If a picture is worth a thousand words.....

You would never be able to tell from looking at this picture, but Sydney is actually having fun trick-or-treating. Today is Halloween. Deni brought the kids up to Novell for some indooor trick-or-treating. Usually Halloween is bitterly cold, raining, or even snowing, but not this year. It was in the 50's and a nice day. Within about 30 minutes of walking around offices at Novell, the kids were set with candy to last them the rest of the year. (We filled Sydney's backpack.) After Novell trick-or-treating we stopped by Springville to see my parents and to show them the kids Halloween costumes. Ryan was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle and Sydney was a little Devil (thanks to Deni's mom -Donna - she can make anything.)

When we got home, the kids and Deni went around the neighborhood while I cooked dinner. We got interrupted about 10 times during dinner with trick-or-treaters. After dinner, we put the bowl of candy on the porch, turned off the inside lights, locked the door and went downstairs to watch a movie as a family.

The Project Part 2

I took the day off today to get a little further with the lawn than I did on Saturday.

I accomplished quite a bit today. First, I got the grass transplanted from the back of the yard to the front. Dad showed up around 11:30am to help me out. We moved most of the dead grass from the parking strip and went back to his house to put it on his empty lot. It worked out great, except, it is a long drive each time to drop it off.

On the way back home, we stopped Kevin's house. Kevin just sold his house this month. Last Saturday I helped him move a some things to his apartment. He has a cool wooden swing set that Ryan loved to play on when we were over at his house. I asked Kevin what he was doing with it. He said they were leaving it there. I then asked him if it was in their contract, and if it wasn't, then I would like to have it. They looked and it was not. So he said if we took it away, we could have it. So we stopped by his house, it broke down easily into 3 pieces we put on dad's snowmobile trailer. Took it home and put it up in the back yard. Dad and I got it put together without the kids knowing. When Ryan came home, I asked him to look in the backyard. He was really excited and squealed even. Both kids played in the backyard for a while.

Dad and I finished up some sprinklers in the frontyard, then called it a day.

After Dad left, Sydney and I went in the backyard and I pushed her on the swing. She would say "higher, higher" It was fun to push her on the swing. Then she would go to the top of the slide, turn around backwards and slide down on her belly. When her belly touched the slide, she would say, "Slide warm..." then slide down. She did this at least 4 of 5 times in a row. It was funny.

Dad left his trailer here, so after dinner, I went out with Deni and we got quite a bit of the remaining dead grass on to it. We still have alot of work ahead of us. Getting 3 trees out of the ground and lot of dirt moved around.

After finishing up in the yard (because it got dark and the kids were really tired) we came in, cleaned up then had Family Home Evening. We read a book of mine that I got when I was 8 and was baptized. The book was on Baptism. After doing that we played soccer in the dark downstairs. Ryan recently got a glow in the dark soccer ball and he wanted to play for FHE. We played for a few minutes then put the kids to bed.

I'm going to be very sore tomorrow.

The Project

I always do projects but never seem to capture before pictures. Well I did the same on this project but decided at least to start halfway through. This is my current project. As I explained yesterday, I'm moving a few things around in the yard, as well as trying to fix a few trouble spots at the same time.

This first picture is where Grubs got the lawn. So we dug it all up and will be replacing it with some sod from the backyard. (That will happen on Monday)



This is really next years project but since I had a machine that cut sod, I figured I would get a head start on it. I'm removing all the grass from the park strip. All the way down to the end of the white fence. Next year I will replace it with rocks (about the size of my fist.) A neighboor has it about 3 houses down and it looks really nice.





I'm creating a new flowerbed in the front of the house. I'm removing the existing one with 2 trees. I have it roughed out right now. I will end up having a tree in the middle of it, as well as some native plants to Utah.



The flower bed and 2 trees I'm removing. My sister, Teresa, is going to take the trees. Now I have to figure out how to get them out of the ground in one piece. And where to put all that dirt.



