Seattle

It's not an obscure quote, but oh well. It has been said in film and song thus staying with my quote motif.

This past week I and nearly all of my siblings met up at my illustrious brother Michael's house in Seattle. Good times were had. Without going into too many of the details I'll give a rundown (run-on?) of the festivities.

The first day we were there I went out with my dad and James to pick blackberries. Apparently these humongous bushes grow wild all throughout Seattle. It also became apparent that my choice of flip-flops was poorly thought out. Yes I knew the bushes were thorny, however I did not know that there would be piles of dead thorny bramble all over the ground. After several minor lacerations and one slip of the foot earning a prick to the bottom of the arch I magnanimously decided that I would hold the bag so as to allow my brother and father to worm their way into the bushes easier. They would stick an arm out from these treacherous bushes of despair and drop their prized berries into my bag before rummaging deeper into the thorny abyss. After an anecdote about picking berries with his mother until he had to inform her it was time to stop I gigglingly (new word, it's gonna be a thing, and why the crap does spell check accept 'gonna' as legitimate? I digress) said 'Dad it's time to go'. And wonder of wonders we went!

Mmm blackberries, as syrup or in oatmeal they were exquisite. After breakfasting on various all natural thingies we decided that we would take a drive up to Hurricane Ridge (magnificent view) and continue on to the Hoh Rainforest. As I stated before (but feel it deserved a second mention) the view from Hurricane Ridge was tremendous.

We could see Canada (not the tremendous part of the view) and a range of glacier covered mountains. Took a walk around the crest and saw some amazing vistas, and a bunch of deer that were rather nonchalant about us two legged types being around.

Back into the cars we go and off to the Hoh rain-forest. We had to pass through Forks to get there and let me tell you "Twilight" has either destroyed or invigorated that town depending on your viewpoint. Mine is the former. Everything was labeled 'twilight this' or 'twilight that'. 'Bella eats here' proclaimed local establishments, there were other more mundane items such as 'twilight firewood'. Really? I ask you.

Moving on, it was quite a drive to the rain-forest, but well well worth it. The smell alone was incredible. I saw the largest trees I have ever seen, amazing fern like foliage, mosses of many variety, I even heard an elk bugle. We decided to walk down one of the trails (which was quite a bit longer than anticipated) and it quickly grew dark. Luckily I pulled out my iPhone which has a flashlight (yes there's an app for that) and made my way merrily on. I could happily go back and spend days in the forest. we got back to the cars at around 8:00ish and had to race back to the other side of the state to catch the last ferry home at 12:05. We made it, but that ferry only operates on the weekends, so we had to rush down to the south part of the island peninsula to get the actual last ferry at 1. after landfall we made it home at somewhere in the vicinity of 2 AM and blissfully tumbled into bed. BTW, I have absolutely no cushion on my bum, and sitting that long was quite uncomfortable, but totally worth it.

The next day (Friday) we packed up the cars again and drove up to Oak Harbor to see my Grandpa. I haven't been to his house in 25 years but the floor plan was just how I remembered it; (that semicolon [also I have a friend nicknamed Semi Colon due to an unfortunate blood clot {I digress}] is for you Rebecca Maas Blevins) hurray for geeking out about little things like floor plans. We bought KFC for lunch and Grandma Ruth showed up with some Albertsons deli chicken so there was plenty of fowl food to go around (I like puns, don't judge). After/during lunch my brothers and I made free of the fallen apples in Grandpa's backyard and played monkey in the middle. Many lost and splattered apples later we were done and juicy and somewhat sweet smelling. James exploded a thrown apple against the heel of his palm. It looked sweet (ba dum ching). BACK ON THE ROAD!! We drove over deception pass (gorgeous) and stopped at a roadside/beachside park and threw a baseball around/played on the beach/ used some seaweed as a whip (it was surprisingly flexible [I contend it should be 'flexable', makes more sense to me] and strong)/ laughed at Stephen who chose the frigid ocean of Washington to be his first oceanic swimming experience/ skipped stones/ had a jolly good time before driving the couple hours back to Seattle.

By the way, I love Seattle. I thought the city was quite lovely. The skyline was pleasant, there were trees and bushes and coast. Very nice.

