May 18 2008

In as much as there were two services planned for Barbara, one in Spokane and one in Juneau I was faced with the decision of whether or not to go to Juneau for the second service. I was very satisfied with the first service in terms of the closure it provided. I decided that even though people may like to see me in Juneau no one really needed me there for emotional support. I am not sure I really am that much emotional support anyway. So with that decided I was left without any moral high ground to justify the time and expense of a trip to Alaska. After working a while to justify something in my mind about life ending and trying to live it while I am alive I finally just gave up and decided along with Lexie that we should go to Alaska because it would be a lot of fun and we could. I have heard that the way the human mind works is that it will make a decision and then use thought to rationalize the decision it has made. Even though it seems backwards it does seem to be the way things happen some time. Even though it feels to me as though everything was thought through I will admit that it is quite likely the thinking happened after the decision.

Our original route plan had actually included Alaska but Alaska had been cut as a practical measure when we learned that we were going to add an August birthday to the family. Now under the new circumstances since we were in Spokane earlier than we had anticipated being we determined we had plenty of time to get to Juneau, spend some quality time there and be back in Idaho well before contractions got 3-4 minutes apart and at least one minute in duration.

I found some amusement as we talked to the family about our decision to go to Alaska and found them deeply concerned by it. It seems that even though we did our best to explain it people did not fully grasp our intent in our new life style. We concluded that the family had accepted that we wanted to spend our time traveling but had not accepted that we intended to go anywhere. To be truthful if we were not expecting a baby in August I would love to be heading north from Juneau instead of south when we leave. Lack of more money is the only thing keeping us in North America. Not that there is a shortage of things to do in North America we just have big appetites. I don't fully understand my fixation with ice. I am not particularly fond of snow. In fact I rejoice in my new found ability to avoid snow. However I think that if I had a ticket for a go anywhere I wanted for vacation it would be to Antarctica. The pictures I have seen of Antarctica absolutely move my soul. I think it would be wonderful to see the unique wild life, look for meteorites, climb giant ice walls, and experience the vast remoteness of the place.

The largest tactical hurdle to resolve in getting ready for a trip to Alaska was that we had not managed to get the kids passports ordered. Lexie had brought the kids birth certificates and social security cards. The problem was that Natalyn's had some how managed to get lost. With a little bit of online research we were pleased to learn we could order an expedited copy of the birth certificate to be sent to Mariann's house. Another problem of similar nature was that we had not picked up our mail from our Rexburg UPS mail box since leaving Pocatello in February. This problem proved to also have an equally elegant solution in that we were able use a phone call to get mail forwarded by two day ground. The timing worked out that both the mail and the birth certificate would be in our possession before the end of the week leaving us at least a week span in which to make the trip to Juneau.

Tuesday was a waiting day in as much we did not have documents we needed to get in and out of Canada. (As an insert I would have noted the out as being more important before arriving in Canada however now that I am here I am not sure how important the out is. With that said based on my lack of love for snow I am sure that come winter time I would find the out part very important.) We used the wait day to have a day of school and a day of work. I found it very difficult to focus on work. With the events of the previous week I had taken the week off and had my mind full of very different things. When I was finally able to push through it and make some progress I found the progress very satisfying and exciting.

I was delighted when both the mail and the birth certificate came together on Wednesday morning. Lexie was out shopping for some pre-trip supplies when the mail came. By the time we got everything together it was almost 5 o'clock PM. Somewhere in the blur of preparation and planning we picked up a couple of hitch hikers, my 12 year old niece Kylie (technically she's a second cousin but I think of her as a niece, we lived in the same house for about 5 months when she was two) and a bunny rabbit for my cousin Kathy living in Juneau. Kathy raises rabbits for food and needed a new buck to add some depth to what had become a shallow gene pool in her herd.

