May and June Update: Day Out with Thomas, Park City Trip, and Flickr Photo Update
Hello all,
These past two months have been fun and busy. It started off in May that we went to Park City as a family for the Utah Marriage and Family Therapy Conference. We had a really good time with the kids. We did a little shopping at the Outlet Mall at Kimball Junction. (As most of you have seen at on Flickr.) We had a good meal at Granny’s in Midway, UT — love their shakes.
The next week Oscar and I (Phil) went to see the “Day Out with Thomas” in Midway’s Heber Valley Rail Station. It was a great time. Check out the pictures on Flickr. Here are a few. We thought Oscar was growing out of his love for Thomas the Tank Engine but oh was I wrong. He had a stellar time. Loved Thomas and all the other train engines and train cars that were around the Heber Valley Rail Station.
Some of the pictures were taken and used in a story on newpublic.com on Thomas trains that are being recalled. I thought that was kinda cool. Check out the story here. If you look at the photo gallery on the bottom right of the page. We are not the first ones in the gallery. Here is a link to the pictures that were used in the gallery.
Following that stuff, I (Phil) have been enjoying the work I do with the adolescent boys in the wilderness program down in Loa two days a week. I have been happy with my experience gained there and my enjoyment of doing therapy. In my last year I haven’t been doing as much therapy as I had when I was in Loma Linda working for SACHS Norton (the medical/behavioral health clinic where I started) or LDS Family Services or the parenting program through Cal State San Bernardino. I do love working with people and families to help themselves find ways to better improve themselves. On a side note, Loa has is a small town in Utah not too dissimilar to my experience living in Delta, Utah growing up.
Another change for me, I was released from the Young Men’s/Scoutmaster calling to teach the Gospel Doctrine classes (or any other class since it is on a rotation of all the classes taught during the Second Hour of church). My first lesson is next week on “This is Eternal Life.” I’ll be interested to see how the prep and actual teaching goes.
Marlene is doing well. She is now a Cub Scout Den mother and works with two cub scouts in the ward. She enjoys that. Also she is has calling the Relief Society to help them with visiting teaching supervision. She is still involved in the HPPF work to save the Catholic church here in Provo and that seems to have slowed but it is still on the burner. The organization is still hoping to have a chance to get it and renovate it into something that the city will be proud of.
Oscar is growing up and just loving the outdoors. All he wants to do is go outside and play with friends. He is loving his little Red Trike and his new blue scooter that we got for $7 from a garage sale. He is quite mobile and loves to go on rides. This has recently become an option because I (Phil) got a bike from a garage sale myself. It is a GT XCR 3000. I got it for $225 (down from the $300 they wanted). They paid over $1000. So I felt good. I needed to repair a tire and get the gear shifter replaced. It has full-suspension and the RB stairs are pretty fun to take again. It has been a little while since I last did it. Last night my ride was to begin the training process to get back up the Y trail head. I am weak. I made it about halfway and then turned around. We have been taking the bikes on little rides and it has been fun. We are currently looking for a bike for Marlene and a bike trailer hitch to attach our fairly unused (garage sale) Trek bike trailer ($25 for $300 value). Oscar and Lily will both fit into it. I love riding my bike. I’ve missed it so much and I didn’t even realize it. Lots of good memories. We’ll have to go for a ride on the family reunion next month.
Lily has been doing fine as well. She said the in her crib about a little fuzzy play thing that we gave her to try and help her so she doesn’t want to pull her hair when it got lost was, “Sneaky little devil.” It was so cute. I had her keep repeating it so I could make myself laugh.
The screen on the iMac seems to have burned out last night when there was a blip in the electicity, because it isn’t responding normally. Mar and I will be taking it to the Mac Store in Salt Lake tomorrow morning to have the fix or replace this one.
A couple of current internet items that I have been interested in lately.
A. Last.fm - this service provides a way to track online what music I’ve been listening to. In conjunction with the service I use iScrobbler so that it picks up the music I listen to on our iPods. Love it.
Top Artists This WeekPink Floyd, Coldplay, U2, 311, Weezer, The Smashing Pumpkins, Embrace, Midlake, Counting Crows, Traveling Wilburys,Check out my music taste on my Last.fm music profile.
B. Lala.com - great way to trade out old cd’s that you don’t listen to anymore or just like one song on (which I have in iTunes). Anyway, you can legally trade your cd’s with other people who also are sick of the old cd’s that they have around with no particular purpose. It cost’s a total of a $1.75 for the new cd’s that get shipped to you. Artists get paid 20% from what you pay so it is copascetic.
C. ***NEW Public Beta Version of the Safari internet browser is now available from Apple for the PC. I know I’ve recommended browsers in the past. I dislike Internet Explorer from Microsoft - too cumbersome. And this is one of my top 2 browsers as of late — Flock (a modified version of Firefox — which is still a good browser) and the Apple Operating System’s Safari browser and it is now being made available for use on the PC. Check it out. Offer feedback in areas that you think can be improved. My favorite part - on my older laptop the Safari browser was quite a bit faster than IE, Firefox, and Flock. That is my subjective feel.
Here is a cool audio track that I have been loving as of late.
Song: Happy Mondays Artist: My Teenage Stride[audio:HappyMondays.mp3]
