17.14 tons of rock

I worked from home this morning as my rock was going to be delivered sometime this morning. I finally got a call saying they would be here between 11:30am and noon.

When he called to tell me the time, he also told me the exact tonage (17.14 tons) and the price. The price was about $125 more than I was quoted, so I called the company and got that straighten out. A dump truck holds about 15 ton, and since I ordered 17 ton, they brought a "truck and a pup". They had 10 ton in the truck and about 7 ton in the trailer (pup).

I asked the driver to drop it in a few locations for me, which he did. He made four drops. Since we were spreading this by hand (and wheelbarrow) it put the rock much closer to where I would need it.

After the delivery, I headed off to work to finish up some loose ends. I talked to Dad and he said he was coming over to help me after work around 5:30pm.

When I got home, Deni had been already working on it and had finished about 20ft of the 125ft park strip. She had worked for hours to get it that far. I didn't expect her to work on it, but she did, which was really nice.

Deni, Dad and I started working on it again about 5:30pm.
Here you can see three of the four piles of rocks.

A friend, Kevin Fenn, also stopped by and helped for about an hour. He had done the same to thing to his old house, so came and worked with us and gave us some pointers, which was really nice.

Just as we were calling it a night, with about 40 feet left, a neighbor came over and said he had saw us spreading the rock by hand and that he had access to a bobcat and would go get it right then. We accepted his gracious offer. He was back in about 30 minutes with the bobcat. It took him about 20 minutes to finish to two remaining rock piles and by about 8:30pm, we called it a night with the rock mostly done.

I couldn't have planned it any better. We used all the rock with a tiny bit left over (probably the .14 ton extra they brought).

I had planned on working on the rock today, all day tomorrow, and then on Saturday too.

I still have some minor finish up work in cleaning up weed fabric.

Starting again on an old project

Our new neighbors drove by today and told Deni that everytime they drive by I've been working on the park strip. Deni laughed and said, that I started the project back in April. The funny thing is that they've driven by the only 2 times I've worked on the park strip since April. I've been really good at coming up with excuses to not finish it.

In April, I dug up the park strip to the west of our house. The park strip is 125 ft long and 6 feet wide of unusable space, plus it took two watering stations to water it. We decided that we would rip out the grass and replace it with rock. I dug it down about 3 to 4 inches deep and had planned on filling the space with rock.

I finally ordered rock late last week. I actually ordered 17 tons of rock, so I have to be ready before it gets here tomorrow. Actually it has been ready for the last few months except for the weed fabric.

Deni and I laid down the weed fabric and got the park strip ready for the delivery tomorrow.

Snow in September

It's amazing how much one day makes in the weather here in Utah. Yesterday, as seen in Deni's birthday post, we were outside in short sleeve shirts laying on the grass. Today it snows.

Let it snow.

To contrast yesterday and today:

Sydney outside on Friday Sept 28th:


Sydney outside on Saturday Sept 29th:

Happy 30th Deni

Happy Birthday Deni! Deni turned 30 today.

I took off half a day of work and came home to spend some time with Deni and the kids. The kids happened to be out of school today for some school administration day. When I got home, Sydney wanted to go outside and play chalk. Sydney loves to go outside and play with chalk on the driveway. However today, she wanted someone to play with her. Deni was on the phone, so I went out and played chalk with her.

We decided to let the neighborhood know it was Deni's birthday.

After we finished it, Sydney went inside and got Deni. Sydney made Deni close her eyes and then she brought her out to show her our masterpiece.

Later on Ryan had a soccer game. When we got there, the other team didn't have enough players, so Ryan was chosen with a couple of others to play on the other team. I'm surprised he was happy playing on the other team. However his real team scored on him (I think it was their first score of the whole season). Of course, it had to be the game that Ryan got put on the other team. Somehow at the end of the game, he was excited that his real team won a game, even though he wasn't on the team at the time.

After Ryan's soccer game, we dropped the kids off at my sister, Teresa's, and Deni and I went out to eat at Red Lobster. We both had the All you can eat shrimp. We didn't get to eat until about 9pm, as there was about an hour wait. But it was worth the wait.

