Shooting

On Labor Day I took Christopher, Andrew and Mark (and Andrew Clark) and we joined the Dillon cousins for a morning of shotgun shooting at this really great range out in Homedale, Idaho (about an hour from Boise). Though last time we did this in January I did pretty well, yesterday I started strong but ended up shooting horribly. I was last amongst the Goodale clan, and close to the bottom of everybody that went. I am going to blame it on the hayfever-inducing "snow" (the wind blowing cottonwood tree "flowers" all around). Oh well that doesn't matter; we had a good time, anyway! Christopher actually shot really well, which I suppose is appropriate since he ships off to boot camp in a little more than a month!

Yesterday while driving on I-84 we saw a cool bumper sticker. It said "Annoy a Liberal: Work Hard. Be Successful. Be Happy." I guess it should have also said, "Go Shooting." :-)

Anyway, check out the photos here (part of the group here on the left; Christopher taking aim here on the right), but to see all the photos, please click here on Flickr, or here on Facebook.

Grad BBQ/Pool Party

We had Christopher's graduation BBQ and pool party today, an 8-hour extravaganza that was really fun! It was fun to have Grandma Nancy here, and we had quite a bit of the Dillon family clan here, as well. It's always so much fun getting together with the cousins and extended family! And several of Christopher's friends from school were here, as well. This first picture here is of Christopher and some of those friends, and Brianna.

We had BBQ'd chicken, hamburgers and hot dogs. I love summertime BBQs and pool parties, and the pool was up to 88 degrees (it was only 64 when we opened it on Monday!). It's gonna be a fun summer!!!

The party got so wild that the law had to show up and calm us down, too. No just kidding - not really. Michelle's cousin, Mike, works for the Sheriff's department, and he came by on a break. Unfortunately, he was only here for about 10 minutes, when he got an urgent call. This picture here is of Ed, Steve and Mike Dillon, three of Michelle's cousins.

To see all 75 pictures that I've uploaded from the party, please click here for Flickr, and here for Facebook.

Mark Trumpet Recital

Mark has been taking private trumpet lessons for about a year now, though he recently took about a three-month break because of his bout of Bells Palsy. Last night his trumpet teacher held a recital for all of her students, and it was Mark's first trumpet recital. His teacher has been very impressed with how he learned to play the trumpet again, even though he's not quite fully recovered from the Bells Palsy (though he's now probably 95% or more completely healed). As you can imagine, it's impossible to play a brass instrument when half your face is paralyzed!

Below you can see a video of Mark playing "When the Saints Go Marching In" at his recital. E-mail versions of this will not have the embedded YouTube video, so please click here for the link to the video on YouTube.

Christopher: Graduate, Mechanic, Great Guy!!!

This weekend, it's time for Michelle and I to be proud parents. It's hard to believe that Christopher is graduating from high school. We now have a second child who is a high school graduate. Amazingly enough, though, Michelle and I are not getting older. HA! To the left here is the graduation announcement that I put together for him; the photo is from his senior pictures that we just took in March. I will get around to posting them eventually.

Earlier this week, Christopher made an interesting analogy, from the pulpit in church, actually!!! It had to do with churning horsecrap in to butter - it was really funny, though highly embarrassing to his parents, sitting in the second pew in the chapel at church. We could just feel the eyes boring in to the backs of our heads. :-) Check with Christopher if you're interested in hearing the details behind that analogy.

We are very proud of Christopher and the awesome young man he has become. As you can see from the announcement, he ships off to Army National Guard Basic Training on June 30th. After 8-10 weeks of that, he'll then go to Virginia for six months of AIT (Advanced Individual Training), learning how to repair Apache helicopters. Then he'll come home and still be in the Guard, but he cannot be deployed to any current conflicts (new conflicts are fair game) until he has had two years of school. So after AIT, he will do a semester of school at BSU, after which time he can take time off to serve a mission for the church, which he intends to do. Long term, he is considering a career in law enforcement, while he continues his eight-year commitment to the Guard. He LOVES those drill weekends, and I'm sure the two weeks of exercises every summer will be awesome for him, even if he never gets deployed to active duty military. But what are the chances???...

