How sweet it is to see a young man with whom I worked going on a mission in a few weeks.  He’s headed to the Charlotte, North Carolina mission on Dec 31 (what a cool date to enter the MTC, IMO).  I take no credit for his decision.  I’m grateful that he’s a great guy, has concerned and involved parents, is a great example to his siblings, and that he has sought the Lord diligently in his life.  I’m honored to know him.  Best wishes for a safe, successful mission!

It’s funny… when the Game Farm Ward Bishop (Auburn, WA) asked me to be the Young Men’s President, I literally laughed out loud.  “Me, YM President?  I know the scriptures say that ‘Vengeance is [His] and [He] will repay’ and it’s time for payback.”  I was… how can I say this… a difficult youth, at times (most times, perhaps).  I’d served in many callings but none of them interacted with the youth since before my mission.  Naturally I agreed to the calling, but I felt overwhelmingly inadequate and ill-prepared for the responsibility (which feeling other perhaps shared!).

Nonetheless, I learned a lot from the boys and other leaders.  I had great times.  And, hopefully, I fulfilled whatever the Lord had in mind when I was called.  We moved to UT about a year later, so it wasn’t a lot of time to develop super-strong relationships with all the boys, but I’m grateful for the opportunity I had, short as it was.  I remember their individual names, faces, and think of them.  May the Lord continue to bless them.

Alright. The other day I alluded to a great story about our favorite jeweler, Tony Bagdy. It’s time to document the story. Cue the music:

Some couples shop for rings together and others do it apart. In our case, we shopped for rings together. We got mine from Unicorn jewelry in Rancho Bernardo (San Diego), with which we were quite displeased. I don’t recommend their services or products to anyone. From that experience we went looking elsewhere and discovered Palomar Jewelers. While there Mrs. Smith located the ring. We ordered it to be her size and sometime thereafter I picked it up and proposed. Mrs. Smith elected to wear the whole thing, not merely the engagement band, because it was so nice which was fine with me.

Now, understand Mrs. Smith is not much of a jewelry person (yay!). She occasionally will wear something, but by and large she doesn’t rely on jewelry to enhance her physical features (yay!). Unfortunately, the byproduct of that is that when she washed her hands one night at an “Islands” restaurant, she took it off and failed to pick it back up. She discovered the ring’s absence a little later during the meal but the ring, by that point, was gone. She hunted through the trash, we had the U-drain checked, etc, but alas, no ring. Someone likely picked it up.

So, there we were: engaged and ringless. A few days later we stopped at a supermarket and plunked ~$5 into a toy machine trying to get a ring but, alas, no ring for us! Now we were ringless and $5 poorer – argh! So I went to Tony’s store, explained what happened, and requested a new one be created with the same design as it was the ring. When I went to pick up the ring several weeks later, Tony gave me a tremendous surprise: he charged us only for the band, not the precious stones (diamonds)!

First off, he certainly didn’t need to provide anything for free, yet he did. Secondly, the band is considerably cheaper than the diamonds, particularly since he specifically put in diamonds of better quality than what we originally purchased!

Think he got customers for life You betcha! Customer service may be a dying thing in many industries, but it’s alive and well at Palomar Jewelers!

Another fun-filled day of Marklogic training. This time, though, I was able to participate a little more than last time (though not much). Most of the time was spent working issues that arose today, and others that needed follow-up given my absence for the last couple of weeks.

We’re back in SLC now.  We arrived home this morning at ~1:45am (got to sleep about 3am after getting the kids to bed, stuff out of the car, etc).  Vacations are great.  And, as I’ve told people, San Diego is a wonderful place – to visit.  Glad I don’t live there anymore.  Don’t get me wrong, the weather was nice, people were friendly, air was clear (no “Santa Ana” conditions while there, or brush fire smoke), beach was nice, etc.  But the expense and congestion, particularly on the roads?  Ick.  No thanks.

As for the rest of the trip, it was a blast.  After the evening with the J & J Smith family (and their pushy vaccum salesman), we met Mrs. Smith’s brother and his girlfriend for dinner (Mrs. Smith and the kids went to visit Aunt K., too, while I took my CA real estate broker exam – which I failed… remind me to study next time), and the next two days we visited Legoland (buy one day get 2nd day “free”).

The park was perfect for kids our ages.  Older kids (9+ I’d say) might have been bored as it’s a theme park geared toward a younger crowd.  But for our barely 36″ and just over 42″ kids, it was awesome.  And, given the unusual season, there were no crowds.  Our kids were able to repeat rides over, and over, and over (did I mention they did them over and over?), and over again without having to stop.

On Saturday we hung around the timeshare, met our favorite jeweler (great story for some other blog entry – if you’re in SoCal, I highly recommend Tony Bagdy’s jewelry shop!), and met with Mrs. Smith’s former music teachers and mentors, Martha Rossicker and Diane Geller.  Mrs. Smith was instructed in the “Kodaly” (pronounced Co-Die – go figure) music methodology (I may be incorrect in classifying Kodaly as a methodology – I don’t know; I’m sure Mrs. Smith will correct me as needed).

