A Wonderful Sunday

I know it is already Wednesday but Sunday was a great day in the Leavitt house and I haven't said anything about it yet. It kind of turned out to be a great day for Alex. Being the first Sunday of the month it was fast Sunday. On fast Sunday we choose one or more things that are important to us and we fast and pray for that thing or person. During our sacrament meeting there are no formal talks given but the congregation is free to go to the pulpit and share their feelings, experiences and their testimony with the congregation. On Sunday Alex chose to bear his testimony and it was a very touching testimony. I think graduating from High School has caused him a great deal of reflection on life and he paid very special tributes to Brandon, Ben and Kira. After priesthood meeting I also had the privilege of laying my hands on his head and conferring the priesthood on him I then ordained him to the office of an Elder. Ben and Sharley joined us and Ben was able to stand in the circle with me. Kira and Sarah were also there. It is pretty mind boggling to me that my third son is now a grown man heading off to college in just a few short weeks.





















We had a nice barbecue in the afternoon and then we were off to Seminary graduation. For anyone who is not familiar with early morning seminary let me explain. Every single day that there is school there is seminary. You start attending seminary when you start ninth grade (that would be high school for us) and when you graduate from high school you graduate from seminary. One year you study the old testament, another year you study the new testament, another year you study the book of Mormon and the final year you study church history. It is a wonderful program but requires a lot of dedication from both the student and from the teachers who receive no pay for this. For our kids it starts at 6:00AM and goes for an hour. Alex of course graduated from seminary but the guy conducting the meeting called Alex up special and gave him an award for attending every single day of the four years. There was one time we went to Utah and Alex and Alycia actually went to seminary with the kids of the family we were staying with. It was pretty cool but I could tell that Alex was embarrassed. In this photograph there is a picture of him with most of the kids in his class and the four teachers they had throughout the four years. What dedicated people they are. Just to recognize them they are in the first picture left to right:

Bryan Holland - grade twelve
Chuck Cotter - grade eleven (that would be Sharley's dad)
Linda Bessey - grade nine
Roger Platt - grade ten

Good job Alex, you make me proud!!! (am I allowed to say that?)

-------------------trivia---------------------

Drinking two glass of apple juice a
day may delay the onset of dementia

---------------------------------------------

My Last Week at Home

The flight home from my mission was still a huge novelty for me since the only time I'd ever been on an airplane was when I flew to Belgium at the beginning of my mission. It was a bit of a let down though since I flew on a 747 from Brussels to JFK and from JFK to Calgary I was on a 727 and it seemed so small compared to the 747. The real eye opener was from Calgary to Lethbridge I was on a small prop plane and it was quite scary compared to the big jets. If I'd been on the puddle jumper first it would have been exciting. It was so wonderful to see my family waiting for me at the Lethbridge airport. When we arrived home there was a box on our back door step and in the box was everything that I had ever given Maurine. I had no expectations about what my relationship with Maurine would be once I got home but I was surprised (and a bit embarrassed) to see the box of stuff. She wrote me quite regularly during the first half of my mission but almost not at all during the second half. When I saw the box with everything I'd ever given her the message seemed clear to me. In her mind we were done. I wasn't overly upset because it had been two years and I was so busy that after a few months I thought of nothing but the work that needed to be done. I saw Maurine on the street once when I was driving so I stopped and said hi. She chewed me out for not calling her so I guess that meant that she did want to be friends and I was glad about that. We did hang out a bit and I remember even singing a duet with her in church on one of my weekends home. Maurine was an important part of my life and even though I haven't seen her in twenty years I still consider her a good friend.

That first night laying in bed all alone was so strange. I hadn't been alone in my entire life. Growing up it was always Lester and I. At college I had a room mate and on my mission it was always me and my companion.

Everything was very strange for me. In some ways it felt like I had never left and my entire mission was only a dream but at the same time everything was different. One of the reasons it was so different is that Lester was now on his mission in Uruguay and that felt strange to me. The other thing is that I had absolutely nothing to do. I arrived home late in August just a few days before classes started. It had always been my plan to go back to BYU but Mom really wanted me to go closer to home and she had done all the work to get me enrolled at the U of A. I never thought much about it then but thinking back I am so grateful that she did all of that.

