Olympus High School Class of 2000 Alumni Website

Old tracks in Kapaa.

Beaches between Kapaa and Kealis on our way up to Princeville on our first day.

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End of a perfect first day.
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Hanalei River Valley overlook.

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This was at a beach that we started calling the River beach, because it has a big river flowing into the ocean at one end of it. (The Picture at the top of this post is from this beach also.)

River meets the ocean.
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The town of Hanalei.

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Us at Anini Beach. We snorkeled and made friends with a little chick while sitting on the beach.
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Sunset over Hanalei bay.

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This is on the West Shore. We were on our way into Waimea Canyon.

Waimea Canyon is called the grand canyon of Hawaii. We stopped at all the overlooks. It was so beautiful.

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Salt Pond Beach.
The waves come over the rocks and then on to the beach forming ponds.

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Spouting Horn.
The rocky beaches of the South Shore were beautiful and the sea turtles seemed to love this side of the island.

Us at the Spouting Horn.
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Found this just driving around. We still don’t really know what it is.

Waliua Falls

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Opaekaa Falls.

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Kilauea Lighthouse and wildlife Refuge.

These are Monk Seals there are only 24 left.

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Us watching the sunset over Hanalei Bay.

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Tunnels Beach.

We spent all day snorkeling and relaxing in the sun.
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Waterfalls in the mountains above the town of Hanalei. Bryan and I loved Hanalei. It’s a cute little town. It’s like Kauai’s Park City. It has small and artsy shops.

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This is at the Smith’s Family Tropical Paradise Luau.
There are 30 acres of botanical gardens that we explored.

This is a pine tree that grows on the island.

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Our last sunset on the Kauai (for now).

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Honeymoon…

Andrew and I went on a cruise back in December but it’s taken until now to post about it. I’m a cruise veteran having performed and lived on one, but this was Andrew’s first. We arrived in L.A. and boarded the Royal Caribbean Mariner of the Seas. The ship was HUGE! We loved the omelet bar in the morning and the formal dinners at night. We had happily found out we were pregnant two weeks before we left. So I was a little limited on what I could do (no dolphin swimming this time) and I slept a lot! Our stops were along the coast of Mexico. In Cabo we strolled through the town and hung out on the beach. Andrew parasailed in Mazatlan. We took a catamaran ride in Puerto Vallarta and hiked to a gorgeous waterfall. Andrew was converted to cruising and wants to do another one this year!

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Cruising!

we went to san diego…again… over easter. since we have sea world season passes we decided to go there all day on friday… once again, jake was in heaven and went strong from 10 am til 9 pm! then on sat we went to the beach…..it was a little too cold for us to lay out (we are currently in the high 80′s in phoenix so 65 is cold )

halle’s first time in the ocean!!!

jake and his cousins had an egg hunt on sunday but i just recorded it so no pics!!

and we just may or may not be going back to california some time soon

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easter in california

the pictures are in the reverse of our trip but oh well!! we started out in vegas for two days and we had a great time staying at the bellagio. then we met my parents, grandma and kel in california and went to disneyland…jake loved it and did great all day. we stayed until 11:30 pm and jake was still going strong so we stopped at in n out. even at 1 am jake was the happiest kid and kept us all laughing! the last day with my parents we went to newport and spent the afternoon there… it was beautiful and jake loved pushing his stroller on the pier. after we said goodbye to my parents (tear) we drove down the coast on highway 1 and i LOVED it!!! the beach towns were awesome especially luguna. we have seaworld season passes so we went there 3 days in a row and jake was in heaven and asks to go back every day! we had a great vacation and the kids were little rockstars
jake not too sure of meeting elmo

loved the ‘bounce house’

loved the ‘block house’

jake on the pier doing his thang

newport

the halster

john lovin the flip

disneyland

goin strong at 1 am

checking in at the bellagio

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California 2010

For Scott’s birthday we went out to Roger’s beach house with our friends David and Kaitlyn and their 8 week old baby Rosalie. It was a lot of fun. We had nice weather and the kids were great! We ate out at some new places that David and Kaitlyn showed us and just hung out. David and Scott played golf two different days at different golf courses. Logan enjoyed the beach and I think he will really love it once it is warm enough to put his whole body in the ocean. It was just warm enough to stick your feet in!