Christopher is a great son and brother, and a great guy to everybody. Christopher goes out of his way to help people in need, and everybody loves him. Through his three years of auto tech and through his own learning and experience, he has become a great auto mechanic. Just in the last week alone, he was requested to look at a cars by three friends and neighbors. To the right here is Christopher replacing break pads and rotors on a friend's car. This is just what Christopher does, and he enjoys it. In this photo, both Christopher and Brianna are making silly faces; only Christopher's girlfriend, Norah, looks normal!

We're excited for Christopher's graduation Tuesday night!!! And he is SO excited to be done with high school!!! :-)

Last Soccer Match

This past Saturday (May 16th) Andrew's teach had their last soccer match of the season. The team had a very successful season, and more importantly, the kids had a lot of fun. To the left here is Andrew on the attack. Andrew scored once in this last match of the season, and he scored at least once in most every game they played. Andrew played mostly at left midfielder, though he occasionally played as goalkeeper, as well.

Also in this last match, we had a guest player, as well. The Dahl family used to live in this area, though currently they live in Vancouver, BC. They were visiting this past weekend, and their daughter Katie joined the team for a day. I tried to get some good shots of our guest player, as well, and you see one here to the right.

I've uploaded 40 photos from the match. You can see them here on Flickr, or here on Facebook.

Hiking/Camping

Our Boy Scout troop went camping this weekend, to a campsite that we had to hike in to. Andrew and Mark went on this campout, and I love going with them on their campouts, as well. To the right here is a photo of the group posing on a bridge over the river downstream from a dam's spillway. Notice the patches of snow in the background... it was somewhat cold up there, with the overnight low Friday night dropping to near freezing. None of us felt too cold, though... I think the 3.5-mile hike in, in hilly and snowy conditions, made us so tired that we didn't care that it was cold in our tents and sleeping bags! :-)

We really had a great time!!! Most of us brought freeze-dried meals that we "cooked" with boiling water - those meals aren't half bad!!! Saturday morning, though, one Scout even finalized requirements for his Fishing merit badge by catching, cleaning, and cooking a fish all on his own, and then of course eating that fish!

It was absolutely GORGEOUS up there, as you can see from the photo on the left. We went to Sage Hen Reservoir, about 65 miles northwest of Boise, Idaho (about a 2-hour drive). To see these and all 40 of the pics I've posted from the campout, please click here for Flickr, or here for Facebook.

And thank you, Scoutmaster Sant, for a great campout!!!

Prom

Today was prom at our high school, and it was fun to see Christopher and Brianna with their dates, heading off on a double-date with their dates. For dinner, the four of them went to Olive Garden, and good big brother even called ahead to see if the restaurant would puree noodles for Brianna. Fortunately, Brianna was having a good day today, and hopefully the pureed noodles went over well (they're still on the date as I post this). What a drag to be in a liquid diet on your prom!

To the right here is a fun shot I took of them, and below you'll see a few others. For all 18 pictures I've posted, please click here on Facebook, or here on Flickr.

Christopher and Brianna. Christopher is such a good big brother, and Brianna's going to be a wreck when he leaves home in less than two months. We're taking donations of Kleenex cases in advance of that event!

I love the "attitude" look here by Christopher's date, Norah.

Christopher and his date, Norah.

Brianna and her date, Jeff.

Wu Zhen Tour

Today we went by car about two hours from Shanghai, to a town called Wu Zhen. On the way there, though, check out this photo on the left. The little kid, being held by the girl on the back of the bike, is sound asleep, and this looks so dangerous. This would be SOOOOO illegal back home!!! Anyway, Wu Zhen is what they call a "water town" because most of the town's buildings are built on rivers that run through it. According to a legend told by our tour guide, it started because a successful merchant doing business from his home needed room to expand, but there was no land. So he extended his home out on to the water. I don't know if that's true or not, but it sounds good so I'll go with it!

It's still an active, functioning town today. Of course today was a national holiday and it was REALLY crowded, but I'd have issues with tens of thousands of people strolling past my home and gawking at my neighborhood! Or "boating" by my home like you see in the picture here (we took one of these boats, too).

The town was filled with various museums and what not, including a museum that feature all kinds of beds built in the day. You'll see some of those if you click through to the photo links. We even got to see a cute little Chinese shadow puppet show (pics and video via the links). Oh... it was a bit weird, too, because the entire day we saw just about one dozen non-Chinese (whereas in Shanghai westerners are very common!).

