New Uniform

I just received my new flight suit. (well, new to me, not new though).  Since I am now a senior, and have a rated slot I was issued a flight suit for my new uniform.  A few weeks ago I flew to Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio for a Class I flight physical.  They ran so many tests.  The testing lasted 8 hours a day for 3 days.  They did chest x-rays, dental exam, dental x-rays, EKG's, color blind test, depth perception test, hearing test, a 4 hour psych evaluation, urine and blood test, a ton of eye tests, etc.  Luckily the Department Of Defense paid for my ticket, but I got over 5,000 sky miles.  I was extremely nervous to go to the flight physical cause thats where a lot of people get disqualified.  It can take up to 8 weeks to hear back the official word if I passed or not, but the doctor said not to worry about anything.  They have to send all the results to Head Quarters, and Head Quarters has the official say wether I pass or not, but I unofficially passed.  Now I just have to hope that enough people didn't pass and I get bumped up to a pilot spot.  My commander is thinking that I will find out in the next month or two if I get bumped to pilot, however it could happen any day until I graduate in April.

Here is me in my flight suit.  Currently I am on track to become a Combat Systems Officer (CSO).  This Job replaced Navigator, but they do so much more than navigate.  The flight suit is so comfortable, and I will get to wear one wether I'm a pilot or CSO.  The only place they train CSO's is in Pensacola, FL.  We have been looking a lot online about Pensacola, and the more I learn about CSO's, the more I have decided that I won't be too disappointed if I don't get bumped to pilot, however I still really want to fly.  If I get bumped to Pilot I will go to training in either Florida, Mississippi, Texas, or Oklahoma.  I'll keep you posted.

Bi-Annual Review

I am horrible at updating this blog, and its been a long time.  In fact, last post I made the spring semester was almost over, and not the fall semester is about to start. Yikes, where did the summer go?

This summer I have been working like Crazy washing windows all day, losing weight by swimming and running a ton, and seems like thats about it.

I've been camping a few times this summer, but I couldn't go as much as I wanted because up until mid July there was still snow in the mountains.

On June 4th, 11 of my friends and I did the "Dirty Dash."  It is a 5k race at Soldier Hollow.  It was fun.  The entire race was through the mud, and a bunch of obstacles.  By the end everybody was way muddy.  we were able to get a group picture.

As part of our multiple hiking/camping trips, Amanda and I hiked up to some hot springs in diamond fork Canyon.  It was 3 miles up, and was way fun.

We have had a lot of fun adventures with our dog.  In this picture, We were able to crawl back behind the waterfall.  It was pretty neat.

Another trip I went on was hiking King's Peak, the tallest mountain in Utah.  It is 13,528 ft.  Me, Apollo, and 3 other friends hiked up 8 miles to the base camp at Dollar lake.

This was our view of Dollar lake right outside of our tent.  It was awesome up there.  Very beautiful.  On tuesday we hiked up to the summit.  It was 16 miles round trip from our base camp to the summit.  Very difficult at times.  Apollo made it the entire way up, I was very impressed.  The last mile is very steep, and you have to jump from boulder to boulder, but he made it up like a champ.  Everybody that saw him going up and down were very impressed he had made it.

One more adventure we had was hiking up to the Timpanogos Cave.  It was more of a hike than anticipated, but after doing kings peak it wasn't too bad.  The cave was pretty cool.

All in all, the summer has gone by way too fast, but it has been a good one.  I wanted to do a lot of fun things this summer, since it is my last here in Utah.  I love the outdoors, and I will definitely miss that about this state.

catching up

I know, I know.  Its  been nearly 6 months since I've written anything.  Deal with it.  I will try and remember all the things that have happened since then.