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Scott's Birthday Weekend

I guess it is time for an update. Well we have been in Bakersfield for over a month and so far we like it. We love our house and the extra space that comes with it. Eric didn’t start his job until the 18th so we had him around for awhile. It was nice but we did a whole lot of nothing. We are so broke from our move that we couldn’t really get out and experience Bakersfield while he was home. Plus we came in the winter when it is cold and always foggy so we haven’t really been able to make it out to the beach or anywhere like that.
We really like our ward. There are a lot of other young families for us to get to know. Although our ward boundaries are a lot bigger than I am used to so there are not very many members that live close by me as far as I know.
The kids love their new home as well. They are both growing up and learning so much.
Aaron has really improved his talking. He still has a long way to go but I am understanding him a lot more. He is singing songs and playing pretend with his toys all the time. His new favorite thing is the “Harry Potter Puppet Pals and the Mysterious ticking noise” you tube video. He saw it once and has asked to watch it over and over again. Now he will get whatever toys or objects to act out the video by himself. It is pretty cute. Aaron is also loves our dog sugar. We got her back from Eric’s parents when we moved here and Aaron couldn’t be happier. He loves having a dog to chase around the house. I think Sugar loves Aaron but gets annoyed by him sometimes. She loves having someone to play with but hates it when he comes up and grabs her when she is resting.

Kaylee is getting bigger and bigger every day. She is so close to crawling but not there yet. She can go from sitting up to her belly and then starts to kick her legs and wave her arms like she is swimming. She has mastered scooting backwards for over a month now. I have been expecting her to figure out how to go forward but she is still working on it. She has definitely hit the stage of being more squirmy when I hold her so it can be very difficult to hold her in my lap.
Aaron and Kaylee still love each other but they are still siblings so we need to work on sharing and taking turns. Aaron keeps pushing Kaylee down when he is frustrated (thank goodness we have soft carpet again) and he has discovered that results in a timeout. Overall these kids are pretty happy and are having fun.

It has been a bit of an adjustment for me to be a stay at home mom. For the last two years I have been a stay at home mom but with a job. It is absolutely wonderful being able to devote all my time and attention to my kids without having the responsibility of the dorm. However, it gets pretty lonely with no one to talk to but my kids. We only have one car right now so I am pretty much stuck at home. We try to go on walks when the weather is nice but that hasn’t been very often these last couple of weeks. I am excited that there is a park in my neighborhood just a 10 minute walk away. That place will be seeing a lot of me.

Eric is enjoying his job. We are excited that this internship will definitely be a full time job once he is done with his internship. Half his office is LDS because they have done a lot of recruiting at BYU-Hawaii and BYU-Idaho. He may be working a lot of hours but we could use the money to save up for a car for me.

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California update

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with lots of family. Scott’s parents, my aunt Davina, my uncle Roger, his boys and his mother Mimi were all out at Roger’s Beach house.

All of the ladies had a hand in preparing something for the dinner which was sooo scrumptious. Then we had a massive bonfire that the guys took care of that night.

Of course Logan was enjoying every second of the attention he was receiving from the family.

As you can tell by the hoodies and fire that it actually does get cold here. We all were FREEZING and then realized it was only 55 degrees outside! You really do become weenies once you are actually here, TRUST ME!!

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Thanksgiving

We decided to take pictures on the beach one night.

Here are 10 of my favorites:

Walking on the Beach

Baby Love!

Relaxing on the Beach

Close up

There’s no hiding that baby bump now!

Love this picture of Kristin, shows so much personality

Group shot

Hey Handsome Hubby!

Lovin the moon!

Dock love – aren’t the colors amazing in this picture?

And now I can officially say goodbye to Florida posts!

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Beach Photos

No one was more excited for the trip and to be on the beach than NICKY-BOY…

Except for when Brad tried to take him out into the ocean. As he saw the oncoming waves he would yell “Run, Daddy, RRUUUNNNN!!!” If you look closely, you can see that he’s holding on for dear life.

So he and Brad played catch with the football instead…

And he and Julia buried Brad (the other one)at a safe distance away from any water…

And they also made a killer sand castle…

Chase, on the other hand, spent the first day on the beach hiding behind my chair with this general expression…

And I spent the first day gazing at the beautiful ocean and soothing my frightened boy (tough life, right?)