I'm glad Deni is finally 30 years old, as she has been giving me a hard time for the last 2 1/2 years that I'm in my 30's.

Real Salt Lake Soccer Game

A few months ago we won four Real Salk Lake Soccer tickets at an auction. We finally got around to redeeming them for tonights game.

Of course the night I picked to go to the game, it had to rain. Actually it was more than rain, it poured the whole time we were at the game, however we had a fun time.

It was the first time that any of us had attended a Professional Soccer game. Having grown up playing soccer, I looked forward to taking the family to the game. With Sydney playing soccer for the first time this year and with Ryan playing for his 2nd year, I had hoped that seeing a Professional soccer team play might make both Ryan and Sydney more interested in playing soccer.

We took rain poncho's because we didn't have enough umbrellas and it turned out to be the best decision we made as when we walked in, there was a huge box of umbrellas. The guard said no umbrellas were allowed, as it is impossible to watch a game with someone in front of you with an umbrella. Since it was already pouring, we were wearing our poncho's. I had a number of people stop me and ask me where I bought the poncho. I told them Wal-mart, but I'm sure they were thinking that someone at the game was selling them. It was pretty cool (in the 60's) as well, so I'm glad we were able to stay mostly dry for the 90 minute game.

We sat next to a group of people that were banging a drum and chanting all night. As Deni said, the game is a very fast paced game, unlike football. There aren't too many times that things stopped, even when someone was down injured.

Real Salt Lake beat the Colorodo Rapids 1 to 0. I think we all enjoyed tonight's outing.

Soccer, Soccer

We've been staying busy with bi-weekly soccer games for Ryan. It seems like we are always going to something. Monday night is family night, Tuesday is YM/YW's, Wed and Friday at soccer games and occasionally on Thursdays, I have meetings.

Ryan's soccer team is called the Charge. Ryan's team has struggled to win a game this year, but since they play 2 games a week, they don't practice. Some of the teams do practice and it makes a big difference. (the difference between winning and losing.) However if they practiced it would be more time away from home.

Most of the time Ryan plays defense and has learned to get his body in front of the ball and even sacrifice his body for the team.

It's been fun and frustrating to watch Ryan play soccer.

School Pictures

We got the kids pictures taken for school. They came out really well again this year.

Ryan just started 2nd grade

Sydney is attending a preschool a few times a week.

Never driven by a woman

We are trying to sell our van and replace it with an older Toyota 4Runner. While I was looking for a 4Runner for sale today, I came across a 2001 Toyota 4Runner with this description and it made me laugh.

It has low miles and has never been off road and driven by a woman.

I'm just taking a guess here, but my guess is the seller either isn't married, or is divorced, or will as soon be divorced (at least as soon as his wife sees the posting.)

Camp Steiner

Welcome to Camp Steiner. Camp Steiner is located in the Uinta Mountains just a few miles from Mirror Lake. The camp is at 10,000 ft above sea level. Our ward choose to take the Boy Scout Troop, Varsity Team and Venturing Crew to this camp as it had Merit Badges for the younger boys as well as High Adventure for the older boys.



The Uinta Mountains are beautiful and green. It rained at least once each day we were there.

We left at 5:30am on Monday August 13th. The drive is only about 90 miles on way, so it was alot closer than I had thought. We took 5 Adult leaders and 15 boys (13 being deacon age and the other 2 were teacher age). I hadn't planned on going up the whole time as we only had 2 older boys going, however I thought it would be a good time to get to know the younger boys, as many of them are going to be moving up this coming year.

As one of the 5 leaders up at camp for our ward, we helped keep the peace at camp, as well as served as buddies to get the boys to and from our camp and merit badges, etc. Apparently there was a bear sited the day before we got there, as well as in other camps while we were there, so they made us clean up completely all food and cooking items (including our Camp Chefs) after each meal. We also found out the day before we left that we could not have any open fires, including brickettes used for Dutch Ovens. So we had to change up a few things at the last minute.

As soon as we got there, we had to do a swim check/cold water check. A few of the boys had to do the swim check, so I thought I would do that with them as well. I have never felt colder water in my life. As soon as you jumped in, your breath was taken away. I did my 100 yards and got out as fast as I could.

