In a nutshell...

Here are the things going on:

-Had an amazing trip down to California for a 3-day cruise to Mexico with the fam and then Disneyland- thanks Mom and Dad for a fun time!

-Coaching a 5th grade basketball team...it's a little tougher than coaching 8th graders, but we won yesterday!

-Playing intramurals

-Business is going AWESOME, seriously I'm just loving it

-Got a glove for racquetball, my bros don't stand a chance against me

-Thinkin about jet skiin a lot lately, seriously, I love it so much! :)

-I think we're gonna start a Beck family blog

-Research

-Studyin

-Enjoyin winter

-Livin the dream with a cute wife

Mini-golf on the cruise ship

Can't resist taking a sunset picture

Fam's first time to California Adventure

It rained nearly all day which meant SHORT lines

Disneyland is magical even when it's raining

They had to be in every picture, Dallas is only taller in this pic cuz he's closest to the camera

Eating A LOT of food makes ya hungry

Carrie was there too, so was Bret

Me and the girlz

So we lost last night...by one point!! It was such a good game, though. We've lost to this team by 40 points, 30, 15, and 1. Their coach came up to me after the game and told me that in his five years as coach this was the best Meridian team he's seen. It was a nice thing for him to say. It was sad saying goodbye to everyone.

The weather is so amazing! I went running a couple days ago, and it was a spiritual experience soaking in the great weather and all.

HELP training over the weekend was good. We have a lot of good things planned, like business training, helping out at the orphanage, community health, teaching square-foot gardening, etc. The two things I'm going to try to focus on are business training and square-foot gardening cause those are the things I believe can help people get out of poverty the most, and improve their standard of living. It sounds like that as long as we have a buddy they'll let us travel wherever. Uganda is close to Kenya, Sudan, Congo, Rwanda, and Tanzania. There are so many places to go, so I'm going to try to see as much as I can.

This Weekend= Amazing!

I never know where to start with my blogs. Friday night was the Hunger Banquet. It was really cool. We were third world again, but we actually got a lot of food because the 1st worlders gave us their leftovers. I went to the banquet with Megan Blodgett, and a lot of other people in the ward. We went to Pier 49 pizza afterwards because I had a coupon for a free pizza. They have some interesting pizzas but I wouldn't actually pay money there, the pizzas are too small and not that great. We played Murder in the Dark at Br. Smart's. I let people know the day before that we were doing, and we had 23 people there!! It was fun, but too many people for the game. Haha, SpyGlas 102 guys are crazy!

Saturday morning was our quarterfinals game. Ya know how you sometimes know you're just going to win? That's how I felt Saturday. It was a great day for basketball and I was feeling good about things. It was a really low scoring game, and was close the whole game, but in the end we won 22-21. They had the ball with 5.5 seconds left, they inbounded, we hit it out, and then they passed it in again and Tim (mini Yao Ming) stole it...and dunked it! J/k. I was pretty pumped, and so was everyone. It was a really emotional, intense game. The ref yelled at me, telling me to quiet my fans or we would get a T. So I turned around and softly told them that I would handle it and quiet down please. Ha, I love parents. I stayed after and scouted out the team we would play. The best team in the league, who is 9 and 0 lost. Was 9 and 0...was. So that's who we play tonight. We had a good practice this morning and threw in some new things to break their press and their aggressive 2-1-2 defense. We'll see...I'm feeling good about it, though. I know how to play the next team too, so hopefully we'll get to play them Wednesday night.

Ok!! So I got my guy at his class on Friday. My new target was Cameron Boyce, who killed Tiffany Taylor. I really wanted to get him, I tried his classes, tried him at Church, went by his apartment, and tried some more classes, but nothing. I think I'll cool down. I don't really have to get him, and he probably won't advance so I'll let him be...for now.

Saturday night was great. Tubing was amazing, the stars were incredible (not as great as in Burroughs Burros, though). My favorite part of the night though was when I saw Kenneth Alford. So I walked out the lodge and saw him walk in with Kathryn Tomaselli. I was sure that he was my assassin, so I went Jack Bauer style, took Chelsea's gun, put it to his back, grabbed his arm, and asked, "Are you my assasin?" He said, "no." I asked again, "are you sure?" He said, "I swear I'm not." It was pretty funny.

So the next day at Church I was really paranoid that somebody would try to get me because a lot of people have been doing it lately. After Church, me and Chelsea went to get her guy, Michael Pugh. So we were outside their Priesthood classrooms, I was on one end, she was on the other. She called me and told me that she thinks she found him. I looked at him and said it was him, she went Jackie Bauer style, turned the corner and gave it to him. She asked who the target was and he said, "Kasey Beck." Ken was with her and said, "I can help you get him if you want." Chelsea said, "No thanks, he lives in my apartment complex" and then walked over to me. She told me that she overheard them talking at the drinking fans about the game. She overheard one of the guys say, "and then he put his gun to my back...and it was dumb." Haha. So then we both walked by them and overheard them say, "what the heck." Haha, I love this game. So Chelsea has me now...hopefully she won't get me.