Until eventually he ventured off my lap and went sea-shell (which Nick kept calling ‘taco shells’) hunting…
Also horrified of the ocean, Brad made a little pond for him to dig in and throw rocks and shells into…
Overall, it was a perfect beach filled, game-playing, wonderful weekend. Now we’re back to the daily horse-play that goes on around here…

{I love these boys!}

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Delaware…

Thanks to my incredibly generous parents, Spence and I and some friends of ours were able to go and spend a wonderful week in South Florida.

Because this trip came less than three weeks away from when I delivered with Lance, I was pretty lucky I was able to go, and not only go, but I felt awesome the whole time I was there.

Due to the fact that I am a photoholic, I am going to divide this post up over several days. So, here is day 1 and 2 of FlOrIdA!!! FYI – this post is extremely long and full of stories in an effort to journal our trip, so feel free to skim and look at the pics.

DAY 1 – We all arrived on Saturday night. A funny story about our friends: We met Dave and Kristin in our first ward in downtown SLC. (yes, 9 wards ago!) We only lived in our ghetto blaster of an apt downtown for a couple of months, so we were lucky we met and became friends with these guys. We hung out for about a year, and then they moved to Buffalo, NY to pursue dental school. Well, we have stayed in touch with them however, we have probably only seen each other for tops 2 hours in the past 5 years. However, we knew they would be the perfect people to go with, and indeed, they were. We had a BLAST!

First picture together – reuniting over dinner after the flight Saturday night.

(I just have to point out – dude, doesn’t Kristin have the world’s best eye lashes?!?)

Day 2 – We decided to get up and go to church. Funny story about church: So, we go and Kristin happens to run into one of her best friends from her mission to Prague! Just pure coincidence. He was in Florida doing dental school. Well, during sacrament meeting, her mission buddy finds out he has to give the lesson in sunday school, and sure enough, Spence steps up and sings an incfredible rendition of “Come, Come Ye Saints.” It was amazing. Her mission buddy ends up totally hooking us up later on in the week.

After church, we decide to hit up the beach for some of this:

And this…

(yes, those pasty white thighs become quite nicely tanned by the end of the week!)

Kristin and I were busting up over the obnoxiousness of Spence and Dave’s short shorts. So we look down the beach and we see guy after guy coming out of the water wearing short shorts. So we start thinking ‘dang, our hubbies are totally in style!” About 15 minutes later as we are walking down the beach, we realize that the area with all of the “stylin’ guys” was clearly the gay section of the beach, LOL!

And a little of this…

Daily group shot!


Later Sunday afternoon:

This is the view from the balcony of our hotel lobby.

This picture shows all of the shops and restuarants that lie directly beneath our hotel.

Sunday evening – strolling the boardwalk and taking a ridiculous amount of pictures of ourselves!

The girls:

The guys
Kristin striking a vogue shot!
Katie smiling cause she can’t get up from her “beached whale” position!

Cute couple!

Back in the room, we just start taking funny pictures of each other. Dave, totally acting like a goof ball, starts posing in these shorts (which happen to be my dads from like the 1970′s!) Little did he know what would happen to this picture in about 12 hours…

Dave, also known, as Gramparoni, (since he went to bed at 10:30pm this night) – goes to bed, but forgets to sign off of his facebook account. So, in order to get back at him for being a sell out with going to bed, we upload this photo of him to his Facebook account as his profile picture. He was half mad/half laughing when he saw this picture of himself along with all the comments that accompanied it in the morning! It was pretty darn funny. What a good sport.
And that concludes the first 2 days of one fantastic trip!

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The trip of the year!

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My Latest Fave

Oh how sweet it was to be on the west coast with REAL sand, sun all day, a nice mild temperature, lots of free parking, the list goes on and on. We LOVED every minute of our trip and it was especially nice to hang out with the fam.

Here are some pix! Yes these are pretty much the same ones in my facebook album but it’s all we have…we got camera-lazy after a few days.

We started our trip by visiting the Getty Villa in Malibu. It was GORGEOUS (thanks Dave for taking us there). If you go to Southern Cali you must go see this place.

Our nephew, Andrew, posing at the entrance

We made Andrew take this picture (pretty good!)

5 minutes later they tossed me in the water

Before my swim

What a view!

Don’t you just want to put Marshal in your pocket and take him home? Adorablest ever.

