Keller Landing

On Friday, we made the 8 hour drive from Reno to Meridian and now, four days later, we are amazed at the transition.

We still really miss all our great friends in Reno and remember fondly our last year.

However, in four quick days, we have already unpacked 50% of our stuff, met 15 of the local neighborhood kids, spent a night playing touch football in the park behind our house with 4 of the locals, attended two dinners with neighbors, one of which was a block party where we met a good 20 people. We also had two consecutive days with play dates for the kids, had two different sets of stranger kids knock on our door and ask if our kids could come out to play, received a plate of cookies and a third dinner invite for Thursday.

What can I say other than Meridian is a great place to raise a family. We felt it a year ago for two years and feel it again. This is a truly unique place to grow up. Oh and the people seem so kind.

Here is one example. The cable guy came over on Saturday and spent 2 hours getting things set-up. He went out of his way to get our cable wired in the attic and he chatted like an old friend. He bid good bye to Sarah and me calling us by name suggesting maybe he'd see us again soon. Today, the gas guy stopped by to get us connected and Sarah commented again just how nice this guy was.

Today was also my first day at work and it was an absolute breath of fresh air. Unlike past employment, I was greeted by an office full of happy, hard-working, very smart people who took time to welcome me, find common connections, offer advice and greet me with a smile throughout the day. These people were wholesome family oriented people who were very goal oriented and the company is led by top tier leaders.

For those of you who don't know, I took a job with Clearwater Analytics. It is a company founded by 4 great guys, 3 of which are BYU undergrads. They are industry leaders in fixed income investment management. The business I work for sells subscriptions to a finance reporting service and software tool used by hundreds of large corporate cash managers in the largest corporations.

I am one of two marketing professionals focusing on strategy, business development as well as a slew of cross marketing initiatives including a web site redesign, web analytics tracking, tradeshow planning, competitive analysis, email marketing and lead generation/sales tool development. I am thrilled to be there and realize how fortunate I was to have the PC-Doctor experience which was critical preparatory experience for this work.

Thanks for all of you who have commented on our last blog post. I promise we will soon be back to pictures and kid updates and will soon be back to reading and posting on your blogs.

One-Year Vacation Over

Today is our last Sunday in Reno. It is a bitter day in a bitter-sweet experience. We move to our new/old home in Meridian this next Friday. 

Wow how the time has flown and this last year has been so good to us, full of enriching, new and challenging experiences. We have met so many friends and seen new places and spent lots of time soaking up the Nevada sun. 

This is a super short post because we are off to church.

Yosemite Yam

We made a spontaneous trip to Yosemite National Park Friday after work through midnight on Saturday.



It was a breath-taking experience and super fun. Our kids were great. Sarah packed lots of goodies and we had incredible vistas.

We drove 3 hours on Friday and stopped at Lee Vining. The kids love hotels and turned each bed into a trampoline. Once they went to bed, I went over for some yummy barbecue meat. I liked the taste until it got cold and I had to gnaw it off the bone. Darn't! It ruined the experience.

Well, next day we started at 5:50 am. We were all bright eyed except for Sarah. We left by 7 am and drove 2.5 hours to Yosemite proper. We saw the Yosemite falls and visitor center and took a number of wandering trips and took lots of photos.

The best part was yet to come - we left the valley floor and climbed some 4000 feet in 30 minutes to Glacier Point at about 9000 feet. Thank heavens for Sienna, our trusty van. I can't imagine climbing that by foot.

Here is our incredible panoramic view of Half Dome from there [click on the image for the really large view]



Oh, and we saw some 50 or so climbers on the top of Half Dome through a telescope. It was nuts



Here is a view of the valley floor just to the West of the Half Dome. The green down below is where we were 30 minutes previously



Lastly, we headed to the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias and snagged a picture of this giant - It is several photos stitched together which explains the rough edge.



This picture was crazy too - you can drive a small car through this and amazingly, the tree is still alive and growing.



Here is one of Levi taking a mid-day snooze on some cute girl's back



This is a picture of the root system on these trees which goes 6-8 feet deep but up to 250' in diameter.




Finally, here is a picture slide show of all these pictures and more

55 Reasons to Love Mom

55 Reasons We Love This Lady



Mom - Happy Birthday!

Here are 55 reasons that we love you.

1. She spoils my "rotten" kids . . . I mean "kids rotten". ;-)
   
2. She works very hard.
3. She cares deeply for people.
4. She spent thousands of hours listening to me late into the evening.
5. She remembers things that are important to those she loves.
6. She deeply loves my father and works hard at her marriage.
   
