April 29, 2009

Doesn't she look cute! Mother and Daughter! (and tree!) The tree has started sprouting buds and leaves. Sadly, it doesn't know what is coming it's way in a few months. 120 degrees

Baby!!!!!!!

Mid to Late January

Late February, maybe early March


March 29, 2009 (She looks bigger than this picture shows)

Just this last week Laura had someone ask her about being pregnant form someone that she hadn't told she was pregnant. We take this to mean that she officially looks very pregnant. Several people have mentioned how small Laura is for being less than 3 months away from the due date. I think Laura feels plenty big. The baby is doing great and is kicking a lot. We have had several belly rumblers as we were both watching.

We are in the middle of a debate on what we should name her. The top choices are as follows
1. Jane Ivy Foster
2. Lilia (Margaret or Helen) Foster - Maybe Lilya
3. Lucy Ann Foster
4. Ashley Naomi Foster

It is really between the top two but 3 and 4 are names we were discussing earlier on. Any input?

The Greatest Comeback I have ever seen

Dad, Mom, Laura and I all went down to Tuscon yesterday to go to an Arizona basketball game with Carson. Little did we know (and apparently Carson didn't know either) we had tickets on the floor. We're talking about the sideline was 2 ft in front of us. Whenever the players passed the ball in we were staring into their backside. (of their knees!) It wasn't actually that great of a game until the last 4 or 5 minutes and even then not that great until the last 52 seconds. They were losing by 10 or so for the entire second half and then they began pressing Houston. Houston went cold and we started hitting some threes, but we still found ourselves down by 9 with 52 seconds left. Half of the the crowd got up and left during the time out. I will try and recount what happened next.

I just tried to do it but I have no idea how it happened. It doesn't seem possible. I know that there were at least 3 missed free throws from Houston and turnover on an inbound pass and 3 threes and a turn around jumper by Jordan Hill for Arizona. The point is with about 15 seconds left Arizona was losing by 3 and Lewis (Houston's best player) was shooting two. He missed both and Nic Wise for Arizona came down and hit a three. Literally 15 ft from where we were sitting. That just sent the game into overtime and Arizona ended up winning by 6. It was a great game and probably the most fun I have had at a game for a very long time. Thank you Carson and Warren!

Here is a link to a youtube video that runs through the highlights. You can see us sitting on the sidelines during one part of the game. In the second half Houston's second leading scorer was kicked out of the game for stepping on Chase Budingers head. (I don't know if he did it on purpose but I can't figure out how he couldn't have known he was there. Watch the video and you'll see) click on the link and then fast forward (or watch) to 5:28 seconds into the video. If you look at the first red blob that you can see sitting on the floor seats, that is Dad. (and me :)) I stand up right after the guy steps on Budinger's head. Just click on the title of the blog and it will take you to the link.
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IT'S A GIRL!

Laura and I went to the Doctor this week and found out that our little baby is going to be a girl. Not only that but Laura is pretty sure that she has been feeling our little girl kicking the last couple of days. We are really excited and are loving life.

There is some amazing new technology that a computer can take several different ultrasounds and combine them to give you a very real looking picture of your baby. Even better they can give you a fairly accurate picture of what your baby will look like. We decided to do it and these are the pictures we got.





















Isn't she cute? Hey, it's not her fault she has my genes.

Microwave-safe Bowel

Laura was looking up a recipe the other day on allrecipes.com and this is a copy of one of the reviews that she found for peanut brittle that you can make in the microwave.

Everyone loved it and asked for the recipe. My only tip is DO NOT USE A PLASTIC BOWEL to make it with in hte micorwave, not even a micorwave safe bowel. USE A GLASS micorwave safe bowel. I made that mistake and it got so hot it melted a hole in the bottom of the bowel.

So, make sure you never but a plastic bowel in your micorwave!