Getting the rabbit proved to be a bit tricky in that our departure date moved forward a couple of days with the early arrival of the documents. Mariann made a quick trip out to a friend's house to pick up the best she could find, a Rex cross doe. In as much as Kathy had asked for a "not Rex" buck we knew we were missing the specification but figured that it was better than nothing because a new buck could be bred through the doe. With a quick double check of Craig's list as we were leaving Mariann discovered that by making her search term "bunny" instead of "rabbit" she was able to find a person selling baby New Zealand just east of Spokane, very much a fit of what Kathy had been asking for, "a little rabbit with big potential".

In as much as determining the gender of a baby rabbit as well as I would suppose Mariann doesn't need a lot of reason to go visit another person's farm it was determined that Mariann would escort us to the rabbits and determine which of the litter was a buck. As rabbits are known to do, but not exactly in the way they are known to do it, by the time we left Pines (just east of Spokane) the one bunny we were to transport to Alaska had multiplied to four.

An unpleasant discovery I made shortly after acquiring the rabbits is that I am reasonably strongly allergic to rabbits. As cute as they are I can't be around them with out having my eye's water up and feeling stuffy.

We didn't make it very far Wednesday night and simply camped in the Post Falls rest area. Even though it was probably not even an entire hour away from Mariann's house the displacement was significant in as much as it officially began our trip.

Thursday morning started in the DMV office of Couer D' Alene. We needed to get Lexie's driver's license renewed and get photo ID's for all of the kids. The DMV office proved simple to find, but parking in downtown Couer D' Alene for the suburban and trailer proved elusive. Eventually we got it figured out and made it into the DMV. The kids were great to wait patiently the almost two hours it took to get through everything. They were very excited to look at their new ID cards which looked a lot like drivers licenses which I called their "back seat driver's licenses".

Getting through the Canadian border proved to be quite simple. I had visions of getting every item removed from the trailer and blood work done on the bunny rabbits, but they proved to be false worries. Getting through the border was nothing more than giving documentation and answering some simple questions which I believe were engineered to determine that we were not entering with intent of blowing up some part of Canada. The question that caught me by surprise was when the border officer asked what was waiting for me in Alaska. The answer of course was a funeral. Even though I didn't put it on the outside, the process of answering burned some emotion inside of me. It was obvious to me that I have not fully accepted that fact that Barbara is gone. I know there is a very stupid part of me thinking that she is in Alaska that needs to go there to see that she isn't.

Getting through the border was simpler than I had anticipated.

Even though I had read about it on the internet, my stomach sank when we passed our first gas station in Canada. Gas prices were a stout $1.39 per liter, that's $5.26 a gallon for those of you like me that don't think in metric.

The route we picked to go to Alaska goes through three national parks, Kootenai, Banff, and Jasper. Thursday night we were able to get through Kootenai. The drive through Kootenai was amazing for the amount of wildlife we were able to see. I have never seen as many deer. We didn't count them explicitly, but I would guess we saw something on the order of two or three hundred deer. It seemed that every corner we turned had a heard of ten deer on each side of the road. A tradition I started a long time ago is that anyone in my car that can spot a deer by the road before the driver gets a dollar. By the time we pulled into camp I owed Kylie $4.50 (the 50 cents for a tie) and Dallin 50 cents. I found the motivation of keeping the bill low great to keep my attention sharp. Had I not put full energy into spotting the deer the bill could have easily been $50-$60 or of course much worse with authentic antlers as a part of my hood ornament.

We had a great picnic at a rest stop by the road.

The parks were loaded with wild life.

We were delighted to also see big horn sheep, elk and two black bears during our drive Thursday night. Tyrell said it was better than Bear World!

As a typical consequence of early season travel, the campground that was in a perfect place to camp for the night was closed. We found we needed to drive another hour before we found a place to camp in Lake Louise. In the morning it was nice to have hot showers and use the dump at camp ground to get the appropriate tanks empty and full as they needed to be. After another gouging at the gas pump we were on our way again.

The scenery in Banff national park is simply breath taking. I am having an internal struggle deciding if the four park system in Canada hasn't displaced my beloved Yellowstone and Teton in status of favorite national park standing. I didn't see any peak which I would describe as close to better than the Grand Teton, however the volume of high quality peaks was overwhelming. David started noticing the abundance of maple leaf symbols across the national park and started pointing them out. It was fun to watch him point, smile and say leaf, leaf, leaf.

