This post is dedicated to my Dad. Today is his birthday and he deserves to have the best birthday ever. I could not have asked for a better father.

Instead of sending a card, Dad, I’ve been working on a little video. It’s for you. Watch it. Listen to the words- they are so true. As I grow older and begin raising my own family I rely more and more on the example you have set for what a father should be. As I do this, I start seeing myself doing a lot of the things that you did as a Dad. I truly “see my father in me,” and I couldn’t be happier about it. If I can be half the dad that you were then I will have very lucky kids.

Thanks for everything, Dad. You’re the best.

Love,
Logan

By the way- click HERE to see a tour our our house. Remember, it's about 20 min long.

I’m sitting here in our new house and looking out of our big back windows at the mountains. The weather is getting cool and there is snow on the peaks but it hasn’t quite hit us yet. This week has been a whirlwind of unpacking and organizing, and finally I think we are about done with the move. I have to say, we love this place!

Just when we were starting to relax and think that our work was done (2 days ago) we received a call on the phone. Would we speak in church this Sunday? I’ll tell you what- we are totally reliant on technology in the Hazard home. Our internet still isn’t connected (don’t even get me started) and preparing a talk without the online resources was NOT the easiest thing I have ever done.

We finally finished everything, but then last night after we put the kids to bed Rachel realized that somebody (I’m thinking Addy) got on the computer and deleted her entire talk. Two days of hard, internet-less work went down the drain. Rachel was devastated. Church starts at 9:00am and she was to be the opening speaker. Not good.

So last night I spent driving around town trying to find somebody’s unsecured wireless line so that I could rip off their internet. It was for a good cause, right? I finally ended up at McDonalds and got the stuff I needed before racing home to report to Rachel. She worked hard, and finally finished last night around midnight. We gave our talks today and all went well. Now we need to take naps.

Last night while Rachel was re-writing her talk I took a part of it, and in order to stave off the boredom of watching her think, I wrote a poem on a whim. I haven’t done this since my grade-school days, but back then I was a very prolific writer and I have to say it was sort of fun. I like writing.

Anyway- Rachel wants me to post it, so bear with me. Feel free to skip this next part if you want.

My Nameless Poem That Was Written in the Middle of the Night When I Had Nothing To Do

 -By Me

I don’t think I can handle this

High school’s such a drag
My girlfriend won’t talk to me
I hate my mom and dad
No one understands me
And I don’t have any friends
Surely when I move away
I will be happy then.

Now I am in college

And man, this stuff is hard!
I miss my easy teenage years
When family wasn’t far
I wish I had somebody
With whom to share my life
I know that I’d be happy
If I only had a wife.

I’m married now, I’ll tell you what

It’s everything they say
Except nobody mentioned
All the bills I’d have to pay
The rent, the car, and don’t forget
The student loans and gas
A job would bring such happiness
And then I could relax.

Work, work, work- that’s all I do

My life seems all amis
Those days of college suddenly
Seem easy next to this
My life seems unfulfilling now
I’m needing something more
I’d be happy if I had kids
We’re thinking three or four.

Crying, yelling, whining, screaming

It’s all I hear all day
I know that I’ll be happier
When children move away.

My kids are gone now, how I miss them

Hour after hour
I can’t wait till I can visit them
As soon as I retire.
Then my wife and I will travel
We will live out all our dreams
That surely is the ticket
To happiness it seems.

Turns out with all that travel

That it surely took its toll
My body cannot handle this
I don’t like feeling old
So I keep on enduring
But I’m not having any fun
I’m glad they say that happiness
Is in the life to come.

Today I had my interview

With God- here’s what he said
“If you weren’t happy during life
You won’t be once you’re dead”
Turns out I sort of blew it
Always looking for tomorrow
Wish I didn’t have so many “nows”
So filled with grief and sorrow
So take advice from me, my friend
And chalk it up to learning
Forget the destination
‘Cause the joy is in the journey!

The end.

Anyway, that’s my poem. There really isn’t much more to write about this week. I finally got the garage cleaned out enough that we can put both cars in there. It is nice not having to scrape the windows in the morning before driving to work.

Oh- and for those who are interested, be watching for a tour of our house (comming soon...hopefully. This has been so much trouble trying to get it on here. I hope you appreciate it!). It’s about twenty minutes long so make sure you have time to see the whole thing before you start it. Also, I made this on the day after we moved in so things are still kind-of all over the place. Just know that we really are clean people!

…Most of the time.

This week has been super busy...and that is my excuse for not posting until now.

Let's start at the beginning. Monday was obviously Halloween night. We had already carved our pumpkins and made our decorations and the kids were excited about trick-or-treating. When I got home from work that evening our friend Katy and her daughter Ava were already at our house. We had a quick dinner and then everybody got dressed up in their costumes, we turned off our porch light, and we were on our way.

