----------------Swiss Family Palmer------------

We got punished...

2011-05-11T11:17:00.000-07:00

Yep, that's right. We are bad. Bad to the bone!

Here's what happened.

Me ( Agi) : We're out of milk.

Aaron : (sigh) Fine, get your passport.

One hour later on the other side of the border in Germany . We enter the second awesomest store ever ( the first one is called Coffee and Pantyhose, I dare you to ask why...) and start loading stuff into the carts. Half an hour later rich in groceries but poor in money we get into the van. Now you have to know that in the protection of the swiss dairy farmers we aren't suppose to import more than 1 lb of beef per person and more than 10 liters of milk into Switzerland. But no one ever checks....until now. We are pulled aside by the border patrol and asked to open up the back. He leans in to take a look then steps back obviously puzzled by the sight of the avalanching food and stuff. He dives in to look for the contraband. I should be ashamed but I'm not. He declares that we have 8 lb more beef and 15 liters more milk than we should have. By now I feel like a drug dealer busted by the cops. Aaron has to follow the agent into the office to pay a fine. I know that, he knows that but the kids don't. They are watching their father disappearing into the office with the metal bars on the window. Now at this point I should've said something comforting to my children. But I did not. Instead here's what's coming out of my mouth.

" Now y'all have done it! Your father has to go to jail because you guys eat too much! "

I know. I'm awesome.

Aaron comes back and has to explain to the kids that mom isn't really mean, she just has a very warped sense of humor and/or had a temporary brainfart.

At this point I'm LMBOWPMPATST ( laughingmybuttoffwhilepeeingmypantsatthesametime ) all the way home.

I know. I'm also cool.

THE END

Our first Swiss Christmas...

2010-12-25T13:45:00.000-08:00

It's quiet now and our first Swiss Christmas is almost put to bed. Bittersweet, given the circumstances of the last three days. I don't think the words we read in Luke regarding Mary's travails and the Savior's birth ever seemed as rich or poignant as they did last night. Agi has been a study in stoic strength and resilience.

But a quiet, introspective, beautiful day, this 25th. It started snowing late last night, as it should on any Christmas Eve, and continued through mid-day today, leaving a thick fluffy blanket of snow on everything. Kids were up not-so-early, surprising me, since I didn't expect them to take my admonish to "sleep in" to heart. I know I never could. Up at the crack of dawn when I was their age. But they held out, and we all padded downstairs as a family in our new opened-on-Christmas-Eve PJ's.

Presents were a flurry of new clothes, most emblazoned with the BYU logos everyone had been asking for--a way I guess to do the two-birds-one-stone thing-- swaddle themselves with the comforting emblems of home, and set themselves apart at the new Swiss schools they attend. Never been prouder to see my kids so excited and anxious to set themselves apart as "BYU kids" among all their respective peers. Ali especially.

Everyone got a small HD video camera, either the FLIP version for easy uploading or an indestructible hand-held. All purchased weeks ago when documenting today seemed like it would be so much more enjoyable and forward looking--documenting the last Christmas with just the current team of 4, together for 10+ years. I guess this team will stay longer than we planned--probably forever.

In spite of the turmoil of this week, Agi still made hands down a fantastic Christmas feast--a homemade honey-baked ham that would put the usual suspects at "HoneyBaked Ham" to shame, and a delicious pot of her famous stuffed cabbage--a Hungarian Christmas staple in our family. Love this woman.

This late afternoon after the wrapping had been sizzled away in the hearth's fire, and the New Donkey Kong world had been fully explored, dinner eaten and the kitchen cleaned, we cleared the table and had two plus good solid hours of playing a family board game. Love these times with the kids. SO many great, funny conversations spring to life over haggling about roads and resources in the Cataan world or racing trains across Europe. Mental note to get the original "Ticket to Ride" --Zug am Zug", considering we're in the backyard of the original :-).

And now the day's over. Another Christmas down. Another year closer to whatever comes next.

Merry CHristmas to friends and family the world round. We appreciate so much the love and support we've felt from so many of your these past days.

Have a wonderful New Year....

Aaron

FInally, a night out on the town...

2010-11-06T16:38:00.000-07:00

The wife and I finally decided to check out the Zug nightlife. Or lack thereof. WOW, for a Saturday night it was DEAD. But hey, we found a surprisingly decent Mexican restaurant. And after having sworn we'd never go to the movies in Switzerland (20 bucks a ticket will definitively change one's opinion of what passes as quality cinema these days), we decided to pop into the Seehof and watch 'R.E.D.'

And it was freakin' AWESOME. And I don't think that was just because I hadn't been to a movie is Switzerland since last April. Seriously great movie. A little 'by the numbers', but it hit every number perfectly. I hope they make more.

Natch, I still HATE that in Switzerland there is some unwritten codified LAW that every theater must break the movie in two and practically blare at you from the screen to go buy popcorn and ice cream during the completely inappropriate "intermission". Come on! This ain't 5-act Shakespeare in-the-round! Its a freaking 100 minute movie. We don't need a break. And you ruin what little enjoyment is left after taking out a mortgage for tickets by cutting off mid-scene, turning the lights on, and flashing popcorn and coke like a psychedelic flick from a 60's interrogation camp. Come on Switzerland.

Much as I am dying to go see Paranormal Activity 2, I won't (at least here) because what better way to massively screw up a tense edge-of-your-seat scary flick than by turning up the lights halfway through the second reel. Idiots.

Although I guess that for every 100 things that Switzerland gets completely right, natural law dictates that they have to spectacularly ruin one thing. And that one thing would be the movie-going experience.

Tells you how great the movie R.E.D. was, that even after all that, we loved it. I see myself watching this one twice a year. That good.

17th Anniversary...

2010-11-06T02:26:00.001-07:00

The weekend is finally here. Looking forward to celebrating our 17th Anniversary tonight. 17 years from Nov 6, 1993.

Naturally I am sweeping Agi away to a romantic day at the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France. And by Paris I mean Mulhouse and by Eiffel Tower I mean that "Walmart of France", Carrefour. Yep--we have some food shopping to do, and the Mulhouse Carrefour is our cheapest bet! 90 minutes away, across the border from Basel.

Tonight we'll go somewhere hopefully a little more romantic. BUt at least I can say in 25 years, when everyone has forgotten the particulars, that I took my wife to France on our 17th wedding anniversary! :-)

So in 25 years, this:

Will hopefully be remembered as this:

:-)

CREEEEEAAAAAAAAK....

2010-10-30T06:11:00.000-07:00

That's the sound of me shaking the rust off this blog. As my last post from 700 years ago stated, we were looking at moving to Switzerland. then we did. 3 months ago!

SO I guess my blog needs a new title. Somehow Budapest Palmers doesn't quite cut it anymore, though we still consider the "Pearl of the East" our adopted hometown (having lived there longer than any other city in my life...).

New titles... Maybe "Swiss Family Palmer"? KInda cheesy, and a little on the nose, but maybe. I'll chew on it...

BUt we are LOVING Switzerland. My job as Managing Director of Sisel International's Europe operations has planted us firmly here, in Central Switzerland, about 35 minutes south of Zurich.

We arrived on August 4th, really deja-vu-ing the same experience from Budapest in 2003. 6 Palmers de-camping at the Zurich airport looking like refugees with 16 pieces of luggage. DIfferences were pretty clear, though--now older, taller kids, more jaded about the international travel experience. And we had a cat with us. One that has now traveled the globe with us. Picked her up as a newborn kitten our first month in Budapest. So she's been killing mice in three countries & two continents now. Now I'm picking up dead Swiss mice off the back porch every morning. Still as cool and as gross as ever. Particularly with the heads missing. Serial killer, this one... A grumpy, middle-aged serial killer...

So here we are--three months in, and fully embarked on this new adventure with a great company, very scenic backdrop, and new adventures piling up every day.

I'll try and do a better job of documenting them...

AP

Time for my bi-annual post...

2010-02-15T18:33:00.001-08:00

I'm getting better at this! Only 7 months since the last post. Yawn. Where was I?

Oh yeah. The Budapest Palmers became the Nephi Palmers and may very well become the Bern or Zurich or Lucern Palmers by this summer... Jury is still out, but is looking promising. DOn't ask the kids if they are excited about going back to Europe. All of the yowling and screaming and pain I heard from them when we came home from Budapest pales to what I hear now at the possibility we might move to frickin' SWITZERLAND. These kids are nuts. This would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for us, in a lifetime where we've had some cool opportunities already. Switzerland. UMMMMMM. The hallowed place where chocolate gets it's own grocery aisle.

I'll be headed to see the lay of the land next month for a few days, and I'm lucky to have my brother join me for a few days...

So if all goes well in the next few days (company budget-wise) this might be our next view from the living room:

The ONE movie I am most-est looking forward to!

2009-07-23T09:11:00.000-07:00

BOW before the almighty disaster movie to end all disaster movies!

Update from Washington....

2009-07-21T12:43:00.000-07:00

Yowza! It's really been 2 months since we last postified something from this blog....

Well now I have a couple days to kill in these here Seattle parts, so I'll get right to it....

Yep. Seattle. More 'pontosan'-ly (fer yew magyars out there) Kent, WA, about 21 miles from the Needle itself. I arrived yesterday after an arduous 2 and half hour drive from Tigard OR. Tigard, you say? Why yes, Tigard. I spent the last 11 days in Tigard at my very first roadshow sales event for Little Giant Ladders. Had an awesome time. My feet would disagree with me night after night, but I just tell them to shut up and deal with it. The feet will start to feel better after they get used to this new stuff...

I was in hopes to escape the record temps in Utah for some nice weather in Oregon, but alas, Portland temps were in the mid nineties most of last week, and I saw none of the nice cool rain I'd been hoping for.

That show wrapped up Sunday, and next day I was off farther North to these parts--where I'll start my first solo show this weekend.

The Palmers back in Nephi are all in relatively fine shape. The ones left at home are probably in a little better shape since Dad isn't around to muck up the schedule--from what I hear the boys are doing fine--they enjoyed a trip to Lagoon last week with their band cohorts--a reward for about 7 hot days put in at various parades around the Valley.

Aidan celebrated a birthday a couple weeks ago--I repurposed my 2 year-old ipod touch and handed it over to him--from what I can tell, he's thrilled with it. He wanted a cell phone, but since that sure as h-e-double hockey sticks wasn't happening, this was the next best thing. He can email his buddies to his hearts content from the house on it, and I am pretty sure that's all he wanted a cell phone for anyway.

That's all for now. Here's a pic from Saturday night at the Multnomah Falls....

What an AWESOME Month of May its been....

2009-05-22T20:18:00.000-07:00

Ahhh, where does the month go?? Been a typical May so far--kids are wrapping up school, the garden preparatory weeding is coming along nicely, nice little bit of rain here and there, and oh yeah, I got laid off, along with 30 other guys... So that's fun. Nothing like looking for work again, after thinking I'd found the perfect home.

that's actually true--loved NOV, loved the work, had just finished my training and was ready to deploy to the Far East, when the bottom truly fell out of the market. Thanks Global Recession! Apparently the contraction in oil demand has been steep enough to make most major companies cut back on new investments in the cool cutting edge drilling technologies (ahem, NOV). So most of our division was hosed. And I understand the company line--tough to keep 40 guys on the payroll when there just is no where to send them for 10-12 months. I've been on the other end of the table, and while it is certainly worse to GET laid off, being the one bearing bad news is no picnic either. So bummer. Being fully trained and qualified though, I guess its nice to know we're first on the callback list when work picks up, but who the hell wants to wait or CAN wait around that long? Meh...

In a nutshell, Agi and I are really enjoying yet ANOTHER chance to reevaluate where we are going, and I think I'm full circle back to schooling. I guess there is no bigger neon-flashing sign than this--that I'm supposed to go back to BYU and wrap up those pesky final 3-4 classes. So that's the plan. I'll keep working part-time while I knock the schooling out, and get back into the Reserves. Once the degree is out of the way, we'll go from there.

So that was our awesome Month of May .

IN way more fun family stuff--this development gave me the time to go hang out with Ashton on his Heber Creeper field trip. IT was fun being the only 'Dad' chaperone in the class. I got to be in charge of him and 2 other boys...

The actual 'Heber Creeper' train and route were a MASSIVE disappointment. I've heard for years now how cool the ride is, from Heber City through Provo Canyon. The actual ride was a major letdown. Get on the train, pull out of the station, creep along the backside of the Deer Creek Reservoir for 1 hour at 15 MPH, grind to a halt before even hitting the Canyon and all the supposedly spectacular views, then back up and creep back to the station. What a rip-off. Paid 6 bucks each to creep along in a straight line for 10 miles, then back. Might have been a thrill for the locals I guess, but after 'train-ing' it through Europe, this was a huge waste. Couldn't hold a candle to the ride from Budapest to Ljubljana. Both Agi and I are really missing Hungary right now. Happy to be home, love Nephi, love the schools, but there are just tons of little every day things that remind us of Hungary...

But the time spent with Ashton and his buddies was fun, and I guess that's the point....

Probably the only decent view from the train....

Lone Wolf and Cub hanging out in the bitter frigid crosswinds that are only experienced by screaming down the tracks at 15 mph...

Rainy Saturday morning-- the perfect time to get caught up...

2009-05-02T07:31:00.000-07:00

Been a while. Since the last post. Not for the nagging though--not a day went by really where I didn't hear from one internal family member or another to POST SOMETHING! Got caught up in wrapping up training at work, umm, washing the dogs, painting bathrooms, umm, and whatever other excuse I can come up with...

Oh yeah--Agi always ends each blog post request with a resounding rejoinder of "make it funny!", so in the interest of keeping her happy, here you go:

Courtesy of my MacBook Pro's "photobooth" program... This is my new 'Cletus Palmer' look... I figure I take so much good-natured crap from extended family now for living in Nephi, that I'd throw them a cliched bone to fit the stereotype. No problem--whatever keeps them from moving down south to the best-kept secret in Utah... Nephi rocks.

Back to my blog-delinquency excuses----Mainly I think I just got tired of sitting down to the computer and being overwhelmed with the urge to vomit out obscenities at the Obama administration. I definitely don't/didn't want to become one of those tired sites, where all content is consumed with whining about the direction our country is headed. Though on that front there is MUCH to whine about.... I'll just try and keep it to a minimum...

SO--that pesky update that Agi has been bugging me to write for 3 months now....

Wrapped up the training program at work two weeks ago. Finally. The end couldn't come quickly enough. I am now for all intents and purposes qualified to go out on an offshore rig in Australia/Malaysia/Asia/Middle East and do what we do. Granted, I really look forward to being the junior guy for a while to get my bearings in off-shore life, but I've got the basic tools down to at least muddle through. Right now I am enjoying the time off while waiting for an assignment, and realizing that I have fully transitioned from a corporate life complete with meeting, suits, ties, powerpoint presentations, and employee reviews, to one of "new low guy on the totem pole", albeit in the awesome world of OIL. Its with a hugely successful, established company, in a new division that is perfecting cutting edge technology, and I'm in at the beginning. So happy times, hopefully, after a rough year...

Got my 2008 taxes done without a minute to spare. And by "got my taxes done", I mean got the accountant to file the extension on the last possible day, thereby pushing the day of reckoning to August. Taxes. Awesome.

Had an awesome week with the family, immediate and extended. Tough to ascribe the adjective 'awesome' to any event surrounding a funeral, but that is what it was. Grandma Solie passed away, after fighting off medical problems for the better part of 20 years, and it was good to get together with the entire extended Solie clan and see cousins again. Already planning a big "Salem Days" get together in August. It really is ridiculous that we all live here in Utah now and don't get together with the cousins that made muggy summers so much fun so many years ago. The Holland Clan is awesome.

