A Bunch of Random Things

Well, it's almost October and I figured that it was about time to post again. I don't know what the length of this one will be. Where to begin? Let's begin with two weeks ago Monday. We had to go eat with the same guy that had us come to his house in Hollywood and he likes to eat at the Nugget. After we got home I was complaining that my throat was hurting. The next morning my throat was killing me and then the next day I had the regular bug symptoms. It wasn't very fun to have a virus. Then Lauri caught it on Friday and then Mom got it on the next Monday. We are almost cured but are still kind of recovering from it. Since we were all sick on Saturday, we got to play risk! I fully enjoyed it even though I'm not sure the rest of the family did. We also watched Cheaper by the Dozen 2 and Benchwarmers while we were sick. Cheaper by the Dozen 2 wasn't as good as the first one but it was still good. I enjoyed it. As for Benchwarmers, I didn't really enjoy it. It had it's funny parts but the majority of the funny parts were in the preview. The kind of humor that the preview had, I enjoy, but they didn't rely on that kind of humor in this movie. It was kind of gross. Alright. I'm finished with that section.
I am excited that Dad and Mom decided that next week we are not doing school on Friday and we're driving down to Granddad and Grandmom's on Thursday evening. We do have to go back on Saturday of course but it's still really cool.
I'm really glad that it's Saturday. In some subjects, school has gotten better but in others it hasn't. I read the Negotiator in English for an oral book report and I enjoyed it.
I'm probably going to try to clean the fish tank today. Ewwww. Snails, Slime, and uh, something else that starts with an "s", (oh my!)
I wanted to end with the words to Receive the Glory last time but I couldn't find them. This song was on my iPod last night and read it like Glad sings it on their latest cd. :)
Be still, my soul: your God will undertake
to guide the future, as in ages past.
Your hope, your confidence let nothing shake;
all now mysterious shall be bright at last.
Be still, my soul: the waves and winds still know
the Christ who ruled them while he dwelt below.

Faux Planets, Fictional Planets, and Surprise Visits

Time for my first long post in a while. The reason for the length being that I have a lot to talk about. To begin with, I've just recently found out that everything I know is wrong. Well, maybe not everything, but did You know that there are no longer nine planets???!?! I know, mind boggling. They (whoever they are) have decided that Pluto is no longer a planet! http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060828.html This is a site that Dad gave to me to see them. Ceres and Pluto are good names but that other one is bogus I'm convinced. Anyway, that's the first cool/crazy thing on my list. The second, by my title, is Fictional Planets. Now, Star Trek is not my forte and I know very little about it but we did go to the Star Trek Experience in Las Vegas and it was pretty fun. Anyone who's been anywhere with me will attest to the fact that I have trouble doing new things. Thankfully, I didn't overload and the two rides were actually pretty fun. One was kind of like the Muppet thing at California Adventure but more Borgy and less Gonzoy. You sit in a theater type thing and put on your 3-D glasses and the seats poke to and stuff spits at you to provide the "Fourth Dimension." The other was a simulator ride that took you through areas where plenty people had gone before. It almost made me sick but I was able to ward off the motion sickness. The third and probably greatest thing over shadowed the Star Trek stuff. Two and a half people came to visit: Zachary, Brenda, and Other!!!!!! Yay! I think most of the angles have been covered by Brenda and Lauri's blogs but I had to mention it anyway. We had a whole bunch of fun even though they only stayed for one whole day. It was extraneously fun! Again, I would appreciate your comments on the Faux planets or whatever. Have a good rest of the week!

A Full Post

I decided that I'd write more than a few sentences this time. A really exciting thing happened today! We got a G5 Tower!!! Yay!!!!!!!!! I'm excited but also am kind of bummed that we have to get rid of our old compy. Dad said that we won't get around to selling it for a couple of months now but I'll still miss it. Just so you're not wondering, I'm not making this post on the new one. It's on the table because we wanted to check to see if it worked all right. Everything but the disk drive worked fine the first run then Dad poked around inside it and fixed the disk drive so that was good. Nothing else that was really amazing. Happy Labordabor. We're not going to take it off so that we can go camping again on the fifteenth. Talk to y'all later.