Marshal and Lindsey…awwwwww

Two nights before our trip I was running through our condo and I slipped on a cell phone charger cord and ATE SH*T like never before. I started crying because it hurt (my pride) so badly. The next morning I woke up with a G I N O R M O U S bruise on my thigh. The picture seriously doesn’t do it justice. The thing was black and blue.

As if a minor injury wasn’t enough to spice up our trip, we also had to take Marshal to the ER! The first 2 days we were there we feasted like crazy on In-N-Out Burger (double double with a chocolate shake) and greasy mexican food. Marshal usually eats like a health nut and his body couldn’t take all the bad food. So at 4:00 in the morning I took him to the ER because he had a huge pain in his side that wouldn’t go away. Turned out to be his gall bladder dysfunctioning (I made up that word btw) from all the fatty food we ate. Big oops. But at least now we can say he OD’ed on In-N-Out Burger.

Before – happily enjoying In-N-Out (cell phone pic)

After (another cell phone pic)

Like I mentioned in the previous post, we had tickets to Pageant of the Masters in Laguna Beach and it was stunning! Another must-see in California. Unfortunately we couldn’t take pictures of the show, but I found some more images online from one of the actual sets we saw on stage. So here’s a little glimpse but not from our camera.

And here are a couple random photos…

A total stranger who just got done shopping at the best store on earth (except I think they were having a bad day when I was there because the store was a hot mess)

Marshal practicing his daddy skills

This pic is hideous of me, but check out Marshal’s partial sun burn. He used the spray but didn’t rub it in so he had the cutest sun burn patches poor guy.

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I was born to live in California

Summer is going by WAY too fast even though it just barely got warm in Chicago. We had the coldest June ever and it was no fun at all. Life is great…just keeping busy with work and work and more work.

We are SUPER excited because we are going to Newport later this week. I can’t wait for 7 days of lounging at the beach. And we finally get to hang out with family. I totally need a break I’m not going to lie.

Oooooh the beach…

Marshal got us tickets to Pageant of the Masters. I’ve always wanted to go and I can’t wait to see it! Here are some cool pics I found online…

I have some more fun news. Guess who lives in Chicago now? Drum roll please…………ELAINE!! So freaking exciting, right? She starts a new job soon and we work just 1 block from each other!! OMG!!

Here is a pic of us from high school (I look special)

And here were are just a few months ago at the Britney concert!

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Life is great

Going to Hebgen is one of my favorite things about the summer. This most recent trip was a blast! Nana and Mom came up with Lyvia and I for a few days. Then Jason came up for a day of fun- then a bunch of friends came up to finish out the week! We had a wonderful time swimming, laughing, eating, talking, hanging out by the beach, feeding the animals, eating some more and just being together.

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Hebgen Lake

I just spent the last 4 days telling my family when I needed to poop. So clearly, I have been a little out of it. I was in Lake Powell. By the way, I pronounce Powell as it is spelled. Not “Pal”. That is a major annoyance of mine (among many many others) that I just wanted to clear up.Anyway, I'm not going to blog about “how much fun it was” or “how I totally needed a vacay” – because no one

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Some things should be left a mystery. Things like when I need to use the restroom

Speenwalter and I celebrated our anniversary this past weekend. I would definitely say that we are go getters… the day included the following:

- waking up, getting ready and working out (speen only for the work out!)

- I went to a surprise shower while Spence and Lance went grocery shopping

- Taking Lance to the zoo

- Doing all the yard work while Lance took a nap

- exchanging gifts

- dropping Lance off at my mom’s for a sleepover

- 4:28 tee time – walking 9 holes

- 7:00 sealings at the Temple

- Dinner on the patio at Market Street

- 9:50 movie!

Needless to say, we were EXHAUSTED by the time we got home. But, it was really, really fun to have a fun day together and a night out on the town!

Being married to Spence these last 6 years have been a lot of fun! We spoke in church the other week and I will relay part of the introduction I gave about Spence and I that sums up some of the things we have been up to in the past 6 years. (obviously for humor some of things were slightly exaggerated! )

- 9 wards = 9 different homes (owned 2 homes, 1 of which was one of the worst financial disasters of our marriage to date!)

- 4 different states (Utah, California, Arizona, Washington)

So throughout these 9 homes and 4 states:

I have taken 864,432 pictures

Spencer has eaten 22,641 bowls of cereal

16,798 is the number of times we have said to our selves “how did we luck out with the world’s best child!”