With the time being so short I only had time to give a talk in my home ward (Carston First Ward) and another talk in Leavitt Ward. I also hiked with Tom Crooks up Old Chief Mountain. We didn't know where any trails were so we just drove up the highway until it looked like we were about as close as we could get and then we started walking. It was one of my most favorite and memorable hikes. I love old Chief Mountain and when ever I see it I get a lump in my throat. I'd seen that mountain in the distance pretty much every day of my life since I was born. Kira actually took this picture for me. If you have a great imagination you can see that the mountain sort of looks like the face of an Indian laying on his back. The edge on the left is his chin and the sloping right side is his headdress. One of the bumps on top is supposed to be his nose. I seem to remember that a big chunk fell off the mountain years ago so it doesn't look as good as it used to. Even though it is actually in Montana it has always meant home to me. With little more than a week at home I packed my bags and it was off to school for me. It seemed like such a rip off that after having been gone for so long I was only able to be at home for a week. As it turned out, it was my last week ever living at home.

--------------------trivia--------------------

An ancient copper mine in Southern Jordan has been carbon dated to the tenth century BC which aligns exactly with "Solomons Mines" referenced in the Bible. The data supports the Bible.

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Father / Daughter Camp Out

At 11:30 pm on Friday night we pulled into the camp ground. My worst fears were realized when I saw that the guard gate was closed. We could drive into the campground but no one was at the gate to tell us where we were camped. Have you ever tried to find your friends in a very large campground in the dark? I have and it is very difficult and could take hours. I started making phone calls to anyone that I had a cell phone number for but no one answered. As I was sitting there debating what to do next the guard popped around the corner. I almost gave him a hug. He told me where everyone was camped and off we went. As I suspected they were all in bed. Boy things have changed since my kids were little. I couldn't get them to go to bed before midnight and so I went to bed and I'm not sure when they dragged in. We pitched our tent and then put Evan to bed and then we were all so tired we just went to bed also. That moment is always my favorite part of any camping trip. Laying in bed listening to the night and breathing in the fresh air.

I had a wonderful sleep but unfortunately my eldest child has become acclimatized to Florida and one winter in Calgary has not been sufficient to thicken her blood. She froze all night long. In the morning we all laid there listening to Evan calling, "momma, momma, momma..." continuously but he was calm and I could have easily gone right back to sleep but I had a very full bladder. I check the time and figured 7:30 was not a bad time to be getting up. Kira and I sat there and tried to read our books but too many people wanted to visit (including Sarah) so we chatted around the fire until breakfast was ready and then we enjoyed bacon, eggs and pancakes.We then headed down the mountain. We had to rush back because Lisa and I were going to Blake Pierce and Jenny Hall's wedding reception.

I loved camping with my daughters and what a treat it was to have Kira there. I guess I could also say it was my first Father/Grandson camp out. I took Sydney with me last year so that was my first Father/Granddaughter camp out.

The only other thing we did Saturday afternoon was to go to a movie. Kira called up Mandy and Peter and we all went to watch "UP". It was a very good movie. I loved it.

--------------------trivia--------------------
The bigger your grin in your high-school yearbook photo, the more likely you are to have a successful marriage, according to a new study.
---------------------------------------------

Dance Concert

Friday was an exciting day for me because I got to go on a father/daughter camp out with Sarah and Kira. I will talk about that later but today I want to talk about the Westview High School Dance concert. A good friend of Alex's named Heather Wilcox is in dance and they needed dance partners for one of the dances they were doing. She asked Alex if he would be her partner. Alex loves to dance and he certainly has the rythm but I never thought I would ever see him in a dance concert. It was a treat for all of us. I was hoping he would be early in the program so that me and girls could leave early for our camp out and as it happened his dance was in the first half of the program. Unfortunately for our schedule but fortunately for us, they had all of these volunteer boys perform a dance of their own which was the second to the last dance of the night. I was simultaneous proud of my boy and quite embarrassed for him. I guess it takes a man with a lot of confidence to dress like he did and parade around the stage in front of a large crowd. All in all it was a great evening and Alex was an amazing dancer. We were pitching our tent at midnight but it was worth it.

---------------------trivia--------------------

Myopia is most common in people who have a high IQ, high income, high education or status.

