A Brief Recap

Holly is down in Redlands with her family for the next few weeks while one of her sisters graduates from high school and several other events take place. She took Jack with her since I can't keep track of him while I'm at work all day each day.

That means I'm home alone living the bachelor life for a little bit. It's not as much fun as you would think, but I am hoping to get lots of stuff done while she is gone. I'll probably go see a couple of movies that Holly never would have wanted to see, I'll give Shawn Saunders a call and see if he wants to do something once or twice, and I'll probably do some stuff with Gerald Smith as well to pass the time, but he doesn't get back in town until the 11th.

I also want to finish off some websites, read several books, clean up some cupboards and closets in the apartment and maybe wash out the car and the FoJ if I have time. Mostly I'm just going to try and be productive but relaxed at the same time so that I can make the best use of the time I have distraction free.

Luckily with Holly's new computer she has a webcam so before she left I got her set up on Skype to video chat every couple of days so I can see Jack and her a little bit while they are gone. We did the first chat last night and now Holly is apparently addicted to Skyping.

Wish me luck in my life of bachelorhood!

Jack and Mommy

Sometimes I walk into a room in our apartment and see something that resembles the scene below. I always think it is cute, and I always try to take pictures. On this particular instance, I had been working hard in the office on my web project for school while Holly and Jack were hanging out on their own. They had decided to go into the bedroom since it was getting close to bedtime and were watching an episode of some show on Hulu together.

Time for Dairy Queen

Every summer since we have been married Holly and I have made a bit of a tradition of going to Dairy Queen on occasion for a fun little treat. There is a DQ sitting right down at the bottom of the hill from us and is about a 10 minute walk each direction, so we've walked down there a couple of times from our apartment in Wymount. This year we commemorated the start of spring by taking Jack on his first Diary Queen adventure.

Yes, I did give him ice cream, and yes, he did love it.

Jack's New Playmate

I know that most of the people who read this blog already are privy to this information, but I just realized that I had not blogged about it yet, so today is the day to do so it appears.

Holly is pregnant.

Three words is all it takes to really open your eyes sometimes. Was it planned? Nope. Was it even close to planned? Once again, nope. Does God have a curious sense of humor? I'm convinced of it now. I always suspected, but now I'm 100% convinced.

According to what I've been told by Holly she is due on approximately November 22, 2009. For those of you who don't remember, Jack doesn't turn 1 until December 15, 2009....... think on that for a little bit.

All in all, I can't do much but say to myself, "Looks like there is some sort of plan you weren't entirely informed of. It can't be that bad, so let's just roll with it," and so that is what I'm doing. I do however think it quite awesome that Jack will never be able to remember a time in his life that he didn't have a sidekick.

Saturday Night with Jack

Right now I am sitting in Shyla and Russell's living room because Holly is holding a PostSecret night over at our place. There were going to be something like 8 girls over for the party and since it had nothing to do with me I figured I might as well leave them to whatever they will be doing.

The problem is that I needed to take care of Jack as well, but I can't take him to a movie or anything similar. So, I called up Shyla and asked if I could hang out at their place for a couple of hours where it would be quieter and more peaceful for Jack if he got fussy or was sleepy.

As it turns out, Shyla and Russell have Stake Conference tonight so I'm just sitting here with a semi-sleepy little boy trying to get a few things done before I head back home after Holly's party. Regardless, I'm going to be up late tonight trying to stay ahead on homework. I may even be up all the way until Jack's normal "first shift" as we call it.

We'll see how it goes.

Conquer Club Volunteer Coordinator

Well, remember that job I was talking about a week or so ago? It's finally been announced to the public and so now I can inform everyone that I have taken a job with my favorite website (Conquer Club) to be the Volunteer Coordinator.

The position is an "admin" position, which means my name is now red on the forums, and I have to work closely with the other admin, including the website owner, to help Conquer Club improve and grow moving forward.

My specific job responsibilities include the following:

• Conduct moderator team meetings
• Train new moderators
• Develop new policies as needed
• Organize and implement various site projects
• Manage forum permissions and forum settings
• Support site moderators in their work
• Perform quality checks on moderation team

On top of that, I will be working on any other stuff that the owner decides to throw my way. There is a lot of work to do that has been on hold for a long time. I've been working for about a week now and am loving every minute of it. The job allows me to enjoy the site I love while being paid, and it also lets me use my talents for organization and project management.