Whaaat else..... Oh yeah--props to the other grandparents, the Hughes, on their 60th wedding anniversary, three weeks ago. 60 years she's put up with that guy :-). Love 'em. Hope to get to 60 with Agi. The over-under on that happening without me being murdered in my sleep is about even right now, and I'm hopefully going to put off that fate for as long as possible by being a semi-decent husband. I get pretty good marks, usually :-)

We also got a new puppy. A papered Golden Retriever we officially named Maximimus Attila, or Max for short. We are such puppy whores, apparently. I'd post a picture right now, but don't want to get up and go find the camera... Take my word for it, he's cute. Almost cute enough to make up for losing Jack to a nice family in the Inland Empire. With work for both Agi and I and school for the kids, Jack just wasn't getting all the attention a Vizsla puppy needs, and was making life hell for our neighbors during his lonely daytimes. So, with the help of Jared in SoCal, found him a great home with a developmentally disabled teenager who can devote all time and energies to him 24/7. He's in puppy heaven right now. NOt the real Heaven--the one in Menifee, CA.

In the meantime, we'll make do with Max and Midnight, our other fat lazy black lab. She's fun, active, and yet too apathetic to make life challenging for the neighbors. SO the perfect dog. I can picture her hunting though--"hey girl! GO get the bird! Looks up annoyed--'go get it yourself, fat guy...." ehhh.

So that's it in a brief nutshell. Caught up. Now that I've shaken off three months worth of rust, and have some indefinite time off, I'll blog a bit more frequently.....

Road Trip!

2009-01-24T23:10:00.001-08:00

Just pulled in to a Colby, Kansas Motel 6, off I-70. I am trekking across the country with Aidan to collect a big wooden trunk/coffee table that Agi and I had made in Hungary. Family friends of ours agreed to haul it home for us in their container, as it wouldn't fit on the pallets we shipped last May. It's in Missouri, and in looking at the calendar, I knew I'd have to get it now or wait at least two months for my work schedule to clear up.

So naturally everything went wrong today. We had planned to leave as soon as we woke up this morning, but actually woke to a cold house--our furnace went out. By the time we got a repairman lined up (the circuitboard was shot) we didn't leave the house until 11. Not too great when we had the first 729 mile leg of the trip in front of us...

And naturally I forgot to pack the camera--meaning no photos for this little travelogue. Which sucks, since we passed some breathtaking sites--Capitol Reef National Park, Vail, Aspen, etc....

Not too fond of Vail now. Got caught in the mother of all traffic jams, in the middle of a storm, and crept forward 12 miles in two hours at the top of the Rockies, through the Vail Pass. Means we didn't get through Denver until after 8 PM. Once clearing Denver though, all traffic magically disappeared. And I mean DISAPPEARED. We had the highway to ourself for the remaining 212 miles between Denver and Kansas. Apparently there is nothing worth visiting past Denver, despite the brochures we picked up proclaiming the stretch of I-70 between Colby & Topeka "America's Main Street". I wouldn't know. We drove there in the dark.

I've had a blast with Aidan--torturing him with the music of my youth. Specifically for this trip I loaded my ipod with tunes from that lost period of the eighties, with a few choice cuts from the seventies as well. I covered the gamut, from cheese like Eddie Money (Take Me Home tonight) and Rick Springfield (Jesse's Girl) to classics from Kansas and Springsteen. And all points inbetween (hello Nightranger, Bon Jovi, Asia, and Toto...) Most of these tunes (with the exception of Springsteen's finest) I hadn't even heard since Jr High in Payson, so that was fun... Aidan handled it pretty well--thumbs up to Eddie Money and Alphaville, not so much the Asia...)

Ah well. Leg two starts tomorrow, as we stop in Granby, Missouri to pack the van with our stuff and visit the Burdens. Then on Monday its a six hour detour south to the Denton TX area to drop in on Janene and Bill. Provided they ever decide to respond to the emails I sent informing them of our desire to crash their house... :-)... If you read this Janene, call me at 435-213-7198...

Signing out from ice-cold Kansas. Seriously. Its like below zero right now....

Inauguration aftermath...

2009-01-21T16:52:00.000-08:00

Nice....

...and which party cares about the environment??

The era of peace and prosperity has begun...

2009-01-21T07:47:00.000-08:00

With a WHOLE LOTTA CLASS!

Seriously, I saw this live yesterday and was utterly disgusted with the hordes of losers who had the classy manners to actually BOO an outgoing president. Say what you will about conservatives and their distaste at having a pseudo socialist lightweight as commander in chief, they have been extremely supportive of the guy and respectful as he begins his term, with some columnists even being seduced over to the dark side by the charming personality of the new president.

Funny, and more than a little hypocritical, of the lefties to now blather on and on about "unity" and coming together as one America" after they all went DefCon 1 when Bush was elected and spent the next 8 years throwing every vile epithet they could at the guy. Yeah. Now we are all magically one happy country when THEIR guy gets elected. And the funny thing is, respect or at least respectful disagreement has been exactly what the right has been offering up. And that'll continue.

I am not unaware of the historic nature of the event--our first black president is a big deal, and symbolically means a great deal to the entire planet. As the symbolism fades, and he has to really lead, I do sincerely hope he continues on the moderate course reflected by his keeping Robert Gates on as SecDef, and his backing away from the instant pullout from Iraq he promised at every turn on the campaign trail. I've always thought that reality would set in once he started getting his daily intel briefings.

That being said, I give a big thumbs up to the outgoing commander in chief. Despite his failings on the domestic front (huge new spending in medicare, inability -no thanks to intemperate democrats- to reform social security, and blase attitude toward vetoes that allowed for profligate amounts of government spending) he did get the big items right. We didn't see another attack on our soil, got two very qualified originalist conservative jurists on the Supreme Court, and you have to love the guys absolute willingness to do what he thought was right, regardless of public opinion. Based on the actions of the crowd on the Mall yesterday, ignoring American public opinion is usually a wise choice.

So good luck GWB. Enjoy retirement in Texas. I am fully confident we'll see a different sort of retirement than the one on permanent display by Clinton--that involves flitting about the globe on a private jet paid for by Saudi money, taking money from every despot on the planet for his "Clinton Initiative", and being seen with one skanky ho after another at yet another hotel in yet another foreign capital. You stay classy, Bill!

On a personal note, I took a month off from these updates mainly because I was tired every day. for these first couple weeks of January (through last Friday) I took advantage of an offer to go into our company's shop and help tear down and gut incoming pipe from the field, all in an attempt to really get an insiders view of how our system works. It was kinda fun--becoming a blue-collar joe. Yep, uniform, grease, heavy lifting, operating heavy machinery, and cutting stuff up with big-ass grinders was fun. But left me comfortably tired at the end of each day, and more than willing to just trudge into the house and watch the tube. And prepare the occasional Sunday School lesson.

I've got two weeks off now before getting back at it, so I'll probably write a little more. I don't lack for material. Like this:

Ashton came into the kitchen over the weekend one morning with a very heavy, sad look on his face, obviously troubled with something really weighing on his mind. I took a break from scrambling up the eggs and crouched down in front of him...

"What's wrong buddy? How are are you feeling?".

"Dad", he whispered, kneading his thoughts and words very carefully---

"When Barack is sworn in on Tuesday, will we have to start calling breakfast, Barack-fast?

Can't make that stuff up...

Merry Christmas to all....

2008-12-24T23:18:00.001-08:00

Merry Christmas everybody. I'm just enjoying the end of a nice long Christmas Eve. Everyone is trundled off to bed for a couple of hours now, and being that I am still on somewhat of a night-owl schedule, I'm the sole sleep-survivor. I have to admit it is just nice to sit here in the quiet dark of the living room with only the glow of the tree in the corner keeping me company. Peaceful. I took the above photo just now, trying in vain to capture a bit of that peaceful solitude, but I doubt it comes across the same. No matter. Know that after a hectic fall & early winter, it feels nice to just sit back and relax, and reflect.

I'm grateful for a wonderful family. I really have it good in that department. 2008 really brought Agi & I closer together in ways we'd previously glossed over or grown far too accustomed to. She's my ultimate Rock. Couldn't have made it without her this year. Tonight we had a very traditional Hungarian CHristmas dinner of her stuffed cabbages and homemade bread, and just sitting there looking around at all the kids' animated faces and listening to their excited chatter, I realize that this is it--this is the only real important thing in life--the people gathered around this dinner table in this house. Ultimately, Nothing. Else. Matters. I'm blessed to have them, and I'm blessed to be their Dad and Husband.

We are looking forward to closing the books on 2008 and jumping in to 2009. I'll wrap up my final stages of training in the first quarter and get into a regular Asia/Australia/Middle East rotation by May. I'm excited for that. Also looking forward to FINALLY knocking out those last 2 classes at BYU.

We love Nephi. We love the quiet. We love the long hikes in Salt Creek Canyon & Nebo Loop with the dogs. We love the little solitude that being down here affords us.

Grateful for my new job. I love that it lets me go out and see all different parts of the world in all its cacophoneous glory, and then come home to quiet and rest. Seriously cool.

Ahh heck. I'm grateful for a lotta stuff. Right now though, I'm grateful I can go get a couple hours of sleep before getting roused out of bed by the kids.

Merry Christmas everybody.

Aaron

The greatest prank call EVER...

2008-12-22T01:28:00.000-08:00

OK this is funny...

2008-12-14T21:25:00.000-08:00

Stay out of the doghouse this Christmas....

I can see the light at the end of the Hitch....

2008-12-11T14:59:00.000-08:00

Just a quick update from my rig work. I'm now on the downside of my two-week hitch in California. I'm all done by Tuesday night, and fly home Wednesday. Just in time for about two months off (theoretically)--which is a welcome respite after working 4 out of the last 5 weeks. Before anyone says "awwww, poor you! didn't we ALL work 4 out for the last five weeks?" I say ha. My weeks were 12 hours a day, 7 days a week :-) SO yeah. I'm looking forward to this time off :-)

I'm still amazed at the whole process of oil extraction. I always had vague ideas of the process (rotating pipe into the ground while pumping in fluid to flush out the debris created from the rotating drillbit). But man. I'm in awe at how complicated it really is--there are a hundred different variables affecting another 1000 different moving parts, all MASSIVE in size, and all vitally important to ensuring that the other parts work together in harmony, to ensure that this round hole gets deeper and deeper, moving through layers of strata that can be punishingly hard to drill through.

Its fun just to be up on the floor, 70 feet or so above the ground, and watch it all unfold. All those metal stairs are great exercise too :-). I was leaning over the railing the other night, looking at the mud below. Speculating with one of the guys how soft the mud would be in the event we fell off, and how many bones would break. Then we looked up at the guy on the "monkeyboard" (the platform at the very top of the derrick) which sits another 90 feet or so above us. Now THAT guy would be messed up if he fell... And he's up there wresting with 90 foot lengths of 4500 pound pipe stands....

These guys are a different breed up here--typically easy going, fun to josh around with, and all aware of the fact that if something breaks and flies off, someone can lose a limb or head, in an instant. Everybody has their stories, and some of them are pretty hair-raising. It is just interesting to be a part of. Also THE most un-judgemental people I've ever seen. So freaking different from anything else I've ever done.

But anyway. That's that. Looking forward to getting home and just being home for a while.

Life in Taft, California...

2008-12-03T15:04:00.000-08:00

Spent my first shift on a actual rig last night. My crappy Blackberry camera really can't do it justice--this thing is MASSIVE.

Its been an eventful month since my last post... IN short order I (or we, as the family case may be)...

1. Finished up my classroom training after returning from Scotland.
2. Went right into a 2 week hitch (14 straight 12 hour days, with rig pay...) at our 'command center' in Provo, learning the ropes of monitoring systems from rigs around the globe
3. Spent 4 fun-filled days in Menifee, CA with jared and Emily for Thanksgiving
4. Started my current 17 day stint in Taft California at our test/training rigs with Oxy.

Couple notes--Thanksgiving was a blast. Spending time with Jared & Emily only served to remind how much we miss them. Hanging out with them is like meeting up with your best friends from old high school days, only better. The kids had fun too--although Ashton's infatuation with all things Nintendo WII now has me a little concerned... He went a little notes over it, for an eight year old. Ali craves time with her girl cousins (I wonder why????) and Aidan added to his growing collection of infatuated little girls vis a vis Natalie. His so good with them. I chalk it up to his gentle nature and kind demeanor. that, and the chicks or all ages just dig the guy. I am worried about these boys of mine.... Both of them had older girls hitting on them in Hungary--reason #2435 that it was ultimately a good idea to come home to Utah....

I don't miss movie prices in California--no 4.50 early matinees there--we all went out one night to see BOLT, in 3-D, and while the movie was pure throwback fun to classic Disney flicks of the past, I felt a little violated by good 'ol Cali at having to cough up 77 bucks for 6 tickets. GAAAAAH! And Holly wood wonders why people are going to the movies less and less--HMMMM 3 guesses, you Mensa geniuses...

We headed back to Nephi pretty early on Saturday, in order to beat the Zoobie hordes who would invariably return to campus either Saturday or Sunday. This, in hindsight, was a wise move. Sunday night, in looking off at I-15 from our upstairs window, it was BUMPER TO BUMPER TRAFFIC, MOVING AT 35 MPH. In FREAKING NEPHI. We saw nothing but tailights as far as could be all the way north. And all those cars didn't come from Scipio or Fillmore, which tells me traffic was heavy like that probably to Cedar City or St. George.

The original plan was to come back late Sunday afternoon or even on Monday, as I still had a full week off from work (I love this two week on/two week off schedule) but that was shortchanged when my hitch to California was moved up from February to now. So, after only a week off, I had the unenviable situation of driving back from Menifee on Saturday, only to get on a plane to Burbank early Monday morning.

THAT flight was fun. Not. Here I am with a million Delta miles, upgrades up the wazoo (ie I haven't flown in coach on a domestic Delta flight in about 3 years...), and I get STUCK ON SOUTHWEST! OUT OF A DELTA HUB IN SLC!. That's what I get for having a last minute ticket, I guess.. To make matters worse (in addition to the standard Soutwest cattle call seating cluster%$^&*...), I had to fly to Phoenix first. Making a 70 minute flight to Burbank a 5 hour odyssey. Heck, I could have driven from Nephi in eight hours, and that would have been more relaxing.

But I digress. I am finally out on a rig. My two compadres and I went through the one-day California rig safety training, required of everyone--from the engineers to the first-time roughnecks-- who will go onto any rig in the state. So. I finally a good idea of what prison school must be like. Bwaha.

I'm now on a schedule from 530PM to 530AM. Until 16 December. SO lucky me, I get to spend my 37th birthday (man 37 sounds OLD!)

On the plus side, I'll have about 4 weeks of time off waiting for me afterward....

I'd post something political, but I am still in denial over this whole Obama thing. Maybe later....

I love the Onion....

2008-11-08T13:03:00.001-08:00

Best recap yet of the election aftermath...

Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are

All Hail Dear Leader of New American Soviet Republic...

2008-11-04T22:26:00.000-08:00

Come on, it had to be said :-) Just prepping the ground for when the "wealth gets spread around"....

Pass the Pepto...

2008-11-04T20:17:00.000-08:00

Uugggghhh. The unthinkable has happened. We have our first real live Manchurian president. Yippee. I am reduced to hoping that somehow he will now NOT turn out to be the product of his very limited professional resume, socialist education, and Marxist upbringing. I'll try to be an optimist. He'll have my prayers.

Ah well. Carter brought us Reagan. But only after 4 tough years of 21 percent interest rates, 10 percent inflation, and 12 percent unemployment. It'll be a long four years...

Weird and sad for me to realize that the next time we get to pick a president, Andrew will be a SENIOR in high school. Poor kid.

At least over the next four years my new favorite website will get even more funny...

www.thepeoplescube.com

Settling in for a long exciting night...

2008-11-04T16:04:00.000-08:00

OK OK. It will only be exciting if McCain/Palin pulls this off. If they don't, it will be the exact opposite of exciting. According to Agi, who knows communism firsthand, an Obama victory will signal the very apocalypse. She is in near shock, unable to fathom how any American could vote for the guy who is campaigning on & for: wealth redistribution, open distain for the Bill of Rights, reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine (see ya later Rush!), vastly increased tax rates, and the most naive foreign policy of anyone since George McGovern.