Finally to the left there is a picture of our Shanghai crew on this trip: Mark Atkinson, Nicolas Schulz, Areil Cai, Barbara Bernad, and moi. To see all 71 pics/videos I uploaded, please click here for Flickr, or here for Facebook (not all posted on Facebook).

Shanghai Tour

Today was China's national holiday, Labor Day. As such, nobody was working and we had no meetings, so even though it was a Friday, we totally became tourists. When my team and I checked in to the hotel here (Marriott Executive Suites with apartment-style rooms), even though the rooms had been pre-paid with a company credit card, they double-billed 4 of the 5 of us again, on our personal credit cards presented for incidentals charges. OOPS!!! They are in the process of refunding the charges on our personal credit cards, but in the meantime to make up for the screwup, they booked a professional tour for us, with an English-speaking guide. Leo, I thought, was pretty good. However, he spoke English with an Australian accent. It was pretty weird!!! The accent and the face just didn't go together.

This first pic posted here is taken from our first stop on the tour, some famous gardens that, of course, I have already forgotten the name of. I like the pic because it's a contrast of old and new. In the foreground are the rooftops of some old buildings, while in the skyline in the background features Shanghai's three tallest buildings, from left to right, the Oriental Pearl TV Tower, Jin Mao Tower, and the Shanghai World Financial Center. This pic was also taken just after we participated in a Chinese tea ceremony.

From there, we went to the Shanghai Museum, but got there ten minutes too late to get in. From there, though, I took this picture, to the left; I really love some of the architecture in Shanghai. Having missed the museum, for the fun of it Leo took us to Shanghai's French quarter. Weird to see European style architecture in Shanghai! Then he took us to a silk "museum" where of course after the brief tour by a very energetic little English-speaking Chinese girl, there was more silk than you can imagine, all on display for purchase (of course!). Yes... I did buy something for Michelle.

Following dinner at a Chinese restaurant that frankly wasn't very good, we went on a night time boat ride on the river. It was pretty cool.

To check out all 82 photos and 4 videos I have posted online, you can click here for Flickr, or here and here for Facebook (in two albums).

Forbidden City

Wow!!! Some countries build an Imperial Castle. China builds an entire Imperial City!!! Today my Crytek associates and I had a chance to visit the Forbidden City here in Beijing. This place is absolutely GINORMOUS!!! We walked around inside it for three hours, and I'm sure we didn't even see one-third of it. At some points while walking through it, you're up sort of high, and you look over buildings, only to see more buildings beyond it, still within the Forbidden City. You've got to take different paths to get everywhere, and it's just crazy big.

Around the mid-1800s, the Chinese government started imported mechanical clocks (as opposed to the sun dials and other ancient time-telling instruments that they had been using) from Europe, and they even had a "Hall of Clocks" in one of the many temples on the grounds. I immediately thought of Nancy, my dear sweet mother-in-law, whom loves collecting clocks (I even brought a clock home from New Zealand for her on one business trip). Check out some of the photos of the, quite frankly, HIDEOUS clocks!!! One of the photos is of a room; can you tell how many clocks are in that room?

All the walking made my knee really hurt, and I've taken a really heavy pain killer. I've been sitting here with my leg propped up and my knee on ice while going through photos and creating this posting, so if some of this isn't clear, I'm blaming it on the drugs!

Check out the photos I've posted online, including this one here of my associates and I, from left to right Mark Atkinson, Christopher Raine, Sascha Gundlach, Areil Cai, and Barbara Bernad. I've posted more than 70 photos, available here on Flickr, or on Facebook (in two galleries, here and here).

A Proud Father

Today here in Tokyo I took that train to the airport to greet my three associates coming in from Germany, and the down time finally allowed me to finish editing our pictures from our family trip to San Francisco last month. So... I'm finally continuing my San Francisco posting from last month.

The previous posting covered the first day that we went in to "the city," for which I was able to join the family. The second day we went in to the city, my trade show had sort of started (it technically started the following day, but I had setup and meetings to attend to), so I couldn't join them during the day. So I handed my camera over to my son and he took over picture duties for the day. I must say, CHRISTOPHER MADE ME SO PROUD!!! Like a complete photography geek, I like to "frame" things when I shoot, and just LOOK at this awesome picture here, and how Christopher "framed" the cityscape with a tree in the foreground!!! :-) This picture was taken from Alcatraz Island.

