2011 Year in Review

We had a great year this year.

The kids had a lot of fun, with tumbling, dance and school.

Mom and Dad had fun too with a trip to Jurassic Park (well, close enough).

Book Thomas Read:

• The Science of Advertising
• Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin
• Purple Cow by Seth Godin
• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini, Ph.D.
• Poke the Box by Seth Godin
• The Alchemist
• Tell to Win
• The Millionaire Messenger: Make a Difference and a Fortune Sharing Your Advice
• Blue Ocean Strategy (reread)
• All Marketers are Liars by Seth Godin
• Free Prize Inside
• Verse by Verse The Four Gospels by D. Kelly Ogden, Andrew C. Skinner
• We are All Weird by Seth Godin
• Read this before your next Meeting
• The Book of Mormon

Media we Enjoyed:

• Jurassic Park (because we flew there…sort of)
• Food, Inc.
• Waking Sleeping Beauty (Documentary about the Disney Animation Renaissance)
• The Coat: A Story of Charity
• Wise Men Still Seek Him
• The Annoying Orange
• AngryBirds (all for the kids of course)

World Events:

• Widespread unrest in Arab and African nations overthrows governments in what is called the Arab Spring
• The war in Iraq finally comes to an end
• Osama bin Laden is killed
• Tsunami triggered by a 9.1 magnitude earthquake devastates Japan and causes a meltdown situation at the Fukushima nuclear reactor
• Steve Jobs dies

Culture Evening

We enjoyed a ward culture evening with various artistic numbers ranging from dance, piano performance, vocal, recitation (which is different from resuscitation), and for the “extremely well cultured,” a ukulele number.

The number was a medely of 3 songs taking us through the roaring 1920′s with Blue Skies.

People sang this song in the 20′s because it was believed that the good times (blue skies) would never end.

Well, they did end with the crash of 1929, and the Great Depression ensued with 24% national unemployment.

They sang Brother can you Spare a Dime.

A very sad song, very sad.

But the sad times didn’t last forever…in fact there’s something that got people through the bad times: faith and love.

And perhaps a few Monkeys put it best in their song: I’m a Believer

That was the medley of song on the ukulele.

(The uke was made pre-1930 and the hat was Great Grandpa’s).

Big Surprise in the Triathlon

We enjoyed participating in a stake triathlon, and what came as a big surprise to us, our team took first place in the team event!

I ran and my friend Mike swam AND filled in for our cyclist as well. During the biking portion, Mike stopped for a few minutes to help someone that had crashed on their bike, and he still made good time.

We even got medals to prove it.

Commemorating The Great Fall of the Terrible Wall – Holding a Piece of History

Do you remember the fall of the Berlin Wall? What an emotional event as we watched on television and in pictures!

Today, November 9, 2009 we commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall.

I remember watching the images and the joy of the people of Berlin as the wall came down.  One of our family friends visited Berlin as a reporter soon after the wall fell and was allowed to bring back pieces of the wall that he chipped off by himself.  Below is a picture of me holding a piece of history, part of the Berlin Wall in my hands.

Courtesy Noir, Wikipedia, GNU License

Courtesy, Staka, Wikipedia GNU License

Courtesy Wikipedia, Public Domain

About the Berlin Wall from Wikipedia:

The Berlin Wall (German: Berliner Mauer) was a concrete barrier erected by the German Democratic Republic (GDR) (East Germany) that completely encircled the city of West Berlin, separating it from East Germany, including East Berlin. The Wall included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, which circumscribed a wide area (later known as the “death strip”) that contained anti-vehicle trenches, “fakir beds” and other defenses.

The separate and much longer inner German Border (the IGB) demarcated the border between East and West Germany. Both borders came to symbolize the Iron Curtain between Western Europe and the Eastern Bloc.

Prior to the Wall’s erection, 3.5 million East Germans had avoided Eastern Bloc emigration restrictions and escaped into West Germany, many over the border between East and West Berlin. During its existence from 1961 to 1989, the Wall stopped almost all such emigration and separated the GDR from West Berlin for more than a quarter of a century. After its erection, around 5,000 people attempted to escape over the wall, with estimates of the resulting death toll varying between around 100 and 200.

During a revolutionary wave sweeping across the Eastern Bloc, the East German government announced on November 9, 1989, after several weeks of civil unrest, that all GDR citizens could visit West Germany and West Berlin. Crowds of East Germans climbed onto and crossed the wall, joined by West Germans on the other side in a celebratory atmosphere. Over the next few weeks, parts of the wall were chipped away by a euphoric public and by souvenir hunters; industrial equipment was later used to remove almost all of the rest. The fall of the Berlin Wall paved the way for German reunification, which was formally concluded on October 3, 1990.

Courtesy Wikipedia, GNU License

Courtesy Wikipedia, Sue Ream, CC 3

The Denver Post Blog posted awesome pictures of the event as well as the progression of the building of the wall, escape attempts, and the coming down of the wall.

Here’s the link to Ronald Reagan Berlin Wall Speech in its entirety, Courtesy Wikipedia.  I listened to the speech recently, and what a great hallmark it is.

Even Alvin and Chipmunks (the cartoon) had an episode I remember from the 80′s calling for the The Wall to come down.

Wikipedia Source: Berlin Wall. (2009, November 9). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 03:40, November 9, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Berlin_Wall&oldid=324762845

Isn’t She Lovely?

The Morning Constitutional

I went for a little stroll today…a jolly little walk or morning constitutional if you will.  After I had walked half way around the block, it started to sprinkle, and then to rain, and then to pour.  I headed back home and just as I reached our house the rain started to let up and stop.

Right as I reached our driveway, I felt an extremely sharp and intense pain  in the back side of my knee.  Instinctively, I reached down to the pained knee and found a hornet.  I tried to swat the hornet away.  It landed back on my shorts, and I swatted it again and ran inside.

I then felt something on the back of my ear; the hornet was on my ear!  I was able to swipe it off my ear and onto the floor, and it met its untimely demise.

Today was the first time I had ever been stung by a wasp or bee, and let me tell you, the back of the knee is one sensitive area to a hornet sting!  The sting hurt all day even though the swelling has gone down.

The ironic thing about the whole ordeal (the rain, the sting) is that I went outside to talk a relaxing walk to help improve my day!

As an aside, we think the wasp was disturbed by the rain, we saw afterwards a den of sand wasps in our neighbor’s yard right by the sidewalk and noted 8 wasps fly into the hole in under a minute.