Sunday we went to the ward in which I grew up (or in which I aged, anyway – whether I “grew up” remains to be seen) and from which I departed for the mission field.  It was nice to see some of the old families from my youth, though there were a lot of new faces!  Afterwards we visited Mrs. Smith’s former piano teacher, Dale Warstadt, and had a great visit with her family.  And finally, we went to J & J Smith’s house again for dinner, some games, and creation and, shortly thereafter, the destruction and consumption of a traditional gingerbread house.

The next morning was spent cleaning/packing things for the road trip with Mrs. Smith’s bro who hitched a ride home for the holidays (yay! he was a big help with the kids in the car).  The trip was ~12.5hrs to drive.  Ugh.  There were four instances when we had to drop down to stop-n-go traffic due to traffic and Vegas afternoon construction.  And then from ~Cedar City to ~Nephi (in So. Utah) we had whiteout conditions.  Not fast, not fun.  Mrs. Smith woke up at one point when I went over the warning strip on the side of the freeway (I couldn’t see the road, afterall), and then decided she wasn’t going back to sleep.  She didn’t much like the whiteout.  Not a bad drive otherwise, though.  I listened to a book on tape (book three of a series by Lloyd Alexander, author of The Black Cauldron) and actually didn’t get sleepy throughout.

Nice to be back home, even though it was 46 degrees in the house (we turned off the heater while gone) and our waterbed was a bit above freezing (turned it off, too).  Brrrr.

Today’s been a fun day.  After breakfast this morning, we left (well, when we left it was closer to lunch, but it was after breakfast after all) for the San Diego Temple.  We ate sandwiches on the Temple grounds, took some pictures, and the kids “played” with the various Nativity statues and animals on the Temple grounds.  One of the most exciting things, for us, is that we discovered a Visitor Center is planned – yay!  In my estimation, it’s something that’s been missing from this Temple for some time, given its proximity to the I-5 freeway, etc.

After there we went across the street to a Jamba Juice – the same one Mrs. Smith and I visited immediately after we were married.  When we finished pictures on the Temple grounds, following our marriage, we left immediately for our honeymoon (we did the reception when we returned a couple weeks later), we were hungry.  So we went across the street to Jamba Juice – Mrs. Smith still in her wedding dress and I still in my tuxedo.  Like the lovestruck kids we were, we’d not brought more than $5 cash – enough for one smoothie.  Fortunately, the employee gave us the ‘Just Married’ special and provided a buy-one-get-one-free offer – wahoo!  We waited for our smoothies, danced to whatever music was playing on their speakers, and delighted in our status as husband and wife. 

So, from there we went to the Birch Aquarium which is nice, but which unfortunately doesn’t compare to the Aquarium at Monterray Bay where Mrs. Smith and I vacationed a few years back (also with our WorldMark, The Club, timeshare resort).  From there we went to Mount Solldad, a federal war memorial, where I proposed to Mrs. Smith nearly six years ago now.  And then we stopped (where I am currently writing this, in fact), at my brother’s house.

We had just arrived, and I received the tour, when the doorbell rang — a Kirby vacuum salesman.  He offered to ‘quickly’ shampoo the carpet to provide a demonstration of its amazing abilities (he hasn’t gotten to it yet, but I’m sure that soon he’ll reveal it also makes Julian fries, doubles as a mini-Cooper, and solves so-called global warming).  Well, ~90 minutes later he’s still sitting downstairs doing the demonstration and started into the ‘pushy’ sales tactics we all know and love so much from in-home salesmen when my brother and his wife have rebuffed his sales efforts.  Oooh, overhearing the conversation, it just went into the emotional manipulative mode “Well, I obviously haven’t done a good job of convincing you about this vacuum if you’re not going to buy it…”  Nice.  To my sister-in-law’s credit, she and her husband have remained civil.  All the while dinner is now, for sure, quite cold on the stovetop.  Were it I, I’d likely have already agreed to it, signed the papers, kicked the guy out the door, and then relied on the 72hr right of recission (i.e. “cool down”) that’s federally guaranteed for in-home purchased products because of pushy salesmenship.

I’m sure anyone over 18yrs of age has experienced the salesman that’s quite good at what they do but which inevitably falls into what I categorize as distasteful, lengthy sales attempts.  Personally, I’d be much more likely to purchase something if they came in, skipped the presentation, told me the bottom line, and then left my family alone.  We’re now going on ~120min.  Take a hint, please – how many ways does someone need to say no?  Clearly many more times than once. 

