A Great Weekend

Thanksgiving week 2008.
This has been a pretty good weekend. We had Thanksgiving weekend with Marla's mom. She cooked a great dinner. We had Jared and Thea with us for dinner. I had'nt seen Jared since he went back to Reno in August. He seems happy in what he is doing in school and doing well studying horticulture and Arbors. He has a job working for the Rail City Garden Center in Sparks. This could lead him into an Arborist position that he is working towards. He is pretty excited to be playing drums for a band in Reno. The Darlings. It is discribed as a "Rockabilly" band. They have a CD out that he brought for us to listen to. The closest I can describe it is like Johnny Cash. Who would have thought that after all of the music lessons, it would be Jared actually being paid as a professional musician. After dinner we went to see the latest movie with Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman called Austrailia. It was a pretty good movie. I was a little sad for the day. I was missing Jesse and Sara. After so many holidays together it always seems something is missing if we are not all together.

Saturday was near perfect. It started at Three AM. Up and ready to drive Marla to the airport for a 6:00 AM flight to Michigan to spend time watching grandbabies while Jesse and Cori go house hunting in Illinois. Then I had breakfast at Denny's ( French toast) while waiting for the airport hanger to open. I preflighted the Musketeer and with 22 degree tempuratures and just me in the cockpit, I was up to 11,500 over Lake Tahoe in no time. I started to get moderate turbulance and took her down over Hope, Faith and Charity Valleys and back into the Carson Valley. A squeaker landing and one more just for practice and put the Musketeer back in the hanger. Then back home for some left over Thanksgiving pie with a Sherlock Holmes movie. A few chores and some grocery shopping for me and Thea while Marla is gone. Then lunch to a John Wayne movie (Comancheros). Then some time with the horses, a little lunge work. Next prepared some turkey enchiladas that Thea and I enjoyed for dinner and a James Bond Movie.

Other than being up at 3:00 AM and having to say good bye to Marla for a week it was a great day.

Jeff and Thea's Trip to Brooks Institute Santa Barbara

The college search for Thea continues this week. We drove to Santa Barbara to tour and check out Brooks Institute, one of the premiere photography schools in the country. We were very impressed by the program and facilities. Brooks is all the business of photography. Very business like. They seem a little pushy to get Thea signed up. I don't know why it is so hard for them to understand that we plan on seeing the school before committing to the program. Santa Barbara seems like a great college town. Very nice weather and a beautiful atmosphere. Now Thea has to decide between Brooks and Academy of Art University.

Jeff and Thea's road trip.

It's college search time for Thea. The older girls were easy. BYU Utah for Jesse and BYU Hawaii for Sara. Marla and I are BYU Alumni so we knew exactly what they were in for. Jared is at UNR and TMCC both familiar entities. The world of art schools is completely foriegn to me and a little scary. After recommendations and internet searches, Thea has narrowed the search down to three. California College of the Arts in Oakland, Academy of Art University in San Francisco and Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara. This past week end we went to the Bay area to check out CA and AAU.

We first visited California College of Art (CA) in Oakland. The campus was a hodgepodge of old big houses and other buildings. It seemed like a hippy camp to me. My test of any organization's attention to detail is how clean the bathrooms are. Theirs were smelly, dirty and covered in graffiti. For thirty thousand a year you'd think they could clean the bathrooms. I didn't say anything to Thea at the time but was very relieved when she said she didn't think CA was for her.

Academy of Art University in San Francisco was a completely different story. Eight thousand student enrollment and a very organized professional operation. They have 30 buildings in down town San Francisco. The housing is in old converted hotel buildings. It is half the cost of CA and yes the bathrooms are clean. They have their own bus system that shuttles students between the classroom buildings and housing buildings. Thea is very excited about the school and the photography program they have. Next weekend we go to check out Brooks in Santa Barbara. She has been accepted into both schools.

A Train to Potevka

Saturday was one of those "got all the yard work done" (but not really), "I'm exhausted and discouaged from work" "feeling sorry for my self and don't really want to do anything days". It was rainy and windy outside , too early for skiing, too nasty outside for yardwork or horse work kind of days. I did three miles on the treadmill, prepared the Sunday School lesson on the gathering of Israel and then found my self with nothing I wanted to do. (there is always something that should be done.)

