Nodak Kid

If you don't have work, make work!

2008-11-26T16:21:00.000-08:00

Well we have rented 1 apartment and 3 houses since we have been married and there is one thing that is common in all of them. They are not yours. You live in a house and want so badly to make it your own but you don't want to spend money to do it cause... its not yours!
I don't care. I did it anyway. I spent 25 bucks and bought a ceiling fan (on clearance) at Lowe's to replace the 1936 light fixture that is in our baby room.

the new fan

the antique fixture (so pretty)

When i got it home i was so excited to put it up but Anna had a better idea. "The baby doesn't need the fan and we do so why don't you put the light from our room in the baby room and the new ceiling fan in our room" she says. "Of course," i say, "why not," because i learned a few months ago not to argue with a pregnant wife.
This is when the fun part begins. I thought it would be a piece of cake. Match the new wires from the new lights and fan to the old nasty corroded non colored wires from the 1915 house. That was the easy part. a bit of guess work and a quick flick of the switch and Abracadabra it worked. The real problem came before i even hooked it up. It went a little bit like this. (start time: 8:30 pm)
1. Take down old light from baby's room
2. Take down light from Mommy and Daddy's room
3. Pull down on the outlet box in Mommy and Daddy's room to make sure it can
hold the new ceiling fan.
4. Find out that the ghetto contractors that put in the new light cut a hole in
the ceiling in a random place and stuck the outlet box in and anchored it to
the cardboard ceiling (or something with the same amount of structural
integrity) and nothing else.
5. Make the decision to continue the project tomorrow (it was now 10 pm on a
school and work night)
6. Recon the attic to find its structural supports.

This is the size of the opening to the attic that i had to climb through

7. Find no supports so i cut a piece of 2x4 and screw it to the 2 crossbeams.
8. Check the newly constructed brace and find that now it shakes the whole
ceiling so now i get another 2x4 and attach it from the ceiling crossbeam
to the roof crossbeam. (sorry I forgot to take pictures and decided not to
go back up in the asbestos filled attic)
9. Bask in my brilliance and take a Dr Pepper break.
10. Begin to hang the ceiling fan with the help of my friend Jon.
11. Realize that the night before i put the ceiling fan together and was
supposed to wait until after the motor part was hung so now i get to take
all the blades of and start over.
12. Hang the fan, take down the fan, hang the fan, take down the fan, and hang
the fan one more time hoping that i finally get it right.
13. End the adventure at 10:15 pm with the wife climbing into bed saying
"turn off the light when you are done cleaning up."

Oh the things we learn while in our youth!

2008-11-19T12:58:00.000-08:00

I miss Todd Tyler!

Life changing times

2008-11-17T14:50:00.001-08:00

Dear Diary, I know it has been a long time sense I have written and I will do better…. I looked back at some of my childhood entries and noticed that they were all about 2-4 months apart and then noticed that my blog was turning out the same way. I would not be a good Nephi.

Well a lot has happened sense September that is worthy of a shout out.

1. We are having a baby. Not just a baby but we found out last Friday the 14th of November that we are having a baby girl! She is due to enter this frozen arctic ice flat on the 10th of April

2. I completed my first solo in the H-300 helicopter about a month ago.

3. I Built a Bassinet for the soon to be here baby from scratch

4. I just got called last Sunday to be the Assistant Teachers Quorum Advisor. (yes I can finally test out my new sleeping bags true sub zero potential)

5. Hello, my name is Dusty and I am addicted to Facebook.

6. We moved to a newer, nicer, cleaner, bigger, better house just down the street (the baby room is going to rock your socks)

Here they are

2008-09-09T13:26:00.001-07:00

This is our new tent (that we took back cause it had 2 big holes in it straight out of the box).

This is our great day on the lake. The lake was great but the boat started having some problems. We still had a blast

This is Anna and I at the Headwaters of the Mississippi.

Paul bunyon and his big ox Babe

Labor Day.......