So. It might be a long night. I am trying to see the bright side of this. Sure we would cede control of the entire federal judiciary to redistributionist, activist liberals for the next 40 years, but on the other hand, it took 4 years of an idiot peanut farmer to get us Reagan.

We'll see....

Bring Me a Shrubbery!

2008-10-28T15:55:00.000-07:00

Another sweet day. Arguably the best so far of the trip. After a 2 1/2 hour drive to Edinburgh, we toured the MASSIVE Edinburgh Castle--home to a rich history of historificalicious Scottish characters including Robert Earl of Bruce (of Braveheart fame) and Mary Queen of Scots. From a size/scale perspective, this is right up there with the Tower of London as one fo the coolest, awe-inspiring places I've visited in Europe.

It sits on a HUGE outcropping of eons-old volcanic rock, as shown below:

Looking up at this thing, I could imagine how wet-your-pants intimidating it must have looked to the invading English.

The view from the castle over the city and North Sea was equally cool:

the castle itself was incredibly interesting. Similar to the Tower of London, it did a fantastic job of trying to portray what life was like in the castle during "ye olden times". I'm certain they couldn't actually replicate the smell of the period, but the displays and 'living dioramas' in the prison area, regiment garrison, great halls, cathedral, chapels were all superbly put together.

In walking through their displays and dedicatory shrines to soldiers past, I really enjoyed reading of the history of our Revolutionary War from their perspective. Found out that quite a few American "POW's" from the revolutionary war were housed there alongside their compatriots of the period from Holland, France, and Denmark.

And I even loved the name of the "pub" up in the castle:

"Red Coat" Cafe. Ha. Takes me back to my Johnny Tremain-reading days.

After finishing up in Edinburgh, we leadfooted it out of town to reach Doune Castle before it closed. Doune Castle, you say? Everyone who recalls Bring Me a Shrubbery! The Knights of Niiii, or tossing a cow over the wall knows the significance of this place--one fo the most recognized sets from The Classic..... Monty Python & the Holy Grail.

And I have to say--this visit kicked all sorts of arse! It really made my trip...

We got there just as they were about to shut the doors for the day. As we just made it in, we actually had the run of the castle to ourselves--three of us able to fully check this place out, sans crowds, screaming babies, or anything else. The castle is one of the coolest castles I've been through--it is kinda hard not to become 14 again when exploring the place, easily imagining how cool it would be to live in a place such as this. Unlike most other "guided" or restored castes I've been through, this one was virtually all open for exploration, with only a very small section roped off.

I could actually go all the way up to the roof, and from there, the views, late in the day at dusk, were pretty stunning. Don't tell the wife, but I actually took advantage of the solitude to skirt around the barriers and climb up to the highest points of the roof, where only knee to waist high ramparts separated me from the green grounds a couple hundred feet below. The views tell it all!

This coolest pic ended our 40 minutes there, and made the 3 hour drive back to Balazs's apartment in the dark (and snow) totally worth it....

Tomorrow its our wind-down-get-ready-to-go-home-day. We may spend our last bit of time this week back up in Aberdeen, hanging out with other friends from work who have just arrived for their HUET training course.

Aaron

Loch Ness....minus the Nessie...

2008-10-27T13:17:00.000-07:00

Just got back from visiting the famed Loch Ness, up in northern Scotland along the coast near Inverness. Alas, no sign of Nessie the water beast in those calm deep waters. From the looks of the gift shops however, not being seen can still translate into a sizable amount of trinketry for sale.

The drive up was amazing. One thing I've really noticed about Scotland--IT'S FRIGGIN' EMPTY! Nothing but tiny roads winding through dark green countryside, populated only by hoards of sheep and the occasional cow. We literally took the main road from Ballater to Inverness, and it involved having to pull over to the side in order to let oncoming traffic pass us.

Inverness was only 72 miles away, but in order to get there we had to cross up and over the Scottish Highlands, and it took us almost three hours to do so. We saw three distinct weather systems in one day--it went from sunny in Ballater that morning, to a BLIZZARD in the highlands, to rainy cold along the coast at Inverness as we drove past to Loch Ness. At Loch Ness the cold rain & misty fog parted and after an hour of being there, the sun shone again. BEAUTIFUL, capital B.

Some pics:

Glenbuchat Castle--near Ballater

Countryside outside Ballater, driving toward Inverness

Scottish Highlands - only 25 miles from the previous picture, and a few hundred meters above sea level!

Castle Urquhart, along Loch Ness...

Me in front of one of the towers of Castle Urquhart...

Balazs at the Loch...

Castle & Loch Ness behind it...

Postcard-perfect Loch Ness....

Parting look at the Castle and its greenery--emphasis on GREEN...

Tomorrow we are headed to Edinburgh to see the most famous castle in Scotland--Edinburgh Castle. Dwarfs everything else.

As it is only 102 miles away, it should only take 4 hours to drive there--but should be the prettiest four-hour drive I've seen in my lifetime. We'll see how it compares to the previous winner--the four hour stretch of coastal highway between Split & Dubrovnik, Croatia....

Aaron

Love me some Scotland...

2008-10-26T04:30:00.000-07:00

Greetings from sunnythenrainythenstormythenwindy then sunny again Scotland. I've just wrapped up my HUET training (Helicopter Underwater Evacuation Training) on Saturday. It was the most fun I've had in a while. Still can't believe sometimes I am getting paid for this.

A year ago I never thought I'd be spending a few days strapped in a helicopter fuselage mounted on a rotating gimble, getting dunked into water tanks and spun around, over and over again. We did it fully kitted out in the cold water gear we'd be wearing on a flight over the North Sea. The suits have these cool breathing apparatuses called "re-breathers" that work as little mini oxygen providers--basically you rip open the front pouch on your jacket, bite onto the dive tube, take a huge breath and blow into it, inflating a small chamber. That one breath then actually provides you enough oxygen to breathe fairly normally for about 30 seconds---enough time to hopefully exit the helicopter that has so helpfully crash landed into frigid water where, in normal clothing, you'd get hypothermia in about 3 minutes. Naturally in all flights over water, we'll be in cold water wetsuits that could provide about 8 hours of protection

Also loads of training on deploying inflatable life rafts, rescue boats, etc... THOSE were cool. Absolutely nothing like you'd find in your average sporting goods store. really cool equipment.

We ran the tests with the breathers, without them, upside down, rightside up, breaking out windows, no windows, all variations of the same thing--hauling arse out of a downed chopper in the water.

Loads of fun--there was also the mandatory first aid training and training on another apparatus called the "SkyScape", basically a 50 meter long tube of kevlar netting that can be rapidly deployed from the rig floor to the ocean--essentially the last ditch escape mechanism from a damaged/burning rig 150 feet above the ocean. AWESOME. Capital A.

Basically I am now certified to work in the North Sea for the next four years. Booyah.

As luck would have it, my brother in law Balazs lives about 40 minutes SW of Aberdeen, in a little village called Ballater. Its very near the Bamoral Castle (Royal Family summer home) and is also where the Scottish Highland Games finish up ever four years. A cool little area. I'm staying with him, along with two of my traveling classmates, for a few days, so we can take in as much of Scotland as we can.

Scotland is green. I mean freakishly greeny green. Hurt-your-eyes-in-the-summer green. Haven't seen this much green since Oregon, and--as I am told--this doesn't even currently compare to how green it is during the summer months. I guess I'll have to come back sometime in the summer with Agi to experience that.

As it is, I've seen all sorts of weather in the lat week. Clear skies one day, total storms the next, followed by mild rain and wind, then clear skies again.

We spent last night here in Ballater at Balazs's pad, and had dinner at the restaurant where he works.

Awesome little homey Italian restaurant "La Mangiatoia". Great food.

This morning we woke up briht and early and took a stroll around the outskirts of town--thankfully had some sunshine, whereas yesterday was pretty stormy.

Walking along a river footpath that runs along the town.

Yours truly posed artfully along the same river, definitely sullying the view with the haggard, bleary-eyed face that screams out "yes-I-just-woke-up-and-haven't-showered-for-two-days"...

AHA! I knew it! even the uppity Scots have trailer parks! I jest--this is less "trailer park" than "guest-housing-for-persons-visiting-the world-famous-golf-course-nearby". Still, I was pretty surprised to come around a bend of the river and see some trailers...

Also on my walkabout I stumbled onto the rarest of finds--something tourists in Europe have to search hi and lo for--an old church. If there is one thing Europe just doesn't seem to have enough of, it would be old, beautiful temples that date from the middle ages. Who knew?

Most of all, I'm just happy to be able to hang out with Balazs again for a few days--haven't seen him since February, when he came out here to work. Cool guy! I know Agi misses him terribly, so I'd like to just take this moment to say....NEENER NEENER NEENER! I'm hanging out with your bro! In Scotland! Kidding aside, its been a great trip so far, and I am looking forward to jetting around the countryside on Monday checking out Loch Ness, the castle at Inverness, and seeing a beautiful countryside dotted with lots of sheep.

Later!

I'm hating United Airlines right now...

2008-10-21T05:01:00.000-07:00

Right now I am really ticked off at not being able to fly Delta to Aberdeen, instead of United. after 900,000+ miles with Delta, this is my first real trip with United, and I find myself right now stuck at the Heathrow for 5 more hours. Really got hosed from the get-go by United. This is after a four hour delay in CHicago that caused us to lose our Heathrow connection to Aberdeen.

At my connection in Chicago, just 50 minutes before boarding, our flight disappeared from the board. After 45 minutes in line to get some clarification, I get told that our flight was delayed due to weather issues, and that our flight was still circling and waiting to land, and wouldn't land for 3 more hours. Right. No transatlantic flight has enough fuel to circle an airport for three hours after an 8 hour flight. The fact that it was a cloudless sky did not help her case either. Obviously we were lied to because any major delay due to mechanical error would make the airline have to cough up food vouchers and other renumerations. Weather, however, gets them in the clear.

We actually got the full story inadvertently a couple hours later from a different crew, who told us that our fight was on-time, but United made the decision to give our plane to the Munich route because the Munich plane was having mechanical problems with their hydraulics. Guess who got the crap Munich plane 5 hours later? I don't so much mind that United made the decision to divert our plane to another route (probably had fewer missed connections for the Munich flight), I'm just ticked they looked in my face and told me it was "the weather".

Then after landing at Heathrow, the gate agent told us to head straight to Terminal 1 to the United desk, where our updated tickets to Aberdeen were waiting for us. We get there, and find out we should have been sent to Terminal 5, a good 45 minutes away. Another missed flight. Another 5 hour layover.

Instead of getting into Aberdeen at 10 AM with a full day to check things out, I'm lucky to get in by 8 tonight.

Joys of flying...

Octobah Happenings....

2008-10-18T00:26:00.000-07:00

Holy procrastination Batman! Has it really been a month since I last looked at me blog? Yep. Apparently so! It dawned on me that I hadn't written in a while, when I got an email from a dear friend who said "hey, you haven't written in a while"...

My days had fallen into a pretty good semblance of normality recently--you know--spend all day at the office, then come home, ask the kids about their day, help with homework, put them to bed, then call Comcast and wait on hold for an hour to complain about the spotty internet service due to the faulty modem they installed last Friday. You know, normal stuff.

I kid. I have also been watching The Office, walking the dogs, finishing up the classroom portion of my job training, and getting around to baptizing Ashton. Yep. The last of the four. It was AWESOME.

Hw was baptized last Saturday, a delay of two weeks from his birthday thanks to conference. Little kids tend to hate conference anyway, so this year he was doubly irritated at having to sit on the living room floor on the 4th. Kind of unsettling to get glowering looks from an eight year old while conference is on, along with complaints like "I SHOULD BE GETTING BAPTIZED TODAY!!"

By last Saturday it was all good. A special day.

We suffered a mini-tragedy two days ago. By we I mean Ashton and by tragedy I mean awesome opportunity for dad to say "I told you so".

Ashton got a scooter for his birthday--
(oh yeah--another event we managed to skip on the blog) on Sep 29th, and I spent the first week of said scooter's life explaining to Ashton that if he kept leaving in the driveway, it was bound to be run over. And in Sienna v. RazorScooter, the good money is on the Sienna. LO and behold, CRUNCH. Yesterday Agi mangled it after a quick run to the store.

Softee that I am, after my obligatory "I told you so's" and "gee what a wonderful teaching lesson this is", I decided to try and fix his scooter. Thankfully, only the stem was mangled, so I thought I could pound it back into an upright position with a mallet. Nope. Made it worse. Then I managed to at least get it taken apart, followed by a trip to Wal-mart to find a cheapie 20 dollar scooter from which I could use the stem and handlebars to replace the mangled pieces.

And this is why I hate Walmart:

I get to the store, pick out my chosen scooter due for organ donation, get home, and open it up. I find that: a) this scooter has already been beatup and returned to walmart, with stem screws that are stripped off (making its reason for existing useless to me) and b) its friggin' PINK and packed into the wrong box. Thanks Walmart. I was tempted to take back BOTH mangled scooters, drop them on the counter, and nonchalantly ask for a refund. "Why yes ma'am--it appeared to have been run over by a car when I took it out of the box". Super. Now I have TWO useless scooters.

In lighter news--I am once again packing for an international trip. I am going to Aberdeen with 4 of my classmates on Monday for an extended course in offshore survival training. While you may think this means learning how to fend off the advances of love-starved roughnecks, it actually is way cooler than that :-). I get to, among other things, practice escaping from a downed helicopter on the North Sea and jumping from a 90 foot platform into the water. I've taken great delight in freaking out Agi with graphic descriptions of every offshore rig accident of the past 30 years.

In any case--I am looking forward to this trip. I am also going to be hanging out with my brotha-in-law who is chef at a restaurant 45 miles south of Aberdeen. Hope to see all the cool sights--castles, Loch Ness, haggis factories, etc... All the cool Scottish stuff.

Bittersweet as well. I recall that my last "foreign" excursion that was any fun was to Hvar, Croatia in March, setting up a training conference for distributors in SE Europe. That was such a fun, blissful weekend, spent on a gorgeous island with two of my kids.

Seems so long ago... Ironically, that conference is this weekend. Hope it all goes well for the participants.

So here I come, Scotland! I leave Monday, and will be back a couple weeks later. I'm sure I'll have PLENTY of cool pictures to post...

Until then, I am back to my midnight laundry duties and the even more fun task of forgetting this week's twin debacles: BYU's craptacular performance last night Vs. TCU, and the snoozer of a Presidential debate from Wednesday. How the country ended up with these idiots winning their respective party nominations is beyond me. One is the barely restrained socialist wunderkint with a background and experience as barren as Paris Hilton's SAT scores, and the other is a doddering, grimacing, smirk machine who can't seem make a cogent argument on TV to save his life, even though his opponent is as wide-open a target as possible. My dream scenario is for McCain to win and then retire in February. Better that than having the Obaminator win with plans to "spread the wealth around". Yecch. I just left European socialism, only to see it on my doorstep here. Uggh. I weep for the Republic.

Latest Palin scandal...

2008-09-17T05:53:00.000-07:00

Dagnamit. I knew she was too good to be true... :-)

Meanderings Schmeanderings...

2008-09-14T20:26:00.001-07:00

I have been duly chastised. Apparently my significant other has informed me that just because I now "have a job", and "am slightly more active than a koala bear on sudafed", I can't neglect at least a cursory update to our family blog. So I'm on for a quickie update of our activities over the past ten days.

I've just finished my first two weeks on the new job--its been mainly classroom work in Provo, cramming info into my brain about high-speed drill-bit telemetry, wave theory, and how oil rigs are not only big and expensive, but can go boom-boom if we aren't careful with electricity. AWESOME! Seriously, I've learned more about underground oil formations and the delicate processes involved with sucking it out of the ground. I'm still doing cartwheels over how cool this company is--we had a business presentation Thursday afternoon that underlined again how cutting edge our tech is. No joke--our process is to oil drilling what a Ferrari is to the handcart. The most up-to-date technology currently in use, the process that oil companies and drillbit-tool producers have invested BILLIONS in over the last 50 years, can only send information to the surface at the screaming rate of 10 BITS PER SECOND. Yes, 10 BITS. It actually travels up to the surface on a wave of mud. Our tech sends up info info at speeds up to 100 MB per second. Mwahaha. And we own the patent for the next 17 years.

