Thanksgiving Point

This week we had some of Leslie's family to visit. Laurie and Jason and Lena and Boyd and their kids came to spend some time (they didn't all stay here at the house). Grandma Lil took the kids to the Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point.

All the kids had a really good time checking out all the dinosaur bones. I hadn't ever been before, it really was pretty impressive. The kids really have a good time when any of their cousins come to visit. The three kids with Addison are Laurie and Jason's kids, Macey, Cache, and Laney.

New Jersey

I just got home from New Jersey today. I flew all the way out there to find out the customer wasn't really ready for me despite his communication on Friday last week that he would be. He wasn't even there. They told me he'd be gone all week for training. Oh well, it's just a 5 hour flight. Wasn't a complete waste though. Erman and Jessica were just 10 minutes down the road so I had lunch with Erman (philly cheese steak of course) and dinner at PF Chang's with the whole Ivans clan. It was pretty funny. I was able to talk Erman into letting me pay some of the bill. It didn't seem right not to expense some of it. He had a gift card but didn't know how much was on it. We told the waitress to apply the gift card and then split the bill. When she brought our receipts back we each owed $4.84. The waitress must have thought we were nuts. We went back to the house for some Guitar Hero and Wii bowling and golf. I'll chalk that up as one of the best nights I've ever spent in New Jersey, even though Landon and Isaac kicked my butt in Golf. Wish they were closer.

Taggage

Leslie has been tagged by Erman and I was tagged by Kaitlin so here you go...

Six Random Facts - - Leslie Urmston

1. I love it when I successfully make my husband laugh. (because I said something funny, not when he laughs when I'm trying to be serious.)

2. When I was in grade school we spent Saturdays dumpster diving behind the mall in hopes of finding new shoes. Best find: new winter coat.

3. We once received homemade underwear from Mom for Christmas.

4. My Brother Lane and I once smoked a full pack of cigarettes we found in the ranch hands pickup truck.

5. The first guy I ever kissed was my husband. (it was before our wedding day but not on the first date)

6. I have CRS!


Six Random Facts -- Matthew Urmston

1. I have major personal space issues.

2. When I get on a plane the first thing I do is put on my headphones so the person sitting next to me is less likely to speak to me.

3. I really don't like computer's.

4. The first girl I ever kissed was not my wife.

5. I have a brother who once went a whole year without watching T.V.

6. One of my favorite things to do is sit and watch people. I have found the Airport and the Mall prime locations for this activity.

My Worst Nightmare.....

Well my worst nightmare has been realized. In the world of sports there are few that I don't enjoy. I'll watch just about anything, poker matches, ping pong, billiards, cricket, horse races, I've even found myself enjoying a good lawn bowling match. There are those that I don't enjoy, NASCAR, (I apologise, I know there are thousands of hillbillies and rednecks who love it, I'm sure it's great but I just can't watch), chess tournaments, that gymnastics event where the ladies run around twirling those ribbons, Curling, and GIRLS HIGH SCHOOL BASKETBALL. As many of you know, my daughter Kaitlin, made the 9th grade team. When she told me she was going to try out, I encouraged her, she'd never played organized basketball and I figured there was no way she'd make the team. Well she made the team and then I thought I was really in trouble, because I'd have go to all the games to support her while she sat on the bench. I don't think there is enough caffeine in the world to keep me awake. Well Cooper and I headed over to the first game. When we walked into the gym my eyes first when to the bench so I could give the accustomed head nod to Kaitlin to let her know I was there. She wasn't on the bench. Honestly my first thought was "Where is she?" It didn't even cross my mind that she would be on the court. We sat down in the bleachers and much to my surprise Kaitlin was out on the floor. She played to whole game and for the life of me I couldn't figure it out. Turns out that there was a big polynesian girl that nobody else on the team was able or willing to guard the whole game. Coach decided to try Kaitlin and never took her out. They lost the game by 20 points. Kaitlin made 3 out of 4 free throws and each one was waved off because she shot jump shots and crossed the free throw line. After the game I thought "we need to to go over to the church and work on some of this stuff" but we never made (that is one well used building). I just told Kait "you figure out how to make your free throws and every time you get the ball just take it right at them and you'll get fouled every time." Cooper and I headed over to the next game this week and this time Kaitlin was starting. It was like watching a completely different team. Apparently Coach decided that she didn't like losing by 20 and implemented a full court press from the time of tip-off and never called it off until they were up by 30 points. Kaitlin never came out of the game until that time. She didn't make all her free throws but she never crossed the free throw line(she stills shoots a little jump shot, she just scooted back a few inches.) got a bunch of steels and she figure out what it means to 'take it right at 'em'. It's funny because she'll knock some girl down and they call the foul and Kaitlin heads over to apologize whole team played really good. Truth be told Cooper and I both really enjoyed it. I'm glad Cooper is there because I have to have somebody to explain what they 'need' to be doing. Cooper starts city league ball in a couple weeks so we'll have his games to go to as well. Good Times!