Christmas and Babies

Laura and I decided that last night's FHE would be get the apartment ready for Christmas night. It turns out that I felt sick as a dog and Laura ended up doing most of the decorating and we are reaping the blessings of Laura's Christmas greatness and cheer. Check out our Christmas tree and our random decorations. (it turns out we don't have a whole lot of room to decorate with so we just had to randomly put things up)


Better than Christmas decorations Laura and I were able to go see our OB/GYN today and had a wonderful experience. We really like him, Dr. Mckernan, and were impressed at his memory of Mark and Liz and of Jeff and Angie. (He delivered Joy and Cal) Without us saying anything to him he walked into the room and looked at me and said are you a student at Midwestern? I said yes. Then he said are you one of the Fosters? Jeff and Mark? I said yes they were my brothers. Isn't Mark in Colorado now? Yes, and Jeff is in his residency. Anyway, after talking a little bit more we realized he didn't have all of the details right but we were still impressed by him.

By far the best experience of the visit was the ultrasound. I had heard about and seen a lot of ultrasounds before and honestly I had thought that they were kind of lame. You could barely see what was going on. It just looked like a blob. But when it was your wife's stomach and your baby that they are looking at it becomes a totally different experience. Not only that but the baby moves! I didn't know that. My wife has a moving baby inside of her stomach and we got to see it today! In fact she/he couldn't stop moving. Not only does he/she move, but has a heartbeat. It was moving so much the technician was having a hard time getting the heartbeat. Neither Laura and I really said anything while we were watching the baby move and listening to the heartbeat but I can honestly say that I was blown away. It was the first time I really felt like a Dad. (It actually feels weird to type those letters with them referring to me) I am going to be a Dad!!!

Here is the first picture of our baby!
According to the ultrasound the baby is 11 weeks and 4 days old which is about a week ahead of what we thought. The due date has been changed to June 19. We still think that our original due date is correct but it doesn't really matter. Laura is officially pregnant.
Even though I am not feeling very good and school has just started, we both feel that life is good, real good!

Rights and Tolerance

This is going to have to be shorter than I would like it to be but Laura and I have been thinking and talking about this a lot lately and I thought I would share a few of our thoughts and a good article that will make you think about it. As I am sure most of you know California, Florida, and Arizona all have propositions to constitutionalize marriage as being between a man and a woman. The church is strongly supporting these propositions and has laid out their reasoning clearly on lds.org.

One of the many issues that has been brought up is that defining marriage more liberally as between any two people will clash with the freedoms of churches and parents. That is what the article I have linked to this blog is talking about. (Click on the Title and you will go to the article) It's really a very interesting topic that forces one to re-evaluate freedom and what it means.

Laura and I watched a little clip of an interview with Elder Bednar where he talked about the issue. One of the main points he made was that tolerance has to be a two way street and it seems often times people want it to be a one way street. The Gay-rights movement is fighting very hard to have equal rights, but they seem to look past the fact that their fight for rights is tromping on the rights of religions to believe and practice as they would like. But that is the big question whose rights should be protected?

I am sure that after reading the article some of you thought that the Catholic church having to pull their adoption services out of Massachuset because they wouldn't place babies with homosexual couples, or a woman being sued because she wasn't willing to photograph a gay-couples wedding, sounds pretty ridiculous. Now think about similar issues but now imagine them being about race, or gender (women's rights). What if a woman today chose not to photograph a black couples wedding, or if the Catholic church refused to place children in African-American homes? I think our first reaction would be to say "but that's different," and I think that they are but the issues are similar. When should a church have the right to prevent someone from joining, or when should a photographer be able to chose who they photograph? The line is not black and white and I am afraid we are going to just keeping moving closer and closer to everyone and everything having legal rights to anything that they want. "I was treated unfairly, I should be able to sue, or the government should force them to let me do what I want" will become the way we think as Americans. I don't know what the solution is, but I what I do know is that not everyone can be satisfied. It seems to me that we should protect the rights of the largest amount of people that we can. In this case, those of us who believe that marriage is between a man and woman and cannot be anything else. This is why America is so great, in a few days there will be a vote and the majority will have their way!

Our Story

Enjoy the story of our life so far. The apartment at the beginning is the apartment we lived in in Provo, not our apartment in Glendale.

Way up in the Gore Mountain Range Part 2

If you had not had a chance to read my previous post go ahead and do that before you read this one. If you don't have time to read the last one and this one I will sum up the first day of our trip in one sentence. We hiked through some beautiful meadows, passed some awesome waterfalls, and found a nice place to camp.