I have more to write...I'll write tomorrow probably.

37-35!!

That was the score last night at the basketball game. It was an insane game! It started out when before the game the coach for the other team got into an argument with one of the referee guys cause his players were too close to the court. It was a really childish argument. That was the start. The game was way closer than it should have been, but it was a good win. The refs were pretty bad. The other team was traveling all the time, throwing elboys, and the refs didn't call anything. The fans for the other team (adults) were being childish, yelling at our players that there were 5 seconds left when there was like 2 minutes left. They were yelling during free throws, etc. But we won, that's all that matters.

24 was amazing! It'll be interesting to see how Jack gets out of this one. Bad guys should learn from each other that if you have a chance to shoot Jack, shoot him immediately, don't wake, otherwise he'll escape and get you. You can lead a horse to water, Jack will make him drink.

That's all.



Me, Bronco Mendenhall, and DallasLas Vegas...Gavin's favorite place in the world
Haha, Burroughs Burros.
War Council
What's wrong with this picture...or rather, what's right with this picture?
More pictures Mom took.

It was such a fun weekend! Friday Night Live was amazing with all the entertaining groups such as Noteworthy, Swing Kids, Jared-Alan-Devin, Salsa Dancers, Club Style, Black Student Union, Breakdancers, and that guy dancing in the corner. It was so much fun going to the hot springs. I enjoy being with friends in the ward. It was also exciting because it really was crazy to leave at 11:00 ish, drive 100 miles and not get home til like 3:30. Saturday morning my team won 43-17!! It was amazing! It was the first game of the tournament and I was just so proud of my team, we've made so much improvement. Tim is a big reason we're doing better, but everyone is improving, especially Jack. He had 6 points! It's nice beating a team pretty bad that we lost to earlier in the season. Later me and Whit went to Carrabas, good Italian food. Chelsea is really thinking about going to Uganda. It would be amazing! If she comes then I'll have somebody to hang out with in Europe. I'll probably be buying my ticket this week to Uganda, spend like a week in Holland and Germany, and maybe go somewhere like Spain or Prague. Saturday night we went to Invisible Children. It was amazing. I've seen it three times now, what made it so much more special to me this time was that people close to me got to see what I care about and want to do with my life-- Skyler, Carrie, R22 and F6.

So and Adam play this game where we take turns in adding someone or something to our army. This one is from yesterday . Adam has Jedi Jared, Hyrum, OK Go, Captain Planet,a Giant Ninja Snake with 2 oozies, Bret, Captain Crunch, Jon Bay, the BLOB, and somebody else, but I can't tell who they are. My army consists of the fruit rollup, Katherine, The Nothing, Gavin, Br. Spencer, Emergency Preparedness's worst nightmare (that's Adam's calling), the ward choir, the squirt gun champion, and Bennet doing DDR on Adam's face.


This one is hard to read. Adam has Maverick, Zeus, Yao Ming and China, Joseph Stalin?, Jack Bauer, Zorro, Pussy-cat Dolls, P-dub, Usher, 2,000 Stripling Warriors, a t-rex, Chuck Norris, and Nemo? My side has Adam Channer, Kim Jung II and his nukes, Wolverine, Superman, Kasey Beck, a tank with a Pirate, Bronco Mendenhall, John Beck, Cameron Jensen, Johnny Harline, Curtis Brown, Ian Johnson, Harry Potter, Spiderman, Batman, Luke Skywalker, the Millenium Falcon, Br. of Jared and Mt. Zerin, 200,000 Temple Square Sister Missionaries.
Haha, my mom took this picture. I'm the tallest!!
Four-square at Gavin's house

Brett on Gavin's shoulders. Bravin. This picture cracks me up.

It's fun to put on pictures for some reason.
So this week has been really cool with Mom coming up, my bball team winning, our bball team beating UNLV, things going well in the squirt gun war, did well on my midterm, and other things...
I'll have to type up the whole story sometime about this squirt gun war because it is intense and me, Becca, and Cecilia are really feeling like we're in "24 world." That was a good episode last night.
I thought that I would have more time for things this semester by not working 20 hours a week, but I'm using up my time for other things. I need to adjust my time a little.

Taking pictures at the BYU-Air Force game.

Alan at the party.

This pic is in Great Falls, Montan. We are returning Chazlyn's nametag.

We tp'd an apartment in the ward.

So I thought the pics were coming out too small, so I'm making them larger now.


Playing Cranium


Trying to figure out how to cover 9 people with 3 tarps...it worked!

