Thursday, November 8, 2012
I Had to Know
(I actually finished reading the Mormon Scholars Testify site a while ago and wrote this, but then left it in draft form until today.)
I've been reading the testimonies of LDS Scholars and they're very interesting. Many of them talk about having an experience where they had an experience that told them the truth of the Book of Mormon. I honestly can't remember when I didn't believe the scriptures. I feel like an idiot when I ask that question in prayer.
I do remember an event that was similar I think. On my mission I one time felt that I had to find a street where we would find someone to teach. One night I told myself that I was not going to get off my knees until I had a street to go to where we would find someone who wanted to hear the gospel. After a while I absolutely knew which street we would find a "golden contact". I went in to my companion, very excited, and told him we needed to plan the next day. I told him I wanted to go to a new area to teach. He said OK. I picked the area that had my street. We prayed for confirmation and I felt the spirit again, but I could tell my companion hadn't, not like me.
In the morning the zone leaders called. They wanted to go on splits and they wanted me to leave the area. I told companion not to go to "my" street. I got back after splits in the afternoon. We did find a golden family. The wife was especially excited. We set up an appointment to come back and when we showed they weren't there! We finally found the father at home after a couple of days, and his wife had passed away. I was shocked. We asked if we could do anything for him and his family. He said his congregation was helping them. As I thought about this I probably should have offered to teach about the plan of salvation. I wasn't inspired to, so I don't feel that bad about it.
I find this story ironic. I'm glad that I was able to find the family I always think that we were there to help the wife and that maybe on the other side, us showing up when we did, will help her accept the gospel. All I know is that when I absolutely had to have an answer one came powerfully.
I've always thought to myself could I walk away from the Church? The thought literally terrifies me. I couldn't in good conscious say in prayer to the Lord; "You have to tell me this book is true or I'm leaving." the Lord would have to know that that's not true and never will be.
Monday, May 14, 2012
The Science Series
I realized that since I haven't been writing hardly anything at all, I also haven't been writing about what I've been listening to and reading lately.
Probably the most exciting thing that I've been listening too is a series of lectures about science. I have a very scientific way of picking which lectures I'm going to listen to. I go on line and see which ones are on sale then I try and pick the ones that I seem most inspired to pick. I like to think that the still small voice helps in this, and really in believe it does but sometimes I'm sure that I just pick the most interesting ones. Here's what happened recently.
First I got a series about the history of science from 1600-1900 that was very interesting. In it I learned about phlogiston which was at one time thought to be the substance that natural philosophers believed was given off during combustion. So everyone for years and years the theory for the combustion mechanism went in exactly the opposite way to the way we believe it goes now. It explained a lot of things. First if you put a candle under a dome and lit it the candle gave off phlogiston until the air became saturated with phlogiston and could not take any more in and the candle stopped burning. Do the same thing with a mouse. Put a mouse under a dome and it combusted food for energy and the mouse exhaled phlogiston until the air became saturated and then the mouse died. There were problems with the theory but it was very predictive. When they alchemist who were becoming chemists discovered oxygen they at first considered it de-phogistated air. Candles burned brighter and mouses seemed perkier because they were able to give off more phlogiston. For 30 years alchemist/chemists fought the idea that combustion was adding oxygen instead of giving off phlogiston. Niels Bohr one time said that the reason quantum mechanics became accepted was because all the old physicists, who didn't accept it, died off and made room for younger physicists who did accept it. I'm pretty sure this is what happened with phlogiston although the series didn't say it. Another interesting thing about about oxygen is that the name means "with acid" because the early discovers thought it always went with acid. So hydrogen should really be called oxygen because it's actually hydrogen that is always "with acid"
That was very interesting but then I listened to a second series called the "Science Wars" where the lecturer talks about how scientists know what they know. The professor takes a historical journey through science but he uses as an example the fact that philosophers have been disagreeing about what people can know since Plato. In one of Plato's books he talks about the Gods who are for Truth, and the Earth Giants who say we can only have belief there is no Truth. Basically Plato believed that men can have a knowledge of truth through deductive reasoning, while his enemies (the Sophists) said that knowledge was alway subjective and dependent on the dictates of society. The rest of the lectures talk about how these two ideas have been in tension for 2400 years and still are today. However the powerful thing for me came in the second lecture.
The professor points out that all of science is based on a logical fallacy. If I say "If I do X Y will turn blue" and I do X and Y turns blue then that is a true statement but saying that "Doing X turned Y blue" is not a true statement. As soon as he said that I thought of phlogiston and how for years scientist said; "If I cause a candle to give off phlogiston under a dome the candle will go out." and that was believed. Well our definition can be no better. I think it's better but it's really not.
I felt like I should share this with the Priests and did last Sunday, and I've never felt the spirit in a class more powerfully that when I shared this and then compared it to a testimony. I hadn't really thought that I would compare it with a testimony but was inspired to do so and frankly I was shocked at how powerfully the spirit came into the room.
There was another thing that kind of shocked me about this series. At the end the lecturer gave an example of pseudo science and used intelligent design as an example. The thing that shocked me was that he said that creative design is really just a cover for creationism, which I still don't believe, but he went on to say that those who believe in it think that biology and related sciences should be done away with. Wow. Now I believe we were created intelligently and I don't think life arose from random processes, but to give up biology is ludicrous. I've. Now started looking to see if ID people really think that and from what I've read so far some of the statement may be true. One of the books that I read that really helped convince me of ID as a theory (although I've always believed in Devine creation, this helped me think I wasn't and idiot for believing so) was an agnostic and he said that he didn't accept creationism, because he was agnostic and so which creation account would he believe? Christian? Hindu? Muslim? So I know all IDers are not creationists.
After that series of lecture I listened to another about the philosophy of science and frankly it was hard and probably over my head. Some of it I'd heard about already and some of it was covered in the first series. In fact I'm pretty sure that if I hadn't listened to the first series I wouldn't have had a chance with the second series. I'm now listening to the both series again so that I can learn more from them. However, one thing that I did learn from it at the end was about how unlikely entropy is at the beginning of the universe the way that it is described. In a way I'd know about this because I've known for a while how unlikely it is that we would get a clumpy universe the way that we have one, but I'd not tied it to entropy. The lecturer said that the unlikeliness of the level of entropy at the beginning of the universe would be similar to throwing styrofoam balls one centimeter in diameter into a tornado in Kansas and having the tornado cover Kanses with a layer of styrofoam balls one layer thick, all of Kansas that is. All I can say is Wow and atheists think theists are gullible in their faith.
Probably the most exciting thing that I've been listening too is a series of lectures about science. I have a very scientific way of picking which lectures I'm going to listen to. I go on line and see which ones are on sale then I try and pick the ones that I seem most inspired to pick. I like to think that the still small voice helps in this, and really in believe it does but sometimes I'm sure that I just pick the most interesting ones. Here's what happened recently.
