Shorts in November?

I feel fat.

Every time I put my hands on my stomach I feel fat. I have not exercised for the last couple of weeks and I really needed to get out while the weather was still nice.

I went out and ran the other day but yesterday I was feeling really tired. So I decided to get my walking shoes and pack a backpack and grab my camera and go up to the campus of Utah State University.

A few summers ago I participated in a Diet Cholesterol Eating Study at USU and I would walk up to campus each morning to eat breakfast. It is about a 2-3 mile walk and it is all uphill on the way there. I enjoyed walking so I decided yesterday to retrace my old walking trip and bring my camera along to take pictures of the beautiful fall foliage. I will have to blog about the eating thing sometime in the future.

This is usually where I start my run. It goes up this nice trail to the Logan Temple. But this time I hung a left and went up a different trial.

If you look right at the bottom you will see a small river.

Somewhere in this direction is my house. Can you see it?

That large building in the distance is Old Main on USU. And that is where I am headed.

Old Main Hill. Not too far away now.

On Old Main Hill there is a cool amphitheatre. Sometimes after class I would come over here and sit and relax.

Old Main. A ton of my classes were here. Grandpa Anhder had to ring the bell in the tower with the A on it when he was at USU.

I circled the building and came back down that path. It was so nice out. I was wearing shorts and I was not cold. SHORTS! In November!

On the way home you can see the Logan Temple rise up out of nowhere.

This was the temple Kristy and I were married in. I would then walk down the hill and take a left and go to Merlin Olsen Park.

Logan and the Aggies

Day 153

Last night we went out as a family to the Future Aggie Athlete benefit dinner sponsored by Utah State University. This was aimed at kids in elementary school and get them to try out various sports taught by Aggie athletes.

Logan had a lot of fun trying out the different sports and did much better than I thought he would. He can be a shy kid and I was a little worried that he wouldn't participate as much as I wanted him to but he proved wrong.

The first station we went to was soccer. He was taught how to dribble and kick the ball but his favorite was using his head to score a goal. I think the girls that were running the station were having just as good of a time as the kids were. They were really cute with Logan, I overheard them say how cute he was. He must take after his dad.

The next station he had a choice of either gymnastics or hockey. I would have loved for him to try gymnastics but I was more proud that he chose hockey. There he learned how to handle the puck (it was a tennis ball) how to pass and of course how to shoot. The stick was a little big for him but that didn't stop him from doing slap shots.



But I was really proud of Logan when they announced the next station, football. I looked over and he pumped his fist and said YES! There he learned how to carry the ball, throw a spiral, run a route and catch the ball and defend. Logan has never been one to catch the ball (think of George Michael on Arrested Development) but he tried his hardest to catch the ball and caught it a couple of times. He even scored a touchdown with a little girl hanging on to him trying to bring him down. He didn't stiff arm her he just twirled his way into the end zone.

The next station was his favorite. He loved volleyball which took Kristy and I by surprise. He did very well bumping the ball in the air. It was cute to see him beam when the girl he was working with gave him five for doing it right.

The last station was basketball. I felt bad for Logan since the ball is so big and heavy but he really tried hard to shoot the ball. He did make a basket (where he gave a double fist pump) against one of the Aggie girls. He asked them to show him an alley-oop and they did just for him.

Afterwards we had a dinner catered by Cafe Sabor (tasty) and had a raffle. Kristy won a $20 gift certificate so she could buy some Aggie gear. He also got his own t-shirt. He had a fantastic and fun night. The Aggie athletes really made a positive impact on him and I thought they did very well.

Logan pumping his fist having a good time.

Sunday Confessional: Trailer Trash

Day 127

I have not done a Sunday Confessional for a long time. I am not counting the last one that was posted since that was when Kristy blognapped my blog. In all honesty she did do a pretty good job.

I lived in a trailer.

When Kristy and I were to be married we had to decide where we should live. We both wanted to live either on campus (we were both attending Utah State University) or close by it. My mom suggested that we purchase a trailer from the USU Trailer Park. My mom had five good reasons.

1) It was cheap.

2) It was on campus.

3) She knew someone that was selling one.

4) It would look good on our credit.

5) Deep down inside she always wanted to live in one.

Kristy's sister was living in a nice trailer so I was not opposed to living in one. We had enough money and I was making barely enough to cover the monthly pad and loan bill. My mom called her friend (it was her daughter's trailer) and we went and saw it. The only thing that I remember was how SMALL it was. But it was cute and it fit all the reasons above so we bought it and moved in after we were married.

Here is the outside of our trailer. We lived on the each of a block so we really only had one neighbor. The porch was awesome and was almost bigger than our living room.
This is the front of the trailer so now you get an idea of how wide it was. *Sigh* Such simpler times. Don't we look so young?
It was so small (how small was it?) it was so small that our double-sized bed took up 88% of our bedroom. In fact when we put our bed in that bedroom, we had to bend the walls to squeeze it through!

This is a picture of our kitchen taken from our living room.
This is a picture of our living room taken from our kitchen.
Both of those pictures were taken from the exact same spot.
That was our hallway. Behind me was our larger bedroom which we used as our computer room. I am standing right beside the entrance to our bathroom and the dark shadow on the right was our bedroom. It didn't have a door so we bought some beads instead.
Sadly, just a few weeks after we had redecorated it to our liking, Kristy got her first teaching job at South Hills Middle School down south and we had to sell our first home. Selling it was a horrible experience. We still had to pay for our pad fees even though we were not living there. And USU sent us a letter threatening to evict us if we couldn't prove that we were students at USU. Of course we weren't current students! We were not even living there! Finally we found someone to purchase our trailer and we made the deal at a McDonalds. How trailer trash did that sound?

I'll drive by the old trailer every once in a while. I really liked living there, I had some good neighbors and it was a great experience. I remember one time the wind was blowing so hard that you could feel it through the trailer. The wind would gust and our walls would move. Interestingly enough, I learned that during a terrible wind storm over thirty years ago, the trailer that was in my spot (#130) tipped over during a wind storm.

Another time our pipes froze. I sent Kristy to Lynn and Roger's to sleep and I called my dad and we hooked up an extension cord and a blow dryer and cradled it under a wooden box so the pipes would thaw out. We went and got some awesome hot chocolate and waited all through the night for the pipes to unthaw.

Good times.