Lately Hailey and I have been playing a game. I would hold her and then act like I was asleep by closing my eyes and snoring. Hailey would then kiss me on the nose to wake me up. We can play this game for a good while with Hailey telling me over and over to go to sleep.
This past Sunday (8/1) I was sound asleep on Rus' couch after church snoring pretty loudly. While sleeping, Hailey came downstairs and snuck up to me and kissed me on the nose. BING!!! I immediately woke up to her cute face staring into my eyes. Once awake she happily skipped away. Still makes me laugh thinking about it.
Nice greasy food, smothered in greasy and fattening toppings. Pastrami burger or bacon burger, fries, and a coke or shake. That would be nice. Or buffalo wings. Or prime rib. How about cheese fries, with crumbled bacon on top. Sigh...:(
This year's resolutions I actually wrote down. The big one I wrote in dry-erase marker on my mirror with blanks for each day of the week to track the smaller daily sub-goals. Once again this year I am going for weight loss.
Goals:
Lose 2 lbs/week
(100 by end of year). How:
Exercise a minimum of 20 minutes daily (7 days/week)
The (*) under no fast food means that when I am with Jen on a date and we decide to heat a burger joint for a meal then, and only then, am I allowed to indulge. The main point is that I can't do my solo trips any longer.
iPod Touch
For Christmas Jen gave me an iPod Touch, something that greatly pleased my soul, and as I promised on Facebook...I will love her forever.
As I write this I am using my Touch; a bit tedious, however, but thought that I would try it. So far I have downloaded multiple apps. Right now my boys, nephews and I are enjoying free burp and fart noise makers.
While I have been down in San Diego I have been playing around with it and have put my mail onto it, have been monitoring facebook, and have even installed a mobile banking app to monitor my accounts. So far it has been fun, but at times a bit annoying (such as writing this entry...a bit tedious).
We are at the time of year that is a double-edged sword for me. Some years I dislike this time of year, other years it is the greatest.
The years that I focus only on my family and aspire to give or get "great" presents, they are the years of dislike. However, the years that I focus outside of the "wants" of my family or myself and provide for those in greater need, my Christmas and holiday season are remarkably serene and enjoyable.
One year in particular my wife and I helped multiple families through sub-for-santa. In fact that year we spent more money on sub-for-santa than on our own family. The kids loved it, and by and far that was my favorite Christmas. Another time we had a holiday food drive at Verio. We collected a huge amount of food that year for the food bank, and once again my Christmas was one of the best I had. The following year, after I got laid-off and was back in school and did not have the involvement in these types of activities, was amongst my worst. From these experiences I have come up with a simple phrase:
"If it doesn't impact your life in some way, than you haven't given enough"
I find that as my focus narrows on a smaller and smaller subset of people, my potential for joy becomes smaller and smaller, until ultimately there is little potential, and thus minimal joy found in my life.
Sub-for-santa is by far one of my more enjoyable ways in which to give this holiday season, and I think it stems from one childhood memory.
In 3rd grade I got a football as my Christmas present. It was a perfect gift for me. I loved sports, and therefore I played with that football for hours on end each day for the remainder of the winter break. The first day of school I packed it in my bag so that I could show it to all my friends at school. When I got to school, I remember not thinking that football was so great anymore, as the gifts my friends got seemed so much better. Suddenly, rather than focusing upon how cool that football was and the hours of of enjoyment I received, my focus moved onto what my friends got, and I wondered why I didn't get such cool and great presents.
Now as I reflect back on that memory I realize that there are many kids in a different position than me. Rather than going to school excited to show their friends what they got, they aren't looking forward to school at all, because they are not excited at all. There are many kids who will return to school having not received anything for Christmas. Sub-for-Santa, to me, has as a goal to provide a Christmas to those who will not receive anything. That is why I like and support Sub-for-Santa.
For the past three years I have taught high school, and each year the school where I teach conducts a sub-for-Santa charity drive where the money raised is used to sponser multiple families from the school's area and provide a Christmas for them. The money is also used to provide for other charitable endeavors throughout the year that benefit families and students within the school's boundaries.
Each year they have a homeroom competition seeing which homeroom can raise the most amount of money per student. For the past two years I came in second, despite raising the most as a whole. The problem was/is that my classes always are close to 40 students each, whereas the classes that have won typically have less than 20 students in their class. See here and here. Two years ago my head was shaven because my students exceeded my expectations, and last year my hear went platinum blond for the month of January as my students once again exceeded my expectations.
