family history

Looks like crazy writing? Yeah... So I kind of caught the Family History bug about a year ago. For some reason decided to check out Grannie's mom, Baba's, line because I noticed it didn't have as many names that had been discovered over there. Plus after our big family reunion I got hyped about the 'army of ancestors' Uncle John talked about. So I found a microfilm that is from Baba's old village in what was once a part of Austria (hey- an Unger connection, sort of), and since then I've been trying to figure out how to read it. I thought that Jordan or Uncle John could figure it out, it's in the Cyrillic alphabet after all- but oh no. It turns out that this is no common Cyrillic. It's in 'Old Slavonic'- a language used exclusively by the church during worship services. I think the ordinary chap understood it, sort of, but they didn't use it when they went out to buy borscht. So it's this super obscure language that hardly got any playtime back then, so you can imagine how hard it is to learn now. It's actually a gorgeous language, very poetic and lovely. I've emailed a bunch of professors and priests here in the LA area who still use it. I've taught myself a lot of it, I just need a little help deciphering the last names. For example, in this file here the second column from the left is easy overall- first names. We've got Maria, we've got Sasha, and then we've got something crazy in the middle. It's the columns with lots of words that's hard for me, and of course that's where all the last names are. So... if anybody happens to find a Greek Orthodox church and they happen to meet a priest who seems really cool- please stop in. Shake their hand, and ask if your sister can email them. I need someone who speaks this language to tell me how to read a few of these lines....

VERTIGO!

I just want everybody to know that I have not abandoned my blog- for the past several weeks I have just been really, really sick. I kind of thought that I was mostly just exhausted from taking care of my little dudes because they just hit this really, really active stage. These guys are climbing, running, jumping, whirling and just overall into everything. I was honestly just getting really dizzy taking care of them. At about the same time the doctor stuck me on some crazy medications because we are getting all set and ready to do another fertility cycle... at some point. Anyways, Ian started getting home earlier and earlier from work as my list of things I could do started dwindling- I couldn't cook- it made me too dizzy. I couldn't do the laundry, it made me too dizzy. I couldn't vaccuum, I couldn't get on the computer (hence the long absence)... I basically couldn't do anything. Finally Grandma Louise graciously agreed to watch the boys for a week up on her, well, it's practically an acreage. The boys romped and played and had the time of their lives and I got to rest. After the fourth day of not being able to watch a movie, look at the computer, or even look outside because it made me too nauseous and dizzy I decided to try something really easy- I went to the Family History Library to check out some nice, still, archival microfilms. It made me feel a bit queasy but I thought I would be OK. Well, I wound up puking all over the floor. My friend told me that something was really not normal with me. It was true, I hadn't been able to stand for more than a couple minutes without feeling pukey. Anyways, I went to the doctor right away and he diagnosed me with VERTIGO! It turned out one of the crazy medications he had me on has a small chance of causing this Hitchcockian little quirk. Once he took it out I got better and better. Once I felt a lot better though I was so mad!! My doctor did this to me!! But the good news is that I'm feeling sooo much better. Today I was even able to put in a load of laundry and yesterday I was able to watch a movie all the way through. My next one will have to be... you guessed it... VERTIGO!!

G00000000000000000000AAAAAAAALLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!

Hey everyone. It's "On My Way Home" time again. I think our big goal of going home is achieved by reaching smaller goals. But many of us with good intentions fail to achieve our goals.
That's due to two main obstacles. They are procrastination and distraction. Time is a precious commodity and it is important to not count on doing tomorrow what we can do today. Wasting time can have serious consequences.

Distraction is another common way that good people lose their way. We must focus on the important things and not get lost on sidetracks or pet projects. The invisible guy scoring this goal couldn't pick the top corner if he lost his focus or got distracted. Life comes at us pretty fast sometimes, but we need to look at how much time we have and use it to accomplish the most important goals.

Let your homes be a procrastination and distraction free zone.

Luv to all, Mom and Dad

P.S. In the last installment of "On My Way Home" we challenged everyone to try different approaches to scripture study. Give us some feedback on how it went for you.

