December 27, 2008

Jacob got his first hair cut.

Guests

Lexie's sister Jennifer lives in Maricopa about 3 hours east of Quartzsite. We were delighted that her family came out to visit us today. We did a sort of pot luck Christmas dinner together. Given our lack of oven space and a few miscalculations about cooking times dinner was a couple hours later than intended but that made it all the better. It is a wonderful experience to be very hungry around delicious food with the great excuse of "It's the holidays! I am supposed to eat!".

We had a great time visiting with Wade and Jen. After dinner the Becksteads didn't have a lot of time because they needed to get back home. In the little time they did have we took them out for their first geo caching. I had a lot of fun and I think they did as well. I enjoy watching the kids sort through the junky toys in the caches deciding which one to claim as their treasure. I also of course love the hiking.

Once the Becksteads left for home we continued from our last geo cache find to a place between Quartzsite and Bouse that the president of the local rock and mineral club told us we could find green laced marble. My geology skills are very weak and I am not sure how to tell marble from other rocks but we did find several rocks with very interesting patterns. There was also a small cave which appeared to be the start of a hard rock mine which the kids were able to enter. It is easy for me to see how people get excited about rock hounding. The longer we were out the more I wanted to be out. We finally wrapped things up as we saw the sun was setting.

Happy Christmas

The kids loved their presents.

Things were a bit different from our norm for Christmas this year. One of the neighbors did run Christmas lights off their generator for a couple of days before Christmas but overall the atmosphere lacked a lot of the things we typically associate with Christmas. The most notable thing missing of course was the snow. My mind shifted from thinking that we were in very non Christmas like weather to realizing we were in the most Christmas like weather we ever had been. I did a quick check of the weather at one point and was pleased to find that Israel was at 55 degrees fahrenheit and lightly raining just like the local weather here in Quartzsite Arizona. I have enjoyed looking at the local desert and mountains imagining what things might be like in Israel.

Christmas really is a strange holiday in that even though it is stated as a celebration of Christ's birthday most of the celebration that surrounds Christmas in the United States is a morph of St. Nicholas day in Europe which Europe celebrates between the 5th and 6th of December. Also the date of December 25th itself is not the understood birthday of Christ. It is my understanding that the date was selected to overlay a Roman holiday to give the Christians a way to celebrate Christ's birthday without drawing attention to themselves.

It would seem it would be possible to get things cleaned up. We could Get St. Nick's day on the 6th of December, give the 25th of December back to the Romans for their holiday if they still want it. We could then celebrate Christ's birthday on his birthday. I am not sharp enough on my history to know if there is a consensus concerning Christ's birthday or if each little church has their own date picked. Lack of exact knowledge concerning the date could be part of what is keeping things as muddled as they are.

As for our family's particular celebration this year we took further liberties with the already muddled traditions. Tyrell made our Christmas tree out of construction paper. Because of the lack of space in the trailer we did not buy a lot of presents. We skipped the stockings and instead wrapped what would otherwise have gone in a stocking. That aside I suppose it was a rather normal Christmas. At first Lexie and I were really wondering if it would be. Tyrell and Dallin woke up Christmas morning about 7:30 AM. Dallin began chattering about the dreams he had the previous night, which he usually does when he first wakes up, and Tyrell pulled the blanket over his head to try to get some more sleep, which he usually does when he first wake up. Lexie and I turned and looked at each other quietly talking back and forth about how strange it was the kids didn't seem to acknowledge Christmas. Not long after that, Ty sat bolt up in bed and asked "Hey, when do we get to open presents?" After that the morning had the electricity in the air Lexie and I had been expecting. By the time we finally got to opening the presents the kids were literally gyrating with excitement. The kids were very pleased with their presents exclaiming they were exactly what they wanted. Natalyn was particularly cute when she got her Barbie, she held it up and joyfully exclaimed "My Dream!".

Tyrell made our Christmas Tree this year.

The Barbie's dog was the hit of the morning because it could poop. The dog came with little brown tick tack shaped metal poops which doubled as dog food. A person could lift the tail to feed the dog, drop the tail for the dog to poop, and finally clean up the mess with a little magnetic pooper scooper. The mess cleaned into a trash can which attached to the dog food container from which the process could be repeated. It was my preference to simply feed the dog directly from the pooper scooper. The boys spent the morning between Transformers and Legos. By the time lunch came around the kids were so loaded up on candy and cookies that they weren't hungry so we decided not to push the issue. Skipping a meal really helped to keep the day simple. For dinner we had elk meat, which I got from my brother Dave, with rice, it was a big hit.