This year I do not have a homeroom, but am once again looking for a good showing, but I will need to depend more on my salesmanship and family and friends. So if you are looking for a good cause and would like to donate, you can send me a personal gift donation through paypal to paypal@heliconius.com. To do this log into paypal, click "send money", then click on the "personal" tab, and then select "gift". As long as you fund it through your account balance or directly from a linked account then there is no cost. If you would like to send a check you can send it to the school addressed to me or generally at:
Copper Hills High School
C/O Mark Berrett
5445 New Bingham Highway
West Jordan, UT 84088
If you would like to give anonymously, just put "sub-for-santa drive" on the memo line, and remove the C/O line. If you would like to give my classes the recognition put "Mr. Berrett Sub-for-santa drive" on the memo line.
Anything would be appreciated, and thanks in advance. May your Christmas and Holiday season be full of joy.
At the end of June 2008 Grandma Kiser had a stroke on the left side of her brain, which has left her permanently incapacitated on her right side. In some ways this is a blessing in that she is left handed, unfortunately she has regained very limited use of her right side.
In May of that year we as a family ended up visiting her prior to the stroke, probably one of the last family members to visit. While looking at picture we took I became intrigued by Grandma's hands. Here are a couple of the photos that I took.
I cropped this picture from a larger group picture that we took with Grandma.
I cropped this picture from a larger picture of Grandma, Taylor, and Heather looking at a caterpillar that Taylor found
(Updated 9/9/9...Grandma is left handed, not right handed.)
A bunch of issues hit at once and now I once again--come monday--will have a windows machine in my house.
When I began coaching track at school the agreement, at least for me, was that the money would go towards buying Jen a new computer. See she has an old iBook from Apple that I bought for her back in 2004 or 2005 (pretty sure it was 2005, but I digress). It has served her well, but with Apple's abandonment of the old hardware architecture for Intel based machines (completely understandable) her system is really outdated, slowing, and the second battery that we got for the computer (a replacement for a recalled battery) is failing--or failed if you don't count the 10 minutes that it holds a charge as functional. So my hope in getting her a new computer was to upgrade her to either a new MacBook or an iMac. Jen declined the new computer...initially.
Since the (initial) declination of my computer offering for allowing me to coach track, my laptop (a little over a year old) and our 2 iMacs started misbehaving. My laptops battery started draining too quickly; the iMac (iLamp) we bought 7 years ago really started to work slowly; and about the same time my laptop started losing its charge, the iMac we have had for 18 months started freezing up when the kids would play intensive video games and then suddenly stopped booting. A check of the newer iMac showed a faulty hard drive (which I hoped was causing the system freezes due to swap issues). After replacing the hard drive the system kept freezing. Further testing showed that the video ram was faulty. Not a problem I should be able to replace the video components of the iMac for not too much. Nope. The video card is integrated into the logic board (mother board) so in order to replace the failed video ram I must replace the entire logic board. Prices for a replacement logic board range from $500 to $800.
So with all that happening, with 4 of our 4 Mac computers showing signs of failure, Jen decides she wants a new computer. But not just any computer--a fast inexpensive one. Oh shi.........was my initial reaction. A new MacBook is about $1000, with a low end iMac at $1200. That in Jen's mind is not inexpensive. She then began rattling off the things she is planning on doing with it and then pulls out this statement: "I think I want a windows machine". Dumbfounded and caught completely off guard, my arguments against windows seemed hollow. They are more dependable. "Really," she said. About that same time I upgraded my OS X to 10.5.7 on my laptop which caused all kinds of freezes and crashes on my laptop (reinstalling 10.5.6 today). The laptop started to overheat and the fans were running heavy. "Really," I said. "Our iMac's have been dependable" (whereupon Ky called up saying that my recently installed hard drive on the newer iMac didn't solve the problem and that it froze again).
So I bit the bullet and compared prices. The system that met Jen's requirements would cost about $800. It includes a 20" LCD widescreen monitor, a 2.3 GHz quadcore processor, 4GB of RAM, a 640GB hard drive, and a removable and replaceable 256MB RAM video card. The bad news, it runs VISTA.
I tried again to argue for a Mac but the points seemed hollow and were ineffective as I was in the midst of trying to figure out the iMac problems and my laptop problems. Her new system arrives on Monday, and since Jen really doesn't want the kids playing their games on her system (she wants it all to herself, which doesn't include me), the kids' new system arrives shortly thereafter--the same system as Jen's.
