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It’s been a little over a year since I “retired” from seminary. After teaching for four years, it was bittersweet to be finished and moving on to different things. Well, we moved a thousand miles away, but apparently I couldn’t escape destiny. I was just called to teach seminary again. And in a super cool twist, Pepper is my co-teacher!

Class starts next week, so we’ve spent many hours in the past few weeks preparing, studying, and meeting all the youth and their parents. We don’t know many of them, so it was a good opportunity to introduce ourselves and get to know a little about each of them. It seems like a great group.

Today we went to the church building (which has been closed for nearly six months now) to set up our classroom. We’ll be teaching in person, which I think will be far better than hosting online lessons. Fortunately I was able to set up the classroom similar to how I’d done it in the past:

We’ll all sit in a big square, on the same level, where everyone can easily see everyone else (no staring at the back of someone’s head, or listening to comments from people in the back). I think it’ll be a welcome change.

I’m excited to return to my favorite calling, and start a new journey with these Montana kids. Let the new adventure begin!

Pepper and I spent Labor Day weekend visiting her brother Doug and his family. They live on the Idaho-Wyoming border, on the west side of Grand Teton National Park. (Which means they’re basically “behind” all the amazing mountains you see in the park.)

We hiked up into the Targhee National Forest and basked in the views of the Teton Valley and the backs of the three main peaks.

It was a gorgeous day, and I was lucky to spend it with such a gorgeous woman.

We also went to Fall Creek Falls, which is a really cool rock formation where Fall Creek feeds into the Snake River. This is a view of some plants waving beneath the water, looking straight down from a bridge:

The falls cascade over a series of rock terraces, which means you can climb around and enjoy splashing in a bunch of little pools. Here are a few shots of the area:

Then we hopped on some mountain bikes and took an awesome trail through the forest along the Snake River. It was a ton of fun.

Two interesting things from our drive: first, as we passed through Anaconda, Montana (what a cool name for a town!), we saw a strange tower in the distance. Was it Orthanc? A weird smokestack? It’s on the hillside a little left of center in this picture, which Pepper took out the car window at 80mph:

Here’s a zoom of the photo; forgive me for the poor image quality. Cell phones and all that.

It turns out that’s the Anaconda Smelter Stack, the remains of a chimney built by the Anaconda Copper Mining Company over a hundred years ago. And it’s built entirely of brick, making it the tallest surviving masonry structure in the world. The Washington Monument would actually fit inside this thing! Pretty cool.

And second, on our drive back, the wonderful sunny 80-degree day turned a bit chilly and we drove for a couple hours through freezing temperatures and snow. The hills were dusted with snow; higher up on the mountains it was definitely deeper. Umm, it’s Labor Day… that’s not supposed to happen!

Overall it was a great trip and a fun way to spend a holiday weekend.

We have a lot of concrete around the house. Much of it is stamped, some is aggregate, and the rest is just the plain old flat stuff. The stamped areas were pretty worn– after almost 20 years without any maintenance, the sun and the elements had worn the concrete down until it was crumbling into sand. So we decided to have it all re-sealed.

The results are pretty nice!

I guess it’s kind of hard to tell from the photo how much nicer it looks, but trust me: it looks nicer. The front porch is amazing compared to the old weathered stuff:

All of the concrete is quite a bit darker, which makes it look more “rich”. The funny part is the sealant is essentially a clear varnish, which means it’s pretty reflective, so it looks like it’s wet all the time. All in all, we’re thrilled with how much better this 3,000 square feet of concrete looks, and hopefully it’ll last a long time now…

Pepper and I went to Rosa’s Pizza for lunch today. I love that place, and it’s only about 10 minutes away (so close!), and I was in the mood. Anyway, we were sitting there happily eating our pizza and I noticed a group of four older women sitting across the room playing a game of Mahjongg. I snapped a picture over Pepper’s shoulder:

They were saying things like “three bam” and “nine crack”, which I recognized as the names of tiles because I read the rules of the game a few months ago when Zaque requested a Mahjongg game. At the time, he wasn’t able to go out much, and as a missionary he couldn’t watch TV or surf the internet, so he was left with a lot of time on his hands. So he decided to learn Mahjongg.

Anyway, after a while the woman farthest away (facing the camera) called out “Young man? Young man?”

I was a little confused, because I wasn’t sure if she was talking to me. But there wasn’t anyone else in the restaurant, and she seemed to be looking right at me, so I said, “Yes?”

“Are you Cosmo’s son?”

“Umm, what?”

“Cosmo’s son. Are you his son?”

I paused, a little unsure how to answer. “Well, I’m Cosmo…”

It turned out she’s in our church congregation, although I didn’t remember her at all because (1) I probably met her once last October or something, and (2) we haven’t been to church in over five months. Apparently she thought I looked so young that I must’ve been the son of the guy she knew as Cosmo. (And yes, apparently I’m so memorable that despite meeting me only once, she remembered me nearly a year later.)