With the time it takes my to style my own hair, I swear I could have earned a hair stylist license by now. It must be those Kowalchuk genes, I know Meliss and Rach, Jaima, Em, just to name a few, all suffer with headaches, broken pony tail holders, and the vast array of complexities that come from having such thick tresses. I mean, do the celebrities do their own hair? I almost want to just hire this task out to someone else. It’s not so bad drying my locks once or twice, but week in and week out, the same routine … Sometimes I wish I could just shave it off, and join the club with Dad.

I’ve narrowed it down to just three steps- and the results are satisfying. First I section off and dry each piece, then I straighten it with the handy straightener Mom got me, then I part it and go! What a piece of work, though… each time I do my hair I pull out my blow-dryer, brushes, and other equipment, and set to work. Each piece must be meticulously dried, each section chosen by parting it carefully with a comb. If I section off too big of a chunk of hair, it won't dry, and if I section off too little of a piece of hair, it flies away when the blowdryer gets close. This could take years to coordinate and master! I need to take a break sometimes in the midst of the process, and lose myself in a good book or just let my arms go down and sit at my desk. I wonder if it would be socially acceptable to just walk around with really bushy, nasty hair, like the piece here.





it certainly is satisfying, though, the times when the moon is aligned right and things work out. one time i called meliss and was like, 'hey, my hair looks awesome!'

Triathlon Pictures Continued

This is the run, 25 times around the track.

Triathlon Pictures

This is the biking it was kind of tough

More Pictures from the Triathlon

This is the pool where I thought I was going to drown

Beej Gets Butt kicked at Triathlon

So the last couple of weeks I had been debating about whether to do this indoor Triathlon at the UofA. Finally about 10 minutes before the deadline I decided to do it. I signed the waiver to exempt the University from liability and thought about how I was going to train for this even that started in 3 days. Two days before the event I saw how long it would take me to do the stuff. I did 20km on a bike and ran 5km. Doing this was probably a mistake because I wasn't really conditioning myself and I was only really just getting my muscles sore but anyways I've made greater mistakes in my life (like signing up for the triathlon from the get-go!) Anyways, Saturday morning arrived and I spent most of the morning drinking water and packing and re-packing my bag because I was very nervous. The other sad thing is that I didn't even get to practice swimming once and I haven't really done any swimming since I had swim classes at Confed. pool way back in like Junior High school so I wasn't exactly sure if I was even going to be able to survive this thing. Anyways, I drank a ton of water and had to go to the bathroom about 13 times, that water was going through me faster than a fat guy going through a timed all you can eat buffet line (buffets are true athletic events as far as I'm concerned).

So I get to the check-in location and they give me a free pair of shoes just for showing up it was a door prize that I won. Sadly, they don't fit anybody a size 8? After that I got some pictures with some other friends who were doing it. Of course I was very nervous and made a few more trips to the bathroom (honestly I wasn't that nervous but I did drink a ton of water).

So here's how it went down. There was a swim which was 500m which were swam lengthwise in lanes in the pool. Then there was 20km on stationary bikes and finally a 5km run around the track. The swim was by far the worst, not training and not having swam in about 8-12 years really made it a true challenge. The skinny is I got my trash kicked by the pool. I did one length (25m) front crawl but found it to be a little too strenous, not quite my style, and I had trouble breathing, so, I decided to switch to the breast stroke. I did a couple lengths of that but then found that to be too challenging can you believe it! So I switched to the back stroke. By this time I was moving about as fast as a sloth. Finally back crawl became too much for little Beejster to handle so I had to resort to the one where you're on your back and you move your arms and legs like a frog. I think it's called elementary back stroke. Needless to say I was the second last one out of the pool and being a 23 year old male in supposively peak physical condition it wasn't my brightest moment. About half-way through I did entertain the thought of giving up but like a 10 year old thinking there might be candy if I finished I decided to push on. My time in the swim was 15:02 which was ridicusously slow but I predicted that it would take my 45 minutes so I decided to look for the positives rather than the negatives.

