It's Official

It is now 3:30 pm, Monday, March 31st, 2014 and I am officially retired.  Look out, I may come spend the weekend with you!!!

Thanks to those who came to the party, called, or thought about me.

Retirement Party

 "The Cake" - with my bucket list

Mom had put together center pieces for each table.  Each one had a theme based on what our plans are when we are both retired.  This one happened to be "Trains"

 This one was based on "Travel" with a brochures, a compass, and a new Ford F-150, and lots of flowers

I put together this display.  It is the Family Reunion picture, four panels with pictures from my youth, marriage, mission, work, and future plans.

There was lots of this - Hugging.  This is Lloyd Loutsenhiser.  He was my first boss with the church.  He retired about four years ago.

 You can probably guess who this is.  The little one in the middle is Amanda's little boy.

This is my boss from Caldwell, Idaho.  He is presenting me with "The Letter".  One of the secretaries from church headquarters calls and asks him to give a few sentences of insight into the person retiring.  Then they write a letter of congratulations and make it fairly personal.  It is then signed by some of the Brethren depending on how long you have been employed by the church.  I had 22 1/2 years .  My letter was signed by Presidents Monson, Eyring, and Uchtdorf.  Several people checked the signatures and their opinion was that they are real.  Kind of nice, Huh?

We had a good crowd.  Mom was a good hostess and kept everyone seated and fed.  I was a little selective on who we invited.  It was friends, family, fellow church employees, and contractors.

These are two pictures I had hanging in my office.  On the left is a quote by President Hinckley about spending the Widows Mite and the one on the right is a picture of a widow holding a small child and making a contribution of a  mite.

 The grand kids

 The kids

 and more kids

Silver Beaver

Mom keep reminding me that I have never put a picture of my award on the blog.  The dinner was held at a convention center out by the Spokane Airport.  They had a nice program, dinner, and silent auction.  Then they awarded about eight of us the Silver Beaver Award.  They said a few nice things about me (that I was an Eagle Scout),  I'm not so I don't know where that came from.  All in all it was a nice evening.  Matt, Kimbre, Kevin, and Lisa were able to attend with us.

Spring Break

This week was spring break.  Being the adventerous souls that we are, we did exactly what we do every year.  After a quick visit with Jamie and the cousins on Friday for lunch, we headed to Colorado Springs.  We hit the Olympic Training Center on Friday and the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo on Saturday.  Here are the highlights-

 

 In the morning, you could hear this lion grunting and roaring throughout the zoo.  Pretty cool!

Aimee and her twin.

All day long, Aly couldn't wait to see the Hippos!

This sculpture wasn't 1000 degrees, unlike some of my childhood memories of family pictures.

 "Looking off into the distance."

The tower bells are right underneath us.  You should have seen Katie jump when they began to chime.

-Brant

One more...

Sorry for the multiple posts today, but I have one more.  I found out today from Ken Last (my old bishop now living in Golden) that Shauna Woods is engaged to President Bingham.  He is an ex stake president from Santa Rosa CA.  She has a ring, so it is official.  The date is set for the end of the summer.  Shauna and Liza both live in Ken's ward- Liza and Ken carpool to school together.  Shauna is the RS Pres.

-Brant

PLANET- Student Career Days

For the past few days, CSU in Fort Collins has hosted the PLANET Student Career Days.  This is where about 60 colleges from across the nation send their students to compete in landscaping events.  Our company was a sponsor, so I was roped in to serving as a judge for one of the events.  It didn't take long to find the BYU team roaming around campus.  I had a nice visit with them and even got my picture taken (notice the BofM as we "hasten the work!")

Below is the event where I served as a judge.  They needed to follow a plan and create a paver patio, with a specific inlay pattern.  They also had to build a dry stack wall around one corner.  All this in two hours, while it was snowing and VERY cold.  Here is the BYU team in action- they placed first!  (I said nothing while we critiqued their work, but the other judges were very impressed.)

And the winner is....

You can see the complete results here.  BYU-Idaho came in second-Very nice!



For those of you "in the know", you can use the following hashtags to see more pictures of the events and the old grounds crew foremen we worked with-

#planetscd

#byuprovo

#realstihl

(You may have to wade through some weird dancing photos that ended up in the mix.)

-Brant

Cross Country

Ty ran in his first cross country meet on Wednesday.  He finished in 5th place!  Not too shabby for his first ever meet.

Trav- I told him that if his shoe ever came loose at an event, to just kick it to someone he knows in the crowd and keep running.

-Brant

I hope you'll forgive me for the random youtube video post. I think you'll find it is well worth your time to watch it.

Announcement!

11 more working days!!!!

St Patty's Day 5k

Ty and Les ran in the Highlands Ranch Saint Patrick's Day 5k on Satruday.  Ty met his goal and finished the race in 25 mins. He placed 5th in his age group of 13-19- pretty impressive!  He just started cross-country with his school and enjoys running with his friends.

Aimee's weekend was a little rougher.  While riding bikes at a friend's house on Friday, she decided to have her first major bike wreck.  (Yes, she was wearing a helmet!)  She now has a chipped front tooth, fat lips, sprained wrist, bumped head and several areas of road rash.  She was pretty sore on Saturday, but felt much better today.  Luckily, her tooth isn't too severe- we'll see what the dentist recommends later this week.