Help! Leslie is stuck in this chair and she won't move...

So now that Leslie has found a spot for everything in the house, except for a few boxes in the kitchen, hallway, laundry/boys room, living room, and bedrooms, she has begun the process of figuring out the floor plan for the new house. She has decided that it's not that easy to just sit down with graph paper and start laying things out so we bought a watered down CAD program that would let her do some design work and that has proved to complicated so now she is trying to find the perfect house plan online. Occasionally she say "Oh this one is perfect!" followed up buy "We'd just have to move the kitchen to the other side of the house, move the master bedroom downstairs, remove the formal dining, and make it two story instead of a single with the bedrooms upstairs." Next. She's having fun and I'm sure she will find the one she's looking for. In the meantime if there are any budding architects out there who think they have the perfect plan send it our way.

Moving Day or Week

Well there's no turning back now. The transaction is complete. We have moved all our stuff in and if you came to visit you wouldn't be able to tell what color the carpet is because you wouldn't be able to see it. I never really felt like we had a lot of stuff but moving out of the old house into this one proved me to be uninformed. We were just getting started when this picture was taken, hadn't even begun to move in all the boxes. We've had two Sundays in the house and we havn't yet adjusted to a single bathroom. Church starts at 9am and I think Kaitlin was in the shower at 6:30am to make sure she got hot water. I've just decided that showering isn't that important anymore. So here's how things finally shook out. The family that bought our house closed on a Monday, we closed on Tuesday evening an had until Thursday night to get all our stuff out. I figured it would be no problem but if the YM/YW hadn't have shown up Wednesday there is no way we could have pulled it off. They got all the really heavy stuff out of the old and into the new in less than an hour. So that just left a few more loads of boxes and stuff, oh, and three ton's of hay that had to be moved. Can I just say that I hate hauling hay, absolutely the worst activity I've been involved in. Leslie, Kaitlin, and I got up Saturday morning early to try to beat the rain. The wind was blowing about 60 miles and hour and it was all we could do to keep from getting blown off the stack. We got it stacked on the trailer, hauled down to the new place, and the last tarp went on as the rain started to fall. I had to apologies to the ladies. I had to lay on them pretty heavy when they started telling me how tired they were and needed a break. "We don't have time to be tired now!" I'd say and they'd both give a dirty look and I'd point at the impending storm that the 60 mile an hour winds were blowing our way and back to work they'd go. Good times! I think we've just about got things where they need to be now. Cooper, Wyatt, and Bronson are sharing a room, actually it's the laundry room but we managed to fit the bunk bed in, yes they all three sleep on one bunk bed. The bottom bed is a double. Kaitlin and Addison are sharing a queen in one room and Leslie and I took the other. It's going to be a long year while we get this other house built. Here's a shot of what the view out of our back window will be once we finish, so it will be worth it. BTW, I didn't think it would bug me but we've gone down to the house to pick up a few odds and end's and they have completely torn out the tile downstairs. It took me three days to get that stuff laid and a night of sleeping on the floor. They're putting in hardwood throughout the great room, it's gonna look really nice, we should have done that. Here's a shot of the moving vans. This is how you do it in horse country....

26.2:4:37:07

We did it. Spent the weekend in St. George for the St. George Marathon. This year was so much more fun than last year. We loaded up and headed down to St. George Friday morning and got to the St. George Convention Center about 2:00pm. They have a Health & Fitness Expo that the kids really enjoy going to; it's also where the runners check in. I run in the weight class and figured I'd weigh in around 230 or so. I was surprised when 249 popped up. I think there was something wrong with the scale. After walking around for an hour checking out the booths and getting our share of free samples of Energy Bars and Goo, Leslie and the kids took off and I stuck around to wait for Peter, Nathan and Jill. After they got checked in we went up to Lane and Rhonda's for a big spaghetti dinner. (you've got to carbo load). Nathan and Jill stayed down in town, the rest of us stayed at Lane and Rhonda's house, (thanks you guys it was a good nights sleep) We were all up at 4:15am, including the kids. We had to get down to St. George to meet at the hotel to catch a shuttle to the buses that take you up to the starting line. Leslie and the kids, Lane and Rhonda drove up to Veyo which is at the seven mile mark. We hopped on the bus and started the drive up to the starting line. It's always a little nerve racking driving up there, you just keep going and going and you're thinking to yourself "I have to run all the way back down?" It's quite a site when the bus drops you off with 6500 other runners waiting for the start of the race. I was surprised when Dixon Kumer came walking up, somehow found us in the dark with all those people. After a twenty-five minute wait it was finally time to start running. The run was awesome. It seems like the miles just fly by, nothing like when I'm doing training runs. There are all these people along the way cheering you on, not to mention all the runners. It seemed like at no time at all I was in Veyo passing by Leslie and the kids and feeling pretty good about things and then hit the Veyo hill. Feeling good to not so good. It's pretty tough for me to get up that hill. I felt at the 18 mile mark I was making pretty good time and by the time I was at 24 miles I knew I was going come in at about 4:40 which I was hoping for. Last year those last two miles were mostly walking for me. This year I was still chugging along. It was a good run and can't wait for next year. Having Peter and Nathan there running it too made it even more enjoyable. (even though all I saw of Nathan was his rear end heading off in the dark at the start, he ran it in 3:47, Peter passed me at about the 10 mile mark I think, he ran it in 4:22, not bad for a 40 year old. ;>) Can't wait to do it again next year. I don't think, with all the athletics I've been involved in, I've ever done anything so extremely difficult and so completely satisfying all at the same time. Somehow you have to figure out how to keeping going when every thing inside of you says to stop. Good times.

