...tadashi...

The Beginning of our Trek

2010-05-12T14:51:00.001-07:00

Well, we recently started out on our new adventure in life together. Having recently graduated from BYU-Idaho it is now coming time for my internship in Connecticut. Many people have been asking for a blog or record of what we do over the summer, so I'm going to try and keep up on my Blog (until Ashlyn breaks down and agrees to start a family blog :)

The time is approx. 11:30am on Friday, May 7th as Ashlyn and I finally fill up the gas tank in our super-poo in Ogden, UT to start the long drive to Wisconsin - Ohio - Connecticut. The camera is tucked securely away in Ashlyn's Dufflebag, but amid the long list of other things we've had to do over the past 2 weeks, snapping pictures hasn't exactly been on the top of our priority-list.

We spent two days driving. First day 10 hours of driving from Ogden to Hill City, SD. When we woke in SD we went and saw Mt. Rushmore. After some site seeing we started our long day of driving. After 12 hours of driving we arrived in Marshfield, WI. We nearly ended up in a Marsh because there was a Bridge Out and my GPS took us on a bad detour... hee hee...Sorry, but we don't have any pictures of that scary adventure.

Photo's

2009-01-27T07:11:00.000-08:00

Hey, So i'm trying a new thing where I submit some of my photo's to a contest. The winner can get a scholarship, money, or a new camera. i'm hoping for the scholarship to help pay for school this summer, but whatever. follow this link everyday (or every 8 hours) and vote for this photo! thanks alot!!!

Planet Beautiful
Brickfish

News News News

2009-01-10T07:54:00.000-08:00

Hello Blogspot World! It's been a while since I updated my blog, and quite a bit has happened since my last post. The most important thing is that I'm going to be married to a wonderful girl on March 21st in the Logan, UT Temple. The proposal was a lot of fun, involving a poetry book and a partially hollowed out Dictionary. I hid the Ring inside the dictionary, within the Definition of the word love, and then i set the book on a shelf in the BYUI Library. I gave Ashlyn the poetry book with a note to read some of the poems and then a note that had the call number of where i put the dictionary. Then I went and hid behind some shelves and waited for Ashlyn to come (and to make sure no one took the dictionary). When she opened to dictionary i came around the corner and asked her to marry me! How magical is that!? haha we both love books and i figured it would be a memorable way :)

So over the christmas break I flew to Ohio (getting stuck in the ATL airport for 10 hours on the way) to see ashlyn and meet her family. It was a great experience and I really enjoyed meeting her family. It's quite a diverse family and anyone who knows me understands that I love diversity! I flew back to Salt Lake on Christmas Eve and spent christmas morning with my Aunt and her family, then drove back up to Idaho that afternoon.

On Dec 29th-Jan 3rd I went on what our school calls "Winter Summit" which is a 6 day 5 night winter camping and backcountry ski trip up in the Teton Mountains. It was QUITE the experience. I never stepped on the ground once for the whole trip, there was constantly 3-4 feet of snow under foot. The snow probably wasn't as nice and fluffy as we wanted, but at least it was good to get out. I was snowboarding on a fairly new kind of snowboard called a "Splitboard" which transforms from a snowboard to Cross-Country ski's. In the backcountry there aren't any chairlifts, so anytime you want to go DOWN the mountain, you have to hike up! Amazingly, someone has created a thing called "skins" or "tractor skins" that stick to the bottom of your ski's and act as traction as we hiked up the mountain. Needless to say, hiking in all of your snow gear with a pack on is quite exhausting, but i feel that i came back in better shape than i left in! haha. we ate deliciously warm food every night as we all took turns cooking for the group. There was about 9-11 people up there depending on the day. Most days we had some sort of Avalanche Training and on one night we had a little Talent show. On new years eve we celebrated new years with a little dance party (little being the under-stated word) and all went to bed by 10pm haha. Winter summit was definitely an eye opening experience, and I learned skills and determination that I know will overflow into the other aspects of my life. I'm goin to try and post an album of those pictures on picassa, when i get a link i'll come back and post it. or i'll just post this slideshow! sorry there's no captions... i'll work on that...

cheers everyone!

November Update

2008-11-20T08:40:00.001-08:00

So it's November, one of the best months of the year. Think about it: great football, beginning of basketball, great food, great birthdays, fall colors, maybe some snow, it's all just so awesome!!! i think i'll go ahead and show some of these great things in my pictures... : i've learned and developed an immense love for photography. I'm not a pro or anything, nor do i have any of that nice photography equipment, but i do have a camera that i love and it seems to take amazing photo's. a quick family update, as i'm writing this, i got a text from my family about Lynn's surgery going well, they seemed to have fixed the sac in her bac. so thank goodness for that. well, picture time!!.... Those are some pictures that I am contemplating posting for a picture contest... we'll see...