DAY 2

I woke up at 7:00 am knowing that unless I got a fire going Laura would not want to get up. So I got up and with one match was able to get a blazing fire going by the time Laura got up at 7:45. Our thermometer said that it was 49 degrees when Laura got up and I thought that it was significantly warmer than when I got up so I am thinking we were in the 30 degrees over the night. Regardless we both stayed fairly warm and got a decent nights rest. This is what it looked like in the morning.
This is just east of where we slept
We had a delicious mug of oatmeal to start the day and then we were off hiking by 9:00am. We knew we had about 3 miles to the top of the pass but we were not ready for how beautiful of a hike it was going to be.This view was constantly to our left as we rounded around this valley. It was huge. I think it was probably a mile to a mile and half wide.

We crossed about 20 other streams just like this one that were running down into the valley. It was all run off from the melting snow. We had a couple of close calls but we didn't take any spills into the creeks.


After we went through about a mile and half of going through trees and little breaks into beautiful mountain meadows we started breaking out of the trees above tree line. We are at about 11,500 ft here.
You can see Eccles pass in the upper left hand corner of the
picture. It was spectacular when we got above the tree line.
















We ran into two crystal clear mountain lakes. Behind the lake on the left you can see Red Buffalo Pass. That trails runs down into Vail. Behind the lake on the right you can see Eccles pass. This trails runs down into Frisco.




This is what it looked like from the top of the pass. This is the path we took to get to the pass. This was the most spectacular part of the hike.


This is looking down the other side of the pass. We could hear a waterfall but we couldn't see it very well until we got down a little further but then we saw...
This picture doesn't do it justice. We were probably a mile away from this on the other side of the valley and it looked gorgeous.
We walked through this meadow for a mile or two. It was hot but it was pretty awesome.


This is where our pictures start thinning out a little bit. We were getting tired but we also wanted to get as far as possible before stopping for the night. We ended up going for another 4 or 5 miles and decided to stop at a less than ideal location, but it had a nice rock to sit on and enjoy the afternoon.
We sat out on this rock for almost two hours. We pumped water (tried to), whittled our sticks, boiled water, talked about life, and enjoyed the day.

By four o'clock Laura got up to go to the bathroom and while she was gone I found a tick crawling up my leg. Laura came back and said that she had also found two ticks on her. We were already dreading all of the mosquitoes that night and the next morning. (There already were a lot and it was the middle of the day) We decided to pack up camp and hike about a mile to the a lake that would provide a better place to camp.


They didn't call it Lily Pad lake for nothing. We decided that we didn't want to drink this water, so we moved decided to hike another mile to the next creek up the trail. By this time it is about 5:00 pm and we are getting real tired of hiking.

We don't have many more pictures of the day because we weren't in the picture taking mood. We got to where we thought the next creek should be and couldn't find a good place to stay. Laura mentioned that she thought there was a campground at the end of the trail which was probably another mile or so up. I looked at the map and sure enough there was a triangle at the end of the trail. So we decided to hike there.

Laura started talking to me about Turkish food and how great it was and somehow we got onto the wrong trail. We quickly realized that the trail had changed and that we were going up hill when we should be going down. We only got about 1/4 or 1/3 of a mile off track but that seem like a really long time when you are getting as tired as we were. We got back on the trail and headed to the campground. By this time our feet and legs were numb and so it didn't hurt too bad to hike.

We got to the end of the trail and started looking for the campground but we couldn't find it. I looked again at the map and the little triangle didn't mean campground it meant trailhead. It is about 6:30 by this time and we are both really tired of hiking. I am thinking that we have done about 9 or 10 miles to this point. Now we are surrounded by cabins and roads and we have no campground to stay at and our car is still 2 and half miles away. I was very impressed with Laura and her composure at this point. I was getting frustrated but she remain calm and just said "well, let's hike to the car." She also had the idea of leaving our packs up in the trees and then driving back to get them with the car. I thought this was a great idea so we hike up into the trees and hid our packs. I found the keys to the car in my pack and was getting ready to go when I realized that it was probably going to rain before we got back and so I decided to cover our packs with some garbage backs that we brought.This is the last picture we took as I was putting the garbage bags on the packs. You can't see it here but I put the keys down on the ground as I put the bags on.