A closer picture of the new flowerbed, at the edge of the lawn, and the old one with the trees.




Finally, when we bought the house, there has always been a low spot in the frontlawn where the sewer line comes from our house to the street. We pulled the grass back, filled it with some extra dirt and have placed the grass back on top.




I didn't get done what I thought I would today, so I'm going to take work off on Monday and finish up as much as I can. Dad called to tell me he would come over and Monday and help me. He has already helped me quite a bit with getting it cut.

What was I thinking.....

Started on a project today. It is five fold. My brother-in-law brought by a grass cutter by for us to borrow today. The machine has a big blade on the bottom and just shakes you to death. Here's what I'm doing in the yard

First, we have some parts of our lawn that are dead because of grubs eating the roots. So we used the grass cutter to get the dead grass up.

Second, we have a huge park strip on the side of our house, which I don't care to water, espically when our water bill for just the lawn is over $50 bucks. So we are taking the grass out and putting rocks on the side. This won't happen till next spring, but I have the grass cut up now, and need to get rid of it before next sping.

Third, I'm moving the kidney shaped flowerbed with 2 trees to the very front of my lawn. The front of our lawn didn't get watered very well, mainly becaue of the angle of the lawn and the shape of the area. I took out the grass in this area and I'm moving the flowerbed from the middle of our lawn, to the front corner. There is alot of dirt to move, I'm not sure where it is going to go quite yet.

Fourth, We took a out the back west section of grass. I'll use most of this grass to fill in the blanks where the existing flower bed is and where we had to take the dead grass out because of grubs. We are taking this grass out, so we can put a trampoline in the back yard.

Fifth, There has been a low section of grass in the front of our house where the sewer line runs out to the street. I cut four strips out of the lawn, then I'm going to fill it with dirt and compact it, then put the grass back.

I going to have to take a day off work to get this done before the grass dies. But will work on it tomorrow for most of the day, then probably take off Monday and work on it.

I'm going to be a little sore tomorrow.

Cool quote I found today

George S. Patton Jr., "If everyone is thinking alike then somebody isn't thinking.

Kindly do the needful

Over the last few years Novell has built up quite a group of developers over in India. With as many developers over there, during my daily duties, I am starting to work with them more and more (get emails, have them in meetings, etc.) Anyway, today I was going through a bug, reading the comments. I came across a note that said "Kindly do the needful" It made me laugh. I'm not quite sure what language that is, but it is now my new quote. When I want someone to do something, I will just say "Kindly do the needful."

Work has been extremely busy. Stayed busy all day. I got to work at 7am this morning, its a miracle. I tried something new last night. I set the alarm on my cell phone then set it far enough away from the bed so that I had to get out of bed to turn it off. Once I was out, I actually got dressed and went to work, and actually got to work on time.

When I got home, Sydney was still down for her nap, Ryan and Deni were playing on the computer. Deni is addicted to Super Tux. She started playing the game on Ryans comptuer (which I installed Suse Linux 9.3) SuperTux is a Super Mario Bros-like game, but you are a penguin. She beat all 26+ levels, only to find out that the game hasn't been finished. At the end, it told her to wait for the next release to finish the game, or something like that. I think it is funny. For Ryan, I found some cheats for the game. He loves it, he can have as many guys as he wants, which allows him to play and play and play.

Deni bought Robots DVD today. I watched it with the kids. It is a funny movie. In the movie, one of the robots makes Farting noises with his hand under his armpit. Ryan thought it was funny but couldn't do it. So I did what any good father would do, I helped him till he come make a farting noise with his hand under his armpit. Now he's cool. (grin)

My mom and Sourceforge

I was telling a co-worker about how my mom is now looking out on Sourceforge.net for applications. The more I thought about it, I thought it was funny.

A while back, my mom needed to take documents and PDF them. I told her about a free program that could do just that that was out on a site called http://sourceforge.net/ I downloaded it from Sourceforge and installed it for her. My mom also does alot with digital pictures, so I told her of another application that resized the pictures for you. Again I went to Sourceforge and downloaded and installed the application.