The mountains in the parks are outstanding.

Just into Jasper National Park is the Columbia ice field. I was pleased to see that our timing worked out such that we would be able to go on a glacier tour. The Brewster company has some specially made busses that can drive on the glacier, a crevasse free part of course. I was delighted with our tour driver. The tour starts with a 33%, yes you read that correctly a 33% grade. He calmly explained that if the steepness of the decent bothered us the way it did him we could simply do what he did and close our eyes! He salted the rest of his narration with jokes but that was by far my favorite.

Notice how the the family fits in front of a single bus tire.

The kids loved the snow on the glacier.

I was a bit disappointed that the glacier had so much new snow on it as to hide most of the ice features however my disappointment was offset by the kids enthusiasm to be in snow. I haven't decide whether or not to formally add Mt. Athabaska to my "must do" list but it is very, very high on my "would love to do" list. I will need to do some more reading but simply going off looking at the peak the climb itself looks pretty straight forward. The bus tour guide said it is about 8 hours up and 4 hours down, or 4 seconds down if you make a mistake.

After the glacier tour we did some hiking around Athabaska Falls. The most unique thing about this waterfall when compared to others I have been to was that the trail down the waterfall followed an old flow route through the rock. This gave us the opportunity, well exploited by the kids, to imagine we were water flowing down the rock. I took some time day dreaming about how much fun it would be to do a free rappel or pending the depth of the water in the bottom a jump off the bridge which spanned the waterfall however the kind of day dreaming one does knowing the day dream will not meet fruition in its current state. I have too much respect for a national park to break its rules in the ways I was imagining doing.

Dallin and Natalyn enjoyed watching a dog go in the water.

This photo was taken at the base of the falls.

Our goal for the night was to get to some hot springs on the northeast corner of the park. We arrived at the near by campground at 7:00PM first relieved to find it was open (this was the first day of the season the campground was open), second that we were able to get a camp site, and finally that the hot springs was open until 9:00PM which promised enough time for a quick dinner and then about an hour dip in the springs. We were disappointed in the final point in as much as after getting everyone who was going into swim suits and getting dinner finished we realized that we still had our clocks set to Pacific time and the local time was an hour later. This meant that the hour we had intended on using in the hot springs was not available anymore. As the kids registered their reactions to the news I was relieved that we were going straight to bed and not keeping them up for another hour and a half. It really is a hard thing to tell the difference between being very tired and the world falling apart. As much grief as I give the kids for getting the two confused I catch myself doing it every now and then.

Kylie has been a real treat to have along on the trip. I am convinced that if our new baby is born knowing how to cook, clean, baby sit and do laundry we won't have a moments trouble with a fifth child in the trailer. Even if the baby can't do all of those things we have figured out enough ways to free up extra room I am getting more confident things will work out well space wise. In addition to having a great chore ethic Kylie has been a lot of fun to talk with as we are on the trip. It was fun to talk with her when she was two but the conversations go farther now. Kylie is very excited to get to Alaska and I enjoy her enthusiasm as we hit milestones on the trip such as the Canadian Border, the park boundaries, and mile 0 of the Alaska Highway.

Kylie hiding out

Saturday was a day we decided to focus on simply putting on miles. Even though it wasn't really practical with our current crew I got it in my head that I wanted to get to Fort Nelson a bit over 600 miles away. It turned out we didn't do too poorly in that we made it to Buckinghorse River about 100 miles south of Fort Nelson. I imagine we could have made it all of the way but I caught myself yawning and I am a very staunch non believer in the merits of driving tired. Finding camping sites in Canada has been a little more tricky than I would have expected but not near hard enough to be considered difficult. A trick with driving until you are too tired to drive is that at the point one decides they are too tired to drive they are in fact too tired to drive and need to stop right away. We were pleased to find a nice little provincial park, (the Canadian equivalent of a state park) next to a river. I was impressed with the river ice which was breaking with the spring thaw.

