Odds and Ends

I know all of you are anxious to see two of the biggest posts of the year (Lisa's marathon post and my elk post).  But first here are some odds and ends that we have been up to recently.  Our good friends from dental school, the Lintons, were in town visiting from Oregon.  They were staying at the beautiful lodge at Aspen Grove, so we jumped in our car with the kids and met up with them.  It's always fun reuniting with dental school friends.

It's crazy to think that when we started dental school we didn't have any kids, and now we each have 4.  Such cute kids.  Imagine if we had to pack all these squids up when we took those camping trips to the beach?

On Labor Day we took the kids over to Soldier Hollow for the annual sheep dog championship and festival.  This was our attempt at a family photo.  Blake decided he didn't want to cooperate, at all, so all of the photos were of him with his back turned to me and wandering around.  Anyone want a toddler?

It was a really cool thing to watch in action.  The competition times (Only 24 minutes to complete the course) a dog trainer/handler and the dog on how fast they can work the sheep through a series of gates.  They start at the top with a group of 8 sheep that have no collars.  They are to push/herd this group through one set of gates then leave them down below the large digital sign.  Then they have to run back up to the top and grab another group of 8 sheep, this time with red collars, lead them through the same gate, unite them with the previous group of 8, and then work all 16 sheep around a pole where the handler stands, up through one set of gates then turn sharply to the left and across the field through another set of gates, then back down to the bottom into an area that was chalked off as a big circle in the grass.
This is where things got really interesting.  The dog had to separate out all but five red collared sheep.  Push the other 11 off to the side while keeping the other 5 in the circle the whole time, then take the 5 red sheep over to a tiny enclosed pen and put them inside.  It was so cool to see how good those sheep and handlers were.

There were many other attractions there as well, like a petting zoo with some cool animals the kids enjoyed.

And to top it off there was the dog jumping competition.  Some of those dogs can seriously fly.  Here is a german shorthair like we had when I was a kid.

This Newfoundland dog set a world record for his breed.  He jumped over 21 feet that day.  Incredible that a dog that size can jump that far.

In other news, my dad and I got season tickets to BYU football this year.  The home opener last week was against Texas.  My dad and I ended up at the stadium about an hour early and unfortunately for us we got absolutely hammered by the rain.  As we were parking the car we saw some clouds that were incredibly dark and ominous.  They reminded us of the clouds that precede a tornado (surprisingly both my dad and I have been through a tornado, both in Kansas, but not together).  We eyeballed the clouds from my truck, then I had this brilliant idea to try and out run the storm and get into the stadium.  We almost beat it too.  About a block from the stadium the skies opened up and it was like standing under a fire hose.  We ended up finding shelter at the chapel that is on the north west corner of the stadium, but not until after we had been soaked to the bone.  It was insane how much rain came down on us.  The game had to be delayed because of the foul weather, but by the time it had started my dad and I had purchased sweat shirts from the stadium book store and rain ponchos and were warm and dry the rest of the night.

Our seats are pretty good.  We are in the west stands, about half way up.  It turned out to be a really, really fun game to attend.  BYU absolutely dominated and pounded Texas.  It was not the result I was expecting.  I had a great time with my dad and am excited for the rest of the games this year.  Go Cougars!