SO yes. I am still very much excited about my new job. The crew I was hired with is composed of electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, avionics professors, and some IT supergeeks. Which had me questioning, albeit briefly, why the hell I was hired :-) .

Outside of work, we've been busy with other pursuits. I coached my first soccer game yesterday. The boys (Andrew and Aidan) are playing in the city league, and their coach decided his anniversary weekend getaway was more important than leading seven 12-14 year-olds to victory on the field. Has this guy not seen 300 or what??? In any case, I stepped in. Granted, my coaching technique consisted mainly of screaming "good job, ladies!" and "keep those guys out of our kitchen!" , and "lemme see blood! You are all wearing shin guards FOR A REASON!". Yeah, after 5 years in Hungary, I sadly know just as little about soccer as before I left. In any case, we did win our first game of the season 10-6. SO naturally I am going to take all of the credit.

Here's some pics of my awesome results:

This is Andrew, #9.

...and here's Aidan, eye on the goal...

Andrew, taking a breather...

..and team captain Aidan, debuting his "hey ref! I got yer yella caaahd right here!" face. Ah, the little Beckham...

In other news, Ashton threw a tantrum the other day because he was assigned "Beauty and the Beast" as a reading project, and -as a big second grader- I WILL NOT READ A GIRLIE BOOK!!!" and WHY DOESN'T MY TEACHER GET THIS??? DUUUHHH!!". Sigh. This is going to be fun. In other Ashton news, he is pretty excited to get baptized next month. Last of the bunch.

Ali is Ali. Cute as always. Having fun with her new girlfriends. I'm happy she has been making friends with not just the predominate LDS kids, but all the other girls in the small "non-LDS" group as well. After picking her up from a playdate at one these girl's home, I was chatting with said girl's mother, and she indicated how grateful she was for Ali to be so nice and accepting and friendly with her daughter, even though they aren't LDS. This family has been in Nephi for a few years now, and apparently once it was known they weren't LDS and weren't exactly interested in joining our fair community, all the invitations dried up and the non LDS kids (in frigging FOURTH GRADE, mind you!) end up having mostly only each other to play with. Show me a parent that doesn't encourage their 10 year old to invite the non-LDS kid to the birthday party, and I'll show you a parent I want to KICK.IN.THE.TEETH. OK. Now that is off my chest.

Lastly--we just got back tonight from the boys' first ever Court of Honor. Agi's first a well. She was pretty proud to go up and have the boys punch the mother's pins in to her blouse :-). Andrew received his Second Class and FIrst Class advancements, and Aidan received his Tenderfoot and Second Class. After no scouting at all in Hungary for the last 5 years, the boys are making up for lost time. I told the boys that if they want to even sniff at a driver's license, they better be Eagle Scouts first. They are making up for lost time :-)

That's it for me. Agi is off across town putting old people to bed, and I have just put a bunch of young people to bed. Now if you will excuse me, I am going to nightcap my evening by settling onto the couch & rewinding and watching over and over, each of Max Hall's seven touchdown passes from yesterday. BOOOOYAAH! 59-0.

Flub of the day, yet surprisingly awesome..

2008-09-05T05:47:00.000-07:00

I'll get to a longer post this weekend--I've been busy all week with the new job during the day and soccer games in the evening. Andrew & Aidan had their first game last night and won 1-0. Gotta love those high scoring edge of your seat scoring frenzies. Almost as fun as the game was watching Agi begin the transformation into rabid US soccer mom, the kind that just might stomp down to the field and rip the head of that sweaty, nervous, 16 year old volunteer referee. Kidding! Sort of. Maybe not. Ok, I'll bring the restraint jacket to the next game :-)

Anywhoo-prior to my larger more meaningful post, which I am sure to get to this weekend, here was a smaller clip from this week's convention coverage. Obviously I loved Palin's speech and am currently enjoying the backlash against MSNB's raving moonbats and everyone else who has tried to "take her down" this week. If you saw her speech, you'll know why. ..

Anyway--this was funny. ABC's Terry Moran didn't even break a sweat on this flub.

I'm thinking Hillary is throwing ashtrays right now....

2008-08-29T15:00:00.001-07:00

....and Obama is on the floor in the fetal position, thumb in mouth.

As less-than-enthused that I was about a possible McCain presidency, I think the choice of Sarah Palin as the VP is a masterstroke. Everything I know about this woman is stellar. She's more of a man than Obambi is :-). She's got the most "real" family of anyone that has run for the presidency in my lifetime...

From a few of my preferred commentary sites, I've culled a few awesome "Palinisms" that are sure to catch on...

--Sarah Palin is so tough, she wears polar bear fur when it’s 40 below outside… while the polar bear is still alive. 
--Sarah Palin is so tough…she digs for oil with her bare hands and doesn’t ruin her manicure! 
--I once saw Sarah Palin punch a hole through a cow just to see what was on the other side. 
--Sarah Palin is so tough she glared at Obama and made him start his period. 
--Palin is so tough, her Moose kills show blunt force trauma… 
--Sarah Palin doesn’t use bait when she is fishing. She merely touches the hook with a bit of her perfume and the fish jump into the boat. 
--Sarah Palin is so tough the 1975 Philadephia Flyers won’t play against her. 
--Sarah Palin is so tough that John Wayne briefly returned from his grave today to endorse her. 
--Sarah Palin doesn’t debate opponents, she debases opponents. 
--Sarah Palin is so tough that she makes Barack Obama sit down when he urinates. 
--Sarah Palin is so tough she shaves her legs with a blowtorch while putting on her lipstick. 
--Sarah Palin is so tough that Osama bin Laden will now star in one of those Southwest Airlines “wanna get away” commercials. 
--Sarah Palin is so tough that Chuck Norris wets his pants when she walks into the room. 
--Sarah Palin didn’t take off work when she had her baby last Spring. She delivered the baby during a phone conference and finished the day. 
--Sarah Palin is so tough that she can single-handedly tame 18 million pumas. 

--Sarah Palin is so tough, when the glass ceiling heard of her nomination it didn’t shatter, it just fled in terror. 
--Sarah Palin is so tough she sharpens her hunting knives by giving herself a manicure. 

My new favorite campaign commercial....

2008-08-24T12:30:00.001-07:00

OK OK. He wasn't my first choice. He's not Romney (central casting). Or Fred Thompson (sleepy). Or Guiliani (crimefighter). But he's a heckuva lot more appealing than Huckabee (squirrel-eating mormon-hater). And definitely more qualified than Obama (57 states, uhh, uhhh, uhhhhhmmm).

So here are my two new favorite campaign commercials...

When Nerds Collude...

2008-08-23T20:18:00.000-07:00

...And Particles Collide...

I think when this finally goes down, the space/time continuum will implode and we'll all be sucked into a swirling vortex of hellfire via a newly created black hole. Awesome. I knew I should have paid more attention in my science class.

Because its cool, that's why....

2008-08-22T09:49:00.000-07:00

Couple of the best voices in the industry on one of the best songs ever....

Springsteen & U2

First day of school

2008-08-20T15:04:00.000-07:00

Its official. The kids are back in school. They all just got home and inundated Agi and I with info on the Big First Day. Over the past couple of weeks we'd occasionally gone over to both Nebo Elementary and Juab Junior High to have the kids walk around and get familiar with their classrooms, lockers, etc, and of course both places had orientation nights for parents last week where we could meet the teachers. We're comfortable with everyone we talked to.

I'm going to have problems with Aidan. I asked him the best thing about his day, and of course it was the fact that "there's a hot chick in the locker right next to mine". Super. This is the kid who apparently was juggling three 'girlfriends' in the fifth grade in Hungary. I am still hoping good 'ole US girls will be less enamored of the Palmer Family 'ladies man". An inauspicious debut.

Anyway--in light of the occasion, here's my favorite back to school video:

The Horrifying 80's...

2008-08-17T21:08:00.001-07:00

I couldn't help it. Reading all my bro's and sisters' responses to that survey made me a little nostalgic for that awesomest of awesome decades--the 80's. I distinctly remember watching some music videos one afternoon in Payson on Utah Avenue with Janene (prolly Duran Duran or A-Ha) and one of us making the comment that the "our 80's" was so much cooler than the seventies, what with its bell-bottoms and bad hair, etc...

Well, I thought I'd try and find the one video that would put the lie to that statement. There were of course many, many contestants. But I think I have a winner.

And here it is...

Look away. I dare you. Look away....

Happenings, Schmappenings....

2008-08-16T13:55:00.001-07:00

I've been accused by more than one source of slacking on the blog front since getting news of my impending hire by Intelliserv. Were that it so! Actually I've been pretty busy the last seven days. Monday was spent in two separate doctor's offices doing a battery of tests physical, drug, and otherwise (cough cough) for my employment packet. I also spent half a day in the Intelliserv offices filling out hire paperwork. Never been so happy to put pen to paper.

I've also been spending more time at the Ascent Group home in Mona than my actual home--worked a couple of double shifts (4 PM -8AM) a couple of times. Its nice getting paid to play basketball & Guitar Hero III with recovering drug/alcohol guys. Seriously. I've loved this job this summer, and it is really cool to work for a place that has redeeming social value. Structurally, I am actually taking some good notes on procedures that I'll be implementing in my own house once school starts.

Past few days I've also enjoyed reading all the responses to a family group questionaire that has wound its way through the Palmer/Kieffer/Wawro ranks. Funny stuff! Thanks all!

Speaking of The Funny, I am really rooting for this movie to do well in October--we need a good conservative spoof flick mocking all the idiot "conventional wisdom" that the Left and Michael Moore spout. With Russia pretending it is 1956 and 1968 all over again this past week, refuting the Left is now more relevant than ever. So check this out--I am going to be all over this movie...

My New Office...

2008-08-08T23:34:00.000-07:00

Ohhhhh yyyeeaaahhh...

I'm stoked about my new profession! I am really looking forward to helping Intelliserv facilitate the removal of oil from our globe's nasty ocean seabeds and placement into the international commodity market. I start on September 2 w/classroom training in Provo followed by on-site rig practice off the coast of CA. Somewhere mixed in there will be what I am REALLY looking forward to-- a week of training in Scotland preparing me to escape from a downed, burning helicopter in the middle of the ocean! And I thought my mock-interrogation training in Germany was fun!

I am a kid in a candy store right now. Its going to be a blast. I get to do everything I want: Work for a RAPIDLY growing company with a superhot proprietary product in a sizzling industry--check. Get out from behind a desk--check. Fly in a helicopter on a regular basis--check. See the world--check. Get copious amounts of time off to spend with my kids--check.

I'll be monitoring and maintaining Intelliserv's proprietary new networked drillpipe system that, in the course of drilling for new oil deposits, can communicate massive amounts of real-time data between the drill-head and surface-- ensuring that whatever company utilizing our services will be able locate and tap oil deposits in the most efficient and cost-effective manner. So suck on that, Al Gore :-) Oil rules.

In all seriousness, I am thrilled with this opportunity. I've been circling this position like a vulture since May, when we returned from Hungary, and it finally happened. After three interviews over the last month, I got the offer this morning :-)

Best of all, I have Agi's blessing to now shave my head and get a gnarly oil tattoo. But, being that this job is actually a little more sophisticated than that, I should probably hold off :-) A guy can dream, though...

Happy BIrthday Mom!

2008-08-03T19:15:00.001-07:00

A quick shout out to Mom Palmer in Waterloo Iowa! Happy birthday from the Nephi Palmer's...

We hope your day was wonderful, and that the next 29 years will be as pleasant as the first 29 ;-)

Love ya.

AaronAgiAndrewAidanAliAshton

I'm told this is what BIrthday Cakes look like in both Nephi & Waterloo....

Our favorite new blog...

2008-07-31T09:00:00.000-07:00

Agi and I stumbled onto a new "fake" blog that is hilarious. IF you've ever encountered newlyweds at BYU, than this blog is for you... Because Seriously, we are So Blessed....

Its a worthwhile investment of time on a lazy Saturday afternoon, to read the whole thing, from first post to present. IF you aren't laughing hysterically after two minutes, then you don't have a funny bone.

The posted comments alone are also worth the read...

http://seriouslysoblessed.blogspot.com/

My only regret is that I didn't think of it first...

Best. Advert. Ever.

2008-07-29T02:50:00.000-07:00

Poor Kirby Heyborne can't catch a break. Aghast Mormons everywhere turned on him for showing up in the background of a Miller Lite commercial. And now his positively awesome new Snickers commercial gets yanked in the UK for being allegedly homophobic. Say Whaaattt?? I guess I had no idea all speed-walkers were gay until they protested this video and got Snickers to pull it... Too bad, since Mr. T hasn't been in anything this good or funny since the A-Team. I could imagine a whole series of these commercials...

I totally want a Snickers Gatling Gun now.

GET SOME NUTS! :-)

To all those who would use Germany's adoration of Obama as a reason to make him president....

2008-07-24T17:22:00.001-07:00

...don't forget, Germans also love DAVID HASSELHOFF!

I 'specially love the high leg kicks, tight jeans, and the coup de grace... KITT THE TALKING CAMARO, LIVE ONSTAGE! Bear in mind this video is only a few years old... :-)

Like I said, lets not get all hasty in judging German adoration of someone as worthy of our attention just yet :-)

the Kitty post....A sop to my children...

2008-07-21T15:44:00.000-07:00

Just a quicky post. After enduring 3 hours of caterwauling from my whiny kids (this following the posting of their new & improved job charts) I decided to give in to a long-standing demand of theirs and post a few pics of the them with their brand new kitten. SO I suppose I am 40 years early. I didn't expect to begin telling funny "cat stories" until I was half senile.

I'll try to keep it to captions and pics. Here goes...

Here's Ali's portrait of the new kitty "Cosmo".

Wide angle view of the little cutie. Just give her 6 months. I'll be ready to dump her in the woods by then... :-)

Livid "I HATE YOU!" kitty. Immediately following flea-dip shampooing.

Pic of our other cat. No longer cute. Has perpetual serial killer look about her. This is her "I will murder you in your sleep" face.

Andrew's contribution to the group. This is from "Kitty-toss Olympics on Sunday afternoon".

And this is Aidan's "Just for the Ladies" pose. Awwww.

I especially liked Barack & the unicorn...

2008-07-16T08:12:00.001-07:00

Time for Some Campaignin' | Funny Jokes at JibJab

The little Palmer soldier...

2008-07-16T07:08:00.000-07:00

As a by-product of cleaning out & moving our storage unit, we came across my old duffel bag of army gear. Andrew's wildest dreams were thus fulfilled. He's obsessed with going to an service academy or at least BYU ROTC and then joining the Special Forces. You can imagine how happy he was to be able to parade around the house for three days kitted out in my old gear...

I don't know what is more depressing--that Andrew can now fit into BDU's I wore only 5 years ago, or the the fact that five years ago I ACTUALLY COULD FIT INTO THESE BDU's!

I think I am off to do a few more pushups now :-) ...

Aidan's a deacon!

2008-07-15T05:01:00.000-07:00

Oh yeah--in my haste to bore the world with my insomnia-based garage story, I left out the best part of the weekend... Yesterday Aidan received the priesthood and was ordained a deacon. I'm proud of him. He's a good young man, with a firm conviction of what's right, and a great example for everyone he comes in contact with. I can even overlook the spider-on-Ali's-bed hijinks.

He's excited to finally have the Aaronic Priesthood, and is looking forward to passing the sacrament for the first time next week.

Garage capers...

2008-07-15T03:38:00.000-07:00

I hate being up at 4 AM. While there are worse things in life (ha-believe me I know), being awake when you'd rather not be awake is still a mildly irritating form of suckitude. My fault though. I conked out on my bed at about 8PM last night, thus ensuring that by around 3 AM I'd be wide awake.