A few months went by and my mom had downloaded a song from Wal-Mart and unfortunately it was in Windows Media Format. Before she talked to me, she went out on Sourceforge and searched for a utility to convert it to an MP3.

Pictures, Pictures

I have finally decided that my digital pictures are getting out of hand. I used to have a good procedure in place, but my laptop has been acting up (vpn isn't working) so I can't sync my pictures up to my server at work (through iFolder)

So things have gotten a little bit messy. I brought home about 6 to 7 DVD's of "backups" at different times over the last year or two. Now comes the fun job. I'm actually comparing file for file, on each DVD with what I have stored on my hard drive. Fun, isn't it. Well so far I've gotten through 2 DVD's tonight. Guess I'm going to have to pace myself. However once I get things cleaned up, it will be alot nicer. I'm going to burn a DVD at the end of the year, each year. Make a few copies, one I will give to my parents to put it in their safe, I will keep one in my filing cabinet, then store a 3rd copy somewhere else (friend, or maybe at my work).

With my new camera I'm going to fill more than a DVD per year. At 30 cents a DVD, no biggie.

In other news, we went to Shop-ko tonight and spent $75 dollars on picture frames. Can't go wrong with 60% off frames. With all these great pictures we have taken, we aren't showing them off in our house. We will need alot more picture frames than we bought, but it is a start. Now I need to find my favorite pictures. I bought 3 frames for my office. One is a 16 X 20 frame with 4 - 4X6 matted pictures. The 2nd is a 8 X 16 frame with 3- 4X4 and the last one is a 8 X 10 frame with a 4X6 picture. All three of these have shadow mattes. I will have to take a picture of them once I get photos in them. Since they are black frames with white mattes, I think I may go black and white photos. 4X6's are really cheap to print at Sam's. Only 15 cents a print.

Tonight Ryan put Sydney to bed. We seem to always fight who gets to put who to bed. Tonight Sydney said no to me and Deni, so we asked if she wanted Ryan to put her to bed. She said yes. Deni put her in her crib, then Ryan came in and sang two songs to her. It was really cute. Even better, she went to sleep. Not sure it it was just a fluke or not, but was fun to watch and listen from the door, while Ryan sang church songs to her. Ryan's a good kid.

Current Favorite Things

Deni - she's amazing, need I say more.
Ryan - giggling and playing with his sister.
Sydney - putting Sydney down at night for bed and laying on the floor singing songs to her, while she holds on to my finger

Favorite Band: Better than Ezra (BTE)
Favorite Song: Trees by Marty Casey (Rock Star INXS)

Favorite TV shows (in order of preference):
-Lost
-Survivor
-Alias

Currently reading:
- Square Foot Gardening
- Leadership/Rudolph Giuliani

Warm corn bags

Daddy's home

Worked all day on a training for work that I have to give tomorrow. I'm not sure I'll be ready, but it is to my team, so no biggie.

I didn't see Deni online today, like I usually do. I called her around 5pm and she told me she had not been feeling well all day. She stayed in bed most of the day. When I got home, she was just finishing up some homemade chicken soup. I yelled "daddy's home", like I usually do when I come in the door, however Sydney was in timeout for going to the park by herself and for hitting Deni when she brought her home, so I had to wait for 4 minutes to see Syd. She was so sad, calling my name - "daddy". But you do the crime, you pay the time.

After dinner, I took the kids out to rent a movie. We went to McDonalds, where they have a service called Redbox. You rent a DVD by swiping your credit card. They charge a dollar a night +tax. Not bad for a new release. After renting "Robots" cartoon, we went to Macey's to get an ice cream. Then home to watch Robots.

Ryan and Sydney promised me that if I let them stay up to watch the movie, they would go to bed right after. Both kids went to bed, just as they said they would.