LakePowell.2011

Another chance to go to the best place on earth and we loved every minute of it!

Swimming

Sleeping

Waterskiing

Fishing

Riding on Papa's big boat

Scenery

And fun

I really hope this tradition lives on forever! It has become a part of my life that I don't ever want to change or give up. It is a week of fun! Can't wait 'til Lake Powell 2013

Fourth of July

I wasn't that thrilled to know that I was stuck working all weekend of the fourth of July. I have ongoing traditions with my family that take place that weekend every year but I guess when you grow up and get jobs you don't always get to have every weekend and holiday off. On the other hand, Trisha was really excited to stay in town and hang out with our friends. It turned out to be a really great day. First, we went to breakfast on Main Street and watched some of the parade as it went by. Then we went fishing with our Friends, Justin and HayLee. We went to Matt Warner Reservoir and had a really successful day. It was lots of fun!

Sam enjoying the day fishing and Justin and Trisha in the background

My first catch

All of our catches

Trisha showing off the fish that Justin let her reel in

After fishing we invited all of our friends over and we had a big party. It was fun! We were supposed to go see the fireworks in town but we got carried away with the party and the fireworks went off while we were driving to see them so we ended up enjoying the new firework regulations from our friends front lawn. There were fireworks like crazy all weekend long. Party all night!

These are the decorations that Trisha made. She was really happy about them.

C.P.R.

June 21, 2011

Started out like any normal day. It was the first day of training our new pharmacist at the pharmacy. At some point during the day I hear a checker come on the loud speaker and ask for the manager to come to the front of the store for an emergency. I thought there was some sort of theft or something so I continued on working. About ten minutes later, the GM manager came running back to the pharmacy and told me they had a lady out in the parking lot that needed CPR. My adrenaline started pumping immediately and I grabbed some rubber gloves, a mask (because that was all I could think of to use as a cover for mouth to mouth) and ran out the door telling the other pharmacist to come out with me. We got out to the parking lot to find an elderly woman lying on her back on the ground, half way under the passenger side of her car. There was several people out there already, some employees, some bystanders and the lady's daughter. One employee had 911 on the phone. I got down and felt for a pulse and looked for breaths. Neither were present. She was a grayish color and completely lifeless. I could look into her eyes and see that there was nothing there. I don't know how long she had been out there but it had been a while. It just happened that I kneeled down by her side so I started compressions. I have had CPR training back when I was in school but I have never done it in real life, and it was crazy to me how similiar it felt on a human to a dummy. After the compressions were done the other pharmacist cut a small hole in the medical mask that we had and did 2 breaths. I continued to do compressions. After a few rounds, some stuff started to come up out of her mouth and you could just sense that she was trying to breath but nothing was happening yet. A few more rounds and the ambulance showed up. They had me continue with compressions while they prepared their equipment and set her up on oxygen and a pump to do the breaths. After many rounds of compressions and breaths, there was still no pulse and no breathing. She was in really bad shape. The EMT's had some suction device and were able to get some more stuff out of her throat. The next task was trying to move her from beneath the car and get her into the ambulance. I don't think people realize how hard it is to move an overweight individual when they are lifeless, nor do I think people realize how not gentle people are when they are trying to move someone in a hurry to save their life. It took many adult men and some female EMT's to get her onto the bed to be moved into the ambulance. They took her off pretty quickly after that but she still had no pulse and was not breathing on her own. I went back in to the pharmacy wondering if what I had done had made a difference. Also wondering if I had done everything I could have done and done it properly. I felt more at peace this time around than the first time when I had to help a guy who had passed out and started seizing down the dairy isle. However, I had no clue whether this lady was going to live through this, it didn't look good for her even when she left. A few hours after the incident an officer at the scene came in to the pharmacy to tell me that when the lady arrived at the hospital they pulled a food mass the size of a small taco out of her throat. Apparently the lady and her daughter had gone to a fast food joint to get food and then stopped by the store for some groceries. The daughter ran in to pick up a few things and when she got outside her mother was hunched in the car not breathing. That's when the call went out to the store manager. She must have fallen out of the car when the daughter opened the door. A man there at the time started doing CPR but I was told he probably wasn't pushing down hard enough to get the job done. That's when I came. After she went to the hospital and the food was extracted from her throat, she was transferred by life flight to a hospital in Salt Lake. Days went by and I never heard anything about her. I kept checking the obituaries to see if she had passed away but didn't ever see her. After several weeks of checking I had a pretty good idea that she had not died, because I'm sure I would have heard about it. Finally over a month after the event, the officer came back into the pharmacy and told me that the lady did make it through it and she was alive and well in a rehab facility in town. The officer had gone by to visit her. He told me that we did a really good job and that in all his years of being a police officer he had never seen a session of CPR turn out positively with a patient alive at the end. It made me feel really good! I'm so glad that she is doing well!

