Photos: Barbara Jean Wilcox Goodale

Back in a November entry "Tribute: Barbara Jean Wilcox Goodale" I paid tribute to my mom on the third anniversary of her death. At the time, I promised to post some pictures of my mom. Well... I've finally gotten a chance to do that. At the risk of having my sisters cry as I did as I was going through these, enjoy the photos below, and 160 archived photos posted on Flickr; please click here.

Ahhh... such a cute little baby!!!

Man... was Mom a hottie, or what?!?!?!

Barbara and all of us kids in about 1976. Man... I simply GOTTA find a suit like this again!!! :-)

Michelle and I on our wedding day, March 26, 1988, with both of our moms.

Barbara and all four of her wonderful children in Junction City, Oregon, in about 2000 (perhaps my sisters here can help me with the exact date of this photo).

Sledding!!!

We spent Christmas Eve day sledding in the hills near Idaho City (about a one-hour drive from home). We went with our friends, the Ashbys. Below are some links to videos I shot of the kids sledding over a jump they made in the snow, as well as several photos from the day. For a link to all the photos I posted, please click here.

• Video of Mark sledding over the jump.
• Video of Andrew sledding over the jump.
• Video of Christopher sledding over the jump (1).
• Video of Christopher sledding over the jump (2).
• Video of Justin sledding over the jump (1).
• Video of Justin sledding over the jump (2).

Steven sledding down the hill!!!

Justin catching some serious air over the jump! It doesn't look like his landing will be too comfortable!!!

Christopher catching air over the jump while doing a 180 from stomach to back!!!

Andrew with his trademark silly face while catching air on a jump!!!

Look at the nice sons standing by laughing at Mom going over a jump!!!

Silly Brianna going over a jump!!!

Andrew catching some big air over a jump!!!

Swimming, Anyone???

Below is a picture of our (closed-for-the-season) pool this morning, after a night of snow. By the time I took this photo, the kids and the dog had already been out there playing, trampling down all the snow, but you still get the idea. Anyone for a nice cool dip, anyone? Contrast that with the two photos below, taken at Justin's graduation party we had at our pool back on May 25th.

Forget swim trunks... ice skates, anyone???

John's BBQ chicken was the hit of all of our pool parties this summer!

Nice dive, A.J.!!!

Birthday Tradition

Another tradition that we have in our family is that for each person's birthday, that person picks a restaurant, and we all go do dinner. Well... even though Brianna and Michelle had birthdays earlier this month, because December is so hectic, we just finally got around to doing that tonight. Brianna chose Olive Garden. Here's a picture from dinner; silly faces abound (where DO the kids get that from???!!!). While we were at dinner, it started snowing outside, and by the time we drove home, it was snowing quite hard. It was gorgeous, but it sure made driving tricky!

Christmas Programs

OK... in the spirit of keeping grandparents, especially, up to date, below are videos shot from Mark's and Steven's elementary school Christmas programs this past week. Enjoy.

Train Tensions

Howdy from LAX. Even though I'm not home yet, I'm close! This morning on the train in Tokyo, though, something interesting happened. It was rush hour, trains were packed, and Tokyo was its typical bustling self. I was on the train with my colleague, Takumi Shimizu, from our Tokyo office. Standing right by us was a young man and a young woman, probably both early 20s. She apparently lost her balance on the train, and stepped on his foot. Wow did this ever set him off in a rage. He started yelling at her (all in Japanese, of course), "Why did you step on my foot, you idiot; that hurt!" She countered with "I didn't do it on purpose, you idiot!"This guy was REALLY hot. Fortunately, he never took his hands out of his pants pockets; otherwise I fear he would have started hitting her. Shimizu-san, who is a big guy, especially for a Japanese person, put his arm in between them and all he did was say a soft but forceful, "Anata!" ("You!") to each one in turn as they wanted to keep the shouting match going. Each "Anata!" backed them off, though, and eventually it just became a silent stalemate. Way to go, Shimizu-san!!!

I think my colleague, our local Sales Manager, in Tokyo is a pschrink in disguise. He handled the situation very nicely.