LEIGH LAKE! CANOEING!!

2008-10-02T08:03:00.000-07:00

aloha!!

so i think that should show up as a cool slideshow... hopefully it will. otherwise just look at those cool pictures below. i just got back from Leigh Lake in Grand Teton National Park, and it was one of the most beautiful campouts i've ever been on. we canoed in across String Lake, and then through Leigh Lake to get to our campsite which was across the lake from these beautiful 6000 ft mountains! It was too cold for me to sleep, so i got up really early, all bundleded up in my sleeping bag and blanket, and sat on the beach waiting for the sun to rise and reflect off the mountains. there was a nice layer of fog which provided for some beautiful effects, and eventually it brightened up and the stillness of the lake provided some awesome reflections. i'm very glad i invested in a new camera last week... yay :)
side note: while i still have memories of Hawaii i miss, there seems to be plenty for me to get involved in out here in ID.... :)

So i want to put up alot more pictures, but don't really know how. I'm thinking a slideshow would be the easiest because going through and adding one by one is kind of a pain. any suggestions??

Breaking Dawn or Camping

2008-08-08T08:24:00.000-07:00

So let's just say that I've been a busy boy the past couple weeks. Being in Idaho has increased my desire to be outdoors and doing stuff like camping, hiking, cliff-diving, bridge jumping, rafting, etc. so this past weekend I was torn by the release of BREAKING DAWN. but have no fear, i managed to appease both appetites. I bought the book for an amazingly low 13 dollrs at wal mart on saturday morning and spent a few hours reading it throughout the day. I had to work though, and I was also invited to go to a bon-fire/ bridge jumping. *(the lesson i learned from that is to always be aware of who you're going with. for instance, i don't ever want to go with city-dwelling folks who dont' have any idea about nature or have any respect: for instance, starting a huge bonfire, throwing gas on it, almost burning veryone around the fire, and then just leaving before it's put out. not anyone i ever want to hang out with again) so saturday night i spent some more time reading, as well as most of the day on sunday when i wasn't at church. then late on sunday night, aroudn midnight, my buddy and i decided to go camp cuz neither of us had work the next day haha.
so we went to this place by the Palisades which we had been to before, arriving at around 1am, starting a fire cooking some brats, and then deciding that we're too lazy to set up a tent so we just sleep in the back of my car. a couple weeks ago we had serenaded a neighboring group of campers all night, and then woken up and jumped a 60 foot cliff.... this time though, we just woke up and looked for a better place to camp the next time around.

anyway, then i came home and proceeded to finish Breaking Dawn on Tuesday morning. which amid all of my working, and playing, i feel is quite an accomplishment. and let me just say that the book was AMAZING. different then the first three, but still the same. alot of good stuff in it. wow, i just.. yeah, it's good. haha intense and action packed!!

2008-07-21T08:15:00.000-07:00

Want to see a Magic Trick?? BOOM!

So on saturday i had the privilege of going and seeing The Dark Knight. Yes finally, the long anticipated day arrived and i was able to go see it. First let me say, i was fully ready to pay 9.00 to see it, but as it happened, i knew someone who knew someone who got us all in for free :D haha

So the movie IS AWESOME!! anyone who's seen it will appreciate and probably cringe at the magic trick joke. The graphics of the movie were incredible, the story was twisted and developed, (albeit long in some parts), and the characters were amazing! My only hesitation is the same one from the first batman (begins), in that i don't like Christian Bales voice when he becomes batman... the low gruff-type voice.

Heath Ledger, RIP... he made this movie. There wasn't a single second that I knew it was him playing the part. I thought they seriously got some crazy psycho guy to come play the part! He played that part like a CHAMP! It was so intense that there were times when i was like, whoa, is this for real!? It kind of saddens me to know that we'll never get to see is acting-genius in any more films. But at least his film will hopefully end his career on a high note!

I give it three thumbs up, and 5.5 out of 5 stars. Don't take your little kiddies, there were some very disturbing images. lol. and yes, be ready for the long haul, you dont' really notice it very often, but it is almost a 3 hr movie....

AFY!

2008-07-21T07:45:00.000-07:00

So I just got done being a counselor for AFY, and had pretty much the best week EVER! To be honest I was so intimidated by the thought of being responsible for 10 boys, but in the end, it worked out. I had 10 guys aged 14-17, most of them were all 14/15. I had the youngest group everyone was a first-timer at AFY. For those of you who dont' know, AFY is Adventure For Youth.

