Our Growing Boy

Patten is now nearly 11 weeks old. We consider him the miracle baby. He sleeps through the night (has since 3 weeks), has made two trips two Las Vegas with us and both times we made it to Cedar City without stopping, and has now found his smile and shares it regularly. What a baby!!

His Grandpa and Mimi, Kristin's mom's preferred name in lieu of "grandma," gave him the "Jumperoo" for X-mas. Only problem is that although he seems mature for his age he's not quite large enough for the Jumperoo. But, for now it is his space ship - at least that's what this picture reminds me of.

I hope Patten won't one day kill me for posting this picture. But I just had to show how happy he looks in the bathtub. Every other day Patten gets to do his favorite thing - splash in the bathtub. It is the cutest event I have ever seen. We lay him down in the water - he looks at us for about 3 seconds - gets a big grin on his face - and then splashes until he can't splash anymore.

And finally, a random smilely picture. Isn't he cute? We just love Patten. Particularly we love his hair and the fact that no matter what we do it refuses to stay down. Oh well, he looks stlyish.

Viva Las Vegas... err Boulder City!!

We had a great time in Boulder for Thanksgiving. Kristin's aunt and uncle live in Boulder and the entire family, we're talkin' 25 people for Thanksgiving dinner, converged there for Turkey Day. I had never been, and while some of my assumptions concerning Boulder were verified - others were not. For example: (1) I thought Boulder was "just outside of Vegas." While this is true time wise, roughly 25 minutes, it is not just outside like Sandy is to SLC. You have to drive through 10 minutes of nothing to reach Boulder. (2) I thought Boulder was "a little LDS community." Truth is a few Boulder neighborhoods are "little LDS communities," such as the one Kristin's aunt and uncle live in, but the rest of the town is as diverse as you'll find. (3) I thought Boulder would be warm, hence my plethora of shorts for the trip. Truth is it is warm, however not 80's, more like 55 - 60.

Enough of my Boulder insights - on to the pictures.

Kristin's family. I did my best to show Patten's face for the picture - however the Bjorn (that backpack thing) made it a little difficult.

Cousin Trevor and Patten. If you look closely you'll see a hand holding Patten on Trevor's back - as much as I trust Trevor, I don't trust him with my child's life.

Grandpa and grandson. Patten, as you can see, has learned how to use his arms/hands. He now sucks on his hand, occasionally swings his fists of fury, and enjoys waving his arms.

Kristin's sister Kelsey and Patten. One of the best pictures of the young one - now we just need him to learn to smile for a picture.

More pictures of Patten

Patten is doing well. He gained 1 lb. in his first two weeks and at night he sleeps 4 - 5 hours between feedings.

Enjoy the pictures.

Kristin and her boy.

Amazing how people can enjoy a good diaper change.

One of Patten's many hats.

Love the boots.

Patten is here!

That's right.

Patten Fredrick Johnson arrived Friday morning October 12th at 9:50 weighing 8lbs 4 oz. and measuring 22 inches long (can you say - they should have induced Kristin 10 days earlier on Patten's due date?)

We couldn't be happier. He seems perfect to us in every way, even his crying brings us joy.

Unfortunately, Patten has jaundice (or, is jaundiced?) and is spending some time under the ultra violet lights at the hospital. He couldn't come home with us today, Sunday, but we hope he will join us tomorrow. In the meantime we visit him every 3 hours for feeding. We can't wait to have him home.

Enjoy the pictures.


Swaddled Patten in his crib.

Attempting the perfect mouth posture for a good drink.

He spent most of the days sleeping.

Gotta love the pumpkin hat!

The Joy of Classmates

Last Thursday, while sitting in my Torts class, I received the following email:

"I have two tickets to the Utah game this Saturday. First person to respond to this email with the name of the person who kicked the winning field goal in the 1993 Utah - BYU game gets the tickets."

Thankfully as an 11 year old brat Laird Swensen's family kindly took me to BYU games. They had season tickets, Laird and I were friends, and I loved football, so they took me. And, even more thankfully, they took me to the 1993 BYU - Utah game and I saw Chris Yergensen kick the winning field goal.

I responded to the email and won the tickets.

Little did I know the 2L named Chris Hill happened to be the Utes Athletic Director's son, Chris Hill.

And, I couldn't have dreampt this up, Chris Hill gave me two tickets on the 50 YARD LINE on the 20TH ROW!!!!

AND ----- The UTES OBLITERATED the 11th ranked UCLA BRUINS!!

Wow. It was a sight to behold.

Thank heavens for kind classmates.

Go Utes.

3 Weeks and Counting

Well, well, well.

Less than 3 weeks until the babe joins us.

