Busy weekend

Saturday morning, after an adventure at the laundromat, I took Calathea to a park we haven't been to yet. I had seen it before and it looked like a fun place to take a kid. It shouldn't have been a surprise that it was packed with people when we got there! We still had fun, we just had to wait our turn to play on the toys. After a full rotation on the playground equipment, we walked over to the duck pond. It is nice because it doesn't have the big scary geese there that chase you. Just cute little ducks. And it wasn't messy either, a very big plus!

I took Callie to the demolition derby later in the day. She is definitely a Johnson, she loved it! Here's a few pics and videos from the event. After awhile, the loudness and everything got to her so we left early. But was fun while it lasted...

The yellow-green dodge in the middle had a Cummins turbo diesel in it with just a huge pipe coming out of the hood and no muffler! It was a brain rattler! It was actually one of the first to die though : (

Play them all at the same time to get a closer similation of the mayhem was really like! (And pray that your speakers don't blow up!)

And last but not least, She was trying to climb up on my landlords' Harley on her own, so I helped her up there for a minute.

...and another fun video...

new map!

It makes me want to sing that song from Dora the Explorer, but I'll save you the agony of that for now. This new map is bigger, more accurate, and it also will give me a list of the locations that people have visited from. I'll be able to find out where everyone has been checking in on me from. The last part of that sentence doesn't seem like it could be grammatically correct, but that's the only way I can think of saying it at this time. Oh well!

Here's a cute one of Callie from today. She was exhausted today by the time I got there, so she really wasn't interested in being entertained by me. Sarajayne said that she had had a 2 1/2 hour nap this afternoon, but she was still walking around like a zombie half of the time and being fussy and clingy the other half. Enjoy!

The cowgirl boots she has on are being borrowed from a neighbor until she grows out of them, which won't be long at the rate she's going! She loves to walk around on her heels and stomp just to make noise

Our animated choir lady

Stake Conference is in two weeks and I'm in the Preisthood choir that will be singing in the Logan Tabernacle. Our practices are on Sunday nights and it's pretty fun to go just to be around the choir director. She's a little 90 year old lady who stands with her legs far apart and uses her whole body to direct us. Her arms are always flailing around, pointing at everyone to come in here and cutting others off with her other hand. At the same time she's making us raise and lower our volume by raising and lowering her whole body almost. She's pretty feisty and won't hesitate to tell one section, "Oh you're doing it all wrong! 'Earth is not Earrrrth, pronounce it 'UHHHHth!!!!' , 'and you guys over here have to hold this out until I cut you off!!' , etc. It's so entertaining.

I had to work today on Labor Day!! We had a total of four customers from open to close. I got paid time and a half to sit and surf the web all day. I did restock some of the shelves , so I wasn't totally worthless.

Daddy/Daughter date

I'm not feeling too blog-a-licious today but I do have some fun stuff to share so I guess I'll do it anyway...

I had the day off on Tuesday, so I got to have some time with Callie! I picked her up Monday night and we spent all day Tuesday out on the town having fun. Our first stop was the little park by my house. Callie played on the slides for awhile and I only got one halfway decent picture of that.

We caught the bus over to Macey's and had lunch there.

I could tell that Callie was tired as we were walking back to the bus stop because as I was carrying her on my shoulders, she kind of flopped over on my head!

When we got home and I was putting her in her crib for a nap, boy she was wide awake then!
she finally went down and slept until 6:30 pm!

My internet connection is pretty nonexistent tonight so I'll have to upload the pictures later, Sorry!

Edit: I got the pictures up tonight, 8-28-08, so this will count as a post for tonight!

Don't be ridiculous!

As I get all my pictures sorted out from my trip to WA, I'll keep you entertained with an old school episode of Perfect Strangers. this is a 2 parter, so there are 6 clips total, you'll have to watch!!!! Good stuff! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYcPJ7bQawQ&feature=related

Boys will be boys

Our ward is doing a Pinewood derby race this Saturday.Unfortunately I will not be able to be there to witness the agony of defeat of the other racers, but my car wil lbe there. My home teaching companion will be racing it for me. It's name is, "The Stick of Joseph" #1 because it's made of wood, #2 because this is a church activity, #3 because we removed so much material from the original block, we will be using some special weights to bring it up to the specified weight.

Pretty sweet, huh?

Sunday Afternoons

There's nothing better than a lazy hazy Sunday afternoon to go take pictures. Today it was a time to take some self portraits. I was going for an old fashioned look, I think they came out fairly well considering I had to go set up the camera, turn on the timer, push the button , go run into the frame, wait, then check the shot every single time!

