japawo

Halloween. Does anyone else think it's weird to encourage your kids to disguise themselves and go beg strangers for candy? Oh well, here is a picture of our kids costumes this year.



On Saturday David and I drove down to SLC for the RSL playoff game against Chivas USA. We picked Micah up from Ben and Danielle's. It was a fun game, and RSL managed to win 1-0 even though the ref was HORRIBLE. He called 17 fouls on RSL and only 9 against Chivas. Even with Chivas having the 12th man advantage RSL dominated with 21 total shots (8 on goal) compared to only 3 total (1 on goal) for Chivas. They also had 6 corners while Chivas had 0. It was only through sheer luck that Chivas kept them from scoring until the 90th minute.




Toward the end of the game some of the Chivas fans started setting off firecrackers and smoke bombs. It was crazy! RSL plays again on Saturday (in California) and if they win or tie they will advance to the next round. GO RSL!

It's time for the Major League Soccer Playoffs and RSL (Real Salt Lake) made it in for the first time ever. GO RSL! They needed a win or a tie in the last game to make the playoffs. They trailed for most of the game but managed to score a goal right at the end to tie it and advance to the playoffs. They will be playing against Chivas USA in Salt Lake on Saturday. Adam is taking Joe and John, and I will be going with Micah and David. We plan on yelling loud and hopefully cheering RSL to a win.

It's fall in Idaho, and that means NO SCHOOL! The kids were out of school from Sep 27th - Oct 13th for Harvest Break. Usually it is a huge hassle because it comes just when the kids are starting to get back into the habit of school. Then they get 2 weeks off which screws that up and you have to start over. This year it worked out really nice for a different reason. I had to go to Las Vegas for training Oct 7-10 so we begged people to watch our kids for a week and I took Toni with me (a big THANKS to Ben, Danielle, and Shelly).

We flew out of Salt Lake on the 6th. The first night we went to Marriage can be Murder. It is a dinner murder mystery thing. It was very entertaining, and the best part was that Toni won! She figured out who the killers were by the end of dinner. It turned out to be the couple that sat across the table from us (probably helped a little). The weirdest part (and one of the main reasons she suspected them) was how much they had in common with us. The guy had gone to BYU-I around the same time as us, had lived in the same appartment complex as me, and knew some people that I went to high school with. The girl was from Michigan and had graduated from Otsego high school the year after Toni's brother Mike. Anyway, for winning Toni got a plaque and 2 tickets for another show (Defending the Caveman).

The next couple nights we went to Carrot Top and the Tournament of Kings. I can't remember which was when. On Friday we went to Defending the Caveman which was VERY good. It was funny, but somewhat educational too. It is about some of the differences between men and women and how they could have been due to the lifestyle of the caveman. Or something like that anyway. We flew back to Salt Lake on the 12th picked up the kids and drove home.

And that brings us to last week. Toni spent most of the week trying to get everything ready for a wedding and reception she was doing. It was the first one she has done, and I think she was very stressed. She then spent all day Saturday decorating, setting up, rearranging, decorating again, cleaning up. She did a great job and got several compliments.

Wow, has it really been a whole month since I last posted? I appologize to all those people out there for whom reading my blog is their only source of entertainment. I know how hard it is for you to survive without knowing about all the exciting things happening at the Wood house. ;D

Ok, enough kidding around. I'll try to catch up in the next few days. Way back in September I took the kids up to Mesa Falls. Toni was doing work for a wedding so she didn't go. It was a very nice day and the fall colors were bright. We stopped at the lookouts for both of the falls and then hiked a little over a mile down to the top of the Lower Mesa Falls.

Here is the Upper Falls.


This is the river next to the trail between Upper and Lower Mesa Falls.


This is a little creek in Sawtelle Estates by Grandpa and Grandma's cabin.


And this is Walker stuffing 1/4 of a Double Big Jud (the only hamburger he will eat) in his mouth.

We decided to pull Walker out of public school this year. He is very excited about being home schooled and is doing a great job so far. He's in his second week and his new computer finally arrived. He's been checking the mail and asking about it every day. Here is a picture of him at his desk with his computer and books.



And here is David hard at work making a video game. I got him the book The Game Maker's Apprentice (http://www.amazon.com/Game-Makers-Apprentice-Development-Technology/dp/1590596153) and he's loving it. It comes with software that makes it easy to create some simple games.

I had a work sponsored golf outing this past weekend in Star Valley so we decided to stay with our friends the Hokums for the weekend. The kids had a lot of fun jumping on the trampoline and playing games. We also thought it would be a great time to do our almost annual hike to the Intermittent Spring. It is a short 1.5 mile hike (round trip) up to the spring that provides most of the water for the city of Afton. It is a periodic spring which means it stops flowing for 12-18 minutes and then starts again. It is considered a cold water geyser although it isn't nearly as explosive as the normal hot water and steam kind. The area that you hike through is gorgeous, especially when the leaves start to change colors. Unfortunately I forgot to take our camera out of my work truck so we only got some pictures with Toni's cell phone and also a few that our friends took with their camera.


Stanley showing us the sign that explains about the spring:


David at the top of the spring contemplating the meaning of life:


Toni and Tori relaxing at the top:


The beautiful fall colors along the trail:


And finally here is a picture of the whole family:

A few months ago I was talking to David about computers and trying to explain what exactly binary was. He had heard me mention that computers used 1's and 0's to store and send information but he didn't understand how they could. So I started trying to teach him how we use base10 numbering (probably because we have 10 fingers) and that binary (base2) is just a different way to show the same numbers. After several minutes and many questions I think he almost understood it because then he asked if there were other numbering systems, specifically he wanted to know if there was one based on 3. I told him that you could have a number system based on any number you wanted and that another system used by computers was called hexidecimal which is just a different name for base16. Well, I hadn't heard anything about it since that day so I thought he had forgotten.

This summer we have been talking more with David about what kind of job he wants to get when he grows up and the career he has decided to try for right now is Video Game Programmer. We have talked with him and tried to get him to think about what things he would need to start learning if he really wanted to do that. One of the things we mentioned was that he should try doing some computer programming to see if he really liked it. They don't offer that at his school so he asked if I would teach him. This week I have started teaching him some basic programming skills using Pascal and we will then move on to C in a week or two (once we receive some books I ordered).

That brings me back to the base3 numbering system. I asked him what kind of program he wanted to write and gave him examples of simple games like Rock, Paper, Scissors or Guess a Number Between 1 and 10. He asked if we could make a program to convert a base10 number to base3. So that's what we did. Here is the program:


program base3 (input, output);

label user_input;

var x,y,z,a,b,c,d : integer;
begin
user_input:
writeln('Enter a number between 0 and 80:');
readln(x);
write('You entered ');
writeln(x);
if x > 80 then begin
writeln('Invalid number entered.');
writeln();
goto user_input;
end else if x < 0 then begin
writeln('Invalid number entered.');
writeln();
goto user_input;
end;
a := x div 27;
y := x mod 27;
b := y div 9;
z := y mod 9;
c := z div 3;
d := z mod 3;
write(x);
write(' in base3 is ');
writeln(a,b,c,d)
end.

It will convert a number from 0 to 80 to base3. For example if you enter 26 it would return 0222. Daivd was very excited that it worked and I hope to keep him interested in programming. If anyone has any suggestions please post a comment.