For any of you expecting your first, let me clue you in on something. The impending baby may not seem too real for the first 7 or 8 months - but when you visit the doctor at the hospital and hear things like "this is where you will deliver" and "here is where you wash the baby after he is born" and "3 weeks from today you will likely hold your baby here" the forthcoming baby will seem real.

We are so excited. I probably won't write again until I have a picture to post - that will be a happy post.

Once a Ute, Always a Ute

Well, well, well. My blood is red.

I got the call (okay e-mail) this morning from GW informing me they will not take anyone from their waitlist this year. A somewhat sad development, but considering our baby coming in October and the fact that I'm sick of not knowing where I will live for the next 3 years, I felt happier after reading the e-mail than before.

I'm almost finished with orientation week here at the U Law School. This place overflows with impressive students and teachers. We have 2 marines (that means 2 future JAGs), a Romanian, an Irish fellow and something like 40 states and / or countries represented.

I'm enjoying lawschool, at least for this week. We'll see what happens when the real deal starts next week (by the way, I just bought my books -- $570!!!)

USPTO

I took the United States Patent and Trademark Examination (for the second time) on Monday.

The test is pass / fail, with a score of 70% needed to pass. The first time I took the exam, June 14th, I scored 68%. As you can imagine that made me a little upset.

But I'm happy to report that I passed this last Monday. I studied roughly 180 hours (in total) for the exam. I am so glad I do not have to study for the test ever again. I've seen enough of the MPEP (Manual of Patent Examination and Procedures).

As for the law school update, I'm planning on the U but waitlisted at GW. GW cut their waitlist to 80 people (down from 1400) last week and I'm on the list of 80. Time is running short, I told GW they need to accept me by the 7th of August if I'm going to come (I need time to drive across the country and be there by the 14th). Let's hope they get on the ball and call me sooner than later.

Our Bean

Early in the pregnancy Kristin and I decided our baby (pictured to the left) should have a name. At the time we didn't know he would turn out to be a he, so we needed a gender neutral name to use for the pregnancy. I don't remember how, but somehow we came up with "pinto."

The evolution of pinto (no -- not that kind of evolution -- I'm referring to his name) amazes me.

The ladies at Kristin's work come to Kristin every morning, say "good morning Kristin," and then kneel down and while speaking into her tummy say "hi baby pinto -- how are you today."

Both of our families refer to the baby as pinto.

I find myself calling him "the bean."

Sometimes I wonder if our current actions will harm my son for the rest of his life... I doubt it.

Long live the bean.

Last Summer

On the off chance my kids read this blog someday I thought I'd include one post to describe what I did the summer of 2006.

I worked as an intern for the Division of Water Resources (DWR). We designed, and Gerber construction built, a new and improved spillway for the Red Butte Dam up Red Butte Canyon. I actually joined the process midway through; DWR had completed the design and construction began just before I came into the picture.

I spent the summer verifying that the construction company followed the engineer's drawings (fancy way to say I worked as in inspector). For those of you new to the construction business inspectors don't have the best rap in the industry -- they are known for sitting in their trucks while the construction workers die in the heat and only leaving the blessing of their air conditioning to inform the construction workers of a mistake.

I did my best to buck the trend. I worked with the construction guys, against policy but I did it anyway, and did my best to deliver a nice glass of water when needed.

Below I've posted a picture of two DWR engineers and myself -- from left to right: me, BJ and Lee. As you can see Lee is sitting on the spillway (the structure used to release water from the reservoir when water elevations are too high). I am using a handy dandy instrument called a nuclear density gage. It determines soil density by sending a probe 6 or 8 inches into the dirt, releasing some radiation and then measuring how long the radiation takes to return to the probe.


Most days I spent 6 - 8 hours at the site. We saw moose, rattlesnakes (the construction workers ate them -- no joke), deer and other wildlife. I took notes of all the activities, held responsibility for anything that went wrong, kept a photo journal and performed necessary on the fly engineering calculations (we engineers love that "calculation" word). Sounds like fun, no???

The Grand Canyon, St. George and a growing baby

Last Wednesday through Saturday I set out with the Priests of my ward to hike the Grand Canyon rim to rim. My group started on the north rim and ended on the south. What an adventure; 26 miles in 3 days, 115 degree high, 100 degrees at 7 am, 90 degrees at 8 pm. Sleeping was futile (a layer of sweat coated our entire bodies) and we (or at least I) felt thoroughly exhausted by the end. Still, I say hiking the Grand Canyon rim to rim should be on everyone's to do list at some point in their life. Unfortunately I didn't take the digital camera for fear of it melting, but I do have one shot of Kris and I upon my return:

And now that I think of it, the above picture explains most of our recent happenings. You can see the increased size of the babe and the picture shows the condo in St. George which is where we, along with my family, spent the first half of this week. We swam, ate, watched movies and tv, and had an all around good time.