So... I've trained Christopher pretty well in being all geeky and framing pictures that he shoots, but apparently I forgot to train him to put PEOPLE in the pictures. I've uploaded 87 pictures that he took that day, and even though there isn't much of our family to be seen in them, they're still fun memories for us whom were there that day. :-)

After driving in to the city from Susan & Eric's house, the family dropped me off to work, and they went off to play. The biggest part of the day was touring Alcatraz - I've never been out there, so I'm sorry I missed it. But then later that afternoon I was able to join up with them for dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe at Pier 39, and then we all went to see Wicked. It was... well... WICKED!!! Seriously, it was so good!!! What an amazing show!!!

Enjoy the pics on Flickr and on Facebook (in two albums there; three and four).

Back on the Pitch!!!

That's right... the greatest sport ever has started back up in Boise, and Spring soccer is in full bloom (pun intended). And indeed, soccer can be a full contact sport; check out that picture on the left! Both players are getting pretty aggressive on the ball here, and number 6 with his back to you is Andrew. The girls on the coed teams don't slow Andrew down at all when he's going for the ball! Nice tackle, Andrew! By the way, no penalty was called here; it was just two players being aggressive after the ball, and despite crashes and burns by both players, everybody was alright and play went on.

I also like this photo on the right. It looks like Andrew is "juggling" the ball with his knees or something, but he's not. It's just a ball coming down, and Andrew going for it.

The season is going well so far. We've had two matches, winning the first one 4-1, and the second one 5-3. Andrew has played almost exclusively at left midfielder, getting lots of exercise! Enjoy these and 58 more photos from their April 4th game, that I've posted here on Facebook, or here on Flickr.

Call Me "Kabe-san"

Greetings from the Land of the Rising Sun. Enjoy the picture of Mt. Fuji to the right, here, even though it's totally unrelated to this posting (other than the fact that I'm talking about Japan). One of the reasons I like coming to Asia is that it seems I always get to experience something new here. This morning was no different.

As I was walking from my hotel to the train station en route to my first meeting this morning, there was this guy RUNNING from the station to his office (I assume). Running late to work, I guess. As I rounded a corner, we met. I noticed him just before he slammed in to me, so I squared my stance to the impact. This poor guy didn't stand a chance. He must have not been much over five feet tall, and the guy just bounced off me. Literally hit me, bounced back several feet, and ended up right on his keester. It didn't even phase me, and I felt bad for the guy. He was really apologetic and I of course made sure he was OK (he was), but as he stood back up, he told me it was like he had run in to a wall. And he laughed... I laughed.

The last name "Abe" (awe-bay) is pretty common here. So... sounding close to that, you can now call me "Kabe-san." Kabe is "wall" in Japanese, and I'm now a wall. :-)

Easter Eggs

Tonight for Family Home Evening we colored Easter eggs. I'm just thrilled because I'm going to be home this Easter!!! I originally thought I'd be in Asia, but I'll be leaving shortly after Easter, instead.

As you can tell, we have a lot of fun when we color Easter eggs. In the photo on the right, you can see GREEN outside in the background. Spring is here, and it's nice that things are starting to turn green again, and flowers are starting to bloom.

We're not sure who has more fun with the eggs, though... us or the cat. Our cat is quite intrigued with them, and she loves playing with them like they're balls. When the Easter Bunny hides all the eggs around our house, the cat really goes crazy. I just hope we find them all, or you can imagine what our house will end up smelling like!!!

Below, too, is a picture from above. :-) And you can see these and 17 more pics that I've uploaded to Facebook and to Flickr.

San Francisco

Boise schools are on Spring Break this week, and coincidentally I have a a trade show in San Francisco at the same time (well... it technically starts later this week). So we're combining the two to get in a little family vacation.

We started driving down here after school got out Friday afternoon, and drove to the wonderfully exciting Winnemucca, Nevada where we spent the night. We continued the drive on Saturday, arriving at my sister's house in Fremont, CA Saturday afternoon. Of course, as part of the trip here, we've already stopped off at two of the restaurants we miss from California: Wienerschnitzel and In 'n Out. And we've had a GREAT time staying with my sister, Susan, and her family. Three of their four kids are either married or away at school, and my sister and her husband are practically empty-nesters! It seems weird here without all four of the Grimm kids!

