Jib Jab

If you've ever seen those jibjab cartoons on Jay Leno, you know they are quite funny. What I didn't know until tonight is that you can do a lot of things with your own faces on their website. Check it out.

Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

Elf Yourself

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Surprise - Las Vegas Bowl

So, is it any surprise that BYU ended up at the Las Vegas bowl for the fourth straight year? Nope, however they will play a weak Arizona team. They had better beat them easily. Now to Utah, they will actually give them a challenge in Alabama. This is good, it could give the MWC a little more respect.

Helper light Parade

On Friday night we decided that we would go up to the Helper light parade. Our oldest son loves parades and Christmas lights, so what could be better than this? It was cold, but not as cold as it could have been and it was still enjoyable. Ok, there were only about 20 floats or so, but all of them had lights and it was entertaining.

Yearbook yourself!!!

So I don't know if you have ever been on yearbook yourself, but it is pretty funny. Here is me, my wife, our two kids, my mom and a sister. So if you want a laugh or two, spend some time on that website.

Happy Thanksgiving

Just wanted to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving. I hope everyone had a good day. I just give thanks for my family, my health, our country, and many other things that I take for granted everyday.

Tape Job

Today, myself and two other teachers got taped to the wall as a reward for raising so much money during the penny drive. It was sort of fun. However, to the demise of the kids, the duct tape did not hold us to the wall for very long. The paint that is on the walls does not like anything sticking to it. So instead of being up on the wall through both lunch periods, I was only stuck to the wall for about 3 minutes. When we do this again, we will have to think of another place to hang us up on. Well, it was fun and I still think the kids liked doing it. I wonder what I will think of next year.

BYU 10-2

Well, that was a bad game played by BYU last night. Some people say that Utah just played better and was the better team. I still don't think so. Max Hall had 6 turnovers. That was the difference. 4 of his 5 interceptions he threw right to the defense and his fumble was just carelessness. Other than that, and BYU's not-so-good defense, BYU could drive the ball almost at will. Now we just have to sit and wait to see what bowl they get invited to. Probably some crap bowl. Oh well, I guess that is the way it goes. I think that BYU will be better next year. Although I am a BYU fan, I hope Utah does not get screwed with a bad opponent in a BCS bowl like they did 4 years ago. Give them a true test of how good they are. If the BCS truely wanted the best teams in their bowls the would take the top 10 in their own poll and have them play each other. Instead Utah will probably play a 18th ranked team or something and beat them horribly. The BCS needs to be fixed.

Penny Wars FInal Total

Our Penny War ended today at the Junior High. It was funny, the seventh graders finally caught on how to work it and started quite a stash of their own. For the most part, the eighth graders were out of it, and the lost pretty bad. The ninth graders also had a pretty big stash. In the end, the 7th and 9th graders tied. It was pretty amazing. Over $500 in pennies were brought in. On top of that $1000 in other coins and bills were brought in. The grand total was $1498.32. About $800 of that was brought in just today. Boy, it sure is a lot of fun to count and roll all those coins. The $1500 was more than double our goal. So that means that me and another teacher are going to be duct taped to the wall. We haven't set a date for that, but it will be in the next couple of weeks and I will definitely post pictures and maybe a video of that. The $1500 means that each student brought in just over $6. Now we know that not all kids brought in money and others brought in a lot more than that. . This total was also the most money that was raised in any given fundraiser ever at our Junior High. I would just like to thank everyone that helped out with the Penny Wars. What a great community that we have here. The money raised will definitely help out with our faculty member's medical bills and I'm sure that he will appreciate it greatly.

Our Land!!

Well, we finally got the land that we are going to build on. It's about .40 acres and not too far from where we are now. Here are some pictures of it. Hopefully, In the next two years we will get to build!! We are very excited!

Girls' Basketball

This week I held tryouts for the girls' basketball at the junior high. That just means that it is time for crazy. For my wife and I it just becomes a very busy time for us. This year is going to be even more crazy due to my wife's schedule. However, I am still excited for this season. Tryouts are always hard to do. There are plenty of girls that love to play basketball and some think they are really good. The thing is that there have to be cuts and in junior high, it can be the end of your life. As a coach it is hard to make cuts, but it has to be done. One thing that makes me laugh though is when the girl tells me that I am mean and that I don't know what I am doing. I tell them that they can call me mean all they want, but if they want to grow up and talk about why they didn't make the team, we can do that. I am just glad that tryouts are over and we can get down to playing basketball.

