We lost Dad and Sydney in Spanish Fork Canyon

On the drive home from Scofield, Dad said he was getting tired and asked me to drive the rest of the way. He pulled over and we switched drivers. 3 minutes later, both he and Sydney were fast asleep.

Leaving at 6am and fishing all day makes you tired. When I got home I gutted the fish outside (which was very cold).

We then all got cleaned up and went to Macaroni Grill in Provo for dinner.

My new ice fishing buddy

Our whole family went ice fishing today with Grandpa Berger. This was Sydney's first time ice fishing ever. Deni and I were a little concerned about how she would handle 6+ hrs out in the cold sitting around a hole in the ice, but we decided it was time to find out. My dad went with us, as well as my Uncle Kim and cousin Chad. We left from our house about 6:15am and headed towards Scofield. When we got to Scofield, there was so much fog that you couldn't see the Lake we were parked right next to. We got the snowmobiles off the trailer and all the gear attached and took a few trips out next to the island we were going to fish next to. After getting all the gear out shuttled out, Dad and I went back for Ryan, Sydney and Deni that were staying warm in the truck.

Not even 5 minutes after getting to our fishing place with the kids, Sydney was walking through untouched snow (there was about 8 inches of it) and all of the sudden she fell down. I was really close to her, so I picked her up. Somehow she had found a previous hole that hadn't frozen over (I'm not sure how that happened, as it was well below zero and should have frozen over) and she sunk into the water up to her knee. As I pulled her up, I could see the water was dripping from her boot. Since it was so cold, we scrambled to get her back to the truck. (about a mile away) I took Sydney on one of the snowmobiles and headed back with the keys to the truck and Deni came a few minutes after me with some supplies to warm her up. Once I got the truck started, I stripped the wet clothes off of Sydney and tried to get her little leg warmed up. Deni finished getting her warmed up and somehow got her boot dry. About 45 minutes later, they rejoined us fishing out on the lake.

I found myself a new ice fishing buddy today. Despite falling in the hidden ice hole, Sydney was a great little fisherman. She loved to pick up the little ice fishing poles and reel them in. I got a fish on the line and handed it to Sydney to reel in and we got it up to the ice hole, but it got off right before it came out of the whole, so she didn't get to land her first. She sure was cute out there on the ice, though.

Ryan on the other hand complained most of the day. Ryan is a great little fisher too, IF, and that is a BIG IF, you constantly have a fish on your line. We expected Sydney to complain and Ryan to have fun, but the opposite happened.

I had a good ice fishing day. I caught 4 fish total. The 3 that I kept were about 15-16 inches and much fatter than the little ones we catch at the ponds during the spring and summer. They were good size for eating.
Deni got skunked today, but that is ok as the last time she and I came to Scofield, she caught the only fish all day. We stayed out on the ice till about 3:30pm. We then headed home (which is about 1hr away.)

Christmas Day

I woke up at 5:30am, 6:00am, 6:45am. etc. At 7:30am the kids finally woke up and came into our bedroom. I teased the kids, just like my dad used to tease me, with comments like, "Did you think Santa came?", or "I'm not sure that Santa left us any presents this year". We got up and got the cameras rolling (another thing my Dad used to make us wait for) and let them come out.

Sydney ran right past her present, which is funny as is almost as tall as her. Ryan went right to his unwrapped Santa gift.

Here is what we got:

Sydney - A "maker-thing". Translated is a kitchen with a microwave. We bought this "maker-thing" online. Deni had been telling me that we need to start putting it together just in case there were parts missing. We spent about 3 hours the night before Christmas eve, and we still weren't done. We are both glad we didn't wait till Christmas eve to put it together. Sydney also got some puzzles, books and clothes.






Ryan - Star Wars Transformer that transforms into the Millennium Falcon. Ryan also got the 20th Anniversary edition of "Transformers, the Movie". Ryan also got some books, dvd's and clothes.










Deni - I had a few surprises for Deni this year. My first surprise was her favorite picture of her and Ryan printed in a 11X14 on Canvas, along with a black frame for it to go into. I really like canvas prints, if I had the money, I would get hundreds of pictures printed on Canvas to hang in our house, but for now, we will start with her favorite picture.