What was I thinking? Oh yeah, I made the mistake of lying down to thumb through an old "Punisher" comic of mine that I'd unearthed via my just-completed three day garage restoration project. Andrew really wanted to read it, and I figured I should go through it again just to make sure there wasn't any inappropriate language in it (there wasn't). Ha. Never mind Frank Castle's endless and hugely creative methods of eliminating gangsters and other assorted "unpunished" criminals splotched across the glossy pages, I'm worried about the language :-). Stems from me being a profane little punk as a teenager, and me wanting to save Andrew from that particularly odious habit (trust, me, hard to break, even after 20 years)... In a nutshell--no, he's not going to get to read it, even though the language was charmingly innocent--(seriously!) along the lines of "stop it! You jerk!" coming from the from the supposed hard-core mobster type, just prior to being tossed into the bear pit and getting wacked-via-hungry-polar-bear at the NYC zoo... Funny! Just how I imagined the Sopranos verbalizing their inner frustrations when facing imminent death at the paws of a furry white disembowler.

SO. Apparently the Punisher's Methods of Mayhem have a tranquilizing affect. I was out like a light, and thus up at 3 AM.

Natch, this is only about an hour after Agi had rolled into bed, ensuring that waking up and doing some light emailing/net surfing/news reading in bed is not going to fly. I tried to just lay there and will my eyes back shut, but was treated to a charming late nite/early morning visit from Ali, who just woke up from a nightmare involving spiders. Thanks Aidan!

Apparently, knowing his sister has quite the aversion to our friends of arachnoid persuasion, he laid out a fake one on her bed last night. Super.

So Ali's now climbing into the center of our bed, meaning there are now TWO women ensuring I am confined to an ever-shrinking 7 inches of bed space on the far left hand edge of my Serta. Thankfully, that lasted only 5 minutes. Ali noticed the kitten in our room and decided that with its protection, she'd be safe from the Furry Ones in her own bed. SO back she went. Leaving an even more awake dad behind and a pretty grumbly Agi.

WHere was I? O yeah. Sleepy, Punisher, garage project. That';s actually where I wanted to focus. My just completed three day garage project.

Before:

During:

After:

Starting Friday, I moved (with nominal help from me boys) all of our accumulated stuff from the garage out onto the RV pad. It was nice to see the newly spacious garage bare to the walls. Then, later that evening, I picked up a U-haul trailer and spent a couple hours finally emptying out our Spanish Fork storage unit. Saturday morning , all of THAT stuff was unloaded and added to the pile next to the house. Our yard now looked like THE white trash yard sale to end all white trash yard sales. All we were missing was Ashton sitting on the porch, banjo pickin'...

I spent the rest of Saturday painting the garage. And by paint, I mean TRY TO KILL MYSELF. Holy crap, that was a lot of real estate to cover with a brush and a roller. You know that flimsy top rung on a step ladder? THe one that always says in big white letters "DO NOT STAND OR SIT ON THIS AREA"? YEEEAAAAAh. Now picture a sizable dude like myself balanced on his toes, on the top of said step, straining upward with a roller in one hand and a paint tray in the other slapping paint on the ceiling. Good times, good times.

At that point I had pushed through to Saturday evening, where, after a full day of hauling heavy garbage and painting, I was looking at the finished walls and decidedly UNFINISHED ceiling, and trying to rationalize how good the place would really look if I just went ahead and left the ceiling coated in spots of primer, spackle, & finishing tape...

It was tempting. Agi was particularly evil about it too--purring--and I quote: "It is just the garage. IT looks fine. Just leave the ceiling for a later project...". But noo! I girded up the proverbial loins and spent the next 3 hours, until 11PM, doing the ceiling too. Happy I did.

I spent all day yesterday moving our crap back in, nicely arranged, maximizing space, organizing, etc.... you know, all that TLC-channel twaddle, and now I have by all accounts a pretty decent looking garage. WIth my own white-trash cracka office in the far corner, and neat walls of organized boards & hooks. I still have a huge pile of yet-to-be-unpacked luggage, but at least it is a well-organized, feng-shui-ish pile...

And this takes me back to the present-- wide awake at (now) 530 AM Tuesday morning, after crashing way to early Monday night.

Nozzle Rage....

2008-07-10T12:49:00.000-07:00

I know its a vastly simplified overstatement, but still....

Family weekend...

2008-07-08T16:48:00.001-07:00

Had a blast this 4th O' July weekend with the family--as previously noted, the CA palmers jetted up I-15 from Menifee, CA and graced us all with their humorous presence--they stayed over with us in Nephi on Wednesday night. We had fun hanging out and catching up, while the kids all roughed it in the backyard tents. Couple days later came the aforementioned wigged-up Stadium-of-Fire awesomeness, followed by a Sunday evening of food, fun, & frivolity at the Kieffer's, where we pulled the Hungarian drinking game "Snubli" out of mothballs. We only went one round, and Matt lucked out as the final "winner" getting to down a raw tortilla, wrapped up with peanut butter, ranch dressing, and salsa. Wrapped up the night with a killer round of (as it's known in the extended Palmer/Kieffer clans) "the divorce game" otherwise known as Settlers of Cataan.

Sleepover city!

Later that night a good chunk of the kids piled into the Nephi Palmer van and headed south for a sleepover. Aubrey, Sarah, Emma, and Ali slept out in the tent, and David stayed inside with Ashton.

Naturally they all went to sleep at 130 AM (following a late-nite showing of "The Santa CLause 3" on DVD in the tent), and woke up 4 hours later. I drew the short straw and slept on the couch in order to be within earshot. And take the brunt of the early-morning melee.

Later that morning we all headed up to Magleby's Fresh in Spanish Fork for brunch with the group, and for final goodbyes to Jared & Em, prior to their heading back down I-15.

It was a blast, and we'll repeat it all in November, come Thanksgiving... Or perhaps earlier! --should my job search go so poorly that I finally give in and go to California, for a fun and exciting career within the uniformed California Penal System--breaking up prison yard gang fights, and hunting for contraband all the non-fun places....

Budapest reunion fun...

2008-07-08T09:05:00.000-07:00

Getting away from my funky Miley Cyrus wig below, we also had a great mini-reunion with friends from Budapest. We got together at Rock Canyon Park for a few hours Thursday night and shot the breeze (does anyone still use that phrase?). It was great catching up with the Belka's & Thorstensen's (both families here locally now in Springville & Provo, respectively), the McCotters (on their way to a new post in DC) and The Gatrell/Polizotto's (on loan from the UK for the holidays).

Good times! For a minute, it was just like being back at our little sacrament meeting in BP. It was GOOD to catch up...

A few pics of the group...

Group Pic of the kids....

Lansing Gatrell, Cade & Ashley McCotter

Ashton and Hunter Thorstenson

Stadium of Fire! Miley Cyrus! YAY!!!!

2008-07-08T08:23:00.000-07:00

Tuesday morning--I have a little catching up to do. That, and I am under orders from the Boss to post something-anything- large enough to push down the disturbing photo of my 8 week old Vizsla attempting to get it on with our poor lab's face. Mission accomplished, babe. But no guarantee you'll iike the replacement photo:

OHHH YEEEAAAHHHHH. THat is me and my brother Jared in our Hannah Montana wigs, getting ready to take our two rabid-Miley-Cyrus-fan daughters to the Stadium of Fire show. We both decided months ago, when we bought the tickets, that merely buying tickets to the show that would fulfill all of our daughters' dreams, was NOT ENOUGH. They'd have to pay for it. And what better way to embarrass our 9 year olds, than taking them to the show in HM wigs and making general arses of ourselves...

....and here are the Palmer cousins, Ali and Aubrey, decked out and ready for Miss Cyrus....

Yep. We wore these stinking wigs for the duration--from the time we left the house until Miss Cyrus wrapped up her encore. Whoo Hoo! Needless to say, we were pretty popular with the masses. We were stopped for pictures in the stadium too many times to count. Everybody wanted a photo with us and our daughters. The girls were good sports and really got into it, and we got a lot of vocal kudos (all from the ladies) for doing this for our daughters. DUdes looked basically uncomfortable--especially when they were being poked vigorously by their respective mates and told, in no uncertain terms, that THEY WOULD MOST DEFINTELY BEING DOING THIS FOR THEIR DAUGHTERS IN THE FUTURE. Ha.

Sadly, we did not make the Jumbo-Tron, which had been our main goal for the evening.

Apparently Lavell Edwards Stadium has taste standards, or something.

Somebody read the Kama Sutra backward....

2008-07-02T07:57:00.001-07:00

Call me crazy, but of our two 8-week-old puppies, I'm guessing one didn't didn't read the procreation manual properly, and the other is about to be scarred for life...

Good news/Bad news...

2008-07-01T18:47:00.001-07:00

Today's bad news is that, as my Spidey sense indicated over the weekend, I did not get the Colorado job.

In the good news department, I saw Hellboy interviewed by James Lipton on Inside the Actor's Studio...

BOOO-YAAAAHH!!

2008-06-30T07:13:00.001-07:00

VIsit from the Balint family!

2008-06-29T14:59:00.000-07:00

Had a blast-from-our-recent-past today....

One of the couples from Hungary that we've really gotten to know over the last 7 years, and been pretty close to, stopped in to see us on their way to Vegas. Jozsef and Julika Balint. They are officially our first visitors from Hungary since we've been in the house.

It was really great to see them and visit for a bit. They admired the scenery and the backyard and we spent a little time getting caught up on life in Hungary.

Puppy buffet!

2008-06-28T15:30:00.000-07:00

Can't help it. While I was wrapping up that last post, the puppies decided to tag team Ashton on the floor for a delicious mid-day snack....

New Vizsla Puppy

2008-06-28T15:04:00.000-07:00

Well--back home from Colorado. Gave me a great chance to test the commute time should ( if luck happens to run my my way) I I actually get an offer. WOuldn't be too painful--1.5 hour flight from SLC to Colorado Springs, then a 25 minute drive to Pueblo. All in all, if I plan the flights right, I could be from Nephi to job in 4 hours.

But that's another story. I wish I felt better about the interviews. They got progressively better as the day went on, but who knows? There were some other strong finalists there with really impressive logistics backgrounds. In any case, I'll know in a few days.

On to happier news--we picked up our VIzsla puppy this morning--yes this makes two. This little guy is similar to Midnight, in that he has a purebred vizsla mom and a lab dad. Apparently breeding those two types together produces an uncommonly talented pointer/hunting dog who is also playful and good with kids. We haven't yet picked out his name. But now we are back to having two dogs, both within a week of age of each other.

Pics:

Here he is! One hour after getting here, he's already taking a break in the cool of a backyard bush shade.... The name is still a tossup. One popular version making the rounds this morning is "Jack Bauer". Hmmmmm.

Death Match: Two puppy enter--one puppy leave...

These two don't mess around. Interesting how right out of the birthing canal these little guys already have the genetic disposition to go for the throat when play-fighting. Nothing more serious than some initial nipping and biting, and playful tuggin'. You know--just getting to know each other. Much like southern cousins meeting for the first time at the family reunion...

All differences aside, they call it a draw and jaunt out to explore the backyard together....

I think we are going to have blast watching these two grow up together. Cute little pups who will grow into good looking dogs. The kids are over the moon...

Hopefully I'll have a job soon, so we won't have to be looking at doggie du jour recipes come September :-) . Mwahaha.

Job stuff in Colorado...

2008-06-27T13:13:00.000-07:00

Well, I just wrapped up an intensive 4 hour interview process for a management position at a Pueblo, CO distribution center. I am sitting in the Colorado Springs airport waiting for my flight home.

I think overall it went OK, but my rust (on finally being on the other side of the interview process) sure shows. Round one was EHHH. Rounds 2 & 3 were much better. I should hear back from them in a week or so. I am not holding my breath too much--of the three of us flown in to interview for this position, one of the gents had a super background for this particular position, having managed an entire warehouse already, for Intel. That and he had a masters degree. Meh. I'd love to get this offer, but truth be told I am not entirely holding my breath. Guess I'll see...

Fingers crossed!

Young Men's Hike in the Nebo mountains

2008-06-24T22:55:00.000-07:00

Picking up a new puppy was not the only new and interesting (OK maybe not so interesting for you, gentle reader...) we've done the last 24 hours.

I just got back from a 'grueling' 6 mile hike up one of the Nebo Canyon spurs withe the young men of the ward, two of which I claim to be raising.

We had a blast. The trail heads up concurrently with the Spring Creek, which this time of year is busily going about the business of shuttling the snowpack runoff down the canyon. The water level made the hike interesting. The trail typically sits inside the dry spring bed, so natch, with the waters coming down, a good deal of our hike was spent crawling along the side of the water, flailing at the loose shale rock and extruding roots to keep from falling in.

Andrew took great pleasure at laughing at anyone who got the slightest bit wet, so it was quite satisfying to see him do a flailing, windmill-churning back flop into the water on the way back down the mountain. Thankfully, I had already removed my camera from the backpack he was wearing, and was able to document the sopping wet aftermath.

Boys had a blast, and knocked out some compass reading requirements for a merit badge or two. The total trip time took about 4 hours. I came home relatively unscathed, but not completely dry. In crossing the creekbed, a dry downed log, serving as my pseudo bridge, snapped under my weight and gave way, buckling into the water and taking my ankle with it. Luckily this is my trick tennis ankle, and winding it around 360 degrees is my party specialty. So while I am now ever so sore and limping like the Elephant man, I managed to get off the mountain alive and in one piece. And no one had to fireman-carry me out. Or call in a rescue helicopter. Or leave me for the bears to eat.

New puppy....

2008-06-24T22:46:00.000-07:00

Well, our "dogsickness" finally overcame us the other night, and we broke down and picked up a beautiful little black lab puppy from a family here in Nephi. Their lab had a litter of ten, of which 7 survived. We had to pick between the final two, and settled on the "runt" of the litter--a little girl we promptly named Midnight. I know, I know, points for creativity all around. She is a jet black purebred (yet unpapered) lab, and is frickin' adorable. We've had her for 24 hours now and the kids are in love. She trots after them everywhere, nipping ankles and cuddling every chance she gets. Here's a few pics...

Naked eating Cheetos....

2008-06-21T19:15:00.000-07:00

this be me in a while if I keep myself off the job market for too much longer...

Naked Eating Cheetos - Jeff Foxworthy, Bill Engvall, Ron White & Larry The Cable Guy

Love this comedian, Paul F. Tompkins

2008-06-21T16:28:00.000-07:00

What did you do in the Great Summer of '08, Daddy?

2008-06-21T08:27:00.000-07:00

Saturday morning. Prior to "headin' North" (Nephi vernacular for goin' up to Utah County) for Liam's birthday party at Chez Palmer de Springville, I decided to do the monthly camera dump. I picked a select boring few to post here. Basically from a couple weeks ago, when we thought we'd head up the Nebo Loop to explore Payson Lakes. Hey--we though-- it's June! It'll be brilliantly warm! Not. Good thing Agi helpfully pointed out that, despite it being 80 degrees in Nephi, she could still see the snowpack up range. So we packed sweaters and blankets just in case. Good call, Eubanks. It dropped 35 degrees on the drive up and was plenty chilly.

Beautiful area though! Maybe by late July it will reach 65 degrees....

Also kicked in a couple pics of Ashton enjoying the dual slipinslide I set up in the backyard....

Enjoy....

..........................Behold, the Cracka Waterpark......................

Right out of a Norman Rockwell, right?

Ali: TAKE ME HOME NOW!!!! I'M COLD!!!!!

Purty...........

Andrew overlooking Utah Lake to the North

Global Warming Clip of the day...

2008-06-19T18:20:00.000-07:00

Courtesy the gents at South Park.... Still the place for the best left-lampooning satire on the web. This clip is clean, for those of you who wonder--well worth viewing!!

Cool story on new Filipino singer for JOURNEY

2008-06-18T14:30:00.000-07:00

Found this video the other day on youtube-AWESOME STORY! Also reminded why Journey was one of the best bands to listen to in the car when I wanted to stay awake on long road trips... This whole story is pretty compelling. This guy sounds just like Steve Perry, the original Journey lead singer, only BETTER.