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The Book of Life

My action packed week continues. I think I've mentioned before that I have the absolute best calling in the church. I am the assistant scout master. That means the the scout master has to do all the planning and I get to show up, play with the boys and participate in all the activities. I love it. Unfortunately, once in a while the scoutmaster is out of town and I have to take over. That happened on Wednesday. The good part is that Rick made all of the plans before he left and because I was gone last week with Alex's CIF volleyball play offs he asked Steve Collard to help out. Steve definitely got the biggest share of the load but I still had to do some work. It was a combined activity and the Scouts were in charge so we had a lot of work to do. The boys wanted to plan a road rally but since we didn't want to do that we designed a sort of mini-road rally at the church. The kids were divided into families. We had Lehi and Sariah, Abraham and Sarah, Adam and Eve, Moses and ??, Joseph and Emma and Joseph and Mary. The families were sent out to find "Earthly Messengers" who turned out to be the missionaries. They "baptised" the families and gave them the gift of the Holy Ghost (a compass). They were then sent to an Angel who recorded their names in the book of life and sent them on a compass course to find the next message. They then went through a series of "challenges". They had to learn unity by walking with group skiis tied to their feet. They learned about clean thoughts and actions at the dumpster, they learned about the atonement when one member of the family had to suffer through push ups for each member of the family. They had to rely on each other to get guided through an obstacle course blind folded. They learned about service at the janitors closet where they cleaned a window and then finally they were guided to the judgement seat of Christ where their name was looked up in the book of life (the same one used earlier) and they received their reward and were sent to heaven (except for one boy who was sent to hell). Heaven was a fire in the pavilion where we cooked smores.

It was a fun activity and each of the clues to find the activities was a scripture.

Today Kira came to the temple during my shift. It was great to see her. Her session was very small and they needed a witness couple so I voluntered to go through the session with Kira and we were the witness couple. I loved it. She went through the last session of the evening so she helped me close up the temple and we came home together.

--------------------trivea--------------------

81% of all deaths in Saudi Arabian hospitals are related to car accidents. You can't blame women drivers though because they aren't allowed to drive.

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Mr Torns

This week is promising to be a very action packed week. First of all, Kira arrived yesterday. Her High School band instructor is retiring and today was his last band concert after 35 years of teaching. He has taught at three different high schools and they had representatives from each of them. Kira got to be the representative from Mt Carmel High School. They each gave a very nice tribute but Kira's was so much better than the rest. It was a beautiful evening. It totally reminds me of "Mr Hollands Opus".

Another interesting thing happened today. For Alex's economics class he had to give a speech today. He did his speech on McDonald's and he practiced at home so I know it was a very good and well prepared speech. I haven't talked to him yet but from what I hear he receive essentially full marks for the speech but the teacher docked him 30 points. He was discussing the time period in the early part of this decade when McDonalds was taking a lot of flak about being unhealthy. McDonalds was actually losing money at that time and and to make his point he showed a picture of a fat man. I thought the picture was very relevant and apppropriate but the teacher was very angry with him. I get so tired of all the politically correct garbage that goes on in todays world. Lisa and I are both very ready to go and do battle but Alex doesn't want to. I guess we will have to respect his wishes but I'm really ticked.

CIF Semi Finals

Wow, what a week. The days just fly by. Several things of note happened this week. First of all I've been crazy busy writing proposals to get my hands on some of my money that Obama has stolen. There is $150 million available from DOE to develop transformational technology to either save or generate new power. We're going in for about $3.5M. I really think we are a shoe in for $2M and we have a very good chance of getting the other $1.5M.

Wednesday Westviews Volleyball team played in the CIF semifinals. We lost in three games but each of the games were very close and the third game actually went into overtime. It was a heart breaking loss to come so close to winning the whole enchelada but hey, we made it to semi-finals, that isn't bad is it? I doubt he would admit it but I think what was hardest for Alex is that it was quite possibly the last "real" volleyball game he will ever play. There are plenty of opportunities to play basketball and football with "the guys", but when will he ever play another serious volleyball game. He was one sad boy after the game and we all had to keep our distance. These athletes really take their games seriously. I figure that is probably why I was never a good athlete because it was never that important to me whether I won or lost.

Thursday of course was the temple and that too was a rough night. We were very short on help and it was all we could do to keep the sessions running. As always though we made it through.

