Salsa night

Found this quote today and I liked it.

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. - Dr. Seuss

Tonight we made Salsa again. 14 quarts this time. I picked a 5 gallon bucket of tomatoes tonight after work. Deni had picked about half that eariler today. So we had tomatoes coming out our ears. It's getting to the end of the season, I think I need to cut back my tomatoes a bit so that I can get one last good crop.

I found out today that I can get into the Provo Rec Center by flashing my Novell badge, however the family has to pay, if they want to go. I think I might start swimming a few times a week during lunch at the Provo Rec Center, since it is so close. It's either that, or eat my lunch at my desk and work through lunch. Hmmm, hard decision, isn't it.

If we want to go as a family, or if I want to go swimming with Deni, we will go up to the Orem Rec Center, like we have in the past.

East Meadows Ribbon Cutting

Ryan's new elementary school officially opened today. The school was under construction when we moved in a year ago and recently finished at the first of the year. The school district had a ribbon cutting today to official open the school. It's exciting to have Ryan attend a brand new school.

Ryan sang a song with about 100 other kids before the ribbon cutting. After the ceremony, we were able to go and meet Ryan's 1st grade teacher, Miss Berger.

It was kind of odd meeting Ryan's teacher and saying, Hi, I'm Brett Berger, Miss Berger. Although the conversation never came up about at type of relation, I'm pretty sure there is no relation.

Ryan's official first day of First Grade is tomorrow.

Happy Birthday Ryan

Today was Ryan's birthday. Ryan has been interested in bugs for the last little while, due to a friend of his, so the birthday theme this year was a "Bug party". Deni went all out and made sure it was a happy day for Ryan.



Ryan's birthday invite list started small. (5-6 boys, no girls allowed). However when we started inviting people, Deni felt that he needed to have others there. 15 kids later, Ryan's birthday was a hit.



I came home during lunch to help Deni with the birthday party and I'm glad I did, as she would not have been able to handle 15 kids by herself.

Deni had 3 crafts for the kids to do. First, they created bug hats, next they created catapillers out of egg cartons and finally they decorated their own cupcake. We also played pin the spider on the web. Each child recieved a bug catcher, complete with bug net and tweasers to catch bugs. After receiving the bug catchers, they went on a bug hunt in the backyard. Plastic bugs had been hidden in the backyard. Each child received about 4-5 plastic bugs to take home in their bug catchers. Finally, to top off the birthday party, the closing event was a pinata.





With so many kids, we had to be careful on the first hits, so we could make it through the whole group once, however after we made it through the group once, it was shortly after that the candy went everywhere.

Along with 15 kids comes about the same amount of presents. It was worse than any Christmas we have had. Toys coming out his ears, however he was happy to receive each gift and was greatful for them.

We held off on giving him presents from us and our family as with 15 kids, the presents alone were a little overwhelming.

We gave Ryan 2 things. A dinosaur that you put in water and it grows. It is supposed to grow 600% after 96 hrs and we gave him some Knex car kits. The Knex toys are ones that I'll get to help him with. They say ages 6 and up, however he's a little young to do them by himself. However, I'll enjoy helping him put them together. All in all, Ryan had a great birthday.

It's still odd that my first born is 6 years old. It's amazing to reflect on his little life and remember the things he has overcome. He is an amazing child. Deni and I love him very much.

"I'm EVIL....."

Sydney woke up this morning with a cough, so I stayed home with her from Church.

When I went to wake up Ryan, I asked him how last night went and if he had fun. He said he did have fun and that they went to McDonalds for dinner. I asked him how they decided to go there and he told the story about making the 2 pieces of paper for Grandma Berger to pick. So I asked him - "How did Grandma Berger know to pick the right one with her eyes closed?" he paused for a second, then giggled to himself and said "I'm EVIL....." and that he helped make sure Grandma got the right slip of paper.

23 miles

This morning, Deni, myself, and Randy (a neighboor) went on a extended bike ride. We woke the kids up at 7am and took them Ana Smith's house to watch them while we rode.

