Boone Family Reunion '09

Let's see, for me the whole thing started on Saturday, July 18, when I headed up to Bountiful. I went up on Saturday as I needed to give a talk on Sunday with Daddy as his return missionary companion. We spoke on the Articles of Faith in the 9th branch. That branch is way cool. It is the retired people's branch next to this one hospital which I can't remeber what is called. It is in Bountiful. Naturally.

After we finished that assignment, I went back to the home (4th) ward to listen to Christina talk in sacrament meeting. After church, we had choir, dinner and headed off. We drove my car to Provo and then I helped in driving all of us through the night to Snowflake, AZ. When I say we in this case, it includes Mother, Daddy, Joseph, Maren, me, Kathryn, Elisabeth, Christina, Morgan, Tanner, George, Mary, Whitney Checketts, Laura Checketts, Lietta Checketts and Uncle Samuel. We got to Snowflake safely even though we drove right through the wreck site of 18 years ago. I guess that the curse may only work if we are going north from the family reunion! We still don't know, as will be commented on later in the post.

We got to Silver Creek Campground not first, but close. We set up tents, had lunch and started the talking, playing and general rendevous'ing.

The various activities that we had available to us were volleyball, canoeing and rowing, swimming (although the famous slide down the dam had fallen apart, making it unusable), softball, basketball, a little train for the youngest children (which I got to drive for a while before the tractor pulling it became too persnicity), an assortment of crafts, food galore, morning devotionals, evening programs, board and card games, group games like mafia and "how's yours?", and, of course, visiting with family. The underlined ones are the ones that I took part in.

Everyone had their own experiences leading to a varied but very good time for everyone. The last night there we had a nice slide show that Daddy put on. There were lots of pictures of people. After about an hour or so, Daddy got up and said that his pictures went on forever, but the night didn't, so he cut it. You can probably get a copy of it from him, which has a lot more very hi-res pictures than I do.

Friday night was an all nighter for many. I went to bed, then got up and watched Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow until 2:30 in the morning. Saturday we packed up the camp and headed home. Joseph, Maren, Whitney, Laura, Lietta and Uncle Samuel left Friday night, so they weren't with us. A few hours after leaving Daddy suddenly had thought that we should go and see the Grand Canyon, which none of us had had the opportunity to see before. So we headed off and saw it. I must say that any picture or model I have ever seen never comes close to the actuality of the canyon. Even looking at it from above doesn't give it justice. It is an amazing hole in the ground. I recommend it to any interested. However, going and seeing the Grand Canyon led to our arrival in Provo, where Kathryn and I disembarked, at 4:00 in the morning. Poor Daddy had a meeting to go to at 6:30. We went north via Cedar City, so we bypassed the wreck site, so we don't know if the "curse" is still active if it ever existed. The only reason I call it a curse is because Daddy called it a jinx, and for some reason when I started this post I called it a curse instead of a jinx, and don't feel like going back and fixing it.

In summary, I think that this past week was a wonderful week. The fact that Wyatt Klaus Muhlestein was born and Elisabeth had a birthday during this time makes it even cooler.

Life Update

So I went for a hike up Y mount recently, and here are some pictures of the hike. The other people are people in my ward, Kirsten, (who is also a physicist [hence, I know her]), her fiance, Jimmy, and her room mate, Jen.


We also went and visited the Oquirreh Mountain Temple. It was really pretty. I liked it a lot. Definitely up there on my favorite temple list.

On my second to last day at the tutorial lab during Spring Semester, I built a tower, which I call Ode to the Lab.
Well, my life is pretty normal. These are just some samples. I also have been looking for a new job and going on bike rides and learning about programming from my roommates. We are working on a trebuchet game. Pretty darn fun.

Provo in the Summer

This past few weeks I have come to notice that the world of Provo becomes very, very, green during the summer. I took a few pictures around campus and town. See if you can identify the various locations!

This house looked really cool, so I took a picture of it. Maybe later I will find my favorite style of house and get a picture of it.


