She's Home!

9 months ago I posted about X leaving and going back to school in Utah while I stayed in Nevada to work. It was definitely one of the hardest things we've ever done, but it doesn't matter any more since SHE'S BACK!

Last weekend I drove out to Logan for her graduation, we loaded up her car and said a more permanent "goodbye" to everyone, and then drove back out to Nevada. X said it felt weird to be driving "home" since she has only spent a couple of months out here since we moved in and it doesn't really feel like home yet, but hopefully we can get that changed in the coming weeks.

Good work babe!

The day we drove home was Mother's day, so X was kind of bummed to spend the whole day in the car, but I made it up to her by letting her cut off my beard when we got home. I have to admit it was getting pretty nasty, but I wanted to see how long I could get it before she came home.

It was getting long enough to braid!

Ain't she a beauty? My chin feels so naked!

I also got X a set of Cutco knives for graduation. Both our moms had these knives growing up and they had been an item on our "want" list for some time (the knives we had previously were pretty cheap). For a while I've been telling X they were too expensive and it would be something for much later in the future, so she was quite surprised to open a box and find a whole set of her own!

Last night we were invited over for dinner at a neighbor's in our ward. I am home teaching companions with the husband and the wife is X's visiting teacher. What X didn't know is that the "dinner" was actually a surprise graduation party for her! We'd been planning it for weeks, and it was perfect because X was out of town so there really wasn't any way for her to find out about it! (X is notorious for finding out secrets). She was really surprised and happy to see so many people wishing her congratulations and happy to see her home. Now all we have to see is how long it takes for her to get called to speak in sacrament and also to receive a calling! So good to have you home babe!

For more on X's graduation keep an eye out on her blog. Supposedly she's going to try and get caught up on her blog and she'll write more about her big day.

Spring Hike

We have some friends coming out to visit over Memorial Day weekend, and they are really outdoorsy people. Which is perfect because Douglas County has TONS to do outdoors! My friend's wife is 6 months pregnant though, so we wanted to find a way to see a lot of cool stuff, but still take it easy.

Last weekend I went scouting for some good hiking trails with a guy from work. He volunteers for the Douglas County Search & Rescue unit, so he's very familiar with all the different areas that people like to explore (and subsequently get lost). He said he knew of a perfect trail that is relatively easy, but has great scenery, so I took him up on the offer.

About 30 minutes south from our house is Grover Hot Springs in Markleeville, CA. Right near the hot springs is the head of a trail leading up to Hot Springs Creek Falls (it's a mouthful). After 10 minutes of hiking I could already heard the rush of water, and within the hour we saw 4 different waterfalls. It was so cool!

Hot Springs Creek Falls

More of Hot Springs Creek Falls (sorry it is a terrible angle)

Me blocking the view of Hot Springs Creek Falls

My co-worker Eelke. It's hard to tell in the picture, but he's wearing a gigantic 40-lb backpack! He says "just in case"

I don't know the name of this one (maybe they are all considered Hot Springs Creek Falls?), but Eelke says that people like to swim below this one when the weather gets warmer

This one was a little more difficult to get to, but I think she can do it!

Another popular swimming hole

The total hike was around 3 miles round-trip and took about 90 minutes. Overall it was a pretty easy hike (Eelke says he always sees families with little kids on the trail) so I think it'll be perfect for our friends, and we can always turn back if it gets too difficult.

After the hot springs hike we went over to Lake Tahoe (another one of Mother Nature's beauties less than an hour away from our house) to see Eagle Falls and Emerald Bay.