Today we went in to San Francisco, and took Dan with us. We went to Pier 39 and strolled/shopped around there (even rode a merry-go-round!). The photo above and to the right is taken from there. We toured a WW2-era liberty ship and submarine. We visited a wax museum. We rode a street car and a cable car. We strolled through China Town. And we even stopped at an outdoor Italian cafe and had some wonderful desserts and hot chocolate as people strolled by us on the sidewalk (people were looking at us like we were nuts - it was a little bit cold outside). That's where this photo at the left comes from. When we travel, it's all about experiencing as much as possible, so it was a busy and fun day!

Tomorrow I start working, but the family will still be playing in San Francisco. They have tickets to go on a tour of Alcatraz tomorrow afternoon - it's a bummer I won't be with them, but I'm sure they'll have more fun and frivolity tomorrow, like this goofy picture at the right. Then tomorrow night, we'll all meet up again and go see Wicked!!!

For all of the photos posted from today, please click here for Flickr, or here (set #1) and here (set #2) on Facebook.

Officer Steven at Pack Meeting

Last night our Cub Scouts had their monthly Pack Meeting, and the theme was careers. We had a Boise City Police officer come and talk about his 22 years as a policeman. He's done a lot in his career, including SWAT (a sniper in that unit) and currently a motor(cycle) officer. To the right here is Steven sitting on the police motorcycle - did he have fun with this, or what?!

A funny part of the evening was when the officer was showing us a sniper rifle. The rifle was on the ground, and Steven was sitting right in front of the business end of the .308 rifle. During Q&A, one of the cub scouts asked if the officer could show them what one of the bullets looked like. The officer said, "Sure. In fact, there's one right in the rifle." I said, "Um... Steven... can you move, please?" Everybody laughed.

Of course, it was perfectly safe, as the officer meant there was one in the rifle, but the round was not chambered and there was no way the rifle could fire. :-)

To check out all 20 of the photos from the Cub Scout Pack Meeting, including the kids all sitting around the sniper rifle, please click here.

Mark Goes on to State Competition!!!

The GT sixth grade students here in Idaho are required to participate in a "National History Day" project. The project has to cover some aspect of history, and can be creating a website, putting together a commentary, writing a research paper, doing some kind of performance, or putting together some sort of exhibit. Each participant's entry is judged at the school district level, and winners there get to go on to State competition (and Nationals after that if the entry goes on).

Mark's entry won!!! He did a video commentary on Claus von Stauffenberg, the German colonel during WW2 who tried (and failed) to kill Hitler. For his efforts, he was executed by firing squad - bummer. Claus von Stauffenberg was even the subject of a recent Tom Cruise film, Valkaryie. The State competition is next month (we think - details still pending). At stake are college scholarships of $25K, $50K, and $75K!!!

Mark's video commentary is embedded below, but can also be viewed on YouTube by clicking here. This is a pre-subission draft, and not the one that went to competition, but it's nearly final. Enjoy.

Brianna & Dani Bring Victory to Steelheads

Brianna and her friend Danielle Despres sang again to kick off the Idaho Steelheads game tonight. I think they should sing before every game, because every time they do, the Steelheads win (4-1 tonight)!!! As they played the Victoria Salmon Kings from Canada, Brianna and Dani sang both the Canadian and USA national anthems. We thought it was very nice of the 4,170 adoring fans came out to see the two of them sing.

But of course, after they sang, we all very much enjoyed watching a fight, and occasionally a hockey game broke out. Seriously though... tonight's game was pretty violent. One of the flights left blood on the ice - yikes! What's that you ask? Of course I got a picture of the blood-splattered ice (to the left here). During another fight, the officials literally could not get the two players separated. There were three officials tackling two players rolling around on the ice trying to get it broken up. It was crazy!

Anyway... we had a great time. I'd never been to pro (or semi-pro) hockey games until we moved here to Boise, and they're a whole lot of fun. There are a few more pictures (including more blood splatter - now this link will strangely get double the amount of normal hits that I usually get, I'm sure) that I have posted from the evening, here on Flickr.

The two videos, one of each national anthem, are also embedded below (and of course, here and here on Facebook).

NOTE: The "Oh Canada" video is not working right at all on YouTube. But the Flickr one is embedded below, until I can figure out why this video isn't uploading correctly. Sorry about that.