They haven't arrived yet but I already feel compromised and corrupted.
Over the past several months Hailey has begun to pray more and more. Since attending the Draper temple her prayer has been the following:
Thank go swimming
Go church
go temple
spot
Christ
amen
It is quite fun to see her progression of prayers. In her earlier prayers she would pray to go swimming and then would immediately stop her prayer to tell us she needed to go swimming. We would agree and ask her to finish her prayer. She would continue her prayer but would again ask God to go swimming, and then quickly stop her prayer to tell the family that we needed to go swimming. One night this happened at least 5-6 times. It was quite humorous.
Needless to say she is funny. She is quite perturbed if she is not the one that prays each time a prayer is needed.
Jen and I are getting life insurance so that....well you know. This morning a nurse stopped by to do our physicals.
No surprise that Jen was in apparent good health. Heart rate of 60, and a blood pressure of 98/60.
I was a little worried about mine, however. Many of you know my weight is not the best and that exercise is something I work on but don't get much of. So needless to say I was happy when my heart rate came in at 68 and my blood pressure was at 102/60. NICE!!!
Now we are just going to have to wait on our blood and urine analysis to determine our rates. Will be interesting to see.
When we moved to Alpine nearly 12 years ago Ky was 6 months old. During that time I have missed only a couple of Priesthood Sessions of LDS General Conference. Each time I went, I went alone and watched the other Fathers bring their sons.
Yesterday was the first session that I was able to take my own son. Ky turned 12 in March and received the Aaronic priesthood. It was fun and comfortable to sit next to Ky and listen. I actually felt "complete" or "whole" as I sat there and listened to conference.
After the session we went to "Hogi Yogi" for their orange sherbet desserts. Other than the dessert the night was fun and enjoyable.
Jen and I have been attending Dave Ramsey's "Financial Peace University (FPU)" to help us get control of our spending habits. I can honestly say that for most if not all of our married life we have never set up a budget. We seemed to always have enough to cover our needs...enough if you count borrowing from savings.
Since I have become a teacher we need to be much more careful with our money and have had some difficulty with it. This month we went on a "zero sum budget". This means that before the month begins (we go from the 25th to the 25th because of my pay) we set up a budget where we allocate my entire paycheck to the needs of the household. To help us keep on this budget FPU recommends that you spend as much of your budgeted expenditures using cash, rather than a debit or check card. Credit Cards are a no-no.
Last night Jen and I were out buying dog food and items for Ky's birthday party today. Most of the purchases were done with cash, and each time we dug in for cash I just felt like things came to a stop and eyes were on us. Kind of like this commercial for visa.
It was actually very surreal and irritating. Using plastic has become so accepted and "vital" to our speed centric economy that, at least for me, the use of cash seems so archaic. By the way I can attest that it is easier to part with plastic money than paper money. You think about your spending more when you pay with cash rather than just swiping the card.
Ky is 12 today. The first grandson on both sides of the family to receive the aaronic priesthood (this sunday).
Jen and I are incredibly proud of the kid Ky is and the young man that he is becoming. He is a fun kid that tries to make all of life into some sort of game.
This week we had parent/teacher conference where I teach so I was off today. One of the errands that Jen and I had to do was to get a pair of running shoes for me, and a pair of cross-trainers for Jen. We found a good pair of running shoes for me at 26.2 running company, approximately 100 East and 100 North in American Fork.
After putting Heather and Hailey in the car Jen got in the car. As I was about to get in I looked north up 100 East to see two guys running through traffic. As the lead runner crossed the street he lost his phone and shoes, but didn't stop. Odd I thought, what a bunch of dumb kids. I suddenly realized that the second runner was a cop. I began to move towards the lead runner which is when the look on the runners face made me stop and move back.
Just then one of the employees and another customer moved in to stop the fleeing "suspect" (seems like the only word that fits). The employee, the other customer, and police officer took the runner to the ground right in front of Jen and Heather, who were watching the whole thing from the car. I moved my car to the other side of the parking lot so that Heather, Hailey and Jen didn't have front row seats to the arrest of the individual.
In a matter of minutes of me seeing the whole thing the parking lot was full of at least 20 police officers, several of which were in SWAT attire, equipped with their automatic weapons. Seemed a little over kill to me, but then I heard a couple officers talk about a 'shooting' which suddenly made a lot of things seem more reasonable.