First I got a series about the history of science from 1600-1900 that was very interesting. In it I learned about phlogiston which was at one time thought to be the substance that natural philosophers believed was given off during combustion. So everyone for years and years the theory for the combustion mechanism went in exactly the opposite way to the way we believe it goes now. It explained a lot of things. First if you put a candle under a dome and lit it the candle gave off phlogiston until the air became saturated with phlogiston and could not take any more in and the candle stopped burning. Do the same thing with a mouse. Put a mouse under a dome and it combusted food for energy and the mouse exhaled phlogiston until the air became saturated and then the mouse died. There were problems with the theory but it was very predictive. When they alchemist who were becoming chemists discovered oxygen they at first considered it de-phogistated air. Candles burned brighter and mouses seemed perkier because they were able to give off more phlogiston. For 30 years alchemist/chemists fought the idea that combustion was adding oxygen instead of giving off phlogiston. Niels Bohr one time said that the reason quantum mechanics became accepted was because all the old physicists, who didn't accept it, died off and made room for younger physicists who did accept it. I'm pretty sure this is what happened with phlogiston although the series didn't say it. Another interesting thing about about oxygen is that the name means "with acid" because the early discovers thought it always went with acid. So hydrogen should really be called oxygen because it's actually hydrogen that is always "with acid"
That was very interesting but then I listened to a second series called the "Science Wars" where the lecturer talks about how scientists know what they know. The professor takes a historical journey through science but he uses as an example the fact that philosophers have been disagreeing about what people can know since Plato. In one of Plato's books he talks about the Gods who are for Truth, and the Earth Giants who say we can only have belief there is no Truth. Basically Plato believed that men can have a knowledge of truth through deductive reasoning, while his enemies (the Sophists) said that knowledge was alway subjective and dependent on the dictates of society. The rest of the lectures talk about how these two ideas have been in tension for 2400 years and still are today. However the powerful thing for me came in the second lecture.
The professor points out that all of science is based on a logical fallacy. If I say "If I do X Y will turn blue" and I do X and Y turns blue then that is a true statement but saying that "Doing X turned Y blue" is not a true statement. As soon as he said that I thought of phlogiston and how for years scientist said; "If I cause a candle to give off phlogiston under a dome the candle will go out." and that was believed. Well our definition can be no better. I think it's better but it's really not.
I felt like I should share this with the Priests and did last Sunday, and I've never felt the spirit in a class more powerfully that when I shared this and then compared it to a testimony. I hadn't really thought that I would compare it with a testimony but was inspired to do so and frankly I was shocked at how powerfully the spirit came into the room.
There was another thing that kind of shocked me about this series. At the end the lecturer gave an example of pseudo science and used intelligent design as an example. The thing that shocked me was that he said that creative design is really just a cover for creationism, which I still don't believe, but he went on to say that those who believe in it think that biology and related sciences should be done away with. Wow. Now I believe we were created intelligently and I don't think life arose from random processes, but to give up biology is ludicrous. I've. Now started looking to see if ID people really think that and from what I've read so far some of the statement may be true. One of the books that I read that really helped convince me of ID as a theory (although I've always believed in Devine creation, this helped me think I wasn't and idiot for believing so) was an agnostic and he said that he didn't accept creationism, because he was agnostic and so which creation account would he believe? Christian? Hindu? Muslim? So I know all IDers are not creationists.
After that series of lecture I listened to another about the philosophy of science and frankly it was hard and probably over my head. Some of it I'd heard about already and some of it was covered in the first series. In fact I'm pretty sure that if I hadn't listened to the first series I wouldn't have had a chance with the second series. I'm now listening to the both series again so that I can learn more from them. However, one thing that I did learn from it at the end was about how unlikely entropy is at the beginning of the universe the way that it is described. In a way I'd know about this because I've known for a while how unlikely it is that we would get a clumpy universe the way that we have one, but I'd not tied it to entropy. The lecturer said that the unlikeliness of the level of entropy at the beginning of the universe would be similar to throwing styrofoam balls one centimeter in diameter into a tornado in Kansas and having the tornado cover Kanses with a layer of styrofoam balls one layer thick, all of Kansas that is. All I can say is Wow and atheists think theists are gullible in their faith.
A New Toy
I got a new toy because I'm pretty much as spoiled, or blessed temporally would be another way to think about it; or it's becase I noticed that I had $700 dollars in my cash back account and I realized that that would pay for my new iPad and so we went and got one, along with a power cord a cover and the Apple Care plan.
I have to say that I'm liking it so far. It's taken a little while to get used to it but I haven't really gotten used to it, but. It has taken a while to set it up. One of the thing that took the. Most time was converting Awesome note so that it would sync a little easier. Now my goal is to use it to keep my blogs more up to date. Lately I've been doing things on my laptop where it needs to be hooked up to a hard drive because our photo files are getting so big, at least compared to my three year old computers hard drive. The big thing that I'm doing is trying to get all of the photos that we have into one Apature file so that we can move the library to Karen's new computer. When I first moved to Apurature I those to keep the photos in the original iPhoto library and when I did that they stayed there when I moved the new library. It's been a lot harder todo that than I thought it would be.
Here's a serendipitous happening as well. Remy and I were talking about how we really didn't have our data " backed up" because it was really only on one hard drive. When I bought Karens computer I also bought a airport with a hard drive on it shortly after that the hard drive with all our data got corrupted and I had to back it up and it took about 2 weeks to finally get it all done. First there was a lot of files to back up second it would keep stopping but I finally got that done then I reformatted the old hard drive and moved it all back but now I don't trust it. I've got to look for a solution to backing up my hard drive because this takes too long.
So with that long story that's one of the reasons that I've not been keeping up with blogging because when I sit at my computer to write I feel guilty if I'm not doing the other stuff and when I'm doing the other stuff the computer runs clunkily and annoys me. We'll see if all my justifications amount to anything.
I have to say that I'm liking it so far. It's taken a little while to get used to it but I haven't really gotten used to it, but. It has taken a while to set it up. One of the thing that took the. Most time was converting Awesome note so that it would sync a little easier. Now my goal is to use it to keep my blogs more up to date. Lately I've been doing things on my laptop where it needs to be hooked up to a hard drive because our photo files are getting so big, at least compared to my three year old computers hard drive. The big thing that I'm doing is trying to get all of the photos that we have into one Apature file so that we can move the library to Karen's new computer. When I first moved to Apurature I those to keep the photos in the original iPhoto library and when I did that they stayed there when I moved the new library. It's been a lot harder todo that than I thought it would be.
Here's a serendipitous happening as well. Remy and I were talking about how we really didn't have our data " backed up" because it was really only on one hard drive. When I bought Karens computer I also bought a airport with a hard drive on it shortly after that the hard drive with all our data got corrupted and I had to back it up and it took about 2 weeks to finally get it all done. First there was a lot of files to back up second it would keep stopping but I finally got that done then I reformatted the old hard drive and moved it all back but now I don't trust it. I've got to look for a solution to backing up my hard drive because this takes too long.
So with that long story that's one of the reasons that I've not been keeping up with blogging because when I sit at my computer to write I feel guilty if I'm not doing the other stuff and when I'm doing the other stuff the computer runs clunkily and annoys me. We'll see if all my justifications amount to anything.
Saturday, April 14, 2012
The Next Scientific Revolution
Following up on my last posting about how closely the science and technology seem to follow spiritual outpourings, at least from the LDS viewpoint.
I think it will happen at the second coming. I've been having these types of thoughts for a number of years. It all started on my mission with one of my companions Elder Grether. We were talking about what the millennium was going to be like, and he said that he thought that the first thing we would learn was how to learn. I've always thought that was an interesting idea.
A few years ago I read a science fiction novel that talked about a future society where the driver was energy and the people served the society where they were the most expert. It was a good book and got me thinking about how modern society is energy driven. I think that during the millennium science will finally figure out the fusion problem.
One of the things that is always talked about when talking about the millennium is what kind of professions will be needed or not needed. Usually things like policemen, lawyers, things that since it doesn't seem like there will be crime. Hugh Nibley shared an idea one time about how things in this society that are valuable such as honesty, truthfulness etc. will be worthless in the millennium because they will be so common. That sounds right.