Eagle Falls - We didn't have enough time to hike down to the bottom (the trail goes all the way around the mountain), so we just went to another area to get a nice view of the whole thing (sorry the snow kinda makes the falls blend in)

The top of Eagle Falls is right near the road though, and we had enough time to see it up close

Looking "down" Eagle Falls

Emerald Bay - Some crazy rich lady owned this bay and build a castle (Vikingsholm) at the head. She would take a boat out to Fannette Island (which she also owned) for tea every day

Fannette Island - right in the middle of Emerald Bay. They have "cruises" in Lake Tahoe that will take you near/to this island

It is truly awesome to live so close to this this kind of stuff and to literally have national forests in our backyard! Thanks again Eelke for the great hike and the perfect spot to take our friends later this month!

When The Murders All Began

Every Halloween some friends of mine get together for a "Murder Mystery Dinner". If you haven't ever been to a murder mystery party, basically everyone dresses up and acts like their assigned character, and you follow the mystery in a pseudo-scripted/-improved activity to discover who the murder is (sometimes you are the murderer and you don't even know it until the very end)! Well I stumbled upon this picture from the first Murder Mystery dinner from about four years ago:

Murder Mystery Dinner 2007

In case you couldn't tell, that is me on the far left in the ghastly-white complexion. I was supposed to be the 60-year-old Sir Hamish Hogwash in The Mystery of the Pungent Pumpkin Poisoner, a free murder mystery game you can download. I think I took the old-age thing a little too far, but everyone loved it and we had a really good time. If you are wanting to try out your own murder mystery dinner, but don't want to spend any money, this one was pretty fun for a first-time experience. And if you want to add a fun twist, checkout my post about the murder mystery dinner we hosted back in 2009 for more fun ideas for your own party.

Our Inviting House

This is the view our friends and neighbors got as they approached our door this winter:

Watch your head!

Not very inviting, is it? At least we had our little "Welcome" sign to make people feel more comfortable as they reached our ice cave. Luckily we didn't have anyone slip on the ice that formed from all the dripping. We're definitely going to have to put some gutters up this year!

Dedicated to Breeze

Dogs are the funniest animals! Growing up, we always had a dog in the house. And while yes, they are a lot of work and cost a lot of money in food and upkeep, they are just too much fun to skip out on! Here are two dog-related videos I've seen in the last little while that made me laugh really hard:

When my wife decided to move back to Utah to finish up school and left me here all alone in Nevada (don't worry honey - I don't hold it against you :) I asked her if I could get a dog to keep me company. She told me that she wanted a dog too, but didn't want it to get too attached to me and not like her as much after being with me for a full year. Lame. So hopefully within a little while of her returning we'll get ourselves a good dog (or two?)

But this post isn't supposed to be about dogs in general, but about BREEZE - my sister's Golden Retriever dog (who has really become our family dog) and has been one of my favorite dogs growing up - thanks Amanda! Don't let the blog post title fool you - she didn't die or anything - I just wanted to put up some pictures and video of the best dog around.

Growing Up

As is the case with most dogs, Breeze was a very cute puppy. Breeze was the first dog I've known since puppy-hood (all our other dogs were already adults by the time I was born, or we got them as adults from a shelter) I remember that Breeze had really bad "puppy breath" (it smelled like crap - literally) and I always wondered if it was because the puppies ate each others poop. Thankfully Breeze stopped (or never started) eating poop, so her breath has improved since then. Our other dog Hazel unfortunately has never given up the practice... :-/

Puppy Breeze

Teenager Breeze

Doesn't she look like she's going through that "awkward teenage phase" in that picture? It always makes me laugh :)

A Patient Pup

Breeze is one of the most patient dogs around. She'll sit and stay for eternity just waiting for you to tell her "okay!" before she can get up and move. She's also content to spend the entire day by your side - so long as you are willing to hold her paw.

Breeze also puts up with a lot of crap from us. She'll endure the torment as we pile a tower of treats on her nose waiting patiently (and steadily) for us to give her the command that will allow her to dine on her snout snacks.

