Gas Prices

After driving to Northern California and back last week and paying $4.09-4.59 for gas along the way I found this website very interesting. If you zoom in you will actually see the actual price (past 48 hours) for each gas station. Bookmark it so you know where to get gas. The trip ended up costing about $160 each way which is still way cheaper than 3 airline tickets and probably didn’t take that much longer consider chances seem to be high that we get stuck on the tarmac for a few hours.

Update: I’ve labeled this post with “gas prices”. It is my third post about gas prices in 3 years. Click on the link below to see what the price of gas was in 2005 and again in 2007.

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Sneak Peak at Stargate Worlds



For those of you that don’t know, I work for a video game company as a software engineer. The game in the video is our first game and it has been in the works for a couple years. I actually show up in this video for a split second when they pan the engineering area. Points for anyone that can tell me what color shirt I’m wearing. Hint: it’s at about 1:15

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Washington DC

Sarah and I took Lacey with us to Washington DC the other week to attend Sarah’s brother Steve’s wedding. I had never been there before so it was a treat to be able to go and we stayed for a few days to see some of the sights. Sarah been about 10 years ago or more so it was good for her to see things again. Here is a run down of our trip.

Wednesday – arrived in DC, checked into hotel. Went to dinner with the group then took the metro to the national mall and walked to the Lincoln Memorial. Saw Washington monument, WW2 memorial, Vietnam memorial and Korean memorial. In the process I was reminded why dry heat is not so bad compared to humid heat.

Thursday – took tour to the top of the Washington monument with awesome view of the city. We then went to the national archive and saw the declaration of independence, constitution, and other founding documents. We then drove to the temple which is actually in Chevy Chase, MD. After the sealing we all drove down to VA to Mount Vernon where there was a small reception/dinner. We planned on taking a tour of the mansion and property but got there just as it was closing.

The next day, Friday, was a wild one. We were woken up early in the morning to sirens and alerts and a message from the hallway that there was a fire in the building (we were on the 15th floor) and that we need to leave through the stair wells. We quickly found out that the power was out and we had no water in our room. A little panicked we started to get shoes on and pull ourselves together. A littler later another voice comes on and tells us there is no fire and that the elevators were working on the backup generator. Phew, we don’t have to leave and can let Lacey sleep a little longer. We then had to get ready for our tour of the senate offices and capitol ( no shower mind you). We get to the elevator and it doesn’t work. The backup generator ran out of juice so we had to go down 15 floors in an unlit stairwell with only our cell phone back light to see where we were going. We make it down stairs to find out the metro was also not working so a few of us decided to walk to the senate offices. The rest of the group stayed to wait for my brother-in-law who was actually stuck on the elevator at the hotel when the power went out. We all made it to the tour covered in sweat from the long walk and half of us with no shower (come to find out, those on the 7th floor had water. it was just the upper floors that didn’t have water because there was an electric pump providing water for the upper floors). The tour was good and we even got to go into Senator Kyl’s Minority Whip office in the capitol.

After seeing the capitol I got to see the Supreme Court and Library of Congress. After lunch I went to the Holocaust Museum and Air and Space Museum. After dinner met up with everyone and went to the Marine barracks for their weekly concert/parade. That was a lot of fun

Saturday – we went to Arlington Cemetery (much bigger than I expected) and then I hurried to see the white house real quick before we had to catch our flight back to Phoenix. It was a busy and fun trip and we were glad to get back home to Jackson, who did very well with the babysitter.

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Swim Lessons

Jackson is on his second round of swim lessons. He absolutely loves swimming. I took him swimming yesterday and he showed me all of his tricks. I can give him a noodle and he hangs on and goes where he wants. He also likes to play a game where I send him to the bottom of the pool and he pushes off from the bottom to go back up. He also did his monkey walk around the entire pool.

I’m glad we have a pool here but it seems like I haven’t had much time to enjoy it yet and the water is already 88-90 degrees. I’ve spent more time trying to figure out how to keep the darn thing clean and algae free. I think I’ve finally figured it out…after spending over $100 at Leslie’s this week!

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Families are forever

We’ve had a sweet but very sad event this weekend in our family. Micah’s sister, Emily, had a little baby girl last Thursday evening. Her name is Gianna Rae. Gianna came at about 30 weeks and had several physical disabilities which made her life here short. On Saturday, this sweet little baby passed on. Her immediate family was able to spend a little time holding and loving her before her little spirit went on and they cherished every minute. I never knew that I would feel such a connection with her even though we didn’t meet her and I feel so strongly that she is such an important part of our family. Her life has strengthened my testimony of family and my knowledge that families can be together forever. It is awesome to think that she is with Heavenly Father now and it has been a wonderful opportunity to talk to Jackson about this (even though we’re not sure he totally understands everything we’re saying, I think he gets the idea). Even still, our hearts are aching with her passing. We can only imagine, from the sorrow we have felt, how much deeper it is for her parents. Even with the knowledge we have of our Heavenly Father’s plan, we know its ok to hurt and to mourn the loss of someone passing away. Our love, thoughts and prayers are with them! Micah and I are going to the memorial service for her that will be held on Thursday.

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