We had a nice camp site next to the Bucking Horse River

A problem with our location was that we were so remote that there was not a church near by. I failed to research church locations before leaving and I did not dare experiment to find out what kind of roaming charges I would acquire trying to connect to the internet via my cell phone. I woke up at 5:00AM feeling like a boxed cat. I took a walk for about an hour but didn't calm down much. Lexie agreed to letting me pull all of the kids out of bed and make a try for church in Fort Nelson. The kids weren't very impressed with the idea but made the best of it. When we arrived in Fort Nelson I was exited to see that there was a church listed in the phone book and then disappointed to see that the address was in Whitehorse, 600 miles away! Oh well, I didn't see a way we were going to make a 10 AM meeting in Whitehorse so we decided to do our own church lessons. A benefit of being in Fort Nelson was that we were able to get full hookups for the RV and internet access. Kylie had started really missing her mom. She was happy when we were able to get a Skype account setup so she could call her mom. I was impressed with how well the Skype phone call worked. I imagine we must be on a satellite internet connection here. My reading had indicated that latency induced by satellites would cause problems with VoIP communication however that didn't really seem to be the case. I was also happy to be able to call my Mom. We learned that Naomi was in the hospital in labor. We were please later to hear that she had a healthy delivery. Baby deliveries always scare me and I am always relieved to get news that everyone made it through alive. I got a great belly laugh hearing Patrick's report that they were able to get a good night's sleep the night before the labor. Some how that didn't line up with a report of Naomi being in the hospital with false labor for the previous 24 hours. I imagine Patrick got a good night's sleep. I am really excited for both of them. They will be wonderful parents. I have great expectations of my new nephew.

Having internet access allowed us to down load conference talks which we used for church talks. We also had some quiet time in which to catch up on Journals. Kylie wrote a talk themed around happiness in the family to fulfill one of her personal progress standards. She also planned Monday's Family Home Evening. The kids did well being quiet through the talks and did get a little done in their journals. Dallin wrote about the Grand Canyon in his journal so we are guessing that the Grand Canyon has been his favorite stop to date.

 

May 13 2008

We had news that my Aunt Barbara was very sick. When I was a teenager I lived in Alaska with my Aunt Barbara and she became a second mother to me. With Tyrell's baptism on Saturday and our general "no traveling on Sunday" policy we decided to delay the trip to Spokane until Monday. With all of the commotion surrounding Ty's baptism and everything else we still had several left over errands to get ready for the trip left Monday morning and hence were not able to leave until around 2 o'clock in the afternoon which is not exactly a good starting time for a trip from Pocatello Idaho to Spokane Washington. It was very important to me that my mom (Barbara's only sibling) and my grandma (Barbara's mother) be able to see Barbara. It was decided that Lexie and the two oldest boy's Tyrell and Dallin would stay in Pocatello to free up room for 'the grandmas' as we call them. Leaving Lexie with just the two oldest boys also promised some good opportunity for some focused school work. My sister Mary also came north to Spokane.

It turned out to be the most convenient to have Mary drive. Mary and I differ in driving philosophy. I like to end my driving around 6 or 8 in the evening if that late. Mary like to get where she is going. At 10PM I was more than ready to stop for the night and Mary was ready to finish the drive to Spokane. In the circumstance I gave the nod to Mary to keep driving in that the traffic seemed reasonable, the roads seemed clear and I am generally not a fan of big fights over little things. We had shuffled to arrange that my grandma was able to be in the back seat by herself so she could lay down and sleep. I sat between Natalyn and David in the middle where I was able to stretch my feet through the center and have a great view from which to carry out the ever important duty of back seat driving and my Mom was in the from passenger seat. I did my best to stay awake to help keep Mary awake but on the way into Couer d' Alene collapsed into about a 20 minute sleep. At about 2:00AM we pulled into the Post Falls rest area. We were asleep by 2:30 and then I was back awake at 6:00 AM my normal time to wake. This of course was 7:00 AM in the new time zone.