Laura and I were feeling light on our feet as we got on the road and started walking towards our car. We asked a few people how to get back to the trailhead where our car was. (We even talked to a bus driver that was very disgruntled and told us that the trailhead had been shut down and they weren't letting anyone up there since midnight last night. We still don't know what he was talking about) The last quarter of a mile before the car Laura got very light on her feet and was happier than I had seen her the whole trip. We were both talking about going to Pizza Hut and drinking lots of water and eating a ton of pizza. The car was a glorious sight. Lonny had never looked so good. We get to the car and I reach down into my pocket to get the keys and I didn't't feel anything. I reach into the next pocket and didn't feel anything there also. Laura noticed what I was doing and had sudden break down of emotion. I couldn't tell if she was laughing, crying or cursing. On cue the rain clouds opened up and it began raining. This was a terrible feeling.

We decided that we were going hitch hike back up to our packs and try and hitch hike back down. Luckily, we had passed two women on a walk earlier and we re-passed them as we were walking back. They were very kind gave us a ride back to the packs and then back to our car.

We went to Wendy's had a junior bacon cheeseburger and a frosty and then we headed home. We were a little disappointed that we didn't camp out the second night. (but not that disappointed) Overall, it was very fun.

Way up in the Gore Mountain Range

Drew, Kristin, Laura, and I have been planning to go on a backpacking trip since the beginning of the summer. We were meant to go last week the 23-25 but due to Kristin's bad cough and to the fact that Laura and I both got a temp job for those two days we decided to postpone until this week to go, but without Drew and Kristin. :(

We decide to hike a loop that would go up and over Eccles Pass. It is the mountain that is directly north of Frisco, CO. We were planning on hiking 5-6 miles each day and go for 2 nights and 3 days. It didn't quite work out that way.

Day 1

This is Laura's first backpacking trip. Doesn't she look great like a true mountain woman!

The trail started out nice and flat through a forest with a ton of trees that were dead, dying, or fallen over.

We crossed this creek or other smaller creeks about 30 times and only a few of them had bridges. There were a couple of close calls for both of us but we ended up getting through the whole trip dry!


We hiked through some gorgeous mountain meadows with beautiful flowers of all shapes and colors. The picture of the flowers does not do justice to how beautiful they were.

We had heard that there were going to be some waterfalls along the trail but we had no idea that they were going to be as cool as they were. We could hear them from the trail so we trekked about 50 yards off to the side and we found...
Can you find Laura in the above picture?
There were several other waterfalls that we didn't get very good pictures of. They were awesome. Much bigger and loader than these pictures make them look.

We continued on for another 2 miles or so and found a nice camping spot. We were only 100 feet or so from the creek and there was a ton of firewood all around. It was a really nice place to stay.

This is taking longer than I thought so return tomorrow for the even more exciting Day 2 of our backpacking trip...

Random thoughts blog

I have a few minutes so I am going to post a few random thoughts that I have been having.

1. I only have a few more weeks left in Provo. My missionaries were moved to a different room in the MTC last week. We are on the 5th floor and from the windows you can see all around the city of Provo. It is a beautiful place! I am going to miss it.

2.I am really excited for General Conference. I have felt a lack of direction for what I want to focus on for the next couple of months. It feels like I am sitting around waiting for Med-School to start. Which I guess is exactly what I am doing. I am excited to hear what we need to focus on as church and as individuals.

3. The economy of our country amazes me. I am taking Econ 110 this semester and I learning a lot. I am not sure how good I am going to do on the final but I didn't take it for the grade. I just wanted to learn basic economics. If there is one thing I have learned while taking it, it is this, no one really knows what is going on. There are trends and statistical likelihoods, but no real facts. We seem to blame people a lot for what is going on in our economy. We blame people for controlling to much or we blame people for not controlling enough. From what I now understand, which is admittedly very little, our economy is so huge, well over 13 or 14 trillion dollars, no one really knows what is going on. To me its kind of like a puppy growing into a dog. Sure, when you first get it he was cute and fun to play with, but then he gets bigger and bigger until you can't control him any more you can try and fence your garden, or train him to go in your yard, or not rip off your windows, or not tear apart you porch but really he is going to do what he wants when he wants. That was the first analogy that came to mind. Sorry.

