Winter Retreat 2009!

To view a slide show of winter retreat

pictures click here.

(I stole a bunch of pictures from Joy and
Crista's facebook pages since most of
my pictures were of dudes with
mustaches. Hope that's okay.

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This past weekend Becky and I went on our annual winter retreat with the middle school students from our church. This year's retreat was at the Snow Mountain Ranch near Sol Vista ski resort. As always when hanging out with our students, we had a great time.

I grew a very dirty mustache, or whatever you would call that thing on my face, for winter retreat this year. (More on that shortly)


Most of my students spent the day skiing/boarding at Sol Vista. It was a perfect day...fresh snow and sunny. There were some absolutely amazing wipe outs/yard sales by a few of the dudes which was of course very hilarious and only one sprained wrist out of the entire group...and Dylan, who injured his wrist, usually sustains some sort of a head injury when we go to camp so this was actually a step in the right direction.

Below is most of our crew on the mountain in our famous "Justice" pose. (Since this past summer's "Gladiator Games" the 8th grade dudes have been known as team Justice. The pose all of us are doing...except for Cam on the right, is the Justice pose. It's alright Cam you'll get it).


While some of us were skiing, all of the 8th grade girls and some of the dudes were back at the camp having a great time tubing, playing games, and other shenanigans.


Saturday night was a celebration of the mustache, and was the reason I grew facial hair for about five weeks. I actually attended a career fair last week with my full beard so as to not miss out on the festive occasion. This picture shows the 8th grade dudes rocking a wide assortment of fake mustaches. You will also notice we are all wearing the same shirt, which I found at Walmart. At the top of the shirt is a guy doing the "Justice" pose standing on top of a trophy which is labeled "Trophy Husband." Amazing. Yes I also have one.

All weekend long the 8th grade girls had been blowing up balloons and storing them in their rooms in order to pull off a prank early Sunday morning. The picture doesn't really show how awesome this was...the entire 6th and 7th grade girl's hallway was filled with over 500 balloons.


Becky and some of her girls.


I was not the only 8th grade leader who grew a sweet 'stache for winter retreat. My extremely attractive friends Paul and Anthony are on my left and right.


The 'staches caused all sorts of excitement and hilarity. For one thing, we temporarily changed our team name from Justice to Mustiche (pronounced must-ish). And our usual chant which goes: "Just what?...Justice!" became "Must what?...Mustiche!"

Joy (pink sweatshirt in above pictures), had perhaps the funniest line of the weekend when she said something to the effect of, "If Jesus asked me 'Joy would you go out with me?' I would say 'No, Jesus you have a mustache.' "

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Dallas Part 2: Chuck Norris

One cool part of our quick trip to Dallas to visit Tim, Rachel, and Lowell that must be mentioned, is our visit to their church. We often heard Rachel talk about how much she loved her old church in Dallas so it was nice to get to visit. A very important thing you should know about this church is that it is also attended by the one-and-only Chuck Norris.

Yes, Chuck Norris. That is amazing.

Since I brought him up, enjoy a few of my favorite Chuck proverbs:

- when Chuck Norris does a push up, he isn't lifting himself up, he's pushing the world down

- when Chuck Norris jumps into water he doesn't get wet, the water gets Chuck Norris

- outer space exists because it's afraid to be on the same planet with Chuck Norris

- and, my favorite: Chuck Norris counted to infinity, twice

If Chuck Norris attended your church and you were the pastor, where do you think he could best serve? I say he should be an usher. If I saw him at the end of my row I bet I would just throw my whole wallet in.

To close this ridiculous post, I would like to include side-by-side pictures of Chuck and Tim.


I'm very excited to hang out with Chuck in heaven.

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Dallas Part 1: Surprise!

This past weekend we went to Dallas to surprise our good friend Rachel for her birthday. Tim had set the whole thing up and she had quite an amazing reaction when Becky walked into the room. Tim and Rachel were our very close friends in Colorado until they moved to Dallas back in May. Since then they gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, Lowell Bandon, so we were of course very excited to get to meet him.

We first met Tim and Rachel through volunteering with the middle school ministry at our church. We worked with the same grade as them for two years, so we still get to see and hang out with their students every week. Becky told a bunch of Rachel's girls that she would be sending a care package to Rachel for her birthday (not wanting to tell the whole truth in fear that the surprise might be ruined). We brought all of the cards and gifts from her students with us to Dallas to give to her.


It was our first time to Dallas, and from what I could tell the best thing about it is the amazing Mexican food...also the people are very nice. Below is a picture of all of us shortly after eating the best fajitas of all time. Lowell is sound asleep.


You may have noticed the amazing artwork in the background of the previous picture...I have included it here for your enjoyment.


Becky and Lowell.


Tim, Lowell, and me.


On Sunday we went for a walk along a creek in Dallas. We noticed that some guys had kicked their soccer ball to the other side of the river. Zeerza the dog took care of it. It took awhile but she finally got the ball over to our side of the river. Hope you enjoy the video and a lot of giggling by me.

P.S. If you're at all curious as to why I'm rockin' a beard, please check back in a few days.

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A tribute to my grandma

This post is a bit overdue, mostly because it is difficult to know where to start for something like this. My Grandma Loomis, who was my last living grandparent, passed away the Sunday before Christmas. She had always been such an important part of our family and so it was difficult for all of us to lose her.

There are many things I could say about my grandma: she was strong, generous, hospitable, and the greatest cook I have ever met; but a list of attributes never adequately describes a person. From the time we were very young, my family would once a year take a road trip to Florida to spend a week with my grandparents at their beautiful home on a lake near Orlando. Sarah and I would get more excited for these trips than for Christmas morning...there are so many great memories from our times at our grandparents house that it is impossible to begin to recount them. Even when we were teenagers we still so much looked forward to a week spent with our loving grandparents.