I'll make a competition out of this, and say the person who gets the most correct, first (assuming multiple perfect scores), will get something from me. We will talk and figure out what would be suitable.

Interstate 95

Catch Up

Well, it's been a while since I updated my blog, so I decided to play a bit of catch up.  Via pictures!

While I've been here at Provo, I realized that I have an awful lot of free time on my hands, and so to keep myself productive, I tried my hand at photography.  This one of the tractor and Mt Timpanogos I liked, as well as the following two.  If you want to tell me your favorite, offer advice on how to do better ones, or have requests, feel free to leave them as comments, or just talk to me about it!



 
These are pictures from some research that I've been doing.  We have been doing acoustical tests on exploding balloons, which are apparently very commonplace in chemistry classes.  Due to the fact that recently an older lady lost her hearing due to these, we decided that it was time for a full fledged project.  As you can tell we got balloon shreds everywhere.  Guess who cleaned it up.  That's right, me.  I love my research!
This is actually one of my pictures that I took on my photography day, but I put it here because I went and hiked the Y and forgot to take pictures of it!  Jordan, I did some calculations, using a good deal of estimation, but I got it:  2.24 miles from the shore to the stadium.  This is off by about a mile, but, hey!  I used the sun, some rough time measurements and the elevation change from the valley floor to the Y to figure that out!  Not too shabby if you ask me.
I went on a campout with my home stake for their stake conference priesthood session.  It was fun.  This is a picture of some of the boys huddling around a fire early in the morning.
Most recently (ie yesterday) Rachel Checketts had a birthday water party!  It was also a lot of fun.  We had lots of water (too much at the end, while I was trying to dry off, but, hey), food, family and friends and fun.

This is where I live.  I live with Ryan Coatney and Roy Hammel.  We are possibly the nerdiest apartment in the world, seeing as I am a physics, Ryan is a math and Roy is a CS major.

Well, that is most of the interesting things in my life.  The final one is that I just got a new calling in my ward:  I am now an assistant ward clerk.

Vacation '09 According to Michael

Friday the 24th of April found me in Bountiful, UT, waking up early to go down to Provo to watch Joseph's Convocation.  It was entertaining and enlightening to me to learn about what it takes to be a proffessor of physics at BYU, which I learned at a luncheon provided by the physics department and talking to Proffessor Turley.  Straight afterwords, I went down to 

Joseph's apartment, where we wrapped up packing and attached a super overloaded trailer to Mother's suburban.  It was loaded twice the rating of the trailer.  This would bring issues later on.

We headed off into the stormy sunset, but only got ten miles before we realized that we needed to do something about the trailer, which was

 swaying dangerously anytime we got above 40 mph.  We got a new, ten inch drop hitch, and set off again.  It was much better, allowing for a consistent 45 mph.  This was most encouraging, implying that we may very well actually get to Texas, the trailer's destination.  However, just an hour outside of Moab, UT, our nice trailer decided to lose its left wheel.  It actually rather exploded.  Very interesting to look at.  We were blessed to be right next to a rest area, so we pulled in, killed our

 jack, called in the cavalry (Maren's brother Thomas and friends) who were not able to help, and stayed the night.

The next morning, a very kind man with just the right equipment got us back on the road,

 and not needing to leave the trailer.  We drove to Moab, got a UHaul truck, loaded everything into it, and drove to Monticello, where we left the trailer and got a quick taste of Uncle Jim's motorcycle.  They are really fun, though I personally would be scared to death to actually control one.  Then we were off!  We headed out and in Albequerque, NM Joseph and Maren left our small caravan, leaving only Mother and me in the truck.  The reason for this departure was that all involved felt that they should be in their new ward as soon as possible.  They drove through the night, arriving in Irving, TX a mere two

 hours before church.  Mother and I drove till about one in the morning, pulled off and slept until about 7.

