So We're 3 Months Behind - So What!

Not posting for 3 months has its benefits – I assure you. On the top of the list is fact that there's plenty to talk about, and buckets o' photos and videos to show off.

With Holly traveling back from Provo right now, I'm gonna have to wing this part. How about I try and do a top 5 list? Sweet.

(Note: this first slideshow is a set of videos, the 2nd are photos)






5 things that have happened since January. 

1.  California
Sam and Kristen are, for lack of a better term, "da bomb". Yes, and old school phrase, but true nevertheless. They rented a huge estate (much bigger and expensiver (my word) than a house) on the coast of Santa Barbara and invited us and other family to go chill for a week. It was quite amazing. Check out the photos for some cold hard proof if that. Two downers from the trip, however: 1. Sam got a tick and ended up contracting Rocky Mtn Spotted Fever -- it knocked him down to a slug for a week!  2. Holly lost her iPhone at the beach – not cool. Fortunately her bro, Jackson, was gracious enough to send her his old iPhone. It was a rough few weeks for her ... not having her Words with Friends games and all :)

2. Thailand ... again. Then San Diego.
I had to take another trip back to Bangkok at the beginning of February. In fact, it cut my time at the luxurious Santa Barbara in half. Holly dropped me off at LAX and as I walked in I saw the sign flashing "Canceled" next to my flight. Turns out someone had died on the plane that was coming to pick us up. My schedule was already so tight that I'd be arriving 5 hours before a very important pitch for some work with a client. I scrambled to find a different flight–and after a few hours finally got on one, but it was scheduled to arrived just 3 hrs before the pitch...and I'd have just traveled for 28 hours. Not cool.
I made it on time and the pitch went as well as we (me and a Thai partner) could manage with so little time to prepare. The rest of my time in Bangkok reminded me of how much more fun traveling is when you're with someone else! I managed to eke by with some stellar Lebanese food and the crazy Chatuchak weekend market.
Less than 48 hrs after my return to Logan, I had to jump back on a plane with a few co-workers to pitch to another prospective client in San Diego. The pitch went well, but jet lag had set in and I realized that I'd be a crappy traveling businessman ... at least if I had to hit opposite sides of the world on a regular basis!

3. Cabin
For my birthday, Holly arranged a surprise trip up to our friend's lush cabin in Bear Lake. She told me Friday afternoon and said we had to leave by 6pm. All the kiddies were coming along of course. One problem: there was a severe winter storm warning starting around 4pm.
Around 6pm when we decided to leave, the snow had nearly stopped and the roads seemed fine. The first half of the canyon was also perfectly fine, but suddenly the storm arrived with fury! The snow was coming down so heavily that within 10 or 15 minutes, we could barely see the road. The snow was piling up so quickly that the car tracks were disappearing at it felt like we were driving through a field of white snow ... but we knew there were steep canyon drop-offs somewhere in the whiteness. It was quite possibly the most terrifying 12 mph experience ever! At times it was a complete white-out and we had to hit the breaks because it was so disorienting. We were sure we were going to have to sleep in the car in the middle of the highway...but somehow we suddenly found ourselves at the canyon summit and made our way down very carefully. Then we turned off onto the sideroad for the cabin and just over the half way point our AWD wagon became NWD - no wheel drive! We were totally stuck! We tried for nearly 30 mins to get out, but it was useless. There was nearly a foot of new snow and slippery snowpack underneath. Suddenly a guy showed up from a cabin nearby -- he noticed us out there in the dark (fortunately!) and grabbed his snowmobile and took 5 trips the rest of the way to the cabin. That man deserves a free ticket to heaven! What a relief and blessing. We left the car right there in the road ... we had no choice.
The next day I had planned to go skiing with friends from Advent at Beaver. I was still determined to go. I packed up my stuff and started hiking the mile or two out to the highway. Holly was happy to hang at the warm, cozy cabin and wait for our friends to come later in the afternoon.
I hitchhiked to Beaver, had a killer day of deep powder and hitched back home with an old railroad worker who skis every day in the winter.
The city plow that does the backroads gave us a ticket for illegal parking -- lame! Holly contested it and we got off -- cool!
Check out the pics and videos from the cabin. We took great advantage of the snow by doing leaps and flips off the upper deck of the cabin into the mountains of snow below. Awesome and momentous birthday thanks to the oh-so-lovely Holly.

4. Provo/Orem
As you've probably noticed by many of our posts over the past year, we take quite a few jaunts down to the Provo/Orem/Alpine area. And it takes a LOT of love to get us down to such an area of Utah!
But with Sam and Kristen AND Marshall and Kristen and Rick all living down there, it's worth it. We love getting down there to chillax.

5. Drew's Birthday
Just wanted to mention that it's been 5 years since Drew died. Time passes so extraordinarily fast. Drew continues to inspire me in my life. His relaxed and animated personality, coupled with his passion for learning, music and simple honesty made him a magnet to all around him. I miss him and hope he's keeping up with the drums in a celestial band. :)

We'll try and stay a tad bit more up to date from here on!

