The emblems of our family

Sara was commisioned by her aunt to make a family crest to be presented at the family reunion. I am always so impressed by my little wife's artictic finesse. She spent hours studying heraldry so she could most accurately capture what her family holds near and dear. I'd say she hit it right on the head. Every line and color has a meaning, and anyone who knows her family would agree that nothing was incorrect or left out. The crest was embroidered onto a flag, and hung up in the lodge. Pretty cool.

Sara's Grandma Ranae and Granpa Glen are pretty much the best grandparents around. I owe a large debt of gratitude to Sara's Grandpa. When we were just beginning to date Sara and I were up in Idaho visiting, and when I held the car door open for Sara, Glen came over to her and told her that she ought to keep me around. That same trip I figured out that I most certainly did want to stick around, because I'd be gaining such great grandparents by marrying Sara. I gave them my immediate seal of approval when, even though we didn't get to their house until after 10:00 p.m., Ranae still got out the ice cream. Anyone who gives me ice cream late at night forges an unbreakable bond. Since then, I've been adopted as an honorary grandson, with all rights and priviledges bestowed upon me, including make up time at Grandma's fishing pond during the family reunions. My mom's mom died when I was only 12 and dad's mom passed away about 10 years ago. My grandma gap has been very well filled by Grandma Ranae, and I'll never be able to thank her enough for it. After the kids went to bed, Sara and I spent hours talking to Glen and Ranae at the reunion, and their stories taught me a huge lesson. In the sunset of your life you don't look back on the jobs or the money. Instead, you talk about the car rides with the kids, and the great friends from next door. Grandparents spend reunion time observing their own lives as reflected in the surrounding grandkids and great grandkids. Surely getting married and having kids early was a better choice than getting a head start on the CEO trail. I hope I can be more like my grandparents and enjoy those golden years starting now. Thanks for everything Grandpa and Grandma Glen and Ranae!

My nature's preittier than your nature.

So nature is really pretty, and there sure is a lot of it out there. I grew up in Cache Valley, Utah, where all the locals are 100% convinced that they've homesteaded on the world's best looking land. Now that I've been around the country quite a bit, I've been humbled enough to shun my haughty upbringing. Ends up that there are even prettier places out there! As you can tell from these pictures, one of those places is rural Idaho (rural Idaho represents about 98% of the state). During the annual reunion up at Little Piney I'm always in the thick of actuarial exam study time, so I've gotten into the habit of waking up early and hitting the books before everyone else is around to distract me. During this particular trip, I watched the sun come up over all the trees on the mountainside and it was so pretty I almost wanted to become a perma-camper. I recovered from this mind set quickly when I remembered that I'd have to trade my plumbing and my microwave in order to make this happen. I think a few times a year is enough to fill my nature canteen. Besides, I live in western Washington now, where if you stand still long enough outside you find that there's green slimy nature growing on your skin, so I've got plenty to look at.

Zoe and her cousin/best friend in the whole wide world, Annie, spent a lot of their outdoors time throwing stuff into the river. Sara's uncle Dennis brought a really cool PVC pipe rocket launcher and Zoe couldn't stop launching stuff up into the air. Grandma provided the annual fishing pond (thanks Grandma) and all the kids ate more than their weight of cookies and chips. Add the slide and baseball diamond to the mix, and you've got a great big steaming hot pot of summertime fun. Looking at these pictures make me long for the warm summer sun. Here in Puyallup we haven't seen a sunny day in about two weeks. I guess that's what we signed up for. Hey Mr. Golden Sun, please shine down on me!

Lodge Cooked Sliders

When Summer nights are starting to get a little colder than you want them to be, and the mountain lions start looking for food at lower elevations, its time to go camping in the woods! I'm not really sure you can call the annual family reunion camping, seeing how we stay in the gigantic lodge and eat all sorts of home cooked (lodge cooked) meals. Actually one year we did sleep in a tent during the reunion and it was delightful...when the sun finally came up! Sara's extended family on her mom's side are very rugged and tough outdoorsmen. People on my side of the family are better described as squishy and reclined basement dwellers. If you really think about it though, the latter lifestyle is preferable as mountain lions rarely infest a basement, but if they did, imagine how happy they'd be when they discovered the squishy people reclined down there. Despite our differences, Sara and I both absolutely love the family renion, probably because her family are the nicest folks to ever reunite. Beyond eating, there are other generators of family fun at Little Piney Campground such as the ginormo slide that goes from the lodge all the way down to the swing set and baseball diamond. What is that, like half a mile of pure terror? Those stairs are a new luxory to sliders, we used to have to climb all the way back up the mountain using our bare hands. Zoe thought it was the neatest thing since Elmo met Big Bird. We must have hiked up those stairs 20 times, that comes to 10 total miles. A few years back, on my first time down the chute of death, I made the horrible error of putting my shod feet out. The rubber on my shoes stopped, but I kept going...over the slide side and down the hill. Like the true man I am, I walked it off. Since then I know, as taught by Sara's 6-year-old cousins, that one must use the supplied carpet samples when sliding and keep the feet safely tucked away.