My cousin Mariann who had been anticipating our arrival was very pleased to hear of our progress. We arranged that it would be simplest to go to Mariann's house about 30 minutes north of Spokane, drop the trailer and then return to the hospital with my cousin Laura who was down from Juneau at her sister Mariann's house. The hospital is in downtown Spokane without a good place to have a trailer. We ate a quick breakfast and then once we got moving immediately found a gas station because the night's travel had all but exhausted the fuel supply. At the gas station we got another call from Mariann with very bad news. She told us to go directly to the hospital. Barbara's condition had deteriorated to the point that it had been decided to discontinue her treatments which meant that by the afternoon she would not be able to communicate with anyone. When we relayed the news to my four year old Natalyn that we would not be starting the trip from Mariann's farm (which she was very much looking forward to seeing) but would be starting at the hospital Natalyn protested in a slight cry "THAT IS NOT FAIR FOR ME!". I assured her that we all felt exactly the same way.

We called the hospital to find out if there was somewhere close by we could park the trailer and to get directions in. The security guard told us to come to the emergency entrance and also gave us directions of how to find the hospital. Upon arriving in Spokane we were confused that the first "left" in the security officer's directions would take us the wrong way down a one way street. After a quick call to Mariann and some looking around we figured out where the hospital was and were able to get to it. In the end it turned out if we replaced all of the "lefts" in the security guards instructions with "rights" they were indeed very good directions. Everyone but Mary unloaded at the emergency exit and then we left Mary with the very unpleasant task of finding some where to park 45 feet of vehicle (including the suburban and trailer) in downtown Spokane. Somehow on the way out of the car my grandma managed to get two reasonably large cuts on her leg. They weren't gushing blood but still were producing a small flow. I did my best to get the leg patched on our way up the elevator. By the eleventh floor I had the bandages in place.

Seeing Barbara was very difficult in that she was much more sick than I had realized. She wasn't able to say much but it was very obvious that she was pleased to see me, her sister and her mother. As much as I would have liked to have a picture of my aunt, mother and grandmother together I decided that reverence dictated that I only hold the picture in my mind.

Mary was able to find two parking meters in a row and feed both as a way to take care of the Suburban and trailer. The metered parking had a 3 hour time limit on it. After we had exhausted the time we were allowed to use the parking meter a group of us took the task of moving the trailer to Mariann's house in Nine Mile Falls about 30 minutes north. Mary was still driving and Mariann was giving directions, sort of. While Mary was driving Mariann was on the phone working to arrange for her brother John to be able to come down from Ketchican. Every now and then we would interrupt Mariann to ask something like "Mariann there is a light coming up. What should we do?". Mariann would glance up and say "Oh go left". After missing a few intersections, doing some extra touring of Spokane and giving Mary some great experience driving a trailer in city traffic we eventually cleared Spokane and were able to get on the road to Nine Mile Falls.

When we got back to the hospital Barbara was sleeping. At this point things were getting clear that she would not be with us much longer. Mariann called and was able to make arrangements to get John on an earlier connection between Seattle and Spokane. We picked up John from the air port around 6:00 PM and were able to get John back just before Barbara passed on. We had the feeling that Barbara had been waiting for John before she said goodbye.

I don't really feel up to describing all of my feelings but I will say that it was extremely difficult.

Mary wanted to get back to Utah by Friday afternoon so she could see her kids. After several circular discussions and a generous offer from my brother-in-law Camron it was finally decided my dad would come up with Lexie and the boys and Mary would fly back to Utah On the other end my mom and grandma would return to Idaho with my dad and my Family would be free to do what ever we wanted. Incidentally I really like the state of being free to do what ever I want.

Mariann was in the thick of a week long animal fair which her two oldest daughters Kylie and Sabrina were involved. Even though the other people in her 4H club were very gracious about helping Mariann, Mariann was still feeling a lot of stress and guilt about being so disconnected and uninvolved in such a big show. On mornings of the show Mariann wakes at about 4:30 to get things ready. To be honest I started the experience very uncertain of why anyone would spend as much time on something as Mariann was on the show but by the end of the shows I was able to see why someone might spend about 25% of the time on a show and extrapolated that someone starting from there could easily develop into putting as much effort as Mariann did into an animal show.