The pooping dog was the hit of the morning.

Tyrell bought me a glass chess set for Christmas. Unfortunately the board was broken when I opened the box. I am quite sure that we did not break the set so we will be returning it. I was touched that Ty was very obviously reaching out to get some time with me. I am looking forward to when we can get down into Mexico, we are planning to shop for a replacement chess set there. In the mean time Ty and I can still play chess on the computer. It really does surprise me how grown up Ty is getting.

Ty bought me a chess set, somehow some toilet paper got wrapped, hey, I'll take it.

I felt more vested as a dad this year than I ever have. I am sure it is because I now have two children old enough I can remeber when I was their age and also I have the same number of children as I grew up with in my family. As I was giving the lecture of the meaning of Christmas to get interrupted by "when can we open presents?" it was fun to ride my little power trip and say "You'll open your presents when Dad says you can open your presents." I'm sure I have heard that some where before.

The kids loved openning presents.

December 21, 2008

The London Bridge didn't fall down it was moved to Arizona!

David takes on the big 3.

Heavy heavy hang over thy poor head.

Whatcha gonna do with a bump on your head?

Nope!

You'll watch it!

Lexie here. I haven't written in awhile, okay, only once way back in February, so here I go again. Jacob is sleeping. Natalyn, Dallin, and Tyrell are playing with the pattern blocks, color tiles, and bears, and David is sitting next to me twirling my hair. After the way this morning went I wouldn't have imagined I would have any quiet time, let alone some free time to be able to write. This is really exciting! For those of you now wondering what happened this morning let's just say the kids lost their computer turns last night for not going to bed well and it is pouring rain outside. Your imaginations can fill in the rest!

It has been reaffirmed in my mind why children are not the protectors in the family. As we were discussing why they need to stay somewhat close to us while they ride their bikes and we are on walks Natalyn and Davey were positive they would be able to protect themselves. David gave me his best growl that was sure to scare away any bobcat (which do frequent the area - although not so much here as in Needles - and we haven't seen any)! Natalyn was just as confident exclaiming that she would simply suck on a candy cane until the tip got sharp and then she could use it as a spear! That's an idea I certainly hadn't considered. We'll continue to leave the job of protector to the parents for now.

Speaking of being protector, included with that is also the added job of being responsible for feeding the kids and in general making responsible decisions. With that said, Dan and I have decided to stay in Quartzite, Arizona until our spelling game is finished. Our original plan was to pass through here on our way to Florida to see the shuttle launch that is scheduled for February 12. The process of decision making is very interesting as two people start talking about what they want and what is probably best for the time being. It was a little revealing for me to realize that one of my underlying fears of not going to Florida right away was pride. I was so embarrassed to think of not going after telling everybody that we were headed there that it weighed very heavily on my mind while we were taking finances into consideration and if I hadn't recognized it, I could have pushed to make a decision that would have been financially foolish. Quartzite is a place we can live virtually free of hook-up fees, save on gas money, and live extremely frugally as we boondock in the desert. Clothes are even optional we discovered! We chose against parking next to the nudist colony, however much I hate doing (and paying for) laundry. Before you all panic and think we're stranded in the desert without any money or way to feed our children (except for the occasional lizard that they catch for lizard stew), I will let you all know we are doing fine. Our decision was based on the fact that Dan cannot be doing free-lance work, and private work at the same time. We're 1 month to 2 months away from finishing our game completely and we have come too far to quit the game now to do free-lance work full-time. Our plan is to live as frugally as we can for the next 2 months while we finish the game, then we will pick up more free-lance work and market our game. When the cash starts coming in again we will continue our travels. There is another shuttle scheduled in May and hopefully we will make it to that one. I can hope!

Quartzite has filled me with all kinds of conflicting and strange emotions. In so many ways the desert is just plain ugly and bland. When we go into town it really does fit the stereo-type of trailer trash. As we come into the desert I realize how alive everything is here. The sunsets are absolutely gorgeous! The cacti are really fascinating. The sharp mountain ranges are intriguing. I'm finding that this place has a very definite beauty worth admiring. Even though the town itself looks like trailer-trash, it's not. The majority of the town consists of seniors that are snowbirds, just looking for a warm, economical place to stay in the winter and take advantage of the flea-markets and mineral shows that come into town. There is nothing trashy about the people we have met!

We have enjoyed magnificent sunsets.

David seems to be confused about who he is lately, which confuses me because I never seem to call him by the right name. After seeing transformers at his cousin's house he wanted to be called Bumblebee, after hearing the story, "Holes" with his brothers he was Zero, today he said, "Call me Scooby."

