New Feature...

I think I'll start a new feature here on Ken's Bloggy Blog. I think I'll call it "Friday Flashback".

I'm thinking that I'll post an "older" picture of whom ever I happen to have an older picture of, and maybe give an explanation or circumstances or story about it.

That sounds like it should be kind of fun.

Here then, is the first official, Ken's Bloggy Blog Friday Flashback...

I figure I should start with myself. That's my senior picture. That was taken the summer of 1989 (I graduated in 90) because you always took your senior pictures before your senior year began. I remember thinking I'd always like this picture because it was so "me". I'm not sure that's held true. Especially since I've pretty much denounced having hair past an inch.

I remember that vests were HUGE at the time, particularly for the "alternative" crowd, as well as the bolo ties. Therefore, I was in top form for who I was; I was one of the alternative kids. That's back when there were mostly videos played on Mtv, and there were increasingly more alternative videos as well. Highly influential.

I guess I can't complain too much about my style at the time. It landed me on the "fashion" pages of the year book that year. I didn't run with the "popular" crowd, but I guess I was considered fashionable.

So yeah, that's the first Friday Flashback. Not too bad for a first one. What do you think?

It's still there...

Yesterday was our first time back to Disneyland since getting blocked out for the summer. It was a lot of fun.

It was our first trip to Disneyland while being on the gluten and casein free diet though. In preparing for Disneyland, I made sure to give the kids a big lunch. They had homemade GFCF corndogs (they taste great). Then, for dinner they got to have In-n-Out fries, a banana, a fruit snack, and juice. It's so nice to know that In-n-Out uses fresh potatoes, and only fries are cooked in their oil. So many other fast food places add "stuff" to their fries for taste or crispness or whatever, and they often use the same oil to cook those fries as well as other breaded food items. The other nice thing about In-n-out being so GFCF friendly is, Anna and I usually get a burger there too. And keeping mommy and daddy happy is an important thing. *big smile*

We went on the Jungle Cruise, then Anna took the boys on the tree house while the girls and I watched the ducks in the lake, then Pirates, the Tiki room, Buzz Lightyear, then Finding Nemo (thanks Sara), and then home. More and more, Jennan wants to walk instead of be in the stroller, so it looks like pretty soon we'll be a "one person" stroller family.

So yeah, good times.

Summer Vacation Officially Over

At least it is for Anna.

Today is Anna's first day back to work/school with students. She said she has to get used to being mean again. Not that she's mean to her students, but she has to be very strict and firm with them from day 1, so they learn to listen and obey. Once they have that down, she lightens up a bit, and the fun of Earth Science can then be bestowed upon them. Anna's the queen of class room management. One of the down sides to that is getting assigned classes with a majority of "at risk" type kids. At least this year, Anna gets to have 2 periods of "regular" kids. So that should be a little better than years past.

In other Anna news, she was informed this past week that she's been awarded the National Association of Geoscience Teacher's 2008 Outstanding Earth Science Teacher Award! She was nominated by an old classmate from Cal State L.A. Anna is one of 10 recipients in the nation, and the one from the Far West region. So that's very cool. She gets $500 for lab supplies, $500 in travel expenses to the next Geologic Society of America conference (which she really likes to attend), as well as free membership in quite a few other organizations. She'll also get a wall plaque to show off her achievement.

Forgratulations!

Flashback photo: Anna in Mexico (Spring or Summer of 94?)

Putting Around...

Yesterday we went miniature golfing as a family. We went to a local "fun park" called Fiesta Village. They have a lot of things to do there, but we were there just to golf.

We were planning on going earlier in the day to try and beat the heat, but it didn't open till 11am., so was still a bit warm. Luckily we've only been in the low 90s and not the 100s this week, so it wasn't unbearable. We sun screened up, put on our hats, and carried some water with us for water breaks.

Duncan did pretty well playing the ball where it landed for the most part. We weren't keeping score so it didn't really matter anyway. Liam and Jennan were just happy to tap the ball around. I helped them with most of their opening shots, and they took it from there. But, the big story of the day was Duncan actually got a hole-in-one! He was so proud.