Anyway I think that there are a few things that will be going on during the millennium. First it will seem very normal like a progression from what is going on today. Second we'll work on the principle of consecration and scientists will be able to work out ideas on how good they are, not how valuable they are. Men like Tesla will be able to develop their ideas even if powerful industrialists don't think they are good investments. So that's what I think, the millennium will be like a science fiction novel.
I think it will happen at the second coming. I've been having these types of thoughts for a number of years. It all started on my mission with one of my companions Elder Grether. We were talking about what the millennium was going to be like, and he said that he thought that the first thing we would learn was how to learn. I've always thought that was an interesting idea.
A few years ago I read a science fiction novel that talked about a future society where the driver was energy and the people served the society where they were the most expert. It was a good book and got me thinking about how modern society is energy driven. I think that during the millennium science will finally figure out the fusion problem.
One of the things that is always talked about when talking about the millennium is what kind of professions will be needed or not needed. Usually things like policemen, lawyers, things that since it doesn't seem like there will be crime. Hugh Nibley shared an idea one time about how things in this society that are valuable such as honesty, truthfulness etc. will be worthless in the millennium because they will be so common. That sounds right.
Anyway I think that there are a few things that will be going on during the millennium. First it will seem very normal like a progression from what is going on today. Second we'll work on the principle of consecration and scientists will be able to work out ideas on how good they are, not how valuable they are. Men like Tesla will be able to develop their ideas even if powerful industrialists don't think they are good investments. So that's what I think, the millennium will be like a science fiction novel.
Monday, April 9, 2012
It seems like a long time
Since I've written a blog. I keep thinking that I have to make more time to write, so maybe it's important that I do make time.
I've been re-listening to some of my lectures series from The Teaching Company. Actually one that I listened to twice in succession was one on The History of Science from 1700-1900. I'd actually always thought that the Scientific Revolution preceded the Reformation. I don't know why but I did. So actually instead of the Middle Age Authorities being questioned the Reformation caused people to start to doubt what for many was the ultimate authority, the Bible, since the theologians couldn't agree with what the Bible meant, perhaps the other authorities could be wrong as well such as Aristotle.
Actually it's kind of exciting to thing that revolutions in the spiritual realm lead to explosions of knowledge in the scientific world as well. I've always been amazed at the dramatic turn up in science and technology that came around the same time as the Restoration of the Gospel. It appears that the Scientific Revolution started preparing the world for that explosion of knowledge at the same time that the Lord was preparing the world for the explosion of Gospel knowledge with the Reformation.
Along with that thought I was reading the new Elder Bedenar book called Increase in Learning, and a couple of passages hit me in a new way when I read them in this book.
"The greatest and last of all gospel dispensations was introduced through the Prophet Joseph Smith. I was necessary in this final dispensation "that a whole and complete and perfect unison, and welding together of dispensations, and keys, and powers, and glories whould take place, and be revealed from the days of Adam even to the present time. And not only this, but those things which never have been revealed from the foundation of the world, but have been kept hid from the wise and prudent, shall be revealed...in this, the dispensation of the fulness of times" (D&C 128:18) The Prophet Joseph Smith...proclaimed that preparatory to the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, "the dispensation of the fullness of time will bring to light the things that have been revealed in all former dispensations, also other things what have not been before revealed.""
I hit me after reading this, on my iPhone which is a marvel, just how many things we have in the world that might have been hid from past generations in the form of technology and science, and that that could be part of the Resortation in the Dispensation of the Fulness of Time? It could be.
I've been re-listening to some of my lectures series from The Teaching Company. Actually one that I listened to twice in succession was one on The History of Science from 1700-1900. I'd actually always thought that the Scientific Revolution preceded the Reformation. I don't know why but I did. So actually instead of the Middle Age Authorities being questioned the Reformation caused people to start to doubt what for many was the ultimate authority, the Bible, since the theologians couldn't agree with what the Bible meant, perhaps the other authorities could be wrong as well such as Aristotle.
Actually it's kind of exciting to thing that revolutions in the spiritual realm lead to explosions of knowledge in the scientific world as well. I've always been amazed at the dramatic turn up in science and technology that came around the same time as the Restoration of the Gospel. It appears that the Scientific Revolution started preparing the world for that explosion of knowledge at the same time that the Lord was preparing the world for the explosion of Gospel knowledge with the Reformation.
Along with that thought I was reading the new Elder Bedenar book called Increase in Learning, and a couple of passages hit me in a new way when I read them in this book.
"The greatest and last of all gospel dispensations was introduced through the Prophet Joseph Smith. I was necessary in this final dispensation "that a whole and complete and perfect unison, and welding together of dispensations, and keys, and powers, and glories whould take place, and be revealed from the days of Adam even to the present time. And not only this, but those things which never have been revealed from the foundation of the world, but have been kept hid from the wise and prudent, shall be revealed...in this, the dispensation of the fulness of times" (D&C 128:18) The Prophet Joseph Smith...proclaimed that preparatory to the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, "the dispensation of the fullness of time will bring to light the things that have been revealed in all former dispensations, also other things what have not been before revealed.""
I hit me after reading this, on my iPhone which is a marvel, just how many things we have in the world that might have been hid from past generations in the form of technology and science, and that that could be part of the Resortation in the Dispensation of the Fulness of Time? It could be.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
My Head Nearly Exploded
For some reason I was reading or listening to something that said that; "We [humans] need to stop driving extinction." For some reason that hit me as the stupidest thing I've heard in ages, and I've heard it before. My new saying is when I hear something stupid it makes my head explode.
Do these idiots that say things like this realize that mammals wouldn't exist if a bunch of birds or lizards (or whatever the scientists thinks the dinosaurs are now) and become extinct?
Wait this is what made my head explode. The thing that made my head explode was the thought that all cultures should be treated equally!? Really? Let's say that there was this small indigenous tribe in Eastern Europe with a long history of being on the land and a unique culture, and suddenly the Huns came and over ran that tribe over and wiped them out. Did the world lose anything? Ok maybe it did. But come on if a culture has something to offer it will be offered despite the best efforts to wipe it out.
Lets see was the Greek culture wiped out when the Romans took over their country? No they had a lot to offer. Was the Jewish culture wiped out when the Romans took them over, or Christianity? I'm not saying that all cultures are bad but that if a culture has something to add then let it be added, but a culture shouldn't be propped up just because it exists.
I don't know why I wanted to say this but I think it needs to be said.
Do these idiots that say things like this realize that mammals wouldn't exist if a bunch of birds or lizards (or whatever the scientists thinks the dinosaurs are now) and become extinct?
Wait this is what made my head explode. The thing that made my head explode was the thought that all cultures should be treated equally!? Really? Let's say that there was this small indigenous tribe in Eastern Europe with a long history of being on the land and a unique culture, and suddenly the Huns came and over ran that tribe over and wiped them out. Did the world lose anything? Ok maybe it did. But come on if a culture has something to offer it will be offered despite the best efforts to wipe it out.
Lets see was the Greek culture wiped out when the Romans took over their country? No they had a lot to offer. Was the Jewish culture wiped out when the Romans took them over, or Christianity? I'm not saying that all cultures are bad but that if a culture has something to add then let it be added, but a culture shouldn't be propped up just because it exists.
I don't know why I wanted to say this but I think it needs to be said.
