What to do in Twin Falls, ID

This past weekend we took a trip to the world famous Twin Falls Idaho (OK it isn't that famous). The Wilkins, our good friends from my mission, met us half way between Salt Lake and Boise and that just happens to be Twin Falls (not exactly halfway but the only civilization in between). We had a hard time coming up with things to do there but we had a good time just visiting and being our crazy selves. The whole Wilkin family came up, all 9 of them, it was a blast. Who knew it was so hot in Twin? We all stayed in two hotel rooms, had a hot picnic, and viewed the sites. The sites consisted of the Shoshone Falls, some public swimming hole made on the banks of the river, and a big bridge. The swimming hole ended up being fairly entertaining not because of the good swimming but because of the Twin Falls locals. This place looked more like a Kentucky backwoods family reunion-in other words for lack of a better phrase total white trash chaos (I don't want that to sound mean because I'm a little white trash myself at times and proud of it). Anyways, if you didn't have at least 6 tattoos on your chest (male or female) and at least one dangling earring somewhere on your bare overweight body you did not fit in there. It was a people watchers heaven if you could stand to watch. Man I sound mean but it was pure entertainment. The next day we spent a lot of time at the I.B. Perrine Memorial Bridge (longest span bridge in the west at 1500 feet long-that was for you Susan.) and we found some entertainment here also. It is 486 feet above the Snake River and I guess a great bridge to jump off of with a parachute (base jumping). It was pretty cool to walk with the random people out on the bridge and stand right next to them as they jumped. Their adrenalin was shared with the spectators as it seemed at least on one jumper (a girl going for the first time) that her chute was not going to open, that made all of our hearts skip a few beats. Overall Twin Falls turned out to be fairly entertaining, but if any of you know the Wilkins these events above don't hold a candle to how entertaining the Wilkin family is...they're are all extremely fun to be with and make everything you do exciting! Thanks Wilkins for the good time we had a blast!!!


Evan didn't like the cold water but sure liked the mud!

The bridge

You could feel the bridge flex when a semi drove over

The girls enjoying a blistering hot day under the bridge


Jordyn's new friend Aubrey


One of those crazy adrenalin junkies

Ketchup taco's and sweet cottage cheese!??

Tonight as we were making our taco's there was only enough sour cream for one taco, so I let Emily have it. I rummaged through the fridge looking for some other condiment I could liven up my taco with... hmmm pickles... no, cottage cheese...possibly, mustard...no, I usually do put ketchup on my taco's and so do a lot of my family, but there was no ketchup. Well I came across the cream cheese spread and thought, "what the heck it's kinda like sour cream it couldn't be too bad", and well it was quite good if I do say so myself. I got to thinking while eating it the strange things that I put on food that doesn't seem "normal." One of those like I said is ketchup on my taco's that is a norm on my Mom's side of the family and I grew up thinking it was normal but then once I got out of the house everyone thought it was wierd. Other things that seem different are sour cream on my scrambled eggs and ham, milk poured over cake- as long as it's chocolate cake with chocolate frosting I heat it up in the microwave till it's piping hot and then pour cold milk over and eat it like cereal...mmmmm good! One other thing I enjoy is bannana's on my peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwich that is a new one for me that I tried and really liked it. I come from a family that puts wierd things on other things my mom with the ketchup but that doesn't compare to my dad who puts sugar on his cottage cheese, salt on his catalope and eats saltine crackers crushed up with milk over them...all things I never adopted. So what strange things do you do to your food I'm curious and need some more ideas to try.

First Official Business Trip

Well all you may be tired of me only posting about my job all the time, but this is what takes up most of my time and I haven't come up with anything else to blog about, so more about the job.
My first travels for my job send me to Tamarack, CA where I will be giving (mostly learning how to give) technical assistance on how to stack one of our log houses.

I don't know California very well and didn't have any idea where Tamarack was and I basically had only had one place to compare it to that I've been to; Tuolomne, CA. Well it just happens that it is only about 60 miles away (I'll be darn!).


I'm excited to learn the process although it's going to be hard work in hot weather but it should be fun. Something funny happened when my boss told me I was going he said "I've booked your plane tickets" and told me what day I would be leaving and what day I would return (for example "you'll be leaving Wednesday and returning on Friday") I thought OK I'll be gone for 3 days, but then when I looked at my flight schedule it was 9 days. So I went home and told Emily that I was going to be gone to California for 9 days, she was freaking out not knowing what she was going to do for 9 days in a town where she doesn't know anyone. The next day I was telling my boss about how I thought it was 3 days but was actually 9 and he was all confused saying "WHAT?! It is only 3 days!" he had actually scheduled my flight to return 9 days later instead of 3, but luckily it was a refundable ticket and he fixed it. He said "Thanks for catching that; I don't know what you guys would have done down there for an extra 6 days." Anyways I'm excited and enjoying the job more each day as I meet more and more clients and help them achieve their dream of a log home.

The new job, new home, and new name

First of all our status has changed, as far as where we live, and with that the name of my blog must change too, as has been brought to my attention by a few people. I did change the name but I will leave the web address the same, to save you all some work.

