Easter trip to SLC

My sister-in-law, Kati and her husband Boston came to visit us over the Easter Holiday. It was fun to have them here. While they were here we took them to SLC to see the sites. It's funny we've lived here for a long time and never really taken our kids to the sites of Downtown Salt Lake City. We saw the old Tabernacle and the new Conference Center Root Tour. Pretty amazing place.

We caught a quick family portrait in front of a beautiful fountain that stopped just as we were getting pictures.



We also went and saw the Christus at Temple Square. I caught this picture of the kids. I really liked it.

Making Brakes

The kids and I watched the movie "Marley & Me".

Before we watched it, Sydney was so excited. She had seen the commercials for it a number of times and was very excited to watch it. It's about a unruly dog called Marley and in the TV commercial, Owen Wilson is hanging out the window of his car holding on to the back part of the dog while Jennifer Aniston is slowly driving down the road. Owen's character says "Marley's making a break for it". Anyway, as I said Sydney was so excited and said was attempting to quote the commercial and said "Marley's making brakes". It was funny and cute.

Deni had a meeting tonight so I watched it with the kids. As it ended, I told the kids they couldn't say ANYTHING about the movie to Deni, as I knew one of them would say it has a sad ending, which would ruin the movie.

Thanks Disney Channel

Sydney and I were watching Disney Channel a few days ago and they gave a suggestion for an April Fools prank. They said to switch the insides of two cereal boxes. Sydney and I looked at each other and decided to try it on April fools day with Ryan.

As I was helping get Ryan ready for school, I asked him what he was going to have for breakfast (so I could make the switch) and he told me, then went on to get dressed. I quickly switched the Captain Crunch with the Corn Chex.

When Ryan came to eat breakfast, he almost caught on to us. He picked up the Corn Chex, shook it and said, "Hey who ate all the Corn Chex", not knowing I had switched it with Captain Crunch. Sydney was doing all she could to not laugh, which meant she had her hand over her mouth and almost gave it away, luckily Ryan hadn't remembered it was April Fools day. Ryan sat down and began to pour his "Corn Chex" into his bowl and all of the sudden - Captain Crunch came out in his bowl. We all started laughing. April Fools.......

So, Thanks Disney Channel for helping us pull an April Fools prank on Ryan.

Real family date

We headed up to Sandy for a Real Salt Lake Soccer game today. We've been to one other game, but haven't been to a game since they moved from the University of Utah Stadium to their own stadium in Sandy.



Real Salt Lake played the Austin Texas Aztex's. The game was open to the public and best of all free. We got there when the doors opened (11am), got a great parking spot and even got front row seats. If you zoom in on the picture below, at the bottom of the "A" in Real, you can see Deni sitting on the front row. The only problem was the game didn't start until 1pm. We were shaded most of that time, which was nice. The time went by fairly fast as it was fun to watch both teams warm up.



Deni, Sydney and Ryan during the game.




Ryan, Sydney and myself during the game.



The team Real played wasn't a MLS team, so the majority of the game was spent on the opposing teams side, which was the opposite goal from where we were sitting, however the 2nd half of the game we had the action on our end of the field and also on our side of the field. The score ended up being Real 3 - Aztex 1. The last goal Real scored was in the last seconds of the game and was amazing.

Brett, the co-inventor

Sounds funny, I know.

A few months back, a co-worker and I submitted an idea to an internal Invention Committee. The submission alone gets you $75 bucks and a T-shirt. It was initially rejected, however my co-worker resubmitted it and apparently explained it slightly differently the second time he met with the committee and it was accepted.

From there a outside patent lawyer was assigned to take the information submitted and translate the technical idea into a lawyered up 30 page document that was ready to be submitted to the US Patent Office.

So what does this all mean.

First, a Patent application has been submitted to the US Patent Office with my name as co-inventor.

Second, with the filing of this Patent, I got a little bonus. Right before we officially submitted it, we signed a number of legal documents essentially saying that my employer owns the patent, and in return I'd get the bonus, which is completely fair.

Apparently it can take up to three years for the US Patent Office to review and either accept or reject the patent.

It was an interesting process and has gotten me a little more visibility to my boss and boss's boss.

Uh Dad, I don't want to be mean, but

Tonight was date night.

