Ryan's Bone Marrow Turns 6

Today was a busy day. I woke up about 5am and couldn't go back to sleep. I had taken the day off to go fishing with my dad. There is something about waking up early and going fishing. I can't wake up early like this any other day, but the days I go fishing, I'm up and can't go back to sleep.

Deni's sister, Jessica (and her husband Nic and baby Mataya) arrived at our house about 6am from Arizona. They drove all night to get here. They will be staying with us for the next few days to visit.

My dad arrived at 6:30am all ready to go fishing. We decided to go to Scofield again. We usually catch fish when we go to Scofield and we can keep them, unlike going to Strawberry. It started snowing on the way up Spanish Fork Canyon. Driving in snow up to your fishing spot isn't the best of signs. The canyon was very snowy and slick. When we got to Scofield it was cold and windy. Not too long after we got there it started snowing. The drive out to our fishing spot on the snowmobiles was odd. I was following Dad and he got about 50 yards ahead of me and I couldn't see him because of the fog, snow and wind. When we got to the spot, we set up Dad's new Ice fishing hut. Without the ice fishing hut, we would not have stayed out there fishing. At times I thought the ice hut was going to blow away.

Quick story about the wind. The ice hut has an internal frame and the wind was blowing so hard, it knocked off one of the pieces of the internal frame, which hit dad in the head and of all the places it could fall, it fell pole down into one of the 4 ten inch ice holes we had drilled. It all happened so fast, that I didn't have time to catch it. I watched it sink and then saw it on the fish finder for a minute. Then it was gone. For the next minute or so, bubbles were coming up, probably because the pole was filling with water. The pole we lost was one of 2 braces that kept the tent's from folding in.

As you can tell from the picture, the snow wasn't falling down, it was blowing sideways.

I caught one fish, a rainbow, about 14 inches long. I threw it out on the snow outside of the tent. Within about 30 minutes the fish was frozen stiff. Dad got about 3 bites but missed the fish. I didn't feel any other bites the whole day.

We were hoping the wind would die down, but it never did. When we left to come home, our snowmobile tracks we covered over and you couldn't see too far ahead of you, maybe 25 yards, at most.



We got everything on the trailer and headed home about 1:15pm. As we pulled on to Highway 6, I looked back, only to see the lid to Dad's trailer blow off. I told Dad and he quickly stopped, I jumped out and started running back down the road waving at people to go around it. About 4 cars went around it. The final 4th truck was a semi and he drove right over it and smashed the lid. I picked the pieces up and ran back to the truck. We secured it back on and headed home.

Today is also Ryan's Bone Marrow Birthday. It has been 6 years since the amazing transplant day in Los Angeles, CA. I'm amazed each day that Ryan is healthy without any side effects. We are on a email list with others that have similar problems as Ryan. I would say that at least 90% of the kids don't have anywhere the quality of life or health that Ryan has. We are very blessed to have Ryan alive and healthy with a fully functioning immune system.

For Ryan's Bone Marrow birthday he got a Wii points card with 2000 points. He can use the points card to download older nintendo games. We downloaded Mario Kart 64 (it cost 1000 points, or $10.00).

We had my parents over for dinner to celebrate Ryan's 6th bone marrow birthday. After dinner, Ryan talked my parents into going down stairs to play the Wii.

My mom even played a game against Ryan on the Wii. They played Tennis and Ryan got beat by his grandma.

Fishing for Sydney's toe

Deni called me at work this morning to tell me that Sydney had a fishhook in her foot. Having had a fishhook in my leg as a kid, I knew that if the barb wasn't showing then it would probably be a Emergency Room visit.

