Happy Fathers Day to Me

See, Grandma was a "hottie" too.

For some reason it is very quiet in the house right now. It must me Mom that makes all the noise. Thanks to those that have call and to those who may yet call. Matt was first - I think marriage has done some good things to him.

This summer, church has been kind of nice and very low key. There are about 15 - 18 couples still here for the summer and not a whole lot of things going on. The ward is cleared out of the building within 10 minutes after the closing prayer. I left before they had finished counting the tithing today. By the way, did you all hear that you will have to get new recommends. There is a new bar-coded recommend that you will receive from your bishop, then the stake approves it and enters the info somehow and then at the temple they will swipe it or check it and if the info is not in the computer guess what - no can enter. We have four months to issue all new recommends.

I hear you are all having a party at Kevin and Lisa's without me. With four layer dessert too. That's OK, I made Felecia's Friends yesterday and ate the whole thing. I made half a pan and finished it after church today.

For Father's Day we did the same thing we did last year. I tried to find the stuff but couldn't so I turned it over to our Relief Society President (who did it last year) and she and her husband took care of it. We had bottles of DAD's root beer with a big SNICKERS candy bar duct taped to the side. Get it - duct taped. It's a man thing.

I have been reading about one Louis L'Amour per day. That's either a very good time filler or time waster.

That's about it for now. I'll be glad when Mom gets home. Be nice to her.

Love, Dad

Soap Box Derby Anyone?

Last week was our ward Youth Conference. We camped and went hiking, rafting, and paintballing with slingshots. Everyone had a great time and I wish it would have lasted longer. We had planned on using the campground's well for our water, but they hadn't de-winterized it yet. We pumped it anyway into this water barrel and used it for washing and other non-potable activities. When I got home the water barrel had a layer of red rust on the bottom. I decided that this barrel was not too sanitary anymore and so with Tyler's prodding, we turned it into a go-cart. I marked a circle and Tyler cut out the opening with a jig-saw. When then made a frame and took a trip to Home Depot for some wheels. For just building it on the fly, it actually works pretty good. The only bad part is your's truly usually gets to do the pushing.

I've really enjoyed this blog and so has Leslie. She has now started one for her family. To view it click here. (Thanks Travis for showing me how to do a link.) You can now read about our adventures with my slant here and her slant there.

Have a great week!

Brant

Grandpa Backlund

The other day mom sent us a note and asked us to buy a flower to put on Grandpa Backlund's grave for Father's Day. This morning before church we rode the Vespa out to PG and found his head stone. It only took us about 5 minutes to find (not too bad for not having been there since I was 6) and yes there is still an Alberta Spruce right next to it. Actually if you look at the picture you can see that the tree is encroaching on the head stone a bit. We left the flower, took some pictures and then took the scenic route home.
In other news Kelly announced that she successfully defended her thesis but she didn't say that they passed her "without qualifications". That doesn't mean she's not qualified it means that other than a few typos she doesn't need to make any changes to her thesis. Most people have something they have to change so Kelly was pretty happy. Also, the scariest professor on her committee told her that if her project had been just a little larger it was good enough to be a doctoral dissertation.
The only other news if that our Vespa is 1 year old yesterday. If you want to see a neat picture of our friend's trip home to California click here