New web address (URL) for the family blog..

Well...Now that Mac has gone to dog heaven (all dogs go to heaven!) i thought it best to change the blog address to something more fitting than "9kids2dogs.blogspot.com". Plus, what if mom and dad have another child? Just saying... 9kids just wouldn't be right anymore.... so RRBROOKSFAMILY it is!

Also, I discovered there is a very easy way to download the entire blog archive (we have 365 postings over 5 years now!), so if we ever decide to abandon the blog in favor of FB or some other media, we can each have our own complete copy for archive/genealogy purposes. Yea!

My BEST Friend Ever!

I sure am gonna miss the best dog I've ever had! Too bad we didn't all get to say our goodbye's but that's ok. I'm sure he knows he was loved. Thanks so much to mom and dad for taking such good care of him all these years. He definitely had his fair share of pigs ears and walks and ear scratches and swims. One of my favorite memories with Mac is swimming with him in the pool on the corner of 9th and Northern. He sure loved his water, even tackling the canal's in Arizona and the reservoir in PV. I also will miss his smile, I've yet to see a dog that could actually show emotion like Mac could. By far the best looking yellow lab I've ever seen and everyone else seemed to have the same opinion. It was kinda cool when he would put his head in-between your legs too begging for a scratch on his butt. I also liked laying on the ground when Mac would wonder over and lay himself right on your arm or chest and just stay there. Love you Mac! We'll see you later...

Can you guess who this is?

We laugh every time we look at this picture. If you're not sure who/what you're looking at, just ask Jared and Chelsea.

Week 4 in Los Angeles

Dear Brooks Family,

If anything gives me a great boost to the day it’s reading your letters. Every now and again it hits me, I’m on a mission! What a blessing to serve. Sorry Dallin about your last football game, but it sounds like you did great. I’m excited to see you play when I get back. Ally it’s crazy that you are in your senior year talking college already. You’ve just grown up so fast. SUU is ok for your first year but it’s USU when I get back. I can even get someone to personally set it up for you, yeah, I’ve got the hook-up.

Erin you never cease to amaze me with how you handle every component of your life. I can’t believe this is your last year in college! My big sister is all grown up.

Parker, ruff ruff rooohhhhh, ruff ruff rufffff, roofffff, ruff ruff.

Mon and Dad, you two are quite the pair and oh so great. Can I just say that we have the best family around, like really though. Seems like everyone I talk to lately has family problems, I just don’t get it. High fives to all of you. I just can’t begin to tell you how much I love all of you. I absolutely love hearing from you and all your good news.

Ok, so this week in the mission field has been pretty cool. Have I told you about elder Ohata? He is from Japan and was in Joel Einfeldt’s ward. In fact his father is Joel’s Bishop. I’m going on splits with him tomorrow. More good news is that Elder Carroll is doing a lot better. He’s been down because of the lack of baptisms and thinks it is fate. I have a different opinion so I ask him what he thinks we could do to improve and change things. Today seems to be a better day for him - he is smiling anyway. Maybe it’s the eggnog I bought and he tried for the first time ever. Good stuffJ

That’s great, Jessi Carter is coming to this mission. Maybe I’ll see him in the MTC when I’m sent back. I wrote Jase Bleazard today and have tried to write Ryan, not sure I have the pouch system down though - hope it got to him. I do need Joel’s address if you could get it for me. Also I’ve lost track of Brandon, I’m assuming he has been sent to Mexico by now.

Mexicans are so funny. When they feed you and ask if you want water or soda to drink, and you answer water, they bring you juice. They take little pieces of fruit and water and blend it all up and call it water. I don’t know why they ask what you want they are going to give you what they want you to have. I think they think just water isn’t good enough.

Another funny thing is that they cannot sing. I want to record them sometime. When we sing the hymns in church it sounds so bad I can’t help but laugh.

So this week I planned to finish the Book of Mormon on Sunday. I couldn’t wait and finished it on Friday. What an amazing book. I decided to take Moroni’s challenge and to pray about it again. I read and re-read Moroni 10:3-7 and then the introduction and testimonies of the witnesses. I read some conference talks on the book of Mormom. I couldn’t wait any longer, I ran to my room, closed the door and knelt down to pray. I could only get out two words before I felt the spirit rush through me. I couldn’t hold in my emotions and let it all out. What an experience. I have a testimony that the Lord will answer our prayers. I recently reviewed Elder Holland’s talk, Safety for the Soul. In his talk he bears the strongest testimony I have ever heard of the divinity of the Book of Mormon. I had the opportunity to be at that session when he gave the talk, so powerful and influential in my life. Give it a listen if you have the chance this week.