Thanks giving
Christmas
New Years
Valentines day

Which brings us up to our move at the end of february.  Our old place was getting WAY too expensive with utilities.  Our Gas bill alone for january was $190, Electric was $160, then internet, water, trash, etc.  It was ridiculous.  So we started looking around at new places and found a 3 bedroom (legally its only a 2 bedroom cause the windows in the third are too small to be called a bedroom, but its big) for more than $100 a month less in rent, and a ton less in utilites.  We just got our first set of bills for our new place.  $50 for Electric and $25 for gas!  Wow, what a huge difference.  We are happy with our move.  We just had a bunch of friends from the ROTC come help and got us all moved in in just a few hours.  But first we had to paint the new place cause it needed it desperately.  It was a pain, but it looks 100% better with new paint.   So Amanda has had fun decorating, etc.

I also found out about my pilot slot.  I didn't get it :( However, I did get a navigator slot (now they call them a Combat Systems Officer cause they do a whole lot more than just navigate).  Also, I am on a very small alternate list for pilot, so as people get medically disqualified I get bumped up to pilot.  From what everyone tells me its about a 90% chance I will get bumped to pilot.  Even if I don't, I'm excited to be a CSO.  It seems like a pretty cool job.  Don't get me wrong, I'd rather be a pilot, but if that doesn't work out I won't be too dissapointed.  Also, with a CSO/Pilot slot comes a top secret clearance.  So they have been investigating me and going around talking to everyone I know.  So you might get a visit from a federal investigator.

With our new apartment we are able to have a dog.  So we got one.  It has been really fun.

His name is Apollo (after Apollo Creed from the Rocky Movies).  He is 7 months old now (he was six when we got him) and is a boxador (boxer/lab mix).  He's very loyal and an awesome dog.  He loves being around people.  We have him potty trained now and things are going great.

To wrap things up, I got a job a few weeks ago washing windows again for a company called Alpine window washing.  They set up all the appointments and do everything, all I have to do is wash.  Its pretty nice, and they pay pretty good.  Its all according to how fast I wash, but so far I've been averaging about $15-$20 an hour.  I mostly just got a job to pay off the loan on my truck.  Also, today I received a half tuition scholarship for next fall/winter semesters.  That will be very helpful because I don't qualify for any grants this year.

And thats our life in a nut shell.

Well That Came Quick

Our first anniversary was this past sunday, Nov 21st.  I can't believe how fast this year went.

On saturday the 20th we went and did sealings at the Oquirrh Mountain Temple.  The sealer was really good, probably the best one I've seen while doing proxy sealings.  He would explain a lot of things in between and it was really neat.  After the temple we were gonna head up straight to Park City, but decided to go back to Provo and get my truck.  Good thing we did too.  It was so snowy up in Park City!  It snowed the whole weekend we were up there.

We started out our stay up there with a trip to the Tanager outlet mall.  Amanda found a $70 dress, but it was marked down half price.  Then an employee accidentally marked it down further to $10.99, so when we took it up to the register they rang it up and it came out to be like $25 (it had another discount), but I pointed out that the tag said $10.  They checked the rack and a few of them were marked like this, so they had no choice but to sell it to us for $10.  Pretty good deal!  I'm sure they immediately changed the other ones.

Then we checked into the hotel and went walking up and down the historic main st. where we ate some dinner.  It was pretty neat with all the snow, etc.  I had never really been on that main st. up there before.  It was a great weekend.  Sunday we just relaxed and drove home monday morning in time for me to go to class at 10.  Unfortunately we forgot the camera, so no pics.

Life Is Precious

Sometimes I have the tendency to feel invincible.  Especially in high school.  Nothing could happen to me. I have done some very high risk activities to include skydiving, scuba diving, cliff jumping, rock climbing, extreme skiing, wake boarding, flying, etc.  After my mission I kind of realized that I wasn't invincible, but still had this attitude that nothing could happen to me.

Today all that changed.  A student from UVU, who I knew, and his instructor crashed in their airplane killing both of them.  They are not sure what happened yet, but its pretty humbling and eerie to think that just yesterday he was sitting behind me in class, and now he's gone from this world.  He got married a month after I did, so it hasn't even been a year yet.  I've always taken the stance that these things happen to other people.  Somebody else, but not me.  Even though UVU has had 400,000 successful flying hours since 1987, all it takes is one unsuccessful one to cast a huge shadow.