The sun was setting and it was just about the perfect temperature, and everything seemed like it was made for a photo shoot down on the railroad tracks.

I'm outta here for now....

Killer Tomatoes

I had a late start on planting my garden this year. I've always had good luck with my tomatoes and this year has proved to be the same so far! I don't use the cages because my plants outgrow them anyway. Plus it's easier than trying to reach into the cage and pull a huge fruit back through the squares. This one is the Sweet 100 variety. It's almost as tall as me and it still has several more weeks to go before the chilly nights start setting in.

August 12

Kinda looks like she's got a big fat leg, huh? Unfortunately there wasn't anyone behind the camera to tell me to move my foot!

Cali is training for the 2020 U.S. olympic whiffle-ball team, or whatever sport this is.

Nice form on the backwards catch!

First night

If rumors start leaking out that I'm having young blondes staying the night at my house on a regular basis, the bishop might want to call me in for a little chat! I'm sure that when I explain to him that it's only my daughter, he'll be ok with it. Now that Calathea is 18 months old, I get to start having her stay the night here. There's going to be some good bonding time happening now that I don't have to worry about finding something to do withing two or three hours, factoring in travel time, loading/unloading her and her stuff from the car, etc. It just doesn't leave a lot of flexibility when there's such a time constraint.

I'm sorry I don't have many exciting pictures of this weekend, but it was really fun nonetheless. Friday night we went to the Cache County fair and had a great time there. Cali loves being around people and there were plenty of them there! She couldn't get enough of all the multi-colored flashing lights and excitement. her head was always turning this way and that trying to soak it all in. We cat in the field for a bit and listened to a band playing country music. she loved it! She was clapping her hands and smiling the whole time. She probably would have gotten up and danced around if I had let her off my lap. we went in the buildings and looked at the quilts and canned foods and things. We went in the 4-H building and she liked the animals except the cows were awfully big, loud and frightening, which sent her sheiking in terror. (awwww....) We didn't do any rides, but one of the game booth guys conned me into trying to throw a ball into a big bucket to win a stuffed animal for her. 20$ later the ball bounced out on every single shot but the guy let have me have a stupid snake thing for my efforts. I swear I've seen the same toy at the dollar store before. He also tossed a little tiny tiny pink bear/dog(?) into her stroller as we were leaving. I thought that sure was generous of him for the twenty bucks I just handed over.

Saturday morning we stayed around the house and occupied ourselves. we watched some episodesof the muppets show on you tube andplayed outside a bit. We also got the apartment cleaned and Cali helped vacuum. After lunch I tried to put her down for a nap(Mostly because I needed one!) and she just stood up the whole time talking. After such a futile asttempt at relaxing, I took her to the Sprinkler Store to show her off to my coworkers. Even my manager who is a self proclaimed child resistor, said she was, 'pretty dang cute and that's forshizzle-nizzle!'. I think it was when she gave him a high five and her big smile afterward that broke down his wall. We're used to seeing him deal with rough and tough contractors so we rarely get to see his soft side. Corbin, another worker is having having a little girl in october with is wife. When he picked Cali up, she latched on to him and gave him the biggest hug ever. He then proceeded to melt into a big Corbin puddle all over the Sprinkler Store floor.

By the time we left, we barely had time get home and get everything organized for Jani to come pick her up. As soon as I got her in her seat to go home she zonked out. I got her in the house and in her crib as if she had been asleep in there the whole time.

When Jani came she asked if this whole time was harder than I thought it would be. Honestly it wasn't any harder at all.I had already done most everything I needed to do before today, it was just at another person's house. I've changed her, fed her, put her to bed, entertained her, comforted her and everything else conceivable all on previous occasions . This weekend was just the next step. I got to do it all in the same segment of time and all on my home turf. So actually , it was easier than before because I didn't have anybody watching my every single move.

Over all, I'd say it was a ssuccessful first weekend. Here's a picture of the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed wonder on Saturday morning.

An unlikely pair

I figured out how to get a playlist on my blog and in the process I found a song that Frank Sinatra and U2 did together. Never in a million years would I have guessed that they would do a song togeher. They are from completely different eras and have totally different music styles, yet it works! Click on "I've got you under my skin".

I had Cali for a few hours tonight! I took her with me to my elder's quorum meeting and then we came home and picked Raspberries . She's pretty good about picking only the ripe ones and a few of them actually made it into the bucket rather than her mouth! I'm making a treat for her out of our harvest so I can give it to her the next time I see her.

I can tell Fall is on it's way. It's starting to get cooler at night instead of staying roasting hot all the time. It gets in the 90's during the day and it cools down to the 50's or 60's at night. It's really not jacket weather yet, but I put this on her to help fend off the mosquitos when we were outside.

