Feeling Much Better

I am feeling much better, for any who might be concerned. Other than having a stint in, that has to come out, I'm good. 

Once again I have swore off diet coke and drinking gallons of water. How long will it last? Probably not long. Time blurs rational thought.

I know that in my last post I said "Man I hate to travel", but I am going to get to go on the trip of a life time this weekend. I get to fly on a private jet to Alaska and then get on one of those really cool yellow planes with the floats for wheels and fly into one of those lakes that can only be gotten to by plane. I am so excited!

It's all fun 'til the bear eats you.

They have WiFi at the lodge, but NO cel phone service. So I can post some pictures and a note or two, but no phones. Yippee!

Stay tuned!

News from Tyler/ Man I hate to travel

Well as you can see, we just got a picture CD from Tyler. It is so cool to see all of the people and sites that he is experiencing. A few of the files were video files so we got to hear from him as well as see some of people and scenery of his area. He only has 18 more weeks. I can remember when he still had 18 months left. 

There are so many blessings that a family experiences while having a missionary in the field, but the one that is the most impressive is the growth in that young man. Tyler has matured so much and you could see it in every letter week to week. He has such a strong testimony. We can't wait for him to come home, but also know he has a lot more work to do in Australia.

A Travel Tale

I wasn't feeling well last week as you know, but I had a very important business trip in New York that I could not get out of, so I suck-it-up like a good soldier and headed out.

 The trip there was uneventful, I was well rested from the weekend and got to fly First Class. I was eager to be in the big city. Little did I know that it was going to be the classic tale of the " Country Mouse/ City Mouse." 

After arriving that afternoon I courageously caught a cab from the airport to my hotel uptown. Piece of cake.

 I walked over to Central Park and if you have never been there it is awesome. I stayed all afternoon, but got scared when it started to get dark. I've heard stories.

I had meetings all the next day and wanted to get a good rest for my big day in the city.

After waking up to the pulse of the city, I headed down stairs to meet the day. I pushed my way through the big revolving doors and go around a couple times because it's fun. I stumble to the street because I was dizzy and have the bellman help me hail or is it hell or hayle a cab. Whichever it is, he whistled real loud and a cab screeches to a stop right in front of me and I hop in. 

I try to be so cool and  say "136 Franklin Street" and of course that is not enough information. The turbin slowly turns toward me and in a middle eastern accent the man says "Uptown or downtown?"

 I stare at the plexi glass and mutter "Uh, uh it's by a bridge." 

He stares back and asks again "Uptown or downtown mister, let's go the meter is ticking" 

I hold the note to the glass like a little kid hoping that if he reads it himself he will somehow know whether it was uptown or downtown. It doesn't seem to work. I suddenly remember and shout "I can walk to the World Trade Center site!" He hits the gas! "Downtown we go, please buckle now!"

Have any of you ridden in a New York City cab in rush hour traffic? There are no traffic rules or at least none of  the ones I obey.

 You can pass on the right, you can pass on the left, you can actually go into on coming traffic as long as you do so while honking your horn.

 We drove for over a 100 yards on the sidewalk because a delivery truck had stopped in the middle of the road, which I also guess is OK. I now know over a dozen swear words in Arabic. 

The "bridge" that the address was by was the Brooklyn Bridge, but I did not see the bridge because my head was in my lap as I prayed to Ala to get me there safely. It must have work because we came to a screeching stop right in front of 136 Franklin Street. I threw money at him and rolled to the curb and kissed the sidewalk. Never again! 

My meetings go well and I got the chance to walk to the World Trade Center site and go through the memorial. It was very emotional and so worth the effort. 

I was done and tired and ready to head back to my hotel. As I started to walk in the general direction of the hotel I got involved in another big city experience. I've seen it on TV, but now I was in it. A 15' wide sidewalk with a million people all headed home. I swear, wall-to-wall people. Solid people all moving like a "lava flow" down the sidewalk. 

I was just going with the flow even as the part I was in peeled off and went down stairs to the subway. The subway! I've never ridden on a subway.