I am so grateful for the protection I have had from Heavenly Father over the span of my short life, cause he knows I've done some stupid and outrageous things.  life is precious and we should live each day to its fullest.

Laboris Gloria Ludi

In case any of you have wondered what "Laboris Gloria Ludi" means, I'll tell you.  It is latin for "Work Hard, Play Hard."  I have adopted that as my life motto because I feel that both of them are important.  I try not to take things too seriously, unless I have to.  It feels good to accomplish something hard, but life needs a good balance.

Lately

Life has been great since I last posted. I try to post more often, but its hard to find time. So buckle your seat belts and remain seated until the post comes to a complete stop.

I have been looking to buy a truck for a while now. I finally found one that was in great condition and went to West Valley to look at it. I liked what I saw, so I called the bank and got the loan all set up. Then to my dismay, he didn't have the title for it, so the bank would not let the loan go through. I was disappointed, but kept looking. Nothing like it was coming up on KSL. Finally another truck came up on KSL, and I called and went up to Kamas to go look at it, gave him the money and drove away with it that night. The cool thing is, the body is in better shape, its a year newer than the other one, and has less miles than the other one.

It is a 1994 Toyota Pickup 4X4.  Basically a Toyota Tacoma, but they didn't start calling it a Tacoma until 96.  Its in awesome condition and I love it.  I sold the Honda I was driving to a friend in the ROTC.
I'm also in the process of selling the camper shell.

As soon as I drove off from the guys house buying it I went with my friend Steve Davis up to his cabin to go deer hunting.  We got up at 4 am saturday and hiked around the mountains until about 2 pm when I snow storm came out of nowhere.  We hadn't seen any bucks unfortunately (but lots of Elk and a few doe) so we decided to head back to the truck.  However, we still had about a 3.5 mile hike back to the truck in this snow storm.  The snow was not snow at all.  It was little ice pellets that were coming in sideways, stinging any exposed skin.  It was a fun day though all in all, even though we didn't get anything.  Next year.

I had my 24th birthday on the 28th.  We had a bunch of friends over for Hoagies, then 4 of us went to the Haunted Forest in American Fork.  It was pretty good, compared to some of the other ones I've been too.  It took about an hour to go through, and people were spaced out.  So we weren't just standing in line through the whole thing watching the people ahead of us get scared and know what's coming up.  Amanda had never been to anything haunted, so it was a good night.

The 29th was our ward Trunk-or-Treat.  It was pretty fun.  A few hours before we still didn't know what we were gonna do for our costumes or how to decorate our trunk, but pulled together something pretty good.  We decided to be a Mad Scientist (Amanda) and Igor (me).  We decorated the trunk like a mad scientist's lab with things in jars like grapes for eyes, fake mice floating in apple juice (AKA formaldehyde) and propped my head on a box with black cloth around my body so it looked like a live head on display.

 It was pretty good and kind of put some of the really little kids on edge, but everyone loved it.  It was pretty uncomfortable laying there with my head crained like it was.  But it was good.  We got 2nd place on the trunk decorating contest and only lost to a full on pirate ship with a mast and a plank.  A few couples came as peter pan, wendy, and some pirates.  So we felt good about our 2nd place, especially after throwing it together at the last minute.

After I climbed out of the truck I put on a trench coat and was Igor, the hunchback assistant.  We didn't win any prizes for our costumes.  However, after the Trunk-or-Treat was over there was a chilli cook-off that Amanda's chilli got 2nd place.  We take great pride in the fact that we are the #1 losers.  No one lost ahead of us. ha ha.

This is our Jack-o-Lantern that Amanda and I carved together.  I found a picture of a pumpkin like this on the internet and we tried our best to recreate it.   I think it turned out pretty well.

On Nov 1st Amanda got her wisdom teeth pulled and a few cavities filled all in the same procedure.  She got the laughing gas for it, but they didn't put her out.  I was kinda hoping she would be all drugged up and I could film her and put it on youtube, but she was pretty coherent.  The dental assistant told me that it only took like 10 minutes to get all 4 wisdom teeth out, but her recovery has been extremely quick.  The next day she didn't even need any pain killers.  Lucky her.