06-08-11 We'll start without them...

So, still no pictures. And come to think of it, I'll probably just put them on facebook anyway, so you won't see them here. That said, I might as well start the recap. After I'm done with that, I'll probably start on my Yosemite site reviews and checklist.

So, starting Saturday, we drove down to Bass Lake, where we were staying during our trip. A bit of a drive, but General Conference CD's are a great way to pass the time. Anyway, once we got there we were in for a bit of a surprise. The place we were staying was AMAZING. It's a kind of time share thing that Tom's parents have, only it has several locations and you use points to make reservations.

There were three units, so the Hinds, Rosers, and Robarts each had their own space, with the Aunts each staying with one of the families. The units themselves though? Crazy. They were two bedrooms, two and a half baths, completely with laundry machines and a fully functioning kitchen. There were two twin sized beds, and king or queen (whatever it was in the master bedroom), as well as a murphy bed in front room. Very cool.

We did a little shuffling once we got there, moving a lot of stuff from the other units into the Hinds', where we would be doing most of our gathering. The rest of the day was spent hanging out and playing games, just enjoying a little time to get settled in.

Sunday, we got up and went to church. And let me just say, any ward close to somewhere like Yosemite must be impossible to plan for. I mean, just look at the number of people who are there each week just visiting. How do you guess how many will be there? Anyway, I liked how they did it. They had a fairly small chapel with an overflow in the cultural hall, complete with a projector so the speaker could be seen more clearly.

The people were nice too; you could definitely tell they were used to spending a good portion of time recognizing visitors during lessons. So, that was good. The lessons were about the same as you would find anywhere. The Bishop had just had a training meeting with a couple General Authorities though, so he shared some of that with us. (I even got to get a copy of the notes he took. ^^)

After that, it was more games, more hanging out. While that was happening, though, we did get to have a pretty fun game of hide and seek. Now, the resort where we were staying had pretty efficiently stuffed everything into those units. Not a whole lot of empty space like you might want for hide and seek, but we had a blast with it. We had people in closets, stuffed with the murphy bed, hiding behind furniture, and even a few people in the kitchen cabinets. But the best hiding spot by far was Tom's.

He lifted up the couch cushion and hid under it, with Ruth sitting casually on top. The funny part: It took the kids nearly ten minutes to find him, even though he was right there in plain sight. Hilarious. There should be a video of it somewhere. Maybe even more than one. It was good.

Memorial day was pretty nice too. We would usually have spent it at Mount Vernon, but that's a bit of a drive from where we were staying, so we had to improvise. Tom found this great video online that talked about the story behind the national anthem, and since we couldn't find a service nearby, it made a really nice substitution. Well... Until we got to the end and learned that someone was using it for a political campaign. It was still nice though. After that, we went down to the lake, then changed our minds (which had really been made up even before we got there) and went swimming at the pool. That was nice. I still don't know why I'm so bad with chlorine. I open my eyes too much.

After that, we went geocaching, which oddly enough led us to a cemetery. Well... Next to a cemetery. But we ended up walking through it anyway. It was nice to stop and think about Memorial day is all about.

Then we were off again. We found one across from a Starbucks, although the log was missing from the cache when we got there. After that we found one that was hidden quite cleverly in a bridge near a store called the Purple Cow. Yeah, it's like it was made for our family. The store owner was really helpful too. He gave us clues and talked a bit. While we were there we got to see them making those cool hand carved wooden bears. Really cool.

With those wonderful adventures over, and with Memorial weekend coming to a close, we headed back to the resort to get ready for the real highlight. Yosemite. But that recap will wait until later. Once we got back, Ryan, Rori, Andrew on a hike up a mountain next to the lake before dinner. It was about half way to the trailhead when we realized the hike might be a little longer than we had once thought. So, we set a turnaround time and plunged into the trees. It was still a nice hike. We eventually got a pretty good view of the lake, even if it was infested with mosquitoes. Good times. Good times...

That just about sums it up. Next I'll be talking about Yosemite, so it should be pretty good. Until then, the job hunt continues! See ya.

06-06-11 Still no recap, but this should keep you happy...

For a little while at least. Just until I can get a hold of the pictures everyone else took. There were a lot of them... With this one though, I'm pretty sure it works best if you click the link and get the larger version.

