Revenge of the Bobby Pin

As I was breaking a bobby pin the other day it fought back and cut me.

Holy cow it's been a long time since I updated my blog...more than a month. So much has happened since then: Carrie and Bret's wedding, Skyler and Rebekah's wedding, dropped Dallas off at the MTC, moved back home, so much!

First thing's first. I ran into Elder Brad Jones the other day. I shot him in the squirt gun war last year and now he's serving here. I went up to him after Stake Conference and put my finger to his back. Fun times. Oh yeah! So we were waiting outside the Temple in San Diego for Skybekah to come out and Christy Witt showed up! She must have been there with some friends. We smiled at each other and then went our separate ways. We kinda butted heads last year in the squirt gun war...haha.

My first Monday back here there was an incredible storm with so much thunder and lightning. Half of CB was out of power. At the end of FHE we watched the lightning show from the church, it was amazing. I forgot how awesome the storms are here. The other night it was raining really bad, so I went and jumped on the trampoline. Good times. It's been a lot of fun being back. It's sweet being with the fam, catching up with old friends, enjoying the Midwest weather again, and eating a TON! My mom wanted to fatten me up after I lost weight in Uganda and I think I'll for sure get it back. If I wasn't training for a marathon right now I'd probably put on 10 or 15 extra pounds. My bro and sis's have been complaining that I eat everything...it'll be hard going back to an empty refrigerator in Provo.

Our stake got a singles ward about a month ago and it is so much fun! I'm really surprised at how many people I don't know here. There's only a handful of people I know from before. Monday's we have FHE then basketball, Tuesday is movie night, Wednesday is game night, Thursday is Institute then volleyball and we've all hung out the last couple of weekends. We went to the zoo on labor day and have played a couple games of werewolves. I'm hoping it can be the type of atmosphere where it's really fun and people feel comfortable with bringing their friends. Probably the coolest part about the ward is trying to get it going. It's a real challenge to get people coming and the branch president is really relying on us to get to work and get people to come. I'm loving being the ward mission leader. He's letting me get some things started that I've wanted to happen in a ward since my mission. There really is nothing better than doing the Lord's work and trying to build his kingdom.

Last Friday as I was driving to go play steal the flag I had a moment where you just realize how good life is. I think what did it was breathing in the cool air and smelling the Friday night in the fall goodness. I forgot how awesome the weather here really is. There's just this smell or coolness of fall that gets me all nostalgic. That nostalgic feeling has been happening a lot lately with Colby's home football game, running at night to a big ole red moon, sleeping on the trampoline staring at the stars, or just driving around with the windows down and the wind blowing in the face. Life is good.

When I was little I was always afraid of the forest behind our house at night. I had nightmares of guys walking out of the forest at night with guns or the forest setting on fire. I've slept on the trampoline several times now- one time I really thought I heard someone walking in the forest. I thought I was going to see a guy running toward me waving a gun.

I am alergic to my basement. I can't sleep down there. Everytime I've slept down there the whole night I wake up in the middle of the night sneezing and with a runny nose which makes me go upstairs to take medicine. Well, because I'm upstairs I might as well eat some ice cream. Actually I do that because it helps out with my nose a little and to recreate memories in high school when I would eat ice cream in the middle of the night. So yeah if I don't sleep on the trampoline I sleep on the couch upstairs until 5:45 when Colby and Jamie are getting ready for seminary, then I sleep for a couple more hours downstairs. Rusty (our dog, not my roomate) will usually lick my face around 5:45 as well. That dog is a funny dog. I think he has ADD. He runs around all the time, throws stuff into the air, follows you around everywhere, and will try to make a game out of everything. I like having him around and would like it even more if he wouldn't chew up everything and poop in the basement...darn dog is costing me like $20 because I got poop all over my suit pants.

We played werewolves, but now instead of a Jack Bauer, we're calling him Jason Bourne. Have you seen the Bourne Ultimatum?!! Wow, Bourne is a stud, he can't be caught. That is definitely the best one of the series.

I love Saturdays! I run a ton in the morning and then rest, eat, and watch college football the rest of the day. It takes me the whole day to recover from my run but wow, I love college football. Can you believe Michigan got beat by Appalachian State and then Oregon?!! Man, we should have beated UCLA. My gut feeling tells me we're going to win the rest of our games and that loss will keep us out of the BCS. I'm really impressed with Max Hall. He doesn't have my complete confidence like John Beck had, but he is a lot better than I remember him from the Spring game and he is getting the job done. But what's weird is that I really enjoy watching our defense play, more than our offense. Our defense didn't lose the game for us, the refs and stupid mistakes did.