Silly Steven

This morning we decided to go to IHOP for breakfast - YUMMY!!! Steven was being really silly, though, and drew the drawstring to his sweatshirt hood so tight that you could only see his mouth. Then he started making really weird noises, and he's just a mouth. Very silly, Steven (video embedded from YouTube below. Also here on Flickr.

Lake Lowell

Last Saturday (February 28th), it was wintry, cold and windy, so we decided to go do some more Idaho exploring! Since moving to Boise almost three years ago, it's amazing how LITTLE we've still seen of our new home state. We didn't go too far on Saturday, just to neighboring Lake Lowell in Nampa, only about a 30-minute drive from home. The shot here is a panorama of six photos that I took standing at the water's edge. Yes... I am a geek.

They have a fun little indoors visitors center there, where it was warm and toasty. Then there's a nice half-mile trail down to the lake. Andrew, Steven and I were the only ones brave (stupid???) enough to go walk the trail in the cold wind. That's Andrew in the picture at the left, walking down the trail. Ironically... we may get to know this place A LOT better. We thought this would be a GREAT place for Andrew to do his Eagle Scout project: putting some benches along the trail. Andrew has called them, and they're interested in having him do it.

Of course, we also found a fish head down by the water's edge. How cool is THAT for two young boys (and their dad)?! I'm posting a picture here to the right, just so you can start singing in your head, "Fish heads fish heads, rolly polly fish heads..."

And finally, at the entrance to the visitors center, they had this "robot" constructed entirely of trash found on the lake. Steven thought it was cool and had to pose with it, but isn't that GROSS??!! Please don't litter; keep our land beautiful!

I've posted all the photos from our fun little family outing; for the full album (13 pics), please click here for Flickr, or here for Facebook.

Swim/Steak Anyone???

The photo here to the right was taken yesterday morning at about 7am. The temp was low 20s, and we had had a dusting of snow overnight. Soooo many shots of our pool have been taken from this angle, with friends and family diving in during summer pool parties. Anybody for a swim now??? Of course, you'd bounce off the cover more like a trampoline (hmmm... sounds like fun!)

But by afternoon it had swarmed up to the high-30s, and I felt like BBQ'ing. So for the first time this season, we uncovered the grill and I cooked some yummy steaks. In about 10 weeks, we'll be having BBQ pool parties - I can't wait! :-)

Yup... those are pineapples waiting to be fried on the BBQ, too. And of course, Andrew just had to get a picture of the steaks. This is just after we threw the steaks on the grill, but even at this state, it's cooked just about right for our carnivorous Andrew!

National Guard Postings Moved to a New Blog

Just to let everyone know, my family and I decided to move the drill postings and other NG postings to their own separate blog off of the family site to allow easier navigation of both sites like we did with Justin's missionary blog. Due to the length of my postings and the fact that some people don't care about either my postings or the general family postings we decided to break it off. The URL for my blog is http://pfcgoodale.blogspot.com/. All old posts will remain and but new posts will all be on the new blog. All prior relevant postings have been moved to the new blog as well.

Brianna Loves the ER

Last August, Brianna started having some major abdominal issues. Lots of very sudden, intense abdominal cramping that could only be relieved in the hospital emergency room via morphine drip. After several trips to the ER and many many tests, we determined that it was her gall bladder that was causing the trouble. Hence, on October 3rd, surgeons removed her gall bladder.

On Wednesday of last week, though, she had one of these episodes again, and had the priviledge of getting her second ambulance ride from school in the same school year. We didn't really figure out what the problem was, but morphine put it to rest, and we were waiting to do more doctor visits/tests.

Advance to today. Brianna had another episode in her AP Biology class (AP Bio would make me sick, too!!!) at school today, and her teacher called Michelle (whom was also at school, at BSU), who called me at home. Hoping to save another embarrassing ambulance ride from school, I raced over to the school and picked Brianna up. I'm not sure how many traffic laws I broke on the way to the hospital, trying to get her to the ER, but we both survived the trip.

Short story long... we still aren't sure what's going on. Brianna's gastroenterologist suspects that she is a spastic duck. Oh... wait a minute... that's not what he said. What he said was that he suspects that the duct emptying in to her small intenstines from her duodenum is spasming, causing the trouble. We will try to verify that and/or rule other stuff in or out, and then decide how to treat it. Meanwhile, Brianna is resting comfortably at home now.