2008-09-07T16:22:00.000-07:00

So I think it may be time to update the old blog again. No excuses just kind of forgot. Well school started up again last week and it has been going really well. I am still waiting to finish my private pilot course but all I have is one more flight. I am in German 2, Military science 1 and 2 ( to catch up from the first semester I missed), aviation orientation, aviation human factors, ROTC lab and PT and helicopter private pilot course. All in all it is 19 credits so a fairly busy semester.
We did take a break this past weekend to go camping with our new tent and sleeping bags and take a rented boat out to Lake Itasca and Lake Bemidji (both in Minnesota) to go tubing and knee boarding. The boat lasted a few hours before it broke (longer story than I want to tell) so we went back to shore and swam in the freezing Minnesota water. We took a walk the next day to the “Mouth of the Mississippi.” It was cool but just another place on the map that I can tell my grand kids that I went. Very pretty place but after 20 minutes not much left to see. Here are some pictures of the fun vacation with more on the way later.

My Little Darlin is a Firecracker

2008-07-09T19:17:00.000-07:00

Happy July everyone. The 4th is so much better out here in the country where you can blow up fireworks and shoot guns and nobody cares. We had a blast out at the Bronson’s Farm (an hour southwest of town). He owns enough land that you can’t even see half of it from the house (and North Dakota is flatter than Texas). We ate steak (my expertise) and ribs and played ultimate Frisbee until it got dark. Finally at around 9:45 it got dark enough to start the fireworks but we didn’t start the big ones until 10:30 because it doesn’t get dark until then. We had a lot of fun and decided to start saving money now for next year cause it was a blast. I have my second solo flight on Friday morning. I am very excited. It is so much easier by myself than with an instructor hovering over you all the time. I should be finished by August 10th or so. I am ready for it to be over however so I can start flying helicopters. I finally picked the helicopter that I want to fly. It won’t be for a while because it is a special ops (delta force for army aviation) helicopter that the “Nightstalkers” (aviation special ops) flight. It is the AH-6 little bird. It is old but amazing. You can find out about it at Wikipedia.com. Well I will fill you in later about my progress!!!

There is fun in North Dakota

2008-06-09T10:28:00.000-07:00

Well I started my private pilot courses last week and they are going great. I had my first exam 3 days after class started and I did very well. The weather hasn’t been that nice though. It has been raining so I only flew once on Saturday but it was great. I had so much fun and my new headset worked great. My ground school… Not so fun. I do have a pretty cool ground school instructor though who informed us about fun things in the area. This past weekend was the annual Fargo Rib Fest. Anna and I and the Pierson’s decided to go on Friday night because my favorite country band was playing and the concert was free. DIMOND RIO ROCKS.

Minus all the drunk, smoking, country bumpkin’s with no teeth it was a very fun evening. We didn’t have enough money to try all the ribs but we did try Aussom Aussie’s and they were amazing.

By far the best ribs ever. Those Aussies can cook. They must be authentic as well because the guy that took my money told me “Thanks Mate” in a very legit accent.

Dallin and I found Heaven on Earth and had to enter

Anna Loves her funnel cakes

My wife is so hot

2008-06-09T10:15:00.000-07:00

I forgot to post some pictures of your wonderful trip home so here they are. Enjoy

My Parents neighborhood has pet Peacocks

Back to the Souix Nation

2008-06-01T12:37:00.000-07:00

After 18 hours of driving we are home. It was a great 10 days. Hot, humid and hot. I moved up north and now I can’t stand the heat. We did beat the heat while we were there at Hurricane Harbor. It was a lot more fun when I was about 15 or so but now its like a gigantic wet day care. Not for me but Anna still loves it. I do like the Hooks lagoon play area which is ironic seeing as how it is for kids under 3 feet tall. I did have some great news while I was there though. My commanding officer at UND called me to tell me that I was awarded the Helicopter flight training scholarship!!! This is the whole reason why we moved up here and we have been praying and crossing fingers ever sense. What a relief.
Well I start my private fixed wing class tomorrow at 9:30 so wish me luck. I am so excited and also a bit nervous.
It has warmed up around here although it is still not to Anna’s satisfaction. Yesterday and today have been sunny and warm around 80 or so and at night is still gets down to about 55 or 60. That is the perfect temp if you ask me.
While we were in Texas I did get some new running shoes and an ipod adapter that will tell me how long I have ran and what my pace is. It is way cool.

Out for the summer

2008-05-05T17:36:00.000-07:00

School is done for the year and I am so excited. Finals were good I guess. I got a 97 on my speech final and a 96 for my final grade and I aced my Military science test (it was a take home test) but I have not yet received my meteorology and German final so lets cross our fingers. I am also excited to not have to get up at 5 am to work out. Now I can sleep in until 6:30 cause then I have to take Anna to work.
Well about two or three days after my last blog it snowed on us. Not a lot but about 3-4 inches. It was just enough to make everything muddy again. Then this morning it started out at 28 degrees and a chance of snow and now it is about 65 degrees. I love it. I have to change from jeans and a sweatshirt in the morning to shorts and a t shirt by noon.