Let me just say, though, there wasn't any panorama mode around to help me out with this one. This was rough guessing and photoshop all the way. So yeah... Standing up for the little guys. They can take pictures just as well as those fancy ones. It just... takes longer. Yeah...

...Anyway, Yosemite is amazing. I took this while standing in a really cool meadow that had some nice views of both Yosemite Falls and Half Dome. And since they're both pretty well known, I thought it'd be cool to get them both in the same shot. Not always easy. I'm pretty sure Ruth has these pictures, but I had to wait until I got home to put them all together, so I thought I'd post the completed shot just in case anyone wanted to see it.

That's it for me, I think I'll see if I can write something interesting later. See ya.

06-04-11 Yosemite

So, I may wait on the play by play until I get a chance to go through all of the pictures and see if there are any I could use. For now though, let's just say that Yosemite is awesome. I've been there a few times now, and every time you can't help but be blown away. I got to see some different places this time though. Last time I went, we mostly went on the more known hikes. Half Dome, Yosemite Falls. We also got to go rafting down the Merced River and do a couple service projects. This time though, we got to see a lot more of the smaller, less exaggerated ones. One of my favorites was Bridalveil Falls. Lot's of mist, but really fun. (A couple decent climbing rocks too.) We also got the distinction of being able to say that we chopped down trees in a protected National Park in plain sight of a ranger and got away with it. Takes stealth. Anyway, some other highlights. Tunnel View and Glacier Point were both awesome, as were Yosemite and Vernal Falls. All in all, it was a pretty cool trip. And one of the nice things, we got to stay at a place not too far from the entrance of the park, thanks to Tom's parents letting us use their World Mark reservations. That made our stay /very/ comfortable. Anyway, I'll have more on this later, but for now I should get to bed.

05-23-11 Of doves and scripture stories

So, this post will be a bit random, but I've got a few things I need to write down. First off, Sacrament Meeting was pretty nice this week. We had a youth speaker talk about the first article of faith, followed by a soon-to-be missionary and a recently returned missionary. All were pretty good, but there's one thing about the first talk that's been bouncing around in my head lately. This goes back a week or two when the Priest Quorum was learning about the Holy Ghost. Now, it's a subject that's fairly well known, but we got to go look at it from different angles. What is the Holy Ghost? We read a couple scriptures about times He's made an appearance, and a few of them mentioned Him descending in the form of a dove. Now, since we know he doesn't have a body of flesh and blood, (not to mention the fact that He's not a dove, he's a person) I've always thought that it was just talking figuratively. Still, a few of the scriptures seemed pretty clear about there being a dove. This is where Bro. McCord gave us an interesting idea to think about. I highly doubt that the dove was Him personally, but it could have been that the dove was sent as a sign, a sort of physical confirmation that He was there. I don't know, it's one of those things I know hardly anything about, so I'm just waiting to get to the other side and have it rolled out for me. Kind of like the whole Lamanite skin curse thing. It doesn't really matter to my personal salvation, and I'll get the answer eventually. I the meantime, though, I just figure if I don't go around shooting doves for no reason I should be alright.

The conversation did answer an interesting question though. It turns out that when people go around saying holy -insert inappropriate term relating to biological waste-, they're just talking about dove droppings. It all makes sense now.

Now, I'm not really one for the inappropriate humor, but if there are funny things you can find in the scriptures, I'm all there. (Makes you want to study more and see if you can find them. xD) There's this one story that Bro. Swenson told us about in seminary about his mission. In Taiwan, it can take a while to get used to the language, and some numbers especially sounded similar. So they were teaching this one investigator that was having a hard time accepting the commandments, thinking it was a lot to ask for right away. So, the missionaries recommended that they read 1 Nephi 3:7, which talks about the Lord providing a way to fufill His commandments. Or, that's what they thought they said. In reality, they accidentally said third, instead of first, making it 3 Nephi 3:7, and I'll let you figure it out on your own. Unfortunately, they uh... didn't hear back from that investigator again. Yeah... Hopefully that will be cleared up on the other side.

So uh... I'm relying heavily on dodo birds here. I figure if Heavenly Father made something like them, He must have a sense of humor. A course, they went extinct, so maybe He's changed His mind about some things... I'm gonna burn. It's a real shame too, I've always liked cold weather better.

Anyway, I should go. Hedge, could you wrap things up here?