 I push through the turn styles with the flow and a lady seeing my panic gives me some comforting advise "You'll be fine, just watch for your stop and get off when it's your turn." Sounds easy. 

I squeeze onto the subway and the problem is that at every stop, lot's of people get off and lots of people get on. I am having a hard time keeping track. I think it's my turn and I nervously get off. No turning back now, I walk to the stairs and head up. 

Now here's the weird part. You pop up out of the hole like a ground hog and look around. I could have been anywhere. I'm thinking Harlem, but no, I am right by my hotel. How cool? Much better than the cab ride. 

I crash I'm so tired and wake up feeling a little better and in no rush. My flight is not until 12:30 pm. I make my way down and do the cab thing again, but this time it's easy. "JFK Airport and take it easy we have 3 hours." I say. The same guy or his brother says "OK, mister, set back and take it easy."

I get to the airport with time to spare and make my way through the "shoes on shoes off" thing. My back is really starting to hurt, I really over did it with all the walking the day before.

 I know that I will be having to go to the bathroom every 10 minutes so I move my seat to the very front row by the bathroom. Big mistake! 

They start to load the plane and guess when row 1 boards? Yea, last.

 So I wait until everyone has boarded, my back is really hurting. 

As I step through the door of the plane the first thing I see is the 250 lb lady sitting by the only empty seat, my seat, and 100 lbs of her was in my seat.

 I try to find a little space to push my carry on into and sit down with my briefcase under my feet, because on the "front row" there is no compartment under the seat in front of you. 

It's then I meet the "grumpy stewardess". "Sir, you can not have that case under your feet." 

I stand to find a spot for my briefcase and there is none. 

"Sir, you have to be seated."

"Uh, ok, I'm trying to find a spot." Nothing, everyone is staring. 

"Sir, please you have to be seated." 

I'm looking, I'm looking, help.

 "Sir" 

Ahh! She pops up and makes this tisking sound, grabs my briefcase and heads down the plane and crams it in a overhead 3/4 of the way down the plane. 

Now I'm sure when the plane lands all I will have to do is say "Could everyone stay in their seats for a second while I come all the way back there and get my briefcase." Crap!

I plop down into my seat and smoosh the fat lady's arm because it's in my seat. Now she's mad. I try to put my seatbelt on, but she's sitting on it. Did I say my back was hurting?

 We take off and I have to go to the bathroom so bad I can't stand it. You are not allowed to get up until the plane gets to some special altitude that it is safe to pee at. Why? I'm not sure, but I can not wait, I unbuckle and head to the bathroom

 "Sir, you have to remain seated." 

I disregard and head into the bathroom. I'm in big trouble now. I don't want to come out. When I finally do I get glared at and return to my seat. My half of seat. It is the longest flight ever.

 I can't stay seated because I have no where to put my right arm. Her arm is not only on the armrest, it's past the arm rest. I can't rest it on her arm, so I hold it in the air. Did I say my back hurts?

 I try to stand, but am told to "Please be seated!" They are very serious about the whole "stay away from the pilots door" thing. It's the law. 

It is truly the flight from hell.

So after we land and I wait for the entire plane to unload, I walk back to get my briefcase.

As I pass by "miss grumpy pants" she says and I quote " Thank you so much for flying JetBlue." 

Man I hate to travel.

Talk to you later

From the other side

Ok, it wasn't a kidney stone and I'm not saying it was worse, just horrible in a different way. I ended up with a severe infection in my "nether region", I'll just leave it at that. For those of you I told or for those of you that are in my wife's "inner circle" you know that it was a very painful situation with some very weird and uncomfortable things going on. Not a good time for me, but I'm glad I could add a good laugh to a few luncheons and cell phone call or two. Ha! Ha!

   Well I think I'm out-of-the-woods, they gave me a shot in the bum of strong antibiotics and a prescription of the same and I seem to be feeling a little better.

   The hardest thing for me was to actually take some time off to rest. I don't do that very well, but the doctor said if I did not rest then it was possible that my "nether region" could fall off. I rested!