Boy, was this fun! Our kids are naturals when it comes to trick-or-treating. They ran from house to house and held up their pumpkin buckets and even said "thank you" at most of the houses that we visited. Jack got a little bit carried away at first and as soon as the person would open the door he would bolt into the house before anybody could hold him back. He soon caught on, however, that all he needs to do is hold the bucket and the candy will come to him.

After we were done collecting the candy we all went back to our house and enjoyed the spoils of the night. Then Addy and Jack went to bed while we had scones and hot chocolate. We let Evelyn stay up with Ava and pass out candy to the other kids in the neighborhood while the adults enjoyed good conversation and guitar music ;)

The next several days of the week were spent preparing for our big move. Packing, cleaning, organizing, and planning took up pretty much every bit of spare time that we had. In the meantime, I had an awesome week at work- just a little FYI.

Finally, on Friday night Rachel's mom flew into town and everything was ready.

Saturday was crazy. All morning I made trips back and forth from our little duplex to our new home. The goal was to get all of the breakable things moved in before we turned the Elders Quorum (a group of guys from the church) lose on the house. While I was taking trips, Wendy stayed at home with the kids and Rachel stayed at the new house organizing thing. I'd say we did pretty good because by noon she had the kitchen pretty much completed.

Around 1:00 the Elders started showing up. In short, we moved everything in two trips and got the stuff all put into the rooms where it belongs. There was only one casualty- a bottle of laundry cleaner spilled. That's it. Not too shabby. That same day I put the beds together and got the kid's rooms pretty much organized to they way they will be.

On Sunday we all went to church and met our new ward. We like them. We also did a lot of unpacking and organizing.

We are getting close to being done. Our house is looking a lot more like a home and we absolutely love it. Can I say that again? We absolutely LOVE it! The previous owners took very good care of things and made a lot of improvements. Specifically, I love our kitchen. I like cooking and this kitchen is like a cook's dream. The kids love having the space to run around (outdoors or indoors) and we love having the space for them to do it.

You know, it is amazing what space will do. That, along with some thoughtful organization and lots of child-proofing has made our home such an easy place for our family to be compared with any other home we have been in. Our kids can pretty much go anywhere or do anything without us ever having to keep a super careful watch on them. Even in the back yard, our huge windows allow us to look out and make sure they are fine and happy (which they always are) without having to actually go outdoors.

One of the other things that I am really excited about is the ability to do projects. Some people I have spoken with see this as a major downside to owning a home. I think, however, that since this home is already in really good shape, the projects we do will be fun instead of frustrating. Sure, there will be repairs to make along the way and things that don't go exactly according to plan, but by and large I think that the improvements we do will be focused more on making our home into something that is uniquely ours.

And after years of apartments and rental homes, we are finally in a place where we can just "be." No more moving. No more landlords. Just living. What more could we ask for?

 Here we are about to leave the house.

 Our kids are natural trick-or-treaters.

Reaping the benefits of their hard work.

 My pumpkin. I know- I was boaring

 Addy's pumpkin. She wanted circles.

 Rachel's Skull pumpkin. At least one of us was creative this year.

 Jack's pumpkin. He insisted on the off-center nose.

 Evelyn's pumpkin- designed entirely by herself. I especially like the teeth- that was all her idea.

 The "other" pumpkin.

 The ghost wreath that Rachel made with the kids

 Egg-carton spiders.

Evelyn's creation. She came and got me and asked me to take this picture. His name is Mr. Square-Head (it was more square before) and he has hair. That's all.

I made a 20 minute video-tour of our house for those who want to see it. We haven't yet gotten the internet at our new house though, so for now we are leaching off of a neighbor's unsecured wireless connection. The connection is sort of spotty though, so I haven't been able to upload this video. I'll post it sometime in the next couple of weeks.

It was a good week- but before I go on about it I have to share an experiance that happened to me a couple of weeks ago that I didn't post here. Some Facebook users might already know about this so bear with me.

As most of you know, we recently purchased our first home. Among the many things we are excited for, the house has a large, fenced-in yard. Also, a couple of weeks ago we came across a killer deal on Craigslist for a $20 swing-set that was still in pretty good shape. The only thing was that we had to take it apart and move it ourselves. So I took the seats out of the van one afternoon, packed up my tools, and went to work. The disasembly went well, and I soon found myself driving home with the pieces all in the back of the car.

That's when I saw the first wasp. And then the next. And then the next. And then they started streaming out of the pipes of the taken-apart swingset. By the time I arrived home there were dozens of wasps in the car. When we took out the swing-set there were 50-100 more that came swarming out as we moved the pieces into our garage. It was pretty exciting.

