trip to sf

went to sf in may. thanks dave and brook, and cambria and maya! i had a great time.

luckiest guy

so, i realize that janell is much cuter, smarter and a much better writer. i'm the luckiest guy to be married to her. well, i do feel fortunate, maybe a little smart, for asking her to marry me at a time when it would have been difficult to say no...luckily, she had thought about it just a couple of weeks earlier and knew it was coming! we've now passed our 6 year mark - things couldn't be better. our fun and handsome children, joshua and jacob, are joys. just to give an idea of how much more interestingly janell expresses our lives, read our holiday vacation (can compare with my sorry holiday post below) and this about sweet jacob. one thing to add on jacob. he pronounces everyone else's name in our family perfectly - he's been saying "joshuua" for months. but never tried to say his own. until a couple of months ago he started calling himself "beetup". cute name, and kind of close to jacob. the other day, since he can say "jay", we worked on saying "cup". it was obvious he couldn't say his "c"s, and he was saying "but" instead. then i thought, man this guy is smarter than he lets on. he can't say "jacob", so he picked "beetup" instead of "jay-but". showing some early prudence

fb

how about byu ending up 14th in the 2007 year end AP poll? i was pretty happy to find that out - nice job cougs!

holiday/winter break

we had a great time over the holidays. christmas was spent our favorite way - at home in slc with each other. most of all i was grateful to spend time with janell. visiting friends and family together is the best, and we got to do lots of it. thank you to the bakers, atkinsons, moores, tylers, thomas', halls, collivers, stevensons, reyes', fogelquists, mccords, cooks, bairds, poggios, all the merrells, mom, jodi, and lorri for your friendship, love, and company over christmas break!

for a day of fun, we took the boys tubing to gorgoza park in park city on a whopping 5 degree day. we all ended up pretty cold, but joshua had a blast (jacob didn't get to tube this time). inside a mongolian style (almost) yurt getting slightly warmed...

the greatest calendar

aunt lorri is amazing - she made this cool calendar for grandma. the stars are joshua & jacob, arianna & enzo, & ethan. a lot of fun pictures (can click for larger images). nice work lorri

three good speeches

3 of my favorite speeches/letters. warning - none is short

martin luther king's letter from birmingham jail. read it first in a favorite college class, intensive writing - a powerful message with great clarity. then heard it again recently reading king's autobiography. i was also pleased to learn that bill george, a new personal hero, uses the letter in his leadership classes at hbs.

bill gates' 2007 harvard commencement remarks on solving the world's biggest problems, "whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity – reducing inequity is the highest human achievement." reading about his preparation for the speech made it all the more impressive to me.

hank paulson's restoring investor confidence, now secretary of treasury, but CEO of goldman at the time, "I [believe] passionately in the strength of our free market system -- a system that generates growth, creates jobs, rewards initiative and fosters innovation like no other in history...this [is] an opportunity to...rebuild the trust that is so fundamental to our markets and their vitality."

do you have a favorite speech?

jacob and aaron

great picture of jacob with cousin aaron at grandma's house (thanks Jer for the pic). we had to keep watching b/c he kept wanting to get too close!