We haven't had individual dates with the kids in a while. It's always fun to go out with one of the kids and spend one on one time with them.

Tonight Ryan had a date with his mom, while I got a date with Sydney.

Ryan choose to go to the Jr High with Deni to see the Disney play Mulan, put on by the Jr High kids. Sydney also wanted to go the play, but Ryan was adamant that Sydney and I do something different, as he wanted a date with just his mom. We finally came to an agreement that we'd all go, but we would drive in separate cars and sit in different spots. A win-win for all.

There were a number of kids from the ward in the play and 2 from my Scout group. The tickets were $5 a person. I'm cheap, as that seems pricey for a Jr High play. I think I only paid $15 a seat for Broadway plays in NYC while I was on my mission. However, the play was excellent and enjoyed by all.

On the way home, I was singing to a song on the Radio and Sydney said "Uh Dad, I don't want to be mean, but can we just listen to the song."

Shortly after that we pulled up behind a car in the right lane sitting at red light and Sydney said "Don't they know they can turn on a red light."

Geocaching

Since getting our hand held GPS, we've gone out a few time looking for geocaches. It's quite addicting. Some have been really easy to find and others are trying our patience (I've been back 3 times now and still can't find it, but I know it's there.)

Ryan, Sydney and I have a few minutes on Saturday, so we went out. We found our target, but couldn't get into the container. This geocache was quite different from the others we had found. This one required you to bring a gallon of water, to pour into a tube. So we went home and went out as a family a little while later.

You had to pour the water in the pipe and the container floated to the top. Quite amazing.




Inside the PVC pipe was a log book to sign in and little odds and ends to trade. Sydney really wanted the hot wheels car in the pipe, so I told her to go and find something in the car to trade. She came back with a paperclip. Not really a fair trade, but worked for now. We're going to have to raid the kids toy room to get rid of all the little useless toys we've acquired over the years.



After we made the trade, I screwed the lid on tight and put the pvc pipe back into it's hiding place for the next geocacher.

Miracles in Provo

Tonight I, along with a second Scout leader (Scott), took 7 Varsity Scouts to the Marriott Center for to watch a BYU Basketball game. I'll be honest, I'm not a sports fan, nor do I waste my time watching sport events, however in the Varsity Scout Program, the boys focus on a certain activity for 3 months that lead up to an Ultimate Activity. The Ultimate Activity in this case was the BYU basketball game. They had been planning on attending this game for the last 3 months.

Scott was in charge of getting tickets, however we both agreed that since we didn't know exactly how many boys would actually come, it would be better to buy tickets at the door. Scott left a few minutes before me and when he got to the Marriott Center, the game was sold out. I'm sure it being the last home game of the season, senior night, and the conference Championship game didn't help.

Scott called me to give me the bad news and we talked on our cell phones attempting to make other plans. As we were waiting for Scott and the other half of the boys to come back to the parking lot, one of the boys rolled down the window and asked the car next to us if they had any extra tickets. He said he did have some, but they weren't with him. So the boy got out of the car and began talking to anyone in the parking lot asking for extra tickets. Within 3 minutes, he had gotten 4 tickets, however we needed 9. A few of the other boys started doing the same and within another few minutes, we got 3 more tickets free. 7 free tickets to a sold out game. Not too bad.

With 7 tickets in hand, we decided to start walking towards the Marriott Center to see if we could get 2 remaining tickets. As we walked on to the Marriott Center property, the boys asked a couple a few steps ahead of us if they had any extra tickets. They of course had 2 extra tickets. Amazing.

Finally with 9 free tickets in hand, we went into the game. We only missed the first 5 minutes or so of the game and had a great time watching BYU barely win.

After the game, we went to the Creamery on 9th for some ice cream.

I don't want to

Deni asked me to run with her today. I really didn't want to run since I only started exercising 5 days ago however since I worked through lunch yesterday and didn't get to exercise, I decided (after much weeping/wailing and nashing of teeth) that I'd run with her.

As we left she said 2.5 miles but about 1/2 a mile down the road, she changed her tune to 3 miles. I struggled through the run, stopped a few times but caught up to Deni by the end of the run.

Elapsed Time 28:49
Distance 3.04 mi
Avg Pace 9:29 / mi
Avg Speed 6.33 mph

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.