Before we left, Deni asked if we could have a prayer and we did. First we headed up Canyon Road, towards the mouth of Spanish Fork Canyon. Since we left at 7am, the wind was blowing pretty hard, as usual for that time of the morning. We turned and headed down Riverbottom road and then headed towards Woodland Hills. Woodland Hills is south of Spanish Fork and South West from Salem.

The ride up to Woodland Hills was a trying one. It was mostly uphill for at least 1-2 miles. We rode up to the round-about right before entering homes up in Woodland Hills. Randy and I got up there first. Randy wanted to keep going, so I let him and I waited for Deni. She wasn't too far behind.

The ride down was very fun. I got going 43.3 miles per hour (in a 40mph zone) and Deni got going about 40mph. We turned into Salem, rode past Salem pond and then home. About a 1.5 miles from home, my front tire began making an odd noise and I couldn't figure out where it was coming from. I thought my brakes were rubbing, but that didn't seem to be the case. So I continued to ride home. As soon as I got in front of my house, I went to turn around and I felt my front tire buckle a little. I looked down and I could tell my tire was losing air pretty quickly. I got off my bike and about a minute later, my tire was flat. I'm very blessed that didn't happen to me when I was going 40+ mph and was very glad my wife asked to give a prayer before we left.

All in all we rode 23 miles. It felt good to get out and ride with Deni. I think we are going to try and do that more often.

Tonight we asked my Mom and Dad to babysit Ryan and Sydney while we went out on a date. They came over to our house about 5pm. We hadn't fed the kids yet, so we offered Mom and Dad some money to take the kids out, but Mom said, "We'll figure something out." As the story goes, Ryan told my Mom that they could make some rice, corn and chicken for dinner OR we can go to McDonalds. Ryan then made two pieces of paper, one that said stay home and the other said go to McDonalds. Ryan had Mom close her eyes and choose one. Of course, Ryan guided her through the selection process so that she was guarenteed to pick the "Go to McDonalds" piece of paper. When we got home about 10pm, the kids were fast asleep and from the sounds of it, had a great time.

Are you Scrobbling?

I am now.....

So what is Scrobbling? Scrobbling is basically tracking the music you listen to and publishing it to a website for all to see. Its a social music revolution.

Here's how you do it. Sign up for a free account on http://www.last.fm/ and download the last.fm application. When you install it (on Windows) it will determine what music players you have installed and ask you which you want to keep track of.

At work, I'm using Banshee (on Linux (SLED 10) to listen to music. Next all I do is listen to music throughout the day and each song I listen to is tracked and reported up to the last.fm servers and saved in my musical profile. So now you know what “scrobbling" is.

If you care to see what I've been listening to: Follow this link:

http://www.last.fm/user/brettberger/

or at home


http://www.last.fm/user/bergerhome/

What are the chances?

Deni called me today at work to tell me that she registered Ryan for 1st grade and that his teachers name is Mrs. Berger. What are the chances? There is no relation that I know of, unless it's some weird twelveth cousin, twice-removed thing.

I hope the kids don't tease Ryan, although it's only first grade, maybe they won't realize that Ryan and his teacher share the same last name.

At work today, we lost power for just about an hour. We have backup generators that keep the necessary lights, etc on. Before the lights went out, a co-worker called me out to the window to see the storm roll in. We watched it through the 3rd floor window. We were facing west (can almost see Utah Lake). The clouds were a dark black. I've never seen clouds like that before. At one point, once the storm got to Novell, I could not see out of the window. It was raining so hard, then hail. 15 minutes later the sun was out.

As I rode my bike home, there were trees uprooted and branches everywhere. Very crazy for South Provo area. I rode to and from work today. Both rides were good. Ended up riding just over 25 miles today.

Pioneer Day at Starvation Reservoir

3 minivans with canoes on top headed towards Starvation Reservoir today.