Spreading the Gospel of Coldplay...

2008-06-18T11:05:00.000-07:00

Took a break this morning from sending out the umpteenth resume to the umpteenth possible employer on the umpteenth jobsite (I moved well past Monster and HotJobs to include CareerBuilder, TeleportmyJob, and about a jillion other sites...) to listen to the new Coldplay album. It had been pre-ordered a couple months ago and I finally got the download notice last night. WOW. Awesome stuff. Really really strong album. these guys are perilously close to kicking U2 out of the top heavy-rotation slot on my ipod.

Sweet stuff-particularly the tracks Viva La Vida and Death and All His Friends.

If you have not yet joined the Church of Coldplay, highly recommended that you do so. Pretty sure one can maintain memberships in both. Each album has been better than the previous...

In other fun news we had our Ward's annual "Movie in the Park" night, last night. Our activity chairman runs a mobile party-planning/entertainment business, so once a year he sets up all his movie gear and snack stations in the Nephi park and treats the ward to a big screen movie experience. It was a blast--the whole ward came out with blankets and lawn chairs and watched National Treasure 2, and had nachos, popcorn, candy and soda while just kicking back and visiting with everyone. I have decided that small towns are awesome. Sure big cities have the theater, opera, 24 hour Chinese takeout/delivery and a huge section of town dedicated to drugs and hookers, but where else but a small town of 5000 people can an entire group commandeer a public park, with the cities blessing, to openly flout Hollywood copyright restrictions and put on a Dolby Digital show for the ward? SWEETNESS.

Agi and realized again what a cool place we've moved to--just sitting there in the cool dark of the evening chatting with our new neighbors, while all the neighborhood kids played together on the park equipment, and all the young men ran around shooting each other with marshmallow blowguns fashioned out of PVC pipe and duct tape. We met a new set of Catholic neighbors who came out to have fun as well (we are now no longer the newest family in the neighborhood) and we'll have fun with them talking about about becoming the fish out of water--they being the only Catholics in a sea of Mormons, and us just coming from a place where we were the only Mormons in a sea of Catholics, albeit non-practicing ones...).

Small-town life rules. Nights like last night make up for paying a little more at the grocery store or only having one Mexican restaurant to choose from instead of 10. We love it here.

On a related note--In the interest of ensuring we can stay in this awesome small town--I'd like to ask you all to kindly include us in your prayers and fast next month. I'm not one to typically ask for anything, but we could use the extra help and support your thoughts, prayers, and fasts could provide. I really need to find a job, and it is getting a little frustrating dealing with the non-success I've been finding in the past few weeks. I have come to realize I am likely not going to get anywhere on the "non-strength" of my own spiritual efforts, so please add your efforts to my own little weak ones. THANKS.

weight update...

2008-06-12T06:11:00.000-07:00

Just a quickie note--finished my ten day fast last night (celebrated with a decidedly unhealthy grilled cheese sandwich) and the final tally was 235! I lost a solid net 17.5 pounds in 10 days, after regaining 3 pounds in water overnight. I kinda sorta min-broke the fast Tuesday at noon, when, in having a business lunch with an old colleague, ordered a salad w/shrimp on it. So that alone probably prevented me from dropping the additional 2 pounds.

BUT HEY! 17 pounds in ten days... Fruits and veggies until Sunday night, and then I'll do another 10 day fast. I have also started my local gym membership at Nephi's one fitness center (for a small town, its pretty nice) so I'll be hitting the treadmill and weights every day as well. Agi is now on Day four of her 7-day fast, and feeling pretty good.

I have a preliminary weigh-in & physical with the National Guard on July 2nd at Camp Williams, to keep that option open while I explore this COlorado possibility with the Target DIstribution Center in Pueblo. I should be wrapping up the next ten day fast about a week before that physical, so with the exercise as well I should be in pretty good shape for it. At least that is the plan.

Speaking of the COlorado job, I had a great second phone interview yesterday and should know more by next week. Heck of a commute, if that pans out, but the pay is NICE and I'd have the option of having a three-day work week. If it doesn't pan out, I feel pretty good about going back to the Guard, freshening up my skills there, learning a new language, and going full-time. Decisions, decisions...

musings on weight loss...

2008-06-07T08:59:00.001-07:00

Update time...

As the title states, this will be a short entry on the my recent thoughts of weight loss. As everyone who knows me knows, ever since leaving the Utah National Guard and parking myself for good portions of the day behind a desk in 2003, I've ballooned up like crazy. Basically from 200 pounds to 250. Yecch. Now that I am home and contemplating the future (including a very possible return to the guard full-time), I am looking at ways to quickly and efficiently drop some poundage.

We live next to the Nephi City cemetery, which has 1.5 miles of wide, shaded, walking space, so a round trip from my house, through the cemetery and back, runs just over 3 miles. It makes for a nice brisk walk, and I am getting up to the point where I'll actually jog it. For now though, its a nice 45 minute power walk. Still found it to be too slow in helping me drop weight, so I am adding to it with the following:

I've read up a bit on the concept of 'fasting' for better health (spiritual, mental, and right now most importantly--for me--physical) and was intrigued. There is a plethora of info out there supporting the idea that extended fasting (I am not talking the traditional two meal, 24 hour fast that we typically do each month via our church responsibilities) is actually the best thing we can regularly do for our bodies. Basically by giving the entire digestive system a chance to rest and recover from the loads of processed crap we put into it, we emerge refreshed, invigorated, and sporting a sharp mental clarity/acuity that has been lacking.

There are 3-day, 7-day, 10-day, and even 40-day fast period "guides" that are readily available online. I read through them all and decided to really give the ten day fast a whirl.

I started Sunday night, following family dinner at the Cranes. To put it bluntly, for the last 132 hours I have subsisted on a daily diet of lemonade (made of purified water, freshly squeezed lemons, a few tablespoons of pure maple syrup, and a pinch of red cayenne pepper) and a nightly cup of herbal tea. Nothing more. No solid foods whatsoever.

Spartan, it is. I'm getting roughly 800-1000 calories a day, essentially from the maple syrup content of the lemonade, so it isn't like I have completely starved my body into some health danger.

Here's the kicker--after 5.5 complete days of these (halfway through my designated fast period) I feel FREAKING AWESOME. Seriously. Energetic yet calm, incredibly peaceful (no small feat considering the stress in my life recently) and flat out GOOD.

The hardest day was 2-3. That was the point where my body tried to kill me--saying HOLY CRAP PUT SOME FOOD IN MY BELLY! I've gone 24+ hours before with no food, so the end of day two was really the point where I'd hit my natural limit. I pushed through it though, and by mid-day 3, hunger was completely gone. I mean completely. Don't get me wrong, the SMELL of food drives me crazy, but not from hunger. I honestly feel like a have a comfortably full stomach. I read that extended fasts really trend to sharpen your senses as the body purges off all of its built in toxins. I'm not going to speak to the whole "toxin" idea, but I can say that my sense of smell is supercharged. SO the smell of food is particularly intense and inviting, but doesn't induce hunger per se.

At this point I feel like I could take this thing indefinitely. Obviously I am going to hold it to the 10 day period I mapped out, and on days 11,12,13 gradually reintroduce food back into my system, starting with chicken broth and soft fruit, and then building back into a regular diet by the end of day three (post-fast). Its a great chance to press the restart button on my
entire system, and to 'restart' by eating healthily afterward. Fresh fruit and veggies, lean cuts of meat, no junk food, soda, etc...

Now for the kicker--like I said, I am halfway through the 10 day fast--(meaning I'll stop this next Wednesday night (June 11th), and be back to a somewhat normal eating schedule by Sunday the 15th) and I have dropped --in 5 days-- 16 pounds. From 252 to 236. Agi is freaking out. She is claiming there is no way this can be healthy--that much loss in so short a time (frankly it is accelerating now). All I can say is that I feel GREAT. I am still working out in the yard, going for the occasional walk, and playing basketball with the kids. And all I am putting into my body is 8-10 glasses of maple-syrup infused lemon water, additional glasses of water, and a nightly 8 oz. herbal tea.

I have tons of energy. No headaches, no other aches, no weird or out of the ordinary body issues, nothing. And a real serene (I cringe at saying it--but 'zen-like') outlook right now. In a nutshell I feel fine. No, more than fine. Great. Outstanding. I even had a previously scheduled mini-physical checkup for a health insurance policy on day three of my fast, and I came through with flying colors--totally normal heart rate, blood pressure, etc...

So. I'll throw another entry on Wednesday after I finish with the final tallies of my ten-day fast. I had hoped to lose 10 pounds in 10 days. NOW it is looking like I could easily lose 20+. In ten days. Yowza!

Our remaining link to Budapest arrived!

2008-05-28T19:34:00.000-07:00

Our four pallets of household stuff arrived yesterday--meaning I spent the morning in SLC getting it through customs (an easy task) loading it into two minivans (thank you Eric) and hauling it down to my garage--where it awaits its final sorting.... 33 pieces! 14 black trunks, 10 pieces of luggage, 7 cardboard boxes, and 2 tents. Ali gladly posed on top of the whole pile...

The backyard is finally shaping up! Two years of basic neglect ensured that dandylions and other noxious weeds took over--I spent two weeks laying down thick layers of weedkiller, to no avail. The weeds laughed at me. So I did next what any rational parent with able-bodied teens would do--I sikked my boys on the lawn, and over a five day period they yanked out by hand approximately (in their words) a kajillion weeds. MY number came closer to 4000... In ANY case, the results are looking tremendous! I wish I had taken a before picture, but the after the after picture is 1000x better!

In other news--I've had a few good interviews these past two weeks. Too early to tell which will pan out. The job I'd really like is up in SLC, in a business park just up I80 from the airport, as a product manager for a large company that supplies Saks, Macy's, and Nordstroms with high-end cosmetics and supplements. And its an MLM-free company!! Who would have thunk! In Utah, no less! Naturally since it is in SLC, I would have to get a rental loft downtown--you know--to save on gas money (Agi rolls her eyes...) Heh Heh. We'll see. It would be a killer commute from Nephi... I might as well live in Menifee and drive to San Diego every day. Oh wait.....

It probably beats my other gainful employment idea--that of locking myself in the basement and finally cranking out the gory, mormon-themed thriller I've mused over for the last decade. You know--the one where one of the three Nephites goes bad, heads off on an unstoppable modern day killing spree, with only the other two Nephites, a renegade apostle, and the reconstituted Danites to stop him. They end up having to go all 'Shiz' on him in Missouri.... And in the epilogue, they'd stumble across a band of narcissistic, tortured, pale, skinny, abstinence-loving vampires in Oregon, and kill them all without a second thought :-). A real faith promoter! --Come on, who's with me? :-) I SMELL PULITZER!!!!

Home to Nephi...

2008-05-07T05:09:00.000-07:00

Now that we are semi-settled in Nephi (got home on May 3rd)--time to throw out an update! Haven't yet decided on a a new title for our blog, so we'll compromise with the interim Budapest-to-Nephi Palmers. The Nephi Palmers was just too "ehhhh...", and some of us aren't yet ready to detach from Budapest just yet. Call it paprika withdrawal syndrome...

Ah yes. Semi-settled. I say that because our garage is still full of unpacked luggage, and what IS unpacked is still piled around the house as we decide Where To Put Stuff. We basically transferred our gypsy caravan look from the airport to the house.

Not helping us abandon the whole gypsy theme is our basement--just after we had THOUGHT we'd fixed a leak in our water heater that flooded the basement in April, the main line to our house backs up (again) and floods it all over. Basically a repeat of last summer. Its now cleaned up, and thanks to the polite-yet-expensive gentleman from Rescue Rooter, we now have fiber-optic camera evidence that our main line, 9 feet underneath our driveway, is cleanly separated and about 3 inches off each other. I don't know who to voodoo-doll first--the previous owner who must have had the same water-back up problems we do (being we have only spent about 40 days total in the house since purchase, and it has backed up twice--like clockwork every three weeks) and 'conveniently' forgot to disclose it, or the idiot contractor who didn't lay pipe properly 12 years ago.

Judging from the settling in the driveway, the break has already been there for years on end. Mr. Rescue Rooter says something of this nature doesn't happen overnight or even over just two years. It settled a while back... Meaning the idiots who sold us our house knew about it and didn't disclose it. Meaning on top of all the drama of finding gainful employment, I now have to somehow find a way to spend 12K ripping up my driveway, digging down 9 feet, replacing a section of pipe, and backfilling the immense hole with two dumptruck loads of gravel to prevent further settling. Until then, to keep from flooding, I need to run a waterhose down the front back-drain-fill-stop pipe in the front yard and power flush the line--also helping shrink the sinkhole! Every time water runs down there, the sinkhole gets a little larger. One day the entire house will probably drop directly into the burning pit of hell. Perfect metaphor for our life right now :-).

ANYWHOO.... We did manage to sell most of our household furniture in Budapest before coming home. We were stuck in a Sophie's Choice of paying 15K to send 25k of furniture home, or selling the furniture for whatever we could get in 6 weeks. We compromised and sent three pallets and 1500lbs of books and smaller items home for 3K, and managed to sell off the rest of our stuff in Budapest. Thank you budapest.Craigslist.org! We also had to part with:

1. the close-to-fulfilled-dream of adopting a little girl
2. Our two awesome Vizsla dogs

3. The kids' awesome school
4. Our sweet branch.

On the plus side we:

1. No longer have to speak every month in church
2. Can allow the kids to go into gas stations again without blindfolds.
3. Will have real school sports teams (now if only Nephi schools had soccer teams, the boys' college scholarships would already be in hand...)
and
4. Can watch the Jazz games on real live TV, not a crappy streaming internet radio feed at 3AM.

I jest. One day we'll look back at this whole clusterfrak (come on, I know you all secretly love Battlestar Galactica...) of a spring and shake our heads and laugh. Sometime after we fix our driveway that is... they say adversity makes you stronger. We'll be a veritable family of supermen when this is all over.

The kids are excited that the summer break for them came three weeks early. We aren't going to bother putting them into school for only three weeks. I'd rather they be the 'new' kids at the START of the school year, when chances are they'll have other new kids in new classes with new teachers anyway. Should make the transition easier for them. Plus Agi and I have the three weeks to put them to work weeding the garden and clearing out rocks and logs from the landscaping.

Agi has taken to her gardening these last two days with evangelical zeal. She finally has the space to get her pre-marriage gardening freak on. It is awesome to behold. We'll be doing tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, green beans, and who knows what else...

Well--the day dawn is breaking! Time to get back to work. Today is lawn mowing day and -rip-the-rest-of-the-carpet-out-of-the-basement-day. And roto-till-the-garden-day. And of course find-a-job-to-pay-the-mortgage-day :-) ....

New phases...

2008-03-10T12:59:00.001-07:00

What a whirlwind week--Agi and I & the kids are returning to Utah, looking forward to finally "nesting" in our Nephi home! After 4&half great years for TNI in SE Europe, my expat period is up. I guess I knew the day would be coming sometime, considering the typical expat for our company is abroad for only 2-3 years. We've exceeded that by almost 18 months already. We should be home around the 1st of May.

We leave Hungary with a ton of great memories, great friends, great experiences, and great pictures. We'll miss our branch dearly. As fate would have it, our branch is emptying out as well--most of the families are leaving this summer as well, so we are in good company.

I do regret having to change the name of our blog--somehow the "Nephi Palmers" doesn't have quite the ring to it as "The Budapest Palmers". But in light of our great exciting new chapter in life, we'll always still be on some level...

"The Budapest Palmers"...

Hvar business trip with the kids...

2008-03-01T11:39:00.000-08:00

Fun fun fun. I finally took a long delayed trip to the Croatian island of Hvar to do the final site-survey and approval of our Big Fall Event. Once in a while I'll take a couple of kids with me on these trips to get them out of the house and their mother's hair, and Aidan and Ali drew the lucky straws... These pics were all taken earlier today.