    One of the things that has come up while I have been resting is I'm starting to get some feed back on my "blog". This feed back is coming from some people who have some personal interest to my comments. They are either questioning their involvement in a story, or whether all parts of the event are accurate, or lastly, some are worried that they are going to be incriminated through  my stories when they have either on their own, or through legal or psychological council, hoped that these things would lay dormant.

    Well I have this to say. History is written by those that get it on paper first. My disclaimer is that all of the events are accurate to my best recollection and totally from my point-of-view. For those that are concerned about their implication in the crimes, I mean events, they really should have thought about that when they decided to hang out with us. I might change some names to protect the innocent, we'll see.

So here's a good one.

I'm sure he's reading this, because word got back to me that he was one of the complainers, but a common theme from my childhood, you'll notice, is that my cousin Tony (name NOT changed to protect the innocent) will be at most of the catastrophic events that happened. There might be something to that.

   This one occurs at his parents house in Las Vegas, as from my earlier blog, "where was the adult supervision?"

   His parents had just installed a new fireplace in their family room. It was summer, I'm not even sure they had burned a fire in it yet. Well Tony and I decided we should see if it worked. So after piling every newspaper, magazine and loose piece of lumber from the backyard, we threw a match to it. Now that was a fire! 

    After we burned everything within reach we became bored. Remember "bored 12 year olds" not a good idea. So we leave that burning and go out back and the first thing we notice is the unbelievable amount of smoke coming out of the chimney. Sitting there at our feet was a box of 55 gallon plastic garbage bags. Picture light bulbs going on above our heads. Box in hand and on to the roof we go. 

   Now if there are youngsters reading this, do not try this at home, we were highly trained professionals.

   We took a bag and placed it over the chimney, it rapidly filled with heat and smoke. We released the bag and it went nearly 30' in the air and then rolled over and the smoke poured out like an Indian smoke signal. Now come on, how cool is that?!?! 

   We did this until all the bags were melted and we were still not bored. It had to be cool. So there has to be more bags inside the house right? So we scamper off the roof and run to the back door and open it...........Solid Wall of Smoke!! I am not lying the house is plumb full of smoke. 

   Once again panic sets in. I spend a lot of my childhood operating in panic mode. We are running through the house opening doors and windows. There is so much smoke you could write your name in the mirrors on the wall. So picture two 12 year olds running through the house with flapping towels and trying to clear all this smoke. 

   Now here's the best part. Tony's older brother Eric kept rare birds in cages in his room. Don't know what they were, just knew they were really colorful and usually made a lot of chirping sounds. As I ran by his room, no chirping, that's odd. I hit the skids and peek in. Colorful birds covered in soot and hanging upside down. 

  Now picture two 12 year olds trying to administer mouth-to-mouth to little birds while pumping their little chests.

   So needless to say we never even came close to cleaning that mess up, but we did take a blood oath to the fact that all we did was light a fire, much too large for the fireplace, and under no circumstances did we get on the roof or place anything in or on the chimney. I even think my uncle had the contractor check on how well the fireplace vented itself.

   I think I was grounded for the entire summer and forbidden to hang out with Tony. Talk about (barn door after the horse is out). The whole not hanging out with Tony didn't last very long any way. I think the fire in Kanarraville was that next summer. There are plenty more stories to come. 

   My mom was in town and she brought this newspaper clipping about a lady who raised boys and had all these things that happen while they were growing up. I scoffed.

Peace Out

Kidney Stones Suck!

I have racked my brain for the last 18 or so years to figure out what I could have done to be cursed with kidney stones. Oh sure, I have definitely done my fair share of naughty things, but for those of you that have had the experience of a kidney stone, I would have had to have destroyed a civilization to have been cursed with the amount of "stones" I have brought into this world.