Saturday we went to the beach and had family pictures taken and played frisbee on the sand. So much fun. My family basically rocks. For lunch after a touch of confusion we went to a place on the pier that sold fish and chips (and clams/oysters/other stuff). After eating my fish and some of my chips with relish (the noun, not the sauce) I went and fed the rest of my chips (fries) to the seagulls. My siblings and/or I would hold one (chip/fry, not seagull) in the air and the seagull/s would fly down and take them from our fingers. AWESOME. I'm an animal nut, again, don't judge.

Sunday was church and then going to watch the locks between the ocean and the lake. Fun, geeked out again, saw salmon in the salmon ladder, watched boats use the locks, hung with family, saw one of my nerf-esque balls get thrown into the ocean, (I was sick of slashes, thus the commas) (still love the parenthesis though), and rolled down a hill that was faster than it appeared. Good times.

Monday the Parents and younger siblings went home. Boo hiss. Oh well, I'll be in Missouri with them in a week... I don't remember what else we did monday...Except we ate at an establishment called the crab pot which was immensely gratifying. The waitress gave us bibs and covered our table with butcher paper then dumped a pot of crab and shrimp and oysters and mussels and clams on our table. I want these people to do this at my house at least weekly.

The rest of Monday and Tuesday consisted of playing board/card games and enjoying each others company. Aside from a small trip to the park where we all got very dizzy by spinning repeatedly on playground equipment not intended for adults. Too Much Fun.

All in all the trip was exactly what I needed. I was happy, I laughed, I saw siblings, and I didn't wet my pants once...(well... maybe a little, those spinny things were fast!)

BooHoo Boone

Got up in church today for the first time in a long time. I don't generally like doing it, because while I have a super strong testimony and all that I just tend to tear up and get facial twitches when I'm talking. How I made it through my mission I have no idea lol.

Anyway, during my testimony I guess I talked about my mission because after the meetings a little lady came up to talk to me and told me she was from the Philippines. So I spoke with her in Tagalog for awhile, which was fun as I love using my language skills, and she said had she known about my mission before she would have cooked me all sorts of Filipino food.

Well dang it, I should have got up a year ago when I first moved here!

So further updates. James and I have decided that we will be moving into Chillicothe rather that Hamilton or some other place in north Missouri. I'm excited for that. WOOT.

42

You had to know it was only a matter of time before I used that as a blog title right?

So answers that have come up recently:

in September I am moving to Missouri

I found an amazing girl and started to date her, but due to moving it isn't meant to be

I started losing weight again

I was finally able to ride my motorcycle (though it still has issues).

Yea! shortest Blog ever.

Nothing Whatever?

Yeah, so I haven't blogged lately because there has been nothing to blog about. Still don't know about the whole moving situation; Work is still suckily slow; Seem to have plateaued on my weight loss. Yeah, you get the picture.
I guess something new is that now on top of being a cub scout leader I am also a primary teacher over the 7-8 year olds. I must say that sitting through primary is a lot nicer than sitting through sunday school and elder's quorum.
So, that's about all I got. Hopefully some new exciting development will happen for me to write about. But for now I am out.

Fish, Fish, FIIISH

This past week I had the glorious opportunity to go to Day Camp with my Cub Scouts. It was 3 days of hot muggy fun with 7 rambunctious excited runabouts under foot. Fun, really. They loved the fishing (thus the title) and would excitedly show me the little perch and everything they caught. I of course had to take them off the hook and re-bait the hook with a worm. My hands smelled of fish and worm guts all week.

There were other fun activities including archery (really thought a boy was gonna get shot there); BB shooting; Astronomy: Science; Tennis; Ultimate Frisbee; Maps; Rocketry; Swimming; and something else that I forgot. Anyway, I am all sunburned and tired and muscularly sore, but it was great. And my cubs had fun. Success :)

badoomba Jitterbug

That tune had been going through my head for weeks because we replaced 'jitterbug' with 'schlitterbahn' in anticipation of the trip we took last week to the aforementioned 'schlitterbahn' which is a phenomenal waterpark. Backing up...