I was extremely impressed with the way Mariann's girls handled the barn chores. I was also pleased with my daughter Natalyn who went with us. She spent at least an hour diligently sweeping up dirt messes around the barn.

On Thursday we had a memorial service for Barbara. Everyone I talked to about the memorial agreed that it was a very fitting way to honor Barbara. Mariann's husband Jarod arranged a place in the day use area of River Side State Park. We had a canvas tent setup covering a laptop which had slide shows covering parts of Barbara's life. At one point there was so much rain that everyone at the memorial huddled under the tent. I gave a talk at the memorial that I will be happy to share with people who request it of me but I will not share it here.

Friday was the last showing day of the animal show but the most trying for a parent in that the Friday competitions did not judge the animals but rather how well the kids presented the animals. I think I had more fun watching Mariann than the show as she nervously watched on the side line.

Saturday was a slow day. I was happy to be able to get out and shoot a couple of arrows with Jarod. I haven't shot a bow since I was in boy scouts. I remember really liking it then and I still really like it now. I wasn't able to do a lot of shooting because we didn't have much time and we figured out that we didn't really have the right equipment in as much as I am left eye dominant and as such need a left handed bow. I was pleased to find that I could pull back Jarod's 68 pound bow. I was not so pleased to get a kinesthetic lesson in why it is import not to bend one's wrist in while holding a bow. I have been disappointed at how little bruising I have developed for the amount of pain on my elbow. I really really want to get a bow now but am fighting the desire in as much as I think that kind of desire works against what I am trying to accomplish in the trailer life. At least for now it does. Even with my limited space in the trailer I have several disc golf disks. Those disks have not found their way out of the cup board once this entire trip. It is easy to focus on what one doesn't have and forget what one does have.

On Sunday we went to church. We were very impressed with the support everyone in the ward were giving the Crooks. Lexie described the ward as by far the most chatty ward that we had attended. She said it seemed like people were continually stopping her to talk.

I decided to stretch my time off and spend Monday with my cousin Mariann. We went to go get hay for her animals. There is a hay shortage right now. The prices are way up and the farmers are only willing to sell limited quantities. I was very impressed with the farmer he seemed to really like farming. He made me think that it might be a lot of fun to be a farmer. At the animal show I learned that goat meat (chevon) was lower in saturated fat than chicken and higher in protein that beef. Mariann didn't have any goats that were ready to butcher. I kept going back and forth about whether or not I wanted to go to the animal auction and pick up a goat to butcher so that I could try goat meat. Looking online the online distributors wanted around $13 a pound plus shipping and handling for goat meat and I could find any local suppliers. At the auction it was expected that the goats would be selling for around $1 a pound live weight. The main problems that were keeping me from being certain I wanted to buy a goat for butchering were, goats are cute, I am very squeamish about blood, and the butchering process was expected to take an entire day. Even with all of those concerns my curiosity was dominating and I found it easy to talk Mariann into going into the animal auction.

Arriving us an old man greeted us and exclaimed, "you must be rich, you have hay!". At the auction we only found one goat in the pens that looked like it was the right size. Mariann was amused to find it was a goat that had been on her farm only a few weeks earlier. In contrast to the animal show which was an acquired taste the animal auction was a ton of fun from the gate. Mariann bought me a hot dog for lunch which made the experience all the better. After figuring out that the auctioneer left the 'tens' place off of a lot of the numbers he was calling I was able to follow most of the action. There are few experiences as exciting as having an item you want to buy on an auction block. When our goat finally came up I was in a state which I had to remind myself to breathe. Even though we had set our buy limit at $1 per pound we decided not to bid when the price got to $50 on the 60 pound goat. It just seemed a lot simpler to not put an extra chore on ourselves. We stayed long enough to see the horses go through. I was shocked to see a nice 2 year old horse go through for $10. After seeing the worst cows go for 40 cents a pound it seemed extremely unbalanced to see a good horse sold for $10. I guess that says a lot about the hay shortage. It is my understanding that it is illegal in the United States to kill a horse for human consumption. I have mixed feelings. On the one hand I can understand that people value them as pets and can get emotionally attached to the animals. On the other hand they are animals and it seems as right to eat them as any other barn animal. I also know from first hand experience in Belgium horse is very taste!