Last night I worked late on my proposal. It isn't due until Tuesday but they are expecting up to 3,000 proposals and they will consider them on a first come first served basis. We want to get ours in before the big rush so we have a self imposed deadline of getting them submitted this weekend. That will mean working on Saturday. Yuck!! When I got home Lisa and Sarah were starting a movie but as I was sitting there the missionaries knocked on the door. They were walking down the street right in front of our house when they saw a little white mouse running across the road. Elder Duchene picked him up and put him in Elder Taylors pocket and they knocked on our door to see if Tom was hungry. Alex doesn't feed Tom nearly enough so he was quite grateful for the snack. It was only a little hopper but Tom wasted no time downing him. I thought I would video tape the whole event so you could all share in the experience. I haven't figured out how to edit/splice video's yet so you get two video clips.

Shortly after that Ben and Alex showed up and invited me to a movie. Ben was so excited to be going to a horror show. I personally hate horror shows and refuse to pay money to see one. I guess Sharley feels much the same so Ben never gets to go. I figured that I wasn't going for the show but rather for the company. It was fun to spend an evening with my boys but I'm sure glad I wasn't going for the show. It started out very creepy but eventually turned stupid. It doesn't say much for the movie when everyone is visiting with each other talking about how dumb it was.

As I said, there was no sleeping in for Fred this morning. I was up and into work as if it were a normal day. I worked on the proposal until 11:00 when Alex had his end of year Volleyball party. It was held at a local park but today it was a slow drizzle all day. Much like Kira's wedding day. We were indoors but not much was happening outside. Lisa had put together a pretty collage for Alex. All of the graduating seniors had one. The meal was very yummy taco's cooked right before your eyes. Alex received his awards and then I was back to work. I finally got my multi million dollar proposal squeezed onto 8 pages and so I just got home. How's that for a crazy week?

Zwindrecht

It was the spring of 1979 when I received a phone call telling me to pack my bags and head for Zwijndrecht. Zwijndrecht is a suburb of Antwerpen and the best thing about Zwijndrecht is that our apartment was above a laundry mat. This laundry mat wasn't anything like what you would be familiar with but rather it was a full service place. All we had to do was drop off our dirty laundry and then we would come back later and pick it up all clean and folded. I loved it. To get to Zwijndrecht from Antwerpen we would ride our bikes through a tunnel that went under the river. Have you ever seen an escalator for bikes? These were the longest escalators that I have ever seen. It looked like your were desending into a very deep dark hole and as you went down the stairs you would hold your bike beside you.

As you leave the tunnel you enter Linkeroever which translates as "Left Bank", meaning the left bank of the river. Zwijndrecht was just a few miles beyond Linkeroever. Linkeroever was our area and it was very strange.The entire area was only few miles across but it was filled with huge apartment buildings some of them virtually skyscrapers. There was probably more than 100,000 people living in an area the size of Penasquitos. For those of you who have never been to Penasquitos, the area was much smaller than Cardston.

I made many new friends in Linkeroever but my most memorable was Marleen. One day we were tracting which in Linkeroever meant that we would stand at the door and ring doorbells. It is very difficult to do a proper door approach to a microphone so if anyone ever just buzzed the door rather than talk we would just go on in and knock on the doors. One day as we were ringing bells we spoke to this woman and as soon as she realized who we were she said, "oh, come on up, my daughter will want to talk to you." As you may imagine, that was not our typical response. We went on up to the apartment and the lady told us that her daughter was a big Donny Osmond fan and she was sure she would want to talk to us. The daughter was Marleen Van Laere and she was interested. At the time she was only sixteen years old. She started taking the discussions and while at first she may have been more interested in a couple of Americans she soon became more interested in learning about the gospel of Jesus Christ.

During my mission I had many opportunities to "Bible Bash". Most people who are really into religion believe that to win "converts" they have to prove that the bible is the word of God. We on the other hand believe that the only way a person can be truly devoted to the gospel is if the Spirit of God witnesses to them that it is true. Nothing else will give a person the strength he needs to remain faithful through the good and the bad times. Even though every missionary knows this, it is still easy to get drawn into debating the gospel. Early on in my mission I did have an experience where I debated the gospel with a Jehovah's Witness and I trounced them soundly. Leaving from that appointment I felt worse than I had ever felt before. Sure, I believe that I caused the poor guy to have doubts about his own religion but I also knew that I hadn't convinced him that mine was true. Where did that leave him? He may have been worse off after I left him than he was before. I felt terrible and I have never since been involved in debating religion. I will teach if someone is truly curious but I will never debate.