Deni explained where the hook was. I decided I would drive home from work to attempt to get it out myself before trying to get into the Dr. When I got home I had to cut off Sydney's tights, so I could get a good look at the hook. Cutting the tights was a traumatic event for my little 3 year old girl. Once I got a look at it, it didn't look too bad, as the fish hook had already gone in and was starting to come out on the other side. I grabbed my wire cutters, found a hook that was similar in my fishing gear and attempted to cut it, so I knew how hard it would be. It cut easily, which gave me some hope. Next was the fun part, explaining to a 3yr old that she needed to stay still so Daddy could get the hook out of her toe without hurting her. She was saying "no, no, no," and "cut it off". Both comments were referring to the hook.

Deni held Sydney and attempted to hold her foot still. I cut the eyelit off, pushed it a little more through until I was able to cut the barb. At that point, it came right out. Sydney was glad it was out. She wanted a band-aid even though it wasn't bleeding, so we got one for her.

After getting the hook out, I went back to work.

Wii played it

We sat down as a family last night and talked to the kids about doing their chores, etc. After doing that we asked them if they could have anything they wanted, what would it be. (hoping to hear that they wanted a Nintendo Wii).

Ryan said he wanted a play weedeater.

Deni and I looked at each other, surprised that he didn't ask for an Xbox 360 or Nintendo Wii. Deni's reply was, "Dad didn't get that, but he got you something else that sounds like "wii"deater. She had to say it a few times before he caught on that we had bought a Nintendo Wii. He was excited and we all ran into the tv room to play with it.

The first game we played was from the Wii Sports disk, Boxing. Ryan was first and had a good time. Deni videoed him playing. It was funny. We even had to put something in his way so that he didn't get to close to the tv. I can just see him hitting the tv while he is boxing.

We all played games. Baseball, Tennis, Golf. They are all pretty fun. The Wii is not your average a game console.

Wii have it

I finally broke down and bought a game console for our family. After taking a look at the Nintendo Wii, I became obsessed with getting it. The Nintendo Wii is pretty cool.

Deni has been trying to find one for the last week, since I (we) made the decision to purchase one. She found that Toys R Us had one this morning, so she quickly made the drive to Orem to purchase it.

I'm sure I'll have more to share about it later, once we actually get it set up and play with it, but for now, we are excited we were able to find one.

3rd anniversary of my 29th birthday

Today was the 3rd anniversary of my 29th birthday (uh, 32 yrs old). On top of it being my birthday, today is Sunday and it rained all day, not what I was really wanting for a birthday.

Other than it raining all day, my day was a good one. Deni and kids gave me a ice fishing rod holder and an attachment for my bike that allows me to pull the kids in their trailer. Until today, Deni was the only one that could pull the kids, as I didn't have the attachment for my bike,

I think she got it more for her, so that she wasn't the one always pulling the kids when we go on a bike ride, but I'm glad I have one now too, so that I can help pull the kids.

After dinner, my parents came over to visit. It's always nice to have them come over. We live so close and I think we take it for granted sometimes. I want my kids to grow up knowing their grandparents and learning from them.

Time for a bike ride

Deni and I went to a WorldWide Leader training from the Church. It was a great training on how to be better teachers.

After the training, Deni went out shopping for my birthday present while I stayed at home with the kids. It was such a nice day out that Sydney, Ryan and I went on a bike ride around the neighborhood. Sydney had a few crashes, but she got up each time and got back on her bike. She's just about outgrown her bike.

We were supposed to go to a birthday party for a neighborhood friend tonight, but the kids didn't eat their dinner and weren't being nice, so I made the decision that they weren't going to go. We had a hard 30 - 45 minutes when they both realized that I wasn't going to let them go, but after we got through that and I was able to talk to them and explain why I wasn't letting them go, things got better.

I had an opportunity to talk to Ryan alone for about 15-20 minutes that was very eye opening. We usually try to talk to Ryan about school, but he very rarely tells us details other than "things are fine" or "today was a good day" but he seemed to open up to me tonight and tell me a lot of his concerns at school, including other kids being bullies and not treating him too kindly. It breaks my heart that he is experiencing unkind kids at school. I'm not sure why kids are so unkind to each other. I had a good time talking to him and was glad I had the opportunity.