I took advantage of the High Adventure program and got do some rappelling and rock climbing.

The Lake below, known as Scout Lake, is about 10,000 ft above sea level. You could tell you were at or above 10,000ft when you hiked or ran. However, it was fun to hike up above the lake and rappel.

Getting ready to rappel.




It has been a while since I have rappelled, so I was a little nervous, however it was fun going down. I only got to rappel once as a thunderstorm came in after we got up there.



I did get to do a little rock climbing as well.



I also got to do a little fishing a few days. I caught 5 fish one day and 2 the other. It was nice to get out and relax and do some fishing with the other leaders.

On Thursday night, I went on the "Wilderness Survival" overnight. We had 3 boys from our group go. They had to build a shelter and then sleep in it. Luckily, I could take my tent, which I did and set it up near by their shelter. At 2:30am, I woke up with to the sound of it raining very hard. At 5:30am, we woke up, took down my tent (boys took down their shelter) in the rain and then hiked back into camp. Out of the whole week, the rain we got that night was the hardest and most volume of rain.

We came home on Friday August 17th, about 12 hrs before we had planned due to weather and because it was just time to go home.

I officially used up all my remaining time off with this trip. It will be hard to go back to work.

All in all I had a great time at Scout camp and enjoyed the week

Burley Idaho Olympic Spudman - Brett

This morning was a crazy one. We woke up around 5:45am, ate breakfast and headed to do our last minute race preparations. Dad drove us to our bikes, where we placed our water bottles. We then drove to the area where the swim was going to start, 1 mile up the road. I got to the water and they were just starting the first heat of elite racers. I had 10 minutes to get through the bathroom line and get my wetsuit on. Deni was there to help me and she zipped up my wet suit about 4 minutes before they sent my heat down the river. I got into the water, which was surprisingly warm.

I started in the second heat, which started at 7:10am sharp. My dad had parked the truck and headed down to get some pictures of me starting the swim, however not being able to tell which one I was of the 183 people starting in my heat, he took some general pictures, attempting to get me in one of them.

After searching for a while, I found myself.

Since the swim start and finish were 1 mile apart, it was impossible for Dad to take pictures of my swim start and then get down to the end of the swim before I got out.

The bike route was also away from most of the crowd areas, however Dad caught this picture of me as I was coming in the end of the bike ride. I was attempting to get the last drink before I started on my run.

The run was very difficult for me. For starters, prior to this race, the longest distance I had ever run in my life was about 3 miles (from other Tri's.) This race was 6 miles. I just didn't train for the run. About half way through the run, my knees were killing me and at that point, I had to push through the pain to finish. During the run and the bike when people would pass me, they would say "Come on Texas". (Because of my Texas shirt.)

Here I am coming across the finish line. Note, the time is 10 minutes off, as I started in the Second heat. So if you take off 10 minutes from that time, that is my official time. 2 hours 46 minutes and 38 seconds

I got a little metal as I came across the finish line.

Ryan and Sydney had been waiting (not very patiently) for Deni and I to cross the finish line with Grandma and Grandpa Berger. Ryan ran out to say hello to me as I came across.

Dad thought he would be funny and snap this picture. Let me explain the reason I'm running the wrong way. I was up watching for Deni to come across the finish line and I saw a lady about 50 yards away stumble and almost fall. A guy that was close to her went out and put his arm around her and was helping her down to where I was. As they came closer, I decided to go up and help him. When I got close, the man helping the woman asked me to run and get an ambulance. Apparently she had passed out completely. I ran down to the finish line and got someone to get some medical personnel to follow me back up to the woman. Some medical personnel came to her and took her away on a stretcher. She was within 50 yards of the finish line. Not sure what happened to her.

Finally, Sydney holding my metal.

Brett's Official Time for the Burley Spudman Olympic Triathlon

Swim (1 mile)
00:17:44.730
Transition from swim to bike
00:03:55.530
Bike (25 miles)
01:12:50.740
Average Bike speed
20.6 MPH
Transition from bike to run
00:02:14.510
Run (6 miles)
01:09:53.270

Total Time
02:46:38.78