During the time we were teaching Marleen we met a couple who invited us back for an appointment. When we returned we were quite surprised to find that they had also invited a Jehovah's Witness couple and a couple of Protestant missionaries from Holland. I had never met anyone like the Protestants. I'm not sure what religion they were but they were all about "Saved by Grace". My entire experience had always been teaching Catholics who I understood very well but I had never had to answer a question about "saved by grace". I was completely unprepared for it and even though I had no intention of debating I did want to present our beliefs accurately. We do of course believe that we are saved by the Grace of God and that through the atonement of Jesus Christ our sins can be forgiven. We do not have the power to return to God without his Grace and we also believe that the atonement will have no affect on us if we don't accept Jesus as our Lord. That is where we differ from the "saved by gracers". They claim that all you have to do is believe that Jesus is the Messiah and you're saved. We believe that you can say whatever you want but if you don't do everything in your power to become like Jesus and follow his commandments, then his atonement will not apply to you. How can a person mock everything that is holy and live a life of murder, lies and carnal acts and expect to be saved just because he claims Jesus as his savior while another person is kind and helpful to everyone around him but because he never came to know his Lord he is damned? I don't believe it but because I had never been faced with the question before I wasn't exactly able to come up with the scriptures on the spur of the moment to support my claim. That night I went home and learned everything I could about the atonement and the Grace of God.

Shortly after this experience we were sitting on our bikes in Linkeroever when we both felt prompted to go and visit the VanLaere's. When we got there Marleens mother about burst into tears when she saw us. She said "boy am I glad to see you". She was always friendly to us but this was very odd. We went on in and we were quite surprised to see a pair of the "saved by gracers" literally attacking Marleens mother. Marleens mother always claimed to be an atheist but she was the nicest woman you ever met. She would give you the shirt off her back (figuratively of course) if you needed it. These protestants were telling her that she was going to go to hell because she didn't believe in God. This was the one and only time I made an exception to my rule not to debate. That was because I was doing it for a different purpose. I was not at all interested in convincing them of the truth, I only wanted to protect and defend Mrs Van Laere. I was now fully prepared to challenge their arguments and I sent them packing with their tail between their legs. If Mrs VanLaere liked us before, she really liked us after that.

We taught several people in Zwijndrecht and Linkeroever and I loved the area. We had a nice apartment and it was a friendly community. It was summer and that made everything more pleasant as well.

Alas the time came for me to go home. I was very conflicted, I wanted to go home of course because I missed everyone a lot but at the same time I knew that I may never get back to Belgium again. I'm a bit envious of my boys who could get back to their mission areas cheaply and easily. I had been gone for two years and that made the memories of my family and friends fairly dim but I had many friends in Belgium and I was going to really miss them.

By the time I left, Marleen had acquired a very deep conviction of the truth of the gospel and she wanted to be baptized but her father was very concerned that she wanted to get baptized for all the wrong reasons. I was a bit resentful at the time but now that I have daughters of my own I can't blame him one bit. Putting myself in his shoes, here are these two young American boys from a very strange religion spending a lot of time with my daughter. I would be very suspicious of their intentions. This was also not too long after Jimmy Jones and his cult all drank the koolaid so that made things even more difficult for a father who loves his only child with all his heart. If he'd talked to us more perhaps he would have felt different but he was a quite man and I was too young to realize his concerns or I would have gone out of my way more to get to know him. I gave Marleen a big hug and wished her the best and off I went over the big pond back home. One of the most wonderful era's of my life had come to an end.

--------------------trivia--------------------

You are 15 percent more likely to become happy if directly connected a happy person; 10 percent if it's the friend of a friend who is happy and 6 percent if it's the friend of a friend of a friend.

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Memorial Day

Monday was memorial day and boy did we have a great time. The ward had a picnic at 11:00 so we went there and filled up on hamburgers, watermelon and barbecued Ahi caught by Bill Casper. We then went to a movie and following the movie we had another barbecue here at the house. Ben had to work but after work he and Sharley came over for the barbecue. I barbecued a tri tip roast and if I do say so myself, it turned out pretty good. The movie we went to as a family was "A Night at the Museum". It was actually pretty good.

I do have to brag about my bowling skills with the Wii. Ben brought his home for the summer and I rarely play video games but I smoked everyone bowling. I'm not so good golfing though.