Here are a few pictures of our lovely city. This is our street after it snowed (again)

We live about a half mile away from the river so that is where we take our romantic evening strolls.

And this is our pretty fence to keep the children in the yard.

I will Survive

2008-04-23T06:13:00.000-07:00

Well this past weekend was very eventful. I went to Camp Ripley for our annul Joint FTX training (ROTC thing). We left on Thursday around 11:30 am and got back on Sunday at 2:00 pm. It was about a five hour bus drive on the worst highways in the world (thank you Minnesota). The night we got there we did our night land navigation which is when they give us co ordinances on a grid map and we have to find the flag that goes with them. They give us 3 hours and five grid points and it starts at 9 pm and the only light you can have is an army flashlight with a red lens. The red light really doesn’t help unless the map is made for it and ours wasn’t. We still rocked it though. The freshmen got to pair up with each other and my partner and I finished with 45 min left and got 4 out of 5. We got to sleep at 1:30 because some junior in our squad got lost. We got up the next morning at 4:50, went to a team building activity till 10 and then did our day land navigation. Once again we rocked it. That night we camped outside under the stars in 30 degree weather with a C-130 buzzing us until 2:00 am and then we woke up at 4:00 am packed up and then started our 12 straight hours of STX lanes (simulated combat drills). It was then that I realized that out of all the colleges that were there UND was so much more prepared. Our juniors were much better leaders and we all knew what to do because we practice it every Thursday. We ended the day with a 3 mile Ruck March (all our gear on our backs). We ate a nice dinner and then spent the last 3 hours from 8 till 11 cleaning our guns (m-16). Yes it took the full 3 hours.
I am still alive and well. It was overall a very fun and educational weekend. I was not allowed to bring any electronics like cell phones or cameras so I don’t have any pictures to show you.
(only 3 ½ more weeks till we come home!!!)

home for the summer

2008-04-14T07:44:00.000-07:00

Well, it has finally warmed up to 45-50 degrees. I wore shorts and a t-shirt last Tuesday. It was still a little chilly but it was nice to not have to wear a coat and long pants.
I had an interesting encounter with our neighbors from hell last week. To make a long story short, they put there trashcan right in front of our side of the garage so we can’t get into our car without hitting it. I moved it 3 feet way to the side of the garage (still on our side) and then they moved it back. This went on for about 4 days until I get a pounding at the door from a crazy white man with dread locks who tells me to stop touching his f%$#ing trashcan. We exchanged words and then he ended by walking a way telling me to get a job. I told him I went to school so I could get a job. I was then informed that “you ain’t need no schoolin to get an F#$*ing job.” Obviously I have been lied to my whole life for if I only knew that I could speak without paying $100,000 for school, I would be at home in Texas working at the nearest Cracker Barrel driving a Ford pinto.
I called my land lord and told him that I was making my final complaint (complaint #1-4 consisted of noise issues, trash in our back yard, leaving the garage door open, and dog poo on my doorstep) and that if it didn’t get resolved he would be finding me a new place to live.
I hope things will get better so we won’t have to move until our lease is up but we will see if the landlord will even do anything about it. That is life though so we will just have to get use to it.
On a brighter note, we are coming home for summer!!! Yea!!! We will be in town on the 17th and leave on the 24th. I will not be ready for the hot but I would like to go swimming. They don’t swim up here. The water never gets hot enough. Anna is making a list of everything we must do while in town and #1 is EAT AT ON THE BOARDER. Everything after that is up to her.
(todays high has finaly reached 60!!!)

Click Click Boom

2008-03-30T14:01:00.000-07:00

This is My Gun (Johnny)

On Saturday it will be Our 2 year wedding anniversary and Anna Let me buy a Shot Gun (also an army contracting present). I went skeet shooting and riffle shooting with two of my friends Marc and Dallin last yesterday and it was a blast.

This is Mark Farmer

This is Dallin Pierson

This is Me

My Skeet Thrower

My batteries ran out before we could talk pictures of us shooting skeet but here we are shooting Marc’s 30-30

(Dalin got the bulls Eye from about 35 yards).
We drove out about 20 miles west of town and found Farmer Joe’s field and hoped we wouldn’t get caught and we didn’t.
Anna chose to buy new classes (thanks to the Grey giant). Glasses are so much cheaper when you have insurance. We finally bought wood and garden fencing to cages the fury Grey beast from our food storage and future eye glasses.