My latest adventure in domestication revolves around my job actually. Tim, one of the guys I work with, got married a couple months ago. One of their gifts was a food dehydrator and he is actually more prone to using it than his wife. He has made several different flavors of beek jerky and brought some to work for the rest of us to try. It was S-O-O-O-O good! Then figured if Tim could do it, so could I! So when I saw one at the DI on Friday for $5.00 I couldn't resist.

This morning I pureed some raspberries, threw in some applesauce and then rhubarb for a little different taste. I put it in the dehydrator before church and when I got home it was ready! It was so good I had to make more ; except this time I blended in some tropical fruit chunks like pineapple, guava, mango and passion fruit. I'm excited for this next batch- it should be ready in another hour or so.

This might seem like a lot of work and rime for a little snack, but it's really satisfying to think about the fact that this is real food and it's made from my own hands, from my garden(except for the tropical fruit) it gives me alot of satisfaction and confidence knowing that it is not full of preservatives and all that other stuff that comes in store bought food.

I miht have to work up to doing jerky, that takes a little more prep than throwing some fruit in the blender.

This blog will most likely just turn into a place to post pictures of my daughter Calathea Louise. Anything else I could report on is just kind of monotonous everyday stuff. She is truely a hilight of my life. I don't know if it's just the pride of being a father, but I just think that she is the most beautiful thing in the world. I am so proud of her. I'm always fascinated at how smart she is and her abilty to figure things out. I love her personality although she was kind of a pill tonight when I was trying to put her to bed! She's so aware of her surroundings. She's quite sweet and very smiley, as you can tell..

From today, she loves the piano!

I just love her smile on the second one. It also shows that she does have some hair in the back!

Picking raspberries

picking raspberries today

From my visit to see Cali today. It was quite fun and peaceful at first but the rest is a long story that I'll have to share later.

For those of you who haven't seen or heard her in action, here is a short clip of Cali on the neighbor's trampoline today:

After a triple double backflip with an artesian flying monkey twist and half barrel roll she ends with a strong landing....

TTFN!

Lost Media Archive-Out/Ex

"Why don't you go braid your hair or something?"

The lost media Archive was created to preserve all forms of old media such as films, records, old comic books, art, and all kinds of other things like that that ultimaly would have been destroyed, forgotten or otherwise disappeared into unknown places never to be seen again. It was originally started by a group of people who appreciate old things like that, but since then has been moved to the University of Utah's library system where it can be organized, catalogued and made available to everyone.

The Out/Ex part refers to the watching of outsider/experimental movies. Once a month, the group meets in Salt Lake to review these old movies and the progress of the archiving work. I'm new to the group so I'm still learning about everything this involves, so don't quote me on all the details. From what I can tell, it basically boils down to a bunch of geeks getting together to watch horrible movies. These movies are so bad, they're good- no wait, they're awesome! They've got it all, cheesy special effects, bad acting, poorly written scripts, outrageous fashions, you name it.

Last Saturday I participated in this madness by attending a screening of "Creating Rem Lezar" , a children's movie from 1989. You'll have to look it up on Youtube to find more about the movie itself. We watched the movie, then a few from the group performed some of the songs from the movie. After that a bunch of us went to breakfast at freaky Dee's (it's like Denny's). It has been dubbed "freaky" because there is a transgendered person that works there as a waiter/ess. We didn't get to see it this time though, oh well. And since it's always open this restaurant seems to attract odd people at odd hours of the night too- like weird movie geeks for example. We even had our Rem Lezar with us in full costume! We sure got some weird looks walking around with a guy wearing a blue spandex suit, cape, gold shoes and a curly blue wig. I was one bisquit way from finishing an entire Cowboy Breakfast while the large guy next to me tapped out at about 3/5ths of his same meal. I finally got back to Logan completely exhausted at about 1:30 in the morning.

Not everybody gets to have their picure taken with Rem Lezar and Ashley for their birthday!

Hey! It's Ashley, Zach, and Rem Lezar! (you'll have to watch the clips on Youtube)

Bonsai

Banzai is a japanese war cry. Bonsai, (pronounced : Bone-sigh), the art of growing miniaturized trees and plants is a hobby I've been studying for years and years. Because of the unsettled lifestyle I've had in the past, it has been difficult to keep any bonsai stock for very long. However now that I've stayed in Logan cosistantly for over three years I've been able to keep a few trees going. Here's one of them.


This is the story (so far) of a black pine that I acquired in September of 2006.




The first picture shows the tree as I bought it from Lowe's in a 3 gallon nursery pot. It is approximately 4 feet tall.





