So, that's my story.

Anyway, like I said, this week was good. A lot of our activities were focused on Haloween. Rachel has developed a super creative crafty streak and every day when I come home from work I see new creations around our home- Like the egg-carton spiders, or the toilet-paper ghost wreath. Also, we made sugar cookies and decorated them, went to 2 chili cook-offs, had a ward Haloween party, and carved pumpkins.

Happy Halloween!

Here we are about to make cookies.

 Here are the finished cookies. Yum!

 This was the kid's favorite activity from the ward Halloween party- eating doughnuts off a string! Addy and Evelyn are wild crazy fairies. Jack is a dragon. The pumpkin next to Evelyn is her best friend, Ava.

 Carving Pumpkins! Addy wasn't too into the mess of it all- She's our little sissy girl. Her favorite thing was taking the lid on and off. Jackson, on the other hand, had no problem diving right in. We shall call him the pumpkin butcher. He made enough mess on his own to account for everyone. I think they'll find pumpkin seeds in all of the little nooks and cranies of this house long after we are gone.

-Check out the blog next week to see how our pumpkins turned out.

I have a confession to make. Today I did something that was totally un-Sundayish. I almost died. And I am an idiot. Seriously. Here's the story:

Right now I am in Las Vegas- the city of sin. I came down for a dental course (LVI for you dental people). Now, a lot of people love Las Vegas for a lot of reasons. Mostly because Las Vegas is one of the very few cities in the world where there are so many different roads leading to Hell. The options seem endless here, and I guess some people are into that sort of thing. But I love Vegas for a completely different reason.

18 miles west of "The Strip" is Red Rock Canyon- one of the greatest rock climbing destinations in the country.

Of course I'm not down here to climb, and even if I were, it is Sunday so I wouldn't be climbing anyway. I had to go see it though. I just couldn't leave Vegas without spending at least a little bit of my time there. So after church I drove myself to a trailhead and started just walking around and enjoying the beauty of the place. And seriously, this place is super beautiful (but it's also very hot and desert-y so I'd never want to live here).

So I went to go for a quiet walk...And those who know me can probably already guess the rest of the story.

I can't just hike next to rocks without doing a little bit of bouldering. I just can't. I think it is literally impossible. And a little bouldering isn't breaking the Sabbath, right? So I started climbing a little bit.

That was mistake #1

It started out easily enough. After a while though the holds started dissapearing and it turned into a friction climb. My thought at this point was- "wow, this would be a great route if I had my climbing shoes and a rope, but I don't so I guess I'll go down now." And then I looked down to discover, to my surprise, that I was about 60 feet up. How did that happen? And then I looked up and I saw the top of the climb about 20 feet in front of me.

I made a judgement call. It would be easier, and more time efficient if I just went up and then walked off the back.

That was mistake #2

The next 20 feet were super hard. They were friction. I was wearing tennis shoes. It was a hot day and my hands were sweating and my legs were shaking. But finally I made it. Whew. I started walking off only to discover...

...There was no way to walk off. Also, there was a crowd gathered at the base of the rock taking pictures of me. Great. I was on a nice little platform of rock with nowhere to go. The only 2 options were to down-climb what I had just done, or to continue upwards (where I saw a definate walk-off area).

You don't down-climb friction. You just don't. It was about 40 feet to the top. The difficulty looked about the same as the stuff I had just done. So I sent up a prayer to heaven- "Lord, I'm sorry I am such an idiot. Please don't let me die today."

And I started climbing- (Don't hate me Rachel. It seemed like a logical thing to do at the time. And I'm still alive to tell about it, so it's okay, right?)

I have to say, I don't think I have ever climbed better. I was totally in "the zone." Nothing mattered except for the next move. Any fear I had seemed to dissapear and, I'm telling you, if I could always climb the way I did today then I would be famous. The moves seemed to just come- one after the other- smooth and measured. There have been very few times in my life that I have been this focused on ANYTHING. Really, it was sort of cool.

When I got to the top, the group of obese spectators all cheered and took more pictures. Seriously. But that's not fair. Not all of them were overweight. Some of them were Asian. 

Anyway, when I came out of my little trance I nearly had a melt-down. All of my energy totally drained and I seriously wondered if I would have the strength to walk off. I later consulted with a climber who had a guidebook. The route I did ended up being a 2 pitch 5.9+ X. Friction. Tennis shoes. Yeah. Scary.

And here's my thought of the week. I had to tie this all in with church stuff so that I can justify the whole experiance. Isn't it interesting though, how Satan lures us along a little bit at a time until it becomes impossible to "down climb" our way out of our prediciment? And isn't it interesting that if we had just "stayed off the rock" to begin with then we would never be in that predicament in the first place? And isn't it great that our Heavenly Father, who knows that we will sometimes be idiots and get on the rock anyway even though we know better, has provided a way out for us in the form of the Atonement? Just some food for thought. Cool stuff.

