Wife

I wanted to give a shout-out to my smoking hot wife. When I was younger and up until I met Gini I always said I wanted to marry a hard worker. My mom is an extremely hard worker. Not just with the two jobs she holds down but also in cooking, cleaning, sewing, and other motherly duties. Gini is amazing. She is 8.5 months pregnant (couldnt be cuter by the way, she is tiny and so cute) she has a full-time job, in graduate school, and it is parent teacher conference week. Not only that but she never turns down an opportunity to serve other people. This past week the young women in our new ward needed help with a service project and what did she do? Helped them. During the busiest week of the year for her. Took time on Tuesday night and helped them.

Anyways, she is awesome. I miss her and it just isn't the same.

Today, we did some market analysis of North Dakota. Basically, we drove around North Dakota inspecting stuff and looking at the activity that is taking place for about 10+ hours on dirt roads in a cramped third row. This stunk! I need to run a marathon to make up for all the junk food I have been eating and all the sitting I have been doing this trip.

North Dakota

Warning: no pictures.

So I am currently in North Dakota, not exactly sure where I am at just a little bit between Williston and Trenton; right on the edge of the Bakken Oil Field. Savage has a huge rail depot here they are building. I am up here doing some support work for that. When they told me I was coming to ND everyone kept saying oh you'll be staying in the man camps. I finally asked someone what a man camp was and they informed me that since the oil fields have been growing so fast, they outgrew the housing situation here and so there are temporary housing (ie trailers) setup all over that people live in. Here is a link to learn more. It really isn't that bad, basically I am staying in a brand new two bed two bath single wide with one other guy. It is really nice.

North Dakota is kinda nice, it is different from Utah because even though there are small towns there are big towns nearby. Like the drive from Newton to Logan or heaven-forbid the drive from Newton to Salt Lake City. North Dakota doesn't have that. In the state there is nothing. It would be rough living here but there are plenty of people who do. The trip to get here wasn't easy, we flew from Salt Lake to Minneapolis, then to Minot ND. Then we drove 2+ hours to our man camp in ND. We stopped at the Walmart to grab some essentials for our stay. It had to be the dirtiest, most overpriced, and most inefficient Walmart there is. With the influx of oil operations, the minimum wage is being driven way up. Like Walmart employees are making $16 an hour, starting, with no education. Which is the case for most places around here.

It is a very interesting world out here, no one would believe we are coming out of a recession right now if you have never left North Dakota.

Baby

A little text conversation I had at work with my beautiful wife:

Gini: I think I have a vampire baby, because he is beating the crap out of me.
Me: Do you want to be turned? I can do that.
Gini: You can't. You're not even a vampire.
Me: Oh...
Gini: I need edward to do it.
Me: Oh for HECK'S sake
Gini: Sorry. Maybe its his baby...


I guess I missed a lot at that movie she went to.

Thanksgiving

I should be in bed but I just finished some epic Harvard Business School case studies for class and need to unwind so I thought I would blog.

Updates:

- Gini is in her third trimester and is only about 5 lbs heavier than when she started.

- We are under contract to purchase a town home in Holliday

- We both have the end of our semester in the next two weeks

- Holidays are right around the corner and so is a move

Basically life is good for us right now. Tonight Gini and I were talking about our marriage and how we still haven't developed into those standard roles, with both of us working full-time, working on our master's degree, and Gini pregnant we haven't had much time to relax and anything that needs to be done gets done by whoever can do it at the time. It is fun and I really enjoy this way a lot better. There are days I know when I need extra help and there is Gini to help out and pitch in even though she is 6 months pregnant (she is don't let her tiny belly fool ya) and then there are days I can help her out. It is awesome. I am glad we both don't just have our tasks that we strive to do and then take a break when they are done.

Anyways, things are going good for us. We will keep you up to date on the home situation.

Gini's Latest Love

I am so proud of my wife. Today without any prompting she went into my hunting tote and came up with this fabulous outfit. Doesn't it just fit her?

Elk Hunt and other Awesome events

So the past week has truly been a spectacular one, and it should be considering I start my MBA program tonight and free weekends are about to become an endangered species. Let's start it off with last Thursday.

Gini's Dad gave us some REALLY good tickets to Mary Poppins so we went to with her sister, my sister-in-law and our two nephews. Gini's nephew loves movies and plays and is just so smart, he can memorize a play or movie from watching it one time and then wants to reenact it a billion times, it is really cute. My nephew loves Mary Poppins, whether he is watching the youtube video of Let's go Fly a kite for the 50th time at 11:30 PM while everyone is going to bed or he is doing stepping time everywhere he goes, he is truly a fan of Mary Poppins. Both of our

nephews were really into the play and it was really good to see that. We both really enjoyed spending the night with them, and I loved going to the play with my wife. Here we are

The next day we went to Logan, and watched Lori and Kassie play volleyball in the USU tournament. It was a lot of fun and I am starting to enjoy volleyball, I can't wait until Gini coaches our kids.