It all started when Tyler and I were bachelors. We hadn't met Kelli yet and it was the summer of 1988. Tyler was not feeling well, he had a problem with his eyes and ears that caused him to get high fevers. So I was nursing him along and my back was killing me. I was trying to think of when I could have pulled it and why was it hurting so bad.I didn't know what was going on.  Well by midnight I was crawling around on the floor because I could not stand. Tyler was crying, I was crying, not a pretty picture at the Huntsman bachelor pad. What had I done to my back. And then a miracle, a half hour later no pain. I'm healed!

Well for those of you who have had a kidney stone know, I was not healed. It was phase 1 of the "journey". The stone at fought it's way out of the kidney and was now pleasantly floating in my bladder. The fun had only begun. 

Phase 2 began at 5;30am with a bathroom call. Man I had to go! And who had kicked me in the crotch? Well not only could I not go, what little did come out felt like hot lava! What the heck was going on? I had to get to a doctor, something was broken and I was losing my mind. Luckily Tyler felt a little better even if dad felt worse. So me and Tyler called in every favor we had and get a doctors appointment for 10:00 am. The question being could I make it to 10:00 am? I must have tried to go to the bathroom 50 times and all that came out was tears. Help me!

We get to the doctor and we get a "two-for-one", the doctor sees Tyler for his ears and me for my "whatever was going on". This is where it gets funny. Dr. Kilpatrick comes into the room and says "You have a kidney stone" and I say "Why?"  and he says "People just get them and it's hard to say why." so I say "OK, glad we found mine" and he says "OK" We stare at each other for a long time and he says "OK then" and I say " So when do you take it out?" and he says "Take it out of where?" "Out of me" I say. We stare at each other for a long time again. I'm in a lot of pain and not thinking too clearly. He stands and comes to me and puts his hand on my shoulder and speaks the words I will never forget "You pass it" With a shaky voice I say "How do you pass it?" and all he does is squeeze my shoulder. His next words were "What would you like for the pain." Two hours later on wobbly knees in my bathroom I was holding, in my newly purchased "strainer cup", the littlest freakin' thing you ever saw. I thought it would be golf ball size. It was smaller than a BB, but upon closer examination it did have barbs, but still. That much pain and such a little thing.

Well that was only the beginning. I am a veritable kidney stone factory. I have given birth to over 10 stones and counting. One so big it had to be pulverized by sound waves just so I could have the joy of passing all the little fragments that a 9 millimeter stone produces. Do you know how big 9 mil. is? That is the size of a 10 karat diamond for you ladies who like jewelry. That stone was so bad that before it got pulverized I found myself in my backyard at 2:30 in the morning willing to make a pact with the "devil" just to get it out of me. I was delirious.

So on Saturday my back starts to hurt and I have become an expert on the symptoms and phases of a kidney stone. I know the drill. I am am typing this between phases. I am appreciating the break, but know the worst is yet to come.

See ya on the other side.

My Missionary/ No adult supervision

OK, I didn't go on a mission (dang girls) and I don't know all the do's and don'ts to being on a mission, but I'm not exactly sure what Elder Huntsman is doing here. Is he baby sitting? Is he pushing an empty stroller? Is there something besides a baby in the stroller? (It is Australia after all) or is there something that Elder Huntsman has not told us about his mission?

At any rate it was great to hear from him on Mother's Day. Even though the first attempt to contact us was at 5:45am. Australia is 17 hours ahead of us and Tyler's math skills were not turned on. We talked to him for a little while and then convinced him to go to bed, it was 10:45pm there and to call us back when he woke up. That worked out much better.

To give a report, he is doing great. No headaches even though he is back out in the "bush" and his spirits are high even though he is in an area that is only a branch and there are only 30 people at Church, which they have to have in a converted mental ward at the hospital.

 He is getting a little "trunky" with only months left, but he is so driven that he knows the time will go by faster than he wants it to. We are trying to get all of our dates together for when we are going to get him. There is a lot of coordination that goes into that with the Church Travel Agency. We are very excited about being able to see him, less than 5 months.

The small town that Tyler is in has only a thousand or so people in it and he says it reminds him of Kanarraville, Utah. For those of you who don't know where that is, it is just before you get to Cedar City going north and it is where my mom was raised.