Boise, Idaho. Attaboy Boise, attaboy.

Southern Utah. Attaboy Southern Utah, attaboy.

Probably the last original F6 Soviet meeting. Attaboy F6, attaboy.

Oh man, this was the girl we found on the side of the road (for the complete story go back a couple entries). Attaboy ambulance, attaboy.

Beaver, Utah claims to have the best tasting water in the world, so we tried it out...not bad. Attaboy Beaver, attaboy.

Kyle and Alan...can you tell who is who? I forget, if only Alan had his briefcase with him. Attaboys Alan and Kyle, attaboys.

I should have taken a picture with him, but I chatted with Governor Tommy Thompson about his ideas to divide Iraq as opposed to Senator Brownbacks'. He's wearing the red tie, observe how most candidates wear a red or blue tie. Attaboy Tommy, attaboy.

Me and good ole Mitt. Attaboy Mitt, attaboy.

This is Dallas, before he learned Spanish. Attaboy Dallas, attaboy.

Number 100!

Wow, what a weekend! I usually blog on Thursdays, but this week will be pretty crazy. This is blog #100. I really like blogging. At first I was doing it for others, but now it's become a journal and something to entertain my future kids.

So Friday night we were all ready to go except for Alex because he ended up taking Ben Gardner to the hospital because Ben had kidney stones. So we didn't end up leaving til like midnight. Me, Alex, Janae, and Troy were in one car and CoryAnn, Brent, Pdub, and Brady were in the other. Near mile marker 144 ish, at about 2:00 Alex saw a car pulled over and stopped to see if they needed help with anything. Alex comes back and says that this is looking pretty serious actually. So me and Troy go talk to the guy who was kind of panicky and unspecifically told us he hit a guy and the guy rolled into the median and is pretty sure he's dead. Me and Troy were looking all over the median, which was pretty big, looking for a body, yelling, etc. Troy spots a car on the other side of the interstate on the shoulder, so we thought that the guy must have gotten out or something. We go over there and looked in and there was a girl slouched over the passenger seat not moving or anything. Immediately I thought she was dead because there was blood all over her neck and shirt. We're talking to her and then she sits up and is panicky and tries to get out of the car through the driver seat window and is saying, 'look at my neck' and stuff. We go around the other side, open the passenger door and help her into the passenger seat. Looking back it was just so unreal and scary looking for a body, finding her and thinking that she was dead. I'll admit that I was kinda panicky and wasn't thinking that clearly. Troy was a stud, though. He was cool, calm and knew what to do. He told her to not move her head, stay sitting up and asked if she wanted a blessing (she responded that she wanted a cigarette). I ran over to Alex and Janae, they got their flashlight and ran over to Lindsey. I asked the guy if he had called 911, he said he had and that someone was on the way. So I went back to Lindsey, Alex helped her out, he used to be an EMT and then two nurses pulled over and took over. They were asking for something to put around her neck to stop the bleeding. There was a bra by Troy's feet and then I found a sweater in her backseat. The sheriff showed up and had a neck supporter and lots of first aid stuff. Me and Troy cleared the road of debris like the car battery and chunks of the car. Troy went all over the median looking for different things and came back several times with things like cd's, a blanket, her purse, etc. The sheriff thought it was funny and said, 'your friend has a death wish I think.' It seemed like it took forever until the ambulance and firetruck showed up. Lindsey started talking and it was one of the saddest stories I've ever heard. Basically, she was drunk and suicidal; she was looking to run into a semi truck. Because she was drunk she just kind of opened up and told everything. The nurses were so good at handling her, comforting her and just trying to give her hope and reason to keep on living. When the EMT's got there she was back to really panicky, crying and what not, mostly because of the questions they were asking. Alex is right that EMT's are more of scoop and go but nurses are more one on one, helping the person. I guess they don't give counseling services when alcohol is involved. That makes me mad because she really needs help and the state of Utah won't give it to her just because alcohol was involved. She is really lucky, somebody is really looking out for her. She was going really fast and clipped the guy's left corner of his car and rolled across the median, across the other lanes and luckily onto the shoulder. She wasn't wearing a seat belt and luckily only got cuts from the glass. She could have been a lot worse off. The car got beat up so much worse they she did. Lindsey really needs prayers right now.