Thoughts on Health
I've been doing some reconsideration on how I should go about trying to stay healthy. The driving force behind everything I do more or less is diabetes and diabetes has led me to low carb eating but I've had some different ideas lately.
I read a web site by Dr. Mercola who is an alternative medicine website. He has some guest authors or experts that come on his site. One of the writers that I noticed was Ori Hofmekler and I really liked what he said about insulin. I read a couple of books by him and he had some great information. Basically he believes that we have to eat like out ancestors which he believes walked around all day gathering and hunting and then at night would eat it all at once, so his idea is to not to eat during the day and to eat everything you want at night, or 20 hours of fasting and 4 hours of eating. I liked some of the things that he said but I just couldn't bring myself to say that I'm following the "Warrior Diet" that's just too stupid sounding. He also talks about a training regimen called "Anti Fatigue Training" that didn't sound like much fun.
After that I found a site called "Mark's Daily Apple" which talks about "Primal Living" with a "Primal Diet." This is site is by a guy called Mark Sisson who used to be a marathoner and then got injured around the time that triathlons started getting popular and he started competing in those and took 3rd in the Iron Man in Hawaii. Mark says that we over train and that was a problem that he had when he was an endurance athlete. He says that our ancestors would generally walk around all day lots of movement but only occasional bursts of activity or trying to lift something heavy like the animal you just killed. But basically we didn't try running around every day day in and day out. However, he really likes the barefoot movement. I started doing what Mark said when I was able to start exercising after my hernia surgery. I'd do the turbulence training and then on the off days I'd exercise pretty easy, then on Saturday I'd ride the exercise cycle at a fast, for me, cadence of 80 bpm. The first time I tried it I was able to do the ride, and I was able to do it. That surprised me because I've been able to do it before but only a few times. Anyway it seemed to be working. Then I got sick and stopped exercising, then my BG got high and I started exercising again, but only lightly like Mark says and my BG fell. Pretty amazing.
Mark Sisson likes going barefoot and so I started looking into that. I'd actually heard that going barefoot was a good thing because it helped you to keep from getting things like plantar fasciitis and I've been exercising barefoot since then. So I start looking into it and the things that I find are fascinating. Turns out that around the same time that we started being told to stop eating fat we were also told to start aerobic exercising. That started a craze for running as an aerobic exercise. Shoe companies started producing running shoes that padded the heel so people started running slow with heel strikes. I've felt the shoes that feel like your feet are in pillows. They feel great, but the people that talk about barefoot running say these shoes keep our feet encased like a cast and are feet are not allowed to move the way they're designed to. And they say that heel striking cause more stress on the knees and what not. That got me a little excited because of me having the knee problem when I run. The thinking is that when you run barefoot you will run with a ball of the foot strike that reduces the stress on your knees. Here's the interesting thing that the barefoot running people say, that the human body is designed to do endurance running. I've heard this before as well, humans can't outrun hardly any animals but they can outlast almost all of them. For example we can breathe through our nose, which horses can't do, and we sweat so we can expel heat. So these barefoot running people think that our ancestors actually developed language through the need to coordinate long range hunting expiditions where humans would run down the animals they hunted.
That's so funny how people think our ancestors did different things. Some think humans walked around slowly all day and only sprinted to run away from animals. Others think that humans ran down the animals until they become so exhausted we just walk up to them and stab them with a stick. I'm pretty sure that another web writer that I read got it right when he said he's not sure what our ancestors ate or did, but he's pretty sure they didn't sit on their butts and watch TV and the only exercise that they got is getting up and walking to the refrigerator.
After all this reading and stuff I went back to my roots and read some of Drs Eades site (they wrote protein power which is one of the books that I read when I first started the diabetes diet) and from that site I learned that Gary Taubes had written a new book. From reading on the Eades site I learned something very interesting. When Dr. Eades puts someone on a low carb routine he treats them like they are going to have withdrawals from carbs. He says that people that try the low carb route that say that they try it and they felt terrible and so they need carbs is like someone that tries to quit cigarettes and says that they felt crappy and that they're bodies need cigarettes is the same thing. Another thing is that people who do low carb are still caught up in the low fat mind set and don't eat enough fat. Fat is what gives you the full sensation.
Then I bought and read Gary Taubes new book "Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It." Gary Taubes is the guy that wrote "Good Calories Bad Calories" which was a great book, but it was pretty hard to read and it had a lot of good information. The new Taubes books was good, but the main thing that I got out of it, was that you need to be very strict on the carbs. It doesn't matter if you've got only a few to many carbs that's to many and you've got to cut them out. Also, it's hard to lose the last few pounds.
So with all this reading and stuff I've got a new plan.
1) Watch the calories closer.
2) Don't exercise so hard.
3) Don't worry about the fat so much any more.
So far I'm staying around the weight that I was at at the end of the HGC diet so it seems to be somewhat working in that I'm not gaining a lot of weight, but I need to be a little better if I want to get down to the weight that I'd like to.
I read a web site by Dr. Mercola who is an alternative medicine website. He has some guest authors or experts that come on his site. One of the writers that I noticed was Ori Hofmekler and I really liked what he said about insulin. I read a couple of books by him and he had some great information. Basically he believes that we have to eat like out ancestors which he believes walked around all day gathering and hunting and then at night would eat it all at once, so his idea is to not to eat during the day and to eat everything you want at night, or 20 hours of fasting and 4 hours of eating. I liked some of the things that he said but I just couldn't bring myself to say that I'm following the "Warrior Diet" that's just too stupid sounding. He also talks about a training regimen called "Anti Fatigue Training" that didn't sound like much fun.
After that I found a site called "Mark's Daily Apple" which talks about "Primal Living" with a "Primal Diet." This is site is by a guy called Mark Sisson who used to be a marathoner and then got injured around the time that triathlons started getting popular and he started competing in those and took 3rd in the Iron Man in Hawaii. Mark says that we over train and that was a problem that he had when he was an endurance athlete. He says that our ancestors would generally walk around all day lots of movement but only occasional bursts of activity or trying to lift something heavy like the animal you just killed. But basically we didn't try running around every day day in and day out. However, he really likes the barefoot movement. I started doing what Mark said when I was able to start exercising after my hernia surgery. I'd do the turbulence training and then on the off days I'd exercise pretty easy, then on Saturday I'd ride the exercise cycle at a fast, for me, cadence of 80 bpm. The first time I tried it I was able to do the ride, and I was able to do it. That surprised me because I've been able to do it before but only a few times. Anyway it seemed to be working. Then I got sick and stopped exercising, then my BG got high and I started exercising again, but only lightly like Mark says and my BG fell. Pretty amazing.
Mark Sisson likes going barefoot and so I started looking into that. I'd actually heard that going barefoot was a good thing because it helped you to keep from getting things like plantar fasciitis and I've been exercising barefoot since then. So I start looking into it and the things that I find are fascinating. Turns out that around the same time that we started being told to stop eating fat we were also told to start aerobic exercising. That started a craze for running as an aerobic exercise. Shoe companies started producing running shoes that padded the heel so people started running slow with heel strikes. I've felt the shoes that feel like your feet are in pillows. They feel great, but the people that talk about barefoot running say these shoes keep our feet encased like a cast and are feet are not allowed to move the way they're designed to. And they say that heel striking cause more stress on the knees and what not. That got me a little excited because of me having the knee problem when I run. The thinking is that when you run barefoot you will run with a ball of the foot strike that reduces the stress on your knees. Here's the interesting thing that the barefoot running people say, that the human body is designed to do endurance running. I've heard this before as well, humans can't outrun hardly any animals but they can outlast almost all of them. For example we can breathe through our nose, which horses can't do, and we sweat so we can expel heat. So these barefoot running people think that our ancestors actually developed language through the need to coordinate long range hunting expiditions where humans would run down the animals they hunted.