 My kids have spent a lot of time there. It was while Tyler was telling me about the town he's in and and how small and rural it was that I got to thinking about the summers in Kanarraville as a boy.

 All I can say is " Where was the adult supervision?"

 There are quite a few stories to tell from those infamous summers, many of them are historically documented, see flood of 1974, (that was not all my fault).

 One quick little story from the summer of '75. I was 13 years old my cousin Tony was 12. We were bored out of minds. Parents should not let mischievous 13 year olds get bored. Bad things will happen. We had run out of things to break. We had climbed every tree and let loose every caged or penned animal.

 When my father drives in from Cedar City with a present that he forgot to run by my mother...............FIREWORKS! These were not the wussy fireworks of now days. There was no such thing as "Safe and Sane". There were actual explosives in the package. Who can remember M80's? There were 4 of those! Did you know they were waterproof? If you dropped them in the irrigation ditch they wouldn't explode until they were under the road.They were a 1/4 stick of dynamite.  Cool! Where was the supervision?

 Here is where it gets good. There were "Bottle Rockets". Remember those? So named because they were a rocket on a long stick, that you put in a bottle and then lit and swoosh! Up into the sky and POW! We had 24 of these. The first 12 went as per the instructions. Then the wheels started turning. Surely you could launch them from other objects than just bottles? The next 10 were launched from posts, door frames, mailboxes and the back of one very mad pig. Then sheer brilliance. What if you broke the stick in half and through it after you lit the fuse? It would fly in whatever direction it was facing when it ignited. So Boss!

Crap! Only 4 left, the first three went like clock work. Spinning through the air and then zoom! off they would go and POW! The last one? Not so good.

 If any of you have ever been to a rural farming area, you notice that everyone has a field growing something. You also probably know what "summer wheat" is. It's about two feet tall dry yellow grass. Are you getting the picture? My mom's uncle had a 2 acre field of border to border "summer grass". The last "bottle rocket" no lie. To this day I ask Why? Why? As it shot towards the field I remember trying to run and catch it. Do you know how fast dry grass burns? It went like a shot then burnt for 2 hours. I can still remember the sound of the bell from that old fire engine. They couldn't put it out. It burned from road to road to fence. I can still remember the smell after the flames tore through the chicken coop. No not fried chicken, burnt chicken poop. There was a picture of my dad and all my uncles with soot on their faces, smoke behind them and me and my cousin sitting in the cab of my dads truck. We were grounded for most of the summer. I ask again. Where was the supervision?

Talk to you later

Shout out to my Sunday School Cllass

Ok, this is easily my favorite thing each week.  I get the incredible opportunity to teach the 15, 16, 17, 18 year olds at church, and whomever else wants to come into my class.  I am not sure if the Bishopric knows what they have done, and it really tests one's faith in the whole "called by inspiration"  theory, but nevertheless I love it.

I taught them today.......did I say "taught"?  I'm not exactly sure what you call what we do in there, but for the sake of other adults who might read this, I taught them today and we had a great time. 

The lesson was on King Benjamin, that is #15 out of the lesson manual (just in case Bro. Hansen goes to my blog), then the rest of the time we talked about Mothers.  Next week is Mother's Day after all.  You can tell a lot about a young person by the relationship he or she has with their mom. I had a great mom growing up and it is a marvel of human endurance that she is not in a home somewhere staring out the window muttering phrases like: " wait 'til your father gets home" or  "please get your little brother off the roof ".   To show my kids that my mother is still alive, lucid, and that she still loves me, we called her on speaker phone from our Sunday School room.  It went great, she said all the right things, and she does really love me.

I promised a "shout out" to my kids today, but they have to go to my blog and comment. 

So let's do this, and I am doing this by memory so if I miss any names, forgive me and write me back to tell me I missed you.