Now it's back to work...

Tagalicious

Bob -- thank you for the "tag." It is received warmly.

1. I hit a good friend on the head with a baseball bat. That good friend was Bob (Eric Vogeler).

2. A few years back I promised my grandmother I would never ride a motorcycle, or as she refers to it, the "suicide machine." This was probably a bad choice on my part because for whatever reason I can't get myself to break the promise even though my in-laws have multiple motorcycles and I'm pretty sure I could learn to ride them safely. Oh well.

3. I've spent more days / nights in the hospital than any one man should -- the list includes: deviated sceptum surgery, reconstructive shoulder surgery (both shoulders), tubes in ears and a repair of an already "set" broken arm. Let me explain the last one. Sometime during elementary school, all of the laughing gas has made me lose my memory, I broke my arm. During class my arm often itched -- so what did I do? Scratch it of course. But this wasn't just any old scratching, I had to shove a pencil between the cast and my arm and "itch" the itching area. Needless to say that lovely pencil did wonders for the setting bones and eventually I ended up in the hospital in surgery so the doctor could "rebrake" my arm to fix the damage my pencil had done.

4. I absolutely love basketball, hence the shoulders. Throughout junior high and highschool my friends and I met at my church circa 6 am every Saturday morning to play ball, in addition to Tuesday and Wednesday night basketball get togethers. I can't wait to have a son (October) who I can coach, cheer on, etc. I will live my basketball life through him because I am no longer physically capable of living it on my own.

5. I possess a strange ability to remember hymn trivia. Everything from page numbers to verse lyrics to origination details. Of the 341 hymns I can probably name half (okay maybe only a quarter) by page number and title, and the rest I can guess within 20 pages or so.

6. I am afraid of heights. Sometimes they really scare me (walking across the Golden Gate Bridge) and sometimes I can handle them (Angel's Landing in Zion), but all of the time I know they are there.

7. I will take the patent bar on June 14th. What is the patent bar you may say? It is a test which, if passed, allows an individual to practice before the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

8. My wife can out waterski me any day of the week. Not to mention she knows how to "airchair," let's just say my airchair attempt left something to be desired.

9. I played a duet of "I Need Thee Every Hour" with Stu Maxfield for the Prophet when he visited our mission in Philadelphia.

10. James Taylor is and will always be my favorite musical artist. Not sure why but his songs seem to brighten my day.

Shameless Plug

Everyone should visit my brother Tyler's blog (find the link "Tyler" to the left). He writes well. Mostly I think you will find the series titled "Gravity" quite compelling. It has 5 installments and you should start with number 1 of 5. It is part of my dad's life story. Let me know what you think, or just post your thoughts on Ty's blog and I'll read them there. Enjoy.

Here comes life...

Life marches onward. Kristin and I both graduated in early May, she in choral teaching and I in Civil Engineering. Kristin now works full time at MountainLand Physical Therapy in the HR Department and I work full time for the State of Utah as an engineer. We can't believe how simple life is when all you do is go to work 8 hours a day. What a break.

But not for long. As I mentioned earlier we will embark on our law school adventure this fall. I say we because attending any graduate school (law school included) requires as much if not more energy and commitment from the spouse not attending. The U looks to be the school of choice with GW(waitlisted) still in the picture.

And for the most exciting news --- Dave Jr. will be born this October (and NO we will not name him Dave Jr., I just wanted you to know it's a boy). We couldn't be happier. We had the ultrasound just last Thursday and as the doctor put it "he likes to show off that he's a boy." I hope to post an ultrasound picture or two before too long.

To be honest the thought of having children is overwhelming, on many levels. But mostly we feel blessed to have a little one join our family. The next months and years should be quite exciting.

Bob and Dahvid Reborn

(The following factual story involves so much literary license it should probably be classified as fictional. But my memory is terrible, so forgive me.)

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Let me take you back to elementary school...

Eric Boyd Vogeler and I shared many adventures during our Bonneville days: baseball, homeroom teachers, crushes, four-square matches, wounds (ask Eric), and pretty much every other worthwhile endeavor.

In the midst of one particularly creative year Eric and I enjoyed outwitting the rest of the world. This practice extended beyond our friendship, even beyond our families, and saturated our daily lives (or so we thought -- heaven knows we were the truly outwitted ones).

Back to Bonneville. Eric and I are sitting in class reveling in our "Pinky and the Brain" relationship (Eric = Brain -- Dave = Pinky). A substitute teacher enters the room.

Eric whispers "what will we do today, Dave?"

I respond "I don't know, probably the same thing we do everyday Eric -- not listen, stay after to redo our failed spelling tests, whitewash a girl at recess..."