Visiting Family in California

This past weekend Michelle and I were down in SoCal for a company holiday party, and took advantage of the opportunity to visit family. It was great to see Michelle's mom and sister and her family, as well as Michelle's dad and his wife. We had a really nice time.

Michelle with her mom and sister.

Michelle's mom and her sister and family.

Visit with Santa

Ahhh... fun family traditions. Each Christmas we go visit Santa at the mall, and then go to a Hallmark store (typically) and each child picks out a dated Christmas ornament. That way, each child will have a collection or ornaments when he/she leaves home. Justin's now sort of regretting the Michael Vick ornament he chose a couple of years ago, but dog-gone-it, at least that ornament will come with a good story!!! I was in Japan Monday night when the family went out to do this, but I look forward to seeing 2007's ornaments when I get home! Picture with Santa, below. Does Steven look excited for Christmas, or what?! :-)

Christmas Piano Duet

This Sunday in church, Brianna will be playing a Christmas hymn piano medley duet with a friend of ours. Below is a video of one of their practice sessions. Pardon our friend's son running in, Brianna having to reach up and stop her cell phone from vibrating, and other distractions. I think it's a pretty cool medley.

I'm an Alien!!!

Greetings from Tokyo! My family has always suspected it, but know we all know it's true: I'm an alien!!! Among other things, I'm in Tokyo this week setting up my alien registration in Japan. I had the LOVELY pleasure of spending time with government folks and attorneys today, and all of a sudden not only am I an alien, but I feel like I actually have a personality!!!
(was that a slam on government officials and attorneys??? - I wouldn't dream of it!!!)
Anyway... I thought the view of the sunset from my hotel room was quite pretty, so I snapped a picture and here it is.

Signed... your favorite (now registered) alien (I'm now keeping an eye out for the Men in Black)

Orchestra Gig

Last week, Justin was in a paid orchestra gig - saweet!!! Justin is a member of the Idaho Choral Symphony Orchestra, a professional orchestra made up of musicians from the Boise area. Their Christmas concert was Wednesday night, and they sounded great! One of their pieces was the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah. What a moving piece of music! Anyway... here is a shot of part of the horn section.

Heart Attack!!!

OK... sorry... that was an unfair Title to give to this blog entry. Worry not... nobody here has had a heart attack or anything.

It seems to be a tradition here that you "heart attack" your (girl)friends on their birthday. We woke up the other morning to discover this (see photo) on our front door. "I love you" hearts and messages strewn all over our door. Brianna has been heart attacked.

Andrew is a Star!

The other night in a Boy Scout Court of Honor, Andrew was awarded BSA's "Star" rank advancement. Only two more to go now until Eagle, and he can join his older brothers in the Eagle's Nest.

In this picture, Andrew is pinning the Star Mother's Pin on Michelle. Rest assured... no mothers were harmed in the production of this photo (but a kid pinning something on his mom is always dangerous). :-)

Angels We Have Heard On High

Last night at her voice teacher's recital and again tonight at our church Christmas party, Brianna sang "Angels We Have Heard On High." You can check out the video from tonight's party, below.

Wii Sure are Silly!!!

Teenage girls, who normally wouldn't play videogames otherwise, can sure get silly playing tennis on Wii Sports!!! Brianna and her friend Ashley playin' tennis and trash talkin' and bein' silly, and little brother telling them to be quiet. Silly girls!

Billy Joel Concert

Tonight Michelle and I went to the Billy Joel concert at Taco Bell Arena on the Boise State University campus. We had SUCH a good time!!! What an incredible musician and performer this guy is! And pretty good for an old guy; he went non-stop for over two hours without a break. Played a ton of his classics, plus some that we had never heard before, like "Root Beer Rag" (click to hear 30-second snippet) from his 1974 album Streetlife Serenade. We had GREAT seats, center of the floor six rows back from the stage. You can kind of tell how good our seats were by the posted photo (sorry the quality of photos from cell phones is so low).

At one point during the show, Billy Joel announced that he likes to feature new talent, and he invited one of his "roadies" up to sing a song. So this middle-aged, chunky guy covered in tatoos got up and "sang" a song. Before he sang, Billy Joel announced that this guy (nicknamed "Chainsaw") would be singing a nice religious song, that we might all be familiar with from church. When the guitars fired out the first chords everybody could tell right away that it was AC/DC's "Highway to Hell." He did a GREAT job with it, and it was very fun.

