Bowling, Lost Cell, and setting up a Trust

Last night was Young Men's. Deni didn't have Young Womens, which was great as she was able to stay home with the kids. It's not easy with both of us serving in the Young Men/Young Womens and both having separate activities each Wed night. We usually split the kids. I usually take Ryan and she takes Sydney, but it makes for a late night for them.

Back to my story. First of all, all my boys showed up for the activity (they were even on time), however my other leader didn't show up. He sounded like he was losing his voice on Sunday so I thought that maybe he was sick. I called him on his cell and got his voicemail. The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) have a rule (and I guess the church does too) that you should always have 2 deep leadership at all activities. So here I am with 4 boys, myself, my van, and an activity 15 miles away from home with no second leader.

I grabbed my cell phone and started calling around looking for a second leader. I first called the YM's President, Strike 1. Second I drove by another YM's leaders house and it was dark, Strike 2. I continued to drive until I get to the house of the leader that didn't show up and I sent one of the boys up to the door to see if he was home. Surprise, he is out of town and he never told me about it, Strike 3. It's now 7:15pm, we are suppose to be in Provo at 7:30pm for our activity. Next I call the father of one of the boys. He's unavailable. Strike 4. Finally in desperation, I start to drive out of my subdivision thinking that I had done my best and was going to have to break the rule and go alone.

As I drive out of the subdivision, I drove by our bishops house and notice his car was still there. Feeling a little guilty for making the decision to break the 2 deep leadership rule, I call our Bishop on his cell and ask if he could come with me. He had meetings at 8pm, therefore it would be impossible to get to Provo, have our activity and be back by 8pm. Strike 5. The Bishop gives me one more person to call. (2nd Counselor in the Bishopric and the only boy's father I hadn't called tonight.) Finally at 7:30pm, I find the 2nd Counselor in the Bishopric is available to go with me, however he is at work and I need to pick him up in downtown Spanish Fork.

To make a Long story longer, I picked him up and we were on our way. Luckily the boys were too interested in some ipod or cell phone to notice we had been driving around looking for a 2nd leader for the last 30 minutes.

Our activity was to go to Fat Cats, a bowling alley in Provo, to take a tour. We got to the bowling alley, found the gentleman we were told to contact and asked for a tour. The tour was quite interesting. We got to go in the back of a bowling alley and he showed us how everything worked. Much more complicated than it looks from the front. The boys seemed to enjoy the tour and asked questions. We spent about 20 minutes looking around and asking questions before making the trip home.

Fast forward to this morning. I got to work and realized I didn't have my cell phone. I didn't think much about it, as I thought I had left it at home. Around noon, I called Deni and asked her to bring my cell phone with her as we were meeting later. She called it a few times and never heard it ringing in the house. She called it once more and someone answered it other than me. She asked the person on the phone if they had a phone that wasn't theirs and the guy said that someone had found it in the parking lot. Deni said the parking lot of....... The guy reply with the Parking lot of Fat Cats.

It appears that I dropped my cell phone somehow last night and someone turned it in.

When I went to get it today, I walked in and asked for it. The worked said, the Razr, I replied yes, the Razr. He said "nice phone" and then stood there like he didn't want to give it to me. Eventually he gave it to me and I was on my way.

Deni and I were on our way to meet with our "Lawyer". That sounds so official. Since the unexpected death of Deni's little sister, we have felt a greater need to get our estate in order by setting up a Family Trust, Will, Powers of Attorney, Power of Attorney for Health Care, Living Will, and documents about the Procedures that should be followed if we were to die. We met our Lawyer in Orem last week to give him some basic information and we went back today to pay him and get everything signed and officially put into our trust. The Lawyer is contacting all of our Accounts such as Bank Accounts, Life Insurance Policies, etc and transferring our assets into this newly created Trust. All in all, it cost us $510.00 to get it done, however it is worth having the peace of mind that our kids would be taken care of in the unlikely event of our death.

A Trust protects us in a number of ways.

1. Saves estate taxes by using two exemption amounts of $2 million each ($4 million total - now I just have to amass my $4 million)
2. Avoids Probate and saves time and money in transferring assets to our heirs.
3. Provides a written, documented plan for proper distribution of our assets. (this way Sydney and Ryan don't have to fight over anything.)

My life is pretty boring

I've decided that my life is pretty boring. I wake up, go to work, exercise during lunch, come home, day after day after day.

As a side note to my boring life, I rode 12.28 miles in 35 minutes today. Averaged 21 mph. I can't wait until the snow is gone so I can really get out and go riding. I love riding up Payson Canyon. Obviously, it is much more fun coming down than going up, but I love riding up/down that canyon. Payson canon also has my favorite camping spot in Utah, Maple Lake. I'm probably still at least 3 months away from being able to ride up there as we have so much snow and it just keeps coming.

