Michelle bought me some great running gear and pushed me out the door this morning for my annual birthday running up a mountain. This year I wanted to push myself, so I went up Farmington Canyon, north across the spine of the Wasatch to Francis Peak (where the radar towers are) and Thurston Peak (Davis County highpoint) and then ended up at the Fernwood trailhead in Layton. The route was a little over 20 miles, about 5,500 total elevation gain. I started on the Farmington Creek trail and intended to catch the side trail at the end up to the dirt road, but I missed it and found myself scrambling up the very loose and very steep side of the canyon. It got a little sketchy, and I was glad when I crawled onto the road. Disgusted with myself after the gnarly bushwhack up the canyon After that things went really great. I saw a herd of deer and a gopher snake and very few people.  I was pretty bushed by the time I got to the side trail up to Thurston but made it and video chatted with the...

Like any good story, this one is about chickens. Several weeks ago, we came home from running errands after dark, and when I went out to check on the chickens I discovered the coop door was closed and two of the chickens were still out in the yard. While Michelle went upstairs to bathe kids, I went out to hunt down the resident poultry. As we've already learned, when it gets dark and the chickens can't make their way back into the coop, they take to the tree right behind the house . This night was no exception - there, way up above my head, a Rhode Island Red and a White Leghorn were roosting on a branch. Being from southern Utah, I tend to think anything below 60 degrees is life-threateningly cold, and I worried that if I left these chickens out they would be popsicles by morning (it actually WAS pretty cold that night). So I went out to the shed, grabbed a garden rake, and came back to coax the chickens down. The White Leghorn latched onto the handle pretty quickly, but a...

I went to sacrament meeting by myself today, since Michelle was home with a couple sick kids. I chose a rather prominent seat, third row from the front and dead center of the chapel. During the sacrament, I dropped my pen through the crack between the seat and the back of the bench. Not having Addison around to crawl under there and pick it up, I leaned forward and reached back under the bench to grab it. It was farther back there than I thought, and I had to extend a little further than I expected. A little further than my center of gravity allows for, it turns out. Next thing I know I'm falling nose-first into the carpet, then lying on my side, half curled up, arm extended, cheek impressed in the floor. I'm only lying there for a nanosecond before jumping back up and sitting in my seat. As I turned beat-red, hoping no one noticed, I see the first counselor in the bishopric hiding a grin, and the youth speakers practically crying with stifled laughter. With any luck, I've ...

This little story is called "Listen to Your Wife." Once upon a time a family of three was traveling down to St. George for Memorial Day weekend. Their car had been experiencing troubles, despite their having forked over the better part of a thousand dollars to fix it just a week earlier. The problem was that one of spark plug boots (the rubber-like silicone thingy that covers the spark plugs) kept popping out, thereby reducing the little Honda Civic from a V4 to like a V0.3. From Salt Lake to Provo, the thing popped out three times, forcing Nate to mutter mild expletives, pull over, and cram the boot back down in its hole. The family finally made it to Provo, and on their way to pick up a friend, Michelle said gently, "Hey, that Sinclair station has an auto shop and it looks pretty empty," to which Nate only grunted menacingly. She continued, "Maybe we should stop and have them check it out." At this point, Nate was thinking, "I am NOT going to pay a ...