I want to let you know of the importance of our testimonies, they are what keeps us going and keep us living the gospel. They can only be gained through the Holy Spirit, not proof.

I think that’s why Laman and Lemuel were so week. Sure, they had seen an angel but they never sought a witness from the Holy Ghost. Alma the Younger even after seeing an angel still prayed to know if it was true through the spirit of the Holy Ghost. Our testimonies are vital to our progression in the Gospel. I love you all so much and can’t imagine heaven without you. I want all of us to make it there. I want all of us to inherit the glory of the celestial kingdom. Keep working hard to earn that reward. I love you!

-Elder Brooks

1591 E. Temple Way Los Angeles, California 90024-5801

Dallin actually had a much cooler carving on the other side of his pumpkin. It was an owl, but amidst the intricate carving it didn't survive.

Halloween in MD

Here are our little Halloweeners, minus one. There was a neighborhood get-together on Halloween and we had a great time meeting some neighbors that we hadn't met before. We ate a lot of food too. I brought mummy hotdogs and a Jell-O brain mold. Mummy Hotdogs-yummy. Jell-O Brain mold-not so yummy.

Seth enjoyed eating the boxes of the candy much more than the candy inside...well, we didn't give him any candy but still.

Our little Master Yoda. He was the same size as the real Yoda.

Didn't you say you wanted sea food?

This was my costume for Trunk-or-Treat, the night before. I have to say it was so fun and my favorite costume to date. Once I figure it out, I'll put on here a video of my stick figure dancing. It was hilarious.

Our Halloween family. Seth was snoozing away upstairs. We don't really have a back yard but the neighborhood Halloween party was in the alley at the back of all our houses. That glowstick stick figure costume only looks cool at night so that's why I have on my skeloton.

We love our little trick or treaters! That night in bed, I thought about all the boys first costumes. Jake was an orange fish. Sam was a carrot. Cameron was a tiger and Seth was a pumpkin. All orange! I thought that was funny. If we have another baby, I'll have to keep the orange tradition.

We bought a few really teeny, tiny pumpkins from Sam's Club...

We had about a million seeds from these three pumpkin-titanics, plus one other medium pumpkin I used for a dinner-in-a-pumpkin. Last night we roasted them, half savory and half sweet. They're delicious.

Hope you all had a fun weekend! We miss you guys a lot want to beat you all up for getting together for Thanksgiving without us. BOO! We still love you, we're just jealous. Save some awesome fun times for us when we get back!

Happy Halloween!

Work Hard, Play Hard

So I had to go to Anchorage Alaska to watch some contractors of ours do some work for a day, you know, for quality assurance purposes, and to see that everything went ok. Then it just so happened that my return flight for some weird reason didn't leave until 5 PM the next day, so we just had to take advantage of the downtime.

Flying in was awesome because there were no clouds and I had a window seat, so i was able to see some of the glaciers in the mountains of Chugach National Forest. One of the locals where we were working offered to take us out on his boat in Seward / Resurrection Bay (2.5 hr drive from Anchorage, on the Pacific Ocean) before we had to fly out on Wednesday, and so we left a 4:30 am to beat the boat traffic and other anglers.

Here we are at the docks at Seward, 7am.

The Ominous pre-boarding photo...it's probably what jinxed our fishing that day... The two guys on either side of me are the contractors i came to "see/help". (L to R: Ron, Me, and Mike.)


Kevin, our guide and new friend who offered to take us out on his boat, also brought all the protective gear. It was only maybe 40 degrees out, but he warned us that once we got going, the cool air would zip right through our existing layers and that combined with sea spray would really make us "uncomfortable". He advised us to put on all layers possible, including the extra gear he brought, and that we'd take them off if we got too hot. (I'm thinking: He does this twice a week, he probably knows what he's talking about.) I graciously accepted the advice and put on everything... I am wearing a thermal top, two knit caps, and a fleece and ski jacket that i brought for the trip, plus gear provided by kevin: another fleece jocket, rain gear, two pairs of gloves, and rubber boots. Ron and Mike did the same.

This is Kevin ... he's got the snowmobile goggles because he had to face forward into the wind all 15 miles out to the open ocean. The water was quite clear, and yes very blue. We saw lots of Jelly fish (including pacific sea nettle - orange with long stringy tentacles).


15 miles out we reach our destination - on the ocean side of the 2nd to last island in ressurection bay. We fished here first, then headed back toward Seward, fishing in different spots along the way. The salmon run was pretty much over, so we didnt' catch any.


You can barely see it above, but just below the trees and just to the right of the middle through-hole is a white dot - that's a bald eagle. It was eating a fish he caught near us. Another eagle kept trying to swoop in and take it away. The eagles were very cool to watch!

Not too bad for a self portrait...

This looked to me like an elephant...

