Life has been far too busy.  Lots been goin' on.  Klowi and Sofi are both in school, so that keeps Kaitlin busy getting them where they need to be.  Klowi is also in Tavaci, and Klowi and Sofi both take ballet.  Somehow Klowi nailed an audition for a part in the next Tavaci performance.  The instructor says she got up fearlessly and sang the song perfectly, so they are giving her a solo, which they never do for first year students.  She's an exceptional kid.  Sofi is getting much better at speaking.  Saying new words all the time, and starting to string more together.  She has come a long way.  Heather is growing healthy and strong.  Well fed baby.  Nice and big for her age.  She'll be 4 months in just a couple of days.  I could not be more happy and proud of my wonderful daughters, or more thankful for my amazing wife and all that she does to care for them when I'm at work.  I love my family.

Went deer hunting this year.  Didn't get anything.  I thought for sure I would, since I scheduled a lot more time this year.  Sadly the weather didn't cooperate with my plans.  Dustin went with me, and he did get a deer which was rather exhilerating.  Had a good time, but I might skip this next year.  We'll see.

Still been doing crossfit.  I love it.  In fact I did my first ever muscle up the other day.  Here is the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxfKOZ8j2nA&feature=youtube_gdata_player
I definitely reached my goal of being in the best shape of my life by the age of 30.  Now, I just want to keep going and stay and live healthy.

"Stronger people are harder to kill, and more useful in general."
                                                         -unknown

In addition to all of that, work has been very busy lately.  I'm a bit behind on a few things there.  I work a grave shift this weekend, so hopefully I can get a few things done then.

I am also trying to get going on some paper minis.  Nik and I want to have some new stuff to show for Salt Con in February.  I'll be working on the dwarf and orc armies, so we can put together a little display.

Well that's a nice little recap.  I think if I blog more about what I'm doing, I can be more productive, and enjoy different projects more, so I want to do more blogging for posterity.  For me it's just like keeping a journal... a somewhat public journal.

Laterz

We had a fun day today.  Kaitlin worked this morning, so I took the girls fishing.  We walked up to Mayor's Pond.  That's a long walk for 5 and 3-year-old girls.  We got in about an hour of fishing.  No bites.  We were using salmon eggs with bobbers.  Klowi spent most of her time chasing butterflies, and Sofi spent most of her time getting muddy and tangling up the lines for me.  It's to be expected.  No one got hurt, and we made it back ok, so all in all it was a good time.  Next time, I'll drive.

We had a great nap after lunch.  My hike with the scouts was cancelled, so I took Klowi with me to the crossfit gym for a workout.  While I did the workout, she built a fort out of medicine balls in the corner.

WOD:
Run 200m with a medball
Do 50 Thrusters
Everytime you put down the bar, do a 200m run with the medball.

I broke up my thrusters to 2 sets of 15, and 2 sets of 10

After the workout, I got cleaned up and took all my girls out for a date.  We hit the fish farm in North Ogden, since we didn't catch any earlier in the day, then went to Golden Corral for dinner.  I wish I had gotten pictures of the girls after eating dessert.  Their faces were covered in chocolate from the chocolate fountain after eating dipped marshmallows and strawberries.

New Designs

Just having fun making some new designs. Box Elder Elite Fitness is run by Jesse Roberts, who I went to high school with.  He runs crossfit-style fitness classes out of his garage.  He has a great blog where he posts his workouts and thoughts on fitness.  beelitefitness.blogspot.com

It also happens that I work at the hospital with his wife (Erin) and brother-in-law (Gil).

Vote for your favorite in the comments.  Happy to get feedback.  I'm just throwing stuff out.  I have no idea what will be liked the best.  I think my personal favorite is the third one, but that's just me.

Wahaaaaa! (sung in angelic tones)

Just after typing my last post, I took a deep breath, focused my chi, and pondered the meaning of the cosmos.  Just then, one more place to look appeared within my mind, and before I knew it, my body was taking me there of its own volition.  There I looked, and I beheld with my own eyes, the pen for which I had been searching.  Angelic choruses rang clearly through the air as I took a wide stance and held the mighty pen aloft.

It was in a bag that I had already searched three times and not found it.  But then I remembered it had a sleeping bag pouch on one end.  The thought occurred to me that it might have somehow been concealed by the folds of the pouch.  As I fished around, I caught hold of it.  Sweet victory at last.  Now I can get busy with some artwork!

Argh, and double Argh!

I am so frustrated right now.  I finally work up some motivation to get some artwork done, and the pen for my pentablet has vanished from the face of the earth.  I have searched high and low, far and wide, but it is nowhere to be found.  I don't know what could have possibly happened to it.

