Christmas in Emily's neck of the woods in "Utard"

Ok, so this really has nothing to do with me at all, but I thought it might be fun to post some pictures of my little sister's Christmas out in Utah. We had the entire (Mark) Sturgis family out to Utah last Christmas, which was a blast, but this Christmas, Emily and Jared played host to Jared's brother's family from San Francisco. Does that all make sense? Oh well, here are some random pictures from their Christmas since many of you know my little sister from either BYU days or from Methuen. (Em, I hope you don't mind me taking these pics from your blog!)


Em and Jared at an archery range. What a fun activity! I need to look into that around Boston.


Em's first try.


Jared's first try.

Emily and her sister-in-law, Kim.

Emily and her niece, Marlo.

The famous Sturgis "bomb" cookies. For as long as I can remember, my sisters and mom have always made these cookies around the holidays. Awesome cookies!

Em got a subscription to Domino Magazine. Am I suppossed to know what this is? Apparently, she was thrilled about it.

Snowshoeing. I miss those Rocky Mountains of Utah. Oh yeah, I miss Em and Jared, too.

Christmas 2008...cancelled, sort of.

Having three sisters who are all married sometimes poses some logistical challenges, especially aroung the holidays. As much as the entire family tries to get together for Christmas, it generally only happens every other year. That is, we will have a Sturgis Christmas one year and then the year after, my sisters have Christmas with their husbands' families. And the pattern sort of repeats like that. This year was one of the "off" years, in which my sisters would be spending the holidays with their husbands families. So...Emily and Jared stayed in SLC and had Jared's family out to visit, Annie and Brandon went to Buffalo, NY to spend Christmas with the Dayton's and Elaine and Mike made the usual trek back to the Boston area. I, being the eternally single guy, stuck around these (Methuen, MA) parts as well.

Since this was an "off" year (sorry, I don't know what else to call it), and having my parents recently retire/move to Japan, the Sturgis clan decided not to do presents, which was fine by me. It's not too often then you don't need to go Christmas shopping. Although I scored a little package of goodies from Japan and a handmade Alpaca wool scarf that Elaine made me, Christmas was rather uneventful in terms of gift giving, but being with the family that was around more than made up for it.

Some random pics:


Maya on my tummy. I've seen quite a bit of Maya recently as she was up here in November for a funeral, I was down in DC for Thanksgiving, and now she was back up for a week for Christmas.


Maya at the Qualter's house on the massage chair. I wasn't there when this picture was taken, but I'm sure it kept Maya thoroughly entertained for a good 20-30 seconds.


Maya and Grampa Mark (Sturgis) playing some tunes on my guitars. Maya's been getting more use out of them than me lately.


Grampa Mark...professional baby book reader.

Let it snow, let it snow...and then let the weather get to 60 degrees

Elaine and Mike picked a rather treacherous day to fly into Logan from DC for the Christmas holiday. The weekend right before Christmas, the New England area got belted with a good foot (or more) or snow as a follow up to the horrific ice storm that left so many without power for weeks! Their flight was delayed an hour or so and to make matters worse, one of their suitcases was lost. All in all, what should have been a quick pick-up at the airport turned into a 5 hour ordeal. Gotta love flying around the holidays!

It snowed on and off pretty much throughout the weekend. Luckily, Mike Q was there to give a hand, as well as my dad who was enjoying his last week in the states before flying back to rejoin my mother in Japan. (He actually flew back on Christmas day).

Furtunately, a year or so ago, my parents had some friends that moved to Florida (?) and graciously left them a snowblower. I had never used a snowblower before, but after a heck of a time getting it started, it made easy removal of the snow from the driveway.


Putting Mike Q to work! Even though Elaine and Mike see flurries of snow in DC, I don't think it snows nearly as bad down there.


Mike Q and Maya observing the snowfall on the back deck.



I love snowblowers!



So does Mike!

Ironically, less than a week later, the weather got up to around 60 degrees and most of the snow was gone. Go figure.

Ice storms and more...