James 3/7, 5/ 12 had vacation time accrued at work and had to take it, John's brother Shane was coming into town. So naturally Hagen and I took time off of work to be able to take the week and just go have some fun :)

Tuesday we all got up early and packed and left the house at about 8:30 in order to get to schlitterbahn as close to opening time as possible. We got there just after 10 (it's in San Antonio, and opens at 10) and in we went. 9 1/2 hours and a lobsteresque sunburn later we exited the park grinning ear to ear.

The place is huge! tons and tons of different tube chutes, tube slides, water slides, speed slides, lazy rivers. Good times. I'll highlight a couple of them I suppose. Firstly the lines were not bad at all, the longest we had to wait was about 20 minutes. generally we would get off a ride and if we liked it we were able to get right back on. The speed slides and one tube ride we rode 5 or 6 times straight this way. Fantastic :)

Perhaps most fun was a combination lazy river and wave pool. The wavy river as I call it is just a big circle, but it was a wave generator so every x-seconds an 8-10 foot wave would race around the pool. As we were in tubes we thought this sounded like an excellent opportunity to jump into the wave in order to get as much height as we could and then drop on the people below us. Bahaha, went around the river doing that for a long time. Most excellent. There's nothing quite as fun as slamming down onto each other and unsuspecting people that way. Hey, it was in water, no one got hurt.

Unfortunately we only had one hotel room between 5 guys and three of us snore. One of the fellows snores ridiculously loud. First nights sleep was not good. At all. But on wednesday we went to some fun places, we ate at a hole in the wall puerto rican restaurant that was quite good. Then we went to 'the snake farm'. It was featured on an episode of dirty jobs, so I was geeked about that, and I was in a room full of snakes and various other animals. They also had an outdoors area with crocodiles, pens of parrots, a cassowary, lemurs, other animals, and a petting zoo with baby goats, pot bellied pigs, and an evil freaky alpaca. none of us petted the alpaca. We tried, but we'd raise a hand and it's head would come up, it's ears flicked forward, nostrils flared all the while fixing us wit ha fiery evil eye scarier than the depths of Hell itself. Shudder, maybe it was just anticipating and relishing the thought of being touched, but i didn't want to put it to the test.

Also we all went and bought earplugs. I should buy stock in that company, 2nd nights sleep was fantastic!

On wednesday Hagen John and Shane decided to go home right after checking out of the hotel. James and I however went to Six Flags because more flags, more fun (don't i get money for plugging things like that?) And I think we made the right choice. The lines were even shorter than Schlitterbahn. This was due to the fact that school wasn't out everywhere and it was overcast. But it was great, I hadn't been on a rollercoaster in about 16 years, and it was totally worth the wait. we rode all the coasters 2 or 3 times. The rattler was named that, I think, because it rattles and jolts about, but that is expected from a wooden coaster. I screamed on it and had a bug hit my tooth at 60 miles an hour exploding against my tooth and promptly getting swallowed :/ it was oddly sweet. Our other favorite coaster didn't have a long climb before a drop, rather in had a linear accelerator network, basically a series of powerful electromagnets that fire the train out of the station going from 0-60 in about a second. Other than the station there were no straight sections on the track, for the next 30 seconds it's all loops, rolls, and twists. Good fun. Good Good fun.

Got home thursday afternoon and friday was back to reality, but it was a much needed and much appreciated break :)

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

On Tuesday I had the opportunity to finally go down and take pictures of the old spanish missions in San Antonio. I haven't taken the time to just go out and take pictures in many years even though that used to be my chosen career path. I got burned out on it due to the nausea inducing experience of taking nothing but engagement pictures in Utah. I am not a fan of pda. I realize you're in love and sexually repressed young Mormons, but really, save it for somewhere private.

Okay ranting aside, it was really soothing and relaxing to go shoot these missions. There was also a really cool austere feeling to the buildings. I had to stop and think about how hard it would be to be a monk/missionary/priest/nun in a hostile untamed environment. having been a missionary I was awestruck by how hard the mission of these Spanish expansionaries must have been.

Okay reverential feelings aside here are a few of my favorite pictures that I took.