Monday we played the usual "get to know each other games" etc, and also picked our group names and made a banner and what not, then went to bed exhausted already.

Tuesday we woke up for breakfast at 7, scripture study at 8, then we got to watch the ever-popular Rafting/Chastity video put out by the Church back in the early 80's.. ("stronger than dirt").. it was a good intro for us to get ready to go RAFTING!! we went down towards Jackson in Wyoming and got on some rafts. Good times!

Wed was the early day, leaving school at 7am to get to Badger Creek to do ropes-course stuff all day. I think next summer i either want to be an OYA counselor or work up at Badger Creek. It was a blast, climbing a power-pole and jumping off was tough because my kids kept getting distracted, and no one was really watching me.... and they were holding my life line!! scarry! but we got to go horseback riding, play some team building activities, and swing on a ginormous swing. By the end of the day everyone was hot and tired, so it was a quiet ride home (staying awake driving was the hardest part of the day).

Thurs was Temple day. In the morning we had FSY activities (For Strength of Youth). The kids were in their sunday clothes all morning, then after lunch we had a temple-prep devotional and we walked up to the rexburg temple. I had a couple boys who weren't able to go through the temple so i used that time to sit outside and get to know them and bond with them, it was a good experience. Thursday night was the BANQUET! woo hoooo!! I helped my boys make Candy Lei's for all the girls, and they made us skittle-bow-ties, with some Burger King Crowns... :)

OVernight thurs/friday was pretty rowdy, but the only reason i know this was because my boys told me the next day. I was out cold all night haha!

Friday we all had to be up early and checked out of our rooms by 7am, before we went to breakfast, then we had picture time (instead of scripture study haha) and prepared for the testimony meeting which was incredible. :)

This past week gave me the opportunity to find gospel applications to every aspect of life! I was on a spiritual high, and then i remember i had to give a talk on sunday! So i talked from Elder Wirthlins Conference address on the "Concern for the One." Marvelous talk :)

well i'm gonna try to get a slideshow up of my pictures, if can find out where to go to do that...

2008-06-04T06:00:00.000-07:00

aloha!
so, i'm in Idaho. i made the long journey and have settled into my nice little place right across the street frm the biggest construction site on campus. I guess they're building a new Auditorium here on campus which will be great when finished, but until then, it makes going to school literally twice as long because i can't cut onto campus right by my house, i have to walk ALLLLL the way around the building on either side of the construction. Ok, so that's my vent for the beginning of the blog :)
I think I'll like school here. It's bigger than BYUH and UW-Marshfield, so there's more stuff going on, but at the same time it's smaller than Provo so I can still feel special. Oh, a little more about moving in. I moved into my very own apartment. I had it all to myself til someone else moved in, now there's two of us in an apt meant for 4. :) i'm not complaining, we each get our own room. But these apt's are all furnished with large 50" Plasma HD TV's..... i'm in heaven. I've been passing the time watching sports and Planet Earth because I don't know anyone and classes haven't started (they start today). But last night I had some new friends over and we watched a Movie: THE EYE.... with jessica alba. (lynn here come's a movie review for you).

I wasn't really hopping and jumping at the bit to watching this movie, I hadn't heard amazing reviews and am not really a scary movie fan. But within the first 10 minutes i found out that it's about a girl whose CORNEA TRANSPLANT goes haywire, I was immediately hooked. My first thought was, this would be weird if it happened to my Dad (for those of you who don't know, my Dad also underwent Cornea Transplants over the past 2 years). So there are some pretty freaky tie-ins with the "after-life" and spiritworld because basically, without spoiling the movie, the girl can see the spirits of death here on earth. It leads to a plot that is basically non-existant and while the story leads to some very jumpy moments, it's not really all that great. I wont' say it's really predictable, but that's because you really have no idea WHERE they COULD go with a story like this. In one word, i'd Sum up this movie as "Pointless." If you're in for a scare, yeah it's decent.