Balancing Breeze

She will also let us play mean tricks on her (like tying a bone to the ceiling just barely out of reach), as long as in the end she does end up getting her reward:

An Unusual Hobby for a Dog

The most unique thing about Breeze is how she loves to play dress-up. She's happy with all the attention she gets when she dresses up in something like this:

Baseball Breeze

Cool Breeze

Clown Breeze

Granny Breeze

Mourning Breeze

Old Man Breeze

Painter Breeze

Bank Robber Breeze

Police Breeze

Reggae Breeze (with some paw-holding action)

Scary Breeze

Scuba Breeze

Sexy Breeze

Snowboarder Breeze

Cave Explorer Breeze

Swine Flu Breeze

We've had Breeze as part of our family for 6 years now, and here's to many more years of enjoyment and companionship with Breeze!

P.S. What is your favorite dress-up photo of breeze?

Nerds Building Stuff!

Remember "Engineering Week" back in high school and college? They'd usually have some sort of neat demonstration, and there was ALWAYS a building competition (usually bridges of some sort). I never participated in school and recently got depressed when I realized that I'd never have another chance. Then came along GE.

GE celebrates "Engineering Week"
and has a building competition.

When I saw the posters up announcing the event I was stoked. I don't know if I was more excited to find out what we would be building, or to see how badly mine compared to everyone else's! After all, I'm a software engineer, and we have all sorts of mechanical and electrical engineers that can build any kind of contraption you can think of! Luckily they let us form into teams - ideally we'd have one of each type of engineer on a team to be able to tackle any sort of problem, but instead I joined a team with 2 other software engineers. We were determined to show up the other engineers!

Here are the basic rules we had for the competition:

• Our challenge was to build a wind powered vehicle that would transport a small plastic duck along a set course
• The vehicle could consist only of materials purchased at Wal-mart with a supplied $20 gift card
• Nothing can be donated to (or by) the team
• The vehicle must be wind-propelled (there were 3 fans along the course to power the vehicle - as shown below)
• No part of the vehicle may be left behind (i.e. no launching the duck)

The Course

At first our designs were WAY too complicated. We were going to do some sort of tricycle-sailboat-thing with the front axle attached to the sails which would turn the vehicle in whatever direction the wind was blowing. Then we remembered we only had a week to build, test, and compete so we turned to a more simplistic idea - what if we could put the duck inside some sort of ball? Then we'd just have to make sure it was big enough to catch the wind, and light enough to move really fast!

Here's what we made:

Meet pac-man

The duck fits right into his mouth for safe-keeping!

We wanted to do a bigger ball with lighter styrofoam, but when we looked online we found that a styrofoam ball around 12" to be about $65! So we had to go with this denser (but cheaper) nerf foam.

There were 10 different teams that competed in the challenge. I have video of all of the runs (each team was allowed 2 runs), but it was too messy to put them all up here. Instead I have the TOP 5 Building Competition Runs over at my TOP 5 blog if you are interested in checking them out. For now I'll show you our best run (we ended up taking 2nd place - we lost by 0.2 seconds) and the winning run. Sorry for the bad quality!

My Team - 2nd Place

1st Place run

Ironically the winners had a design that was actually pretty close to our original tricycle-sailboat idea; just without the movable axle. Unfortunately, in competitive times like these, there are no prizes for 2nd place, but we're already looking forward to next year's building competition to try for the coveted 1st place spot.

Three-Way? Yes Please!

No matter where you are in the world, there is always some new kind of food that you have never tried, or a food that is exclusive to the area you live. While I was in Cincinnati on an LDS mission, aside from people eating roadkill and squirrels, they ate spaghetti topped with Chili. And they called it a two-way. Want to add cheese? Ask for a three-way. More toppings? Four- or five-way and so on from there.

The other day I made a batch of some homemade chili and was thinking about what I could make with it when I remembered the Cincinnati-style meal. Here's my creation:

A six-way with chili, cheese, fresh tomatoes, salsa, and sour cream

Next time you're looking for a simple meal, but not the same-old red-sauce spaghetti, suggest a 3-way to your significant other and see what they have to say!