I've considered the possibility of one of my daughters having grabbed it and walked off with it somewhere, but I've looked anyplace I can fathom that they might have put it (pretty much our whole house), and I can't find it anywhere.  I just know as soon as I buy a replacement for it, it will turn up somewhere.

All the time I've spent searching for it, I could have done a lot of artwork in that time.  Grrrrrr!

New News

It's been a long time since I've blogged about anything. Probably all my followers (all two of them) are gone away now and have lost interest. The thing is that I've had a million things to blog about, but have been too busy to do it. I think my schedule is going to free up somewhat. I just submitted for my recertification as a Medical Laboratory Scientist. That was a bit of a hurtle to get out of the way. Not surprising when you leave 36 hours of continuing education until the last minute to complete. You know what they say: "Schedule your procrastination time first."

One fun thing that I want to blog about is that there is a new CrossFit gym in town. CrossFit Box Elder. I've been saying for a while that I wanted to do CrossFit, but that there wasn't a decent facility around to do it. Well now there is, and I joined up. I've been doing it for a week now. Yesterday the workout left me crippled. It's not the workout's fault. It was my own.

The work was as follows:

for 15 minutes, every minute on the minute do
5 deadlifts
10 kettlebell swings

Well, I bit off more than I could chew with my weights. I started out on 225 on the deadlifts and 40 on the kettlebell. I feel it's worth mentioning I haven't deadlifted since I was a Jr. in high school, and I've only done kettlebell swings one other time. After the first three minutes I was already spent, so I went down in weight. In fact I had to go down in weight twice just to finish the workout. My back doesn't move anymore. At least not without a lot of pain.

This afternoon I'll go back and see if the WOD is possible for me to do given my current condition. When I do, I'll tell the owner to make a T-shirt that has the logo on the front, and on the back it should say, "I should have waited to sign the waiver." It just so happened that the owner made me sign my waiver right before I started the workout.

I did do a short run this morning which felt great.

Since I do graphic design on the side, and they didn't have a logo in place yet I offered my services. In exchange for a free month of membership and a free t-shirt, I did a logo for CrossFit Box Elder. I actually did a bunch, so I'll post some here. You can vote for your favorite in the comments. My personal favorite is the 8th one below, because it is clean and simple. Gary the owner chose the third one to use for the gym. But I told him he could use any of them for whatever he wants like t-shirts or whatever.

Rabbit Hunting Adventure

Each year around New Years, I go with my friend Dustin to do a little rabbit hunting. Well this year was a bit more interesting and exciting than usual. Starting with the trip to the hunting ground.

I met Dustin at his house at about 5am. We got all our stuff loaded up and headed out. We stopped off at Walmart to pick up some gloves. Dustin had lost one of his and I forgot mine. But they were only $7 so it was no big deal. Then Dustin treated me to a 7-11 hot chocolate. And with that we started up the canyon. At first it was smooth sailing. Then the road started getting a bit slick and snowy. By the time we were half way through we were in white out conditions. The wind was blowing so hard, that the snow was flying everywhere and we could hardly see out. We pressed on slowly. At times we had to come to a complete stop, because vision was entirely obscured. One car we were following decided to turn back. The funny thing was that just as they did so, the road just ahead became clear. And by the time we were going down into Bear Lake the weather had cleared up entirely.

By the time we reached our destination, this is how the back of my car looked.


Good time to commit the perfect crime.

The hunt was good. We were able to take home 3 nice rabbits. Well actually Dustin took them home. Kaitlin, being pregnant, couldn't stomach the idea of me bringing them in.

I took some time to shoot my .45 while we were there. That thing is a beast. I shot through four 8-round magazines. I need to save the rest of my ammo for when I head down to Front Sight later this year. I need about 800 rounds for their 4 day handgun course.

On the trip home, Dustin spotted a buck deer, so we turned about to get a closer look. Sure enough, it was not only one, but 4 bucks all together. There were two 2x2's, a tall 3x2, and a nice looking 4x4. Now we know where to begin scouting for the deer hunt later in the year.

Just up around the corner, all the cars were stopped on the road. We suspected a wreck up ahead. Dustin hopped out and walked up the road to see what was happening, and if he could use his firefighter training to be of any assistance. I sat patiently in the car and gobbled the indulgent trail mix that Nik bought me for Christmas.

This is what was going on: http://news.hjnews.com/news/article_2790df62-3403-11e1-9315-001871e3ce6c.html

We arrived a bit too late to be of any assistance. Perhaps if we had not stopped up the road to oogle at the deer we might have been the ones jumping in the water to help out.

Once the road had cleared we headed on down the canyon without further incident. A very fun and adventurous trip. Worth putting in the blog for sure.

Happy New Year everyone. I hope we can all set some attainable goals, and work hard to realize them. I'm still deciding for sure what my goals will be for this year. It's a good refreshing feeling at the start of a new year.