Spencer’s sang 14,622 songs whether it be in his band or at church or to family and friends

I have held the record for water skiing around the lake 2,763 times w/out letting go ALL while wearing a shower cap on my head so that my hair would not get wet!

Spencer has played 344 rounds of golf

We have visited 26 countries

Hiked 18 mountains

Between the two of us we have had 10 jobs – ranging from selling fruit to hippies down at Pioneer Park to selling 100’s of acres of “fruit-filled” land to large home builders in Central California.

We have had 7 cars

Married for 6 years

Had 3 degrees between the two of us – most recent being Spencer’s MBA from Thunderbird in Decembers

11/2 children – a little boy Lance who turns 2 next month and a little girl due in October.

Yeah that was the cheesey intro I did for our ward, but I thought I would post it on the blog, because it does sum up a bunch of things we have done the past 6 years. We are kinda crazy, but we like it that way!

Love ya Speenie, Happy Anniversary!

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6 years!

Author and doctor Atul Gawande writes an interesting article on the current state of our healthcare mess and questions whether otr debate is really discussing the foundational issues of our nation’s healthcare problems.  Being at Mayo Clinic I’ve had a chance to hear a lot of Mayo’s ideologies and it makes a lot of sense to utilize a pay-per-value system to decrease healthcare costs–but obviously it comes into contention with the self-interest of physicians who don’t want to ‘leave money on the table.’  The counter-point is, that if all our physicians in the nation keep snatching the money off the table, soon there won’t be anyone putting money on the table.  Regardless, this issue will be very pertinent to everyody in America in the near future, so it’s worth your read to offer at least some expanded perspective.

Read Full Article: The New Yorker – Annals of Medicine – The Cost Conundrum
Additional Coverage: Post Bulletin: Mayo Clinic model is a hot topic, but is it sustainable?

McAllen… it is one of the most expensive health-care markets in the country. Only Miami—which has much higher labor and living costs—spends more per person on health care. In 2006, Medicare spent fifteen thousand dollars per enrollee here”

Rochester, Minnesota, where the Mayo Clinic dominates the scene, has fantastically high levels of technological capability and quality, but its Medicare spending is in the lowest fifteen per cent of the country—$6,688 per enrollee in 2006, which is eight thousand dollars less than the figure for McAllen.

The long-term proposal, tosses out the pay-per-service plan completely to be replaced with something like a bundled care method. That means a heart attack would be covered with one fee for all related treatment and that encourages a hospital “to do things right the first time,” he said.

The more money Medicare spent per person in a given state the lower that state’s quality ranking tended to be.

As America struggles to extend health-care coverage while curbing health-care costs, we face a decision that is more important than whether we have a public-insurance option, more important than whether we will have a single-payer system in the long run or a mixture of public and private insurance, as we do now. The decision is whether we are going to reward the leaders who are trying to build a new generation of Mayos and Grand Junctions. If we don’t, McAllen won’t be an outlier. It will be our future.

(Mayo’s) practice model is closer to the quality and cost we want, though we have a financing system that doesn’t make it sustainable,” wrote Gawande in an e-mail. “My conclusion is that it’s the financing system that has to change, not the medical system.

Mayo Clinic, which lost $840 million on $1.7 billion in Medicare treatment last year, agrees.

[Mayo] sees a short term fix and a long term one.

The short term one stays with the per service model, but it adds a “value index” calculation to different Medicare reimbursement level for each region.

The long-term proposal, tosses out the pay-per-service plan completely to be replaced with something like a bundled care method. That means a heart attack would be covered with one fee for all related treatment and that encourages a hospital “to do things right the first time,” he said.

In the end, our national healthcare system doesn’t need to pay more across the board, it needs to use its resource to reward systems that optimize value to minimize cost and reduce waste that is currently dragging our our system as a whole.

Related posts:

1. Week 2: Scrubbed, Gloved, & Inside an Abdomen
2. So Where’s it Gonna Be? It’s Mayo not UCSD!
3. Mayo Family Week

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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Mayo Clinic is Going Bankrupt Saving America’s Money

I found this on our friends’ blogs and I can’t stop listening to it. I haven’t really listened to Jon Schmidt since high school, but this one is great.

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Props to Jon