So I did something I haven't done in a long time. I pulled a book off the shelf and started reading. I have had two people give me this book "A Train to Poevka" by Mike Ramsdell and I can't remember who they were. The book has sat on the shelf for a couple of years. It is about a spy in Russia on a ailed clandestine mission to extract nasty mafia types to stand international trail. I was expecting a James Bond type of read but it is turning out be a more introspective work on the blessing of America, family, simple pleasures of food and friends. I've been reminded of the horrible oppression of the Soviet Empire and the hopelessness of people under that system of government. It has been a surprising and touching good read. My problems seem small and insignificant and blessing we enjoy in this country are tremendous.

FPA Conference Boston

One of our office traditions is to attend the annual FPA (Financial Planning Association) Convention. This year the convention was in Boston MA. This year the conference was marred by one of the biggest stock market drops in history so we had to spend a lot of time on the cell phones to deal with client questions, requests and panics. Breaks, lunches and dinners were mostly spent on the phones. We heard some good speakers and some not so good, but I was impressed by what David Gergen had to say. He has been a political advisor to presidents Regan, Ford, Bush, and Clinton. He talked about the issues and consequences of the current upcoming election. He also said that it was a bad idea to count America as being down and out. It does not pay to bet against America. We are a nation of creative, hardworking and productive people. He predicted we would survive the current problems and come out on top. I realized that that is central to my belief system and I have to have some degree of optimism in the current mess.

In between the phone calls and convention sessions we managed to take in a couple of General Conference sessions including going to Sara's old church building in Cambridge when she lived here, to take in the Priesthood session. While at the Priesthood session we ran into Elder Ayers. He is from Washington now but lived in Gardnerville for a while. It's a small world in the church.

We also took in a Boston Red Socks game. Part of the American League Championship playoff. It was the first time for any of us to see a post season base ball game. There are no fans on earth as enthusiastic and loud as Boston Red Socks fans. The game was an exciting game going twelve innings against the California Angels. We didn't get back to our room until 1:00AM. It was a great experience of baseball, fans, and history in Fenway park. We also took in the Freedom Trail that winds through downtown Boston and passes many Revolutionary War historical sites. North Church where Paul Revere received the signal of the British Invasion, Bunker Hill, Paul Revere's house and others.

Next year the conference is in Anaheim California. That is an easy one for us to go to. After that I think we'll only go every other year.

President's Council meets in Austn

This year's President's Council meeting was in Austin Texas, the State Capital. Pictured below is the State Capital building.


We would work in the morning and then have activities in the afternoon. I chose to go horseback riding one afternoon. After all we were in Texas. I went with Mark Hoover and his wife. The other day I went golfing with Steve Anderson, the National Sales Manager and Mark Hoover again. The golf course took very good care of us. They even brought us chocolate milk shakes on the seventh hole.






Pictured above is the State Legislature room at the Texas Capital.

Aunt Jean's Sheep Camp

My Aunt Jean was quite the cowgirl. She was always interested in horses and usually had one or two. I first learned to ride horses on her little ranch in Sarasota Florida. She loved everything Western. When she moved to Utah with her third husband they bought an old warehouse that was last used as a place to store honey. They restored it into the cutest western cottage you could imagine. Her husband "Patch" Peterson was a Western Sculpture artist. As part of their various restorations they found an old "sheep camp" trailer. A sheep camp is an upgraded version of a covered wagon. It could be pulled into remote locations and provide sheep herders a place to sleep and get out of the elements. They were common between the turn of the century and the 1930s. Jean and Patch restored the sheep camp. It even had a pot belly stove in it. I always thought the sheep camp was the coolest thing ever. I liked the fact that it was compact and small. It could go just about anywhere.

Aunt Jean died of breast cancer a few years ago. I was hoping to buy the sheep camp from Uncle Patch. It had sentimental value because Aunt Jean restored it and I wanted to keep it in the family. Plus I thought it was really cool. My Uncle Patch sold it off faster than I could imagine.

Ever since then I have thought it would be nice to have a go anyway, small, compact camper trailer. I figured I could never find a restored sheep camp. I found and purchased a 16 foot Airstream Trailer. It is small and very compact. It is hardly rustic. It has solar power, satellite radio, TV, DVD surround sound. It is really cool.

We are going to take it up to Lake Tahoe next week end for my birthday.