Ryan, Debi, and Toren Cragun's Blog

This was our 11th wedding anniversary. We had considered doing various things, but eventually decided to take it easy. We did go to lunch with my Mom, Dad, and brother Troy at the Olive Garden to celebrate our anniversary. We then saw my Dad’s new office. Back at my parents, I made some toffee and hummus, which we then took to my sister Tammy’s house, where we spent the evening.

We spent the evening playing canasta. During the game we engaged in some more banter that led to a funny incident. My Mom will occasionally say disparaging things about science, usually when I say something like, “You know, there was a recent study that found X.” Whenever she disparages it, I often retort with, “You do realize that I’m a scientist, right?” During the card game something came up about how we calculate time. The typical sequence of me explaining science and me saying, “You do realize I’m a scientist, right?” played out. In the process, my sister, Tammy, said, “You sound just like Grandpa Nealey.” Apparently I missed this, but my step-maternal grandfather, Clarence Nealey, was fond of saying, “I’m a scientist.” He was an inspector for the FDA and, undoubtedly, used science to inspect whatever he inspected. Not remembering him saying this, I kind of laughed it off. But my Mom and sister insisted that he said it all the time. Tammy was so insistent that he said this all the time that she told me to go ask Don, her husband, who also remembers it. Not wanting to delay the game of canasta, I told them to send one of the grandkids. Hillary, my sister-in-law, was there at that point with her kids and they decided to send the youngest, Nya. To make sure she asked it correctly, Hillary (I think, maybe it was Tammy) wrote down the question on a piece of paper, “What did Grandpa Nealey always used to say?” Nya went up to Don’s room, opened the door, and asked him. Don’s response, “I’m a scientist.” So, Nya came back downstairs and, while running through the kitchen into the family room where the other kids where, said in her tiny little voice, “I’m a scientist!” We all cracked up as it was quite funny.

I’d say it’s genetic, but there isn’t any genetic relation between my step-grandfather and myself. So maybe I just picked it up subconsciously. Regardless, “I’m a scientist.” ;)

I managed to schedule a HALO party on Debi’s birthday (my bad), but Debi was a good sport about it.  Her parents took her to one of her favorite restaurants for lunch – Marie Calendars – then we drove up to Morgan for the HALO party.  The party didn’t start until 6:30, so we did a little sledding before that in my parents’ backyard:

The HALO party was a success – we had about 18 people at it’s peak, playing on 5 different screens.  We played until about 12:30 when we all agreed we were too tired to continue killing each other.

We were supposed to go up to Ogden to meet with some of my childhood friends, but a massive afternoon snow storm that dumped about 10 inches of snow on West Jordan postponed that trip.  Instead I spent the day working on Rosemary’s computer and otherwise not getting much done.

As far as Rosemary’s computer goes, she is the perfect candidate for running Linux.  She uses a browser and occasionally Word and Excel.  Linux has all of that covered. She also does genealogy, which can easily be done in Gramps.  So, Rosemary is now running Ubuntu 10.10.

I don’t remember what we did on the 28th.  I think I spent part of the day working on Rosemary’s computer and Debi went shopping.  But here’s a video of Toren riding the horse in the basement:

He really got into it!

We got off to a slow start on the 27th – our sleep schedule was off most of the time we were in Utah, and Toren’s was all over the place.  But in the afternoon we went to America’s Incredible Pizza Company, which is basically like Chuck-E-Cheese on steroids.  Toren spent half the afternoon on the miniature merry-go-round:

Toren must have ridden this 30 times

He occasionally let us play a game or two, but didn’t want to do much else.

If you make a day out of it, eating a couple of times, it’s probably not a bad deal as you can eat as much as you want (in true American style) at the buffet.  It’s probably not great for your health, but if it’s a rare visit, it would be fine.