For Christmas 2006, my grandma very generously paid for our entire family (Becky and I, mom and dad, Sarah, and Aunt Wendy) to go on a week-long cruise together. That week will forever be one of the greatest weeks of my life. After each day of doing our own various activities we would have dinner together as a family. We would spend hours at the table telling stories and laughing. It was everything family should be. I imagine that must have also been one of the greatest weeks in the long and full life of my grandma. How amazing that must be to sit around a dinner table with your son, daughter, grandkids, and grandkid-in-law and see how much love they all have for each other and how much they appreciate and enjoy the gift of life. I suppose you might realize that you had done something very well to have raised such an incredible family.


We were blessed to all be together one last time for Sarah and Josh's wedding this summer. We had hoped that we would spend this past Christmas together, but unfortunately that was not the case. My grandma will be deeply missed by her family and the many friends she had.

To read the obituary please click here.

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Ice Skating

To view the slide show of our
night of ice skating click here.

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This past weekend Becky and I met up with about 35 of our 8th graders from church to go ice skating at an outdoor rink in downtown Louisville (the town we live in). The community of our students is amazing and they are a real joy to be around. And as always with our students there are a good deal of shenanigans that go on.

At one point, one of my students and I arranged a time for me to "check" him into the boards in front of all of the 8th grade ladies. As a result of my vicious collision with him he completely "flew" out of the rink. It must have looked rather convincing as later we found out that all of the girls thought the whole thing was real.

Towards the end of the night I was starting to feel a bit more confident on my skates. I hadn't ice skated in several years and it took awhile to feel comfortable again. With this increase in confidence I decided it would be a good idea to skate as fast I could at Becky and then stop as quickly as possible in an effort to spray her pants with a bit of ice. Let's just say this maneuver didn't go exactly as planned and I ended up the one covered in ice...it was a fun night.

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Christmas in Fredonia

So we're obviously a bit behind with the blogging as it is currently January 11 and I'm finally getting around to doing an entry on Christmas. Perhaps this will help all of us to rekindle that Christmas spirit that causes everyone to be so nice to strangers for a month or so.

For Christmas we traveled to Fredonia, NY to spend Christmas with my (Bryant's) parents. It was the first time I had been home in four years and the first time Becky had been there since we had just started dating. My sister Sarah and her husband Josh also spent the week at my parents house and we all had such an amazing Christmas together.

We arrived at the Buffalo airport right on schedule at 12:15 AM on Christmas day. We all then slept in that morning making it the latest either of us has ever woken up on Christmas day...much different than waking up super excited at 4 AM when I was a kid and then going into Sarah's room to wake her up so we could both be super excited for 3 hours until we were allowed to wake up our parents to open presents.


Christmas presents are fun.


Becky manages to pose with three Christmas gifts in one picture...very impressive.


One theme of the week was the incredible amount of food that Josh can eat. Shown here is Josh putting away a large bowl of noodles after a full meal of spaghetti and meatballs.


As with any good relaxing vacation, a large portion of our time was spent in our pajamas. I usually got around to showering at around four o'clock each afternoon. We spent most of our time playing a wide assortment of games: pool, Settlers of Catan, Wii mario kart, Wii Tiger Woods golf, etc. I even managed to turn puzzle making into a competition for awhile, mostly just because I was bored of everyone working on the puzzle and wanted it to be finished.


Becky and Josh also experienced a momentous event in their lives with their first visit to the Anchor Bar in Buffalo. For those of you who are unaware, the Anchor Bar is the birthplace of buffalo wings. They celebrated this joyous occasion by the two of them ordering a bucket of wings (50 wings) for them to split...no they did not eat them all but they put in a respectable performance. I also experienced a landmark moment when I consumed my first ever "suicidal" Anchor Bar chicken wing. It was very hot, but it was also the most delicious chicken wing I have ever tasted.

Hope all of you had a nice Christmas as well.

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San Francisco

This past weekend I had the opportunity to go to San Francisco for the GRACE Science Team Meeting (GRACE is the acronym of a NASA satellite which launched in 2002. The science team meeting is a two day conference with almost 100 scientists who are involved with the project or use the data for research).

It was a short trip but I managed to fit in quite a bit of fun both nights once the conference was over. As you can see, I had a good view of the city from my hotel room. I roomed with my friend David (who has the same advisor as me), who I have roomed with many times on various work-related trips.


On the first night I had the privilege of hanging out with my Aunt Wendy who has lived in San Francisco for many years. We had such a great time and ate some delcious food at a middle eastern restaurant on Haight Street. My food theme for the weekend was kabobs (night#1: shish kabob, night#2: salmon kabob, night#3: sushi...which is kind of like a kabob except there is no skewer...and it's not cooked).


Towards the end of our dinner some loud music came on and a belly dancer appeared in the middle of the restaurant. After swinging a sword around a few times she then balanced it on her head and did a belly dance routine. This was the first time I've ever seen a belly dancer so I was impressed and a bit frightened.

On our last night in San Francisco, David, another grad student, and I hung out with my advisor Steve, and one of his friends. After dinner we hopped on a cable car and headed to a place called Buena Vista, which apparently invented the Irish Coffee. From there we all needed to take a taxi back to the hotel we were all staying. After some smooth negotiating by Steve we ended up getting a sweet ride home. You can see a picture of David and I getting out of our "taxi" below.


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