Also along those lines is that the job is online, which means it is far closer to my career of choice than sitting in a department office on campus answering the phone each day. I don't do any web development with this position, but there is potential for it down the road, and it is the type of job that helps build a lot of contacts for things in the future. Who knows, if the site continues to grow perhaps it could turn into a career all of its own.

Holly just shook her head when she found out I had gotten the job because way back when I first started playing games on CC I told her something along the lines of, "If I ever get the chance to work for this place and actually get paid I'm going to take the job without even asking you first, even if it means we have to move to Canada." She laughed then, but now she enjoys the fact that I can work my shifts from home and help out with Jack if she needs me to out of the blue.

I'm thrilled, and I don't know how many people can truly appreciate that, but I'm thrilled nonetheless.

Busy Week

Most of you know by now that Holly and I are moving back to Wymount this coming weekend, which means that we've been spending a lot of time packing and trying to plan things out properly. Holly packs several boxes each day, and then we take them over to the new place each evening when I get home from work. The goal is to get all of the small stuff over there without having to get a massive truck to do it. So far it is working out nicely.

On Saturday morning I'll get the smallest U-Haul available and have a few guys from the ward help me move the big furniture like the bed, couch, and crib, and then we should be mostly done. Thankfully if there are a few straggling items, Grandma Chatfield isn't going to care if we have to come back for them over a couple of days next week. That takes the edge off the stress of getting everything done right at once.

The weather has picked back up, which means I'm back on the Federation of Joy every day, which pleases me to no end. I like being able to feel like Holly has the ability to go somewhere if she needs to, and do things with her sisters or someone without needing to wait for me to get back from campus. The other plus is that by living in Wymount again I can come home for lunch if I have time between classes because the scooter makes parking next to the buildings I need to be in so convenient.

Also been working on a massive project for my CHum 489R class this past week or so. Russell is my technical advisor and has been very patient with me as I worked through a few hurdles. However, the past two days I've managed to clear the hurdles myself as I am finally understanding how a while() loop is supposed to work, and the proper ways to refer to objects and join database tables together. It is nice to feel like I'm learning something and having it stick, even if it seems like it is always a small piece each time.

I have to give a presentation on this project tomorrow morning and I'm hoping that I have enough done to keep myself from looking like a slacker/fool. Russell seems to think that I'll be much further along than anyone else, but until I see that I'm still a little bit worried. The core of the project site is working now, but I'm hoping to tack on a couple of "bells and whistles" before the presentation tomorrow to try and make it a little more complete. I do like the style that I've applied to the site though, I'm quite proud of that. It looks very modern and sleek. Once I have it up on an actual server (curse you slow BYU people) I'll post a link so people can see what it looks like so far.

Let's see, what else is going on... Oh, I was sick, then Holly was sick, and Jack wound up catching a little bit of it, but nothing too bad. He even learned how to shoot snot out of his eye the other day, which I told him was not a skill that we really needed to practice a whole lot if he didn't mind.

That's all of the big news for now, mostly just trying to get my list of things done each day and help Holly as much as I can when I get home in the evenings.

Jack's Photoshoot with Mommy

I got a message from Holly earlier today that said while she was in the midst of packing boxes for our move that she and Jack had an impromptu photoshoot. It looks as though the comforter from the bed became the backdrop and there were even some props involved! The picture of Jack in the black (second one from top) is from days ago, and I posted it because I love it so much, but the top one is my absolute favorite! Looks like Jack really likes hanging out with his mommy during the day. The last picture is Jack watching Aunt Julie dance it up on the Playstation HSM3 DDR. He was mezmorized.

It's Raining Today

Once upon a time I used to enjoy a good rainstorm every once and awhile, but it seems that as I've gotten older the rain just means it is a gloomy day and I don't deal very well with gloomy days.

I stayed up far too late last night making sure that I didn't get behind on schoolwork, which was a good thing, but the bad thing was that I overslept this morning because of it and didn't make it to campus as early as I would have liked. After talking it over with Holly I am trying to get to campus early each morning to focus on schoolwork and make sure that I stay on top of the big projects for my classes this semester.

It worked out great yesterday, but the late night last night really messed up my plans this morning something fierce. Luckily I still got to campus a little bit early, and have managed to get some good work done. Now when I go home this afternoon I can watch Jack for a few hours while Holly works on her text that is due this weekend and then do homework later in the evening.

Thank goodness tomorrow is Saturday, I'm going to need it to get caught up on everything going on right now.