Next I got her a iPod shuffle - 1gb. It is amazing how small and lightweight the shuffle is. I had it about 2 weeks before Christmas, where I kept it at work and made sure it worked (aka -charged it up and played with it). It is a really cool MP3 player, perfect for working out, riding a bike or running. It will hold 240 songs.




Brett - This year was "year of the bike-Christmas". First of all, I got a Cookie Monster bike Jersey. I first saw these up in Park City and told Deni I was going to get her the one with Oscar the Grouch on it for her. Deni took the kids with her to buy this and this is the one they picked out for me. I also got a pair of bike gloves and thanks to Sydney, a pair of Sesame Street bike socks. I also got some Race Lite bike tires that have a Kevlar piece embedded into them so I won't get flat tires. When I was riding my bike to work I was getting at least 1 flat tire a week, which was beginning to get expensive. The new tires are kinda expensive ($30.00 a tire), but should keep me from getting flats, which will be nice, especially during races.

We all had a great Christmas this year.

Santa came

Christmas eve is finally here.

We had 1 hour of church today (instead of 3). Deni sang in the choir. They sang a beautiful version of Away in a Manager. I like that song. The sacrament program was a spoken word/choir ensemble where all the organizations sang a song. So when it was my turn, I went up with the YM/YW and sang.

After church we (Ryan) painstakingly waited for noon to come around. At noon we drove Ryan up to the MTC in Provo to each lunch with my parents. My dad is serving at the MTC as a Branch President. My parents have been taking the grandkids one by one up to the MTC, so they have a little MTC experience. It was finally Ryans turn. Ryan got to eat lunch with them and then attended church at the MTC, in mom and dad's Japanese MTC Branch. Ryan was so excited to go. He was telling people that he was going to learn Japanese while he was there. From the sounds of it, he enjoyed the day very much, as did the missionaries.

After the MTC, we had invited my parents over for dinner at our house, so they brought Ryan home.

At 6pm, Ryan was ready to go to bed so that Santa could come. You would have thought that we had fed Ryan pure sugar. I've never seen someone so excited about something.

We read the Christmas story from the Bible and let the kids open their one present of pajamas and then got them ready for bed. Mom and Dad left about 7pm. Mom and Dad gave us a new book that we opened called "The Three Trees". Deni read it to us as we all laid down in bed. Because the Christmas tree is in the upstairs Family room and the kids beds are downstairs, we temporarily moved the kids to the upstairs guest bedroom to sleep, or at least tried to.

After about 15 -20 minutes of both kids coming out and telling us that so and so is touching me or is bothering me, we split them up. I went into the guest bedroom with Sydney and Deni took Ryan down to his bedroom. What felt like 10 minutes later, Deni came in and woke me up. When I got up, I told Deni that it was time to get everything out. That's when she said that Santa had already came. Apparently, it had been about an hour. What??? I missed it. It appears that Santa was in a hurry this year and didn't need my help. Well Santa left one present that he needed help putting together, so Deni and I finished putting Sydney's Santa gift together. It was about 9:30pm when we got finished.

By that time, Ryan was asleep. We moved him back upstairs to the guest bedroom and barricaded the hallway off, just in case they got up in the middle of the night.

Busy, the secret present - 2 weeks left

I thought Sunday was a day of rest. I had meetings, home teaching, etc, etc. I finally got home at about 5pm only to have Deni leave for a meeting at 7pm. So much for family time today.

I was told that we are only have 1 hr of meetings on Christmas eve. I find that very odd. Of all the times you would want to be in church celebrating the life of Chirst, we cut 2 hrs off our meetings.

We usually try to sit down as a family and watch Funniest Home Videos. Ryan loves the show and it is very fun to watch him laugh at things. I love to hear my kids laughing.

At bed time, I got the kids ready for bed. As always, Sydney didn't want to go to bed, so I sat in her room for a little bit and talked to her. She told me that I was her "best daddy" and that when she got married that she was going to kiss her husband on the lips.

If only she would stay this size and not grow up.

2 weeks left till Christmas. I need to complete Deni's secret present. She gave me a list of things she wanted, however I tell her that I'm working on a secret project for her. She thinks I'm blowing smoke. Guess she will have to wait for another 2 weeks to see if that is true or not. Either way, it is very fun to keep her guessing.