--------------------trivia-------------------
For every inch you are above the average height you make $750 above the average wage.
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CIF Volleyball

Today has been a fairly productive day. Just to share my "to do" list with you.

buy Sarah's medicine (done)
fix the broken sprinkler (done)
mow the lawn (done)
fertilize the lawn and flower beds (done)
dig weeds out of the dirt beside the driveway (done - mostly)
transplant the flowers (done)
put the registration on the car (not done)
clean out the trunk of the car after the fathers/sons camp (not done)
turn in the recyclable bottles (not done)
build bench in the garage (not done)
set up Lisa's laptop (not done)
buy me a bike (not done)
find Lisa some volleyball pictures (not done)

I always have more on my to do list than I ever possibly have time for but I got lots done today. Tonight Alex played in the high schools quarter finals for CIF's. They played very well and I have some really good shots of Alex. He had the most "kills" of the game. They go to semi-finals on Wednesday. It should be fun.

Eagle Court of Honor

Monday was Brandon and Serene's last day here. They were pulling out Tuesday morning. Serene wasn't terribly interested in watching Star Trek (I can't even imagine that) so Brandon was hoping that I would go with him. I don't normally go to a movie more than once. If I really love the movie I'll wait and buy the DVD but in this case I was more than willing to make an exception.

Since Brandon won't be here in June for his birthday we decided to celebrate his birthday on Monday while he is here. Lisa made a ton of pizza's and we all ate way more than we should have.

Tuesday morning I kissed them all goodbye and went to work, they headed down the highway a few hours later. Tuesday evening was Alex's Eagle Court of honor. We piggy backed on the court of honor for a few of his friends in 2nd ward. Boy do they go all out. It was a pretty fancy affair. It was my job to do the program and it was an eight page document. For your edification I've copied the part about Alex here.

Alex Leavitt

Alexander Thomas Leavitt was born in Alberta, Canada on March 12, 1991. He started his scouting career when he joined Troop 644 as a Cub Scout at eight years of age. He advanced through all the ranks of the scouting program until he became a Life Scout at the age of fourteen. Alex enjoys the scouting program and camping in particular. While he loved all of his camps, his favorite was camping in the sand dunes and sliding down the dunes on body boards. Alex also attended several summer camps including Catalina Island, Emmerson, Taquitz, and Shaver Lake. Alex has earned twenty seven merit badges and is grateful for the skills he has acquired in doing so. He believes his most important merit badge is the Life Saving merit badge but his most enjoyable badge was Wilderness Survival. It was a rewarding experience to be able to build his own shelter and spend the night in the wilderness.

Alex’s Eagle project was to make visual aids for the Primary Chorister to use. When a primary chorister is called she is often forced to acquire her own visual aids and it can take significant time and expense to assemble an adequate number of aids. Alex organized a team of volunteers to make over a hundred visual aids and a sturdy wooden box to store them in. Alex loves sports and in addition to playing Football, Basketball and Volleyball in high school he has refereed RPB basketball for several years. This year Alex coached a team of fifth grade boys and enjoyed watching their skills improve throughout the season. Alex will graduate with the class of 2009 from Westview High School in June and will be attending a year of School at the University of Utah before he goes on a mission for his church. Alex is the third of three boys in his family to join the ranks of Eagle Scout.

Senior Prom

We got home from the Father/Sons campout Saturday afternoon and immediately we were in Prom mode. Alex started showering and I had to make sure the camera was ready and the vehicles were cleaned out and meanwhile Ben had until 6:00 to get his stuff in their storage unit. I felt terrible abandoning him but you only get one Senior Prom and so off we went. Someone decided that they had to take pictures at Poway Park and we had to be there by 4:30 so without even showering we were off smelling like a campfire. Personally I like the smell of a campfire. Even though it is very inconvenient and quite a ways out of the way Poway Park is a beautiful place for pictures.

We took the pictures and wished them well and the kids headed out for their very expensive dinner. I'm just glad that they had the sense not to rent a stupid limo. Those get very expensive and I think they're a total waste of money. We headed back to the house and I was very excited to see my little granddaughter. Yes, I was also excited to Brandon and Serene as well. Brandon has an internship with a Patent Judge for the summer in Beaumont Texas. Where in the world is Beaumont Texas you ask? Well, I had never heard of it either. Apparantly for some bizzar reason Beaumont Texas has become the best place in the States for pantent cases and it is very presigi0us for Brandon to be able to get this summer internship. Even more so for a first year law student. Or as they say in the trade, a 1L. Brandon and Serene packed all of their stuff up for the summer and they are now making the road trip to Beaumont Texas. He starts his new job next Tuesday.