Sunday night I began my pilgrimage to the land of my forefathers, the Clear Creek area. For the past three years I have gone on the archery elk hunt with Greg down above Scofield. This year has been by far the most epic. I arrived up there Sunday night and setup my tent in the dark. I was really excited to sleep in a tent because I had bought this really nice tent like 3 years ago and never got a chance to use it. It performed like a champ.

Well so Monday morning we wake up and head down into a canyon. I took some zinc on the way down because I wasn't feeling too hot and was hoping to hold off a cold as long as I could. Well no one told me to take zinc with food or you'll get really sick. I got really sick, in the bottom of a canyon, like lost my lunch sick. We got close to the elk that morning but no shots. That night we rode the horses to the bottom of a different canyon and went for a hike, we got into the elk good. There was a herd of about 9 with a really big spike at like 70 yards I couldn't really see the whole herd so I stayed out of the fray but Greg got some shots off, but no hits. We then rode horses out of that canyon and were so glad that we had them, it was one steep son of a gun.

Side-note; to say I was out of shape would be an understatement. I have been working my nice cushy job in an office all day while Greg has been out on his feet, he was kicking my trash all over the mountain and I was glad he was there or I probably would have hiked half of what we did.

Tuesday: We wake up and go to check some feeding grounds, on the way Greg says hey let me borrow your range finder. I go to grab it from the belt on my bag and it is gone and I say ohhh crap. Right then I know that it is at the bottom of the canyon where we tied the horses up. I just had this feeling I was hoping it would be in camp but I knew it fell off when I was messing around with the horses last night in the dark. So we go look for it around camp. Finally we both realize we have to go back down into that steep canyon. We get on the horses and go and sure enough right where I got on the horse it was just sitting right there in the dirt. So we decide to hunt that area again. I see some elk at like 40 yards but they are through the trees and so I don't have any shots. It was so cool to just watch them move and interact. Finally they know something is up and they take off. So Greg and I are finishing up for the night when all the sudden we see this herd coming out of the trees at like 200 yards. I tell him and we hunker down, out walks this HUGE bull elk. We closed to 150 yards and then we couldn't get any closer because it was all open ground. We watched him and the cows for about 20 minutes before they decided to go the other way. Way cool. He was bugling at Greg and making sure we knew that was his place.

I know this is long but just bear with me.

Wednesday: We start off on a walk, I am tired and trying to take it easy and half way through the walk I realize you know taking it easy won't kill an elk I should just suck it up and hunt. So I just start heading to the bottom of this canyon. I can hear a bull bugling and so I make my way towards him. I am walking along a great trail when I see a cow coming my way at like 125 yards. I duck behind a tree and peak out and see she is on my same trail, so I range two turns one at 50 and one at 30 yards. I draw and lean out she hits the 50 yards turn and turns right towards me and is coming closer so I lean back behind the tree and lean out the other way she turns at 30 yards and I put right on her and let it fly. Direct hit, I can see the arrow sticking in her. She has no idea what just happened. She just turns and walks off like nothing is going on. I was like ohh crap I didn't hit her good so I am trying to nock another arrow when she just lays down like 10 yards away from where I shot her and die. I was so shocked and surprised. I look at my GPS, 8:15 AM.

The rest of that day was spent getting her out of the canyon and by rest of the day I mean I didn't leave the bottom of that canyon until 7:17 PM when I got in the truck to head back to camp.

It was sooooo much fun and I loved every minute of it. Here are some pictures and a video I made to keep myself occupied as I sat at the bottom while Greg made trips with the horses packing my cow out.

If you can't tell from the pictures this isn't very friendly country.

As if this all wasn't exciting enough, I hit a really nice 4-point buck just past the dam in Scofield, he didn't do more than a dent even though he rolled up my hood. I was really blessed.

The past week has been an amazing time for my memory banks. I can't wait to feed Gini and Emily good elk steaks.

Denver

I don't really know what to write. Other than this trip wasn't planned as efficiently as possible. I could have probably caught an earlier flight home instead I have been working from the Denver Hampton Inn for the past 5 hours because my review finished up a bit early. Sucky. Anyways, Denver is really pretty it is really flat and green I was really surprised with how much I enjoyed the country.

Things couldn't be better for my family right now. Gini and I just got back from an epic weekend, complete with slumber party at our apartment. I'll let her tell the story because it was her idea and she was so excited about it. Needless to say we watched quite a bit of tv this past weekend and really enjoyed watching movies from our childhood.

There really hasn't been much on my mind other than the fact I need to get in shape and elk/deer tags go on sale tomorrow at 7 AM. just in case anyone was wondering.

The summer is flying by. Today is actually 3 months since I started working for Savage, feels like only one month. It feels really good though. I love being in control of my career and having time to really dissect problems and situations.

Props to my wife for taking me to the airport this morning at 5:15 since my car is in the shop. She is definitely a keeper, definitely. I just love her to death and kinda miss her, after such a fun weekend in Newton and in Salt Lake it felt like last summer leaving her. Like we were two college kids head over heels in love. Who would have thought vacays were so good for a marriage? I guess I better start using my vacation days for more than just hunting...