The ward we went to had a primary president, teacher, nursery leaders, and that's all. There is normally a little two year old boy in the nursery, so David doubled the attendance in nursery. Tyrell, Dallin, and Natalyn made up the entire primary! The youngest family besides us and the couple with the little boy was probably 55. Their were about 300 people in the ward! J-bird is awake now so I'm signing off!

We had fun singing christmas songs around the campfire.

David playing at the Lake Havasu park.

Dallin enjoying the gold fish perhaps a bit too much.

There is a wonderful park near the London Bridge in Lake Havasu.

A picture at Lake Havasu I (Dan) thought turned out neat.

B Y Boo Hoo

Dan here... I've had a few scattered thoughts that I thought would be fun to further scatter across the world wide web. I find the decision making process a very interesting thing. In life we are bombarded by a series of choices in such a rapid succession that we really aren't even aware of the majority of the choices we are making, we rather just flow along and try not to get bumped too hard in the process. It really is important to make good decisions because in the end one's success or failure is likely simply the arithmetic outcome of whether one makes more good decisions than they make poor decisions. With the great number of choices we have I find it interesting which choices we choose to grab on to as a part of our own definition, which choices we let float by and most of all which choices we make habitually without even realizing that we were taking a path that offered an alternate course.

So what does this have to do with our dear sweet cougars of the Provo valley? Not a lot... That's the scattered part. The center of my thinking about decisions revolved around the way I handled my choice of whether to go to their bowl game or not. When I heard they were playing in Las Vegas I was excited because we were in the area and I have never been to a live BYU football game. When I learned that bad seats were $20 dollars, reasonable seats were $50 and good seats were $100 dollars my enthusiasm was dampened. At that point I made a decision that in as much as going did not directly fill any of my current family goals, the expenditure represented too much outgo for not enough income we would not go. So that was the level 1 of the decision making process. The decision had come to my conscious mind, I had evaluated it and made a mental determination of the outcome. The thing that was interesting to me was that even though I had done this I don't believe the decision was truly made until about 5:45 on Saturday when I realized that it was impossible to drive to the game, buy a last minute ticket and view the game. Even though my mind had been made up weeks ago it wasn't until the opportunity had completely passed that my mind would fully release the decision.

I sometimes wonder how much control I really have of myself and how much I just float around in my sea of possibilities and drift from one thing to the next. Even in cases where it seems that I have taken direct control of a choice it seems that currents still push me one way and another. I guess in the end what we get, really is not the ability to control our wind but rather the ability to adjust our sails. Sometimes I think I get caught in the trap of wanting the right decisions to feel good and that very frequently does not seem to be the case.

Back to the Boo Hoo part. I was very disappointed that the Cougars lost the game. I find that emotion funny in that I only went to BYU for one semester, and I most definitely was not anywhere near their football team. Another piece of my stupid thinking is that I really have trouble with the Cougars loosing sporting events. In the scriptures it seems like a major theme is that God chooses a people and then the chosen people kick the tails of their enemies in battle. In as much as the church claims to be God's chosen people it looks wrong to see them get run weary into a defeat. I'm not as bent up about BYU losses now as I used to be, but it is always uncomfortable to see the shadows show up on the wall in the wrong order.

December 6, 2008

Week In St. George

Natalyn and David near our Sand Hollow camp site.

Well, the week was really in the Sand Hollow State Park just out of St. George. If I understand correctly Sand Hollow is Utah's newest state park. Given the Thanksgiving Holiday the park was relatively full so we were not able to get the exact site we had last February, however we were able to get a back in site right next to it. Now I am conflicted, undecided about which camp site I like better.

The desert is beautiful in a "nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there" sort of way to me. With that said, in as much as a significant part of my childhood was spent in Kayenta Arizona, the desert feels very much like home to me. Sunrises at Sand Hollow State Park are quite breath taking. It rained toward the front of the week but by the end of the week the rain cleared and we were also able to get some wonderful night skies. I have had an interest in Astronomy as long as I can remember, I just haven't yet fed that interest with what I consider any decent amount of education. When I was a freshman in college I took and Astronomy class and it stood as one of my favorite classes in school. Something I love about being out in the desert is the great view one gets of the heavens. While I don't have the time or money right now to take more collegiate level Astronomy courses I would like to think that this winter will be one in which I get a lot more familiar with the stars and planets. There have been two very prominent stars or planets next to the moon in the evening lately and it has been very frustrating to me not to know what they are.