Tonight we got at least another 2 inches with the weatherman saying a possibility of getting 5 to 10 inches overnight.

Habitat for Humanity Service Project

I volunteered to go to a Habitat for Humanity Service Project today with our Scouts.

The Young men in our ward are working on one of the last requirements needed for their Citizenship in the Community merit badge, which has a daunting 8 hr service project that benefits the community.

We decided we would break it up into at least 2 different projects. Project 1, was Habitat for Humanity. (I'm not sure what Project 2 will be, but I'm sure I'll be apart of it.)

We met at the church at 10:30am and got home around 3pm. Once we got to Habitat for Humanity we sat and listened to the mission of what Habitat for Humanity does for the community.

Here are some interesting facts that I didn't know.

Habitat for Humanity was started in 1976.

They build homes for people, however instead of giving them a free house, they make them work on the house, or if they don't have any skills to do so, they require them to come volunteer in their store. Once the house is complete, they still don't give them the house without payment, but rather give the person a 0 percent interest loan for the cost of the house. This way the people are more responsible with their new home. Hmm where have I heard these concepts before?

Last year in Utah county, there were 95 applicants for a home to be built by Habitat for Humanity. They were only able to build 5 due to resource constraints. (read money) The biggest constraint is the price of land.

Another interesting thing I learned was that Habitat partners are encouraged to donate a tenth of what they raise in support of house building in another country. The estimated average cost for building a house overseas is only $4,200. Compared to about $120,000 cost of a home in Utah County. It's amazing there is such a difference in cost.

After listening to an overview of what Habitat for Humanity was, we were given different assignments to help. During the 4+ hours at Habitat for Humanity, we cleaned out the store, arranged items and even removed stoves and refrigerators from a house to be resold at the store. Their store is like a DI or Goodwill for housing items.

While we were serving some of the boys helped an older gentleman with his purchased items to his car. This gentleman followed the boys back into the store, found the other leader I was with and said that he wasn't sure what group of boys we had there serving but he wanted to make a contribute to our group. The leader told him we were a Boy Scout troop and took his contribution (a few dollars) and thanked him. We then contributed right back to Habitat for Humanity.

Even though I was away from my family for such a long time on Saturday, it was a great experience and one I would do again.

A lot of the service projects I've done it the past have been helping friends and neighbors, which is great, however it was a good feeling to help Habitat for Humanity make a difference, even if it was only for 4 hours on a Saturday.

After I got home, we went to a BYU Basketball game at the Marriott Center. I can't really call it a game, as BYU won by 20 or so points, after they had their 3rd string guys in for the last quarter. The kids enjoyed being in the Marriott Center and seeing the game. The Marriott Center was pretty much full. After the game, we went to one of our favorite places to eat, Cafe Rio.

Late nights and long swims

I stayed up until just after midnight last night attempting to get the scout records in order for our Scout troop. The funny thing is I'm just an Assistant Team Coach (Varsity age boys) and there are others that are called to keep up with the records, but since it wasn't done and my boys were in charge of the Court of Honor, I thought it would be wise to make sure we had Merit Badges and Rank advancements to hand out. I started at 7pm and worked on it until just after midnight. I ended up driving all around the neighborhood gathering information from the last 6 months from the boys.

Today I went swimming again. I had planned on for the month of January to only swim 800 meters (1/2 mile) on Mon, Wed, and Friday, however today while I was swimming and got close to finishing the 800 meters, I thought, I'd go 8 more laps to make it 1200 meters, so I did. When I got close to 1200 meters, I thought I'd go for 8 more laps to make it 1600 meters (1 mile) and I did. I felt really good in the pool today. I swam the mile in just under 29 minutes, on my stomach without stopping. It felt good to swim today. I guess I'll have to adjust my swimming schedule and start swimming longer earlier than I thought.

After swimming, I went to a meeting at work where the CFO had flown in to talk to the employees in Provo. I'm always glad to see CXO's in Provo, it makes me feel like they care about me and my job. It was a great meeting and I'm glad I attended it.

Ice fishing, or not

In reverence to Martin Luther King, Jr our family decided to go ice fishing on Civil Rights Day.

Wondering what fishing has to do with Martin Luther King, Jr? Me too. In reality, I just got the day off and needed something to do with my time off.

Because ice fishing is started in the wee hours of the morning and we have about an hour and a half drive to our fishing destination, we decided that it would be a good idea to sleep at my parents house so we could just wake up, put the kids in the truck and head out on our adventure.