KUTV had its helicopter circling overhead as well. Here is a link to the KUTV coverage of the event. It appears to be possibly tied to a shooting in Pleasant Grove where one person was killed.
Needless to say my outing to get a new pair of running shoes turned out to be more of an outing than Jen and I expected. At least I got a 40% discount on my shoes since I am the new throw coach for the Copper Hills track team. (Don't say a single word Emily, not a single word).
FYI, in the picture of the suspect (in orange) lying on his belly in the parking lot, my Sequoia was originally parked in the stall on the left side of the picture.
February is our crazy month. In the space of one week we have 3 birthdays. Heather's birthday is the last of the three.
Happy Birthday HEATHER!!!
For our last three kids we have been able to choose the day of delivery since Jen must deliver by c-section. For Heather they gave us the options of February 12th or 13th. The 13th was a Friday. When the nurse asked us which day, I looked at Jen and said, "Is there even an option?" To which she responded, knowingly, "Its up to you."
As I turned to the nurse and stated "Friday the 13th please." There was noticeable shock and concern on her face. She looked at Jen as if to say, "You're going to allow this?" But reluctantly noted the delivery date in Jen's file.
Heather has been a pleasure since that Friday the 13th. She is a mature, beautiful and sweet little girl. She is constantly mothering her dolls and stuffed animals. She is a wonderful sister to her brothers (a bit of a tease), but is a great big sister.
The 13th truly has turned into a wonderful number by giving us two wonderful little girls. (Hailey is the 13th grandchild on both sides).
To say that I am supremely out of shape when it comes to swimming is an understatement. It has been nearly 18 years since I last swam for any length of time at a high level. Any swimming that I have done since my senior year of High School back in 1991 has been for incredibly short distances (like backyard size pool distances).
Taylor has been swimming on the local swim team for a few weeks now and seems to really enjoy it. He has his goggles, swim cap, suit, and fins and looks very much the swimmer in the water. He has a good movement through the pool. Needless to say Jen and my old swim coach, Dee Loose, convinced me to swim some laps while Taylor is at his team workout. Today was the first day of my 3 day a week swim habit.
I donned my speedo, my swim shirt (no one wants to see me topless), my board shorts (hell no, no one wants to really see me in a speedo), strapped on my goggles and dove in. I had a nice smooth stroke and thought to myself, "This ain't so bad!" And then it got bad. About half-way through a length of the pool I started to tighten and ache. I made it the full 50 yards, rested a minute, and then went again. After the second 50 yards I realized that if I was going to make it for any length of time I needed to use my swim fins. Once I got those on I was moving through the water much better, and was really pushing it from a workout standpoint.
Was I the swimmer that I once was? HELL NO!!! That swimmer is buried somewhere under layers of accumulated fat and may one day make an appearance. Today I was only able to swim 10-12 50's on the 2 minutes. I am a far cry from what I once was. But in time, and with lots and lots of work perhaps one day I will be able to pull off the fins and swim more than 2 lengths of the pool without feeling like my head was going to explode with each beat of my heart!
Perhaps one of my brothers will take pity on my and get me a waterproof mp3 player. Hahahaha.
Taylor and I have made a tradition of watching together the cooking shows that I TIVO on a weekly basis--"America's Test Kitchen" and "Cook's Country: from America's Test Kitchen". This all started when Jen reported to me that she was regularly finding Taylor watching them on his own. It has actually become a fun interaction with Taylor.
Recently we were watching a show in which they were cooking some Prosciutto (italian bacon). As they put the prosciutto in the pan and it began sizzling Taylor said: "That sizzle is the sound of delicious" (Or something along those lines).
At another occasion, as they cut into a nice piece of meat he said: "That pink looks delicious."
So it seems the question of the day that students ask (some blurting it quite loudly) is "What the hell?!" Others express the same question with other adjectives before the hell, but I will edit those out for the sake of my one or two readers.
To say the least it has been quite funny to watch the reactions as students enter my room and see me in the halls. Quite funny indeed. A couple of the other choice statements have been:
You look like a boy-band reject.
or
You look like a Gay movie star.
Yes quite humorous to see students' as well as teachers' reactions.
This morning I put in some special kind of conditioner that my sylist gave me that helps remove the gold from my hair. Here is what it looks like with some styling and product.
You can see the original color, fresh from the stylist, here.