Sound advice found in a Heber City burger joint.

The Housing Battle in Seattle

Have any of you ever had only two days in a foreign state to find a suitable dwelling? Its not a whole lot of fun because in the back of your mind you wonder if the best thing you'll be able to find is that nasty basement rental on Beacon Hill with the spider-infested bathroom and the police on speed dial. We had spent hours and hours on the internet before our trip making appointments with would-be landlords to check out their offerings. It ends up that this is not the best way to find a dwelling because internet ads are often less than truthful. Some cyber landlords were very confident that we'd like their properties, so much so that they offered us the keys to the house sight unseen as soon as the deposit money and first month's rent was wired to their off-shore accounts. We didn't take the bait.

The first day in hot pursuit of a Seattle domicile was just awful. We must have been through over ten houses, each of them scarier than the ones before them. My personal favorite among the blighted was the upstairs floor offered to us by Eric the Red. He actually said to us, "I hope you guys don't have any pets because there's been raccoons eattin' cats 'round here." His only redeeming quality was his skills in math, which he displayed by dividing the utility bills into fourths, "That's one fourth for me and one fourth for the three of you". I guess the raccoons aren't willing to pay their share, even though Zoe is (or should be). Needless to say, we were very unhappy in the hotel that night.

Everything turned around the next day when we met up with a real estate agent reference from the guy that helped Nathen and Jennifer find their house. Within one day she'd found us a cute little brand new yellow house to rent up in Lynnwood. I guess sometimes you have to turn to the professionals. Thanks to her help, we were able to do a little bit of site seeing that last day in Seattle, and we snapped a few vintage Space Needle tourist pictures. This was before it had been dubbed the Space Noodle by our creative little daughter. On the other side of the monorail line we found my new work building. She's the taller one on the right. Surely we'll have a better picture for you in the future. The cylinder towers across the street from my office are the Westin hotel. Sometimes the less private hotel goers give my coworkers and I quite the show as we go to the printers and back. Strange how only the unattractive get dressed on their balconies.

Fishing with Nathen

Our brother-in-law Nathen is a super outdoor woodsman sort of guy. If there were ever a freshly eaten grandmother in the forest somewhere, he'd be the kinda guy that wouldn't even think twice before volunteering to cut her out of the big bad wolf. Back in August he invited us to go "up the canyon" with him to do some fishing. For those of you who didn't grow up in a mountainous region, "going up the canyon" is a local term, which loosely interpreted means to pile into a truck, go on a two hour drive through windy rock-ridden roads, and get really dirty and sweaty. The Nathen fishing trip was no exception. I learned that going up the canyon with your wife is a lot more fun than it ever was with the Boy Scouts. Here's why:Sara is a closet camper. There's no way she'll agree with me, but I think she really likes to go out of doors and enjoy the wilderness, regardless of her frequent tirades to the contrary. If it weren't for the dirt, wild animals, lack of toilet paper, and e-coli, I think she'd be a mountain man woman. Observe the picture above. That's not an "eeeew" face, it's an "I'm so proud of myself" face. In the middle of a long silent spell during our drive to the lake Sara exclaimed, "Are we there yet, I really want to kill a fish". This is the girl I married. Here's a picture of what Nathen did the entire time we were extracting fish from the lake. None of us were any good at tying the line, casting, hook removal, or sharing, so he ended up spending all three hours going from one hopeless fishing novice to the next fixing our mistakes. The less queasy among us (me) even got a fish gutting lesson from Nathen, which ended up being really cool. I had no idea that fish came pre-equipped with handles for facilitating disembowelment. Nathen's a great guy. I wonder why he hasn't invited us back to the lake? It probably has something to do with our moving to Seattle.
We each succeeded in fish catching at least once. The one I got was a funky looking albino freak, so I was forced to return it to the white demons that spawned it. Nathen instructed me to throw it back, which I did by way of a very manly overhanded football pitch. I was then ridiculed by my family members for not knowing that "throw it back" is fishing lingo for "gently release into the water". I'm not sorry for the maltreatment of the albino mutant, he was probably one of those weird roller-coaster loving fish anyway and I provided for him the thrill of his aquatic life. That's the kind of nature lover that I am.