The day after the incident I went on a mission to get our store a first aid kit that is all-inclusive. It has everything you could ever imagine! One of the more important items being a CPR mask. At least now I will feel better prepared if I ever have to do this again.

RAGNAR- Wasatch Back

So I have always been slightly interested in running the Ragnar Wasatch Back but never really entered into it. Partly because I know it sells out really quickly and I never wanted to put a team together. Well, after we visited Boston and got to see me Aunt Jan finish the Ragnar New England, I was sold on the idea of the relay race. And then the blessing of all blessing showed up on my voice mail two weeks after we got back to Utah. Our neighbor and his wife were part of Team H.E.B. (an accounting firm in Vernal and Salt Lake) and they had two people who were thinking about dropping out of the race. I jumped all over that opportunity. I had to wait all weekend to officially hear back from him about the race. I was in and so was Trisha. This was tuesday and the race started on Friday at 6:40am. Trisha was nervous cause she has been doing more swimming than running in the last few weeks. I was filled with pure excitement and couldn't wait. We dropped off Sam at Tyler and Shannons and made the trip up to Logan to start the race. We spent the night with Shayne and Chalise, which was really fun and then we left way before dawn to get to the start line. It was cold at the start line, too, so I was really glad that I wasn't the first runner. We were part of van #1 but Trisha was runner 5 and I was runner 6.

We dropped off our first runner and cheered her on and off we were. The race had started. At first it was hard to fathom the fact that we would be running from Logan to Park City and that it would take us 36 hours. But as time passed it became easier to imagine it all.

1st Run: 6.9 miles "Very Hard" from the summit of Avon pass to the city of Liberty, Utah

Trisha passed off to me for my first run at 12:45pm and I ran up about a mile to the top of Avon pass before descending down in a "knee-jarring" manner. The next three miles were crazy downhill. They felt really good while I was running them and I knew I was making good time but once I reached the bottom of the mountain I realized how hard it had been on my knees. The view from the switchbacks, looking down into the valley, was absolutely incredible! The rest of this leg was hard for me and I slowed down quite a bit trying to get to Liberty. I finished it in a sombrero (which gave me a free meal at Cafe Rio) at 1:45pm.

For the next few hours our van got to rest a little bit. We spent some time at the park in Libery, eating lunch and sitting down. Then we made our way to the next big exchange at Snow Basin. You would be amazed at the traffic when you have nearly 2300 cars trying to drive along these back roads. It took us quite a while to get to our next destination. We did however have some time to lay on the grass and relax once we got there. And all of a sudden it was time for our van to start running again.

2nd Run: 8.1 miles "Very Hard" from just outside of Morgan up through East Canyon to East Canyon Reservoir.

Trisha passed this off to me in pitch blackness at 10:30pm. Every team member is required to have a reflective vest but only 4 people per van have to have a headlamp and tail light. I borrowed a headlight because Trisha had been running with ours. I soon learned that my borrowed headlamp gave about as much light as my cell phone would have. I was worried about it at first because it really was dark out but I just decided that I would have to rely on the many car headlights passing me and pray that I wouldn't fall into a crater in the road. It turned out okay, I didn't get hurt. The first 6 miles was rolling hills with a general climb. I felt really good about it. Then it started really climbing. A big hill, followed by some flat running, followed by another big hill. It must have done this 6 or 7 times. I kept thinking I was gonna be done at the top of the next hill, but then I would get there and there was another one. The only thing that kept me going was my "kills". A kill in the Ragnar is when you pass someone. I had 12 kills in the first 5 miles of the run and as it started to get steep, I just kept seeing people in the distance and making it my goal to get another kill. Whatever works, right? Finally I knew I was close when I turned a corner at the top of a hill and saw East Canyon Reservoir with a full moon gleaming down on it. Incredible! I had one last hill to climb and finally saw all of the lights at the finish line. This was my favorite run out of all of them. I got 23 kills, by the way and I finished at 11:45pm

Now our primary goal, after I got hot chocolate, was to find a place to sleep. We drove to the high school in Coalville but decided we wanted to get closer to where we would start in the morning. So, we kept driving and ended up at South Summit High School in Kamas. We hauled our stuff into the gym, which was dark, completely silent and full of sleeping runners. We laid our sleeping bags out on the hard wood floor and tried to sleep. I think I slept well for about 3 hours and then the hard wood floor got to me and I couldn't fall asleep again. After several more hours of tossing and turning, we got the call to move to our next exchange.

