the Wells Fargo branch manager that called the car loan dept. an inappropriate word that inspired the title to this post.

Because they were so dumb, we had to miss out on the Bees game, which I was ok with at first thinking we would have a new car.. but now I'm just infuriated with the whole process.  Interestingly enough the branch manager and our call seller both suggested the same credit union (UCCU) and said it would be really fast, with low rates, so I will hopefully have a post with our new car's pictures by tomorrow night!

Cruising

Not our boat.  but this is.

Serenity Bay on Disney's private island... notice how serene.

Queen's Staircase, an escape route from the Fort/Palace on Nassau (the capital of the Bahamas)

Goofy's Mini-Golf around the stern

Serious game of billiards

Sailing

Basketball

I was just standing there in the water and these guys came swimming up to me!

Swimming (snorkeling) with the fishes

and finally...
Disney World

and if that wasn't enough for you here's some more pictures and descriptions
Stephanie's blog
Photobook
Kacy's blog
Coleen's blog

Photons

I didn't cry when my I found out my grandpa died (though I did at the funeral).
I didn't cry when my first 'love' broke up with me (though I wanted to).
I didn't cry when I got fired from the best job ever.
I didn't cry when my girlfriend of five months broke up with me.

I did cry after seeing my best friend for the first time in a year.

Over this past year he's led a life that I don't agree with, a lifestyle that he actually begun about four years ago. He turned 23 this week, making it four years since he turned 19 and decided not to go on a mission, about a year later he turned 20, and turned gay. A bounce house of events moved him from SUU to UVU, back home to Elk Ridge, and finally up to UofU. I saw him a year ago when I first came back down to Utah for school, and hadn't seen him since though we have continued to acknowledge each others existence through facebook, commenting on statuses and pictures and the like.

Yesterday, I went up to Salt Lake (Sugarhouse to be exact) and visited him at his work (Olive Garden). I went at a slow hour so he has plenty of time to talk with me, we talked about school, classes, majors, how different life is now than in high school. We didn't really talk about anything super important, but we talked, and that is what I feel was important. Another old friend of ours works there at the same place, she gave me dinner and cheese cake for free (I will forever love you Loni for that), and I left. I got in the car, started driving home, thinking about how much I fun I'd just had and within six blocks I was crying. I honestly don't know why. I suppose it was partly because I was so happy to have seen them, partly because I was again remembering my great love for them, and perhaps partly I was sad that we weren't better friends.

I want to let it be know that I do not find fault in him, I do not feel betrayed or that he is a bad person. Simply stated, my own beliefs in the gospel of Jesus Christ tell me that the decisions he has made are not the ones that will bring greatest happiness, but I do not expect anyone else to live their life by what I believe, they would then be living my life, and that would just be weird, I believe in agency .... more on that subject: next post.

Day 7

Sunday:Boeing
My family was invited to attend Boeing Family days from my Sisters in-laws, the Grahams. We left after church and went to the Everett Boeing Factory, the larges building (by volume) in the world! Where they have production lines for their 747, 777, and 787 among others. We got a little glimpse of the new, up and coming 747-8 a new aircraft to be released within the next year as well as the new 787 the first plane built with a carbon fiber fuselage. They told us that taking pictures was not allowed, but we all know how good I am at following rules so:

That green thing is the 747-8 in final inspection-->


and here's a 777 being sold to EVA air. EVA is a Taiwanese company that I actually rode to and from the Philippines \/