Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.

I'm on a train!

So I'm on my way back from salt lake, enjoying the plush seats, free wireless, and opportunities for people watching that the Frontrunner train provides.  I figured it was as good a time as any to finally update my blog.

2012 has been busy, this last semester especially.  But life is, for the most part, good.  I find that rap up of my life are sort of boring, so here's some recent stories:

Sometimes, when you are a man, you get hit by waves.  It's for fun. 

I just got back from california for christmas with the family.  It was great, and california is beautiful, and warm.  Every day I smiled as I was on the beach in shorts and saw that Provo was in the teens and snowing.  California was everything I could hope for, and I had time to finish the original pokemon, and Ocarina of Time, and Farenheit 451.  It's been a while since I've been able to just hang out without any real responsibility.  Some of that was because I've been putting off a paper I need to co-write, but you can't do work in california, it's just too pretty.

 I have all these photos, so I feel like I should try to get enough text to fill up the post.

How could anyone not walk out to that?

It certainly wouldn't be california if I didn't find a big patch of poison oak to roll around in, and it didn't disappoint.  On the water fall hike (the one that could have been the site for the hobbit) I spent a lot of time climbing on rocks and crawling around, and to my surprise, I found that my legs were covered in poison oak.  It pretty much all on the back of my legs, so it seems like I must have sat on some, which may  have happened when I was dropping through this cool tunnel in the rock, and pushing bushes out of the way.  Anyway, it's pretty itchy.

Elephant Seals!  They had new babies, which weren't actually that adorable.

Shadows are cool.  

Hanging out with nephews was fun, but I have mixed feelings about spending lots of time with lots of little kids.  I'm a big fan of kids, in small quantities.  I did have some good QT with Tanner, and I'm fairly certain I've won the coveted spot of Tanner's favorite uncle (although I don't know what the Wade side has in the way of competition).  I don't think I can compete with Isaac though for Ethan and Carter. It's hard to beat almost constant lego play.

I guess I should mention what I got for christmas.  This christmas felt less like christmas than most, probably because I wasn't at home (not quite sure where I call home these days) and the days leading up the christmas felt pretty standard.  We did do all the christmas stuff: Davey's first christmas, the Nativity, the Night Before Christmas, etc.  It was good.  I think another contributing factor in the lack of christmas was the fact that presents just aren't as exciting for me anymore.  For quite a while I've had enough cash on hand to buy the things I really wanted, and so I don't have a big list, and then I think there just aren't as many things that I feel like I really need anymore, but I'm not at the point where I'm buying lots of presents for other people, so I'm sort of stuck between the two meanings of Christmas.

That said, I am getting a pretty sweet Craftsman tool set.  I'm excited to break it open and go to town on my scooter this week, which has been on the fritz ever since it got cold.  I also got a game, and bought myself some clothes from old navy's after xmas sale.

Best made gift so far?  The Family Historians will have to decide

On the giving end, I did make one of the cooler made gifts I've done so far.  We ended up making a bunch of canvasses for a ward activity that I organized, so I learned how to do that, and so I figured I could make some cool stencils for Cami, or some of her favorite things.  After I got to her house, I realized she has more decoration than she actually has room for, but they turned out pretty cool, I want to make a couple for me, but I don't quite have the energy at the moment.

Oh, good.  It's snowing in Provo.


Anyway, I'm almost to my station, this train thing is lovely.  It seems like this would be a good time to make some sort of new years resolution and wrap up 2012, but I don't really like year long resolutions, and I feel like no one wants to here about me reflecting on last year.  I am going to do something new this next year and try to do monthly challenges.  Last year I tried for a month to wake up every day at a reasonable hour and do something meaningful.  It went ok.  This year I'm going to do something like that every month, and post about it.  The first month isn't very exciting, I'm going to try to exercise every day, I'm not getting fat, but I would like to actually be in good condition, so I can win sports and run races.  So that's this month, later months might be more interesting, we'll see. If you have any suggestions for month long challenges that would make me a beter person, I'm open for that too.  Happy January!

We took a quick stop to middle earth

Marine life, it's alive!