The second picture is in mid-July of 2007. About a third of the tree's height has been removed and it is planted at an angle in a larger pot with plenty of drainage. This is done for several reasons reasons: First, if roots are kept too wet, they will rot and die- and so will the tree! Second, the faster the water drains, the faster the roots will grow to follow it. More roots equals a stronger, healthier tree! The "pot" is exactly what it looks like, a laundry basket. It is lined with window screening to hold the soil in. Planting the tree at an angle creates a more visually interesting form for the trunkline. A lot of foliage has been removed as well. This is also done for a couple reasons. One, it lets more light into the inner parts of the tree, which will encourage the tree to produce more secondary branching on the remaning limbs. It allows the viewer to see the trunkline of the tree and gives it a patina of greater age when you can see the cracks and fissures in the bark. An old gnarly tree with bends and twists in its trunk shows that it has withstood the pressures and ravages of time and is much more interesting than a young sapling with a straight trunk and Christmas tree-like silhouette.







This is the pine in late Spring '08. It has been repotted again into a shallower pot so more people can recognize it as a bonsai in training. The pot is still much larger than the final pot will be eventually. Foliage has been thinned out a little more and separated into more of the "pad" shape they will eventually need to be in. It is still growing strong and is healthy.





This is not my tree! It is a good example of the vision I have for mine someday though. My plan is for mine to reach this point in 7-12 more years, most likely closer to the 12 years... or more!

Here is a pine tree I saw on my hike last Saturday. It must be centuries old! Very inspiring!

I had a great birthday yesterday. I hiked 9 miles in the morning/ afternoon, got to spend some time with Cali, and then some friends from my ward came over and brought me a birthday cake! I got to talk to some of my family members and chatted with my friend Dorothy for awhile. From the ridge of the mountain I was on, I could see Tremonton and Brigham City to the left and Cache valley to the right at the same time. You can barely see the northern most part of Cache valley on the right, most of it is kind of behind and more to the right of my vantage point.

I made this snowman up at the top of the mountain. Time, availability of snow and precarious placement of aforementioned snow prevented me from making a larger snowman. He's cute though, huh?

Back in February when my Pontiac Grand Prix got totalled, my landlords offered to let me borrow one of their cars until I could get a new one. It was an old beater buick Le Sabre that smelled funny, but beggars can't be choosers. I found out shorty after starting to drive it that it would die unexpectedly during the cold wet weather, often in inconveinient places like in the middle of intersections with people waiting behind me. When the weather got warmer and it Stopped dying all the time I actually started getting attatched to it. I put the CD player from my old car in there and last week I traded the wheels from my ex-wife's dead dodge caravan onto it. I had bought the tires for the van brand new and then it died, so they were just sitting not being used. Today I got new wheel covers to fit the new wheels to dress it up more. It only had three hubcaps from the van so it was pretty ghetto looking. Little by little I'll continue to work on this car to make it nicer and run better. The Willardsons are going to sign the title over to me so it will be all mine and that's why I'm puuting all this effort into it. This first picture is the way it was before the new wheels, rather boring looking. The next one is with the new wheels and covers on there. It still needs a lot of work, but there's progress!

After Church today I had the urge to be out in nature and clear my head a little. I went to a place up in Logan canyon called Tony's Grove. It has this cute little lake with a trail that goes all the way around. The road leading to it reminds me of driving through Skate Creek rd. in Mt. Rainier Ntl. Park, you better keep your eyes open or you'll end up in a river! This picture is of the lake itself.

I found a picture of me at work at the sprinkler store, drawing away! here ya go!

On Saturday I happened to be fortunate enough to be at Lowe's visiting my friend Ilene when an announcement came over the speakers saying the Lowe's 48 racecar was outside. I went out there and I only had my phone camera with me so the picture isn't the best, but hey- it proves I was there and I touched it!

I have no idea who these people are...






















The City of Logan is weird about the days on which they do their fireworks shows. Last year it wasn't on the fourth of July and this year it wasn't on the fourth of July either. At least this year I didn't have to go alone! I got to have Cali with me and she loved it. We watched them from the soccer field above the football staduim along with about half of the population of Cache valley. Cali loved running around, jumping on everyone else's blankets and playing with their kids.




I was constantly chasing her and bringing her back to our spot. Overall, it was really fun and memorable.

I"m on my 7th out of 8 weeks of physical therapy and I have noticed such a difference in the mobility and function of my left side. When we last tested, my left hand's squeezing power has increased 3x since I started less than two months ago. The circulation has increased drastically and overall range of motion is signifigantly better. With more work and exersize, more improvement will come!