4. I am married to a beautiful woman that is smarter than me, funnier than me, more spiritual than me, a better cook than me, etc... I am a happy man and life is good!

Machu Stinking Picchu

Laura and I are going there this summer. It's going to be awesome. More details to come!!!!!

THE BIG DAY

Thanks to a few mean comments on how I have not posted anything in a long time I have decided to post something about the wedding day. Thanks Kristen!!



This is how I felt all day! It was great because we didn't have to do anything except smile a lot and talk to people. Thank you to all that helped!



This is us coming out of the temple. I don't think anyone saw this but about 15 seconds before this picture was taken something really funny happened. Laura and I had just started to confidently and joyfully walk out of temple because we were just married. As the inner doors of the temple were opening and we were getting ready to face the many people waiting for us, Laura tripped on her dress and almost did a face plant in the foyer of the temple. We thought everyone saw but no one said anything so we assumed no one knew.



This is us taking pictures behind the temple and I thought I looked pretty cool!!



This is my favorite picture from the reception. Joy is so good at getting down and getting jiggy! I love the concentration that is on her face. This is a woman that knows how to groove!



This is my beautiful wife. I thought she was beautiful on our wedding day but amazingly she continues to become more and more beautiful to me. I have no idea why she said yes, but now she is stuck and cannot go back. I love her!

Laura is up and running

Hey everybody, Laura has a new post up!!!!! Checked it out. You might have a few good belly laughs!!!! Just click on the title of this post and you will be connected.

Me in a Nutshell

8 jobs I have had
1. My first job was for the YMCA. I was 15 and I was field manager. I sat at the baseball field for four hours and made sure I gave necessary notes to the different coaches. I slept most of the time. This job didn't last long. I forgot to tell my boss that I went on a trip and so I missed a few shifts. Once I found out that I had missed shifts I never went back. I am not proud of it but that is what happened.

2. Juice man at Jamba juice. I have worked here on three different occasions. Once before my Junior year of High School. The second time was when I was living in Provo right after my mission. The third time was the following summer.

3. Daycare supervisor. I loved this job. I played with kids all day. We went on field trips to the pool, the zoo, and other fun places. However, I was always really tired after I was done. I don't know how Mom does it.

4. Mail opener. I received, opened and sorted lots of mail for the Dish Network. The most memorable part of this job was working with a really weird guy named Kevin. He had quite the history and if 1/4 of it was true he would have lived quite the life. ex-he owned over a million dollars worth of toys that he kept in his basement.

5. I was the official cantaloupe cutter at the Cannon center. The only cool thing about this job was the machine that was designed to cut the rind off. I hurt my knee after working here for about a month and I couldn't work anymore.

6. I worked at the Malt Shoppe at the same time as I worked at Jamba Juice after getting home from my mission. I hated it. I swore that I would never work in the food industry again. Although I became the face of the Malt Shoppe because I always worked the register.

7. After my second surgery, while I was recovering, I worked at the same plastic factory as Drew and Kristen. Very boring!!! This was only for a few weeks.

8. I have been working at the MTC teaching Japanese for almost 3 years now. I love the missionaries and the daily dosage of the spirit that comes along with the job.

Places I have lived
1. Jefferson City, MO (birth-6 years)
2. Littleton, CO (6years-19years)
3. Provo, UT (19, and 21-25years)
4. In and around Hiroshima Japan (19-21years)

Favorite foods
1. Barbeque Pork steaks with fried Potatoes
2. Little Bread Things
3. Mom's meatballs (Come to my wedding reception because we will have plenty)
4. Poullet de Normandy
5. Okonomiyaki (This can only be found in Japan. A cabbage pancake)

Top Five movies
1. Life is Beautiful
2. Contact
3. Miracle
4. Hoosiers
5. Karate Kid

Top Five shows
1. Lost
2. 24
3. Seinfield
4. March Madness
5. College Football national championship (USC vs. TEXAS)

Four weird things about me
1. I randomly start choking while I am eating. I have yet to find a pattern to this phenomenon. However, I can now recgonize when it is coming on so I just stop eating until it passes. For the longest time I have thought this was due to scar tissue built up in my esophagus because of a previous injury (abrazed esophogus). I do not believe this anymore. Drew is a witness to this.