Bridging the Transcontinental Gap

I've got a few more pictures of the Golden Spike National Monument in my holster so I figured I'd pull 'em out, and throw them into the massive sea of internet imagery. This is Sara and the Zoe and I in front of one of the cool new old trains. One of these days I'll find myself at the monument again when they actually fire one of these babies up and move it up and down the track. I remember that being really cool when I saw it as a Boy Scout.

This first picture here is Zoe and I in front of the original plaque that was put up in 1943 before all the visitor centerage and replicary was installed. I really like how the plaque says it was at this spot that the country was bound together by iron rail. That's pretty cool. Not to ruin the magic, but like I previewed in the prior posting, even though the driving of the golden spike marked the ending of the rail line from Omaha, Nebraska to San Francisco. There was no railroad bridge over the Missouri river until March of 1873. Until then, transcontinental passengers had to hop off the train in Council Bluffs, Iowa, cross the river by boat, and board a new train in Omaha. In 1939 a 56 foot upside down golden spike replica was installed at the 0.0 milepost of the original transcontinental railroad in Council Bluffs. Curse us for not stopping to get a picture with it when we traveled through that area a bazillion times back in the Wisconsin to Utah driving days (I done stole this picture from the world wide web). That's a really cool giant upside down spike.

Like all other Utahns with a speck of class, I was relieved when it was announced that the "Crossroads of the West" design was successfully voted upon as the Utah state quarter. That's waaaaaay better than that dorky snowboard one. What was the motto that went with that one? Something like "Utah: Old Conservatives Trying to Be Extreme". I didn't hate the beehive one though, mostly because I really like honey. Did you hear that the US Mint is starting to put National Parks on the backs of the quarters now? That'll be sort of fun. I think the reasoning behind this is that its the only way that the government can force we spend-happy Americans to actually save money. Honestly, how many of us have a stash of state quarters in our top drawers worth a total of $12.50? I do, and I'm proud of it.

It'll Be a Girl!

This is a picture of our new little baby, which is still just a small 10 ounce Sara spawn. As you can see from the profile of the face, it will be a female child. The long hair and lip stick gives it away. I guess this gives me the medieval right to lock my wife in the Tower of London and lop her head off. I won't do that though because I'm actually excited that we'll be having a Zoe version 2.0, we know how little girls work, and the potty training phase involves a lot less wall cleaning. I really didn't want to sew all those patches on his Boy Scout sash anyway. Sara seems convinced that I would prefer a boy, but I honestly don't mind. Holding your own little baby is a miraculous little thing no matter what color the blanket is. Our little family is growing just the way I always wanted it to...and so is Sara. The ETA for this little tyke is October 17th, right after pension plan tax season, perfect timing. Wahoo for us!!

Some women are drippin' with diamonds
Some women are drippin' with pearls
But golly gee, look at me, look at what I'm drippin' with
Little girls.

The Ultimate Demise of the Golden Spike

I'm not really sure if it can be considered torture to drag your child out into the desert and force history upon her, but Sara and I are guilty as charged. I consider it recourse for the horrible things that my father subjected me to during my youth. While the rest of my friends were spending their summers lying about like slugs playing Street Fighter II, I was being paraded through semi-local museums and historical sites learning stuff. Its a wonder I survived. I suppose it was good for me though because now I'm very good at not throwing up in cars, and I know a lot about sagebrush. And speaking of artemisia tridentata, there is an awful lot of it at America's most famous square inch, the site where the Golden Spike was laid to complete the transcontinental railroad. Well...technically it didn't complete the railroad, but more on that later. (Ay! What a cliffhanger!)
We're just not fit to be tied (pun intended), so we took the drive up to the northern coast of the Great Salt Lake to see the spike and learn about trainage of the mid 1800s, once again. My hometown is only like an hour away from Promontory Summit, and I remember going out there every summer to do scout service projects and it was absolutely horrible. I think I'm still sweating and sun burnt from those service projects. But it also taught me to be all respectful about the gigantic effort put forth by my forefathers to tame the wild west. Here's me between the trains sitting at the alleged spot where one of the four tycoons who funded the railroad, ex-California governor Leland Stanford, wopped the ceremonial golden spike into the ceremonial polished laurel tie using his ceremonial silver hammer and his ceremonial tycoon muscles. This is Zoe and I in front of an original replica of the golden spike. Immediately after the ceremonial wopping by Leland Stanford, the golden spike was yanked out and replaced by a regular old iron one. The golden spike was donated to the Stanford Museum in Stanford, California. Hmmm...I wonder why it ended up there. Someday I'll go see that spike. Mark my words. Unfortunately I won't be able to see the polished tie the spike was wopped into because it was burnt in the fires from the 1906 San Fransisco Earthquake. So what is there to see at Promontory Summit? The golden spike is gone, the last tie's gone, the trains are replicas...there's the track, right? Nope. The actual track that was built through the area was dug up in 1942 and used as war materials. I'm glad there are people out there that make replicas of things like this so I can at least pretend to be witnessing history. Even though all the relics are gone, the site's still there, and I bet nobody ever completed a transcontinental railroad in your homestate! Neener neener.