Penny Wars

Since I am in charge of the student council at school, I am given the task of doing one fund raiser per year. A normal fund raiser that we do involves a penny war. If you don't what a penny war, here is a brief explanation. At school we divide the school by grade levels. One wants to put pennies in their own jars, for pennies count for you. All other money is put into other's jars, because they count against them. Which ever grade has the most money (when all the other money is subtracted from the pennies) is the winner. Now what some of the student don't quite understand is that every grade will be in the hole. The point is to be less in the hole than everyone else. It is sort of funny to see how students react to winning or being in second or third place. Each grade has its own strategies as well. Now we are about a week into the two-week drive. The seventh graders are almost overly excited and bring in tons of pennies and the don't really understand that to win, you need to put money into other jars. Eighth graders are sort of weird and don't participate a whole lot, so it is whatever money they have, they might donate. Ninth graders have to prove that they are the best and usually win. However, it is done by trickery. They usually store up their money in a classroom, while putting in money here and there to make it look like they are trying. Then on the last day, they bring all the money up and decide where the silver coins and dollars go in order to give them the win. All the students usually get pretty involved. Our cause this year is really personal to the school. One of the staff member's son got injured in a car accident and has major brain trauma. The money raised will go to his family to help pay for medical bills. I love when we can raise money for the people we know around us. Our goal this year is $750, which isn't too bad for our small school of 200 students. If our goal is reached, the winning class officers will get to duct tape myself and another teacher to the wall for about 2 hours. I hope they can do it. I don't mind doing things like this if it is for a good cause.

BYU 10-1

Well, they beat Air Force. I thought that they might have a problem with that one, but they did okay. I didn't like some of the play calling, but it worked out in the end. BYU is now ranked 14 in the BCS poll. They still have an outside chance of getting into a BCS bowl. I doubt it though. They face the hated rivals Utah this Saturday. Now I think that they can beat Utah, but it is going to be another nail biter. It might be whoever has the ball last will win. If the beat Utah the will rise in the rankings, but it still probably won't be enough to get into a BCS bowl. That would just take a miracle. I don't think the BCS would take a non-BCS-conference school, with one loss, to a big bowl game. Instead they will take a team that has a lower ranking and match them against another team with a lower ranking, but both teams will be from BCS conferences, and therefore they are better. I normally don't like Utah, but I am thinking back in 2004 when the Utes played Pitt (who was ranked 22, I believe) and decimated them. I think Utah should have gotten a better team to play against that year and who knows what they could have done. Really, college football needs to go to a playoff and not just 8 teams. At least 16 and maybe 24. Now that would really give us a national champion.

BYU 9-1

Well, I was sort of see this game come and go. It ends BYU home games this season. It was fun to be able to go to most of the games and unfortunately I had to miss two of them. I love going to the games. Next season will be a great season to have season tickets. The Y will be playing Utah, TCU, Florida State, Air Force, Utah State, and Colorado State at home next year. That will be a good season to watch BYU football. Now to yesterday's game. Although it was against the MWC worst team, BYU seemed to get out of its funk of fthe past few games. The defense started to look a little better and the offense was just fine. Now they need to keep building momentum because they will have a big game next week against Air Force. They cannot overlook AF to Utah because they will get beat if they do. Hopefully, they can keep it together for AF. Let's see what they can do.

GO OUT AND VOTE!

It is finally here. Election Day. Although I am very happy to see it finally end (after 18 months of politics and all that stuff), it is a very important part of our country. Everyone should go out and vote. I think that if you don't vote, you get deported or something like that. Even though they are expecting huge turnouts and everything, a doubt that half or even a third of USA's population will vote. It's sad that is the case. We actually have the opportunity to voice our opinions and people don't take advantage of it. So, get off that couch and computer and go vote if you haven't.

