Long Time No Blog - Catching Up

OK - So I gave up blogging for nearly 3 and half months. Thats a long time. I will try and do justice to catch everyone up - which is probably nobody except my wonderful sister-in law Holly. She's the only one who noticed and said something about.

Since I last blogged this is what has happened in my life:

• I baptized my first born, Matthew, on March 1st. This was an awesome day. I think both Matt and I were looking forward to this equally. It was one of the sweetest moments of my life. I am so grateful that I had that opportunity. Real funny story about this. I have been in Young Mens for so long, and in consequence taken the youth to the temple for many baptisms there. Needless to say I know that baptism prayer quite well, so when I went to baptize Matthew I had to back track the prayer when I "baptized him for and behalf of... oops" Check out the pics below.

Here is Matthew and Me. I fiddled around on photoshop to make it look cool. what do you think?

Katherin, Me and Matthew before his baptism

Matthew with his Grandma and Grandpa Keddington

Matthew with Grandma Johanson and Grandpa CJ

• We were homeless for 3 weeks. This is a wacky story. We decided to move out of our current apartment in search of another place that did affordable month to month rent. We found a great place in the ward and had everything lined up. We turned in our 30 day notice and all was going well. When the new place learned that we only planned to stay for a few months because we were looking to buy, the backed out. That made us homeless. Luckily we found another place real quick, we just had to wait a couple of weeks for it to open up. Not in the ward, but in a great place none the less. We ended up at Kats parents living in the living room. Not my favorite place to be every night, but it was better than other places we could have ended up.

• While homeless we were youth conference parents. Before we were homeless we had committed to hosting a group of youth from our stake in our home for youth conference. Uh oh :(. Well, the Stake President OK'd it from Kats parents house as long as her brothers moved out for the weekend (we were hosting girls). So we kicked them out. Didnt really give them a chance. We bribed kats parents to leave by using some of my Hilton points to put them up in hotel on the beach. That was easier than kicking the boys out. Just one side note - girls eat as much as boys, no matter what anyone says.

Some of our Youth Conference Daughters drawing on posterboard. I forget what the activity was.

A couple of guys playing water balloon volleyball. The red head is Dallin Fry.

Me and my bling and afro. YOu cant see the afro in the dark, but believe me, its there. Next to is the far greater and most cool Bingham. I cant pronounce his las name let a lone spell it. But it goes something like Tau' la' ouvafalavalava wan'ana' hu' ku ' lou 'gee

• We became un-homeless. Good day. Very good day.

• Little League ended. Hooray. It was great. But I was tired. I really should not have taken it on, but I did. I am grateful I did becuase I was so busy that if I didnt, I probably only would have made it to a few games etc. It forced me to be a good dad. Sometimes we need to volunteer so we are forced to be in our kids lives. Thats wierd, volunteer so were forced to do something. Ok - works for me.

• I embarked upon my Greatness Summit Tour which took Katherin and I to San Diego, Phoenix, San Franicisco, Burbank, and Seattle in just a few weeks period of time. ( In the case of the first three, happened in three days). This was great. We had some fabulous events in these cities. I loved everyone, even though they were all the same. I learned so much even though I busy moment. I probably learned because I was at all. I doubt if I had just gone to one I would have learned so much. In summary, I work for an awesome company that is the best at leadership development and has the latest on info and making great people, great leaders, and great organizations. Even better than that - I got over 100,000 hotel points. Thus the Wii I got this week.

My favorite hotel would have to be the Seattle Westin or the Hilton in Phoenix. My favorite cities were San Francisco and Seattle. In San Fran we stayed an extra day and did tons. Look for hte pics below. In Seattle we did a bunch too. Visited Pikes market and went to an Angels Mariners game. Lots of fun.

Me and Kat with Alcatraz behind us.

Kat was my San Francisco Treat.

Ding da ding ding ding ding ding - That right there is big trouble in little china

• Matthew got a killer black eye playing outfield in our wards adult softball game. See pic below. If you look close you will see a bunch of red lines going horizontal down his cheek. Those are the seem marks from the softball that popped his blood vessels. Good man mark. His final thoughts to me on the incident was, " I'm not afraid of getting hurt, getting hurt doesnt kill ya." AMEN!

Can you see the red lines on the right side, those are the stitch marks

Totally unrelated to any post - took Matt and Isaac Flying.

The pilot is Spencer Phillips. He's getting ready to go on a mission and is a certified instructor as well as a commercial pilot. thats the plane we flew.

Co-pilot matthew

The altitude really got to Isaac and all his pics made him looked stoned. So I thought this was cute. The little pilot who can barely see outsidet the aircraft.






• We got a Nintendo Wii. OK , we have had it for a day and its awesome. I cant say anymore. Its just way cool and will be a great bonding thing for our family :)