Blah blah

I'm pretty sure I don't have any birth announcements or anything to announce, so the "Blog Title Police" (aka: Carrie) shouldn't be able to assess any fines or reprimands. The last two weeks have been mostly school. I suppose there were a couple of things that happened. Once again it was mostly papers and school. They seem to dominate my life. (One indicator that you are writing too many papers is that your natural instinct when typing is to un-contract all contractions, even when writing something as informal as a blog.)

I was invited to apply for a job as a recruiter last weekend. It would mean a full time job, and of course a full time salary. I would have to slow down my schooling, which would be a good thing for my sanity, but it would mean I graduated later and of course would have to wait an extra year and a half to become a chaplain. Normally that would not be such a bad thing, but I've been in this pipeline for five years now, so I kind of want to just be done with it. Those are pretty much the pros and cons of the situation, so now it's up to us to make a decision (after praying for some guidance if there be any, of course). I'll keep you posted.

We are almost done watching the Avatar series on DVD. We stumbled across a rerun on TV and the kids liked it so we checked it out from the library. Each season is on four DVDs (except the first season which only had four episodes on a DVD, so it had five DVDs), and we just watched the last episode on the second to last DVD earlier today. We have the next DVD on hold at the library and will hope to get it in the next week or so. It's actually a really fun series and has unexpected humor throughout. We all like it (and may but them some day when we have money again). Oh, and look, I included a picture. :-D

Blah

I really need to get another picture on here. Three in a row without pictures makes for a boring looking page. Who cares whether or not the page is actually boring, it's all about looks. If it looks cool, I can write whatever I want, but if it looks boring it doesn't matter how good a story I have.

So, I was getting the world (aka: Peter and Rachel) caught up on our events the last couple of weeks. After the last weekend I wrote about came last weekend, the Fourth. We crammed as much in on the Fourth as we could. Amy got up at 0430 to save a spot for the family for the parade. I relieved her at 0700 and she returned at 0915 with the kids. The parade was fun (I would have preferred to watch it on TV though, too much hassle). After the parade we stopped by the house briefly, rested a little, and then drove down to Springville for Amy's annual family reunion. We actually bought a bucket of KFC this year, so we fit in with everybody else (that wasn't why we did it, it was a merely a statement of cause and effect, not the purpose behind the action). Of course the kids wanted to swim, so we did. Amy didn't this year though. She was concerned that her belly would show, and since we had not announced to the family that she is expecting, she didn't want anyone to think anything, I guess. (Btw: we are expecting in January, well, we are expecting now, but we anticipate the delivery will occur in January.) Anyway, after the reunion we came home, ate some dinner eventually, and then went to Stadium of Fire with the two older kids. I got some tickets through the Navy. It was fun, but a very tiring day.

I had school this week. I was reading every hour that I wasn't sleeping or eating, or in class; just like the week before. This weekend we had a few unanticipated events. On Friday night we went to a planetarium show at BYU with some friends from South Carolina (who live in Washington now). On Saturday we had dinner with one of my chaplain candidate friends at an undisclosed location near sheep and cornfields. Today, Sunday, we went to church at Amy's folks' ward (our old ward) because her little brother returned from being a missionary this week and he spoke in church. There was the usual extended family lunch at her folks' house afterwards. That was probably more than anyone cared about though. It was peculiarly fun, as are most family events. Later in the evening we went back for an open house and Amy and I spent a good amount of time talking with her brother. Interesting stuff. Are you bored yet? See? If I had a cool picture you wouldn't care that I was just babbling on and on.

Take two.

So, the Returning Warrior Weekend was a really good experience. We (just Dan and I and our wives (one each), not part of the workshop) went to a minor league baseball game on Friday night after checking in and eating dinner. It rained on us and the game was delayed an hour. "Our" team lost, and we left early; but it was a fun evening. The next morning started early, breakfast was at 0600 and the first event was at 0700 (that's 7 AM). They served us lunch (well, it was a buffet, so we served ourselves) and then there were more meetings and stuff. Sunday they had an ecumenical church service and we only met until lunch. Like I said, it was a good weekend. I enjoyed it and wished that I had done it last year sometime.

I need to thank Amy's brother, Randy, and his wife, Tiffany, for coming and staying out our house with the kids for the weekend. (They will likely think twice before having a second one after that weekend with their one, and our four.) I need to get back to my reading now. More to come.

Getting caught up.

So, I realized I should have written about the Returning Warrior Workshop a few weeks ago. I also just realized that this particular spell-checker thinks I'm British. It wants me to spell realized "realised" instead. (Yes, I'm aware that it is not a sentient being and does not "think" or "want" anything--it's just an expression.)

Anyway, back in June (the last weekend of), Amy and I attended an event sponsored by the Navy Reserve Region Southwest. It was fun. I invited a couple of my chaplain candidate friends, but one of them got the flu and couldn't go.

Amy just turned out the lights, so I guess I need to go to bed now.

School

I was thinking of several things as I was on facebook for a few brief moments this morning and they were all too long and potentially boring to put on my wall or whatever (I'm losing interest in that site, it keeps changing, and I am lost each time I go back), anyway, I realized, oh yeah, I have a blog, maybe it should go there.

First a little update. I have two classes this term (but they are both four credits, and at BYU spring and summer terms are supposed to be half as many credits to be full-time because you are in class for just a handful of weeks, plus graduate credits are supposedly more time consuming than undergraduate -- as a matter of fact, if you do the math on the university's guideline of three hours outside of class for each credit hour, or hour in class, we should be devoting 64 hours to school each week (8 credit hours X 2 because it's summer school = 16 hours in class, 16 hours X 3 = 48 hours outside of class, plus the 16 hours in class = 64 hours), or over ten hours a day, six days a week, but I digress), Book of Mormon and New Testament. Besides the Book of Mormon and the New Testament themselves we have 500+ pages to read for the BofM class, and somewhere around 1800 pages for NT. I'm actually looking forward to a few of the books for NT though. Only one is by an LDS author. (I finished that one already, Dean Hughes' The Cost of Winning: Coming in First Across the Wrong Finish Line, it was decent.) I'm in the middle of Phillip Yancey's The Jesus I Never Knew. It's a good book. I'm also looking forward to John MacArthur's The Gospel According to Jesus. I don't particularly like school, and am only semi-interested in many of my classes. Why do I have to take two classes that I'm actually very interested in, and that I'm looking forward to during Summer Term when we speed through everything twice as fast? I would much rather be doing some of next semester's classes right now allowing me to spend more time on these two classes. (This is part of the reason, I'm not a big fan of school in the first place, I dislike being told what I have to study and especially when I have to study it, et cetera. That was a big complaint of mine in college the first time, having to take six classes on art and literature and history, and only having room in my schedule for two or three grammar and linguistics classes, which is what I really had more of an interest in anyway.) Oh well. Anyway, I should get back to my book now, if I remember I'll leave more specific recommendations at the end of the term on which of the books I particularly enjoyed.

Oh, and here's a random picture from our trip earlier this summer. (I don't know why my father-in-law can't the horizon to be level, it might have to do with the fact that he insists on taking the pictures with one hand. And he may have better software for manipulating the picture after the fact, but I lack the ability to rotate the picture in anything but 90 degree intervals, sorry. Next time I'll just have to take my tripod I guess.)