Christmas in March

No, it didn't snow. It was 60 degrees today. However my new toys arrived.

Ryan and I have been saving our money for a GPS. I told him if he could save up half the money, I'd pay the other half. He's been saving his allowance faithfully and we'd reached a point where it was time to order it. I did quite a bit of research and found a good deal on Amazon. So we finally ordered the Garmin Venture HC GPS. We bought it so we could go Geocaching together (and as a family).

I got a call from Sydney about 4pm saying we had gotten 2 boxes in the mail and she wanted to open them. I told her she could, so when I got home all the packing materials were spread across the front room with my 2 toys. Toy one is the GPS. I didn't have enough time to go Geocaching tonight, but I'm sure we'll have alot of fun stories to tell.

Toy 2 (my birthday cash) was spent on a Kill A Watt EZ. You connect any appliance to this device and then plug it into the wall and it displays the power consumption by the Killowatt-hour. The coolest thing is you can input the amount you pay per Kilowatt from your local utility company and it will calculate how much it costs to run that appliance for an hour, day, month or year. The amazing thing is how much energy an appliance takes that is plugged in but turned off .

For example. I plugged in our Rice Maker (it was on the "keep it warm" setting). It costs $0.11 a day. No biggie, right. But that's 82 cents a week, $3.54 a month or $43.18 a year. These are based off my $0.085 KwH from my local utility company. I can already tell that I'm going to drive Deni crazy by asking her to guess how much it costs to run a certain appliance. My next task it to monitor my TV that is not turned on to see how much money I'm wasting by just having it plugged in and not turned on.

Happy 8th Bone Marrow Birthday

Today is the 8th anniversary of Ryan's Bone Marrow Transplant. 8 years is a long time. I've forgotten so much about that experience, but have a great opportunity to reflect on this amazing day each year. Ryan lives an extremely normal life that we often forget or take that amazing event for granted. Deni and I had heard about others that had Transplants and how they celebrated their Transplant birthday. We thought it was a great idea and decided we would always celebrate Ryan's Bone Marrow Birthday. Some might say he is a lucky kid to celebrate two birthday's. They'd be right, however on the other hand they probably have no idea what kind of pains he went through at 6 months old. 2 weeks of chemo, morphine drip at times to control the pain he seemed to have. The worst part was knowing he wasn't feeling good and him not being able to even hint at how we could take it away from him. He was stuck in a hospital room for 3 months, not having an opportunity to leave with his parents each night. When he did leave the hospital, he was quarantined for almost 2 years not being able to play with kids his age or have a normal life. Taking 4+ medicines each day. Those days are long past however I'm certainly grateful to have him happy and healthy.

Deni had a great tribute to Bone Marrow today.

I don't normally think too deeply about the giving of gifts on birthdays, it just a tradition. Normal birthdays are celebrating the fact that someone was born. Ryan's Bone Marrow birthday isn't much different, as without his Bone Marrow Transplant, he wouldn't be living today.

A birthday wouldn't be complete without a birthday gift. Ryan received a new "large" stitch. Stitch is a much loved figure in our family.


Sydney and I got haircuts tonight. (I wish I could afford a haircut every 2 weeks) I love keeping my hair short. After the haircuts, we decided that it would be fun to go out to eat for Ryan's Bone Marrow birthday. We ended up at the Pizza Factory in town for some pasta. I have no idea how Ryan can each so much pasta, but he out ate his mother and sister.

Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to your Bone Marrow, Happy Birthday to you. (sing it) Happy 8th Birthday to Ryan's Bone Marrow. May he celebrate 80 more.

"Camping" at Scofield

I took the Varsity Scouts "camping" this weekend. I always make fun of the Young Women in the ward when they go "camping" to Girls camp. Cabins do NOT equal camping.

We went to a cabin near Scofield. I had arranged for some snowmobiles to be there to take our gear to the cabin from our parking place, but we hiked in. I had never been up there, but the owner told me it took him 45 minutes to hike down (during the summer) from his cabin to the parking place. I thought, I'm in better shape, I bet I could do it in 15 minutes. So I told the boys that we'd have to hike in and it would take 15 minutes. Opps.

It actually took us about an hour to hike in. When we started the hike, it was 9 degrees. When we got to the cabin, it was 30 degrees inside. After starting a fire, in a hour or less, we had heated it up to a comfortable 70 degrees. My idea about going cabining was to get the boys together and let them have fun. I told them to bring games, etc. At 2:00am, the monopoly game finished. Of course it was down stairs were I was attempting to sleep. At 2:30am, I finally went and turned out the lights and called it a night.

I slept horrible, matter of fact, I'm not sure I slept more than 3 hours total. I can't sleep without a fan making some white noise for me. However it was a great time and it felt good to hear boys say that was the funnest campout they had ever been on and wanted to do it again soon.

My "tent" in the background. There was at least 4 feet of snow at the cabin.

Bendrenalin

Ryan had a pretty bad cough the last few days. We've run out of the children prescription cough syrup we had from last year and apparently all children cough syrup, prescription or not, has been pulled from the market.