I have a lot of pictures I thought would be fun to put on my blog.
I got my next person to kill.........Brad Jones. He actually killed Skyler, so I need to avenge him. He's a friend of Dallas, but takes this game pretty seriously, so I need to be very sly about this. There are only 17 people left...someone is stalking me as we speak.
We have a basketball game this Saturday at 11, ya'll should come out, it'll be a good one.
Hillary is running, she's pretty popular among democrats, that bothers me.

Quotes

I've heard two quotes recently, one is from the Puritans and the other from Pres. Packer. Who said what:

"The greatest battles of life are fought within the confines of one's own soul."

"Xerxes the great did die, and so will you and I"

Ok, so it's pretty obvious; our humanities class showed us what was in a Puritan alphabet book for kids, and that was in it, along with lots of other references to death and your worthlessness. I can't remember if I've talked about this or not but Mormons are often compared to the Puritans. We both stress the importance of being different from the world but we also don't want much difference within our societies. We also place religious significance of the founding of America and God's help in liberation from Great Britain.

We have a basketball game tomorrow at 10:00 at Timpview H.S. It's against the first team we played so we're doing a couple of special things because we know what's coming.

I really like my raquetball class and really think it's helping me improve. My instructor is really good and is teaching us his favorite serves. He really favors the lob, which was strange at first because I though raquetball was all about power, but he's teaching us that, like other sports, it's a mind game, positioning the ball, and playing to your opponent's weaknesses. It's like life. J/k.

I became a little worldly yesterday and finally bought some songs on itunes. Actually, I just really wanted the songs: I can only imagine by Mercy Me, and Devil went down to Georgia and Even Superman by Ryan Shupe and the Rubberband.

I felt really sick yesterday and am not feeling too well today either. I like being independent because I know exactly what I need to take care of myself and help me feel better: ice cream. I went to Smith's and bought butterfinger ice cream, came home and ate that while watching tv. I did feel better. Me and ice cream go way back. In high school and on my mission when bad things happened, I would get ice cream. In high school, my dad thought I was having a difficult time with something so he took me to TCBY treats. That was awesome! My throat was killing me, I was in bed for two hours before I fell asleep.

Three cheers for ice cream: hip-hip hooray, hip-hip hooray, hip-hip hooray!

I'm in Councilina's office right now. Nobody came today. She thinks that nobody likes her anymore.
Had practice with my 8th graders last night. I ran them all night! They're cool with it though, cause they understand that they need to be conditioned because there's only 7 of them and they have 40 minute games. We'll see how it'll go, I'm kinda worried about their season though cause a few of them don't know how to play basketball.
Plutonium 210 is popping up everywhere in Britain. It killed the former Russian spy and now a former Russian Prime Minister is very sick and some think he was poisoned as well. Scotland Yard is speculating that there is a Russian hit team doing all this. Russia has really struggled with democracy since the fall of communism. It kind of depends on the next election. Will Vladimir Putin give up power? Will he continue the trend and try to appoint his successor? It's all very intriguing.
Holy cow that was a good game!! 33-31. I still get choked up thinking about it.
I don't think I've ever rejected candy in my life. Nor brownies. Nor ice cream.
I'm thinking about taking Arabic next semester. It would be really sweet.
Carrie's laptop is playing a Kalai song. Whenever we hear it we think of when we drove through Dixie State Forest when we took a trip to the Navajo Indian Reservation about a year and a half ago.
I have to watch Malcolm X and Red Dawn for my history class. Both should be exciting. I also really want to see Paradise Now, a movie about Palestinian Terrorist bombers and their motivations. I've heard good things about it.
Agent Jane: the chicken is in the pot.

Aufwiedersehen, au revoir, hasta luego, tcau, tot ziens!

Bureaucracies!!

Not only do I not like spelling the word but today was an example of how ineffective they can be run! The School of Technology is having its annual Christmas party. So I sent out probably 70 invitations. The funny thing is that half of those invitations were to professors and we put invitations into their mail boxes here in the office. So we're wasting like $20 or something.
Bureaucracies waste money because they are given their budget each year. If it's close to the end of the year and they haven't spent their budget they will make unnecessary purchases so that their next year's budget isn't significantly smaller. Totally a waste of money!

I'm trying to think of someone to hook Heather up with.

Yesterday I was playing around on the BYU service website and it said there was an urgent need for a basketball coach for Meridian Middle School. I emailed them and said I'd do it, but didn't really think they'd take me serious. Well I got an email saying stuff like, "we're so excited," "the boys didn't think they'd have a team this year," etc. So it's looking like I'll start coaching a middle school basketball team in a couple weeks. Weird! I'm going to have Gavin help me cause I haven't played basketball since high school and forgot how practices should be run. My goal is to get kicked out of a game by a ref, and make a kid cry...j/k.