We spent the day on Starvation Reservoir canoeing, swimming and playing in the sand. We had a great time swamping the canoe (on accident and intentionally.)

As we left, we took a group picture.

The Woodlands, The Bergers and The Wrights.



As we left Starvation Reservoir, there was a gas station and a sign stating how many miles to Heber, UT. 69 miles to Heber and the Van said we had 89 miles till we ran out of gas. I decided that since we were stopping in Heber to eat and that we had enough gas to get there, that we wouldn't waste the time to get gas and we would do it when we stopped to eat in Heber.

About 5-6 miles outside of Heber, we came around a corner and suddenly all the cars in front of us were stopped. We stopped and realized that we weren't going to be moving any time soon.



We stopped about 5pm on the freeway. Most everyone was out of their cars and while we were standing outside someone came by to inform us that the freeway was going to be shutdown for about 3 hours. Since I had made a decision to fill up with gas in Heber, we didn't have enough gas to turn around, we were stuck. So we did what everyone else was doing, we set up camp.



Our friends, Chad and Mandy were just a few cars back, and when people heard it was going to be 3+ hrs, some turned around, which allowed Chad and Mandy to drive up right behind us.

4 hours later, about 9pm, we were back on the road and headed towards Heber. We stopped to get something to eat and then headed home.

We had a great trip and a much needed vacation from our day to day activities.

Crawfish Dinner

After attending church with the Woodlands we went back to their house and had lunch. We had planned on going home after church, however another friend of ours (Chad and Mandy Wright) from our old Springville neighborhood showed up at Jakes church.

They planned on staying the night and spending Monday the 24th with them. (Since Monday the 24th is pretty much a holiday in Utah). We decided we were having too much fun to go home, so we decided to stay another day too.

For Dinner we all pitched in some food and made a huge meal.

Next to the Woodlands house, there is a canal for watering fields and it is filled with Crawfish. We took some of the fish heads from yesterday, tied them on to a string and went out to the canal. About 15 seconds after throwing your fish heads in to the water, you can pull up your string and you will have anywhere from 2 to 5 Crawfish trying to eat your bait. As long as you leave them in the water and put some sort of net underneath them, its easy to catch them.

We caught about 80-100 in about 10 minutes. It was quite fun. Here's our cooler full of live Crawfish.



Jake washed them all up and got them ready for dinner.



The Crawfish were really good. A little on the small side and you had to do alot of work to get them out, but the tail and the claws were really good tasting. Something I wouldn't mind having on a regular basis.

Lake #25 (Angel Lake) - Day 3

Day 3 in the Uintas. We decided to hike into a lake that I fished at last year that has Artic Greyling. I guess the lake really doesn't have a name, but the Woodlands call it Angel Lake, or as the map calls it Lake #25.

We took the kids with us and headed off on the hike. We also took lunches and drinks so we could stay in there for a while.

It was a good hike for little ones. Right before you get to the Lake there are huge bolders that you have to climb on. Most of them being quite bigger than myself, but somehow we made it up there. The fishing was slow but fun. The water was really clear so you could see the fish swimming around. I caught 2 fish today. 1 Artic Greyling and one Cutthroat Trout.

Ryan was getting bored till his bobber went under water and he reeled in a Artic Greyling by himself. After catching that, he wasn't as bored, at least for 20 minutes afterwards.

I decided to show Ryan how to fly fish and while I was teaching him how to fly fish and on our first casts, I saw a good size fish, so we cast out and pulled the fly right over the fish and sure enough, Ryan and I pulled the fish in. The fish was probably 14-15 inches. Ryan was pretty excited about catching a fish on his first tiem trying a fly rod.

On the hike out, I carried Sydney the whole way. Ryan was having a hard time too, so I carried both of them for a little while.

All in all, we had a great day and enjoyed the lake and the fishing.

When we got back to camp, we had a big dinner and then packed up to come home.

As we got down out of the moutains, we stopped to check the canoes, etc and I took this picture as the sun was going down over the mountains.