2. I have been in one official fight and I lost. This was in first grade and I have never fought again.

3. I hate wearing sandals. This is a big difference between me and Laura. The woman will wear flip-flops in below freezing weather. I don't know why but my feet need to feel protected.

4. I like to feel in charge. If I am in a situation and no one else takes charge I automatically feel like I am the one in charge. Very strange!!

Toughest Foster
1. All Foster women that have given birth
2. Tyler Foster
3. Matt Foster
4. Drew Foster ?- this one is up for grabs. I picked Drew because he runs a lot and experiences more pain than most of us.

I think I choose Ty because I have seen him in action more than Matt. However, when I try to picture Ty and Matt in a cage fight I have a hard time imagining a winner.

Humbled

I have tried on 3 or 4 different occasions to figure out how to get Laura's blog linked to mine. I have failed on all 3 attempts. Why make it so hard? I can't read the stupid HTML stuff. Anyway, the link is www.sunflowerpuppy.blogspot.com. I have failed my future wife on my first attempt to provide. Someone else do it for me. Later

What is my Part?

It is late, or early, and I am getting ready to go to bed but I just felt like writing a blog. Today at about 5 oclock my roomate and myself decided to go help search for Camille Cleverly. We went to a neighborhood just south of Seven Peaks and knocked on some doors and asked the residents if they had seen any strange behavior from their neighbors and if they would search their property for anything out of the ordinary. Most people were very willing and sympathetic to the situation. What a terrible situation? It is getting to the point that one can only start to assume the worst. As I was knocking on doors my mind and heart turned to Camille's mother and what she must be feeling right now. I can not imagine. It got to the point where I felt like we must do anything and everything we can to help her.
However, after about 2 hours of knocking on doors and searching through a suspicious field I found myself battling inside of my head. One part of me felt like "I have done my part, I want to get back to what I was doing." The other half of my brain was asking the deep and profound question, "what exactly is my part here?" Am I done when I am satisfied? Is this over when she is found? Or when the abductor is found and punished? When is my part done? Obviously, there is a limit to what I can add in aiding Camille. Can I or should I ever be satisfied with what I've done? Especially when the problem continues to exist.
When does someone else's problem become mine? There is obviously not a right answer to that question. When is my part done? Or should it ever be done? I don't know. There are so many problems and people that are needy. No one person could possibly take responsibility for all of it. The main issue for most of us would be time and awareness. Often, more than we think, those who need something that we could provide are standing right in front of us and we don't even know it.
I want to solve the world's problems. I want to take suffering away. I want people to laugh instead of cry, I want there to be educated and self motivated individuals in place of demoralized poverty stricken homeless men and women. I wish I could take it all away. What is my part?
I stand in awe of Jesus Christ. He did suffer all the bad and pain the world can dish out. He understands the feelings that of mother with a daughter that is missing. He know the thoughts of the seemingly thoughtless homeless man. He feels the pain of the lonely widow, the devistated mother, the angry man. All of this weighed and continues to weigh on his heart and mind. Why doesn't he stop it? Why not just heal the wounded heart? There must be some kind of purpose behind the suffering. There must be a reason for the crying. I simply just can't understand what it is. But perhaps that is my part. Faith in Jesus Christ. Trust in the His atonement and His teachings. There is a path to freedom from sin. There is an oasis of peace right in the middle of the desert of pain, sin, and heartache. I believe in the promises of Jesus Christ. I believe in the resurrection. I believe in the covenants I have made with him and I believe that He can deliver fully the blessing He has promised. I suppose that is my part, faith in every footstep. What else is there to do?

