Painting at Home, Jacob at Work, and Detonators at School

Got the home painted this week. Spent lots of money on it. Spending more next week on carpeting and such like. Hopefully it all pays off and before too long.

Thursday was "take your child to work day" at VSP. Kristine brought Jacob in around 11:30 (after they had finished some standardized testing in Jacob's class). We got to see the executive suite and board room (though no executives) on the sixth floor of HQ1, and we also got to see the server room with mainframe and robotic tape sorter and so on, and Jacob also got to play with security cameras. We also said hi to lots of people, and Jacob also won the drawing for the iPod Shuffle. Haven't started using it yet. They also took this picture of him at security and gave it to him as a badge to wear. Very exciting:



On Saturday, we helped at the school beautification day planting trees (next to sprinkler water lines -- and no that wasn't the intent, but I guess people didn't have it all worked out -- so some upsetness with Gold Ridge folks vs. the school district that had the holes dug). Anyway, we also were digging just a bit deeper in one hole with a pick ax and found something in it. I thought it was a jump rope handle at first, but Kristine read some text on it (and then I did too) that said things like "Explosive" and "Danger" and "Detonateur" and such. So they called the fire department or 911 or something. And we had a fire truck and police cars out and such. Kristine and I only had the worry of the off chance of some left over TNT being off somewhere nearby under the ground. They have used such things around here for clearing out rock.

But in any case, the police and firemen decided to declare things safe after sitting around and chatting for a while, so a tree got put in the hole.

Out of the House

With help from family and the ward, we moved into an apartment yesterday. Still need to do more in the house to get ready for painting next week. Kids are adjusting fairly well. Sam's excited that we have stairs inside the apartment. So far it's been OK, but it seems a bit risky, too. We need to take advantage of the pool at the apartment complex to practice swimming.

Some Home Repair and Packing

Kristine's sister Karen and brother-in-law Curtis came over yesterday to help us work on the house and some packing. That was very kind of them. At church they asked for some volunteers to help us move this coming Saturday.

We've also started planning our trip to Oklahoma. We want to visit in Arizona and Texas. And Kristine has a cousin in El Paso whom we're planning to try to visit along the way. And we hope to see Carlsbad Caverns, White Sands, and maybe Kartchner Caverns, but it looks like the caves don't let you take young kids into many of the interesting areas. Sad.

We also intend to find some big trees to visit before we leave California. Maybe a chance to go camping with Grandma and Grandpa Shaltes. They are also planning to visit us in Oklahoma in October. It worked along with some financial thing they can attend for continuing education requirements for their tax and accounting licenses.

On a different note, David is definitely riding our little bike with both training wheels off the ground these days. Pretty cool. He at least beat me for learning that. But he's not ready to try one of the bigger bikes yet (which are closer to his size). Maybe we'll get up some video sometime.

(Warning. Potential spoilers on some C. S. Lewis.) And finally, we finished reading all of the Chronicles of Narnia yesterday. The final chapter there reminded of the hymn "Oh What Songs of the Heart", but the kids (unsurprisingly) didn't recognize it when I sang through the first verse. Having also read The Screwtape Letters (while commuting with Kristine's dad a couple years ago), I found the ending of both books (or series in the case of Narnia, I guess) had something in common. I hadn't remembered that detail from my prior reading of Narnia when I was in elementary school.

General Conference

This weekend was General Conference. We were able to sustain President Monson. He's so homey in style that it's been hard for me to imagine him in a position of such authority, so it was good to have a chance to see him operating as president. There is definitely a lot I can learn from him.

I did miss the priesthood session last night (and we had distractions throughout the other sessions of course) so that Kristine and I could attend the wedding of one of Kristine's best friends from high school, Michelle Skhal (now Matoba). It was a nice occasion. The kids stayed at the Shaltes home, watched by Annie, so that we could attend the wedding.

In other news, we signed with a real estate agent this week. Kristine meets with the home stager tomorrow morning to start making plans for what should happen when we move out. And I'm trying to decide what courses to take next fall. Main questions are about some math prerequisites for a scientific computing course. (I'm actually not all that strong in my math background compared to what engineers learn.)

Jacob's starting to sound resigned to the move. David has been supportive the whole time (Robots are too cool I guess), but he's indicated he'd like to move back. Sam's with Jacob about staying in Folsom, but he would like to buy a bigger (and two story) house. Anna and Zeke are of course clueless, though I feel a bit bad for Anna. She's old enough that adjustment might be some trouble for her, even while she won't really understand what's going on.

Officially Answered OU

Well, I sent an email to OU last night saying that we coming. Lots still to get in order, though. We currently hope to visit in Arizona and Texas along the way in August. And spend some vacation time with grandparents here this summer camping or something if possible. Jacob is still unhappy with leaving. David says he's for it but has indicated he'd like to move back afterwards. Sam wants to move to a bigger house but stay in California. Anna and Zeke of course have no clue. Hopefully we can keep everyone happy and make it a good experience. And also learn how to cinch the belt a lot on the budget.

I've also been thinking some recently about Mr. Holland's Opus. Quinn Pack, Mark Spencer, Ann Trainer (nee Jensen), and I all went over to Quinn's house after we got back from our missions to watch the movie. I guess it must have been Quinn's idea. I'm not sure what spurred that on, and I don't approve of everything in the movie, but I've thought about it now and then since that time. No particular exact moral at the moment, but it makes me think about things. President Monson's message in the latest Ensign also has some interesting related subject matter. Most important is that we feel good about what we're doing, that it's an acceptable decision. Later on down the road there may be both good and bad to come of it. Hopefully more good, but we haven't been inspired against it. Rather again, as I said, we've felt good about it. And there's something to be said of that.

On other subjects, they had our monthly activity at work last Friday. Some indoor soccer. I got a big dude's shoulder right in my chest. Still hurting. I manage to get injured too frequently at physical company activities. I guess that makes me the common element. Hmm.

Instigoration

Here's the YouTube page for the Pooh movie we made last week.

Feel free to send that link to others (rather than sending links to this blog post).

Apartment Reserved

Well, we reserved an apartment with the plan (somewhat due to their availability date) to move in mid-April. So hopefully the house can be fixed up soon after that for selling. It all scares me. Big things always do.

We made a Winnie-the-Pooh movie last night about the letter A. Jacob, Sam, and I are in it. Kristine filmed. Once the editing is done, I want to put it on YouTube to encourage sharing it. I'd like to try new movies again in the future. So, to avoid encouraging linking now, I won't show an intermediate movie version. But I do hope to have it done soon.

I sang with the choir for the ward Easter program today, and the Spirit was very strong during much of the program. Things didn't go as well for Kristine, since Sam got worked up. So I probably won't be spending all sacrament meeting in front much for a while.