We all laughed and chatted a bit. She and her friends come to Rosa’s every Monday for their weekly Mahjongg game. As we were leaving, Pepper asked me quietly, “If she thought you were young enough to be your son, who did she think I was?” Maybe my mom, instead of my wife? I reassured her that she doesn’t really look that old, nor do I really look that young…

Since moving in almost a year ago, Pepper and I have thought it would be nice to replace our desks with something fancy and customized. My desk has been literally a solid-core wood door atop two filing cabinets for almost twenty years. It’s worked really well, but if I had to describe it in a word, that word would be “ghetto”. And she was using the desk the former owners left behind, which was fine but nothing special.

Enter Darell, a local cabinetmaker who was recommended by my friend Jim. Jim told me “Just so you know, Darell is pretty much a seventy-year-old hippie who happens to be really good at woodworking.” And it was absolutely true. He showed up the first day with long grey locks, a grizzly beard, and a happy demeanor. We spent some time telling him what we wanted, and he went to work.

A couple of days ago, he started the installation. One of the key elements was that both Pepper and I are now facing the corners of the office, which leaves the windows open for our spectacular views. Here’s my unfinished desktop:

Each cabinet was custom-built to our specifications– we each wanted a slightly different arrangement of drawers and cupboards to stash our office stuff.

After some tweaking and final adjustments, the desks were finished and ready to use. They’re made of real maple, with a butcher-block top surface that’s beautiful.

Here’s the finished product, with our computers set up in our respective corners:

I think my favorite feature of this whole enterprise is the motorized base under our desktops, making both of them standing desks:

After using an adjustable standing desk at Zing for so many years, I really missed it. Now I’m happily clacking away on my keyboard, writing this blog post, while I stand and stretch my legs a bit.

Am I the only one who thinks the devil played a much better song than Johnny?

Pepper and I agree that Bill and Ted Face the Music was “dumb but fun”. The highlight of the movie for me was definitely Briget Lundy-Paine as Billie Logan, because she did such an amazing job as a female version of Ted.

Also, their oft-repeated line, “Dads!”

At some point during the summer, one of our many guests left a bucket full of Dubble Bubble gum at our house. I’m pretty sure it was intentional.

But as everyone knows, you can’t just have a bucket of 380 pieces of gum without doing something about it. So Kyra and I decided to have a challenge. Who can eat the most pieces of gum at a time?

As we prepared for the challenge, everyone was in good spirits.

But then the chewing began. We learned why someone had left the bucket: the gum was horribly stale. It was like chewing on gravel.

Once we got past the broken teeth, we were able to work the gum into some semblance of mushiness. The contest continued.

It’s important to note the ingredient list for this gum starts with dextrose, sugar, corn syrup, gum base. So the first three ingredients are literally sugars, followed immediately by rubber. And let’s not forget the titanium dioxide! Several times, both Kyra and I gagged on our sugary pink slobber.

After a while, we both sort of gave up. We had huge wads of pink mush in our mouths, and our jaws were getting tired.

Oh, and of course I won. Kyra claims it’s because my mouth is bigger, but a victory is a victory.

Large areas of the West are on fire, including swaths of California and Colorado. The smoke has drifted all the way up here, practically in Canada. As I drove home from Washington, I couldn’t even see the Mission Mountains along the highway! And our view over Flathead Lake was just kind of a grey mess. The far shore was barely visible, swallowed by the smoky sky.

As the sun was setting, it showed some orange and eventually faded to pink, but it’s kind of sad to have so much smoke and haze.

My thoughts are with the many people affected by this summer’s fires…

Behind our house, there are thousands of acres of the Flathead National Forest. (It’s nice to know that no one will build a house or a subdivision next door!) Those acres of forest ascend a pretty steep hill, forming a ridge that separates the Flathead Valley where we live from the Swan Valley on the other side. Earlier this summer, Kyra and I agreed that one day we’d hike The Hill. Why? I believe George Mallory said it best: “Because it’s there.”

So this morning we set off. Since it’s just a bunch of trees and underbrush, there aren’t any trails and we had to bushwhack a bit. That led to some moments like this, where we kind of peered around for a route that wasn’t completely overgrown:

Near the top of The Hill, there are a lot of rocks, which made for a bit of a scramble.

As we approached the crest, Kyra forged ahead while I stopped to admire the view. Notice the can of bear spray in my hand. There are definitely bears in these woods, and stomping through the underbrush isn’t always enough to deter them. (No, we didn’t run into any on the hike.)

At last we reached the ridgeline and were rewarded with a view of the forest below us. It was a particularly hazy day, so Flathead Lake doesn’t look all that impressive. But what is impressive is that we can see our house from here!

It’s that tiny little thing right in the center of the photo:

Mission accomplished! We headed back down, taking a slightly different route.

Kyra paused to look… contemplative?

The lack of trails or even distinct landmarks made it impossible to take the same route back down, so once again we found ourselves stymied at points as we considered different paths.

In the end, we arrived back at the house and took a celebratory selfie.

Now we can look way up The Hill, point to some of the trees at the top, and say “Yep, we were up there!”