Deni called the Dr and he told Deni to give Benadryl.

As I was putting Ryan to bed, he said, "Dad, I have a pretty bad cough, I need some Bendrenalin. I looked at him and said, ok, let's go get you some Bendrenalin.

It wasn't until the next day we told him it was Benadryl, not Bendrenalin.

Bendrenaline. Possibly a mix between Benadryl and adrenaline, sounds like there would be alot of unwanted side effects if you ask me. Maybe Ryan's ahead of his time, or maybe it's some new medicine that he'll invent and patent and make us, uh I mean him, rich.

Gargoyled video of Syd

I've gotten a kick out of watching friends and family postings when their kids hijack the camera and film themselves. Apparently it's the thing to do these days.

Although very gargoyled, this is a very funny video of Sydney having her 15 seconds of fame.

Just a warning, there's nothing wrong with your sound, she starts out singing, fades to lip syncing and then back to singing.

Millot jaune

On Presidents day, we went to Park City to go shopping at the Outlet mall. We stopped into the Pearl Izumi store (bike clothing store) and there it was. The yellow jersey that Ryan had to have. Nothing in the Pearl Izumi store is cheap, but it was 20% off. So Ryan got the Yellow Jersey. As he was trying it on, Ryan said I'm just like Lance (Lance Armstrong, 7 time Tour de France winner) Just then, a store employee came over and said, "Ah, do you know what the millot jaune is?"

Ryan new it meant the yellow jersey in french and that it was worn by the fastest rider, which is why he wanted it.

It was still cold today but we decided it was time to get back on the bike. Ryan wanted to go first thing in the morning when it was windy. I walked outside and told him we'd go later on when the wind died down.

So here it is, our first bike ride of the year. Ryan and I went about 4 miles, riding up a big hill twice (Ryan has gears now).

Nothing says I love you like....

Nothing says I love you like a working Garage door opener.

I love spending my tax return on necessities. (no sarcasm here...yeah right!!) Our garage door opener bit the dust about a month ago, so now that my tax return is on the way, I get to spend it on fun things like a new Garage Door opener.

I read some reviews before buying my new garage door opener and the consensus was that it took about 4 hours to complete the install. I thought, I'm good at following directions, I bet I can do it faster than that. Turns out I don't think I did. Maybe 3 hours and 45 minutes. I put it mostly together, pulled the new wires through the ceiling and then called my dad over to help me put the "finishing touches" on. Of course, the finish work always takes the longest. Of course, it would have been too easy to buy one that was the exact same length, so we had to move the braces around, install new sensors, etc,etc.

It sure is nice having my dad so close that is so handy with just about everything.

Couple minute soup

I was making lunch and Ryan told me he wanted "Couple minute" soup. I looked at him a little confused, not knowing what he meant. Then it clicked. You want "Cup of Noodle" soup. Oh yeah he says. I smiled to myself, not saying anything else. Ryan must have seen the cogs working overtime in my head, as he the next thing he said was "Dad, please don't put that on your blog."

Party at the Bergers

Deni picked me up from work tonight and we headed to my parents for a birthday party. Today was my dad's birthday. He's 71, he was 36 years old when I was born. (but turned 37 two days.)

Deni brought the ingredients for dinner and also bought a cheese cake (as I don't really care for normal birthday cake.) Teresa and most of her family were also there, so we turned it into a party.

After dinner, we put candles in the cheese cake for Dad. Although I think my mom actually has 71 candles, (which is impressive), we opted to spell out 71 in numbers instead.

After cake we played a card game called Hand and Foot. My grandma Berger used to love to play this game. For whatever reasons, I refused to learn the game as it appeared to be a difficult game with a lot of rules, etc. I never learned to play the game while she was alive and now I wish I would have. You can play individually or as teams of 2. With so many people, we played in teams of 2. I was paired with Teresa. (and we won both times.)

After games, we headed to Teresa's to do some last minute computer things for her. (I had reinstalled her computer for her recently and had to finish up by installing printer drivers, etc.) It's been fun hearing her kids attempt to guess my passwords. Although I set a password hint, they have yet to come anywhere close to what the real password is. Dealing with passwords all day at work, it's fun to know that I've set a password and a hint that haven't been cracked yet.

Breakfast in bed

I woke up a little early this morning as I couldn't sleep. As I was in the shower, Ryan, Sydney and Deni came in to sing Happy Birthday to me. I was surprised they were all up, as it was before 7am. They gave me 2 presents. First a light-weight backpacking stove and second the fuel for the stove. I was surprised. After opening my presents, I was asked by Ryan how I liked my eggs. Ryan likes to fry eggs, so I told him that I liked my eggs fried. He was going to make me breakfast for my birthday.

I continued to get ready and while I was sitting on my bed, in comes the family again bearing breakfast in bed, complete with French Toast, fried eggs and orange juice.

I have 2 great kids and one awesome wife. Starting off my day with breakfast in bed was a great way to start out my 34th birthday.