Then came the bike and this was something I could relate to a little better. I did have to change by wrapping a towel around my waist and putting my shorts on which was somewhat awkward with so many people around but that's how it goes I guess. Not much to say about the bike except a) these bikes were weird, b) my odometer started dying about half-way through which gave me a scare and c) my butt is really, really sore. I think I need to have the Doctor check to see if I got testicular cancer cause my boys are really hurting. Anyways, I was able to make up for lost time on the bike and finally hit the track. My biking time was about 42 minutes.

I hit the track and at this point you just want the thing to be over so I ran as hard as I could. The annoying thing was that we had to go 25 times around the track and it got just a little monotonous. The other thing is that when you are tired and running around in a circle so much you kind of lose track of how many laps you've done. For instance it felt like I had done 30 or something by the time the guy at the counter finally called "number 85 final lap" I uttered a quick hallelujah and ran my last lap as fast as my aching, sore, stiff, tired, fatigued, cramped, pinched, annoyed, agitated, exhausted body could move and finally crossed the finish line. My time in the run was 23 minutes. My overall time for the entire event was 1:20:36 (1 hour 20 minutes and 36 seconds) and let me tell you my body felt every second of that. I got 28th place out of 44 which considering I was second last out of the pool wasn't so bad. Considering it was my first one and I hadn't really trained I felt I didn't do so bad. I should also say that it was spectacular, it was so much fun I can totally see why people get addicted to doing this kind of stuff because I can't really explain it but it's almost a surreal experience pushing your body to the limit and then just pushing some more. It was really really fun. Anyways, this has been a really long entry and I have to go to bed but I've been trying to make up for not writing on the blog ever.

Pictures Continued

Here are the rest of the photos the computer is not fully cooperating

Egypt Lake

So ... I have information that may be of interest. I completed my first over night ski trip in the wild! I'm still new to this whole blog thing as evidenced by the dismal number of posts that I have done but I will try my best to recount this incredible adventure in full.

So I went with two friends to Egypt Lake which is just west of Sunshine Ski Resort through Healy Pass. It was about a 12km trek so it really should have been easy but we didn't really rent the most ideal skis for the trip so that's really what made it an adventure. The problem with our skis were as follows. Normally for these kinds of trips where you are climbing alot of hills you need to have skins which make it very hard for you to slip back, regretably we did not have these skins I guess we thought we were true mountain men or something at any rate the skins were not used. We also should have had what are called alpine skis which are alot wider and have hard boots that you can lock down at the heel for going down hills (similar to normal down hill skis) we did not have these kind of skis. We elected to go with the cheaper but flimsier "light terrain" skis which are essentially cross-country skis with a little support around the heel and with metal edges. They are very difficult to go down hills with especially hills laden with tons of powder which is what we encountered. To put it in prespective if you have alpine skis with skins you can do the trip that we did in a day. Hey if you really pushed yourself hard you could do maybe even in half a day. However, because we had our skinless "light-terrain" skis it took us two days skiing basically from sun up to sun down and we did have to do a stretch in the dark that was really exciting.

So equipment deficiencies aside the trip was really really really exciting. There's something about going through mountains in winter that is just absolutely astounding. To illustrate this I am going to post quite a few pictures I hope you enjoy them and I seriously recommend we try doing a trip like this some time. Hopefully the pictures capture the beauty of the untamed Rockies as well as the exhausting nature of having to climb those hills with the wrong kind of skis. Live and learn I suppose, live and learn!

yea for sure

yea i hate nemuro too. i was also a little shaken when it tried to download something on my roomates computer, although shaun warned me before i clicked on it. i was over at Puentes and caleb said, 'auntie!!!' Elder Schneider asked what words they are saying right now and i am happy to report that is one of them! Yesterday Shaun met them. I told him Julian is the one with more hair, but guess what happened??? They gave him a haircut!! It's all cut off!! He is adorable and looks more like a boy. I love those guys.