Friday, December 20, 2013

Thanksgiving

Tucker, Aubrey and I began our Thanksgiving Day running the Midway 5K Turkey Trot. Aubrey did awesome like usual. Tucker was rocking it at first, and then got tired and cold. It was a very cold morning and they weren't properly dressed. Bad Mom. I let Aubrey run ahead and stayed with Tucker through the finish. I believe he has some exercise induced asthma like me. He was wheezing alongside me the entire time. He finished, we each received our hot chocolate, bagel and came home to shower and get ready for dinner. 
This is the first year in many years that we didn't host Thanksgiving at our house. We had dinner at my parents house. My sister and her boys were in town, my brothers family, Grandparents Grant and great aunts Marion and Lois. We all pitched in and brought food so my Mom wasn't too stressed.

 My Great Aunt Marion.
 My Texas cousins were able to come for Thanksgiving. Lindsey, Kyle, Dave and Tracy.
 Lisa Marie, Kevin and Parker
 My brother on a mission sent a package home for us all to open. He bought all the adults shirts for Christmas.
 After dinner our family drove over to Cody's sisters house for dessert and time with the Calderwoods. It happened to be Cerola's birthday too. We have so much to be thankful for. Cody and I both dedicated each day in November to something we were thankful for. I could/should probably do that every day.

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Miscellaneous

I decided it was time to download some cool photos from my phone.

Lisa and I went to a local ski swap and picked up a helmet for Cole (he is going to learn to ski this year).  He loved it so much, he wore it the rest of the day, even when we went into 5 Guys for lunch.  Such a funny boy.


Tucker is now in Cub Scouts and loves it.  How can you not love a cute boy in a scout uniform?  So awesome.

National Bosses Day was this last month and my staff surprised me with two day passes to Park City Mountain Resort.  Lisa and I are really excited to go and are grateful for the awesome employees I have working for me.

For Halloween the kids asked me to carve a minion.  This was my attempt at a minion.  Not my best work, but not too shabby either.



Hands On Training Institute

As a dentist, I am required to take a certain amount of hours of continuing education each year to keep my license.  The number that is required is actually quite low, in my opinion.  I try to take several courses a year to continue improving my skills and knowledge to be the best I can be.  I actually enjoy learning more in my profession and improving.  The best courses are usually offered out of state (we usually go to Scottsdale Arizona).
One fun thing for me is to take courses along with my brother Carson.  Since he practices in Seattle he likes to try and go somewhere sunny and warm in the winters to escape his Pacific Northwest winter gloom.  This year Carson and I elected to attend an implant course in Orange County, California to improve our implant skills and take on more difficult cases.  Overall the course was pretty good, but the lecturer was a really pompous jerk.  Oh well, at least I learned more with regards to implants.
Here is a photo the institute took on the day of one of our lectures.


This was during one of the hands on portions.  You can see Carson and me on the upper left of the picture.  You'll notice my bald head on the back row.


When Carson arrived to pick up his rental car, they were all out of the economy ones that he had reserved.  Instead they gave him this convertible at the same price.  Hooray for us!  We got to drive around sunny Southern California with the top down.
We attended class from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm each day but the evenings were free to do whatever we wanted.


One evening we drove down to Huntington Beach Pier to eat some grub and watch a little beach volleyball.

It was the last stop of the season for the AVP tour.  The girls were super tall, but just so-so with their skills.

The guys on the other hand were really good.  They were impressive.

Lisa's youngest brother Spencer is serving his mission right now in the Irvine, California mission.  Carson and I surprised him at his apartment one night.  We dropped off a bag of home made elk jerky I prepared for him, gave him some hugs, chatted for a couple of minutes, then left to let him get back in missionary mode.  He was incredibly surprised to see us standing on his door step at 9:30 at night.

We made friends with some dentists from Colorado and New Mexico and they hooked us up one night with tickets to the Anaheim Ducks hockey match vs the Buffalo Sabres.  We had great seats and it was really fun.

One night we met up with our good friend Brandon Jergensen from dental school.  He and his family live in San Diego, so he drove up for the night and we had dinner at Dukes.  It was really fun catching up with him again.

I have a few more courses planned for 2014 that I am already looking forward to.