On the way back we stopped near some glaciers... We saw lots of dall sheep on the sides of the mountains.

There were two TINY houses on this little island!

More of the blue stuff - very scenic and beautiful. I was dumbfounded at how beautiful the place was.

I call this "Big hooks...tiny fish". This is where you're supposed to hang your prize King salmon or halibut, not some dinky sea bass!!!

This is fog rolling in (left to right) very fast along Turnagain Arm (A part of Cook Inlet). We passed through it and headed up the other side along Highway 1, back towards Anchorage...

Here is the other side with the fog still rolling in. We saw a small pod (4 or 5?) of beluga whale just off to the left here.

Late evening on the previous day we drove around Lake Spenard to see the float plane airport. Simply amazing. The pictures don't do it justice...you have to see the place to appreciate it. There were hundreds of float planes parked on the edge of the lake, just like this one. You can pay $300-$500 for a 1-hr "flight-seeing" tour of either wildlife, or glaciers, or both, or even longer float-plane based fishing trips. I didn't have time for it, but if ever i'm in AK again I will totally do it. It would be sooooooo awesome to take off & land on the water! (Check out Rust's Flying Service)

Yes, we yielded! This plane taxied across the road right in front of us while we waited at the stop sign.

OK, so some day, we need to do a REAL alaska vacation, and spend 1 - 2 weeks fishing and sight-seeing. You hearing me, Brothers and Brothers-in-law? :)


Scott

O Whats does ya do in the summertyme?

After dropping Miles off at the MTC (we honestly tried to find a few days when Miles was still here to include him but just didn't work out) we headed for the above destination to spend a couple of days. Here's a 21 picture salute to what we did.

Ruth and I went down the Snake River last year but was during high water season and rapids were fantastic. This year the water levels seemed down and so we opted for riding horses instead. Dallin and Ally voted it the best activity. It was quite a remote operation approx. 30 miles north of Jackson and then another 10 or so miles off a dirt road inside of Bridger National Forest. As we were heading out I asked the guide ( newest one they had and had only been with the outfit for about 3 weeks - owned by his fiance's family) if he had ever seen the movie 'Man from Snowy River'. He sure had and then I told him about the scene where what's his name rides his horse down the steep cliff and that's the kind of experience we were looking for. I even told him there would be a little extra in it for him but he just said we wouldn't be doing anything that dramatic.

Nice view of the Tetons shot from Dallins camera using a 32 diopter filter set to 19 degrees with a flux aperture and shutter speed of 400 joules per nanosecond.

They are constructing 5 additional miles of downhill trails that will set to open Summer of 2011.

Decided to give Billies Giant Hamburgers a go one night since they tout themselves as building the Worlds best hamburger. You sit right up to the counter and watch the cooks which is not a good thing since we caught every move they made including running their fingers through their hair which does wonders for adding a little alberto VO5 flaver to the special sauce.

We all gave it a go and tried to break the record of 7 flips off one jump which is unbelievably difficult since you have to start the flips the moment you leave the trampoline. Heck of a workout tho.

I will love him and squeeze him and pet him and call him my very own . . . .

This was prior to heading out - hence the smile. Not so much of a smile a couple of hours later when your groin is stuck in this position and you can't feel your behind and you get off and look like you've never ever ever ever walked before. Thought Ally was going to wet her pants laughing at everyone dismounting and trying to refire the walking neurons again.

Top of Rendevous Mountain - some 10,400 feet up by way of their newest Tram that will hold 100 people and takes 12 minutes to get to the top. Awesome views. The rope behind is pretty close to the sheer drop off that a skier 2 seasons ago went over and cost him his life. Sure made Ruths sphincters tighten when Ally was taking Dallins picture by the rope especially with the wind blowing hard.

She couldn't resist on one of the side hikes we took at the top of the mountain. Had a pretty fun snowball fight for a few minutes anyway.

O give me a home, where the -------------- roam.

We all liked the water crossings the best - and lots of them and some almost deep enough to get your knees wet.

The gondola tram that we took which only holds 6 people comfortably. Very steep and a long way down which didn't sit well with Ruth when it suddenly came to a stop about 200 yards from the top and started to sway back and forth and she announced "You've got to be kidding me". Especially since Dallin had just layed out several mechanical failure scenarios all of which included falls.

Can't go on a hike and not climb at least one tree!

Town square

One of the restrooms at Teton Village and Ally just knows how to seize an opportunity to grab the bull by the horns - or so to speak.

Snake river in the backdrop along with the Tetons.

Boy scouts are always on the lookout for a service project even if its trivial in nature.

Great day on the mountain and no broken bones

Check out them city slickers

Can't go to Jackson Hole without eating here. Best ribs ever.