That's so funny how people think our ancestors did different things. Some think humans walked around slowly all day and only sprinted to run away from animals. Others think that humans ran down the animals until they become so exhausted we just walk up to them and stab them with a stick. I'm pretty sure that another web writer that I read got it right when he said he's not sure what our ancestors ate or did, but he's pretty sure they didn't sit on their butts and watch TV and the only exercise that they got is getting up and walking to the refrigerator.
After all this reading and stuff I went back to my roots and read some of Drs Eades site (they wrote protein power which is one of the books that I read when I first started the diabetes diet) and from that site I learned that Gary Taubes had written a new book. From reading on the Eades site I learned something very interesting. When Dr. Eades puts someone on a low carb routine he treats them like they are going to have withdrawals from carbs. He says that people that try the low carb route that say that they try it and they felt terrible and so they need carbs is like someone that tries to quit cigarettes and says that they felt crappy and that they're bodies need cigarettes is the same thing. Another thing is that people who do low carb are still caught up in the low fat mind set and don't eat enough fat. Fat is what gives you the full sensation.
Then I bought and read Gary Taubes new book "Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It." Gary Taubes is the guy that wrote "Good Calories Bad Calories" which was a great book, but it was pretty hard to read and it had a lot of good information. The new Taubes books was good, but the main thing that I got out of it, was that you need to be very strict on the carbs. It doesn't matter if you've got only a few to many carbs that's to many and you've got to cut them out. Also, it's hard to lose the last few pounds.
So with all this reading and stuff I've got a new plan.
1) Watch the calories closer.
2) Don't exercise so hard.
3) Don't worry about the fat so much any more.
So far I'm staying around the weight that I was at at the end of the HGC diet so it seems to be somewhat working in that I'm not gaining a lot of weight, but I need to be a little better if I want to get down to the weight that I'd like to.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
A Week of Being a Sicky
I read a web site by Dr. Mercola who is an alternative medicine website. He has some guest authors or experts that come on his site. One of the writers that I noticed was Ori Hofmekler and I really liked what he said about insulin. I read a couple of books by him and he had some great information. Basically he believes that we have to eat like out ancestors which he believes walked around all day gathering and hunting and then at night would eat it all at once, so his idea is to not to eat during the day and to eat everything you want at night, or 20 hours of fasting and 4 hours of eating. I liked some of the things that he said but I just couldn't bring myself to say that I'm following the "Warrior Diet" that's just too stupid sounding. He also talks about a training regimen called "Anti Fatigue Training" that didn't sound like much fun.
After that I found a site called "Mark's Daily Apple" which talks about "Primal Living" with a "Primal Diet." This is site is by a guy called Mark Sisson who used to be a marathoner and then got injured around the time that triathlons started getting popular and he started competing in those and took 3rd in the Iron Man in Hawaii. Mark says that we over train and that was a problem that he had when he was an endurance athlete. He says that our ancestors would generally walk around all day lots of movement but only occasional bursts of activity or trying to lift something heavy like the animal you just killed. But basically we didn't try running around every day day in and day out. However, he really likes the barefoot movement. I started doing what Mark said when I was able to start exercising after my hernia surgery. I'd do the turbulence training and then on the off days I'd exercise pretty easy, then on Saturday I'd ride the exercise cycle at a fast, for me, cadence of 80 bpm. The first time I tried it I was able to do the ride, and I was able to do it. That surprised me because I've been able to do it before but only a few times. Anyway it seemed to be working. Then I got sick and stopped exercising, then my BG got high and I started exercising again, but only lightly like Mark says and my BG fell. Pretty amazing.
One last funny thing, or it's something that I thinks funny. Mark Sisson like going barefoot. I'd actually heard that going barefoot was a good thing because it helped to keep from getting things like plantar fasciitis and I've been exercising barefoot since then. So I start looking into it and the things that I find are fascinating. Turns out that around the same time that we started being told to stop eating fat we were also told to start aerobic exercising. That started a craze for running as an aerobic exercise. Shoe companies started producing running shoes that padded the heel so people started running slow with heel strikes. I've felt the shoes that feel like your feet are in pillows. They feel great, but the people that talk about barefoot running say these shoes keep our feet encased like a cast and are feet are not allowed to move the way they're designed to. And they say that heel striking cause more stress on the knees and what not. That got me a little excited because of me having the knee problem when I run. The thinking is that when you run barefoot you will run with a ball of the foot strike that reduces the stress on your knees. Here's the interesting thing that the barefoot running people say, that the human body is designed to do endurance running. I've heard this before as well, humans can't outrun hardly any animals but they can outlast almost all of them. For example we can breathe through our nose
After that I found a site called "Mark's Daily Apple" which talks about "Primal Living" with a "Primal Diet." This is site is by a guy called Mark Sisson who used to be a marathoner and then got injured around the time that triathlons started getting popular and he started competing in those and took 3rd in the Iron Man in Hawaii. Mark says that we over train and that was a problem that he had when he was an endurance athlete. He says that our ancestors would generally walk around all day lots of movement but only occasional bursts of activity or trying to lift something heavy like the animal you just killed. But basically we didn't try running around every day day in and day out. However, he really likes the barefoot movement. I started doing what Mark said when I was able to start exercising after my hernia surgery. I'd do the turbulence training and then on the off days I'd exercise pretty easy, then on Saturday I'd ride the exercise cycle at a fast, for me, cadence of 80 bpm. The first time I tried it I was able to do the ride, and I was able to do it. That surprised me because I've been able to do it before but only a few times. Anyway it seemed to be working. Then I got sick and stopped exercising, then my BG got high and I started exercising again, but only lightly like Mark says and my BG fell. Pretty amazing.
One last funny thing, or it's something that I thinks funny. Mark Sisson like going barefoot. I'd actually heard that going barefoot was a good thing because it helped to keep from getting things like plantar fasciitis and I've been exercising barefoot since then. So I start looking into it and the things that I find are fascinating. Turns out that around the same time that we started being told to stop eating fat we were also told to start aerobic exercising. That started a craze for running as an aerobic exercise. Shoe companies started producing running shoes that padded the heel so people started running slow with heel strikes. I've felt the shoes that feel like your feet are in pillows. They feel great, but the people that talk about barefoot running say these shoes keep our feet encased like a cast and are feet are not allowed to move the way they're designed to. And they say that heel striking cause more stress on the knees and what not. That got me a little excited because of me having the knee problem when I run. The thinking is that when you run barefoot you will run with a ball of the foot strike that reduces the stress on your knees. Here's the interesting thing that the barefoot running people say, that the human body is designed to do endurance running. I've heard this before as well, humans can't outrun hardly any animals but they can outlast almost all of them. For example we can breathe through our nose
Saturday, January 14, 2012
A New Family Tradition
I'm sitting here pretending I'm sick. Actually I'm not pretending, I'm in the; "I'm not sick except for the cough." stage. This week I started the week talking in a whisper at work (for which I got a lot of grief for) and towards the middle of the week I was starting to feel better and was thinking about when I could start exercising again. Then yesterday I started coughing again so today I'm starting to act sick again so that I can maybe get better. This is the time when in the past I would start thinking; "I can just work through this." Maybe if I just keep acting sick I can get over it. Right now I'm at three weeks, well on Tuesday it will be three weeks, and if I can get over it in three weeks I'm still going to count it at as a win but it's not very much fun right now.