We drove to a rest area where we cleaned up and got ready for church.  We found a branch in a town called Childress, TX.  It was a very interesting, spiritual meeting, and Mother and I both felt the spirit there.  Right after sacrament meeting, though, we headed off to beat the storm and be somewhat timely in our arrival in

 Irving, TX.  We got there about 2-3 ish, and unloaded stuff Joseph and Maren's stuff.  We also had dinner at Joseph and Maren's new home.  I must say that I like their house, and am looking forward to getting a house (and a family to put inside said house) when I am older and probably in graduate school somewhere.  But that is later.  After we ate, cleaned, de-odered and met the neighborhood, we took off for Jackson, MS.  We arrived at 3:00 in the morning, but Uncle Daniel and Aunt Dorinda were most kind and got up to talk to us for an hour anyway.  They also asked us to sleep for a while and eat something, but I had neice and nephew, and Mother had grandson and granddaughter waiting, and we decided to hurry along.

By this time, we only had the suburban, and we had four drivers.  That's right,

 we pulled an all nighter again, taking shifts driving and sleeping.  We got to Columbus, OH just before dinner.  We had Jeeshki, or however you spell it, and were most grateful to Crystal for making it for us.  Mmm-mmm, is that stuff good!  Then we talked for a while, and then went to bed.  Ah, how wonderful beds are.  Mine wasn't quite inflated enough, but it was still a lot better than sleeping on a seat belt buckle.

Tuesday found me with a quandary at 6:45 in the morning, which felt like 4:45 to me.  Either I could sleep in or I could go with Jordan to buy a shed.  I decided that memories and time spent with family that doesn't 

live nearby are more important and valuable than sleep, so I got up and went and bought a shed.  After we bought it, we came back and built it!  It was great.  I really enjoy building things.  That comment might get me into a lot of work in the future, but oh well.  After that, we all piled into several cars and drove to Graeter's Ice Cream, and took a tour.  It was very interesting.  We also found out that Clara is a flirt!  We would have done other things 

as well, but it was raining, so we decided to forgoe those options.  We came back to David and Megan's house and had lunch.  It was way

 tastey, as well!  Then I took a nap.  Or would have, except Clara is

 so fun to play with!  I got a little sleep in, but I think I spent most of the time entertaining and being entertained by my adorable neice.  That night, Mother took us all out to this German all-you-can-eat buffet, and it was overly delicious.  I got rather full that night.  Everything was good (except I wasn't a big fan of the sausage stew), but my favorite by far was the bean and 

bacon soup.  Simple, but soups hit chords with me.  Then we went

 back to Jordan's

 house and watched Planet Earth on Jordan's new 50 inch plasma TV.  Very nice.  Very nice, indeed.  We even watched it on a blueray

 player.  Then I went to sleep again.

Wednesday we got up, and got out.  We took something to a neighbor's daughter, who lived in

 Columbus, OH, took Jordan to school (not correct order) and left town.  We drove straight from Columbus, OH to Bountiful, UT.  That took us all of Wednesday and part of Thursday.  But we got

 there!  But before Mother could get home to her meeting, she was kind enough to drive me to Provo, where my vacation formally ended, and I was ready to get to work!

It's interesting how vacation is so wonderful, because you look forward to it, and enjoy it, but by the time it is over, you are looking forward to work, and you enjoy work more because of it.

That was our vacation, according to me!

Happy Birthday, Jordan!

The End is Near

It is now finals week, and I have yet to take any of my six finals!  For those who don't know, I am going to be taking finals for a Java programming class, a differential equations class, a scientific experimental methods class, a modern physics class, a US government class and a history of creativity class.  I don't know how I will do.  I believe that I will do well, but I rather doubt that I will be getting a 4.0 this semester, but it could still happen!

I am really excited for the semester to end, because I am going to be going to Ohio to visit my brothers and their families there!  I have yet to see where they live, as last summer I was working at scout camp.  This summer I will be staying in Provo and will be tutoring physics.

Life is good.  Oh, for the history of creativity class, I had to make a project.  My project that I did was to teach my younger siblings about relativity not using math.  Here is a clip from it.  I don't think you want the whole thing, as it is about 40 minutes long.