Jason’s Gone Fishing - Canada 2017

Jason took his annual fishing trip to Canada with his friends John and Parker. He caught some amazing fish and took some amazing pictures and footage. Hopefully one day I will be able to get him to write about it….and this is the space I will designate for that. I will include some of his pictures at the bottom. But for now, I will include the email I sent to Jason summarizing our week of activities while he was gone.

Jason,

I hope you had the best time fishing this week and that you caught lots of giant fish! We have been staying busy here (as usual) and having a good time. We definitely missed you and are ready for you to come home! Thank you so much for all of your fun and thoughtful gifts. Each was a surprise and very useful! I am especially shocked with the Ovation Cell Therapy stuff! Geez! Thank you! I'm really excited about it and have already started using it. I can tell a difference! Thanks so much for that. I thought I would send you a few pictures and the low down of what we have been up to this week:

Tuesday:
Orem Splashpad
Kindergarten assessment
Picked up fish stuff: bowl decor and new friend for Clementine (Cutie)
Amy came over, Dinner at Noodles and CO, went to the mall to get makeup and sneak a present for the boys from Disney store, ice cream at Coldstone, Evening watching Poldark

Gift #1 - Humidifier

Lonely Clementine

Upgraded tank and friend

Wednesday:
Left for Idaho for A'menae's wedding- We rode with my mom and Ashley and got their at 6:00 pm.
I went to the wedding dinner at the Sandpiper while Bri and Brad watched their kids and the boys. They had a blast and the dinner was really good! It is a somewhat expensive steak and seafood place in Idaho Falls. I had a 12 oz steak that was cooked perfect and was SO flavorful. It was really good. We slept in Anderson's basement in Ashley’s room next to Bri and her family.

Thursday:
Bryan and Tyson and my dad made it to Idaho in time for the temple sealing, so Bryan and Tyson watched the boys at Anderson's while I went to the temple. Sealing was good. We went back to Anderson's for lunch and naps. Once Jayden got home from school, the boys got to meet her and they just LOVED her! They kept asking "where is that girl?" and wouldn't leave her alone. She was amazing with them and enjoyed playing with them. The reception was fun in the Hillam’s backyard. It was a little windy, but the sunset was beautiful with a red orange sun over the cute wheat behind their house. There were lots of yummy treats: cookies, brownies, cake pops, popcorn that you could flavor, root beer floats. Izac and Nate were asking where you were and missed you. I assured them you would be there for Kaden's wedding. Turns out Weston was fishing the Wigwam just a few weeks ago with his school friends. So that will be fun for you guys to talk about. They only live like an hour and a half away! The reception didn't start until 7 and went till 9, so with the clean up and everything we didn't end up leaving until 11:00 pm! Meaning we didn't get to Draper until 2:00 am!! There was no way I was going to be able to drive home to Orem at that hour, so we slept there.

Cousins reunited!

Friday:
After breakfast in Draper, we headed home. At this point I was nervous about the fish, having not been fed since Wednesday afternoon. Especially nervous about the new fish, Cutie. Somehow they survived! We did laundry and unpacked. We went swimming at the Provo Rec Center pool in the late afternoon and Amy joined up with us for the last hour. Soon after we got home, Camry arrived. We got dinner at Cafe Rio and brought it home. We put the boys to bed and then spent the rest of the night watching Bachelor in Paradise. She stayed the night on the couch.

Saturday:
Camry came with us to the Curiosity Museum. She had never been so it was fun to show it to her. There was way less people than usual so it was really fun to take our time with everything. We were there from 11 to 3:30! So we had a good long visit. The boys even ventured into the water area this time and loved it...aprons and croc boots on and all! We had to tear them away so we could check out Kidopolis. When we got back, Colson napped, and we played hide and seek with Charlie and Spot It. After she left, I took the boys to McDonalds so they could play and I could work on my blog (working on Cambodia post right now...it's going to take me awhile). When we got home, we chatted with the Lambson's for a bit (the daughters and Darla were in the front sitting and called the boys over...they are so sweet with them).

And that pretty much sums up our week :)
Can't wait to hear about yours!

Love you,
Emily

Here are some of the pictures Jason took on his fishing trip:

PicSkip Jostens Conference - Boise, Idaho

In the midst of Alpine Days fun, Jason and I were off on another PicSkip adventure: our second yearbook conference with Jostens. This time we were headed to Boise, Idaho.

The drive was five and a half hours. It was a long drive of NOTHINGNESS! It was amazing the stretches of land with nothing to see. We arrived around midnight and went straight to bed. As mentioned previously, our kids were staying with the Gruber gang back in Alpine. We were so thankful to them for taking our boys in.

Our hotel was just a cheap something or other, I can’t even remember the name, however, it did include a free continental breakfast. After a routine practice in the hotel room a few times we headed over to the Meridian Courtyard Marriott (the location of the yearbook conference).

We were told our session would begin at 11:00 and we would be given 15 minutes to set up. We arrived there at 10:30, ready and anxious. Although we had already done one yearbook conference, we knew each conference would be different, so we didn’t completely know what to expect. But we felt more confident knowing we had done this before and it had been well received.

Well, the session preceding us didn’t get out until 11:10. So we felt very rushed in our efforts to set up and a little insecure since we knew we were behind time AND the entire audience was already in there just watching us get ready. Luckily, they had some music going and people were chatting to help ease the tension for us. They were also doing some drawings for prizes that were fun, but were eating up some time. 

The biggest source of anxiety, however, was the fact that we took a glance at their schedule flyer and they had our session advertised as Augmented Reality...which is basically our biggest competitor in this demographic. A large part of our presentation is spent explaining why Augmented Reality is not a good solution for yearbooks and that our Video Codes offer a better resolution and user experience. We have no idea how this confusion and mistake was made! So our whole presentation was starting off on an awkward foot as we had to explain that we were not in fact what they were expecting. We felt horrible! We were also struggling with the audio; it was only working in half of the room. Bummer.

The good news was that instead of being a breakout session, this time we were presenting to the entire conference, which was 150 people. That was exciting news! The students and teachers were very nice and welcoming. One student brought a particularly tough question concerning copyright that threw us off course for a bit and brought out some tougher comments by some teachers. We did the best we could and relied on each other to answer these concerns.

At 11:45 as we were about to open it up to Q&A, they told us we were over time and would need to end our presentation. Everyone was apparently anxious to get to lunch. We had been told we had 45 minutes (and we didn’t actually get to begin our presentation until about 11:20) so we assumed we were great on time, but there’s a testament to the importance of communication for you.

Overall, we definitely had some things counting against us this time around, but we definitely met some nice people and we were able to expand our exposure just a little bit further. We hoped we could be a good solution for some schools there in Idaho. We were especially grateful to Pocatello High School for giving us a nice note signed by all of their yearbook representatives. That was definitely a highlight.

We went to Cheesecake Factory for lunch for some much needed stress relief. We even had a gift card, which is always so nice. It was great to unwind at one of our favorite restaurants before beginning the drive home.