Like a previous post mentioned, we had a severe ice storm out here in the northern Boston area that extended well into New Hampshire and Maine (I think). Its been over a week since the actual ice storm, but there are still people without electricity! I've heard numberous stories about trees leveling cars and crashing through windows/homes, etc, so when the extend of the damage to our house was a few large branches on the roof, I considered it lucky! Again, my dad is still in town for the holiday season visiting from Japan, so he was happiest to know that there was no significant damage to his brand new roof he had installed last summer. He got a quote of $700 to remove the branches and the tree, which is not necessarily unreasonable, but still alot to pay for something you can (in most cases) do yourself. So, we spent the next Saturday cutting away. I was the lucky one who got to climb all over the roof to start removing the branches. We only got about half of the work done - one more Saturday should do the trick.


It ended up not being as bad as it sounded when it came crashing on the roof at 3am.






After the smaller stuff was removed.

I can see cleary now the ...old windows are gone.

A month or so ago I tracked down a guy via Craigslist (I love that website) and got a great deal on new windows/installation. One reason he gave me a good price was because I offered my assistance in installing the windows. Coincidentally, my dad was in town (from Japan) so he helped out as well. All in all, we installed all new windows on the lower lever of the house and finished just after noon time.

Mike, a general contractor/handyman from nearby Haverhill and me.


Installing windows.

I should've seen it coming

Last night we had a substantial ice storm throughout New England that left branches and trees all over the place, not to mention leaving thousands without power/electricity. Unfortunately, we were a victim, being the recipient of some large branches that have now nestled comfortably on the roof.

I sent an email out to some of my friends in AZ to let them know of my 3am debacle last night as my dad and I assessed the damage of the partially fallen tree on the roof.

Here is an email I received from Garrett, a friend in sunny AZ:

Sturgis,
I am glad that both you and I are all right. Last night and early this morning I also had a scare. I let the dogs out last night and as I stepped on the patio my feet got extremely cold. I hurried and rushed back inside to escape the 60 degree weather barely escaping frost bite. Then this morning as I approached my car I saw that it was frozen, luckily as I got closer I could see that what I thought was ice was in fact dry dust from the previous days 70 degree sunny day.

Looks like we both have guardian angels looking after us.

I will keep your family in my prayers, and please pray that is does not get below 40 degrees here because I may have to open my winter coat storage box and that would be an inconvenience.

I should've seen it coming.

My new watch!

A few months ago I had three watches that I had been neglecting - all three had dead batteries. So finally I decided to take them to a watch repair place to get them fixed. With three newly fixed watches I figured they would last at least a few years, but to my surprise, two of them stopped working within a month. Of course I had no idea where the receipt was and I also realized that is was probably a problem with the watch's beyond the battery. Anyways, I've been shopping around for a kinetic watch - one that had no battery, it works by your movement. I found one that I really liked while reading MENS HEALTH magazine, the Seiko Coutura series. Strangley, as part of their advertising, you could text them a picture of your wrist and they would send back a picture of how the watch would look on your wrist. Here it is! Wow, it looks so real! (I hope my sarcasm is obvious!)

I have five watches now, none of them that nice besides a Swiss Army watch that an old boss bought for me about 5 years ago. As far as I can remember, I have never bought a watch. Maybe this will be this year's Christmas present to myself. Let's hope it looks better than the picture.

BYU's loss to Utah

Well, I watched the BYU-Utah game a few weeks ago with mostly strangers when I was down in DC. It was brutal to watch the Cougars fall to the Utes, but that's just the way it is. My little sister Emily sent me this hilarious video. I wonder where they got the footage:

Random Pictures from Thanksgiving week in Washington DC

Maya loves getting her picture taken. She knows how to take pictures on my blackberry now and insists on me taking her picture with it all the time. It's cute. She loves to pose.


Mark, Mei-le, Dave, and Julie at Big Ben's Chili Bowl. We then went on to Busboys and Poets for dinner after dinner.


This was one of the funniest things I've seen in a while. Maybe you had to be there to appreciate it. Driving back from Home Depot with Mike, we stumbled upon Segway training for the DC police. They looked like a family of ducks crossing the street.


Mike is usually good at teaching me a new song or two everytime I am down there.