So, that is my story about how I was dumb and irresponsible. Lesson learned.

Besides this, it has been a great week. The dental thing I went to was awesome. Rachel found cute Halloween costumes for all of our kids. We are moving into our new house next week. Life moves on...

Thankfully.

Here's a pictue of Red Rocks. I am still in Vegas and I don't have our camera. Rachel may (or may not) get on here later and put a few more pictures up after she calls me on the phone and tells me how angry she is with me and how stupid I am and how much she loves me...and stuff.

Until next week!

 Do you ever wonder what it is like eating breakfast at our house? Make a recording of a child saying "more syrup please" and have it repeat every 5 seconds. Now dump half of a carton of milk on the floor. Finally, spread a thin layer of syrup all over the kitchen table so that the entire surface resembles sticky fly paper. In case you haven't guessed yet, the entre is alway syrup. Sometimes we throw in sides such as pancakes, french toast, eggs, or waffles. And there you have it- breakfast at the Hazard's.

Last night we left the kids with a babysitter and we went to see Harry Potter at the discount theater. Also, we ate at Jack-in-the-box. I have three things to say about this date. First, it was great being out with my beautiful wife for some pleasant one-on-one time. We don't get that as much as we'd like. Second, the movie was pretty good, but for some reason it all seemed so new to me. I know I've read the book, but I guess I didn't remember ANYTHING from it. And third, I think I am addicted to Jack-in-the-Box. Seriously, this is the best restaruant ever. Sometimes I have daydreams about eating mini-churros.

Sidetrack- as I was writing this just now Addy made an impressive dive with perfect form from the couch and landed headfirst on the floor. Miraculously, she isn't crying too hard, but she does seem sort-of stunned. I am trying to supress laughter. -Un-Sidetrack.

We discovered a new place this week. It's called Huckleberry Hollow. It's at a local fitness club and it is open free to the public every afternoon. The best way I can describe Huckleberry Hollow is "Mcdonalds playland on steroids." Our kids love it. They played there for over an hour BY THEMSELVES, allowing Rachel and me to have an actual conversation (a rare event around here during the day).

Okay. I have a dilemma. I take Evelyn and Addy on "dates". That is sort of cute- you know the daddy-daughter date concept. But what do I call it when I take Jackson out for some one-on-one? A man date? (that feels weird to me). A guy's night? (even if it is during the day). A "father-son outing?" (that sounds dorky). I don't know. Anyway, we hung out this week- just him and me. I took him to Corban Park and let him explore. He loved the freedom and we chased squirrels, threw rocks in the river, and climbed on things. We also did some serious off-roading in our mini-van (but don't tell Rachel). He is my buddy and it was fun to be with him and get to know his cute little personality a little better. Also, more than any of my other kids, he seems to love, love, love being outdoors. I think we have a bright future together.

One more thing. Evelyn thinks she is the boss of the world and she throws a fit if her authority is not acknowledged and/or challenged. It drives me and Rachel crazy. She has been spending a lot of time in her room or being ignored this week.

Well, here are some pictures.

Kids were crazy grumpy today. It was a long day. I'll leave it at that.

So...The biggest news this week is that we finally closed on our house! We are officially home owners. It's a pretty cool thing- especially when your house is so perfect. We won't move in for another month because the people who sold us the place are renting back from us for October. Actually, as I wrote that I realized that we are also officially "landlords" now that we have renters. Well, that won't last long, but it sounds cool though. When people ask what I do I can say "Well, you know...I'm a dentist but I also have some real-estate property that I manage for investment purposes..." It sounds very sophisticated don't you think? It makes me feel important. Oh- and don't worry. I would never actually say that out loud (I would only think it).

Also, yesterday we went to the Apple Festival. It is officially Autumn and, as always, I love it. As always, the slight chill in the air and the unique smells of the season seem to infuse me with energy and optimism. Autumn is totally MY season. For the apple festival we went to a farm and picked apples and purchased home-made kettle corn and rode on tractors and played on haystacks and stuff. When we got home we baked all sorts of Autumny goodies and we are now in the process of consuming these baked seasonal treats. And through it all we never once took our camera out to take a picture.

So...That's pretty much all I'm going to write this week. Like I said, it's been a long day. I need to relax.

Here are some pictures of Shannon's wedding and our time in Utah from a couple of weeks ago.

Shannon and Tyson- We are excited for you!

Evelyn- the most beautiful flower girl around (not that I'm biased or anything)

Rachel- the most beautiful bride's maid. No bias there...just fact.

The Sandcastle.
Park City

The Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point