The snow is finally melting but it is so flat out here and the ground is still frozen that the water has no where to go so it just makes massive mud puddles everywhere. Well other than that things are normal around here with not much to report on so T-T-F-N Ta Ta for now!

I'm In The Army Now

2008-03-21T07:21:00.000-07:00

I am an Army Cadet. Soon I will take an oath and become an Army Officer committed to defending the values which make this nation great. Honor is my touchstone. I understand mission first and people always.

I am the past – the spirit of those warriors who have made the final sacrifice.

I am the present – the scholar and apprentice soldier enhancing my skills in the science of warfare and the art of leadership.

But above all, I am the future – the future warrior leader of the United States Army. May God give me the compassion and judgment to lead and the gallantry in battle to win.

I will do my duty.

On Thursday, March 20 2008 at 13:05 I contracted with the UND Army ROTC to become and Army officer. It was a great day. I was nervous cause it is a decision that will affect both Anna and I for the next 11 years (three more years of school and 8 in the army). It was a special day also cause the Brigade Commander (head of 20 university ROTC's) swore me in. There were a lot of people there to watch and support my which made it even more special and less scary. I will get some pictures of it soon. As for now... I am out to run cause i was challanged by my ROTC teacher to make the 320 club ( that is a score of 320 on a PT test) which very few ever do becase a 300 is considered a perfect score and anything above that is great. I can't wait till our friends the Eldredge's come so I will have a running partner!

Stop the Ringing

2008-03-15T17:20:00.000-07:00

Well for all of you who don't know I have something called Tinnitis. Tinnitis is a ringing in your ears caused by just about anything... a chain saw, gun shot, loud music, ect. I have had it sence forever. I found out that if you have it the army wont let you fly. That was heartbreaking. Well the Doctor that did my physical said that i just needed a waver from an ear specialist that says i won't have any hearing loss because of it. I have had 3 hearing test in sence school started and have past all 3 with near perfect scores. Well Anna and I went to the specialist on friday and for the 4th time he did a hearing test and once again i past. He did some other tests and concluded that i am at not greater risk of hearing loss than anyone else walking down the street. That was a great blessing for our family.

Spring Break

2008-03-10T14:58:00.000-07:00

The two best words a college student could here. Spring Break. Anna and i had a great spring break. We left early friday morning and drive 14 hours to Idaho Falls to see Grandma and Grandpa Long. We had a spleded time. Saturday morning we drove up to Green Canyon and went snowmobiling with my grandpa and two cusins Jake and Austin. It was great... if you take out the blizzard snow and winds, Goggles that weren't worth 2 cents and an inexperienced driver (it was only my third time) and a wife that didn't know anything about snowmobiling. It started out great but when we reached the top of the mountain the snow came in with a vengeance. We made it down though but not with out Anna and I getting stuck about three times and Grandpa running into a tree because you couldn't see ten feet in front of you. We also went fourwheeling at grandma's house. Anna Ran into a tree!

That night some cusins came in town to say hello. It was great to see them after many years apart. Sunday we went to church with my grandparents. It was good to see everyone again (i lived there before my mission). On monday we drove down to West Jordan Utah to see my sister and her family. We drove by the Logan temple cause Anna has always wanted to see it. It was amazing. Words can't describe the beauty.

On tuesday Anna and I went to the Salt Lake Temple and did a session. If you have never been there it is definantly a "must do before i die" kind of thing. Everyone should go atleast once. Wednesday... The day that confirmed Anna is not big into winter sports. After a not so fun snowmobiling trip we decided to hit the slops of Snowbird for some class "A" skiing (I Snowboarded). Anna realized after not skiing for about 5-6 years you forget how to do a lot of things, like how to stop. She was a trooper though and there wasn't anyone on the slopes that was so beautiful or with the cutest giggle. She is a great wife.
After a morning of skiing we drove down to Provo to see some of Anna's Texas Friends who are attending BYU. We Made it back home on Saturday afternoon despite the raging North Dakota Winds and snow that Blew 6 cars into the median on I-94 about 10 miles from Fargo. Two of which rolled over and didn't look very good. Well today it is back to school so it must be time to "study"