I'm not sure how long we were there, probably somewhere in the range of 90 minutes. There were two courses, and we did them both. Enough with the description, lets get to the photos!

We're ready to start!

Jennan's a lefty.

Waiting their turn.

"Look at me!"

Daddy helping everyone get their ball up the ramp.

Hole in one!

Mommy and Tegan.

Group shot at the castle.

Trifecta...

Today at church, I sung in a men's quartet after the first speaker in sacrament meeting, then gave the concluding talk in sacrament meeting, and also taught the lesson in Aaronic Priesthood.

The song we sang was hymn #5, High on the Mountain Top. I sang the Tenor part. We sang it a'capella. That was a lot of fun. I haven't sung in a quartet in a long time. I thought we sounded pretty good.

My topic for the talk was the Sacrament. The person before me spoke on Baptism, so the two talks went well together. I took the majority of my comments from to general authority talks. One from Elder Vaughn J. Featherstone, and the other from Elder Dallin H. Oaks. Super good talks. The Elder Oaks one even got a little deep.

The topic for the Aaronic Priesthood was titled "An Aaronic Priesthood Holder Cherishes Womanhood". A great lesson.

All of it was testimony building. Hope your day was as good as mine.

Jennan and the cat...

Jennan really likes cats even though she doesn't have much experience with them. So when she discovered the cat at my brother's house in AZ, she was all over it.

Anna went a little picture crazy with Jennan and the cat, so we have quite a few. Here are some of those.

With Anna being allergic to cats, we all tried our best to keep the cat off our stuff, especially our bedding. Anna was feeling the affects of the cat on Sunday, but the visit to Ken and Rachel's helped a lot in giving Anna a break.

I'm sure the cat was relieved to see us go. Duncan and Liam were pretty enthused about the cat too.

Save some money...

There's another 25% off a single item coupon available to use at Sports Authority this weekend, Aug. 14th - 17th.

Here's a link to a printable coupon. (click sentence)

You can also order online with code TSAFFAUG.

This is a great opportunity to buy an item for your emergency prep. stash, camping equipment, etc.

If you use it, come back and let me know what you got in the comments section.

You're Welcome.

A rough start... but we made it.

Last Thursday we were scheduled to have an IEP meeting for Liam and then leave to Arizona to visit some family. As you may recall, that meeting was cancelled at the last minute. We scrambled to schedule a new IEP asap, and it ended up being rescheduled for the next day which was Friday. That meant pushing back our trip to AZ, but at least the meeting would be done.

The meeting was a marathon! It started at a decent pace but then we needed a computer to access some district files, so we had to move to a different room. Then in order to print anything, the printer was in another room on campus, and it didn't want to cooperate. Then the wrong pages were printed, then the correct pages were printed, copies were made, etc. The technical difficulties were a huge contributor to the delay of finishing the meeting. Another reason it went long was due to the district representative not agreeing to give Liam a 1 on 1 aid. So Anna went back and forth with her for a bit. (I'm summing that all up.)

We were WAY behind in terms of when we wanted to leave to Arizona. A huge thanks goes to Anna's mom for coming out to watch our kids both days from all the way from Pasadena. We loaded up quickly and got on the road. We had about a 6 hour trip ahead of us. I think it was about 4:30pm when we got on the freeway.

Everything was going fine. The kids were reading books, or drawing on their magnadoodles. The time seemed to be flying by pretty quickly. At about 2 hours or so into the drive, we were in the middle of a huge dust and thunderstorm. There was as much dust in the air as rain, and it was coming down in buckets. The wind was blowing as hard as I've ever driven in. I think we were going about 35 to 40 mph during that time. Maybe even less. On the westbound lane, a big-rig truck had been blown over as we began to emerge from the storm. another interesting thing about that storm was the outside temp gauge in the van was reading 75 degrees. As soon as we left the storm, it jumped back up into the 100s.

The storm was an adventure in it's self, and we settled back down into our seats for the rest of the drive.

At some point, I noticed the battery gauge seemed a little lower than normal, but then it would seem fine. Then I noticed it was even further down than the other time I noticed, so I watched it more closely. It wasn't recovering like it did earlier, and it was going down. The "idiot light" indicator came on, and that's never a good sign, and I mentioned to Anna that I was getting concerned. Anna began making phone calls to ask if that meant if the battery or alternator was not working. The gauge kept dropping.