The evening was spent helping Kim get some windows loaded which he will be taking to Alaska. Kim spent a lot of time figuring out how to haul the windows and I believe he came up with a good solution.

May 4 2008

We have spent this week in Pocatello. The first half of the week I worked on game development, Thursday and Friday I worked with my dad and then Saturday was Tyrell's baptism.

Monday was an extremly difficult day to get back into the routine of work and school. I wasn't happy with the outcome of either other than the fact that we at least got to them. Many times simply doing things is much more important than doing things well. Monday was one of those days. Tuesday and Wednesday felt a lot more productive at work. I am getting very excited about the progress I have made on my game. I was able to get rid of a couple of glitches that were really bothering me.

Thurday I went to an equipment auction with my dad. He had been hoping to pick up a back hoe or a tractor. The weather was cold and blowing with light snow fall. We habored a slight hope that the weather would discourage attendance but the number of oversized toys available at the auction it did appear that if the weather had any impact on attendance it was minimal. My dad claimed that he had to hold my hand down to keep me from bidding on everything. That simply wasn't true. I will admit that I did make one unplanned $1000 bid on an old boom truck but had that bid gone through I would have made at least a $1000 on the buy in as much as the auction selling price was $2000. I kind of have a things for cranes. It seemed like everything sold 50-100% higher than we wanted to pay for it at an auction but in general the selling prices weren't outrageous. There was a combine, header and header trailer that sold for $7500. With out knowing the details of what farm equimpment sold for that seemed really low.

During the auction I got a phone call with some bad news. Our dog hank who we had left with a neighbor had gotten extremly sick. The vet said that they could not offer a treatment plan for his condition and that the next step would be to take him to Salt Lake to run an MRI. That next step did not seem practical to me in as much as the condition he was exhibiting was very likely to be progressive and the cost of treatment would like run several thousand dollars. I had to make a very painful decision and decided to have him euthenized. I honestly can't tell you if I made the right decision but I can say that I made the best decision I was capable of with the information and understanding I had available to me. I feel good thinking about the good time we were able to have with Hank and knowing that I put a full and honest effort into his care. Early death even in an animal has a way of leaving one feeling cheated. Even though life expectancy is nothing more than a statistacal average we somehow get the idea that it is an entitlement and not simply a statistical average. Seeing an existence end as I did with Hank causes me to reflect on the purpose of that existence. In Hank's case I really don't have a clue.

(Lexie inserts here that Hank is the only dog I could ever let in my home. I can admire other people's dogs, but in general have had no desire to take care of a big hairy animal, no matter how beautiful he might be, not to mention big dogs tend to scare me, especially around the kids. Not only did I fall in love with Hank enough to agree to keeping him, I let him in my house - something I swore I would never do. He was very well trained and very obedient to me. He quickly helped me get over my fear of big dogs around the kids. David's favorite place to nap was cuddled next to Hank, and if I turned around and David wasn't around, the first place to look was in the kennel, in summer the second place to look was under the deck. Hank dug Davey a little hole under the deck right next to his so they could lie in the shade together. Hank also assisted me in my morning runs. I didn't like running by myself, and a dog as big as Hank would make anyone think twice before getting too close. Strangers didn't know he was a baby. It's selfish to think his existence was solely to aid in providing Davey with a best friend and me with a good dog that could help me get over silly fears, but I'd say those two things were at least a worthwhile part of his life).

