Trip to California

We just got back from a very short trip to California. As some of you may know, I play (am addicted) to a (stupid) computer golf game. This game is normally played on the internet, but Saturday, there was a live tournament in Los Angeles, that led to a World Final in Korea in November. I had to place at least 3rd in this tournament to get the free plane tickets to Korea for a chance at winning $5,000.

I was pretty certain that my chances of advancing were pretty much non-existant, but with a few lucky breaks, I could have made it. I just happened to get put into a first round matchup with the guy who eventually won the whole thing. I only lost to him in the first round by a stroke, which was his stiffest competition all day.

Last year, I got a nice little digital camera as a consolation prize for not getting the trip to Korea. It takes nice pictures (you'll see some in this post when I get around to it). This year, the consolation prize was a new mouse..... a little bit of a dropoff in prizes if you ask me. It's a nice mouse, probably worth about 30 dollars brand new, and therefore, probably the best mouse I'll ever own. I stuck around for the prize auction and won another mouse, hooray! So, the total value of my prizes ended up being about 60-70 dollars, which I wouldn't have spent myself. I did however spend about 200 bucks on gas getting there from Utah.

It would have been a really stupid trip to take if it hadn't been for being able to take Jenn and the kids down for a visit. 4 months ago, we went on a vacation to St. George, and went to Bryce and Zions. Jennifer was bent on getting some family pictures taken next to some spiffy red rocks. It never happened. At one time, she mulled the idea of driving down there one afternoon for the specific purpose of taking a unique family picture. When I was invited to the golf thingy in LA, it represented a great opportunity to go take those pictures, and also visit with my mom and dad. So we all piled into the van wearing nice clothes, and drove 4 hours to St. George with a bunch of starving kids (can't have them messing up their clothes, right?) We took some ok pictures, but a lot of them have some very visible shadows. The idea was cool though. Some of the pictures turned out pretty decent, you wouldn't even be able to tell that the kids in the pictures were grumpy and whiny. (The kids were all excellent on the trip actually, and were sometimes able to go more than 15 minutes without asking for treats. On the trip home, we only had one potty break, which for an 8.5 hour trip is amazing)

We also had to make the trip, because apparently, Jenn has pictures of all our kids taking bath's in my parent's kitchen sink. Emery will soon be too large to do this, so we had to act fast.

All in all, I'm very glad we made the trip, even though I totally sucked at golf. I got some good tips from Dad about how to act and not to act during my fire interview, and some good information on passing the Agility test. I'm looking forward to getting it under my belt in October.