7. She is funny and has a wonderful belly laugh that we get the privilege to see on occasion.
8. She likes to play games.
9. She makes the best Orange Jello Salad in the world.
10. She has a fun design style and is always working on a project.
11. She can touch her nose with her tongue
12. Every once in a while she'll let her18-year old self out to play for a while.
13. She is always finding a good "garage sale" deal
14. She is always having a garage sale to sell some of those good "garage sale" deals.
15. My kids love her (and Grandpa).
16. She hardly ever lets a week go by without a call to check-in.
17. She is happy.
18. She makes the world a bit happier.
19. She even makes burned food taste yummy.
    
20. She taught me to love honey on grilled cheese.
21. She understands people's needs.
22. She makes music when she snores. ;-) Hehehe
    
23. She is her kids best friend.
24. She cares about the details of my life.
25. She taught me how to be prayerful.
26. She gave me great pep talks to woo away my worries.
27. She loves through her touches and gives great hugs and gave great "face massages" as a kid.
28. She loves to read.
29. She is the glue that keeps our family and her siblings together.
30. She seems to have great perspective to life.
    
31. She was always great friends with my friends and made them want to come over.
32. She is beautiful and has a wonderful smile.
33. She has some mischievous spunk to her.
34. She went toilet papering with me and my friends.
35. She opened my world to opportunities and ideas.
36. She lives for Grandkid visits and my kids know it.
37. She spends her time and money to come visit no matter how far away we are.
38. She loves the Lord and has shared that with me.
39. She is honest.
40. She is trustworthy and can be confided in.
41. She is always sharing with the less fortunate.
42. She is a good conversationalist and always has something interesting to say.
43. She is the center of our family.
44. She let me drink all the 2% milk I wanted growing up.
45. She made great custom shaped b-day cakes.
46. She was willing to beat up the Bynam bully that popped me in the nose. ;-)
47. She never said "no" to all the sports and activities I wanted to participate in.
48. She spent all her Saturdays and evenings focusing on her kids' stuff.
49. She gives to the community.
50. She is growing old very very well.
51. She quickly gets to know other people and make them feel welcome.
52. She is transparent, not stubborn and willing to make positive changes.
53. She is true to her covenants.
54. She taught me to eat all my food (or wait, maybe that was Dad).
55. She is one of my best friends.

We love you, Mom.

Chris, Sarah and kids

One day left of Kindergarten

I took my lunch break and joined the family at Caleb's Kindergarten End of School Celebration. It was cool. They had food, games and lots of playing.

Here are some pics:



Watching Caleb play with his friends sent me back to my year as a Kindergartner some 27 years ago. How I remember certain things like it were yesterday. We lived in two places and I went to two kindergartens. The first was Sunset Elementary and we lived in a yellow duplex. The second was South Gate Dragons and we lived in a blue house. 

Here are a few of the funniest:

1. At the yellow duplex, Gary and I and two naughty friends tried to smoke some used cigarette butts that we picked up from the neighbor kids yard. We used one of those low to the ground briquette grills to hold the fire while we tried to light the cigarettes. Good thing Mom was vigilant and had a lawn sprinkler close by because our fire spilled out of our container and started the weeds on fire. I promise that was the once and only time I tried to smoke - crazy that I was in kindergarten.
   
2. I also remember trying to climb the splintery power pole outside our house. I slipped and got poked in the belly by a long screw. I still have the scar.
   
3. I remember another scar when I climbed the side fence. The builder used the equivelant of railroad ties and wouldn't you know it, I slipped and got 1/2" of broken splinters in the inside of my arm. Mom took me to the ER. I was a basket case crying for her and didn't even peep in the ER.
   
4. I remember Mom babysitting a girl that was always peeing her pants and having to use my pants. which she also peed in. I really disliked her for that and in the end, I remember blaming her for my own bed wetting habit. ;-) My logic - something from her passed in those jeans that I wore and made me wet the bed. Hahaha 
   
5. I couldn't help but steal polished pretty rocks from some old lady's front steps. I did it a bunch of times too and thought nothing of it. ;-) Perhaps that explains why Caleb has his own little rock collecting fetish.
   
6. I learned to ride a bike and ran into the back of a parked car at the bottom of the hill and got the wind knocked out of me bad. Ouch.
   
7. I also remember having an absolute fascination with motorcycles then - the same neighbor that tempted me with cigarettes had a picture of a bike that is still in my head.

Then, midway through school, we moved to the blue house.

