As I mentioned, it's been a little while since my last post, but I have to say there are good reasons. Over the past couple of weeks we packed, painted, moved, bought some new household items, and tried to unpack. Being the dependable husband and father that I am, I bailed for a few days and went to San Francisco for some fresh air, while my family endured snow storms. Actually, I have a better reason than that below, but it's probably not good enough.
I've decided to summarize the past two weeks in a little slide show. If you also want to hear the details, read on and I'll walk you through some highlights.
Many people know that I love the Muppets and puppets in general. It turns out, kids love puppets too, which means I don't have to get rid of my puppet collection. For Christmas this year Kirsten surprised us with a beautiful puppet theater, which she made. It hangs in the doorway and is much, much better than any that I've ever seen at stores. Yes, my wife is exceptionally talented and creative. She can do or make anything. Amazing. I mean that. For family home evening we made paper puppets of Eden's favorite scripture story: Nephi building the boat. She loves telling the whole story, complete with Nephi, Lehi, Sariah, Laman, Lemuel, the Liahona, and the song "Nephi's courage." Kirsten drew the figures. Eden and Sam colored. Since I lack all artistic skills, I found my place with the scissors and glue. As you can see, we had a blast!
The next few days consisted of leveraging every waking hour, and many beyond that, to prepare for the move. We only moved a mile or two (Forest Hills), but it's a pain none the less. We packed. And packed. And packed. Where did all this stuff come from?! We got the keys to the new place on Friday (Feb 22) and had to paint in one day Saturday because we needed to move on Monday because I had to leave on Wednesday. Confusing? Sorry. Needless to say, it was busy. And also needless to say, we owe a lot of people a lot gratitude. I can't say enough how grateful I am for all the friends and family who helped us with babysitting, painting, packing, moving, and everything else. Now I'll go out on a limb and reserve the right to edit this post later, but a thousand thanks to everyone: Collises, Lillians, Cardons, Thackers, Quinns, Mom and Dad, Eusebios, Walkers, Bednars, Elders, Barlows, Cherries, Potters...and now I'm blanking because I know there are more people who helped and offered to help. Again, thank you!!
Tuesday was the day after the move, which is always busy as you can imagine. On Wednesday I temporarily abandoned my family and flew out to San Francisco for a "Michigan Innovators" trip with the University of Michigan College of Engineering. I did a quick 3-minute pitch on a business and product idea that I'm working on with a couple of other students. We were selected with a few other people to go to Silicon Valley and meet up with a bunch of Michigan alumni entrepreneurs. Our idea, a new skin delivery patch for large molecule drugs (think: nicotine patch, but for other things), is very early stage and who knows if it will work, so there's no reason to get excited yet, but they liked it. During part of the trip we stopped at Google headquarters. Larry Page, the founder, is a UM grad, but we didn't get to meet him. Most of the 2-day meeting involved talks from successful UM engineering alum. It was a great opportunity to make some new connections. What's that buzz word? Oh yeah, "networking." Yes, I "networked." It turned out very well.
On Saturday they booked us for a 9pm flight back, which landed at 5am in Detroit. I'm not sure why, since we literally had nothing else scheduled that day. I would have liked to get home a bit earlier to help Kirsten back at home (honestly!), but since I couldn't change it without paying a steep price, I wandered around San Francisco for a little while. Kirsten and I were married in the Oakland Temple, and I hadn't been back to the area since. Being in San Francisco brought back some fond memories and I wish she could have been there.
San Francisco is an interesting city. We walked through Chinatown, up to Coit Tower, down along the piers, over to Ghirardelli square, and took the trolley over to BART (the subway) to the airport. Ghirardelli has amazing hot chocolate! Try it if you go. San Francisco has many, many street performers: opera singers, rock bands, break dancers, mimes, and my personal favorite, the world famous bushman. For those of you who don't know, the bushman has been around San Francisco for nearly 30 years. He finds some branches, sits down, and hides behind the branches. Many, many people don't even notice he's there until he jumps out and startles them. I was looking out for him, so he didn't get me, but I just about fell over laughing watching him get a few other people. Of course, youtube has a few clips so you can enjoy it first hand. It's suprising how many people don't notice him until it's too late. Word of warning though: if you want to take a picture, be prepared to donate a few bucks.
I failed miserably at my attempt to bring back a warm front to Michigan. Here in Ann Arbor it is freezing. What else can we expect? It's been a strange winter, with a vicious cycle of snow, two weeks of cold, 36 hours of elevated temperatures, rapid temperature drop that produces a layer of ice everywhere, and then snow again. Tonight when I got home everyone was in snowsuits, so we went outside to go sledding for a little while and meet our new neighbors. Lots of fun.
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3 comments:
Hey, we'll add a link to you guys from our blog. I know why that post was long overdue--it was a novel, complee with a slide show and movies. That's like 3 hours in the making.
We finally made it to the link list. That's like a medal of honor my friend.
Wow, you've had so much going on! Love the puppet theater - that Kirsten is so talented! Now I'm waiting for the post about your horrendous Saturday night/Sunday morning!
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