-Brant

Family Fun

The boys and I drove over to Seattle Friday afternoon to spend Spring Break with Seth. We went and did an underground tour of Seattle yesterday. It was interesting to hear the history of Seattle and learn how it became what it is today. Basically, Seattle was built at sea level with terrible plumbing. A fire caused everything to go up in flames and when they rebuilt, they built everything up a story to avoid the tides. Entires to the buildings were built on the second floor and the roads were built up to meet the second level. The original sidewalks at sea level became like tunnels when they were topped off to keep people and debris from falling into the space between the roads and buildings. It was fun and interesting.

This was one of the wooden sewer pipes used to service the state of the art toilets ordered for the city. When they orginally ordered the toilets there was no sewer system in place, just outhouses at sea level that filled up when the tides came in. It was amazing to hear how long they dealt with inadequate plumbing and how anyone even survived the diseases.

After the tour we came home to let the kids run around and I took a kid free trip to Target. I probably enjoyed the solitude a little more than I should have but it's been an interesting experience to be the sole parent responsible for the kids while Seth is in Seattle. My brain enjoyed the break.

Teeny bought the chocolate cake at a ward fundraiser and while it looked good, I really just wanted a slice of carrot cake. I was more than excited when I found just that at Albertson's. It was so good.

Seth and I had enormous portions of Teriakyi and More on our date.

We'll be here for another week and we're excited to spend time together as a family! Seth recently found out he'll be getting a phone interview with the place he worked at this past summer. We've learned The Lord has a plan for us and we're hoping this can be it, but we never know.

Thanks for all the Birthday calls!

Peter Pan

This weekend was the production of Peter Pan.  After many weeks of rehersals, the shows arrived!  They played 3 shows to sold out audiences.  The kids did great and had a fun time.  Leslie wasn't sure she would survive, but give her a few days and she'll be ready to direct 50 little kids again!

Mr Darling, A Fairy and Two Lost Boys

Katie and her twin- the two Coon Lost Boys- they said all their lines together.

The cast

Aimee with her fairies

Chief Bamboo(Ty) and his braves, surround the lost boys

-Brant

Cambridge

Boats on the river Cam

 King's College Chapel - If you're a music person, this is where the famous choir sings

 The courtyard of Trinity College. This is the courtyard that they supposedly run around in Chariots of Fire, but it wasn't actually filmed there.

 More King's College

No Pictures

I haven't posted for several weeks so I thought I'd just include a little of what we have been doing.

• We had a very mild winter so the last couple of weeks it has been trying to catch up.  Rain, snow, cold, and wind.  You name it and we've had it.  Yesterday we went to the Spokane Temple for Stake Temple day.  It was 12 degrees and with the wind chill it was 3 degrees below zero.  Today in priesthood the young men said they went skiing yesterday and the wind chill at Silver Mountain was 30 degrees below zero.  Spring, where are you?
• We went to the temple yesterday and enjoyed the session.  Afterwards we went to IHOP and used Aunt Tami's Christmas gift card.  We then drove to Post Falls where Kimbre cut Mom's hair and we visited they them and then over to Kevin and Lisa's to visit some more.  The temperature rose 13 degrees on the way home.  The arctic front hit Post Falls but missed Moscow.
• I'm trying to get this years projects started and running smoothly at work for the new guy.  Don't know who he will be but I want to leave things in good shape for him.
• This week we are going to e-mail out an invitation to my retirement party.  We are inviting FM guys, some stake and ward people, come contractors, and family.  I tried to keep it small but we just kept adding more.  I have received some very nice e-mails from friends, co-workers, and contractors.
• Tomorrow starts the last month of my employment - 21 more working days.  I'm a little apprehensive about it but looking forward to going to bed on Sunday evening and not having to "gear up" for work on Monday morning.  I've got a list a mile long of things I want to do.  We'll see how long it takes me to decide to do them.

Hope you all have a great week.

Dr Seuss' Bday party!

 We decided it was a good excuse to party for Dr Seuss' birthday.  So we made some hats to really get in the mood.

 Added some custom Dr Seuss food: bow tie noodles for Cat in the Hat, Green eggs and ham (no not green ham, many said they wouldn't eat if it was colored), cheese tree (Fox in Socks), and one fish two fish, red fish blue fish and some strawberry/banana hats that looked like the Cat in the Hat hat.

 It was a hit, and then we watched The Lorax and Horton Hears a Who with treats of little gummy eggs, green licorice, and Hop on Pop(corn).  It was a fun night and hopefully a memory!

Then Saturday we got busy on the tiling of the bathroom.  It's slowly coming together.  We decided on a rich yellow for the walls, we got half the shower  tiled, and the vanity should be done by next week!  So if we're lucky by the end of March we'll have a functioning bathroom!  

For Webelos one night we were working on the Artist pin and we had to do silhouette drawings.  Luckily we knew an artist that came and helped us out.  The boys had fun doing these!  Anyone else remember doing these?