Its now 9 PM and both kids are completely conked out here at the hotel room. LOOOONG 24 hours for them! This trip started last night (Friday) at 6PM, when we left Budapest for Zagreb. We got in to Zagreb after 10 and crashed at the Zagreb apartment--waking up at 4 AM for the 4 hour drive to Split, Croatia, with my Croatian Assistant Manager Jasmin (despite the stripper name, he's actually a guy and a really really cool one at that...). At 9AM from the Split Harbor we boarded the large passenger Ferry to Hvar, an awesome island with 3000 residents, and about 20,000 tourists and sun-seekers in the summer.

We arrived at 1030 AM to Hvar, disembarked, checked into the hotel, met our hosts, did a thorough review of the facilities and technical capabilities, and wrapped it all up around 330 PM. We spent the rest of the day checking out this awesome stone village that, similar to Dubrovnik and the hundreds of other picturesque locations up and down the coasts and islands of Croatia, is a millennium old. This included a HUGE hike up the side of the mountain to the old castle fortress overlooking the city and bay.

Afterwards I took the kids swimming in the hotel's indoor pool, which is really cool--crystal-clear seawater is pumped in and heated. Ali, fish that she is, did not want to come out. Two very happy kids have now crashed into bed, even before the pizza for dinner arrived.

This gives me a little time to throw these pics on the blog and finish writing up my Big Event Plan and site review. WHOOOHOO!

Enjoy!

Ali and Aidan on the Hvar Ferry...

Dad & Ali on the Ferry Deck...

The Adriatic winds and Ali's Hair...

Me & kids from the castle (after a 5000+ step hike!)

Ali after only 2000 of the 5000 steps...

Ali auditioning for "The Ring".

You know you are in a commie hospital when....

2008-02-29T00:50:00.000-08:00

Your doctors are AWESOME -(SERIOUSLY!) but......

1. While waiting (for 4 hours) for someone to take your wife's cast off, a piece of ceiling plaster falls on your head.

2. Dinner is a rancid cup of sour cream, served with a dry piece of bread.

3. WOW! Breakfast is the same!

4. Your shared bathroom is moldier than French Cheese.

5. Nurse Ratched apprenticed here.

and finally....

6. A nurse says any of the following:
a. Just shut up. It is supposed to hurt. You are in a HOSPITAL.
b. WHO RANG THAT DAMN BUZZER AGAIN?
c. Well maybe NEXT time you'll bring your own water then , woncha...
d. AAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!

Just a little entry to pass the time while waiting for Agi's cast to come off. We are back where she spent 4 fun and aexotic nights last month, and htought we'd reminisce a bit...

So far, so good. We apparently are not crazy.

2008-02-20T11:43:00.000-08:00

One more step forward on our quest to adopt here in Hungary. Monday, Agi & met with the Agency-appointed family psychologist for a few hours. It is required of all applicants-- before any of you think that the meeting was called to counter any possible assumptions that, we as 'crazy mormons with 4 kids already' are a threat to adoptable children everywhere. Whew.

Apparently we are pretty normal--in fact, they made no bones about telling us that we are really now near the top of the list, thanks to our willingness to take a girl of Roma (gypsy) descent up to six years old. Sad fact of life in Hungary, that the vast majority of people over here are fairly prejudiced when it comes to gypsy children--even when adopting.

There are two more home visits scheduled--one for the psychologist to meet the kids, and another for the Agency to determine whether or not our home is appropriate for children. Guess I better ditch the shark-filled kiddy pool in the basement, and that sandbox of broken glass and cigarette butts that I gave the kids for Christmas. Ashton will be heartbroken.

This has all moved REALLY quickly. Where the typical wait time is 18+ months, they are frankly telling us that we will likely have our new child before summer starts. Considering we officially started 4 weeks ago, this is QUICK! Offhand the psychologist mentioned as we were leaving that at the group home where she works, she has a set of siblings consisting of a 6 year old girl and twin 5 year old boys. Hmmmmmm..... Ouch. Agi is now stabbing me in the back of the head with a fork.

We'll keep ya posted....

Happy Birthday Ali!

2008-02-19T11:22:00.001-08:00

Ali turned 9 today. I know this because she has been reminding me for the last two months :-) She seemed to have mistaken today for Christmas, since she wanted to celebrate first thing in the morning.

She also really enjoyed the chocolate cake....

This picture has nothing to do with Ali's birthday. Just love my youngest's many faces...

The spirit of Curt Cobain lives on man! Plus these Cini-Minis are AWESOME!

2008-02-17T22:25:00.000-08:00

In the interest of extending my life I'm supposed to throw a lengthy entry in here. Not so much because I have something particularly interesting or important to say, but because on pain of death I was told to get something on the page that would push down the picture of Agi's gnarly leg stitches. Yep. Agi says the "funny ha-ha" effect of seeing her nasti-licious leg wound has long since worn off. Now apparently its just gross and reminds her of the emails I forward on from Ed (who wins the prize for coolest forwarded emails by the way...).

Soooo. I'll put up a different picture. Like this one I took Saturday of Ali, who seemed, for an afternoon, to have channeled a new personal style straight from Seattle circa 1992. "The spirit of Curt Cobain lives on man! Plus these Cini-Minis are AWESOME!"

Stitches picture

2008-02-12T11:38:00.000-08:00

And here is the photo...

Agi'sstitches get removed...

2008-02-12T10:43:00.000-08:00

How's this for a cool picture of Agi's leg? I snuck in the photo from the cast-changing session, when the stitched were removed and a new cast applied. Pretty gross. EQ thought it was cool though, as did most of the people I showed them to at my friend's wedding this weekend.

We're home. And sick...

2008-01-31T01:53:00.000-08:00

Ahhhh, yeahhhhh. The horrendous trials of the Budapest Palmer's know no boundaries :-). Woe is us. We suffereth neverending trials of misery and pain... Steinbeck will emerge from his coffin and compose a new tome dedicated just to us: Grapes of Wrath 2: Electric Budapest Breaky-leg Boogaloo.

I jest. We's lucky peoples.

Agi is home from the hospital and resting comfortably, happy to be back in her own bad and away from the wailing psychotic roommate she had in the hospital. Now I can't say this for a surety, (since I don't know exactly what I do in my sleep) but I am fairly certain Agi's new/old roommate at Casa Palmer does not scoop out the contents of a soiled Depends and fling it around the room... Small blessings :-)

I cleared the couch out of my office and moved our bed into it --being on the main floor, Agi wins by not having to hop up and down a windy staircase. Thoughtful of me, eh?

I actually win in this equation as well--Agi had laid down the law a few years back that we would no longer have a home theater system set up in our bedroom. WIth this new arrangement, I was able to crawl into bed in my office last night and watch "Blue Harvest" (The Family Guy Star Wars Spoof) in all its Bose-inspired glory on the office wall. He he. So this whole break a leg thing was just an elaborate, complicated ploy to restore cinema to its proper place!

Seriously, it is so good to have Agi home, and her parents have been a huge help these past few days, particularly since the kids(and me) have come down with the flu this week, in succession. Ali and Andrew are now finished and back at school, Aidan and Ashton are wrapping up, and Agi and I just started. Super. I can't even remember the last time I was sick. Literally been years. I probably picked up some super-bug at the hospital.

Thanks for all of your thoughts and prayers this last week.

Aaron & Agi

Agi's accident...

2008-01-25T13:39:00.000-08:00

This is just a quick note to let everyone know Agi took a nasty fall this morning (about 14 hours ago) in our basement stairwell, on the spiral cement steps. She has just now come out of a 3 hour surgery to repair her lower leg. her ankle was dislocated completely from its socket, and her tibia was broken in 3 places--none of them clean breaks. After surgery the doctor told me this was the worst lower leg break he'd ever worked with. The bone essentially shattered, and they had to clean out large pieces/splinters of bone fragment, use about 12 screws to bolt the remaining pieces of bone back together, and graft a 14 cm titanium rod in as well. the screws will come out in a year, the rod is there for life.

I'd made the decision to stay home for work today in order to take Ali to a doctor's appointment for her lingering flu. This turned out to be a good decision, as otherwise Agi would have been trapped on the stairwell with only a sick 9 year old for company. Knowing Agi though, she would have dragged herself up the staircase, made lunch for Ali, ironed the laundry, and then driven herself to the ER.

Agi's been a REAL trooper through this. I dare anyone to go through the process of having two doctors grasp your shattered leg and hold it firmly while a third shoves a dislocated ankle back into the socket. WIth no anesthetic, not even an advil. HOLY. FREAKING. COW. I married the female terminator. I can never, ever, ever, complain about anything painful. ever. again.

Frivolity aside, I ams asking all of you to keep Agi in your prayers for the next little while. We won't get the full details of the extent of her leg issues until tomorrow morning, as the doctor had to go back into another surgery, but Agi is now out and sleeping. She is expected to be kept in the hospital for 5 days. I'll be back in the morning and through most of the weekend.

She's resting as peacefully as one can in an underfunded commie hospital that has broken tile floors, mold on the ceiling, and a "bring-your-own-eating-utensils-towels-and-toilet-paper" policy, courtesy of Hungary's socialist government health-care-for-all system. Ironically, the same system that Hillary seems bent on giving to all of us in the US of A.

Cedars of SInai this hospital is not, but the doctors are awesome and experts in their field. THey just hate working with ratty equipment and derelict surroundings.

I'll keep everyone posted. Love you guys.

Aaron & the Terminatrix & family

Happy Procrastinatory New Year!

2008-01-20T06:59:00.000-08:00

I had 5 days of vacation last week. Or so I thought. Agi and I had some very specific tasks to attend to regarding a project we've been debating on and discussing for going on 2 years now. We decided to finally move forward, so I officially took off 5 days from work. And of course (thank you, Law of Murphy...)events at work guaranteed that my five-days-off turned into 5-days-off-in-your-dreams... Yep. I ended up spending just about as much time at the office and on the computer as I usually do.

THe good news is, that despite all the drama at the office, I still was able to get out there and start the process on this other event. And I guess we'll announce it now. Agi and I are going to try and adopt while we are here in Hungary. We got our paperwork filled out and are officially on The List. Meaning that if a situation came up that meets our stipulations, we get a call tomorrow.

We still have a few other appointments to take care--(visit with the psyschologist, medical checkup, writing our family histories for the state agency, etc...) but the bottom line is, WE ARE ON THE CLOCK! I hope it happens sooner rather than later. Agi and I are very, very excited about this.

IT isn't a decision we made lightly. We both feel our family isn't complete yet, but health issues really complicate future pregnancies for Agi. This is the perfect, location, and opportunity for us to do this. I think we are in Hungary for this reason.

We feel strongly about adopting a little girl. We've put in for an older girl, up to 6 and half (by Hungarian law we are only allowed to adopt a child at least 18 months younger than our natural-born youngest). We've also indicated we would gladly take siblings as well, so there is a chance we could get two sisters, or a girl and a little brother. We are putting it in the Lord's hands. Our options really go up, as most Hungarians wanting to adopt typically want perfect newborn infants that are non-gypsy (Roma). We feel better abut finding a child who others may have looked over. It is a sad state of affairs, but indications here are that if a child reaches 6 or 7 and still isn't adopted, chances are they never will be, and will spend their childhoods either in a state-run institution or flitting from foster home to foster home.

So that's our big news. Keep us, and our new daughter(s)-wherever they are right now- in your prayers.

Aaron & Agi

The year be ticking away....

2007-12-30T12:51:00.000-08:00

It's good to be home with nowhere to go for another couple days. Between Christmas and now we spent a full day in Debrecen with Agi's parents, where we recreated the Hungarian Christmas tree experience. Its awesome, in only an awesome way that Smokey the Bear can nervously appreciate. Take a little fir Christmas tree that is now thoroughly dried out and brittle. Tie a bunch of cheap Chinese fire sparklers to the branches. Light. Sing and take pictures, all while crossing your fingers that the sparks now shooting off the tree/kindling don't set it & the apartment on fire. AWESOME TRADITION! It was well worth the 4 hour round trip, particularly since I love love love being able to drive 110 MPH on the freeways here. Really had a lot of fun visiting with Agi's folks and her younger brother & fiance.

ON the 27th and 28th, I took the family to Zagreb, Croatia, where I had scheduled our company Christmas dinner for my Croatian office staff. This was an 8 hour round trip. We all went to a steakhouse outside Zagreb dedicated to all things "western" in the best US sense of the word. Restaurant was called Fort Apache, and was decorated in a period style best described as "1880's saloon". Everything paneled in wood, with animal heads on the walls, plank wood chairs and tables, and 42 oz porterhouse steaks. I was in heaven. As were our two vizsla's when we brought them back the bones the next day. Since we have a very small cozy apartment there (to save the company money on hotels for my frequent work trips) we all stayed overnight and the kids had a blast at the "adventure" of it. As did Agi.

The apartment itself is located in a 1970's-era HUGE communist apartment building, all cement. The apartment is on the 11th floor, with a great little view from the balcony of a soccer field and park. The apartment (all 500 square feet of it) was gutted and rebuilt before we took over it. Looks really nice inside! I've got to hand it to the Yugoslavian communists. They planned and built their commie-era housing a whole lot better than the Hungarians did. While the Hungarian buildings of this era all have very cramped lobbies and dark hallways (reminding me of what substandard public housing in Cabrini-Green must look like) this building has huge lobbies on each floor, lots of light, and they've been thoroughly updated with security cameras in all stairwells, lobbies, and elevators. Each floor is secured for just the residents on that floor, and each floor has its own locked entryways and access points. Very secure. We like. It was also built to withstand a 9.0 earthquake.

It's now 10 PM on Sunday night and I've wrapped up my last Sunday of the year. I've had to conduct our church services for the last two months. Had a bit of a scare today when my main speaker ended up in bed with a bad bad case of the cold. Thankfully his mission-companion wife roped in an elder to stand in, so I wasn't put into the awkward position of having to ad-lib for 20 minutes at the end of the meeting. The topics for the day were goal setting and procrastination, and dare-say I am a pro in this category. I've been telling myself for a while now that I need to prepare a couple of good solid talks and just always have them ready for situations just like this. I guess I'll do that in 2008. Promise :-) .

Andrew was the youth speaker (funny, how when your dad is in the branch presidency, you seem to be youth speaker a whole lot more often...) and did a good job. He talked about goal-setting for preparing for a mission.

We have our Branch New Year's Eve party tomorrow night at our BP's house. It's always fun & a cool tradition for us. We've got a great little branch here in Budapest. Agi's going to make her famous mashed potatoes for the party. SHe throws in just the right amount of milk, pepper, sour cream, and a little grated cheese. Never any leftovers.

Speaking of leftovers, I've been having fun mowing through our leftover Christmas ham. We tried to make the best reproduction of a Honey-Baked Ham that we could, and Agi got pretty darn close. She found a great recipe online for the honey-baste and we soaked that sucker good while it was cooking.

Hope the whole family had a great Christmas and WILL have a great new year. We love hearing from you guys, and we really enjoy reading your blogs. I love how technology helps us communicate so easily.

I'm in the process of making all the little additions to this page to get a little more personalized. I've been cribbing some of the better ideas from the other blogs I've seen. Hence the cool little bookshelf you now see to your right.

Love all you guys. Hope you enjoy our little musings on life, liberty (or lack thereof) and the pursuit of happiness in SE Europe. Aaron

Christmas morning...

2007-12-25T07:11:00.000-08:00

Actually Christmas afternoon here in Budapest. Its now 4 pm and Agi and I are happily recuperating from a long day that started VERY early this morning. We finally got the kids packed off to bed around 9 pm, after our Christmas evening ritual of opening the cousins' gifts (thanks everybody!) and reading the Christmas story from the BofM, Luke, and Matthew.

We then set about to the real work of getting presents out and ready. In Hungary nothing goes under the tree until the kids are off to bed on Christmas Eve. Helps with the Santa Clause story. THe older kids have been great about not spoiling the illusion for Ashton. HE very carefully laid out cookies and milk for the Big Guy (ironically enough, a Big Guy actually ate them not too much later...) and then looked around and mused worriedly about how Santa would get into the house without the benefit of the chimney. I let hem know we'd leave the porch door unlocked, and he was fine with that for 30 seconds. Then came the worry about whether or not he'd find the door. And if the dogs would attack him. And if there were enough cookies out. We squared all that away and got him off to bed.