Since we got home so late last knight, we slept in this morning. We still got finished with school by 3:30. That was good. There was a mythbusters about Nikolai Tesla but I missed the beginning.

The AWANA Basic Training went better than I expected. It was at this weird little church near the Freemont Street Experience. That was interesting, eh?

Just to be clear, 6.25 isn't to bad. Like, 1's or less are movies like Time Bandits and others that I won't mention so as to not offend others. Ten's are movies like the Music Man and Red October. The regular movie rating is about an eight. I'm glad that I saw Barnyard. More to follow on the 29th.

It is Speech that is the bad subject. We went to see Barnyard yesterday. It was okay. 6.25 out of 10, maybe a little more.

Out of the six subjects that I have: Spanish, physics, Business Math, speech, health, and English; I like about five of them. Can you guess which ones I do like?!?!?

Well, we've finally finished our first week of school.

The Elusive Blue Jellyfish

I'm watching Spongebob and it's that episode again. I figured that since I have nine comments and said that I'd post again soon that I would post again. Not really alot has happened since you last heard from me. We saw Dead Man's Chest again yesterday. It was still good. I enjoyed it. Mom and Dad claim that they did but they are not as enthusiastic about new movies as Lauri and I are. Only 291 days 'til the third one comes out. Make fun of me if you want. It's happened before. I'm still excited about the new child. It'll be so great to have a new kid and being an uncle will be very exciting. School starts on the twenty-first. I'm not very excited but I'm trying not to dread it. As kind of our last thing this summer. We're going camping this weekend. I haven't been camping in at least two years. It'll be so great. This campground allows fires so that's muy bueno. We have s'more makin's and we'll read some Patrick McManus. Just like old times. I'll talk at you either sometime soon, or not so soon, your choice. I'll try not to be presumptuous of the gender of the new chile.

The Future is Now! Oop, there it went.

Ha Ha. It amazes me about how funny I am. We went to Paul Crane's house. Lauri updates a bit more often than I do so you probably read her blog and already found that out. He is somewhat of a weird guy and likes to call me Kevin. I have been called many names in the past, most of them by my older siblings, and some names just 'cause people can't remember: Jacob, Calen, Cayup... But never Kevin. Oh well, you learn something new every day. We did have a fun time at Knott's Berry Farm. I enjoyed the white water rafting ride the most, just like usual. Not quite as Crazy Go Nuts as the one at California Adventure which was good. I don't like anything that has a slope of 30 degrees or more most of the time. I got some cool souvenirs. I got two decks of cards, 11 smashed pennies, and an inflatable hammer that I got on one of those Midway games that charge ridicerous prices. I'd seen the hammers around the park and the game was five bucks for two hits, one through ninety-nine gets you a hammer so I went for it. Lauri says that if my posts are shorter and more often in coming, I'll have a better turn out. Oh and one more thing my hammer is blue which is a very good color for MY FUTURE NEPHEW!!!!! It may be a girl in which case it'll still be good and I'm just stoked about being an Uncle.