Everything Matters

I've recently been listening to a brilliant podcast series called "Design Matters" by Debbie Millman. Debbie is a designer who interviews some of the greatest minds in the design industry. But before each interview she gives a monologue about a recent experience in her life. The experience usually seems very insignificant, but she finds profound meaning in any and every experience in life. Where most of us dig for diamonds among the coal of the everyday life, she seems to recognize the unforeseeable value of every single experience.

I'd love to change my perspective ... to see life for what it really is rather than pass it off as uninteresting, unimportant or insubstantial. I believe more than ever that every event, every conversation, and every experience in life has far more meaning than we give it credit for. I'll do all I can to start seeing with this new perspective.

And now, stepping back into the superficial updates ... as there's rarely enough time to write with the heart and thought that I'd like.

Olivia has started kindergarten at Bear River Charter School and seems to sincerely enjoy it. Ruby is doing her last year of Union bilingual preschool and should be fluent at this point! Sonoma is 4 months today and is realizing that she has vocal chords ... especially during quiet times at church :) She's adorable and growing faster than her hand-me-downs can handle.

Apart from that, our garden is giving us more tomatoes and zucchini than we can handle ... and the fall is always a fantastic time for local whole foods. We've been making mango leather, zucchini brownies and fresh salsa. Such a stellar season for food!

Here are a few photos from the past few weeks.

103 Photos and a few words of summary...

So, we sort of fell off of the blog-wagon for a few weeks. What can we say? It’s summer time and life with three kids takes getting used to! This week’s update will have to be a summary of those we missed.

We had the opportunity to go up to Myrna Redd’s cabin in Bear Lake for a few days. It was wonderful to spend time with family and friends up there. It was especially nice to see Andy and Erin Buteau and their children who were visiting from London (their kids have the CUTEST little accents).

Olivia turned five! It’s hard to believe that she is that old. It’s hard to believe that we were in Thailand that long ago, but yes, it has been five years. She is so fun to have around and we learn so much from her every day. She is excited about kindergarten. She loves princesses, pink, and all things girly. She loves sugar more than any of those things, but thankfully, she is very good at eating vegetables as well. She is a very loving big sister. She and Ruby love to sing and be either “mommy and baby” or “rock n’ roll girls” together.

Ruby's 3rd also happened in May...and we neglected to mention it. Sorry, Ruby! She's got to be the most adorable 3-year-old in the history of the world! She's pleasant, easy, sympathetic, (usually) obedient, and loves just about anyone who will talk to her. She's a fantastic little sister for Olivia and a loving and helpful big sister to Sonoma. What a gem (pun intended).

This month my sister Kristen and her family moved to Provo so that Marshall could attend law school at BYU. I got to go down for a couple of days and help them move in. Wish them luck! Also, my brother Clay and his wife moved to Salt Lake City so that he could work full time for the non-profit organization Fight the New Drug. Both families will be sorely missed here in Cache Valley.

In other news, we found a wonderful live-in babysitter named Bailee who will be with us for a while. We are very excited about her and love having her around. She is a Junior at USU majoring in special education.

Other than that, we’ve just been having a ton of fun and staying very busy this summer! Enjoy the photos ... we're using Picasa so the viewing and uploading is easier. You can watch the slideshow above, or click here for all of them.

Cabo Paradiso

If you read the previous post, you’ll understand why my 31st birthday was the most important one of my life. Well, I suppose my very first one was pretty critical to making sure I could have any future birthdays ... but we’ll ignore that little point and move on.

To recap, my 31st birthday was the day of my final weight loss goal that I had been working toward for that past 14 months. A day I thought about every single day as I stepped onto that scale. And when I stepped on on that fateful birthday of mine last week, I had done it. I stepped off the scale and (no, not literally) stepped off of a place in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. My older brother and his wife knew how important that day/goal was to me and secretly bought Holly and me a surprise trip to Mexico to celebrate! Wow, what great family. 

Cabo is a very fun and cool destination. I’m sure the experience is always heightened when you have kids and get to go somewhere without them. They’re missed, but the ability to relax and not worry about feeding the incessant needs of young children every moment is quite a beautiful thing.

Holly was a beautiful little pregnant lady, and fortunately is past the morning sickness period, so all she had to worry about was how she looked in a maternity bathing suit. P.S.: She looked great.

The hotels that were booked for us are partly what made the experience so amazingly blissful. They were stellar! They were right on the beach and way beyond our income bracket – so we were livin’ it up as posers :)

The food was fantastic and it was whale migration season, so we saw countless whales right off the shore every single day while we were down there. And to try and get a better view, we went on a whale watching tour ... but to be honest, it really wasn’t much better than watching them from the beach.

We did some snorkeling and street market shopping, but mostly just unwound by the ocean and at some countless amazing hotel pools and just soaked up some golden, euphoric, childless relaxation.

A few photos below. 

Recipe of the Week 

This is very simple one we had on our trip and really enjoyed. Since we didn’t make it, we don’t know proportions, but look at the photo below for an idea.

Todos Santos Fruit Salad

Shredded Lettuce (as a base)

Almonds Whole

Raisins Large

Peanuts Whole

Pineapple Chopped

Banana Chopped

Orange Chopped

Apple Chopped

Honey

Curry Yellow

The Recipe Dish.