March 5, 2009

Happy Birthday to Natalyn!

Natalyn is now 5 and she is sure to let people know it. We have been answering the "how many days until my birthday?" question since early fall. She spent the day beaming and was sure to announce at regular intervals that it was her birthday. Something kind of funny during the day was when her aunt Amanda mentioned on facebook to wish her a happy birthday, I told her that, "Aunt Amanda wishes you a happy birthday!" She just looked at me and said "well ... sing the birthday song for me then!" After that she decided that every time she came into the suburban (I was working that day) I was to sing her happy birthday. After that if I was late on singing I would hear a chorus of, "Dad I'm in the suburban!" I thought it was cute.

Birthday Girl!

Blowing out the candles!

Heavy heavy hang over thy poor head!

We do a separate small cake for candles to keep the spit and wax off the main cake.

Making the birthday lunch, mmmm macaroni!

February Sunburns

There is a small cave and some Petriglyphs about a mile from our Quartzsite camp. I had been individually with Ty and Dallin but Lexie and the rest of the kids hadn't seen it so on Saturday we decided to take a family hike. Things are coming into bloom so it has added an extra element of enjoyment to the local hikes to be able to observe the spring changes. We don't make very good time hiking as a family but it is a lot of fun. David likes to stop at almost every flower and stop every three feet or so to pick up a rock or dig a hole. By the time we get anywhere his pockets are bulging.

We didn't stay at the caves very long because I was anxious to be back in time to make it to the church social. They were serving hot dogs and I am a big fan of hot dogs. We did stay long enough to let the kids boulder on some of the rocks and then we all climbed a small hill. I am not quite sure why they do it or who does it but a couple of the hills in the Quartzsite area have flags on the tops. It makes it a lot of fun to climb the hills with the kids because it offers a fun summit.

When we got back from the hike we put the kids directly in the car and went to the church social. I was surprised how many people at the social didn't realize we were in the branch. We haven't missed a week in the last 3 months and in a group of about 500 people mostly in their 70's we are one of two families with kids. The other family is a young couple with a two year old. I guess it goes to show that in general people are paying much less attention to you than you think they are. The hot dogs did not disappoint, quarter pounders! I was surprised at how much the kids ate.

I have toyed with the idea of starting to call Quartzsite, Quirksite, because there are so many little quirks about the town. It seems like we just keep finding new things every week. I don't remember if we mentioned the store keepers who drink beer behind the counter or the bookstore owner that doesn't wear pants. He does wear a little brief thingy but it isn't very modest. I put pictures of the little pyramid in last week, and mentioned the flags on top of the hills. Another quirk we discovered is that in a town with a median age somewhere in the seventies they have a wonderful playground with what must be most of a half million dollars in equipment. After the social the kids had a lot of fun at the playground, which although it did have mostly brand new toys, it still sported a teeter totters and a merry go round, which are getting harder and harder to find at playgrounds. I think the kids would have been happy to spin on the merry go round well into evening if we didn't tell them it was time to go.

The weather has warmed up to where the mornings and evenings are very nice and the middle of the day is just a little too hot. There was a breeze blowing in the morning so we didn't notice how high the temperature really was. When we got home from the playground in the afternoon we were surprised to find that everyone was sunburned. We have been out so much that I didn't think we would need to worry about burns, but it was evidently enough of a temperature change to cause a problem. We are going to need to be much more vigilant about sunscreen in the future.

The top of a nice little hill near camp.

It was fun to take a hike as a family.

Petriglyphs near camp

 

Hotdogs!

The boys have been really enjoying some Calivn and Hobbes comic books some friends gave us.

 

Day with the Becksteads

Jacob and David are due for immunizations so we came back to Maricopa for the dual purpose of getting immunizations and visiting with Lexie's sister Jen. Dallin will turn 7 next week, since he would be with cousins we decided to celebrate his birthday a week early, as I am writing this I am not sure why we didn't celebrate it a day late, because we'll be with the cousins again then, but I suppose it makes sense. I don't think I would have wanted to wait an extra day for a birthday party at that age. We were disappointed to learn that the nurse was out so we would have to wait an extra day for immunizations. We had two days in our schedule for shot recovery so the delay wasn't critical but it did make things inconvenient.

