Mitchell, SD? Where is that?

So I spent last week in Mitchell, SD with the American Red Cross at a Disaster Training Institute. Learned a lot with my 3 travel buddies. We combined our ages and discovered we have 211 years of combined life. Crazy? incidentally I only made up 22 years of the equation and was called " the kid". It was still really educating. We got to see a Building decorated with corn cobs. really cool. Spent our per diem on lots of interesting food, from mexican(yummy), to chinese (not so Yummy). I learned about disaster supervision, mass casualty disasters, accepting non- monetary donations, WMD disasters, got to drive the Emergency response vehicle. That was fun. Then took a very gnarly (spelling corrected by the amazing Rebecca D. Ricks) course on disaster assessment. was pretty wild. Lot's of fun, and lot's of driving!

The best christmas present ever!

Absolutley great was the Christmas vacation I had. Started out in Idaho, then Utah, Colorado, back to Utah, then Idaho, and Home. I got to meet all of Rebecca's immediate family. (Great bunch. Really nice.) Did some swimming, some snowboarding, but mostly driving. All in all. great fun with great people.

Run Forest!

So i had a couple races during the holidays. One was on thanksgiving it was in bismarck and it was 15 degrees outside. i ran a 21:40 which was not a PR but it was a lot colder than an other race. then 2 days later i ran a race in minot where i ran a 10:04 i run a lot slower in the cold, here is some footage from that race. I placed 4th over all.

MY MOMMA!

   

So my parents visited last weekend, so Abba could ordain me an Elder. It was a great experience. Here we are with my parents, Rebecca's parents and, our friends the Feist's.

Making breakfast for my Mother and Abba.

Mom and Abba going apple picking at the Rick's Ranch. Welcome to Minot!

SLACKLINING!

Second-Hand Sweatsuits

So, I just acquired a second hand sweatsuit. i couldn't be more excited, i ran around my building terrorizing in my sweaty style. Great fun.

The Saturday-a-Thon!

So Saturday was busy. Friday night around 10 i decided to run a 5k the following morning in Bismarck (2 hours away) So armed with 4 hours of sleep and a bowl of oatmeal, Becky Dee and i headed off at 530ish. (someone forgot to set an alarm)


We got there with time to spare, and I placed 8th out of 200+ with a time of 21:35. (that's 2:01 off my last 5k in Kalispell in 2006. So I was pleased, and sore. Then Rebecca and her parents went to the temple and i prepared my talk for church on Sunday. That is now my favorite place to Read, write, talk about anything spiritual. Can't wait to go inside! We then went to Golden Corral and i un-did all the calorie burning from 4 hours before.


Becky and i went back up to Minot for the elders quorum activity. We did the Zip-line and played some ultimate Frisbee. then we went to Becky's house where she removed rope splinters. (those hurt) it was a long day.

This Morning I was blessed to give a talk in sacrament on the power of prayer, which was fitting since I left my talk at home and needed that power to make it through my talk. But the spirit definitely knew the program because it went well and i said what i fell was supposed to be said, was a good experience. No rest for the difficult to entertain.

I met Satan. And He's in the form of a smoke detector!

I got home at 1230 with one thing on my mind. Sleep. unfortunately, my smoke alarm had other plans. it is beeping a high b flat every 15 seconds. i took it down. Unplugged it from the AC power, unplugged the 9V battery, and expected it to be silent. but no, apparently there is a capacitor in this vile creation that is keeping it charged for 5 hours. right now it's in my car. and I'm going to try and salvage the night. i hope it burns. Devil Device.