We let everyone settle in a little and then we called Ben over and we started an evening of Settlers. We finished up around 3:00 AM when Alex got home. At this point I was very sleep deprived. Alex's Eagle Court of Honor was tonight (Tuesday) and I was up late Wednesday night getting pictures for the slide show and then Thursday it was the Temple and then Friday was the Fathers/Sons campout when we were up until 2:00 and now 3:00 AM I was really struggling to stay awake in church on Sunday. Sunday afternoon we had a nice roast beef dinner and again another late night of Settlers. I think it was about 1:00AM when I got to bed that night. Somehow I got roped into doing the program for Alex's eagle court so I was up late doing that. It turned out very nice but it was a lot of work. I'll tell you all about that in the next post.

----------Trivia----------
The average cough expels 20,000 viruses.
--------------------------

Father Son Camp Out

You can always tell when my life gets crazy because I don't post anything. What a wonderful weekend this has been. Let me start with Friday. This weekend was father and sons campout. We do that every year in May and I really look forward to it. This year was especially exciting for me because I thought I might have both Brandon and Ben home. Brandon wrote his last final Friday morning and Ben was supposed to walk on Friday night. He just finished off three AA degrees and his last semester was straight "A's" while he carried a load of 16 credits and worked part time. He decided to skip walking for his diploma so he could come on the camp out with me. I felt bad that he would miss walking because I felt he deserved it but he assured me that what really mattered would be when he got his Bachelors degree since that is really what counted.

In the end Brandon couldn't make it because Serene had something Saturday morning so it was just Ben, Alex and myself. We packed up Settlers of Catan and headed to William Heise park. We ate dinner at this really good Mexican place "Cotija's" and headed up the mountain. We got there after dark and visited around the fire for a while and when the little boys started heading for bed we fired up the lantern and played Settlers until 2:00AM. Only once did one of the dads get up and ask us when we were going to bed so we did better than I figured we would.

Come time to go to bed and we decided it was a beautiful night so we didn't bother with the tent and we just slept under the very beautiful stars. The moon was bright so we missed out on some of the stars but it was still wonderful sleeping out in the wild.

Saturday morning I woke up to Ben and Alex jumping on me. It was a beautiful morning. We ate breakfast and then the plan was to go give my guns some exercise. I don't get the chance to shoot them much living here in California but since we were so close to the desert I decided it was time. I'd heard that you can just go out in the desert and find a secluded spot and shoot so off we went. When we dropped down out of the mountains into the desert we soon passed a sign that said we were entering a park and "NO SHOOTING". After seeing the sign I figured it would be hard to feign ignorance so we turned around and headed south. We didn't see any signs that way so we found a little trail that headed into a canyon and packed in my 22, 30-06, 30-30, Winchester 12 gauge pump and Bens 22 auto and his 12 gauge side by side. It was a great morning but my shoulder is throbbing a bit still and it is now 48 hours later.

I was particularly happy to see that I haven't lost my touch. I was worried about the shot gun though. Ben and I went shooting once before and I couldn't hit anything with my shot gun. This time I set up a target that wasn't moving and saw that I was shooting high. I then just dropped it down a foot and by the time we left I was shooting about 80% hitting the clay pigeons.

At one point as we were lighting up the canyon a poor unfortunate crow decided to fly by and see what was going on. Ben happened to be shooting at that time and took out the crow. The big fellow didn't feel a thing and dropped like a rock. I was quite surprised to see how BIG those things are up close.

The cactuses (cacti?) out there were vicious. No matter how hard you tried you ended up getting some of them stuck into your body. They would even go through the soles of your shoes. It is Monday and I'm still pulling them out of my body.

After we wore ourselves out we decided to come home and unpack Bens moving truck. I really feel bad about that. Poor Ben and Sharley had to pack up their entire worldly possesions in Arizona all by themselves. When they got here I assured them that I would help but they waited until Saturday (I offered to help on Friday) and Alex had his senior Prom. I had to be there to take pictures so there was Ben and Sharley all by themselves with no help on this end either. I was much relieved however to learn that Patrick Carey did show up to help them out. Thank you Patrick.

I now need to talk about Prom and about the arrival of Brandon and family but since this posting is running on I will continue the account later.

Dixie sent me this cute Dilbert cartoon. I love Dilbert, he is probably my favorite cartoon. You can probably tell why. Thanks Dixie.