I began running through all the scenarios for getting stuck in the middle of nowhere AZ. We were approaching a gas station/quickie mart exit. I knew that once I turned the van off, it was not going to start again. So I had to choose between getting as far as I could and wait till the van shut off to pull over on the side of the road, or pull off into the gas/mart. I knew it was going to be a lot easier to deal with the kids if there was a bathroom, and a place to buy any "distractions" that might be necessary rather than be in the dark, next to the road where vehicles are flying by at excessive speeds. Though we were given the advice to get as far as we could, I changed my mind and pulled a uturn in the middle of the highway to get us back to the "Zip" gas/mart. I pulled into a parking spot a ways off to the left of the store under a light, and turned the van off.

We were officially stuck!

I want to say it was about 8:30-ish when we pulled into the Zips. Right away, Anna's brother Ken was looking up tow trucks and hotel rooms, etc. And so was Kevin and Jason and Kristi on my side. The nearest town was one behind us called "Quartzite" (official webpage). It was about 30-40 miles away. We were about 100 miles away from Phoenix still. Kevin and I came up with the idea of having Kevin buy 2 or 3 batteries at their WalMart and drive out to us, and use the batteries to get back to Quartzite by switching them out as they died. But that meant waiting as they bought batteries and then drove out to us. A 3 hour wait, easy. But we thought that was better than paying the $320.00 we were quoted for a tow back to Quartzite. We reserved a room in Quartzite at a place called "The Quartzite Yacht Club", and told them it would be very late before we got there.

After sitting in the gravel parking lot for a long time letting the kids play in the dirt and rocks, and feeling a bit helpless, and knowing we were probably going to have to be there a lot longer, we were encouraged to just call the tow truck and get where we needed to be rather than wait and wait. They even offered to help pay for the truck. We knew they were right, and called the truck at about 10:30pm. We were touched by the generous offer, but declined. They know who they are, and we appreciate them very much.

The tow truck was an extra cab, and we fit just fine. It was about a 45 minute drive to the hotel room. The "hotel" was actually a bunch of double-wide coaches. But it had a tub, a couple of beds, a tv, and a kitchen with a fridge, so it was awesome! The kids enjoyed chasing the moths and crickets, Anna gave them a bath, and we watched some Olympics before going to bed.

Somewhere in the 8am hour, there was a knock at the door. It was the owner of the repair shop. He gave us the bad news, and we told him to fix the van. He said it should be done by noon. Check out was suppose to be at 11:00am, so that was going to be interesting. But they let us stay till the van was done. At about 11:30am, the knock came again, and I was on the way to pick up the van.

We loaded up again once I got back with the van, and we were on the road again! We were a bit poorer, but we were happy to be driving again. We got to Kevin and Dawn's house a little before 3pm, and boy were we happy to finally be there.

The rest of our trip went fine. We stayed at Kevin and Dawn's Saturday (watched UFC 87 that night), we visited Ken and Rachel's family and house Sunday, and drove to Bullhead City, AZ Monday and hung out with Kristi and Jason (who had also been visiting Kevin and Dawn that same weekend with us), and drove home Tuesday just in time for me to go to mutual.

We had a great time. We could have done without the breakdown, but that was out of our control. At those times when we thought "why us", and "this stinks", we were both reminded of how much worse it could have been. Had we left any earlier Friday, we would have been stuck during the hottest part of the day rather than when the sun is going down and the temperature isn't unbearable. Had I not noticed the gauge, we would have been on the side of the road. Etc. Before we left on Friday, we had a family prayer in the van, and we asked that we would be watched over and protected from harm or accident, and that we would be kept safe. All of our prayers were answered.

Here are the pictures!...

Our dirty parking lot kids.

The tow truck is on the way!

One of the bugs Liam caught.

Catching more bugs in the second bedroom!

The kitchen!

Playing "school" while we wait for the van to get fixed.

I'm back with the van, but I had to make sure we got a picture of our "yacht/room".