BYU FOOTBALL

I am getting pumped up for the football season!!!!! I believe that BYU is going to have a great season. I have talked to several people that have told me that we lost to many key players from last year to be really good this year, but I disagree. We are going to have a very tough defense and we have some great returners on offensive. We have got Manase Tonga and Fui Vakapuna in the backfield. We've got Michael Reed, Ausin Collie, and Matt Allen at the receiver postition. I have been reading some really good stuff about Max Hall. He has had a while to get to know our system and I think he can be very productive. Lastly, we've got Bronco Mendenhall running the show as the coach. I have become a huge Bronco fan. Not only because we have been winning but he has done a great job of restoring peoples faith in the football program. (faith that was lost under Crowton) BYU Football is back and we are going to have a fun season. If nothing else I think they are going to be a fun team to watch.

Miss Laura Ann Knight

I know everyone would like to see a picture Laura and I found this one on our ward website. She is great!!!!!!! It is amazing that she would even talk to me with my hair looking like that. She's very forgiving. :)









No, we are not getting married.

A busy few weeks

It is midnight on a Wednesday night and I can't sleep. So I thought would write a blog about a few of the things that I have been up to the last couple of weeks since Iron Springs.

Perhaps the biggest most exicting thing I did was this last weekend. Me and a few friends went hiking down in Moab. What a place!!!!! i have to say that I was very impressed the beauty that can be found in a burning hot desert with very few trees.

We were able to hike up to delicate arch and walk around it. Most of the National Parks I have been to you can only look at the cool things that they have there but at arches you can hike up to them and climb all over them. We actually hiked there in the middle of the night and it was hard to see the surroundings but it was still very impressive.


DELICATE ARCH

My favorite arch out of the few that we saw was definitely double arch. We were there right as the sun was setting and the light was shining through one of the arches and made it quite a spectacular view.


Double arch

In the middle of the afternoon we were all burning up so we decided to go swimming in the river and we found this really cool spot to go cliff jumping. It was a lot of fun and felt very good to cool off a little bit.



All in all it was a very fun trip. Moab was awesome and it was fun to go with some of the people from my ward and have a good time. I can't believe that I have lived in Utah for almost 4 years and I have never taken a trip to Moab before now. I hope I can go back before I am out of here. i also want to try and make it down to Zions. I have heard that it is equally impressive.


Manrichment

I was asked to be in charge of manrichment again this summer and we had a good time. This time around we went for the manliness man competition. There were events like the car pull (power), Shakespeare quotes (the cultured man), wall sit (endurance), the tie tie (finger dexterity), Book of Mormon game (spiritual man), a burping comptetion (I'm not sure what this was testing but it was fun). We had about 15 men show up and I am sad to say that I failed miserably. There were about 8 or 9 men in front of me. Very sad.


This is me trying to hold up a couple of cars for as long as I can. We had a some elder's arms pop right off, but it was all worth the entertainment.

Marriage

I have been surrounded by marriage for the last month and a half. Not only am I living in Provo in a singles ward that has been very successful in cranking out marriages in the last year )I think there have been well over 20 couples get married this year), but three of my four roommates are engaged and in various stages of engagement bliss. In the next 4 weeks I know of 5 couples getting married and they are all good friends of mine. It is a lot of fun but also slightly annoying. I have heard quite a bit of lovy dovy words, I have witness a lot of staring into each others eyes, I have heard a lot of love songs.

All my roommates are good men and have found themselves good women. I wish the best of luck to them.

Missionaries

I have been rehired at the MTC and I love working with missionaries. They can be very frustrating at times, but there is no other place on the earth like the MTC. You have a bunch of 19-21 year old men and women racking their brains to learn dozens of different languages, while trying to learn how to teach the gospel, and all the while becoming very aware of their own personal flaws and weaknesses. And they do it voluntarily. I love them for their faith, sacrifice, and courage. there is no better feeling than watching a 19 year old kid realize that he has it in himself to be blessing in other's lives, to catch on to the fact that he (and usually his family) has something that the rest of the world needs and to watch his attitude morph into the idea that "I will give my whole self to this cause because THEY need it, because Christ wants it." I love the missionaries.


i hope you enjoyed a look into my past couple of weeks. Keep smiling everybody. Life is good!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!