1. I had a buddy named Chris and another named Wendy. Wendy invited us over all the time to play but she wanted to play barbies and the other Chris was okay with that so they'd play and I'd go home to ride my bike.
2. I played kiss tag a handful of times at recess and due to Chris' pressure had Wendy pinned under me on the ground by our SouthGate Dragon's school sign.  I was 6 inches from kissing her. In the end, I was too nervous and so the other Chris popped Wendy a big Kindergarten smacker. ;-) She struggled like she didn't want to be kissed but she liked both of us, and we knew it.
3. There was a guy in our neighborhood whose father built him this cool two story fort in their backyard and it had the rough hewn bark covered slabs of wood on the outside so it felt like a real 1800s sort of fort. 
4. I remember Ronnie Wright lived in the culdesac one over from me and we played the Atari Asteroids game as often as possible.
5. Ronnie and I also had elastic in common - that is we both had super hero elastic undies and t-shirts and many times, we would strip down to our skivvies and go slippy sliding on his irrigated bare grass. It was a ton of fun. 
6. I looked up Ronnie a few years back and he was playing professional minor league baseball.
7. I remember when Krystal was born. We were given an oriental cabbage meal one evening from a ward member and I wanted to puke when I tasted it. I think I went to bed hungry.
8. I remember the night I woke screaming after watching the Star Trek episode where the Doc pulled an alien looking ear wig out of the Eastern European speaking guy's ear. It had done some major damage to his brain. Well, I had a "way too real" dream that ear wigs had invaded my ears and were all over my body. Ughhh! It took my parents a long time to convince me it wasn't real.

Funny memories huh? What is your funniest kindergarten memory? 

Caleb Rode the School Bus for the First Time

So, Caleb had 4 days left in school and Sarah was super surprised when he asked to ride the school bus home. She was thrilled and after a good 270 days trying to get him to ride the bus, she was thrilled as a Momma Chicken seeing her little Chickadee come off the bus. I think Caleb was equally thrilled.

Missouri Was Amazing

We just came back from Missouri this last Tuesday. It was a fabulous 6 days spending four with Sarah's dearest sweet grandparents, Jim and Jayne Creed and a day and a half with my oldest brother, Gary and his wife, Teri and their five great boys.

We loved the whole experience and came away with one big takeaway - Missouri is an Amazingly Beautiful Place with Great People. If we had more family permanently clustered there, we'd move in a heart beat.

Here were the highlights:

• First airplane ride for Levi and Ellie and first Caleb remembers.


• Caleb went fishing for his first time and caught 3 Blue Gill that we ate for supper.


• First time in a long time I've seen 2.3 inches of rain in a matter of hours - Reno had a healthy .5 inches in 5 days. Woohoo.


• First time I've seen so many natural ponds collecting run-off


• First time I've made the connection that all that green stuff is watered naturally and no one has lawn irrigation systems. Wow!


• I was reminded that I like humidity and we had lots of it.


• I was reminded how great it is to have a wife that doesn't get motion sick.


• I was reminded how much we love family.

Here is a long string of photos with a few headlines:



WINGS - Caleb was thrilled to sit in the cockpit of our plane.



MOVIE BUFF - Thank you to a Disney movie for entertaining Caleb - is that any surprise?


SHE CRASHED - Finally on the third and last flight, Ellie crashed and slept almost 2 hours like this. Cute girl



ARRIVAL - we finally got our rental car at 1:00 am and we were tired of lugging this big cart of luggage. Bless Sarah and the kids hearts - they were great troopers. We arrived in Columbia at 3:30 am and we were tired. ;-)


SUNSHINE STILL LIVES - Now, if you don't know Sarah's dear grandparents, let me tell you they espouse my theory of limiting consumption and Sunshine is one 40+ year-old example of that. Grandpa drives this most day to and from his errands and the University. Grandpa Creed even let us know it had ~184k miles on it. It was a lot of fun. We went from their house to the backwoods country store for candy. It was something else to see the warped floor boards and carefree patrons and employee behind the counter - it felt like I was in a different country.








ELLIE RELAXING - While Caleb was off somewhere, Ellie was quite content just lounging and smelling flowers and worrying where she left her purple lip gloss. I'm pretty sure she checked every inch of this grass she laid on to make sure there was NO Goose POOP!






FEEDING THE CATFISH - Grandma and Grandpa gave us food for the catfish and I couldn't believe how quickly they came to the water's edge and gobbled up these nibblets. They got so close Sarah petted the back of one and then she screeched when it instantly splashed away. Here Caleb is trying again to touch one of these ugly fish



GOD'S BEAUTY - I died watching the sunsets every evening we were there. This captures the beautiful lush growth, the calm waters and the peaceful evening. Most nights we were wandering in the yard, chasing Geese, watching birds or chatting on the deck.



NEW LIFE - This foal was less than 12-hours old and lived across the street from the Creeds.


POTATO BUG FITS - Caleb is a bug nut and he thought it was so funny to put the potato bug in his belly button and he laughed when it crawled out. Agghh we have a 150% boy in him.





Kansas City with 12 Kellers







SWIMMING - We were bummed when we arrived at our hotel to find the pool was broken so we whipped out the speedos and spent Memorial Day afternoon at the pool in chilly water.



COMMUNITY OF CHRIST TEMPLE - Strange place that only administers one prayer a day at 1 pm for World Peace. We went in but were not warmly welcomed and with 8 kids, headed right on out again.

FAREWELL PICS - Cousin pictures to capture the fun memories



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