The Untitled Post

Instead of a depressing song, I'll use a cheap way out of naming my post. Well, hows everyone doing today. We got back from Phoenix yesterday. It was great! If I had a good picture of everyone we saw, I'd post it. However, it's hard to get a good picture. Snicker, snicker. We did alot of swimming in the salt water. It was just like the ocean, only warmer. We played a lot of pool. Lauri slaughtered almost everyone. Even though I won a very scant few games, I had a good time. We played some Mario Kart. I lost at that too but it was okay.... What was more than okay was the fact that we got to see Dead Man's Chest!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Even though only one other person I talked to said that it was better than the first one, I liked it just as much if not more. Hopefully we'll get to take Mom and Dad to go to see it because they haven't yet. It was a great movie which I plan to see many more times. We did get to spend a day with the Padres while we were down there. For those of you who didn't know, they went to Estes Park Conference because Pop's a VM Board Member. Two more fun things about Phoenix. Numba One: We got to go to Chorale with Granddad and Grandmom and sing. It was really fun and I hope to do it again soon. Numero dos: On our last night there we got to go to Fuddruckers with all of the Phoenix crew. It was delicious and we had a lot of fun. Even though Leigh, Paul, Jay, Kyle, and Lyndsay talked alot about television shows and movies that I haven't seen, particularly Lost, it was fun. I also got to meet Bella for the first time and she was a cute as all of the hype.
On the way home I picked up a Dr. Good Guy. For those of you who don't know, I'm now into collecting fake Dr. Peppers. I already have a Dr. Thunder, a Dr. B from HEB, a Dr. Stripes from a dollar store near Nanny's house, a Dr. Bold from Albertsons, and a Dr. Hytop from Sack and Save. I found this site the other day: http://www.marion.ohio-state.edu/fac/schul/drp/aj.html
If you see any that you can pick up near you, if you'll buy a can then I'll reimburse you next time I see you. In particular, I saw a Dr. Bash, from Bashas, Dr. Rocket from K-Mart, Dr. Shasta probably up in Northern CA somewhere, I haven't seen Dr. Slice in a while, Dr. Spice from Target (I have yet to find a single can not in a six pack), and Real Dr. (a food for less variety.) Don't feel obligated to pick these up. Unless of course you see the elusive, Mr. Pig from the Piggly Wiggly shops.
Again, I congratulate you for making it through my post. One of these days I'll figure out how to fancify my blog a little more.

Happy Forf of the Lie!

I take back what I said at the beginning of my last post. I don't post very often because I don't have anything exciting. Even this post won't be danged exciting but it should suffice for my purposes. Anyway, our fourth of July activities turned out to be on the second because they remembered a couple of weeks back, the town that is, that some group had reserved the park where the fireworks are set off for the day of the fourth. Pretty on top of things this town eh? The Bar-Be-Que, that's how our church advertised it, was moved to Sunday evening at 6:00. The fireworks didn't start 'until nine and it was 112 degrees outside when we were supposed to be grilling. The crazy lady who thinks that she's in charge of everything and if she's not then everything's going to fall apart, said that we were going to sit in the parking lot. The sun reflecting off the blacktop, the sun beating down on us and all. We did move to a small playground so that we'd be out of the sun but that was too close for me. The fireworks were nice, I guess. We listened to the radio presentation of the fireworks. At 9:20 when they said was going to be the finale a whole bunch of fireworks went up. However, after that round was over, the small fireworks just kept on going. Then, a few minutes later, the announcers said, "This is the finale!" but that wasn't the finale either. So after many rumored finales and I guess one real finale, the fireworks were over. Conclusion: The Disneyland fireworks spoiled me.
For the real fourth of July, we went to see Over the Hedge and we didn't watch any fireworks. Over the Hedge was good. From the previews, it looked like it was going to have it's good parts but rely heavily on distasteful humor. I was pleasantly surprised. It was good and had alot of very funny parts. William Shatner plays in it and so does Eugene Levy. Hey Grandad, you need to rent that movie with William Shatner about the professional paintballers vs. the aliens while we're down there. That looks like a fine piece of filmography right there. I'm very excited to see all of you in Phoenix next week and I'm glad that the ones I won't see, I saw the majority of a couple of weeks ago in Dallas. By the way, for those of you who don't know, the title was inspired by the movie The Little Rascals.