So, Master Doodle ran into the bedroom (a sure sign he intends to poop in his underwear, as he’s in the midst of potty training), and when Mrs. Smith went to open the door, it was locked.  Uh-oh.  Doodle must have heard the handle jingle because he yelled out “Not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin!”  Mrs. Smith then played along with the Three Little Pigs child who refused to open the door to the Wolf…  in other words, he refused to allow Mrs. Smith into the room until he’d done his nefarious deed.  Ick.

At least there was some humor in the situation to diffuse the otherwise unpleasant and messy experience.

Today I was in the Orange Glen Ward of the Escondido Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  In the High Priests quorum meeting (ick – I’m artificially aged!) the lesson was from the December Ensign, specifically the talk from Elder Neal A. Maxwell about consecration and the Atonement.  The teacher mentioned the passage wherein the Savior cried out, in the anguish of Gethsemane, “Would that I might not drink the bitter cup and shrink; nevertheless, not my will but Thine be done.” (that’s from memory and may not be the exact wording).  Normally when brought up, the conversastion includes commentary about how the Atonement was such an excruciatingly painful ordeal that the Lord cried out, and asked “Abba” (Daddy) to take the pain away – but, nevertheless, not the Son’s will, but the Father’s be done.  Today I thought of the passage differently than ever before.

“Would that I might not drink the bitter cup and shrink; nevertheless, not my will but Thine be done” (emphasis added).  Perhaps the purpose of the exclamation to His Father wasn’t due to the pain he endured per se — after all, apart from the later declaration on the cruel cross that “[He] thirst[ed],” when do we ever see the Savior express personal regard as opposed to intimate concern for others? — perhaps instead what He feared in those moments in Gethsemane and Calvary when the burdens of sin, sorrow, and pain were nailed upon His sinless soul is that He, as obedient, powerful, humble, strong, and good as He was, that even He would be insufficient to the herculean task at hand; that He, the very Son of God, would shrink during the final hours, that He would fail and that, by so doing, His failure would literally damn all of God’s children forever.

Perhaps His concern wasn’t that it hurt so much — and it must have been terrible beyond comprehension! — but rather His thoughts at that moment were on you, and me, that if He failed we’d be resigned to eternal misery and woe, to become angels to the devil (as Nephi describes in the Book of Mormon).  His fear and plea wasn’t that the awful pain be removed, but that He prove capable to the task given so that we have the chance to return to live with God.  His plea further stands as His declaration of faith in His Father’s plan, that it would be possible to succeed, that His Father’s will be done.

I suspect this doesn’t read as well as it came to me during class today, but hopefully it provides opportunity for the Spirit to teach us about the Atonement, myself included. 

We’re in San Diego where we’ll be for the next week or so.

We left Friday night around 10pm MST and drove through the night.  We arrived at our first stop, my brother’s house, at ~7:30am PST.  You do the math – my brain still hasn’t woken up, I think, from the all-night drive.  Mrs. Smith was awake for the first couple of hours, then she was out with the kids.  In fact, she slept more than the kids did, as they awoke periodically during the trip.  And Doodle is in the midst of potty training, so he was specifically taken to the restroom each time we stopped for gas, and would then be awake for some time once back on the road.  The good news is that we’ve left him without a diaper now for three nights running – and he’s been dry come morning for three nights running.  Wahoo!

In true Smith fashion, we don’t have anything planned for the week, apart from Wednesday morning when I have my CA Real Estate Broker exam scheduled.  I think we’re going to hit the pool(s)/beach tomorrow, we’ll see.  As for the other days, it’s fair game.  Sea World, WIld Animal Park, Disneyland, SD Temple, In-N-Out, etc… only time will tell.

We’re staying in Oceanside, technically, at the WorldMark (by Wyndham) timeshare resort.  We love our WorldMark ownership.  If anyone is looking for a great timeshare opportunity, one that provides maximum flexibility with useful vacation opportunities, let me know.  I’m not looking to sell anything, but I’m willing to provide information and personal experience, fwiw.

No pictures of the trip to view, though, for a couple of reasons: (1) I’m not much for taking pictures, and (2) My wife is, so I encourage the interested reader to peruse her blog.

My wife.  Yes, she is the “ubergeek” of books.  In preparation for our upcoming road trip to San Diego, we stopped by the library tonight to retrieve some held items.  I waited in the car with the kids while she went inside to get the goods.  A few minutes later she comes walking out carrying a mountain of books and CDs (audio books).  The clothes matched what she’d been wearing when she went in but everything from her torso upwards, her face included, was obscured.

“Wow, that’s a lot of books, dear.”  Her reply?

“I know – isn’t it great?”  This is said as she literally embraces the stack of books now safely esconced on her lap.  Yes folks, she’s actually snuggling with the books (I’m getting jealous while driving home!).  I’m surprised she didn’t strap them under the seat belt with her.  Cinderalla, sitting in the back, asks Mommy what she’s doing.

“Oh, nothing.  Mommy just loves books.”

Yes.  She does love books.  She is the book “ubergeek.”

I hate it when projects don’t communicate with needed personnel until it’s the 11th hour. Grrr.