This is my nephew Jake teaching a couple that lives on a man-made floating island on a lake in Peru.

Shannon’s nephew Christian has his farewell this weekend. He is going to Uganda!!

We drove to the NW for spring break. We stopped in Portland for a couple days to visit friends. I got dropped off to work for the week. The manager that replaced me there decided to move back to Michigan to be closer to family, so I will be spending some time covering until they find someone else. Rest of the family drove up to BC to visit Shannon’s parents. They missed the open house for the new Vancouver LDS temple by a day or two, but luckily the temple president is a lifelong family friend so they were able to get a super deluxe private tour. They all loved it. More visiting in Portland, then we made our way south to Shannon’s sister’s near Sacramento.

My sister Margo lives near the Paul Kruger’s family in Utah valley. He was a beastly, defensive superstar for the University of Utah football team and now plays for the Baltimore Ravens. He is Ty’s favorite football player since they are both running on one kidney. Kruger lost his from an ATV accident when he was young. Margo asked his mom if she could get Paul to autograph something for Ty. He sent Ty an autographed Ravens ball and two autographed 8 x 10 photos. Awesome!

Grace has been growing her hair out for almost a year to donate to “Locks Of Love” in Ty’s name. He was diagnosed one year ago next week. On Tuesday she got chopped and the new ‘do looks really cute.

Thanks grandma & grandpa for the early birthday shirt!

Shannon had all of her siblings and most of their kids in town this weekend, so it was a non-stop party. Thursday all the boys and Grace went to SpeedZone while Shannon and her sister went shopping. SpeedZone is awesome: mini Grand Prix track, real dragsters (on rails), kid go-carts and the crowd favorite: slick track go-carts. They throw baby powder on the track and all of a sudden it feels like you are driving on ice: four wheel drifts on the turns, bashing into sons and nephews at every opportunity. Friday we met Boatmans and the local Rennies at Universal Studios after school/ work then headed to our house to watch the Olympic opening ceremonies. All the Vancouver natives were bursting with pride (and deeply embarassed at times…prairie dance girl/boy?…malfunctioning flame holder). Saturday we went swimming at the Claremont Club during the day and had a big party for Ty that evening. More Olympics. Sunday we went to Griffith Park observatory. It was an amazingly clear day: could see the ocean and snow-capped peaks by San Bernardino. The Hollywood sign was covered with a protest sign that said “Save our Peak”. Some developers were trying to build houses by the Hollywood sign. A bunch of groups got together this week and bought the land for $12M. After that we drove thru Hollywood, Beverly Hills and stopped at the LA temple. Next stop was Santa Monica beach. On Monday the Boatmans headed home. I went dirt bike riding with Dave and Paul on a really cool trail that starts just off I-15 at the Palmdale exit and goes thru tunnels under the freeway, up and over the hill to Victorville. Shannon and the girls played, shopped and went to lunch. Good times!

Saturday we went to the Getty to check out an exhibit of Rembrandt sketches I heard about on the radio. Apparently he didn’t sign his sketches and had dozens of students that did similar work, so many sketches were falsely attributed to him. Over the last 30 years specialists have systematically come up with ways to figure out the artist behind the sketches. They paired similar Rembrandt and student sketches side by side and explained how to tell them apart. Most of the time it was immediately obvious: Rembrandt’s usually had fewer strokes and shading but conveyed MUCH more feeling. Even the landscapes. Very cool exhibit!

Next we went to Universal Studios which is about 20 minutes northeast of the Getty. It wasn’t too busy for a Saturday: 20 minute wait for the Simpson’s ride, 30 minute wait for the Studio tour. The studio tour highlights: Wisteria Lane, Skull Island from latest King Kong, flash flood, earthquake and the tour guide. We finished up at the animal show where Shannon was selected from the audience to get pick-pocketed by the parrot from Ace Ventura. She held up a dollar bill and the bird flew across the stadium, grabbed it and flew back. With that and her conversation with Craig Ferguson a couple nights before, she made quite a splash in Hollywood this week. We went to the taping of Friday night’s Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson Thursday evening. The guest was Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite). It was fun, but we missed out on the musical performance by Corinne Bailey Rae (saw her in the parking lot) and the commedian who both taped with the afternoon show. That audience also got a Sirius satellite radio with a 2 month subscription. They also cut our close-up audience shot! We were sitting right behind a pregnant lady who they zoomed in on during the email portion of the show. Also cut: CF kept trying to get Heder to swear, but he wouldn’t do it.

Friday I went snowboarding at the resort up the road from our house. They got 5 feet of snow last week, so I was anxious to get up there. I had to work last weekend, but Dylan went snowboarding with his cousin and uncle Saturday, the first clear day after a week of snow. The ski resort is only 10 miles away, but it took them 4 hours from when they left our house until they were skiing!!! Could have almost been to Mammoth in 4 hours. They had to put on chains, even though they had 4WD and the ticket line takes forever. They still had a great time. Friday my biggest delay was the line for lift tickets: 45 minutes. The snow was still in great shape and the lift lines weren’t bad. REI has discount passes, so a day pass was only $25.

We went for a 10 mile bike ride on the Santa Ana River Trail today to start the new year. Beautiful sunny 70 degree day.

Gave surfing a try for the first time on Saturday. We drove down to Carlsbad to spend the day with Bishop Dave and his family. The waves were OK when we first went out, but quickly started breaking wrong and I was denied the transformative experience. Looking forward to giving it another shot soon.

We went skiing at Mammoth on Monday and had a great time. It’s been cold, so the snow was in good shape. We were able to ride/ ski together all day for the first time: no lessons and everyone kept up pretty well. After going back and forth, Gavin seems to have settled on snowboarding.

We had a great Thanksgiving in No Cal at Shannon’s sister’s house in the country. Shannon’s parents and brother Dave and his family were there, too. Thursday morning Don’s dad took all the boy cousins trap shooting. The 1/4 mile motocross track on their property got lots of use from motorcycles, quads and the Jeep. Dylan drove their old Montero dozens of miles round and round on the track. We played and watched lots of football. The ladies got in a marathon day of shopping on Black Friday. It was me versus the other 15 cheering for Utah on Saturday. They did better than I expected with their freshman quarterback.

Look who my moms and pops ran into at Little America a few weeks ago. President Monson was taking the Mrs to brunch for her birthday. My parents were there with one of their favorite Mongolians: Siara.