What is the new family tradition? Last week Brian said that he was going to fix Goosy's car brakes. Sometime during this week Goosy must have told Brian that Aaron had showed me how to fix the brakes on our car (as in Karen's car when we got married). So Brian texted me that I should teach him how to fix the brakes on Goosy's car.
Brian came over today for us to fix Goosy's car, after I went into Albuquerque to pick up my new spectacles and visit with my Mom. We got the tires off the car and had the car up on blocks. On the first side we were trying to pull the rotor off and it wouldn't come off. I remember one time when I was working on the back brakes on our Van. The rotor would not come off and I spent hours trying to get it off, and finally had to go get a slide hammer from Auto Zone to get it off. Anyway I couldn't figure out why this rotor won't come off and was starting to wonder what we might have to do. Remember I'd never fixed Goosy's car before so everything was new about this. We went in and googled how to fix the brakes and found a video about it and in the video the guy just reached up and grabbed the rotor and pulled it off. Brian and I just looked at each other in disbelief. We just laughed and went out and hit the rotor with a rubber hammer and it came off, and then the other side came off pretty easy because by then we knew how to do it.
Brian had gone to Auto Zone and gotten a set of brakes before we started. After we got the rotors off we took the rotors into Auto Zone to see if they could turn the rotors, but they couldn't. O'Rielly's, the other auto store in Bernalillo could turn them so we took the rotors there. (It seems weird to me that Benalillo has two auto part stores right next to each other in such a small town, but there it is.) The O'Rielly guy said that if we buy the pads there as well they would give us a break on the cost of turning the rotors and that they'd be ready in an hour. We went back on hour later and Brian returned the brake pads that he'd gotten from Auto Zone and then he was able to but new pads and have the rotors turned for the same price. I thought that was a pretty good result.
That's the new family tradition. If Brian and Goosy have a daughter Brian's going to have to teach the husband how to change the brakes on her car.
What is the new family tradition? Last week Brian said that he was going to fix Goosy's car brakes. Sometime during this week Goosy must have told Brian that Aaron had showed me how to fix the brakes on our car (as in Karen's car when we got married). So Brian texted me that I should teach him how to fix the brakes on Goosy's car.
Brian came over today for us to fix Goosy's car, after I went into Albuquerque to pick up my new spectacles and visit with my Mom. We got the tires off the car and had the car up on blocks. On the first side we were trying to pull the rotor off and it wouldn't come off. I remember one time when I was working on the back brakes on our Van. The rotor would not come off and I spent hours trying to get it off, and finally had to go get a slide hammer from Auto Zone to get it off. Anyway I couldn't figure out why this rotor won't come off and was starting to wonder what we might have to do. Remember I'd never fixed Goosy's car before so everything was new about this. We went in and googled how to fix the brakes and found a video about it and in the video the guy just reached up and grabbed the rotor and pulled it off. Brian and I just looked at each other in disbelief. We just laughed and went out and hit the rotor with a rubber hammer and it came off, and then the other side came off pretty easy because by then we knew how to do it.
Brian had gone to Auto Zone and gotten a set of brakes before we started. After we got the rotors off we took the rotors into Auto Zone to see if they could turn the rotors, but they couldn't. O'Rielly's, the other auto store in Bernalillo could turn them so we took the rotors there. (It seems weird to me that Benalillo has two auto part stores right next to each other in such a small town, but there it is.) The O'Rielly guy said that if we buy the pads there as well they would give us a break on the cost of turning the rotors and that they'd be ready in an hour. We went back on hour later and Brian returned the brake pads that he'd gotten from Auto Zone and then he was able to but new pads and have the rotors turned for the same price. I thought that was a pretty good result.
That's the new family tradition. If Brian and Goosy have a daughter Brian's going to have to teach the husband how to change the brakes on her car.
Friday, January 6, 2012
A New Son (in-law AS) and other Stories
My last blog told of the incredible events involving the wedding of my daughter Chantel to Brian and the whirl wind of events surrounding the events. There were some other stories that need to be told, as well as a need to introduce Brian. Heh heh.
Brian and Goose got endowed on November 3rd. Why do I remember that date? when I don't usually remember dates? Because we were looking forward to the weekend when Goose and Brian were getting endowed, which should have been the big event, when little Corry Nichols arrived the day before and the endowment suddenly became the second story. Kind of like when C. S. Lewis died on the same day Pres. Kennedy got assassinated. I know about those two events but only because the one story is so much greater than the other.
Brain asked me to be his escort which was an honor. Although I've never escorted a child through the temple I've been asked to escort my brother and Jeff Hargett, who was my home teaching partner from when he became a teacher to when he was set apart as an Elder. I'm only saying this because I know what I'm saying when I say that this felt different than other times. I guess it felt a little like taking a son through, but I don't have any experience with that.
OK now for the stories, not that I'm bitter. Why did I call Brian "AS"? It stands for Affection Stealer. Now I don't blame Brian for stealing Chantel's affection, after all she's married to him, however, should he be allowed to steal the affection of grand kids? We were at Kiora's house and Brian was sitting with Chantel on his lap and that's understandable, but then Chio when over and sat on his lap as well, and then Alex went over and climbed on to him. All this while I had a perfectly good lap that could have been utilized. Not that I'm jealous.
So during the trip to Dallas and back home (and at Thanksgiving) Chio got pretty well acquainted with Brian (see above), and the first thing she asks when she walks in our house is; "Where's Brian?" What! So then I got to explain to a 4 year old what a honeymoon was. That took about 10 minutes with multiple times of Chio checking with her mother to see if grandpa was telling the truth. Then about 15 minutes after we got that all settled a little while later Chantel and Brian came walking! They had to find something that Chantel had forgotten, but there went grandpa's credibility.
However, the real point is for everyone to see how Brian has stolen Chio's affection as well. I hope I've made my point. Not that I'm bitter.
Chio had a couple of other funny statements. I mentioned that Teandra, mostly but she was helped by her sisters, made and decorated some incredible cookies for the wedding. I, of course, didn't get to eat any of them, but they looked beautiful. Apparently everyone had been telling Chio and Alex not to bother the cookies or to eat any of them. At the wedding they were allowed to eat the cookies, so Chio was caught carrying around a handful of cookies, as many as she could carry and her Mom, I think, made her put a few back. The next day Kiora and Karen went shopping early and left Ryan with me. A little while later Teandra came out laughing and told me that Chio had came in while she was getting up and Teandra asked her where her Mom was, but Chio said that she didn't know where her Mom and Grandma had gone. Teandra then asked if she knew if they'd taken Ryan with her and she said that she didn't know if they'd taken Ryan but that they had left the cookies! Well at least she has her priorities straight.
Brian and Goose got endowed on November 3rd. Why do I remember that date? when I don't usually remember dates? Because we were looking forward to the weekend when Goose and Brian were getting endowed, which should have been the big event, when little Corry Nichols arrived the day before and the endowment suddenly became the second story. Kind of like when C. S. Lewis died on the same day Pres. Kennedy got assassinated. I know about those two events but only because the one story is so much greater than the other.
Brain asked me to be his escort which was an honor. Although I've never escorted a child through the temple I've been asked to escort my brother and Jeff Hargett, who was my home teaching partner from when he became a teacher to when he was set apart as an Elder. I'm only saying this because I know what I'm saying when I say that this felt different than other times. I guess it felt a little like taking a son through, but I don't have any experience with that.