Thanksgiving

We have some friends in Pocatello who told us that after they had their first Thanksgiving dinner in their camp trailer they didn't do it any other way. I have had a lot of wonderful Thanksgiving dinners with extended family, so I am not sure I am quite ready to say I wouldn't do a Thanksgiving any other way. I will say that we had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner in the trailer and being together as a nuclear family is a delightful way to spend the day. Lexie was able to find a turkey small enough that it would just barely fit in our oven. The bird was more chicken sized than turkey sized but it turned out to be big enough to feed the family and leave left overs.

Lexie found a Turkey small enough to fit in our oven.

On Sunday we went to the St. George temple to show the kids the grounds. I am pretty proud of this picture I took it from the car on an errand to get a diaper.

Las Vegas

We did another repeat of camping locations from February and stayed at the Arizona Charlie's RV Park in Las Vegas. The park doesn't offer much for the kids in the way of a place to play outside of the trailer, however it does have a great pool. The kids have grown a lot since February, they were able to touch the bottom of the pool in a lot more places. At most RV parks you can stay a week for the cost of 5 days. Since we wanted to stay at least three days for the wedding anyway we decided to make our Las Vegas stay an even week. Most of the week we have just been in a daily routine of work and school. I guess a little more accurately the routine has been work, school and pool. The kids have been very eager to get in the pool at every opportunity we'll give them. As I am writing this I am getting asked about the next time we'll get in the pool.

The kids love the pool here.

Jeremiah and Crista's Wedding

Jeremiah was delighted with his limo ride to his wedding.

Jeremiah and Christa just before the wedding.

With five kids and a suburban, that needs most of ten feet of clearance with the bikes on top to park, I decided that we should leave extremely early for the wedding in order to make sure we weren't late. Finding the chapel and finding a parking place proved to be simple, leaving us with two hours before the wedding started. The neighbor hood of the wedding chapel has a lot of barred windows. The commercial area is a mix of bail bond businesses, tattoo shops and wedding chapels. I didn't really feel comfortable having the kids play out side. We decided to try and visit my mom's hotel room but aborted that idea while driving toward the hotel when we realized that by the time we got to the hotel, go the kids out, found my mom's room, got the kids in and drove back we would be at risk of being late for the wedding. In the end we simply parked by the chapel and let the kids watch Magic School Bus video's in the back seat for an hour and a half while Lexie and I got the best naps we could manage sitting in the front seats of the car.

I have heard a lot of stories about Vegas weddings so I wasn't really sure what to expect. I was very pleasantly surprised with ceremony Jeremiah and Crista had chosen. For reasons I don't entirely know they chose to have a Celtic wedding ceremony. The music was very nice, the script was beautiful, and the ceremony included a lot of very interesting symbolism. Before the ceremony had started I leaned over to Lexie and as I pointed to each one of our boys told her that it was easier to picture Jeremiah at that size, that size, that size or that size, that it is to picture him at that size, as I pointed to him. It really is amazing to me that he is already married. The chapel was the first place we had ever met Christa. We are very pleased with her. I expect she and Jeremiah will be a great couple. It is nice to have her as a part of the family. For people who might want full resolution images of the wedding pictures I took, I uploaded them to a Picasa web album. You can get to it with this link. If you just want to view a larger photo you can of course just click on the photo.

This is a posed photo but probably my favorite from the wedding.

After the wedding we went to the Sahara Hotel where Jeremiah, Christa and most of the wedding guests were staying. I was concerned about parking but found a very simple solution. The hotel offers free valet parking. I have never used valet parking so I was a bit hesitant about it. Now that I have done it, I will say it is the sort of thing one can get used to in a big hurry. I really hate casinos. It infuriates me that they force you to walk through the gambling areas to get to hotels and restaurants. The kids were well behaved but walking through a casinos is like walking through a pig pen. You just don't come through clean. While I will entertain the thought that there are people who view gambling as legitimate recreation with in the bounds of moderation I think it is better to just draw a line at saying one will never do it. It has been shown that the presence of Casinos is correlated to an increase in crime. This means that the presence of a Casino means that more people are going to get robbed, raped and stabbed than they would in its absence. My vote is for their absence.

We had dinner as a group at the Casino's buffet. Tyrell and Dallin were especially excited about the food. As part of an effort to bring in our budget lately before most meals we have been adding the cost of all of the food items to get an awareness of how much different meals cost. Ty and Dallin left the wedding dinner exclaiming that was cheep! That meal should have cost one hundred dollars (meaning per plate)! We need to do a bit more work in teaching them their economics, but I was glad that they enjoyed the meal so much.

My mom and grandma had a great view from their hotel window.