Tyrell was supposed to have his baptism interview Thursday night so I took him to the church only to find it locked. I didn't have my phone so we couldn't make any calls. We walked over to the bishop's house only to find that no one was home. Then I walked over to Brother Smith's house to see if he knew what was going on. He wasn't home but Sister Smith said he would be home soon so we visited while we waited for Marty. It was a lot of fun visiting with the Smith's. We found out that we had indeed missed a phone call and the bishop wouldn't be able to meet until Saturday morning. Tyrell had a lot of fun playing with Logan's very large bionicle set.

Friday I went up to Thornton with my dad. We spent the morning as "men out standing in our field" while we watched a test hole being dug for the septic tank my parents are planning to get put in. I could tell dad was all but burning gears in his mind turning over all of the possibilities of what he could do with a back hoe like the one that was digging the test hole. We had lunch at the Thornton Merc as we often do when we are in town. I was very interested to learn (unfortunatley after I ordered) that they now sell yak burgers. I am very interested in trying yak meat. Aparently someone in Archer has a heard of about 15 now. I am excited to go and talk with him. I had looking into yaks a couple of years ago because they have an almost 0% fat meat. I also learned over lunch that the yak have a very strong immune system such that they do not require the antibiotics that cattle do thus making the meat even more clean. My main concern over yak in Idaho is about how to keep them cool in the summer. If I can find a good answer to that I think a yak on the Thornton property would be a good thing.

The afternoon and evening were spent pulling wild trees that had grown in the field over the 25 or so years the field hadn't been used. Having failed to aquire a back hoe at the auction our method of tree removal was to chain dad's semi tractor to a tree and back away from the tree. We were pleased to find the ground was soft enough that we were able to pull even relatively large trees this way without any digging. Most of the trees were Russian Olive but there was another type of tree that proved to be much more difficult to pull. The roots on the things simply looked like an inverted tree with a very thick and long tap root heading straight down into the ground. We broke two DOT certified 5/16 inch chains trying to pull larger specimens of the tree but were able to get them with a 3/8 inch chain. By the time we ran out of day light we estimated that we had pulled 80-100 trees. We counted 90 in the dark but it was really hard to get a good count.

Saturday was Tyrell's baptism. I will indulge in the risk of listing the people who came to see the baptism at the risk of offending someone by forgetting them or putting them in the wrong order. So here we go... Both sets of grandparents made it, Robert and his family came up from Utah, Mary and here children were there, my niece Heidi came, Katie and here family came, and Camron was there. That put the totat at 29 people if I didn't miss count or forget anyone. Tyrell was very reverent and seemed to appricate the significance of the day for him. I performed the baptism ordinance and Lexie's father did the confirmation. We asked Tyrell who he wanted to baptise him and he said he wanted to be baptised by a missionary. We overrode him on the decision but told him that his papa was a missionary and that we would be happy to have papa confirm him. I have a lot of respect for Lexie's father and was honored that he could do the confirmation for Tyrell.

After the baptism we went to the park for pizza and icecream. Little Ceasars advertises "franchise opportunities available" on their pizza boxes. I would be a lot more interested if they didn't make such a lousy pizza. Little Ceasars pizza is barely recognizable as pizza by flavor but it is just good enough that it is a bit better to eat it than be hungry. With that a side I am very impressed with their marketing of the "hot and ready" pizza. It is very convienient to be able to simply pick up a pizza right when you want one. I ate way too much ice cream and pizza but enjoyed doing it. Thanks to a very wide selection of icecream and toppings available I was able to discover I am very fond of Rocky Road ice cream with Heath magic shell topping, now isn't that the exact kind of information a person needs? Now that I think about it whipped cream with chocolate sauce on top of that would be incredible. I think I need to think about something else if I want to keep my belt size.

My mom's apricot trees are in bloom. This year is the first year I can remember seeing an apricot tree and thinking that it looked like "popcorn was popping on the apricot tree". The trees are quite impressive with every branch almost completely covered in fluffy little white blossoms.

It was a nice treat to be back in our home ward Sunday to be able to say hello to our old friends. I have become acustomed to needing to introduce myself every week. Having most of the people simply know who I was really simplified the day.