After we talked we played with legos and created spaceships.

Ice Fishing at Huntington Reservoir

Since work has been so crazy this last week, I thought it would be a good idea to take the day off and go ice fishing. I decided to try a new location for ice fishing this time. My dad and I went down south to Huntington Reservoir. From Spanish Fork, you head up the canyon on Highway 6, then head south on 89 towards Manti. When you get to Fairiview, you head up in the mountains.

We got to Huntington Reservoir about 7:30am to find that we were the only ones at the Reservoir. I thought others would show up, but we were the only ones there all day. Not another single fisherman showed up all day.

We fished about 40 feet from the Dam in about 30 feet of water. I only caught one fish. But it was my first time catching a Tiger Trout. A Tiger trout is a cross between a brown trout and brook trout and has a unique, dark maze-like pattern all over a brownish, gray body. They say they fight more than Rainbow Trout, but the one I caught was only 12 inches, so I didn't notice the difference. My dad caught 2, but we threw all three back.

As I was trying to find directions to Huntington Reservoir online, I found an interesting tid bit about Huntington Reservoir. The reservoir became famous in 1988 when the well-preserved, 9,500 year old skeleton of a Columbian Mammoth was uncovered during reconstruction of the dam.

When fishing was slow, we headed out on the snowmobiles for a ride. Around 2pm, we headed home. I had an enjoyable time visiting with Dad as we drove home.

Tonight we had a work party up in Lindon, UT. At the work party the kids were able to ice skate, play pool, basketball, and eat lots of goodies. We all had a good time there. I told Sydney that the work party was my birthday party. I think she was pretty impressed.

23.5 hrs over time

Had a meltdown at work this weekend. As of right now, I've spent 23.5 hrs since Friday night on the issue.

Today alone, I worked from 7:30am until 10:15 or so. I was so busy that I didn't eat breakfast or lunch. I missed church too.

I think about 5pm I decided I needed to eat something. At 7:30pm I tried to start to transition the issue to another co-worker, but that didn't happen until 10-ish.

Time for bed.

Bathroom break

Today while I was work, I was working with a co-worker over the phone that works on the other side of the building. I had drank a lot of water and was in need of a bathroom break so I told him to hold on for a few minutes, I put him on hold and I walked to the bathroom. As I was washing my hands I looked back to see my same co-worker that I had put on hold in the bathroom. Ooops. We had a laugh about that.

I value status, power, money and material possessions

We took the Young Men to the Department of Workforce Services in Spanish Fork for our Young Men's activities tonight. We had it planned for Tuesday night, our normal night, but something came up and we had to reschedule it.

We started out by taking a 180 question test to tell us what type of careers we would be interested in. I went ahead and took the test so I would know what I wanted to be when I grow up.

After answering all the questions, the test told me I had 2 areas of interest.

1. Enterprising Interest Area

People with this interest...
-are "Persuaders".
-enjoy leading or managing other people.
-often respond well to competition and enjoy leading teams.
-are willing to take risks.
-value status, power, money and material possessions.
-describe themselves as ambitious or energetic

and

2. Conventional Interest Area

People with this interest...
-are "Organizers".
-enjoy systematic, step-by-step work tasks.
-like to keep things neat and in order.
-prefer working in stable environments with predictable routines.
-are detail-oriented and persistent
-may describe themselves as efficient or dependable

The part I liked the most was the fact that I value status, power, money and material possessions.

After the activity, we took the boys to get ice cream at Macey's. While I was driving, the boys were telling me the fastest way to get to the store and one of the boys finally said, "Why don't you let Bro Berger drive because he is 16". The other boys laughed, but I thanked him for thinking I was so young. That got me thinking a little, so I asked all three of boys how old they thought I was. The answers were 26, 28, and 30. Not too bad for an almost 32yr old.