We got the kids laptops for Christmas this year. I spent four hours upgrading programs and games to them after the kids went down. They really come in handy for their school work, and I was starting to cringe every time I let them near my Mac. A couple of months ago I found a REALLY CHEAP lot of 5 older IBM laptops (T30's), corporate lease-return models that had been refurbished after 30 months of business use somewhere. they came with everything the kids need for school (Office, XP, etc...) and Agi and I added a few bargain bin computer games to the mix. It was quite the surprise for them. We brought them out last after the other presents of socks, books and board games had been opened. And Ali's High School Musical stuff. She's outgrowing her clothes so quickly. As has Andrew.

We'd told Andrew last year that if he got his grades up to consistent 5's (our equivalent of A's) he'd get a laptop either at the end of the winter semester or the end of the year. I appreciated seeing him try so hard, and he did get close. But he knew he didn't quite get to the standard we'd set for him, so he was visibly disappointed as the semester ended and he realized he wasn't going to get a laptop. What sealed it for me was his determination to make even more progress in the second half of the year, in order to get the laptop by June.

The kids have spent the whole day thus far at the dining table playing with their new laptops, with the exception of Ali, who is upstairs rocking out to saccharin-ey High School Music Tunes blasting out of the TV.

At least my Mac is now safely preserved for another year or so.

Now we are facing the fun ordeal of hearing "High School Musical 2" tunes in our heads for the next 12 months. A small price to pay for happy, polite, well-adjusted kids.

We wish everyone out there a very Merry Christmas and wonderful new year!

best,

Aaron & Agi & Andrew & Aidan & Ali & Ashton

MY BIRTHDAY BOY...

2007-12-21T15:35:00.000-08:00

Well well. ITs 1236 AM in Budapest and I am now the officially proud owner of a teenager. Andrew turns 13 today. He joins Carina as the only other teenager in the extended Palmer family brood, and Agi & I join Janene and BIll as two more aged, cantankerous parents of said teens. Andrew's been waiting for this day for a long time now. Somehow he thinks it will bestow on him magical mystical teenage powers of moodiness, superhuman strength, and the ability to talk back to his parents with no repercussions. Ha. Looking forward to bursting that bubble.

In all seriousness, he is an extremely good kid. Not many of us have 13 year olds who set good examples for US. He's MORE than happy to point out my weaknesses, whether it be occasionally missing family prayer in the morning or muttering an unmentionable term under my breath when I think no one is around. By his count I owe him a couple hundred bucks from the swear jar. Not my proudest habit. But I am glad he strives to keep me up and up.

The time here in Budapest has been good for the kids. I think they are probably closer to us as a family than they would be otherwise, being in a strange country. Not so strange anymore, after four years, but those early times were great in helping them bond together.

So 13. I have to actually work a little tomorrow (Christmas parties, lunches, and recognition dinners and the like) so I took him out tonight, just the two of us, to grab a bite and see National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets. Utterly predictable, with kinda trite cheesy dialogue, and absolutely loads of fun. I wish Hollywierd would crank out more of these--exciting action flicks with no sex and profanity. Just non-stop action that makes every 13 year old want to study archeology and put on an Indiana Jones hat. We had a great time.

Time to go to bed. In the next 36 hours I have to: entertain 100 distributors of my company's products, prepare a nice presentation for said company, work on the 2008 budgets for 6 countries, celebrate a 13 year old's birthday, and put together a Christmas program for Sunday that has been eluding me for the last two months. Procrastination, thy name is Aaron.

Back from the Mother Country...

2007-12-18T11:01:00.000-08:00

The wife and I are back in Budapest from our awesomely awesome weekend in Utah. We spent the weekend at Sundance at a corporate retreat/get-together. We had to sing Karaoke as an initiation. To be perfectly honest, it wasn't as bad as those of you that know me, might think. Oh it was BAD, but but in a good karaoke way. We at least didn't get boo-ed off the stage, like another group did. All in all, good solid fun. We sang (or made weird vocal noises that approximated singing) California Girls. The Beach Boys version. Not the DAvid Lee Roth version.

The cabin we stayed in was nice, the dinner was great, and the other part of my first-time initiation involved getting a watch worth much more than any other article of clothing I've ever put on. So I'm happy. I work for a great company, going on 9 years now.

As usual, we continued our boycotting of purchasing items in Hungary by loading up on all of our family Christmas items in Utah. We waddled through customs again with 5 full luggages of 70 lbs each, and three carry-ons loaded with electronics. Ho ho ho. Apparently we just missed a local airport strike upon arrival. Delta had announced we might be diverted to another airport had the strike started. We literally wouldn't have been allowed from the plane.

However, the strike DID apply to all train traffic, meaning I had to spend my first full day back driving my inlaws back to Debrecen, a round trip of about 300 miles. Just the way I wanted to spend my first day back. IT would have been more tolerable, but my new ipod car adapter sucks. Our old one broke and I haven't been able to find the exact replacement.

We just put up our CHristmas tonight. Count your blessings, fellow Americans. A decent tree in Hungary, with a a stand, runs about 140 bucks. OUCH. I got it stuffed into the back of my ever increasingly dirty Honda and into the garage and up the stairs. We just finished decorating. Only two broken ornaments. Not bad for a typical Palmer family session.

Norm MacDonald is awesome...

2007-12-11T02:23:00.001-08:00

Listening to Norm MacDonald is one of life's simple, yet very funny pleasures. I'm sitting in my Juab County house right now at 3 AM, enjoying the not so great side effects of jet-lag. Like being wide-awake at 3 AM.

To back up: I am in Utah for a few days by myself while Agi hangs back in Budapest giving the kids a few more days of 1-parent living before handing them off to the grandparents. I have some winter corporate training to do with my job, followed up by an executive Christmas party over the weekend. Agi is joining me for that. As this is our first invite to this particular party, we get to look forward to a hazing of Christmas karaoke in front of a hooting audience of my peers up at the Sundance ski resort. Yeehaw! I'm sure Agi is thrilled at participating in this once in a lifetime special occasion... :-)

Back to jet-lag. And Norm. I crawled back to the house last night, took one look at the mess I've made in unpacking, and fell asleep at 6 PM, Just woke up. I have 4 hours to kill before heading back up I15 to my office, so I had a couple of choices--either clean the house at 3AM, or finally get around to doing another blog-entry. Guess which one won out... I do need to get to the cleaning though. The house currently looks like Jed Clampett's, what with my wet laundry hanging out to dry all over every available chair, light fixture, and table. Typical me. I went out and bought a washer and dryer set for the house last summer without checking on the type I needed to buy. Now I have an electric dryer gather dust in the garage while the GAS DRYER stub pokes out of the wall, all useless and alone. Of course to save money I bought the thing via classified ad. Good luck getting my money back on that one. Anyone need a good electric dryer?

I digress. Where was I? Flight, jet lag, dirty laundry, Clampett, blog, radio, oh yeah--Dennis Miller & Norm MacDonald.

I've become quite enamored of the Dennis Miller radio show, which cranked up over the summer. He is an absolutely underrated talent, someone I've enjoyed listening to since his weekend update days at SNL. HIs brand of conservative-libertarianism is probably closest to my own political leanings. Anf he's hysterical funny. And brings on guests like Norm and Dana Carvey.

Norm is my favorite comedian. I just love the dry pithy sense of humor. If I was a coffee drinker I would have spit it out my nose at this last joke he kicked out a couple minutes ago:

"Ted Kennedy recently received an 8 million dollar advance to pen his memoirs. When asked if he would cover Chappaquidick, he indicated--'I'll crash off that bridge when I come to it'".

Somebody give this guy a TV show.

I had a great weekend! As is my yearly tradition now, I spend my birthday alone in Utah, thanks to the vagaries of my corporate travel schedule. IT always seems to be right at this time of the year. This year I decided would be different--since my bro Jared's birthday is almost one month a way from mine, I thought it would be cool if he came to SLC and we'd party hard over the weekend. And by "party hard" I mean PARTY HARD! AS IN 'HARD-CORE!" Like, watch BYU lose to MSU in the Energy Solutions Arena! Crash a Walmart at 3 AM looking for socks and Hanna Montana DVD's! Trash the after-party at the Panda Express! and top it all off-- watch Glenn Beck bear testimony at once to both the truthiness of the gospel and the inanity of HillBilly Clinton! WHOOHOO! Nobody can accuse these Palmer Boys of going soft. When we party, we PARTY! One omission--we actually topped it off by having dinner with the family at Kari's house, gabbing up a storm, and playing Nerts around a card table. And by "playing nerts around a card table", I mean snoring in a beanbag chair while others play Nerts around a card table. Awesome end to an awesome weekend.

In all seriousness hanging with Jared this weekend was awesome. We need to do it more often. That pesky distance though, between Budapest & San Diego makes it a liiittle difficult to do. Ah well. Grab the moments when you can. Glenn Beck is lucky he got to be a part of our weekend.

In other just-as-important-if-not-more-important news, the kids in Budapest are doing OK. If by "OK" one means still alive. They have this talent of really getting on Agi's nerves as soon as I leave town. The second I leave, their usual complaining turns into full-blown Doug-and-Wendy-Whiner mode. Agi gets to call and vent, and I get to do some awesome disciplining-by-phone. Not going to lie--there is a bit of a power rush that comes from making a kid apologize to his mother, do his homework, and then send him to bed at 4 PM. ALL OVER THE PHONE! Agi si awesome. She does all the heavy lifting in this department. I am called on, when needed, to use my outside voice and send the kids scurrying for the corners as the occasion calls for.

Seriously, kids are doing very well at school, Hungarian language and all. Andrew reminds me of me at that age. Lazy as sin, yet just smart enough to skate by at school with B+'s and A's. All while spending more effort at avoiding homework than actually doing it. That talent bit my in the arse later when I realized at the university that "holy crap! I do have to study! Now how exactly is that done?"

I fear Andrew will fall into the same mode if he doesn't get the study habits down now, need them or not. This is all the more impressive as we are in Hungary, where the school curriculum makes US curriculum look like Dora the Explorer-level course work. Andrew is in 7th grade and is already tackling chemistry, physics, and "themthar maths that uses the letters!" SO. Agi and I have a never-ending struggle at getting Andrew to study and finish his homework on time.

Now I am just rambling. I am going to sign off now and get about to more important tasks. Like making this place look presentable for Agi when she gets in tomorrow night. I am sure there is nothing she'd rather see, after spending 16 hours on flights fending off the lecherous advances of fake-sleeping drunk germans (you just have to ask her about it...) than a messy house decorated with my semi dry laundry. I should probably also go through the fridge and toss out all the expired mayo and yoghurt. Took me awhile to find the source of the smell.

Happy holidays everybody. And by Happy Holidays I mean Merry Christmas and by everybody I mean the three of you that read this blog. Including Agi.

Love, Aaron. Who is 36 today, and doesn't act a day over 14.

Customer Service

2007-09-28T20:30:00.000-07:00

Never thought I'd see the day when "Jiffy Lube" became a place dearly missed.

I had to take our Honda in for an oil change the other day, and despite making an appointment in advance with the dealer's service, they had no record of me on file when I arrived. Then a one-hour promised wait turned into three. TO CHANGE MY OIL. I lost half my day, and paid 150 bucks for the privilege. Hungary has taken huge strides in the past decade towards implementing quality levels of customer service, but that sure wasn't on display yesterday. It was the perfect storm of ineptitude. Throw in the ripped up roads currently being fixed, and, all told with my driving to and from the dealer, I spent 5+ hours on my friggin' OIL CHANGE!

The road construction is another irritating issue. In a normal setting, minor roadwork would be conducted overnight, when traffic is least, thus minimizing the delays to commuters during the day. Not in Hungary! THe fixation with the 8-5 schedule is at play even here, meaning even road crews work bankers' hours. You can imagine what this does to commutes. Mind-bogglingly inept! THey'd get much more work accomplished, in a much quicker timeframe, and without inconveniencing thousands of morning commuters, by simply WORKING FROM 10pm -6am. NOPE.

But I digress from my otherwise happy existence in Hungary. The kids are doing well in school, we are getting rain, and I'm getting ready to open another country this Monday, meaning I'll get to spend a lot more time in Romania. Hired new employees to service the new market, and my staff has been awesome in getting this launch ready. Life's good.

And today we celebrate my youngest's birthday! Happy 7th!

kids & travel...

2007-09-03T12:43:00.000-07:00

What a mess this morning. We are back to school days in Budapest, meaning the roads are crowded as what seems like half the city is taking their broods by car to school. Its really only about 10%, but BP's tiny roads (two lanes here equal a single lane in a Utah suburb) really make one think that not only is the entire city in their car and on the road, but that Vienna picked up and drove over on a whim as well.

The kids, as expected, had great days. I love that the kids have essentially the same classmates and teachers each year. No adjustment period necessary. Andrew drew first blood on the homework front--he's got five days to write an essay on his Summer Vacation. Natch, he'd like to put it off until the last minute. That ENDS this year--we got him started on it right way.

I picked them all up at 2 and took them home. The joy of working almost 24/7 means having the liberty to sneak away from the office on occasion and pick the kids up. Makes for a nice late afternoon lunch hour.

Tomorrow after dropping hte kids off is is off on a routine jaunt to Zagreb, Croatia for a meeting with my staff out there, as well as a sit-down at the corporate HQ of the regional bank we are trying to take our business over to. Long day tomorrow--out the door at 650 am, back by 9 or 10 at night. Meh. it seems so routine, but man, the Utah equivalent would be heading out early from Nephi for Vegas, pulling in for a two hour meeting followed by a 1 hour staff meeting/lunch, then a straight drive back. Would I be that crazy? Prolly.

Almost had a coronary last night thanks to Delta. Went online to double check our reservations for Hawaii, and naturally, Agi's Skymiles-based reservation had disappeared. It took me over three hours on the phone to fix it. THREE HOURS. All ended well though. By the end, not only was her reservation rebuilt and synched with mine, but we were both upgraded to business and first class for the the flight over. Not bad for three hours of phone hell.

Couple more work emails (that no one will answer, as I just realized that today was LABOR DAY in the US, meaning the office is closed. Congrats to me--just worked a holiday. Again.

The big initial post...

2007-09-01T00:05:00.000-07:00

Hey family & friends--the Palmers in Budapest have finally taken the big step onto the "internets" (hehe--as one unfortunate senator called it). We are far from the serial types of bloggers who post every little mundane detail of their lives online--one-- we have no time for that and two-- what few people who do stumble onto our site would be bored to tears.

This is more to allow us to more easily stay in touch with family and friends at "home" (a relative term, since we have been here now in the big BP for almost four years...).

"Home" will always be Utah, it appears. After an extended debate on where to become an actual homeowner, Budapest or Utah, we settled on Utah and found a great place last summer. It needs a bit of work, but should be a fun project with a lot of yard and garden to play with. So we rent and live in BP, and own & visit in Utah.

Ali and Andrew just returned from their first-week class trips for school. Aidan is still on his and will return this weekend. We love that about their school, Lauder Javne--in the younger grades the first few days are always set aside for a 2-3 day educational trip to somewhere in Hungary that allows the classmates to bond. There is an element of cohesiveness here that seems to be missing in other academic settings. I also like the fact the keep the same set of main teachers through the first 5 grades. The teachers get really familiar with the students strengths and weaknesses, and are far better able to tailor the program to each kid's needs and abilities from year to year.

Ashton is getting homeschooled this year for first grade. I think Agi & I can handle that curriculum :-) We had hoped to get him into the same school but inadvertently waited too long to submit his paperwork last year, and he ended up on a waiting list. Rather than put him somewhere else, we'll homeschool and get him next year. He's flying along, already reading pretty well anyway.

Agi & I have a long-awaited company trip to Hawaii coming up that we are excited about. It'll be good to get away for a week.