Eric cuts in "no, Dave. Today we will show the substitute teacher we students aren't as dumb as she may think."

"But how we will do that?" I respond with excitement.

"Just watch, just watch" Eric replies through a cunning smile.

The teacher begins taking roll. All seems normal as she traverses the list, that is, until Eric announces his name.

"Bob."

"Bob?"

"Yes, Bob. That's what I said. The roll may say Eric, but I go by Bob."

"You go by Bob? How does the nickname Bob come from Eric Vogeler?"

"Well, mam, perhaps you should take the time to notice middle names on your roll."

"Middle names? Okay, let's see. Your middle name is Boyd, that still doesn't explain why you go by Bob" says the less than amused teacher.

"Mam, trust me, the name Bob far exceeds Boyd in this generation's eyes. And since Bob is a natural replacement for Boyd I don't find my using it hard to believe" quips a confident Eric.

"Okay, whatever."

And with that the teacher concedes and the Brain wins again, as he always does. Meanwhile Pinky, impressed by Brain's brilliance and still lost in the logic, concludes to never again use the name Eric when referring to his remarkable friend. He will forever be known as Bob.

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Hence the title of this post -- Bob and Dahvid Reborn. When you see the name Bob, think of Eric Vogeler.

Now for another clarification. Bob and I enjoy posing mindless questions to each other. When one of us receives a question our task is to answer it to the best of our ability.

Bob recently challenged me with the following topic: "Dick Cheney vs Thomas S. Monson (or, how did BYU and Utah swap commencement speakers?!"


Story Teller vs Oil Man

What do all good Happy Valleys need? A story teller. Nothing renews the attitude, euphoria, and ambiance of a Happy Valley like an engaging story teller. His presence refines the community by uniting the citizens behind a common purpose.

What do all good Salt Valleys need? An oil man -- and his company. Nothing yields more possible uses for oil than the process of extracting, combining, combusting and manufacturing NaCl products.

In light of the above mentioned needs the question has been asked "why was President Monson (a storyteller) chosen for the University of Utah commencement and Vice President Dick Cheney (an oil man) chosen for the BYU commencement?"

On the surface no substantive arguments appear for the commencement speaker choices at the U and the Y. In fact it seems if the men might simply switch schools, thus placing President Monson in Happy Valley and Dick Cheney in the land of Salt, all would be well.

But why mess up a good thing?

If the desire is for a story teller in Happy Valley -- look no further than Mr. Cheney. Unfulfilled Iraq promises alone would (and perhaps will) fill the National Archives. And many of the stories are quite compelling -- complete with the sacrifice of life and liberty. Throw in some big business journal entries and those Provoites won't have enough time to digest what Mr. Cheney throws their way.

As for President Monson in the land of Salt, the connection resides in the Bible. Many of Salt Lake's residents have "lost (their) savor." What could be better than President Monson and his spiritual company invading the Hunstman Center on May 4th. He will extract spiritual diamonds from the crowd and combine a nearly combustable spirit with his stories to produce (produce = a type of manufacturing) conversions of the otherwise wasted salt.

So, in reality, President Cheney in Provo and President Monson in SLC makes perfect sense. The story teller and oil man will speak where they should.


Bob your topic is - A 2012 debate featuring Rocky the Democratic Presidential nominee vs Hannity the Republican Presidential nominee

Ty and San Fran

Two exciting events to relay. First, my brother Tyler is engaged!!! Yes, it's true. The lucky lady is Becca Warthen.

Becca (left) and Kristin (right) -- 1 in the a.m.

Missy (left) and Becca (right)

And the other exciting event is Kris and I went to San Francisco with her choir (she student teaches at Jordan Highschool) over Spring Break. It was a blast. I've included some random pictures from the trip.

Kristin with the choir

Don't jump from the bridge

Outside the exploratorium

The GGB in all its glory

In all we had a great time. San Fran is a charming city. One part of the trip not pictured here was our trip to Stanford. I'll tell you what, I understand why those Stanford folk pay thousands and thousands of dollars to attend school because their campus and buildings are unbelievable.

New Beginnings

This is my blog. Sweet.

Let me explain the title.

Civil Engineering has consumed my life the last four years. I've enjoyed learning math, science, dirt, structures, and transportation. All along the way I've planned to pursue a Master's degree in Civil Engineering.

However last October I felt the need to go a different direction. Immediately, well almost, I changed plans and studied for the LSAT. I took that dog-gone test in Dec and spent January and February applying to law schools. At this point I've heard from 6 of the 12 to which I applied. The process is intriguing, but getting to the point where I just want to know where I will be living, sleeping, and mostly studying next fall.

There you have it. My life, and blog title, in a nutshell. Somehow, someway I will combine the math and the law over the next three years, and the rest of my life for that matter. Enjoy the ride.