However, when we watched the news last night, we saw that a rather large snow storm was heading our way. We decided we would play it by ear and see if the weatherman was right. I woke up at 5am to see if there was snow and unfortunately there was about 2 inches or so. Since we had to drive up either Provo Canyon or Spanish Fork Canyon, leaving at 5am when it was snowing didn't sound like something we wanted to do, so I went back to bead. We postponed our ice fishing trip for another day with better weather.

We hung out at Mom and Dad's for most of the day. Mom broke her other ankle on Friday night (I say other ankle as a few years back she broke her ankle on a house boat). This time she missed the last step of the stairs leaving the house. This one won't require pins and screws like the last, but she does have a "boot" on for a while.

When the snow stopped I measured 5 inches of new snow.

You know you are in trouble when...

You know you are in trouble when... Brett ends up being the Young Men's Basketball coach.

As with most things in my Young Men's church calling, if I don't do it, it doesn't get done. Pretty sad, but it appears to be my reality.

Last week I barely got enough boys to our first basketball game by driving around the neighborhood "recruiting" deacons and teachers. Apparently even though the only thing Priests talk about is playing basketball, they are all talk and no action when it comes to putting a Young Men's church basketball team together. So myself and the other counselor in the YM's Presidency acted as the coaches for the team last Saturday and we ended up with 6 boys, one to spare. The final score 40 to 4. Our team being the score of 4.

After scoring only 4 points, the boys decided they needed to practice, so even though we don't have a Basketball coach, I scheduled a practice at 6:30 pm on Wed. We announced it in church and surprisingly enough, the boys showed up to practice, however I was the only leader. Having no basketball skills of my own and honestly not knowing enough about the actual rules of basketball to talk intelligently about it, we ended up playing 3 on 3 and worked on getting rebounds.

Fast forward to today. Still no official coach, but I called the other YM's counselor to verify he would be there, which he stated he would. I picked up a few boys on the way to the church and arrived about 10 minutes before the game started. The referee came over to me an asked if I was the coach and if I would fill out the roster. Looking around and still being the only leader from my ward, I took the paper, filled out the boys names and numbers and turned it in. Next we had a prayer and then started the game. We had more boys show up this week than last. We actually had 8 boys. So here I am with 8 boys by myself. I chose 5 of them asked them if they wanted to play "man to man" or zone coverage (some basketball talk I learned last week). They choose man to man and I sent them out on the court. A few minutes into the game, the other YM counselor showed up. The team did much better than last week. We scored 11 points this week. The ending score was 11 to 24, but better than the 4 to 40 beating we took last week. Even though we didn't win, the boys made progress. Progress not perfection. Little by little.

Watching the "Blue-birds"

I woke up today at 5:28am to the sound of Ryan dry-heaving just outside my bedroom. I jumped up (in the dark), found Ryan and quickly carried him into the bathroom. Poor kid, what a way to start out the day. Obviously we kept Ryan home from school today.

Since I was up, I got ready and went to work. I've decided that since I'm swimming Monday, Wed, and Friday during lunch, I might as well exercise Tues and Thurs too. So today during lunch I went and rode a stationary bike for 40 minutes, then took a 15 minute shower. I rode just over 12 miles (20k) Actually saying that I rode 20k sounds so much better. I think I'm going to start saying all my distances in meters and kilometers, they sound so much more impressive than miles.

After work today I spent some time with Sydney while she watched the High School Musical 2 "extras" from the DVD. She told me that we needed to watch the "blue-birds". I looked at her and said, I'm not sure where those are. She then ran upstairs to ask Ryan and came back down and said: "Ryan said the funny song is on the blue-birds".

Oh you mean the Bloopers. So we watched the High School Musical 2 Bloopers together.

I didn't know you could make such good lego spaceships

I swam 1/2 mile again today. I was able to better my time from Friday by about 30 seconds. I was amazed how sore I was from my swim on Friday.

I showered after swimming, but it doesn't matter as I still smell of chlorine. It seems I have to take about 3 showers before I can't smell it anymore. I usually shower when I get home too, but even after that I can still smell chlorine (and I'm itchy). The joys of staying in shape and training for a Triathlon.

After dinner, Deni went out to a funeral of a lady in our ward. The kids and I stayed at home. Sydney wanted to watch a movie and Ryan wanted to play with legos. So I combined both of them. We watched the Emperors New Groove (a favorite at our house.) When Ryan was little he would watch that movie over and over. So when it started, I started quoting the movie. Ryan looked at me and asked me how I knew the words to the movie. He had forgotten how much he liked that movie as a kid and how many times I watched it with him.