BYU 8-1

Well, BYU was able to pull out another win against CSU scoring with only 22 seconds left in the game. They have not looked very good the last few weeks. At least the offense looked pretty good. There were two big mistakes, Hall's fumble for a touchdown and his interception towards the end of the game. I think it was lucky the CSU scored so quickly after that, that it gave enough time for BYU to go down the field and score. Their defense still needs some help. They really do need to pull it together. Next Saturday they are playing San Diego State at home. Their last home game. That will be sad. I like going to their games. I will have to watch the rest on TV.

Halloween

You've got to love Halloween. It's a day where you can dress up and no one ever really cares what you look like. I like it because I get to dress up at school. I am one of the few teachers that actually dresses up. Sometimes our faculty is lacking in the fun department, but oh well, I do my best. About a third of the kids dressed up. Also at school, during the last hour of school, the kids got out and we had a Halloween Dance and a movie. It wasn't too bad. Hopefully the students like it. Out student council, which I am the advisor for, does a good job of planning activities.

As you probably can see in the pictures, our whole family dresses up. I was Indiana Jones. My wife was a kitty, our oldest don was a dragon, and our youngest was a puppy dog. They were all so cute! Our oldest son loved going Trick-or-treating. This was the first year that he really relized what was going on. He got a lot of candy. Then when we got home, he loved answering the door and giving candy out to all the trick-or-treaters. It has been a fun day.

Body Worlds 3

Yesterday the Junior High took the student body to the Body Worlds 3 show up in Salt Lake. It was 10 hours worth of fun, 8 on a bus and 2 in the exhibit. I don't know if you have heard of Body Worlds, but it is a exhibit of real human bodies that have been plasticized. Some were split up a others you could see organs and stuff. It was all very interesting. I was really surprised at how well the kids behaved. Obviously some thought that it was good and interesting and others not so much. However, I think that it was a good experience for all involved.

BYU 7-1 & USU

Well, BYU won again and it was closer than it really should have been. I hope that they can really start to pull it together and finish the season strong. Unfortunately I was not able to go this game either and I had to send my wife in my place. I had to go up to USU in Logan and do a six hour lab for my grad school class. Not quite as fun, but sometimes that's the way it goes.

Nephews, Niece, and my Own

This past weekend, we had a few of our nephews and a niece down to our place. It was a fun weekend with several activities. This included fun and games in the back yard, Wii tournaments, picnics, and geocaching. It was a fun weekend and it always good to see famile. Here are some pics from the weekend.

BYU 6-1

Well, this past Thursday was an unfortunate loss for the BYU cougars. They had a horrible game and lost to TCU. Give credit to TCU, they did play well and held BYU in check. I do think it is unfortunate the BYU is in a non BCS conference. There would a little leway if they were. If they win out, they could still be ranked high enough, but due to the fact that are not in a BCS conference, it almost impossible to be able to get into a BCS bowl. There will be several teams from BCS conferences that will have one loss and still get into a major bowl. There really needs to be a better way to determine a national champion.

UEA

You've got to love being a teacher or student in Utah. Every year there is a small break for the UEA convention. So I never go, but it is nice to have a few extra days off. I wonder how many other states have a convention like this every year. Growing up in Colorado, I don't ever remember getting a few days off so our teachers could have a convention.

Chorus and Volleyball

On Tuesday night our school had a chorus concert and then they performed it again in front of the school on Wednesday. The picture is from the school concert. The theme was "A night of Broadway." They performed songs from many of the Broadway shows. The drama department also performed selected scenes from each of the Broadway shows. It was very well done. For a bunch of Junior High kids, they sounded excellent. The chorus teacher getting in the act.

Later that day, we had our annual faculty Vs. 9th grade volleyball game. Once again the 9th graders talked a lot of smack, thinking that they will beat the faculty, but once again, the faculty mopped the floor with the ninth graders, winning in three games. It's always fun to play with the faculty and against the ninth graders. Maybe one year they might be able to beat us, but I don't see it happening anytime soon.

Hoodie Boy

We were upstate this weekend, one for the BYU game, and another for a baby blessing. Some of my wife's family got together and had dinner. I just though that this was a cute picture of my almost 8 month old son.