Anything and Everything

I do realize that my blog posts have a large gap in between. I try this mostly because I don't really have anything to say, partly because I'm lazy, and partly because I hope that you will be more excited about my life on the edge and leave me millions of comments. That being said, for those of you who get restless on some of the longer blogs, I know that this one fits very well into that category, I have a hankering that this one will be a mega post so I shall try to put the main point at the beginning of the paragraph so that skimming will be easier. So it begins.
I had a great time with my iPod. They are wonderful machines and I listened on the car ride to and from the coast and on the plane ride to and from Dallas. Just thought that I should put that in there.
The coast was amazing. I think that this trip probably took the cake in the "Going to the Beach A lot" competition. Betcha didn't know there was one didya? On the first beach the sand wasn't great but there were a lot of hermit crabs that we caught and held. Dad got pinched by a real crab and that was pretty funny. The second beach was sandy through and through. The one on the right is Lauri's and the one on the left is mine. Even though the water wasn't warm and we didn't get stung by jellies :) , we had a great time being knocked over by the waves and getting all salty and sandy. We had a great time with Cogs and Crazy Uncle (and Aunt) and we were glad that they got to come up.
The Monterey Bay Aquarium was fascinating. Again, our favorite part was the jellies but we enjoyed everything from the penguins to the octopus. The penguins were my second favorite part second only to the jellies. I also liked seeing the massive tank with all kinds of fish in there and some sea turtles.
Conference was great. Seeing as how my friends around hotville a.k.a. Pahrump consist of one person that's not really a really close friend yet, conference is the bomb 'cause the main chunk of good friends that I have I only see once a year. Even though the junior highers did more thing with us than I would have liked, it was a blast. Even though I lost at mini golf in my group, one of my two best friends wins every stinkin' year, I didn't do too poorly compared with the rest of the folgies. I have this theory that I don't do well under pressure when I feel like I need to do great. I know, many of you are shaking your heads saying, "No, really?" I was winning in the first half of the mini golf game but then I think it was on the tenth hole that I started losing, bad. But we had a great time. Lauri and I had a great time at the boardwalk beach, (the boardwalk is where the mini golf place is too.) Even though only a few of our friends enjoy getting into the cold water, it was great.
We got to go to the Redwoods a couple of times. We got to ride this really cool train and see the Redwoods with the help of a Bold and Intrepid tour guide.
I had a good birthday and got a lot of cool stuff. One new watch, two new pocket knives, one of which I don't know it's location at the moment, four books, five video games and sixteen candles on the cake. Thanks to Dad and Mom's generosity, we didn't have to drive the entire way home on my birthday but got to stay in a motel outside of Bakersfield.
We only spent a couple days at home between trips. Going to Wal-Mart, playing Ocarina of time, being hot...
And then, (after an incredibly short paragraph) we went to Dallas and sweated. Indeed for most of you, roughly half minus those who don't live in Pahrump, you are used to the hot and stickiness but we weren't. It wasn't too bad but it sure wasn't what I was used to. The reason we went down there was to give Nanny (Mom's mom) a surprise eightieth birthday party! It went really well. I think she was very happy to receive it even though she acted like she should have known what was going on. We had a good time getting to see family down there. I got to see Walker for the first time. That was cool.
It's way past time to wind this post up. For those of you that read it all, I salute you. For those of you that skimmed, I don't blame you. Here's a good pic that Dad took to reward you.

Early Birthday Present

The first post in quite a while I know. Truth be told, I'm not a very exciting guy. (Don't tell anyone.) You could have expected a post when I got back from the coast because we got to go to Monterey and to conference and my birthday, but you get an extra treat because I was surprised with an early birthday present last night. Taa Daaa! I got a Shuffle!!!!! I am firmly convinced that the iPod is an amazing machine. They are far superior to other music players. Since Lauri's Pod was recharging, I used a Mp3/Cd player (a thing that played CD's with Mp3's on them) and I stuck the big old thing in my cargo pocket on my shorts and the big ole headphones. I was stylin' let me tell you. It's sooo great! Here's a picture:
I haven't listened to it yet but I'll have it for the ten hour drive to the coast.
Did any of you know that Dr. Pepper changed their logo? It looks pretty cool.
In other news we watched Temple of Doom today. I was expecting a little gross and nasty but other than that a good flick. What others had not told us was that this was one of the lamest movies this side of Time Bandits. It was awful. Horribly, horribly lame, corny, and just poorly done. What were Steven and George thinking? I'm ashamed of them. Here are some reviews from others in the family:
"On a scale from 1 to 10, it'd be hard to bring this one above a two." Dad
"Whew." Mom
"How much longer is it?" Lauri
I would not recommend this movie or even watch it again. It is amazing that Raiders and The Last Crusade were such great movies and this one was a bomb.
Another news, only three more sleeps 'til the coast!!!!!! Yay! It'll be great. I have probably twenty geocaches in the areas that we'll be in. We're planning on doing some caches with our friends from conference on the Friday after conference ends, my birthday. In sadder news, I have to drive some of the way to the coast and driving is almost as bad as the Temple of Doom. Almost.