Well I finished my GradPlan over the weekend, and it looks like i might be able to finish in Dec 09 and then do my internship after :) I'm VERY excited. That's just a year from this fall!! So excited. That's with an Average of 5 classes/15 credits a semester. Tough Load, but i can hack it. It could be worse!

next step

2008-05-23T06:33:00.000-07:00

In approximately 24 hours I will be embarking on the next step in my life.
Let's back up: last October/November I started preparing for this step by applying for school at the three BYU's (Provo, Idaho, Hawaii). Who would've thought that I wouldn't get a confirmed "yes you're admitted for school here" until mid APRIL! (a week before my first semester classes were to begin in Idaho)

So anyway, a few months ago I was asked to participate in a Readers Theatre that my small Branch will be putting on in celebration and recognition of the Prophet Joseph Smith's life. It's called The Long Road, From Vermont to Carthage, and it's a long poem. (with some songs interspersed). And by songs, i mean verses of A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief scattered throughout the reading. My part is the "Young Man," meaning i stand in for multiple characters: Oliver Cowdry, Sydny Rigdeon, Young Joseph Smith, John Taylor, as well as a few others. It's been a very touching and testimony building experience as we've come together and worked on getting this performance-ready. A Poor Wayfarying Man of Grief has been a favourite hymn of mine for many years, and my memories date back to a time when John Cannon with his beautiful Tenor voice attempted to sing this in our La Crosse Ward. (And by attempt, i mean that he did great til the end verses when the tears were overbearing) Hopefully that won't happen to me, but we'll see. :)

My biggest frustration of this move has been my car. Three and a half weeks ago I took my car into our little mechanic here in town because I had been noticing some oil leakage. We had recently gotten some work done on my pistons which took about 3 weeks in itself. So i dropped my car off thinking ther must be a seal leakign somewhere, or my oil pan is leaking or something. I get a call sayign its my "camshaft seals" and it's kind of a lengthy procedure, but it shouldn't take more than a few days. Then they "ordered the wrong part" and that's fine, i don't mind waitng for them to get the right part. But that was two weeks ago. For the past two weeks, I have driven by many times and just seen my car sitting there (engine parts scattered inside my car), with other cars going in and out bein fixed, while my car gets...... nothing? Maybe i just don't understand how the process of fixing cars works, but wouldn't it be practical to do a "First come first serve" type of business. My car has been in there for 3 and a half weeks. I told him a week ago that I needed it this weekend because I'm driving out of town, but that didn't seem to do anything. (the frustration has been building quite a bit recently, i've had to restrain myself a few times from going and just yelling at them.. probaly wouldn't do any good).

Well, provided things go smoothly tonight and I will be driving out of Marshield sometime tomorrow morning and making my way through Colorado and Utah to get to Idaho. Excitement :) I've got a couple of audio books for my journey, they always seem to tie me over well :)

Just a quick review, I haven't watched any new movies lately, (other thn rambo, but tha doesnt' even deservea review, disgusting) I read a book! Stephanie Meyer has a new book out, The Host, which I gave to my mom for her birthday, (But then i stole and read). The book contains a heavy Sci-Fi feel, dealing with space-traveling parasite souls, but also incorporates much of Meyer's twisted Romance and Love conflicts. Anyone who has read and enjoyed the Twilight books would most likely enjoy this one. It's kind of confusing in the beginning, but after a while you begin to understand things, and get pulled into the intensity of the story.

Oh, by the way, did i mention that i graduated from the UW Colleges? I earned my Associates degree, finally somethign to show for my 5 years of post-high-school work. haha! YAY!

P.S. I Love You

2008-05-03T23:42:00.000-07:00

ssooooo.... i just finished watching PS I love you, and the first thing i'd like to say is, i think they should've found someone else to play the main girl. otherwise i found this movie incredibly sad... and that's ironic because it's said to be a "romantic comedy"..... but yeah. the jist fo the movie is that a wife is devestated by the loss of her husband, and it's a story of her rocky return to reality. The husband had orchestrated this whole thing to happen after his death, but i won't spoil what happens in the end.
i guess, as a guy, this whole story affirms in my mind the use and necesity of being organized and decisive. i think this is ringing in my ears a bit more right now because last week i took part in a panel discussion with the Youth of my branch and answered dating questions, and one of the points that I tried to bring out to the guys was that a well-planned date is often the funnest and safest one. i guess you could say this movie relates to that idea because the husband knew so much about his wife and knew the things she would want/need to hear. in comparison (and you girls who read this can correct me if i'm wrong), but i think a girl would like togo on a date with a guy who took interest in her and knows what she likes and dislikes and makes an effort to plan something that will involve her having FUN and enjoying herself. not one of those "so... what do you want to do now....."....

but to finsih up on the movie, i found it very well made and enjoyable. i like the whole international twist (her husband was irish). the movie plays on the delicate emotional strings of love and death. i'll leave this movie my recommendation. not as good as How to lose a guy in 10 days, or other true "romantic comedy's", but this was pretty good...

Political Drama's

2008-05-02T08:36:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago i watched a couple political movies. I felt inspired with the upcoming elections and all.