What a great show!!!

Delighted!!! (actually... "Lighted")

Today we started our Christmas decorating, beginning with hanging lights outside. Last year, we hung our lights on Thanksgiving weekend, and we resolved never to do that again. But alas... with my travels, etc. we didn't get to it until now. The challenge is that at this time of year, daytime highs are only in the 30s, and the roof shingles are frozen. Therefore, our angled roof becomes nothing more than a giant slide, and it's nearly impossible to crawl around up on the roof! Combine that with our underpowered circuits (last year with about double the lights we were continually blowing circuits), and we couldn't go all out in decorating. But hey... we're the first ones on our cul de sac to get our outside lights up, so we still win! :-) Below are pictures of during and after. Merry Christmas (season), everyone!!!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

What a great dinner we had today!!! Turkey, ham (for those of us who think turkey is fowl), potatoes, corn, stuffing, etc. and WAY TOO MANY desserts.

Last year we had 24 people here, but this year it was a much more "quiet" 15. :-) My oldest (but still young!) sister and her husband and their grandson were here, as well as Justin's girlfriend's family.

We attached two six-foot tables to our dining room table, creating a large "T." Posted here are three photos of the crowd, as well as our dessert island. I made my world-famous cheesecake, but even still, I think it lost out to that chocolate cake you see there.

John and Christopher in Japan

Christopher reminded me today that I never put up pictures from our Spring Break trip to Japan earlier this year. So sorry! So here's some more catching up the blog.

Most of you probably know that we have a tradition in our family, of each of our children getting a one-on-one trip to Japan with Dad after they turn 16 years old. I took Justin two years ago (will get around to posting those photos, too), and during Spring Break of 2007, I took Christopher.

It was actually Christopher's second trip to Japan. He had gone there a year-and-a-half earlier on a Irvine-Tsukuba Sister Cities exchange program. Tsukuba is just outside of Tokyo and Christopher had already experienced much of Tokyo, so we spent only a little bit of time there, and traveled pretty extensively from Tokyo, south all the way to Nagasaki. Here is roughly where we visited:

• Nagoya: Nagoya Castle, my old Toyota City branch of the LDS Church, and some friends there.
• Kanazawa: Kenroku-en Park (one of the most beautiful places in Japan, I think).
• Nara: Todaiji, Kasuga Taisha, Nara Park, and Byodoin.
• Kyoto: Kinkaku-ji (Golden Pavilion), Kiyomizu-dera, Nijo Castle, Ryoan-ji, and Toji (tallest pagoda in Asia).
• Hiroshima: Peace Park including Atomic Bomb Dome, Hiroshima Castle, and Miyajima Island. And also happened to discover completely by accident probably the best Italian restaurant I've ever been to - a little hole-in-the-wall place we actually went to twice!
• Fukuoka: Used this northernmost major city of Kyushu as a springboard to visit Nagasaki, and the Peace Memorial there, too.
• Tokyo: Tokyo Disneyland, Harajuku (Takeshita Street), and visiting Yosuke's family (Yosuke was a home stay student with my family when we lived in Whitter, CA and I was 16 years old!).

Anyway, we had a really GREAT time!!! In this posting I've only included four pictures (at Kenroku-en Park, Kinkaku-ji, Miyajima Island's O-Torii Gate, and Tokyo Disneyland, in that order), but for all photos from the trip, please click here for all 341 photos on Flickr, or here and here for the photos on Facebook (two sets, due to the set limitation of 200).

Christopher Swim Awards

Christopher's swim team awards dinner was this past Tuesday night (a week ago), and he won a fish-in-water award. He's standing here with his two swim coaches.

First Snow!!!

UPDATED AT 8:15AM:
So... it's actually snowing harder now, and some of it is starting to stick. Two more pictures; the first one here of the Hudson's place across the street, and the second one of our house. I turned the flash on to catch the falling snow flakes better.
-----------------
At 6:00 this morning, it was a toasty 36 degrees and lightly snowing outside. Our first snow of the season (in the city, anyway). It's pretty much immediately melting, and the posted picture here will look like child's play in a couple of months, but the first snow is always fun! :-)

Mark Arrow of Light

At our November 8th Cub Scout Pack Meeting, Mark earned his Arrow of Light award, Cub Scouting's highest award. Here's a picture with Mark and Mom, and also of Mark and Parker looking at their awards.