The Great Ski Jumping Conspiracy

A successful ski jump has never actually been performed by mankind. The jumps you see on TV during the Olympics are actually done by spandex clad actors in front of blue screens. My proof of this is that those ski jumps are crazy tall. I refuse to believe that beautiful people slide down those things on flat sticks, do back flips, and land safely on the ground. Did you know that the green padded part the skiers land on (right behind me) is made up of thousands of tiny blades of 3 inch synthetic grass? Its like astro turf...to the EXTREME!!! And speaking of awesomeness, when we got to the ski jumps they were blasting the song "Freewill" by Rush, and I decided its the best ski jumping song ever. I dare anyone to think of a better one.

How awesome is it that they have a set of slides at the bottom of the jump for the little kids to begin ski jump training while watching their older siblings fly down the hill. If the kids are really lucky they'll be able to witness the life flight helicopter come in to take big brother for an exciting ride. Its great to watch Annie and Zoe play together on the slides. Have any of you other parents noticed that playgrounds have evolved into death traps for toddlers? Honestly, the safety upgrades in every other kid-related item in the world is inversely proportional to those of the modern playground. I don't mean to sound like a curmudgeon here, I loved every sliver I got playing at the Big Toy at Hillcrest Elementary School, but wow, the playgrounds we've taken Zoe to lately are like American Gladiator obstacle courses minus the padding and the giant Q-tips. I guess the next generation will be a very tough bunch.

Wouldn't that be W'ummer?

Does this sunny scene make any of you Amazing Race enthusiasts reminisce the bygone days of Season 8? "No, Kason, it doesn't because that Season was lousy with a capital Crap". Hey, I didn't think it was that bad, I kinda liked the whole family thing. The problem is that Season 8 is not of the same species as its sister seasons. Its like the Race's girlfriend's roomate, its hard to look away from her, but you know you must because it's just wrong to get involved. But Season 8 does include the Race's stupidest thing ever said, which spewed forth from the Weaver mom's big mouth as they crossed lake Pontchartrain, "This is one of the Great Lakes". Oye. Some people shouldn't be allowed outside of their living rooms.

Wow, that was a long tangent. A long and very important tangent. Anyhow, so check out how cool this action is. These crazy downhill wooden plank sliders continue practicing their extreme trade in the summer by flying into these swimming pools. We watched quite a few of them do it, and it was awesome. Just before the skier hits the water a whole load of bubbles come up to cushion his or her fall. Regular Kasons like myself can give it a try if they're willing to pay a bunch, which I am not. Its definitely worth the trip up there just to watch these guys fly into the water. How cool would it be to tell your friends back in High School that you planned to spend the weekend ski jumping into a swimming pool. Maybe we should get Zoe involved with aquatic skiing so she can be the BWOC, as you can tell from this picture, she is brimming with interest.

It's S'winter at Park City

We decided that we weren't going to spend our Utah time between jobs lounging about on my in-laws' couch watching TV and eating caramel popcorn. At least not everyday. The convictions of our youth were reconfirmed as we toured the state and discovered that even though it's almost completely covered in nasty desert, Utah's actually a pretty happenin' place. I was out being a missionary in the Dominican Republic when the world came to Utah for the Winter Olympics in 2002, and my friends and family tell me I missed out on a lot of cool stuff. Fortunately, a lot of the coolness is still lingering around at Park City, so we took a little drive through Parley's Canyon to check out the sites. We dragged Sara's sister Jennifer and our adorable little niece Annie along for the ride. One thing I love about Jennifer, Nathen and Annie, is that they are always willing to go out and do stuff with us, like meeting sticker-clad albino bisons. We're still not sure if we were allowed to get inside the bobsled at the Winter Olympics Museum. Judging by the stares we're getting from our fellow tourists behind us, we may have just broken some official Olympics rules and will likely be disqualified from all future commemorative sliding events. Not surprisingly, there weren't a whole lot of people at the museum on a week day afternoon because all the people that love winter sports enough to visit a winter sporting museum are too busy working so they can afford to participate in winter sports. I noticed that there were no exhibits in the museum dedicated to the winter event I'm best at: slipping on the ice while getting out of my car. I got two gold medals and a bronze behind in this event every year while living in Milwaukee. It's the poor man's winter sport.