Being the blogger that I am, and with Brianna's permission, I took this photo of her in the ER today, after her spastic duck calmed down. She is doing a "This is me being dead" pose and trying to be funny. She gets downright goofy in hospitals, with or without morphine. :-)

Thank you for keeping Brianna in your thoughts and prayers, and for doing the same for her doctors, so they can figure this thing out, and how to treat it!

Sweethearts Dance

Last night was our high school's "Sweethearts" girl-ask-guy dance. Brianna asked Jeff Brann from our ward, and Christopher got asked by a Japanese foreign exchange student whom is living with Amy Keithly, Brianna's friend. Christopher and Marina, Brianna and Jeff, and Amy and her boyfriend all went as a group, and they had a great time.

To the right here is a picture of Christopher and Brianna. Aren't they cute siblings?! You'll see some more pictures, below, and all 16 pictures I posted on Flickr (click here) or on Facebook (click here). Brianna has also posted several photos that she had taken, here on Facebook.

The group.

Sister and brother being silly!

Mark: A Good Sport

So... what's up this year with medical emergencies at home while I'm out of the country??? Steven last month while I was in Frankfurt, and this past Thursday morning I wake up in Shanghai to find a text message from Michelle, "I'm in the ER with Mark. His face is paralyzed."

Apparently, he had awakened with his face feeling a little numb, and he and Michelle thought he just must have slept on it funny. But later that morning he was in full-fledged facial paralysis on the right side. The doctors say that it was likely brought on by some sort of viral attack, yet it isn't contagious. He's on some anti-viral medications and some steroids, and they say that it'll likely go mostly away in 2-4 weeks, and totally heal in about four months. Sometimes it can last longer, so we wish him the best!

The right side of Mark's face is paralyzed, and he wanted me to take pictures. The picture you see here is not Mark making a face; the right side will not move. The biggest problem with that is that he cannot blink, and there is danger of his eyeball drying out and getting damaged. So he has to close it manually with his hands, and at night we have to tape it shut.

It's actually a bit creepy looking, especially when Mark laughs hard. But he's taking it all in stride. Please pray for a speedy recovery for Mark.

Mark has also done his own posting on Bells Palsy. Please click here.

Andrew Holding Court

Not THAT kind of court, silly!!! The basketball court. Andrew is enjoying eighth grade basketball this year, where he plays point guard and can often be seen dribbling down the court (even though Michelle and I tried to teach him better manners than that!). I'd love to say that the photo to the right is blurred because of amazingly fast action (which is partially true - notice that the non-moving cheerleaders are clear), but the fact is that I eventually need to take a better camera to his games.

As for me, I employ the same tactic playing basketball as I do in referee'ing soccer: I just stand in the center circle and casually observe what's going on around me. :-) But Andrew dribbles, runs, sets up plays, shoots, and SCORES (a lot). I wish I had his talent. And his good looks. Of course, it could be argued that Andrew got all of his good looks from his father, because his mother still has hers. :-)

Enjoy the two videos below, one of Andrew dribbling down the court and setting up a play, and the other of him making a free throw.

Hi-Tops in Boise

I've written before about our family's connection to Buena Park, CA-based Hi-Tops, and of Michelle's brother Michael and how he performed with them for 26 years up until his death just over four years ago.

We had a very special treat this past weekend, as the Hi-Tops were in Boise to perform at the 2009 Special Olympics World Winter Games. Over 2,500 athletes from more than 100 nations are in Boise this week, and the Hi-Tops are in town to entertain them. This past Friday night, we invited them for a pizza fest at our church building, and afterwards they treated us to a great show, featuring all of their numbers (including two that had never been performed before).

It really was a great event, and all in attendance were deeply moved. It's tough not to be affected by this group; they're very inspiring. Our hats are off to Sandy Garcia, their director, and all of the volunteers who work so hard to make this such an awesome group!

For some reason, I'm having a hard time uploading photos to the blog, though I took well over 100 on Friday night. To see all of the photos/videos I've posted, please check our Flickr site (click here). They're also in two separate albums in Facebook (here and here).

Embedded below is a video of the group performing to Neil Diamond's "America." This was by far one of Michael's favorite Hi-Tops numbers, and our family can barely watch it without crying our eyes out!