I built a lego spaceship while we watched the movie. Ryan saw it and said. "Dad, I didn't know you could make such good lego spaceships."

Everything gets put into perspective when you hear things like that from your kids. I'm sure glad Ryan thinks I'm good at making lego spaceships.

Swimming again

I started swimming again.

It's been a while. Matter of fact the last time I swam was at the end of July when I swam in the Burley Spudman.

I swam 1/2 mile today in 14 minutes and 46 seconds. Not bad for not having swam in 5 months. I swam during lunch. I've been eating lunch at my desk, which means I work through lunch. Not the best idea. It was nice to leave for lunch and swim during lunch. My plans are to swim Monday, Wed and Friday.

Ice skating in Provo

Tonight we went Ice Skating with the Young Men and Young women from the ward for mutual. Since both Deni and I work in with the YM/YW we took our kids along (as we always do). I actually tried to get the kids to want to go to Grandma's during this activity but who wants to pass up Indoor Ice Skating.

I was surprised how well Ryan did. He was off going around the ice rink by himself within seconds of hitting the ice. Sydney didn't quite have the balance to skate by herself. She was ok with me holding one of her hands, however she never caught on to the concept.

It was fun to skate around with the Ryan, Sydney and the kids from the ward.

Deni took Sydney around with one of the Young Women from our ward. I caught this little video clip. Note the Young Man (also from our ward) that thought it would be a good idea to try and push Deni over.


Sydney did much better than this when I took her around the rink.

Party till the cows come home

Dinner was a little rushed tonight as Deni had to run off to a training. As we were cleaning up the dishes, I told the kids that we were going to "party till the cows come home". Deni overheard me and said, "you just called me a cow." We both laughed about it.

I figured it I'd better write it down before Deni does.

In a world where Sea Monsters ruled the ocean....

A while back Deni and I decided that we should start going on "dates" with our kids. Deni would take one kid and I'd take the other. We did this a few months back and it was a hit (for both the kids and for us.)

It was fun for us to spend one on one time with each of the kids and be able to focus only on them and what they wanted to do. Since it was one on one, it was fun to listen to what they wanted to talk about.

We gave the kids a small budget for the night and let them spend it as they wanted. We told them they could go out to eat with the money, or we could eat before went out and spend it on other fun things, or better yet they could spend it all on themselves if they wanted to. As with all good ideas we got busy and we never did it again.

With the new year, we thought we would try and start it up again.

Tonight it was my turn to go out with Ryan. (while Deni and Sydney went out).

Ryan and I started out the night by playing a game of Mario Strikers Charged (which is a really fun Soccer game on the Wii) at our house. Next we drove to Lehi to Thanksgiving Point to the Mammoth Screen Theater, which is an iMax type theater. We bought tickets to "Sea Monsters" in 3D and then walked around the theater looking at dinosaurs.

At 7:20 pm we were seated. I asked the lady if it was going to be a private showing as Ryan and I were the only ones there. We got our 3D glasses and choose our seat. 2 minutes before the movie started, one couple walked in and sat a few rows behind us. It was almost a private showing.

Ryan and I with our 3D glasses on.

Sea Monsters takes audiences on a remarkable journey into the relatively unexplored world of the “other dinosaurs,” those reptiles that lived beneath the water.

The movie alone would have been pretty cool, but the fact that it was 3D made it even better. We enjoyed reaching out attempting to touch the giant "Sea Monsters" as they swam towards us. It was only 45 minutes long, but again, well worth the money.

After the movie we decided to run across the street to Cabelas to look at the giant fish tanks. We didn't have much time at Cabelas but got to look around really quick.

I had a great time with Ryan tonight. I wouldn't change a thing about him. I'm pretty lucky to have such a great son.

Look Dad, no boots

When I woke up this morning it was raining. Within an hour it was snowing hard. By noon it had stopped snowing and we had just over 6 inches of fresh snow.

I went out to shovel the driveway and found the snow was wet and heavy. Great snowman making snow. A few minutes later Deni and the kids got dressed and came outside to build a snowman.

As we were building the snowman we hear, "Mom... Dad...I need some help"

We looked over and we saw this:

Only Sydney would be out in the snow with her boots off.

We had fun making the snowman.

In the past, our snowmen haven't lasted too long. Usually some kids in the neighborhood come by and push it over or do something to it. While we were making our big snowman I had an idea.

We have 2 larger sized rocks in our parkstrip. I threw snow around these rocks and had the kids make smaller snowmen, with the rock packed with snow as the base of the snowman. I'm hoping I don't wake up and see a car stuck on my parkstrip thinking it would be funny to run over a small snowman only to hit my rock.