While Elaine drives, I play entertainer for Maya in the back seat.


Elaine and Maya at the dinner table


Maya is so smart! She knows alot of sign language and picks out everything in her books.!


Family picture right before I flew home to Boston.


Maya and Momma

Thanksgiving Day

We had Thanksgiving with a ton of other people, most of whom I didn't know. Kimberly played a gracious host and the food was delicious!


Maya insisted on wiping the floors with the Swiffer.


Gathering in the living room.


Some of the food!

Kimberly, Liz, and Tomicah cutting the turkey

Fly fishing in Maryland

I have always wanted to fly fish, so when Mike brought it up, I made sure we were going to go no matter how cold it was. Luckily, Saturday was fairly nice weather so we packed up and headed about an hour away to Maryland to fish at Gunstock (Park?). Fly fishing is a bit harder than it seems, but between Eagle, Mike, and Dave, I seemed to pick up the basics. Ex fly-fishing guide, Eagle, was the only one who caught any fish - he caught three!


Mike and Mike (aka Eagle) practing their technique


Enjoying the quiet. That buldge in the front of my waders is a Diet Pepsi, not my belly. I'm not that fat (yet!).


Dave (aka Jesus) enjoying the quiet as well. He can actually walk on water and summon the fish to rise, but he didn't want to show us up.

Eagle with one of the three fish he caught.

Mike and Mike getting the rods ready.

Thanksgiving Turkey Bowl 2008

What would Thanksgiving be without a Turkey Bowl football game? On my team, was Eagle, a University of Utah grad. I must say the BYU to Utah combo worked quite well as we connected for a handful of TDs.

Here is a bunch of us after the game, which, in case you were wondering, ended in a tie.

Thanksgiving in DC (aka "the District")

Apparently I'm not up with lingo down their. All this time, I refered to Washington DC as "DC," but apparently everyone down there calls it "the district." (in case you cared).

Like my last post mentioned, my sister's family visited me a few weeks ago due to a death in the family. Ironically, they flew back to DC, oops, I mean "the district" on Friday, and I flew down the next day for a week's long stay for vacation and Thanksgiving.

Elaine and Mike recently bought a house right on Mass Ave and asked me to help them do some stuff around the house, namely a closet in the master bedroom, where there was little space for any storage at all.

Pictures!

My friend Dave decided to help one day since he didn't have too much else to do. He recently quit his job and is enjoying life more than me these days! Dave and I squeezed into a cut-out barely wider than a magazine cover to get into the attic to install some recessed lighting. I wish we had footage of me trying to get in and out of that cut-out. During one point, I asked Mike to take of my shoes, because they kept getting stuck. Laughing hard and barely able to talk, Mike replied, "Why don't you take off your ass instead!" Real funny, Mike, real funny.

Once up in the attic we found...well...poop. Bird droppings everywhere! Apparently birds were getting into the attic somehow over the years and left a nice mess for us to forrage through as we installed the lights. No bird flu viruses yet! Whew!

The frame of the new his and her closet.

This is what I looked like after an hour or so of sanding drywall.

Elaine and Maya advising the project and checking in.

My Uncle Jeff taught me a lesson a long time ago. Sometimes you have to sit back and admire your work.

Mike and I next to the almost finished product. (we ran out of paint and they are also going to special order some doors which will take a month of so to come in.)

Long Overdue...Surprise Visit!

I've been putting this off too long. Like exercise, the longer you procrastinate, the harder it becomes. Let me try to update the last month or so...

Elaine, Mike and Maya came into town unexpectedly a few weeks ago. It was great to see them, but we all wish the circumstances were a bit different. Mike's grandmother's illness prompted the suddent trip back to New England for them. They were all hoping to see her one last time before she passed away, which she did on Sunday. The funeral/wake aside, the Qualters were generally in high spirits considering the circumstances. Having Maya, and Peyton (the other grandchild) around helped, I'm sure.

Some pics...


Maya's dress for the funeral of her great-grandmother.


Maya and me chilling downstairs at my house.


Maya can totally walk just fine, but she kept insisting on being put in the walker. Go Figure.