"Dine In or Take Away"

I enjoy visiting other English-speaking territories, because the "English" they speak there often doesn't match the language I learned. Some examples of this are:

• Dine In or Take Away. When ordering at a fast food restaurant, this is "Here or To Go?"
• Boot. When I picked up my rental car in Melbourn, the attendant offered to put my suitcase in the "boot" for me. Cute.
• Lift. Elevator.
• Flat. Apartments are "flats" in the U.K. and in Australia (I assume other places?).
• Car Park. I had to park my car in the hotel's parking garage (er... "car park").
• Bottleshop. No, not "battleship" but a bottleshop, or liquor store.
• Chemist. No, not somebody who blows off the entire left side of his body (he's all right now) mixing chemicals, but someone who fills your prescriptions, or a pharmacist.
• Fag. No... I'm not being condescending to those with traditional gender-preference issues, but I'm referring to a cigarette. One of my associates from the U.K. said he learned not to ask to borrow a cigarette by asking, "Can I bum a fag, please?"
  

Anyway, there are certainly a lot more, but these are the best that I can remember.

No Tea Breaks???!!!

Driving around in Melbourne earlier this week, I heard A LOT of political advertisements on the radio, due to the November 24th national elections there in Australia. It's not good, but at least comforting(?) to know that it appears politics don't change anywhere. In one politically charged ad, I heard a challenger say that Prime Minister John Howard's "wartime policies" were going to result in the elimination of tea breaks at work. Heaven forbid... no tea breaks!!!

Sydney

This morning I scheduled a long connection in Sydney, en route from Melbourne to San Francisco. I'm so glad I did; Sydney is amazing. The iconic Sydney Opera House is at the end of a long stretch of land that is dominated by the Royal Botanical Gardens. I could have spent all day just walking around that beautiful area. But alas, I spent only about three hours there. Then, I went to see the LDS Temple in Sydney. It is a small temple, but the drive there was really interesting - got a good taste of Sydney. I got some good photos, only two of which are posted here (Opera House and the Harbor Bridge). To see all the photos I took in Australia (including 66 in Sydney), please click here.

A Nice Drive in Australia

This afternoon I took a nice little drive out of the city. Melbourne is the second largest city in Australia, home to about 3.8 million people. I just felt an urge to get out of the city, so I just got in my car and drove. No particular destination - I just went wherever my car went (and the navigation system in my rental could have bailed me out if I got lost). I ended up driving from Melbourne to Traralgon. Drove almost due east for about 100 miles before turning around and heading back. The countryside was quite pretty, and it was good for this Idaho boy to get out of the city! :-)

Unfortunately, it's late Spring here, and I'm having one of the worst hayfever attacks I've ever had. The sniffing and sneezing just won't stop, and tonight I'm keeping this short. I was having fun today observing some of the differences between American and Australian English; I'll have to elaborate on that later.

Enjoy the pictures below. For all the Australia photos I've posted so far (36?), please click here.

This little pond out in the middle of nowhere was kind of cool.

Australia's equivalent of our "Keep right except to pass." I kept wondering, however, overtaking what? Seems kind of aggressive. :-)

They had A LOT of rest stops on this highway (the "M1" highway). They had signs quite often that if you were feeling sleepy, to pull off at a rest stop and take a "powernap" (one word). This shot was taken from one of these rest stops.

There were a lot of cows out here. When I had a steak at the 100 Mile Cafe yesterday, I'm sure I ate one of these cows' relatives.

Aussie Wave

Walking down the street here, you might think that everybody is REALLY friendly for all the waving they're doing. Well... they might be friendly, but that's not why they're waving! When the temps warm up down here, bush flies are everywhere, and walking around I find everybody, myself included, waving their hand in front of their face to prevent them from landing on your face. I wish I had a hat like this guy does (pictured at the right). Anyway, this has become so common they call it the "Aussie Wave" or the "Aussie Salute." It even has its own Wikipedia entry.