I was looking through our photo album today and realized there are a lot of things going on in our lives that I would like to blog about but still haven't done it. I hope to get around to doing it; not because I want or need people to read it and provide comments, but rather because I view this blog as a sort of journal and I love being able to go back -- 4 plus years now -- and read about what was going on in our lives.

While I was in Savannah, GA, last week (another blog post to come), I missed two pretty cool things. First of all, the young women in my parents' ward decided to donate and decorate a tree for the annual Festival of Trees. They also made a BYU quilt and got my sister, Gillian, involved. That was smart because she's a neighbor to starting BYU middle linebacker Matt Bauman. She got him to have all the players sign the beautiful quilt.

But there's more. The young women decided that a fireside would be appropriate. They wanted the focus of the fireside to be on Ammon and his physical disability (spina bifida). Matt Bauman agreed to speak and my mom spoke about the challenges spina bifida presents but also about how us "normal" folks could interact and help those with physical disabilities.

Before all the speaking, however, they showed a video slideshow put together by yours truly. I compiled a few photos of Ammon -- mostly during the last few years -- showing some of the challenges he's faced. I enjoyed doing this.



Then KSL 5, the local NBC affiliate, decided to highlight Ammon as part of their "High Five" program. They feature people who are making an impact on the community or inspire others and Ammon fit their bill. They were interviewed and shown on the morning news last Wednesday. Here's the video below and here's the story they wrote.

Video Courtesy of KSL.com

Today Jen and I took the girls to the festival of trees to see the tree that was donated for Ammon. It was fun to see the tree and also to have this little secret that the kid who was being honored was my brother. Good times.

Yesterday Leah had a friend over to play. We were talking about how Lauren was going to have a nap soon, when Leah leaned over to her friend and quietly said "That's the best part of my day!" I burst out laughing. Leah felt bad pretty soon and told me that she was just kidding. Leah and Lauren get along really well and have lots of fun playing while Abby is at school, but I'm pretty sure that Lauren's nap time really is one of Leah's favorite parts of the day!

We gave in to Black Friday. I'm not sure why. I've done Black Friday twice before but for some reason, that didn't stop me this year. Jen is crazier than me; she went to WalMart this morning around 4am and got a number of gifts for sweet deals. But WalMart...

I decided to get up at 5:30 and head to GameStop. This store isn't really for me. It's full of a bunch of teenage nerds who don't know how to communicate with humans, let alone shower. Well, they were offering the Wii Sports Resort game for $49 plus a free extra Wii Motion Plus remote, a savings of about $20.

I got to the store at 5:40am and stood outside (in the cold) until they opened at 6am. I got my game, got in line, and then waited. And waited. And waited. I listened to very lame conversation from a super annoying teenager behind me. After half and hour and moving 5 feet (with over 40 people in front of me), I put the game down and left. My time is so worth more than $20.

I drove home and when I walked in, Jen said, "You don't have to go back to GameStop. I just bought the game online with the same doorbuster deal with free shipping." I was a little ticked that I woke up and stood in the line for all that time just to have Jen find it online -- at the same store. But then I quickly got happy that I didn't have to go back.

I think both Jen and I decided that we'll never do the doorbuster Black Friday stuff again. Ain't worth it. I'm tired.

Ain't been bloggin' much lately. I've been reading a lot, but done no writing. The funny thing is how blogging changes how I do things. I carry a camera more often and take pictures with the thought of how it will fit in a blog post. And I have a lot of things to blog about ... eventually.

To start off with a somewhat minor topic, I came across 3 free MP3 downloads at Amazon.com. I love it. What they do is actually give you a $3 credit on your account and you can use it for as many MP3's as you can get for $3. That means you can get 3. Do the math.

What did I get today?

Ingrid Michaelson: Maybe
Lady Antebellum: Need You Now
Miley Cyrus: The Climb

Disclaimer: Leah went to the dentist today and wasn't feeling well when we returned. I used one of my free downloads on her by getting the Miley Cyrus song. I promise I'm not a Miley stalker. That would be creepy.

They have other free MP3 downloads as well and I got Lissie: Little Lovin'.

If you use the Amazon.com MP3 downloader it takes the file and immediately stuffs it into your iTunes Library.

We've got snow. I know it fell while we were vacationing at Disneyland, but this was the first I'd seen this year. It came for basically 6 hours on Saturday, starting around 11am and lasting until dark. When it was all said and done, we have over 4 inches in our yard. In the local news, they reported our city (West Jordan) as getting 7 inches. And I quote:

Benches in Davis and Weber counties saw snow between 1.5 and 4 inches, while parts of West Jordan saw 7 inches of snow. Snowbird ski resort saw 9 inches of snow, according to the National Weather Service.

Comon. Snowbird got 9 inches and my town got 7? Something's not right here. Other proof things are screwy: I spoke with my brother who lives 45 miles south of me and he said they had nothing on the ground.

We got it and it's still here. I actually had to trudge through it last night in the dark to get my snow shovels out of the shed in the backyard so I could use them on our driveway. Ugh. I hate shoveling snow.

This video shows how it looked as it snowed. My batteries died very shortly after I started recording. The kids loved it because they get to go outside and play in it.

This is funny. Gizmodo has a plethora of funny Google Street View images tagged on their website. Take a look at some of the funny things the cameras are catching (like people peeing behind cars and in medians, people picking their nose, an old lady who looks like she just got hit by a fire truck, etc.

Street view peers into my garage if you look at my house, but that's not really funny. So I won't link to that.

Our ward is singing this for our Christmas program. We won't be nearly as good...