Jordanelle

3rd Run: 3.1 miles "Easy" right through the center of Heber

Trisha passed off to me at 11:42am. This run was completely flat, maybe slightly downhill. It should have been an easy run but I was so tired and after a day of running and 3 hours of sleep, my mind was tired and my legs were tense. I still made really good time and was so glad to be done with my legs. I finished at 12:10pm.

Trisha and the rest of our team did so well. We all had a really good time and ran our butts off.

Total I ran 18.1 miles. I averaged 9.0 minute miles. Our team ran for 36 hours and 15 minutes.

Boston

I usually hate posts without pictures but since we lost our camera on the plane on our way back, a picture-less post will have to do. My cousin, Keaton, that I lived with for three years while in pharmacy school, left on his mission and his farewell was scheduled for the last week of May. We really wanted to go back to MA on vacation and we planned our trip around the farewell. Once we started to plan out the trip we also found out that two of our friends would be getting married the weekend before the farewell. So we extended our original plans and set out for an amazing trip back in time. I won't bore you with the entire details of our trip just list my favorite parts of it and tell you that we absolutely loved it!!

The wedding of Rob and Leeann Smith

The wedding reception of Jared and Danielle Mooney

Helping Keaton do yard work

Seeing all of my coworkers from CVS

Spending lots of time with my aunt, uncle and cousins, the Arbons

Visiting with the Vieiras

Driving through Worcester

Going to dinner with Adam, Abby, Carly, Lora, Dave and Jessica

Running in the hills of Princeton with Trisha, Mom, Lori and Jan

Going to lunch at Concord Inn

Walking in the Boston Public Gardens and along the Charles River

Dinner at the Cheesecake Factory at the Pru with Tristan

Lunch with my pharmacy friend, Jessie

A trip to the temple with Keaton and everyone else

Attending Keatons farewell and being part of the 8 hour open house at their house following the meeting

Memorial Day on the beach in Newport, Rhode Island

Driving on Storrow

Watching Aunt Jana finish the New England Ragnar Relay in Harvard Stadium

It was the best trip!! We loved every minute of it and it was sad to say goodbye and have to come back to real life. It really made me wonder why I ever moved away from MA. It is so beautiful and green and it holds so many good memories for me. I can't wait to plan our next trip back there.

To Keaton,

You have grown up so much since I came to live with you five years ago. Not only are you my cousin but you have been a good friend to me over the years. It was especially cool to spend time with you before you left on your journey of missionary work. I am amazed at how you have changed from an immature fifteen year old boy that loved to play pranks on me everyday to a young man that is caring, strong, spiritual, intelligent and kind. I know you will do amazing things out there on your mission. The people will love you and you will change many lives as you teach the gospel. I pray that God will be with you. Love you. See ya in two years at your homecoming!

Graduations and Wedding

We had some busy weekends in May.

Tyler graduated from the University of Utah with a Masters in Accounting

Shayne graduated from Utah State with a bachelors in Chemistry

Chalise also graduated from Weber State's nursing program. Sorry we missed that one.

CONGRATULATIONS to all of the graduates!!

And then, Shayne and Chalise got married...

The cupcakes that Trisha made for the bridal shower

Pictures at the temple

Chalise and the men

All the ladies

Took the opportunity to take family pictures

Sam in his rockstar pajamas, after he had enough of his tux

Decorating the car is our favorite part of a wedding reception. It was relatively low key but still fun!

The wedding ceremony was the best one that I have ever witnessed, it was awesome. The reception was held at the Chantilly mansion in Layton. It's a really cool antique-style house. The whole day was a party. 

CONGRATULATIONS to the newly weds!! Welcome to our crazy family, Chalise.

Random picture: Sam crawling in the bathtub

My mom

I just needed to post this tribute to my mom because I am SO PROUD of her! Over a year ago she decided she was going to start running and she hasn't stopped since.

I knew that she would never let me take a picture of her running so I had to hide at my parents house and take this picture of her while she was out running one day with my sister-in-law.

Not only does she run but she runs around the church parking lot (which is about 1/4 mile) 20 times to make up a 5 mile run. Plus now she has added in her exercise bike every night. So, running in the morning and biking at night. I am really proud of her and she looks great!! She is determined and strong and I know that she will reach her goals because she isn't gonna stop until she does. I am also really excited because she has committed to run the RAGNAR relay with us next year. She is gonna love it and do awesome, I can't wait!

I love you, Mom and I am so proud of you! Keep on truckin'