Turn off the sun

This morning Sydney was laying on our bed watching cartoons. The sun had come up and was starting to come in the windows. She had her eyes covered when I walked into the room. Sydney said "Dad, turn off the light" I said, "Sydney, that's not the light, its the sun." Her reply was "Turn off the sun."

Cables, Cables, Cables

I spent most of the day at Teresa's new house today finishing up on the phone and cable installation. A while back, I pulled about 2000 feet of Cat 5e cable and about 1200 feet of cable throughout her new house.

When I did it, I was very careful to mark each end, so that it would be very easy to finish up the job. Or so I thought.

Well the sheetrockers came in and cut the markings off all my cables in the rooms. And to make matters worse, my dad did the same thing on the other end.

So probably $70 bucks or so later, Dad owns a new cable toner and what should have taken me about an hour, took me 6 hrs.

Going on a date...10 bucks

A co-worker of mine asked me about 4pm today what I was doing for the weekend. I said I was going on a date. He looked at me kinda perplexed and said, "With Deni, right?" I laughed and said "Of course with Deni."

We then talked about the days prior to kids an how "going on a date" was a common thing. Only those with kids understand what it means when you get a few hours away to just spend time with your spouse on a date.

On our date, we went out to eat at a Barbeque place in Provo that Deni had eaten at before.

Before I tell the rest of the story, I have to refer back to the TV show "Ed" that Deni and I watched. On the TV show, there were 2 friends (Ed and Mike) and they would "bet" each other to do stupid things for $10. The bets were usually odd things that only the 2 of them would think was funny.

Here are a few examples:
Mike challenges Ed to meow loud enough to make a guy sitting on a bench turn around.
Mike bets Ed that he cannot drink an entire bottle of pancake syrup.

Here is a complete list.

Now armed with that tidbit of knowledge about a cancelled TV show Deni and I used to watch, we are standing near the counter trying to decide what to order, when I notice the girl taking the order had all black hair, except for a section in the back of her head that was bright pink.

I leaned over to Deni and said, "10 bucks, if when you order, you ask the order girl if she knows she has a little section of pink hair on the back of her head." Deni looked at me, laughed and then said no, but we laughed together about it. Then all of the sudden we were ordering and Deni said "Excuse me, but did you know you had a section of pink hair on the back of your head."

I was shocked that she went through with it. Of course, I thought it was great entertainment, however after Deni asked her, she felt back and told the girl she was just teasing her and hoped that she didn't hate our guts.

I'm just hoping she didn't spit in our food.

After we left, we went to see a movie called "Stranger than Fiction". As we got to the movie theater, we realized that we left Deni's purse back at the Barbeque place. So I had to drive back and ask Mrs Pink Hair if she had found a purse. Of course, she had it.

The movie was great and we had a fun time. All in all, it was a great date.

Dear Santa Love, Ryan

Ryan wrote the following letter to Santa today. I told him I would put it on my blog. Santa started checking blogs a few years ago.



(translated text)

Dear Santa Sydney is being nody (naughty)Today and I am Being nice and I want for Christmas RC Monster Truck and a spy car and a Transformer Love Ryan.

Click, Click... time for a new computer

Last night in the middle of the night I woke up because of a clicking sound. It happened about every 2 minutes. It sounded like it was coming from the laptop, so I got up and decided to shut it off. As I was going through that process, I thought, if I shut this down now, I won't be able to turn it back on in the morning, however I ignored the thought and shut it down.

Guess what, it wouldn't boot in the morning. Gave me an error that the hard drive was not recognized. I broke the news to Deni, who didn't have some of here things backed up on the computer. She was bummed.

I took Sydney to my parents again and took Ryan to school.

Work went by very quickly. too quickly. I'm not going into work tomorrow, so needed to get a few things done today, however I didn't finish them, so I guess that means I am going to work from home tomorrow and finish them up.

Good news at work. I got a new laptop. A Dell Latitude D620. It only has 3 gigs of RAM (memory) and a 100 gb hard drive. (ha.) Support guys get nice beefy laptops so we can run VmWare. I'm sure this laptop is way better than any of the developers at Novell. Go figure. No complaining here, I like the laptop. It has a widescreen, which I'm getting used to but is very cool.

When I got home, Deni had gotten our home laptop to turn on and had backed up all her files to our server. Something is wrong with the Hard drive and I don't expect it to be working for too much longer.