Here goes-

Dallin, Justin, Jordan, Jacob, Andrew G, Sarah, Jesse, Dane, Christopher, Spencer, Madeline, Karah, Andrew P, Nathan, Vic, Liz, Nicholas, Leah, Melissa, Abigail, Carlee, Jessica, Cailee, Paige, Jared and anyone else who might have stumbled into my classroom.  Oh and if I messed up on any of the spelling I'm sorry.

I love these kids more than they know.  They bring so much joy to my life and keep me grounded in the Gospel.  They have such incredible testimonies, it lifts me up.

So there is my shout out to some very cool kids.

Peace Out!!

p.s.  If any of you kids who read this have my scriptures, I want them back. ( They are sacred )

If you could meet anyone

I was driving home from work today, I know it's Saturday and that's a whole 'nother set of issues saved for another day. I can't remember when the last time I did not just assume I was working Saturday. Man I need  a vacation, but I digress. As I said, I was driving home today listening to ESPN on the radio ( remember I have a sickness ) and they were talking about if you could meet anyone in the world, who would that be? I imagined that they were talking about a sports figure and I'm sure they were, it was ESPN after all. I started to think about who I would want that to be. Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, anybody on the Cubs and as cool as that would be I could not help but remember the day when I got my wish. 

Even as a young boy I dreamed of one day meeting the Prophet. It didn't matter who it was at the time, I just wanted to meet the Prophet. 

Anytime I was ever asked that question " If you could meet anyone in the world , who would it be?" I would always answer "The Prophet."

Well as you get older and more realistic, you begin to understand that there are lots of things in life that you dream of that are probably not going to happen ( no chance of dating Farrah Faucet ) so I had pretty much come to grips with the fact that I was not going to just get to meet the Prophet. Oh yea of little faith.

In the fall of 2004 I get an opportunity to work on the new visitors center at the Temple in Hawaii. It was a great job ( how bad can any job in Hawaii be ), we stayed in a beach house, we swam in the ocean and worked at the Temple. Not a bad gig.

Well while we were there we heard rumors that President Hinckley was coming to re-dedicate the portions of the visitors center and temple grounds that were finished. My area was not complete ( not my fault ). So I scheduled my next trip back to coincide with his coming. I brought Kelli along with me for a little vacation and the slim hope that we might see the Prophet.

As the day approached we were told that he might not even come into the visitors center and if he did he probably wouldn't come into our area because it was under construction. Bummer.

Well Kelli is outside just kind of in a hoovering pattern, not knowing if she could stay, well you know her, she goes to the Elder in charge and asks if she can stay and he says they are trying to keep it low-key. Kelli says "what if I'm working?" I peek out of the doors at one time to see where she went and sure enough she's washing windows.

Well the Prophet and his entourage arrive and we go into our construction area and close the door. I find some reason to be working right by the door, just in case. 

The next thing you know the door swings open wide and I am standing face to face with President Hinckley. He peeks his head in and looks at me and asks "what kind of 'mud' are you using to carve that rock?"

Did he just speak to me? What did he just say? Did he say "mud"? How cool is that? Only an old cement guy would know to call it "mud".  Well my lips started to move, but I don't think sound was coming out.  He's got to be thinking, maybe the cement guy is retarded.  I eek out just in time to save some face  "uh, uh it's regular plaster." How lame was that?  I could have said anything.  There was my moment to converse with the Prophet and all I can come up with was "uh,uh it's regular plaster. "  Ugh! 

How about "Hi President Hinckley. I'm so glad you chose to peek in at our work. Would you like to carve a little of the "mud" just for fun to say you did."  Ha!  Ha!  We share a laugh, the Prophet and I. 

No, not me "uh, uh, uh it's regular plaster" that was my once-in-a-life-time moment face to face with the Prophet.  Then to make matters worse Kelli snaps the photo just as I finish speaking and President Hinckley is thinking "Yep, he's retarded! "

But it was still very, very cool. I will never forget the feeling of the Spirit that was in that room in his presence.

I will be much better prepared for my next encounter.

If you could meet anybody on earth, who would that be?

Love to hear back

See Ya