Well, What do I want to talk about?

By a show of hands, how many of you have seen Minnesota Cuke? Now put your hands down and tell me how many of you have seen the Indiana Jones trilogy. Now tell me which one is your favorite. Thank you. This having been said, I'm on an Indiana Jones binge (is that the word I'm looking for?) right now. The Indiana Jones ride was mine favorite of all of the rides at Disneyland and we just got the Indiana Jones trilogy on DVD!!! And there was much rejoicing. Technically it was a Father's Day present but Dad decided to buy it early so we just told him it was one. None of us have seen the second one before and none of us have had the desire to. But now that we have the DVD's, we're going to have to. Since all of the hubbub about Indiana Jones, the video game for Xbox has climbed to near the top of my birthday list. I had forgotten that George Lucas had produced these movies and that John Williams did the music. I noticed that the love themes for both movies were very similar. I'll change my song to something else soon probably cause I don't want the songs to get stale.
In other news, (sorry, no gnus today) Dad and Mom have to go to a NARFE (National Active and Retired Federal Employees) meetings and Dad has to "give a prayer." We don't really know when they'll get home. There are plenty of questions in this post so in case you claim that you have nothing to comment on, here's one more: Have any of you been to the Indiana Jones thing in DisneyWorld?

Disneyland & Other Gnus

Disneyland was great! We all had so much fun and it was just a blast! I won't give you a time schedule seeing as how that concept has kind of been used by others in the WEBNET a lot recently. We spent the first day in Disneyland Yay!!!! Well, that is only half true. When we first got there, we went to Downtown Disney to take a quick look at the park and the shops. I really liked one of the shops but it was too big and I didn't really know what stuff I wanted to look at. My favorite shop was not Disney at all but rather a Lego shop. However, Legos are not what this post is about so I will stop.
When we first got into the park, we rushed over to Indiana Jones per Granddad's request, (even though he had printed out a nice schedule for us that didn't have Indiana Jones first.) I was more than a little nervous at first because I don't like any drops. They tested it out for me and loved it and told me that I would and what do you know? I loved it. It turned out to be my favorite ride in the entire park. Pirates was closed because of remodeling and that was a bum. Grandmom and Granddad had us go on Haunted Mansion and it was better than I was expecting. We went on some other rides but no pictures taken with characters, (sorry Brenda, but we did get this We went on some other rides and I didn't quite work up the courage to go on Star Tours yet. Then came my favorite part of the day by far: the fireworks. They were amazing. I enjoyed them so much that it's hard to write about them. So I won't try too hard.
Next day was California Adventure. We first went to Soarin' Over California. Better known by Dad as, California Adventure. Don't ask me why, I don't know. I loved it. It was all that it was cracked up to be and more. But if I loved it, Dad was crazy about it. After we had ridden it three times or so, we finally convinced his to see some of the rest of the park. We really enjoyed the 3D Muppets and were kind of let down by all of the hype of Monsters Inc. the new ride. Lauri and Mom loved Screaming. I, obviously, didn't go. We did wait in a ridiculously long line for the Ferris Wheel. We did get a picture from the top of the world: It's kind of creepy I'll admit, but it was fun. Another really fun thing we did was to see the Aladdin real life play. It was excellently done and we enjoyed it so much that we started to watch the video last night. Then we watched the fireworks again, man they were awesome.
On the third day I finally did work up the courage to go on Star Tours and I did enjoy it. Granddad and Zachary said that it made them sick and I started to get motion sick but it didn't get too bad. I forgot to mention that the Buzz Lightyear Astro Blaster ride was among my favorites too. It was great but I think those guns cheated me.
Here's another picture, this time from the 50th Anniversary display: I really like that one.
Souvenir wise I did very well. I walked off with three shot glasses, one deck of cards, and seventeen, count 'em, seventeen smashed pennies. And a penny display case to boot!
I have to say that, between the two parks, I enjoyed Disneyland more. It was more happiest-place-on-earth-y.
In other news, we're back to school and this week are those retarded tests that come once a year. At least we don't have to take them at the mormon church. Oh, and guess how many smashed pennies I have but not those of you who already know, that kink of goes without saying.
A couple more pictures:
And a gnu:

Just a Quick Little One

Okay, okay. Since I recieved 9 comments, I figured I should update before Disneyland. As most of you probably already know, we get to spend an extra day in Disneyland. Yeah!! I'm excited. I haven't gotten a clear cut answer about Star Tours yet. Is it fun? Will I get sick? Will I go on it anyway because it is about Star Wars?!?!? Okay, Indiana Jones, Pirates of the Carribean, Buzz Lightyear, sorry, no teacups for me, and I might go crazy and try space mountain. Apparently there is a raft ridish thing in California Adventure. Is that as fun as, say, the one in Six Flags Marine World? That's for those of you who been there obviously. For you others, (the majority), how is it anyway? For something not about Disneyland, we did Easter Eggs with the awesome Star Wars kit that was a Target exclusive. It had Star Wars stickers, those wrap around things that you submerge in hot water to make them go onto the egg, some of those same wrap around things with faces of Star Wars people on them and little stands that looked like the character's bodies. Anyway, I'd probably put some pictures on here if I weren't so lazy and church didn't start in fifteenish minutes. Well, technically, it doesn't start till 9:30 and we're going to brakefast anyway with a Sunday School teacher who is usually late. Oh well, I guess it wasn't so short.

Happy Easter!!!

I guess I just start without too much of an introduction. Today went well. We got up at five o'clock and went to the sunrise service. The sun rose while the service was going. Dad sang the Watch the Lamb song and everybody cried and it was good. Attendance was really low and besides us, there was only one other person in Sunday School! We've hung out this afternoon, had some folks over for Easter dinner, played Super Mario Sunshine and read. We technically don't get a Easter Vacation but we had a half day on Friday and we get tomorrow off. The reason that we don't get a technical Easter Break is because, in nine days, and you ready for this? Drumroll please, bum,budda,bum,budda, bum, bum,,, We're going to Disneyland!!!!! On Tuesday after next, we are going, with Grandmom and Grandad to spend Wednesday at either Disneyland proper or at California Adventure, and on Thursday it'll be the other one. Can you believe that Anaheim is only four and a-half hours from our house? Anyway, that's exciting. It's not spur of the moment, it's been around for a while, we just weren't sure till a couple of days or so ago. If nothing else, respond commentwise with recommendations about rides and especially a response to my traditional Easter greeting: He is Risen!!!!!!!!

The Saga is Complete. Well, not really.

Actually a new saga has pushed it's way (rather beginning) onto special edition dvd. The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe was released today making cinematic history. Or maybe making ye old BBC version mesh with history. We went to Wal-Mart with much anticipation. Usually there's a display of new movies at the front of the store. Sure enough. However, all that I saw was the regular dvd and some Wal-Mart special including a book or something. No special edition. I then went back to the electronics and found what I was looking for. It was a lot more expensive but it was like five times better than the pansy version. The pansy version had four special features: two commentaries and some bloopers and some trivia. The special edition dvd had a whole nother (like how I worked that in there) disc with special features. Not to even mention the fact that compared to the Special Edition, the pansy version just looked, physical appearance this time, like junk. Needless to say, I'm excited. If any of you have not yet seen The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, you should see it.
Besides that, the only really cool thing that has happened is the fact that Mom's home from Valwood's 50th anniversary shindig. Pretty much just school. To give you something to say on your comment, (for those of you who have seen it) who was your favorite character or what was your favorite part of the movie. For those of you who haven't seen it, why not?