What I learned this year:

Sodium Pills work really well for keeping the cramps to a minimum

That Goo stuff can really make a difference

Buy a shoe one size bigger next year(fortunately I only lost one toenail)

Compression shorts do a great job of limiting chaffing

Visit to the Dentist

If you've ever wondered what it might look like when a horse has to go to the dentists, wonder no longer. Joe was losing weight and was obviously not feeling good. Leslie finally took him to the vet to see if he could figure out what was wrong. He determined that he needed to have his teeth floated (filed down to smooth) A horses teeth will develop sharp edges and start to rub the inside of there cheeks and tounge raw. Then they don't want to chew so they pretty much inhale whatever food they can get down whole so they get no nutritional value out of it. Here are a few more photo's .... Leslie was there to observe so she can do it herself next time.

This last photo I know looks like a trick that George the Giant performs but those are actually drain tubes. While he was there Joe also had to have a little growth removed from his chest. Pretty cool stuff I should have been a vet. Would have been fun and would have saved us some money on this particular day.

Latest

The buyers came by on Tuesday with an inspector and a hardwood floor guy to take measurements(apparently they don't like our tile selection). The wife kept apologizing to Leslie because she knew we had built the house and felt bad that they would be making all these changes to it. I think you can call that a pretty good sign that the sale is going to go through. It better because at this point, in my mind, I've already moved out. We had a guy in the ward who is a general contractor come check out the old house and he confirmed what I thought the first time we looked at it. That would be the time I laughed and told Leslie she was crazy. He determined that there were only two major problems with the house, the roof, which has some pretty serious fire damage in the attic, (but the fire took place over 30 years ago so we shouldn't worry about it), and the foundation which is sinking causing the floors in the house to warp. So just the roof and the foundation, everything else in between seems to be OK except for what you would expect from a house built in the 1920's. Like the fact that in some places you can see into the crawl space, and most of the windows are stuck, another sign of a sinking foundation along with doors not wanting to close, the electrical hasn't been updated since the 70's and most of it is spliced together, we'll make sure to go heavy on the heat and smoke detectors, it kinda smells like mice and mold, but we can still get high speed Internet and dishtv. The dishwasher works and the toilet flushes. Hopefully the septic tank was designed to support a family of 7 or we're really going to be in trouble. The good news is that it is only going to be temporary. We've decided that it would be more cost effective to live in it while we build a new house and then bulldoze the thing. Somebody send a video to Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. I'll start working on the sob story.

Here's an idea

Amy just generated an epiphany. Who's in charge of the family reunion next summer. I think it would be a great idea to converge on Benjamin, Utah. I've got an excellent service project. I hear that the family that works together.......... It could be fun.

The Move

OK. It's looking more and more like we really might be moving so I'll give out a bit more information. We have a buyer for our home, which I thought would never happen, and we had an inspector out to the house we are looking at on Saturday. Leslie has been watching this house for a year now and when the guy put it up for sale she said we should buy it and I laughed and told her she was crazy. See photo. The home was built in 1920, has two bedrooms, kitchen, living, ONE bath and is approximately 1100 sq. ft. Never one to deny anybody of a dream I told Leslie sure let's put our home up for sale and see what happens. We made an offer on the house contingent on ours selling. Let me reiterate that I never thought that at what we were asking and the way the market has been that we would find a buyer for our home. I was even told just recently that homes in our price range have been staying on the market for 18 months on average. Well we put our home on the market and 3 days later we had an offer for what we were asking. What!?! I was in Georgia when Leslie called to tell me she had sold the house. Fortunately by this time I had been up to the new(old) house and was able to catch the vision. I've always enjoyed watching episodes of this old house, now we'll get to find out if I enjoy living it. Hey any excuse to buy new tools sounds like a good time to me. The real interesting part will be the seven of use moving from 5 bedrooms and 4 baths to two bedrooms and 1 bath. It's a good thing we all like each other. It's not a done deal yet but we are getting pretty close. We're supposed to close on both properties on the 15th of October. It should be fun. Now I'll really have something to write about.