Liam wrote his numbers to 100! He was so proud (and so was mom).

Since I'm home...

I'll take another quick moment to get caught up on some posts I should have done before now.

UFC 87 this Saturday!
The main event is a welterweight championship fight between the current champ, Georges St. Pierre, and challenger, Jon Fitch. Jon Fitch is undefeated in the UFC (seven fights I think), and GSP is one of the best in the world. If this fight goes past the 2nd round, it will go the distance. I think GSP will win either way. Even if it goes the distance (5 rounds), I think it will be unanimously GSP.
Brock Lesnar vs. Heath Herring. I'm sorry but, I'm a Brock Lesnar fan and will probably always go with him for the win. I think he'll overwhelm Herring early, just like he did to Frank Mir, but I don't think Herring's got the wherewith all to pull off a submission the way Mir did. I think it will end in the first round.
Roger Huerta vs. Kenny Florian. This is a really tough one. Both of these guys are great fighters and this fight has the potential to be the fight of the night. Ultimately, I think Kenny Florian will win. I just think he has the ability to end fights better than Huerta does. A lot of Huerta's fights have gone the distance and there's been chances to finish the fight that were never capitalized on. I'm going with KenFlo on this one.
Manny Gamburyan vs. Rob Emerson. Both of these guys have been on The Ultimate Fighter show, so if you watched that show, you would recognise them. I don't think Rob has much of a chance against Manny. Manny's an animal in the ring. His tenacity is freaky.
Jason McDonald has a fight. I hope he gets the win.
Luke Cummo will be fighting. Hope he gets a win too.
And also Ben Saunders has a fight, and I hope he wins his fight as well.
I'll be watching at my brother Kevin's house. It should be fun.

I was going to mention some other things we've done lately, but I'm out of time. Later.

Delayed...

Well, our mini vacation to AZ has been delayed about 24 hours. Bummer.

We had an IEP (Individual Education Plan) meeting scheduled this morning on Liam's behalf, but as we were on our way to the school, the vice principal called and informed us it had to be cancelled. The speech and language teacher had an "emergency" (questionable). We've been waiting for this meeting for over a week. Very disheartening.

At first it seemed we would be leaving earlier than planned for AZ since we didn't have a meeting to go to now, but as we drove home, we realized that we needed to reschedule today to make sure we would have a meeting next week. Otherwise, if we tried rescheduling after we got back, it would take probably another week to find a day that worked for everyone (about 7 people). So that meant not leaving till we had a new IEP meeting scheduled.

Turns out the only day in the next week that worked for everyone is tomorrow (Friday). That means we aren't leaving till after the meeting ends. The meeting starts at 10:30am, so hopefully we'll be done by 12 noon at the latest.

So yeah, we're glad to be finally having the IEP meeting, even if it was delayed by 25 and a half hours.

Where have I been?...

I just realized that my last blog entry was last friday! Where have I been? I guess we've been busy, and I have forgotten to update what we've been up to.

It's not any better today or for this post. This is just to tell you that we'll be in AZ for the next bunch of days, and I doubt I'll be able to post anything while we're gone.

That was it.

Blog at you later... hopefully.

Muay Thai, baby!

I talk a lot about MMA (mixed martial arts). Some may ask, "What martial arts do they mix?". I would say there are four main components to today's mixed martial arts (in no particular order): Wrestling, Boxing, Ju Jitsu, and Muay Thai kick boxing. Of course there are fighters that incorporate other types of fighting styles as well like Karate, Tae Kwon Do, Sambo, Judo, Pankration, and so on.

But this is about Muay Thai. If you're interested in watching some straight up Muay Thai kickboxing, done by guys that specialize in that art, you're in luck. On the Versus channel, there is a new series titled The Contender Muay Thai.

I didn't get a chance to watch the whole premier episode yet, but what I did see looked good. There are two teams, they compete in challenges, the winners choose the fight, and the loser of the fight goes home. So the cons to this show look to be that there will only be one fight per show and that we'll have to see the drama between fighters, but the pros are you get to see how these guys train, and that Muay Thai is a global art. There is only one American on the show.

So if you can, try to squeeze in some Muay Thai. You'll be glad you did.