Well, as you all know I have started my new job. I'm enjoying it so far and think it will be a continuing good challenge (which is good). I really think I'll enjoy it, especially meeting with the clients and keeping them updated on their project, which is our (the project managers) main job. It consists of a lot of e-mailing, and calling clients, builders, engineers etc. Again, the part I've enjoyed most is , meeting the clients, another part of our job is to do a presentation in the design meeting-a meeting where the client comes to the office, when they've decided to go with our company, and talks with the arichitect, designer, salesman and the project manager in a confrence room- my presentation consists of explaining our "client connect" feature on our website (a tool the client can use to see the status and stage of his/her project) and then to explain the expected schedule and how things will be done. My region that I thought I was going to cover (see last post) is being covered by someone else, so now I'm in charge of all clients in California, and then every thing east of, pretty much, the mountain time zone line,(so Jenny and Chris when you want to build a cabin talk to me, since Joel and Maria already have one, you guys are my only potentials -although you'd be one of the few clients from Kansas since it's not known for it's MOUNTAIN homes-, oh I guess you from Cali. also would be under my jurisdiction). The region is interesting to me since I haven't been out east very much, and from the clients I've met so far, they're a different breed of people then those here in the West (at least those from the far East). I'm enjoying the people I work with and the company, it's fairly laid back (jeans and a polo job), there seems to be a lot happening right now and a lot of potential for the employees. Otherwise we are really enjoying our new house and what little we've seen of the Boise area.

What the future holds...

Well it's official, we are moving to Boise, well actually Meridian, a suburb of Boise. We accepted a job with Precision Craft (a log and timber home builder-a rendering of one of their homes above) as a project manager. We will be headed that way soon after I graduate (June 16). From what I know I will be in charge of 40-50 clients that are in the process of building a home within the Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and Washington region. The company manufactures the log home kits then sends them to anywhere the client desires to build. I will be finding builders, coordinating deliveries, managing schedules, providing customer service, coordinating payment and occasionally traveling to the job sites to provide technical assistance (basically a personal liaison between the client and the company). I went down to Meridian a couple weeks ago and really liked the company, where it is headed, and how they ran things, I also liked the atmosphere and people I would be working with (most of them are young graduates like myself) so I think it'll be a good time.

Jordyn is excited because of the Adventure Island Playground, a playground in Meridian specifically designed for those with special needs (wheelchair accessible swings and all). Evan will be excited to explore a new city and apartment. Emily and I are excited to have a salary paying job (it'll make it much easier to make a monthly budget) and explore a new area. We're also sad to leave friends and family (the Kovichs) behind. Spokane was good to us and we're hoping Boise will be too.

Man...I'm a LOSER!

As of 4/12 it has been one year since Emily and I started our healthier lifestyles. We have both lost a lot of weight and feel a lot better too. People always ask me "What are you guys doing to lose so much weight?" the trick for me is my wife; she has been cooking healthy food for the past year. She exercises a lot but I don't always, but I've still lost weight consistantly just from eating better. We also live by the 80/20 rule, that is eating healthy 80% of the time and still eating "bad treats" and fatty food etc. 20% of the time, I think this is the only way to go, so you can stick with eating healthy without going crazy. We do this easily by just setting aside one sometimes two days to eat "bad"(not usually the whole day but 1 or 2 meals) and then eat good the rest of the week. Emily just plans our menus out of Light and Tasty magazines each week and they are actually really good, we don't even really watch portions very good, but anyways here's my numbers I guess they speak for themselves and the pics too. (The only place I haven't lost any inches is my ankles...I'm still working on that!) Numbers are from mybodycomp.com we been taking measurements throughout the year.


04/24/07--- 04/12/06--- Total
Weight
187.00 ............ 226.90.......... -39.90
Height
73.00 ................73.00 .............. 0.00
Neck
15.00 ............... 17.25 .............. -2.25
Shoulders
46.50 ................51.25............... -4.75
Chest
37.75 .................43.00 ..............-5.25
Waist
33.00 .................39.25 ..............-6.25
Abdomen
36.00 .................42.50 ..............-6.50
Hips
36.50 ..................41.50 ..............-5.00
Thigh
24.25 ...................27.50 ..............-3.25
Knee
15.25 ....................17.00 ..............-1.75
Calf
15.50 ....................16.50 ..............-1.00
Ankle
9.50 ........................9.50.................0.00
Arm
13.25 ......................15.00 ..............-1.75
Forearm
11.25 .......................12.00 ...............-.75
Wrist
6.85 ...........................7.50 ...............-.65

BEFORE (MARCH 2006)
Weight:227 lbs

AFTER (APRIL 2007)
Weight:187 lbs

Make-up work and backseat blogging

So as you all know it's been a while since I've published my unparalleled wisdom and knowledge here for the world to see. As you can see it's also been a while since I've done a reality check on my humble attitude. Anyways, I do need to start blogging again, and I feel I like have tons of work to make up, like in school when you go on vacation and then come back and the teacher's have all this work for you that you missed. That was always a pain and at times made the vacation seem not worth while. I don't have a good excuse for waiting this long to blog, in fact, sticking with the school analogy, my excuse note from my mom might read something like this...

Dear teachers,
I would ask that you please excuse Tom for the last month... or longer, from blogging because...,well just because.

Thank-you,
Mom Bybee

But hey now I'm back and will make up the work I've missed, it will take about a post every day for the rest of the month to catch up on my 3 posts per month goal, but I'm up to the challenge I'm counting this as day one.

Also a topic that may have already been discussed at some point... backseat blogging. When I started to title this blog Emily started asking questions, and I told her I wasn't going to write my blog with her in the room. She asked "Why?" and I told her "Because you'll stand over my shoulder read it and correct my comma errors, spelling, or ask the whole time "Whatcha writing about?" or "You're not writing about me are you?" she laughed and said "You don't want me to be a backseat blogger?" I said "No it's like when you're playing solitare and have someone watching you and the whole time they're like you can put that black eight on the red nine overthere." I'm sure you've all had a similar experience. I made a rule that she couldn't read my blogs until they're finished, we'll see how long that lasts and until she's back over my shoulder you'll have to forgive my comma, spelling and gramatical errors.