LIONS FOR LAMBS

So i remember hearing some reviews about this on NPR a while ago when it was in post-production, getting read to go to theatres, but i didn't hear anything good about it. I heard it was a definite "sleeeper" but i was captivated throughout the whole thing. I haven't yet seen a Robert Redford film that I wasn't impressed with (see also, The Last Castle, and Sneakers). Tom cruise played a pretty good politician as Meryl Streep pursued him as a Journalist. There are three seperate storylines all going on at the same time, in something close to 'real-time', but they are all connected. Robert Redfords students are over in the middle-east fighting a battle that is being orchestrated by politicians like tom cruise, while the media (streep) is printing twisted stories. maybe i liked it because i'm rather isolated from what is going on over there, but it brings to light alot of questions to a politically blind person such as me.

Next was Charlie Wilson's War, and you can never really go wrong with a movie that includes Tom Hanks AND Julia Roberts. The unfortunate opening hot tub scene of this movie made this movie a rated R, otherwise it was fairly tame and ultra-political. I'm not sure if i can give an adequate review because I want to say that this is based on a True Story, but cant' remember precisely. Roberts gives a stellar performance as a southern woman with lots of power and persuasion. Hanks is a politician who, as firm as he says he is, finds himself being manipulated by Roberts, but for things that turn out for the best.... i think.

2008-05-02T08:18:00.000-07:00

so my sisters have convinced me that since i work at hollywood video i should start doing some movie reviews. and this is something i should've started a LOOONG time ago. there was a time when i was watching 1-3 movies a day!! haha, yeah, no life. in most cases i will be doing reviews on DVD's that are just coming out, but for today i'll go ahead and do a review on a movie i just saw in the theatre's.
So for the previous couple months all of my co-workers were so excited for this epic comic-book character to become a movie, but I was skeptical especially after watching the last Spiderman completely flop. however, after reading some reviews and some background on the movie as well as seeing some trailers, I became convinced that this movie was one to be seen on the big screen. It was WELL WORTH IT! well i guess it all depends on if you're into the whole "super-hero-sci-fi-comic-book-action-movie." I actually found myself laughing at a few parts with Robert Downey Jr. giving a superior performance.

Surprisingly as much as this was a straight-up comicbook movie, I found that there were some subtle political issues addressed. ok ok, so the positives to this movie are: the graphics are very well done. the whole 'iron suit' looks pretty sweet. the technology that is shown is very advanced, but not too advanced to be believable. i'd say it compares to Transformers with the whole mechanical animation.
negatives.. well, i can't really find any at this moment, but if i come up with any, i'll definitely let you know.
there is a slight romance story, but kept very low key, and the girl isn't a complete incompetant ditz. plus, she's a fairly new and unheard-of actress. ok that concludes my review for the most part....

Major Swap

2008-04-10T06:56:00.000-07:00

So i've been debating in my head all morning throwing around an idea of changing my major. For the past year it's been Psychology, but i was recently admitted to BYU-Provo and trying to work out all my classes to finish with a degree in Psych has revealed that i'll end up taking a full major's worth of classes anyway. SOO last night when my dad said "have you considered other majors" for about the 5th time in the past two weeks, i finally decided to take him up on the offer. A friend of mine posted a question: "what would your dream job be?" i realized that my dream job would be to work at one of those Outdoor Camps for Troubled Youth type places. or something like that. And after a small amount of research I stumbled upon this major at BYU: Recreatin Mgt & Youth Leadership with Therapeutic Recreation Emphasis. wow... how do i go from having a one-word major to a ...nine-word major. haha

I guess you could say that my desire in life is to help people learn how to help themselves. And i think that one of the most important times to learn how to do that is in their teen years when they're both very rebelious but at the same time can be very impressionable. (is that used in the right context?) There doesn't seem to be any shortage of summer camps and other boarding schools that have recreational therapy emphasis' so I think I should be safe on job security for a while. If i feel the urge, then I can go back and do graduate work more along the lines of conventional therapy and get trained in more clinical type counseling.

With that being said.. does anyone have any inside information on this kind of major or anything? BYU-Idaho (which i'm still hoping to hear back from soon) also has a Receational Leadership which you can take with a therapeutic emphasis as well.

side-note. there were about 5 years of my life that i said i would never go back t live or school in utah.... totally busted that thought...

First blog...

2008-03-26T09:18:00.000-07:00

hello new world...
i've embarked on a new and interesting journey of blogspot..i guess that makes me a new blogger.. hhmm... i've found that most of my older sister's friends are on here, and i always did have a knack for hangin' out with the older crowd, so why should now be any different? So here i am, instead of applying for my associates degree, or reading my assignment for sociology, i'm starting up my brand-spanking-new Blog.

First one down.. many to come..