We had pizza for lunch. Dallin chose an ice cream cake instead of a traditional cake for his birthday. I was happy with the choice. I mostly eat birthday cake for the ice cream that goes with it. The kids played with cousins through the day. Kevin had a half day of school, but didn't seem to be gone very long. Dallin was funny in the morning when he was thinking about the day he said: "That's OK that Kevin has a half day of school, I'm glad he doesn't have a full day of school or else we wouldn't get much out of him." I'm not sure exactly what he meant, but it gave me a good chuckle. I imagine he meant they wouldn't be able to play much. I worked kind of off and on through the day. I have been having trouble sleeping lately and that really messes up my effectiveness. I was frustrated I wasn't more productive, but I was very pleased to get an installation procedure figured out for my game. Even though things feel overwhelming little by little I am getting it chipped away. Metaphorically speaking, I just need to keep my paddle in the water and I'll be able to get my boat across the lake.

Dallin was thrilled Aunt Jennifer decorated for his party.

Blowing out the candles.

Cutting the cake.

Early birthday party!

Heavy heavy hang over thy poor head.

In the evening I went with Wade to a presentation by the city mayor of "The State of Maricopa". It seemed like a nice way to visit with Wade and I was interested in the topic because there has been such a drastic shift in the Maricopa housing market. Houses that sold brand new 3 or 4 years ago in the range of $250,000 can now be bought on foreclosures around $80,000. I think that the housing prices are severely undervalued, but right now I don't have an extra 80K to put into one and I am not interested in having a mortgage. I am also not very interested in getting more rental units because I don't like the exposure tenants give you to damage. When I do rental property again I think it will be either commercial property or an RV park. With that said I might do a lease to own contract on a family dwelling, I could see that working out, but for now as I said it doesn't matter to me because I don't have cash for that scale of investment and I don't want to get financed. I am really surprised the houses aren't getting snatched up by snow birds. In Quartzsite $80,000 will barely buy you a place to park your trailer. In Parker (30 miles north) bring $200,000 for a parking spot or don't come. Back to the presentation, the food wound up being much better than the presentation, the mayor just seemed to want to highlight anything that looked good, whether it was or not, for example he gave a slide comparing crime between counties using numbers of incidents without adjusting for population. In general I think Maricopa is a great little town. I expect their property values to be up soon if the economy does anything near normal.

Too Big To Fail?

Time for a little ignorant whining... How did the United States get into a situation that it has companies which are "too big to fail"? OK, I think I know the answer, but I don't like it. I believe the answer is greed and dishonesty. Next on the plate, now that the country has companies which are "too big to fail" why are we putting them on life support looking for ways to make them healthy again instead of looking for ways to kill them? OK, another question that I think I know the answer to but don't like. I think it is greed and dishonesty once again. The ignorance in my whining is I don't really have an answer of how things should happen. I just have serious objections to rewarding the people who caused so much trouble for so many other people.

I believe that when organizations and institutions start to maintain power for power's sake instead of for merit's sake people suffer from loss in efficiency, loss of freedom, and loss of happiness. We need to have people in charge. It does not work to have a group of people make every decision. All decisions have trade offs and it is highly effective to have a person who can weigh the trade offs well and point a direction for the masses. When the person who is doing the directing is highly skilled, good at collecting input from the masses and well suited to the environment in which they are operating it works very well to have them in charge. It is just very difficult to decide who that person should be. Even if the masses do select the right person when the environment changes it often doesn't make sense to have the same person in charge. What happens however is that once people get power they can use the power to keep it. One great example of power maintaining power is the way one of the first acts of a new CEO almost always seems to be to fire the better part of the vice presidents and many of the long time managers. Graciously one could view that as a way of changing direction toward improvement. I view that as a way of sustaining power by creating an experience barrier between the CEO and the next most likely person to become the CEO. It also gives the CEO an opportunity to surround themselves with people loyal to them. So now when ever I get a position in the corner office and fire everyone you'll know why I did it, to change direction toward improvement of course.