St. George

Leslie and I went down to St. George Thursday - Sat last week. I played in a golf tournament and Leslie just had a few, well deserved, relaxing days away from all that she does. The weather was perfect for three days of golf and the team I was playing on won, so I had a good time. Leslie did some shopping and spent some time with Lane and Rhonda. It was a really nice couple of days. Here's some pretty interesting news. Leslie has found a house she wants to buy and remodel. We made an offer contingent on our house selling. It's been on the market for three days and we already have two serious offers. I'll keep you posted on any news on that matter.

Def Leppard Concert

So yesterday was the big day. Cooper had asked for concert tickets for his birthday. I thought 'Oh man, who am I going to have to go listen to?" When he told me he wanted to go see Foreigner, Styx (he pronounced it Stykes), and Def Leppard, I thought "is this his birthday present or mine." "Of course we can go see Def Leppard!" The concert was really good, if there hadn't have been people there it would have been even better. Of course the majority of the people that were there were in their mid-thirties to early fourties reliving their high school days. From the looks of it many of them hadn't stopped living their high school days. Reminded me of the parties I attended with friends in High School except I couldn't give 8 thousand people a ride home, good times. I'll just say this, if High School Musical is any reflection of what the high schoools are like today they have made some great improvements dince I was in school. Maybe it's just the high schools in Utah. My kids don't ever come home with new dance moves or anything though....... Check out Coopers blog for a more detailed description of the concert.

The Long Weekend

I finished up early in Long Island last week and made it home Thursday instead of Friday. With Monday being labor day it made for a really nice weekend. On Friday Leslie and I went up to the Mt. Timpanogas temple; Cory and Lindsay were having Samari sealed to them. Saturday they had a little luncheon/baby blessing. We were really glad to have been there. Uncle Rick and Aunt Kathy were there and it was nice to visit with them. Peeled back another layer of the onion that is Uncle Rick. We got to talking about horses and he told me that when he was a kid he and Willie Shoemaker worked together at training facility for race horses. Shoemaker was a trainer and he was a groomer. He told me that when he got back from Korea he read a headline in the local paper 'Talk of the Turf' it was a story about Shoemaker. That was the first he'd heard that his old friend 'Shadow' as they called him had become a famous jockey. We also heard stories of him delivering beer out of his uncles bar in Chicago. I wonder what else that guy has done. Kept us entertained the whole time. Carrie and the girls came down for dinner on Sunday and we had the traditional Waffle-rama on Monday morning. Pretty good weekend.

Back to School....

The kids have all headed back to school, including Addison. She was so excited to become a kindergartner. Summer seems to have gone by way too fast. Thought I'd include a post that covered some of the stuff we did this summer.

Cooper and Bronson were the only two that decided they wanted to swim for Spanish Fork this summer. They had a blast. Both improved on their times every meet and qualified for the County meet in several events.

Kaitlin really got into 4-H this summer. She and Leslie were riding at least 3 days a week and Kaitlin was showing just about every Saturday. She and Misty(the horse) won more blue ribbons then they knew what to do with and they ended up winning the Pleasure Class at the County event. Grandma Lil was pretty excited about that.

Wyatt's big event this summer was the fishing trip with Grandma and Grandpa Allred. He thought that was pretty cool.
He also spent quite a bit of time helping Leslie get some horses ready to sell.

Addison spent most of the summer crying as one horse after another would show up and then leave. We've had to explain that we're just making them better horses for some other little girl. She's starting to get it. She's really become quite the rider and has to be right in the middle of it when Leslie and Kaitlin get working.

Leslie has probably been the busiest of all this summer. On top of raising a family and managing the Primary she's been buying and selling horses all summer. She's finally found the stud (horse, that is) she's been looking for. She drove all over the country trying to find one to breed to some of her mares only to find one at the Saturday sale around the corner. So with the help of Mister Jones, we'll have a few babies in the spring. He's quite the pony, a grandson of Slight of Hand (click here to check Grandad out), and we've already had a few requests for breeds next spring.

I've just enjoyed being a spectator to all of it......

Everybody else was doing it......

OK, We're in. Have we not tried this type of thing before and it lasts for a couple months and then everybody stops posting? Kinda like all the journals I've ever started keeping. I suppose I'll be the one doing all the posting on our blog. Leslie, my wife, is anti-technology. She will get on the computer to look for horses but that's about it. Cooper and Kaitlin have become pretty computer savvy, but if I turn this over to them who know's what might show up here. So at least this way I'll be able to control the content.

I read this today and really liked it,
Father Jonathan to Bill Maher, you might too. The site of that guy makes my skin crawl. He's creepy.