OK now for the stories, not that I'm bitter. Why did I call Brian "AS"? It stands for Affection Stealer. Now I don't blame Brian for stealing Chantel's affection, after all she's married to him, however, should he be allowed to steal the affection of grand kids? We were at Kiora's house and Brian was sitting with Chantel on his lap and that's understandable, but then Chio when over and sat on his lap as well, and then Alex went over and climbed on to him. All this while I had a perfectly good lap that could have been utilized. Not that I'm jealous.
So during the trip to Dallas and back home (and at Thanksgiving) Chio got pretty well acquainted with Brian (see above), and the first thing she asks when she walks in our house is; "Where's Brian?" What! So then I got to explain to a 4 year old what a honeymoon was. That took about 10 minutes with multiple times of Chio checking with her mother to see if grandpa was telling the truth. Then about 15 minutes after we got that all settled a little while later Chantel and Brian came walking! They had to find something that Chantel had forgotten, but there went grandpa's credibility.
However, the real point is for everyone to see how Brian has stolen Chio's affection as well. I hope I've made my point. Not that I'm bitter.
Chio had a couple of other funny statements. I mentioned that Teandra, mostly but she was helped by her sisters, made and decorated some incredible cookies for the wedding. I, of course, didn't get to eat any of them, but they looked beautiful. Apparently everyone had been telling Chio and Alex not to bother the cookies or to eat any of them. At the wedding they were allowed to eat the cookies, so Chio was caught carrying around a handful of cookies, as many as she could carry and her Mom, I think, made her put a few back. The next day Kiora and Karen went shopping early and left Ryan with me. A little while later Teandra came out laughing and told me that Chio had came in while she was getting up and Teandra asked her where her Mom was, but Chio said that she didn't know where her Mom and Grandma had gone. Teandra then asked if she knew if they'd taken Ryan with her and she said that she didn't know if they'd taken Ryan but that they had left the cookies! Well at least she has her priorities straight.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
One Week 2 Weddings 1800 Mile Round Trip (and other amzing feats)
I saw this title from Aunt Donna on Facebook and thought it was cool so I stole it (and because I can't think of anything original either) but it captures our Holidays pretty well.
Last year we got the wonderful news that Kristan Bond our niece was getting married on the 22 of December and made plans to attend. After that Chantel decided to change her name to Nowlen (that's pronounced KnowLan for anyone who doesn't know Brian yet, which means that pretty much all of my daughters have changed their last names to names that prove that spelling in English makes no sense at all). We told her that she needed to plan her wedding in a way that wouldn't mess up Kristan's wedding.
So here was our schedule. Karen, Linda, Brian and Chantel all left for Lake Jackson to arrive on Monday January 19th to help with Kristan's wedding. I stayed home because I didn't have enough time off to take off the whole week so I flew to Houston on Wednesday morning. The ironic thing was that I was planning to drive to work on Tuesday so that I could get home early enough to visit with my mother Tuesday night before someone drove me to the airport Wednesday morning. Monday that week work was canceled because of snow but usually the roads after a snow are terrible in Santa Fe and I didn't want to deal with the stress of driving up and I was feeling pretty cocky about silver water keeping me healthy so I took two days off sick leave which meant that I didn't go to work that week at all, but spent the first two day's at home. (What does it say in Bible about pride? Oh yeah pride goeth before the fall, but that's a story for later. I'd planned to take a day of sick leave anyway but decided to take another because of the roads.) Kiora was supposed to drive up for the wedding as well, but she and her kids were sick so she didn't come. Karen and Chantel and it seemed like everyone wasa sick.
Karen, Chantel and Brian picked me up at the Houston Airport. It was the smaller airport. I was late getting off the plane because we were parked on the tarmac for half an hour while our slot was cleared out. I was standing on the curb waiting for them to pick me up and Chantel called me to ask where I was and I said I was standing on the curb right as the van they were in drove up and Chantel and I were looking at each other about ten feet away. The wonders of technology. So I jumped in the van with Karen, Chantel and Brian and we drove about 100 miles to pick up Teda and Mark who had come and visited Mark's brother then we drove back to Lake Jackson. The next day was Kristan and Zach's sealing and it was wonderful to see a new eternal family created. Then we all went to lunch at a barbecue place and then we went back to Lake Jackson for the reception.
The next day we took off for Dallas, all 7 of us, Karen, me, Chantel, Brian, Teandra, Mark and Linda. We were supposed to have two vans at this point but since Kiora didn't come we had only one van. I was thinking that we needed to ask Donna and Greg to bring some of our stuff with them but Karen said that she could load everything. Have I ever mentioned that Karen is the greatest packer in the world? Now I think she she's a wizard like in Harry Potter with a tent that has an extra dimension. She was able to pack everything and we were able to drive 6 hours to Sherman without killing each other. This in itself is a testimony of the Gospel and that family's are forever.
We spent Christmas with Kiora's family over Christmas and it was a lot of fun. It's always nice to have Christmas fall on a Sunday. This year I thought was especially special that Pres. Monson said that we only needed to go to Sacrament Meeting. It was very nice to take the Sacrament and remember the Savior in a special way on the day we celebrate His birth.
The next day, Monday, we drove back to Rio Rancho in two vans. This time we had Kiora, Alex, Chio, Ryan, Karen, me, Brian, Chantel, Mark and Teda and the Gospel's still true. Tuesday we had the Sealing of Brian and Chantel as an Eternal Family. By this time Greg and Donna had made the trip from Lake Jackson to witness the sealing and help with the wedding (thus the stealing of the title for this blog), Shawn and Barry had come from Utah to witness the Sealing, Lisa, my sister had come from Arizona to witness the sealing.
It was a wonderful ceremony and Chantel and Brian were ecstatic. However, I came down with a cold. Remember the pride thing.
Then we had to prepare for the Friday reception. Teandra did an amazingly miraculous job decorating the cookies and the cake for the wedding. She was wonderful. And she did an amazing hulu during the wedding for Chantel and Brian. All the family gathered Friday for the decoration of the cultural hall at 9:30 AM. We were extremely grateful for all the help from our friends and family in getting everything arranged. (I'll get some pictures up. I sorta promise. This web stuff is not that hard but it can be confusing to figure it out.)
The Ring Ceremony and Reception was pretty awesome. All of Chantel's sisters were there, and their friends. Brian's brother was there and Brian's mother, friends and family. There are always a lot of family and friends at these things but at this one there were more than usual because it was Christmas. Also, Kristan and Zach showed up for the reception which was cool. I told them that they had to hurry and tell Chantel and Brian all their marriage experience because they were married twice as long as Brian and Chantel were but they would never be in that position again. It just seemed like everything aligned just right and it was a wonderful party. Brian actually had to tell everyone to go home at 8:00. It was kind of funny because I was talking to someone, who I was pretty sure was non-LDS, and I said it looked like the party wasn't dying and he said I would find out at 1:00 when I was trying to get people to go home, and I was thinking that he obviously didn't know about LDS receptions. Iwalani even said that it was her favorite reception, even better than hers. That's a pretty high recommendation.
That Sunday, Jan 1, 2012 everyone got to bless little Corry. That Sunday night we'd invited the missionaries over for dinner and it was the first Sunday of the month so it was the night that we have our family over for dinner. Brian still had his brother visiting and his mother came by and we invited her as well and we ended up having 15 people over for dinner that Sunday night. Then we played "Catch Phrase" and that was a ton of fun.
