Thomas the Birthday Boy

Thomas turned 9 last week. He is a great kid, always willing to help, even-tempered (mostly), and a lot of fun. We had a fun birthday party with him last week.

Thomas and his best friend, Payton.

Payton gave Thomas a matching monster sweatshirt.

Thomas scoring some cash from Grandma!

Thomas asked for pumpkin pie instead of cake.

I took Thomas skiing for his birthday.  It was his first real skiing and he did great.  He caught on quickly and was soon cruising down the hill making some good turns.

Posted: January 13th, 2010
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Reading 2009

I got a Kindle for Christmas last year and my reading has increased significantly. I read 45 books in 2009 compared to 30 in 2008. Of those, 27 were Kindle books. I’m also still a big audio book fan, listening to 17 audio books this year.  I’d like to shoot for a goal of 52 books in 2010, but realistically I think I’ll be more around 40. Last year was unique and I had an unusual amount of free-time and travel time to get a lot of reading in. But I still hope to take advantage of my time and enjoy some more great books in 2010. Any recommendations or must reads? Always looking for a good book.

I enjoyed most of the books I read in 2009, with just a few duds in there. Here’s my list with the highest rated first.

Title Author Rating
Olive Kitteridge Elizabeth Strout *****
Brooklyn Colm Toibin *****
Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë *****
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society Mary Ann Shaffer *****
American Pastoral Philip Roth *****
The Love of a Good Woman Alice Munro *****
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie Alan Bradley *****
A Thousand Splendid Suns Khaled Hosseini ****
Great Expectations Charles Dickens ****
Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2 Annie Proulx ****
Let the Great World Spin Colum McCann ****
Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You Alice Munro ****
Goodbye, Columbus : And Five Short Stories Philip Roth ****
Agnes Grey Anne Brontë ****
Knockemstiff Donald Ray Pollock ****
Nicholas Nickleby Charles Dickens ****
My Man Jeeves P. G. Wodehouse ****
Night Elie Wiesel ****
Revolutionary Road Richard Yates ****
Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut ****
The Corrections Jonathan Franzen ****
The Forever War Dexter Filkins ****
The Good Earth Pearl S. Buck ****
The Good Soldier Ford Madox Ford ****
The White Tiger Aravind Adiga ****
Three Cups of Tea Greg Mortenson ****
Tell No One Harlan Coben ****
The Humbling Philip Roth ****
The Northern Clemency Philip Hensher ****
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall Anne Bronte ****
The Uncommon Reader Alan Bennett ****
Little Bee Chris Cleave ****
When You Are Engulfed in Flames David Sedaris ****
A Separate Peace John Knowles ***
Breakfast of Champions or Goodbye Blue Monday! Kurt Vonnegut ***
Caught Stealing Charlie Huston ***
Cranford Elizabeth Gaskell ***
Sabbath’s Theater Philip Roth ***
Six Bad Things Charlie Huston ***
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Stieg Larsson ***
The Mysterious Benedict Society Trenton Lee Stewart ***
UR Stephen King ***
Where Angels Fear to Tread E. M. Forster ***
Serena Ron Rash **
Until Proven Guilty J.A. Jance **

Posted: January 8th, 2010
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Fun around the Christmas Tree

Posted: December 21st, 2009
Categories: family, grace, henry, holidays, lucy
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Piano Recital

Grace and Thomas performed in a Christmas Piano recital last Friday night.  The six weeks of listening to Feliz Navidad and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer five times a day finally paid off:

Try to ignore Henry’s begging to watch a movie on the camera.

Posted: December 16th, 2009
Categories: grace, henry, thomas
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Thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving with many of Amanda’s family joining us at our house.  Amanda did a great job with the food and setting.

Thanksgiving flowers

Thanksgiving flowers

Abby and Lucy enjoying some pie.

Abby and Lucy

Thanksgiving place setting

Thanksgiving place setting

Katie, Janice, Allen, Whitney enjoying some good food.

Katie, Grandma, Allen, Whitney

Marc, Scott and Cheryl

Marc, Scott and Cheryl digging in

Posted: December 16th, 2009
Categories: family, holidays
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Grace’s Birthday Party

Amanda and team put on a great birthday party for Grace’s 11th birthday a few weeks ago. They did a spa theme with facials, hair-dos, makeup, yoga and a movie…and lots of junk food.

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Posted: November 16th, 2009
Categories: birthdays, family, grace
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Moving In

It’s been a long but fantastic weekend. We closed and moved in to our home. So many boxes. So much clutter. But we’re getting there little by little. The kids are happy and we’re loving the extra room. We’ve had many nice neighbors drop by to welcome us to the neighborhood. We went to church on Sunday and everyone was very welcoming. Very similar to our last ward, lots of young families but with a good mix of older folks as well.

Internet, TV, phones, utilities: all set up.

It feels so good to be getting settled again, and very nice to be sleeping in my own bed again. Life is great.

Posted: October 13th, 2009
Categories: family, utah
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Summer stats

I drove from Herriman to Portland on April 22 of this year. Since that time I’ve felt like quite a vagabond:

  • 68 non-consecutive nights in an extended stay hotel in Portland.
  • 32 nights in a Residence Inn (28 in Sandy, UT; 4 in Folsom, CA)
  • 5 nights in a beautiful cabin at Bear Lake, ID with my family
  • 4 nights at a fantastic condo in Park City, UT with our great friends
  • 1 night in a dumpy hotel in Battle Mountain, NV
  • 1 night at the SLC Marriott Downtown (very nice)
  • 1 night in a tent with Thomas at the Spruces campground
  • 1 night at my in-laws in Placerville, CA (always nice)
  • 14 nights in my own bed in my old home which we moved out of on June 18
  • 33 nights at my mom’s home in Provo, UT
  • 21 flights
  • Long drives:  Herriman to Portland, Provo to Bear Lake, Bear Lake to Sacramento, Portland to Sacramento, Sacramento to Provo

Needless to say, very excited to move in to our new home next Friday.

Posted: October 1st, 2009
Categories: family, oregon, travel, utah
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Full circle? Loop-di-loop

So much for that last post from over a year ago. So much has changed since then. We are staying in Utah.  I got a job working for the LDS Church, working at the same building where I worked for Intel for the past 9 years.  We are buying a home back in Herriman.  We are very happy things have worked out.  It’s been a long and crazy summer, one that we’ll never forget, but we’ve been very blessed and feel that we are where we’re supposed to be.

Posted: September 29th, 2009
Categories: family, oregon, utah
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Full Circle

It’s been almost nine years since Amanda & I (and baby Grace) moved away from Portland, OR, and now we’re headed back. Following an invitation from my manager and much prayer and contemplation we feel that it is a great opportunity for us and will be a fun adventure. The hardest part now is knowing that we will be leaving a wonderful neighborhood and our best friends.

We haven’t set a move date yet, but it will likely be in June or July.

The kids are also sad but we’ve been trying to focus on the positive and they are starting to get excited about the move. I’ve tried to find fun things to tell the kids to help them get excited about the move.

Knowing that Thomas loves zoos and animals I told him that the Washington Park Zoo in Portland has the largest population of elephants in the United States. He got very excited about that and we looked more online together; after further research Thomas told us “Yeah, but they’re Asian elephants, my favorites are African elephants.”

Oh, and check out new photos going back to Christmas and our cruise and Thomas’s birthday.  I’m still getting caught up.

Posted: March 24th, 2008
Categories: family, oregon
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Comments: 5 Comments.