#o -breaks fortune cookie-

"Never travel by plane over the Pacific." -flips it over- "4 8 15 16 23 42"

-squeak- -gets out keyboard- º'ºº''º'''ºº'–º'' -translation- Only turbulence chewing, cellphone safe– Snail!

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . #o . . . . . . . __o"

05-20-11 Let's see if this works

Hmm, it's been a while since I've posted a sketch on here– been a while since I've done anything on here really. Anyway, here are some more recent ones. I've been leaning more towards reference sketching lately than I have in the past, trying a little more life-like style. Don't get me wrong. I still like the manga style, and a lot of it still shows, but I'm trying to get a little more detail into them now. Both of these ones had a couple mistakes in them, but I did what I could in photoshop to clean them up a little. Anyway, enjoy.

Yep. That's it. Still no masterpieces, but it's all a matter of progression, right?

Anyway, I've got some good news. I finally finished backing up my old blog posts. Yay! Not sure that it matters much, but it's always nice to have a copy in case something crazy happens.

On another note, if you ever start drowning, just make sure you're doing it around our 11-year-old scouts. We went over swimming safety and rescues this Wednesday, and I've got to say, I thought they did very well with throwing the line. By the end of it, all of them were able to throw out their line without it getting tangled at all. Those guys are awesome.

Well, that's pretty much it. I'll probably post again some time later, but I think this is good enough for now. Have a great one.

05-19-11 Updates

So, since you already have a detailed and complete account of what life's been up to for the past year or so, I've decided to talk a little more about things that you're probably more interested in anyway.

First off, the staff.
Hubert has taken up a position in one of our outposts in Alaska. He said that it was primarily because the Monkeys were becoming too big of a hassle, but I hear the work load is a lot lighter with this new position. Anyway, he'll be connecting through Skype on occasion, but knowing him, it probably won't be very often. And of course, his fish went with him. Not sure how he'll do with the weather up there, but I heard something about a thermos, so he should be alright.

On the bright side, Hedgy is still here. After months of tracking, he finally managed to bring back the monkeys. A few of them had to be put in isolation to keep them from starting another uprising, but once we found out that the word 'banana' had the same pronunciation as an insult in another language, we were able to calm them down. After that we started working on the translators again. Aside from a few glitches now and then, they seem to work fine.

So, that's everyone. Right now we're mostly–

#o -squeak-

Eh? Oh, sure, put him on.
____
| .O/ .|
| /|__|

Hubert: Hey.

Muncher: You know, we were in the middle of a post here.

Hubert: -shrugs- So?

Muncher: Whatever. So is the fish okay? I wasn't really sure if that thermos idea was going to work.

Hubert: Yeah, he's fine. The thermos thing only worked for a couple of hours. Luckily though, they've got these cool aquarium climate controllers here. He's got a volcano in his fish tank now. It even has a night light.

Muncher: Happy to hear that. Anyway, I've got a post to get–

Hubert: So, did those gremlins break anything yet?

Muncher: You mean the monkeys? No, they're fine. It took a while to get them settled down, but the new translator seems to be helping. Just don't say banana. They still get a little riled up by that. But anyway, I've really got to get back to the blog post. People are staring.

Hubert: Kay. I'll send you a snowball later.
Hubert is offline.

So yeah... Where were we? It doesn't really matter; you guys get the idea. Hedge has been helping a lot in getting things back in order, but I think he's feeling a little overworked. Do you think I should get another hand to help out evenings and weekends? I'll talk to him about it later. For now, though, I've gotta run. See ya.

05-17-11 The REAL year in sixty seconds

Not really sixty seconds; I can't type that fast, but we'll see how fast this can go– okay start!

In 2010, I got to go running through the wilderness with a handcart and the most incredible adopted family I could ask for, fall in love with a hat, climb to the top of half dome and explore the wonders of Yosemite, race to finish planning my Eagle Project while simultaneously participating in our kitchen remodel, organize a group of over thirty people in constructing a deck, removing a concrete fire pit (not in that order), and otherwise remodeling an amphitheater at the Effie Yeaw Nature Center, one of the most awesome places on Earth, and tons of other stuff I couldn't even begin to mention.

Okay, now that you're caught up, I'm late in making breakfast.

In case you're wondering, the real running time was three minutes and forty-two seconds.

PS: And how could I forget? I also received the greatest calling I've ever had, where I get to help teach the eleven-year-old scouts of our troop. Don't forget that one.