We stopped in Beaver to taste the water (on Beaver's sign they claim to have the best tasting water in the world- and it really isn't that bad). Lindsey's blood got on me and Troy, so we cleaned that off and then headed to St. George. We didn't get to CoryAnn's cousin's place until 4:30. We were wanting to leave at 8:00 but decided to scratch that. So we slept and didn't leave until noon on Saturday. So we left for Zion's National Park! Brady's friend, Tim, who live in St. George, came along with us and had a year round pass so we all got in free. The others were way ahead of us and Alex got a ticket trying to catch up with them. It was pretty dumb actually. They were stopped at a light in a little town and Alex accelerated a little when we finally saw them and there just happened to be a sheriff watching. He said that Alex went 45 in a 25. It was dumb that it became 25 so fast and he was not going 20 over, maybe 10. We looked at the ticket and you can get a ticket for going the speed limit. It says on the ticket that the fine for going 0-10 mph over the limit is $82. Dumb, huh?!!! So yeah, that was bad, but the rest of the day was awesome! We hiked Angel's Landing, which is a strenuous 2.5 miles to the top. It is in the middle of Zion's Canyon and the views from the top are incredible. For the last .5 mile you have to pull yourself up with chains, it's pretty sweet. We wanted to do a hike after that but we were all so tired afterwards that we just took the shuttle the rest of the way around the park and then back to the car. Zion's Park is really cool, I want to plan like a weeklong trip there next year. On the way home Alex bought us frosties from Wendy's. That was probably the best 99 cent gift I've ever received! It was so good! So we went to CoryAnn's other cousin's home for a pool party/BBQ. They live in the half of the basement of this huge, gorgeous house. The pool was so nice and from it you could see all of St. George. It was such a sweet evening cooling down from the hot day, eating food after not eating the whole day and just having fun and playing games in the pool and then playing on the swing set. We then watched What About Bob and CoryAnn's grandma's house. The next day we slept in and then went to church at the new institute building and then went home, chilled, and came back.

Man it was such a sweet weekend, definitely one for the books. The experience with the accident changed me. For like 5 minutes I wanted to change my major and become a doctor. So it's not for me but I definitely need to refresh my first aid boy scout skills and be more prepared for the next time something like that happens. Lindey's not a bad person or anything but people can do really bad things when they're thinking irrationally. I need to be more sensitive to that. I haven't really gone through tramatic things. It was pretty bad when Skyler's head was cracked open but early Friday morning I was looking for a dead body and then when I saw her I really thought she was dead at first. It's just a little crazy for me right now to fully take it in.

So...life huh?

The things on my mind right now

Right now I want a shirt that says "Intramural Champions" more than a college diploma. Our frisbee team won our first three games 15-4, then 15-7 and then we got destroyed in the tournament. My softball team is really good, 2nd tourny game tonight, hopefully we'll win. Goin to Zion's this week babY! It's been my goal to do that for awhile now. Um, life has pretty much been a party this summer...is that a problem? I'm trying really hard to figure out if there is anything better in life than jet skiing, besides going on a mission. Whitney goes in today, Dallas will be there in two weeks. Me and Amanda went on the most intense ride ever last Saturday! It was just the right combination of a powerful jet ski, big wakes, right amount of wind and enough boats on the water to make even bigger wakes. Went to TRC at the MTC last Monday. I was an investigator for Dutch missionaries. That was really cool. It was neat watching them struggle for the right Dutch words like I went through and every missionary goes through. It was like being taught by myself when I was in the MTC. I want to write a song. Wednesday isn't my usual blog day, but just kinda felt like it today, probably cause today feels like Thursday. Mitt Romney is obviously the best choice for the next president. Why can't everyone see that? I bought an ipod-like device. It's actually really sweet, has 4 GB and only cost $60. You can put pictures, music, videos on there. It's also a flash drive and voice recorder and really small. So I finally crossed the dark side and became one of those people. Don't worry though, I don't listen to it when I'm walking or stuff like that, just when I run. I took in my teacher training ideas to HELP international and they really liked them and were kind of thinking about doing something like that anyway. I'll keep you posted, I really hope they add this part to their organization cause it's a gold mine.

Here are some of the pictures from the teacher training thing/student workshops we did. These and other pictures were used in a news special they did on us.