The only problem was that the cold that I'd caught on Tuesday hung on and I almost totally lost my voice on Friday, the day of the reception, then the cough started. I'd hoped that I'd dodged getting sick this year but I got sick after hanging out with sick people for a whole week. You know, sick people like my grand kids that I hold on my lap and play with (at least that's my excuse). Saturday I tried to stop talking to everyone to handle the coughing then I didn't go to anything but Sacrament Meeting on Sunday so that I wouldn't have to talk to anyone, and that didn't work really well Sunday night during all the family game fun.
The long and short of the story is that we had a Holiday filled with family, friend and lots of traveling and everyone came through it sane and happy. We went from a home filled with 15 people Sunday night to just me tonight. Sadly one of Karen Aunts died over the holidays so Karen and Linda left to Utah for the funeral. I'm home alone tonight with that crappy cold that I get every year, but I went to the doctor today and he said it hasn't gotten into my lungs yet, so it's not bronchitis but sinusitis or something like that. That's good. If I can get over the cold this week and only be sick for a couple of weeks I'm going to count this as a win for the silver water even though I did get sick.
Last year we got the wonderful news that Kristan Bond our niece was getting married on the 22 of December and made plans to attend. After that Chantel decided to change her name to Nowlen (that's pronounced KnowLan for anyone who doesn't know Brian yet, which means that pretty much all of my daughters have changed their last names to names that prove that spelling in English makes no sense at all). We told her that she needed to plan her wedding in a way that wouldn't mess up Kristan's wedding.
So here was our schedule. Karen, Linda, Brian and Chantel all left for Lake Jackson to arrive on Monday January 19th to help with Kristan's wedding. I stayed home because I didn't have enough time off to take off the whole week so I flew to Houston on Wednesday morning. The ironic thing was that I was planning to drive to work on Tuesday so that I could get home early enough to visit with my mother Tuesday night before someone drove me to the airport Wednesday morning. Monday that week work was canceled because of snow but usually the roads after a snow are terrible in Santa Fe and I didn't want to deal with the stress of driving up and I was feeling pretty cocky about silver water keeping me healthy so I took two days off sick leave which meant that I didn't go to work that week at all, but spent the first two day's at home. (What does it say in Bible about pride? Oh yeah pride goeth before the fall, but that's a story for later. I'd planned to take a day of sick leave anyway but decided to take another because of the roads.) Kiora was supposed to drive up for the wedding as well, but she and her kids were sick so she didn't come. Karen and Chantel and it seemed like everyone wasa sick.
Karen, Chantel and Brian picked me up at the Houston Airport. It was the smaller airport. I was late getting off the plane because we were parked on the tarmac for half an hour while our slot was cleared out. I was standing on the curb waiting for them to pick me up and Chantel called me to ask where I was and I said I was standing on the curb right as the van they were in drove up and Chantel and I were looking at each other about ten feet away. The wonders of technology. So I jumped in the van with Karen, Chantel and Brian and we drove about 100 miles to pick up Teda and Mark who had come and visited Mark's brother then we drove back to Lake Jackson. The next day was Kristan and Zach's sealing and it was wonderful to see a new eternal family created. Then we all went to lunch at a barbecue place and then we went back to Lake Jackson for the reception.
The next day we took off for Dallas, all 7 of us, Karen, me, Chantel, Brian, Teandra, Mark and Linda. We were supposed to have two vans at this point but since Kiora didn't come we had only one van. I was thinking that we needed to ask Donna and Greg to bring some of our stuff with them but Karen said that she could load everything. Have I ever mentioned that Karen is the greatest packer in the world? Now I think she she's a wizard like in Harry Potter with a tent that has an extra dimension. She was able to pack everything and we were able to drive 6 hours to Sherman without killing each other. This in itself is a testimony of the Gospel and that family's are forever.
We spent Christmas with Kiora's family over Christmas and it was a lot of fun. It's always nice to have Christmas fall on a Sunday. This year I thought was especially special that Pres. Monson said that we only needed to go to Sacrament Meeting. It was very nice to take the Sacrament and remember the Savior in a special way on the day we celebrate His birth.
The next day, Monday, we drove back to Rio Rancho in two vans. This time we had Kiora, Alex, Chio, Ryan, Karen, me, Brian, Chantel, Mark and Teda and the Gospel's still true. Tuesday we had the Sealing of Brian and Chantel as an Eternal Family. By this time Greg and Donna had made the trip from Lake Jackson to witness the sealing and help with the wedding (thus the stealing of the title for this blog), Shawn and Barry had come from Utah to witness the Sealing, Lisa, my sister had come from Arizona to witness the sealing.
It was a wonderful ceremony and Chantel and Brian were ecstatic. However, I came down with a cold. Remember the pride thing.
Then we had to prepare for the Friday reception. Teandra did an amazingly miraculous job decorating the cookies and the cake for the wedding. She was wonderful. And she did an amazing hulu during the wedding for Chantel and Brian. All the family gathered Friday for the decoration of the cultural hall at 9:30 AM. We were extremely grateful for all the help from our friends and family in getting everything arranged. (I'll get some pictures up. I sorta promise. This web stuff is not that hard but it can be confusing to figure it out.)
The Ring Ceremony and Reception was pretty awesome. All of Chantel's sisters were there, and their friends. Brian's brother was there and Brian's mother, friends and family. There are always a lot of family and friends at these things but at this one there were more than usual because it was Christmas. Also, Kristan and Zach showed up for the reception which was cool. I told them that they had to hurry and tell Chantel and Brian all their marriage experience because they were married twice as long as Brian and Chantel were but they would never be in that position again. It just seemed like everything aligned just right and it was a wonderful party. Brian actually had to tell everyone to go home at 8:00. It was kind of funny because I was talking to someone, who I was pretty sure was non-LDS, and I said it looked like the party wasn't dying and he said I would find out at 1:00 when I was trying to get people to go home, and I was thinking that he obviously didn't know about LDS receptions. Iwalani even said that it was her favorite reception, even better than hers. That's a pretty high recommendation.
That Sunday, Jan 1, 2012 everyone got to bless little Corry. That Sunday night we'd invited the missionaries over for dinner and it was the first Sunday of the month so it was the night that we have our family over for dinner. Brian still had his brother visiting and his mother came by and we invited her as well and we ended up having 15 people over for dinner that Sunday night. Then we played "Catch Phrase" and that was a ton of fun.
The only problem was that the cold that I'd caught on Tuesday hung on and I almost totally lost my voice on Friday, the day of the reception, then the cough started. I'd hoped that I'd dodged getting sick this year but I got sick after hanging out with sick people for a whole week. You know, sick people like my grand kids that I hold on my lap and play with (at least that's my excuse). Saturday I tried to stop talking to everyone to handle the coughing then I didn't go to anything but Sacrament Meeting on Sunday so that I wouldn't have to talk to anyone, and that didn't work really well Sunday night during all the family game fun.
The long and short of the story is that we had a Holiday filled with family, friend and lots of traveling and everyone came through it sane and happy. We went from a home filled with 15 people Sunday night to just me tonight. Sadly one of Karen Aunts died over the holidays so Karen and Linda left to Utah for the funeral. I'm home alone tonight with that crappy cold that I get every year, but I went to the doctor today and he said it hasn't gotten into my lungs yet, so it's not bronchitis but sinusitis or something like that. That's good. If I can get over the cold this week and only be sick for a couple of weeks I'm going to count this as a win for the silver water even though I did get sick.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)