Holly and Jack, Sleeping Buddies

I'm still awake at 12:30am this morning because I'm trying to make sure I stay on top of my homework. Holly was a trooper and held Jack all evening long while I worked, and the picture above is the evidence of what happened when both her and Jack finally gave in and fell asleep.

Jack appears to be holding on for dear life for some reason that I don't understand. I'm pretty sure that the two of them will stay in that chair for the next couple of hours until Jack normally wakes up for his middle of the night feeding, at which time they will relocate to the downstairs bedroom like normal.

Bringing Back a Habit

For our first anniversary Holly bought me a new watch because my old one had been around for something like five years. I had worn it almost every day that I owned it because I had always worn a watch.

I wore my new watch every day for a long time, at least several months from what I can remember and then for reasons completely unexplainable I slowly kept forgetting to put it on in the morning. It was always sitting right there on my desk or on my little blue "drop all" plate on the bookcase near the door to the office, but regardless, I still kept forgetting to wear it.

The fact that I was regulary carrying a cell phone may have had something to do with it because all cell phones have a readily available clock built right in, often on the front screen without even having to open the phone up.

Well, one of my New Year's Resolutions this year is to get back in the habit of wearing a watch because it was one of the things that was part of my "routine" before I let it fall away, and because I really like my watch, so I should get some use out of it because Holly was very excited when she bought it for me.

The Adventures of Vomit Boy

Jack is an interesting baby. He has been pretty calm so far in the first three weeks of life with only a handful of really fussy times and only a couple of nights where he didn't sleep very well. Despite all of that he has one talent that truly amazes me to no end.

About a week ago Holly, Jack, and I were sitting on the couch watching a little college football in the morning when my arm started to get a little tired from holding Jack. I figured since he was nice and calm, just sitting there looking around the room I would lay him out on the floor and let him do a little wiggling. He hadn't been on the floor for more than about a minute when all of the sudden he turns his head to the side and projectile vomits across the living room floor everything he had eaten so far that morning. This is where it gets a little strange. You would think a small baby who had just thrown up would be a little traumatized, especially when it came out through the nose as well, but no he just threw up, and rolled back over happy as can be.

Holly was of course mortified and worried that he had hurt himself, but I promised her nothing was wrong, he probably just ate a little too much and his little stomach decided it didn't have room anymore. We got him cleaned up and gave him a bath that morning and life continued on.

Fast forward to about three hours ago at 5:00am this morning when Holly had Jack in the bed with her for a few snuggles following a feeding a bit earlier. I was out on the couch because I couldn't quite get comfortable on the bed at the time and all of the sudden I hear a gasp and a yelp from Holly followed by a "Caleb! I need help!"

Apparently, Jack had accomplished the same feat. He was asleep, snuggled next to Holly, and all of the sudden just turned toward her and threw up like a champion. Out the mouth, out the nose, and even managed to get some in his little ear. We tore the sheets off the bed, threw them in the washer and changed Jack's clothes and then Holly took him upstairs to the guest bedroom to finish sleeping out the morning.

Once again, he didn't make a sound. No crying, no groaning, no red or scrunched up face, nothing. No warning of any kind, just turned to the side and let loose. Nothing afterward either, he just looked at us with big eyes and an expression that seemed to say, "Aren't we supposed to be sleeping right now, Dad?"

That's my son, Vomit Boy, saving the world one batch of throw up at a time.

The New Year is Here

This is a common scene at our house these days. Jack loves to take naps, just like any newborn baby does, but for some reason he especially likes to take naps with his mommy. I took this picture just a couple of minutes ago after Holly was done feeding Jack and decided she wanted to catch up on some sleep at the same time Jack was.

For the most part Jack is sleeping pretty well at night, we can usually get at least one chunk that is 3-4 hours long, but the rest is sort of hit or miss. Luckily the doctor told us that once they get to be about 13-16 pounds in weight they start sleeping much better at night. We are doing pretty good so far though.

This is my new computer setup thanks to Mom and Dad. My laptop is still up on its stand and now I have a brand new 22" widescreen monitor to supplement my viewing landscape. It has made such a difference I can't even begin to explain. The ability to keep everything open at once, find things without having to dig through multiple layers, and just see things bigger is well worth it. Thanks Mom and Dad!

The Story of Baby Jack

I know that I've posted a few pictures of Jack and Holly, but I figured that a lot of you would like to know how the whole series of events went down as he was arriving.

On Sunday morning Holly woke up like normal, but all of the previous night she had been having some pretty intense contractions about every 20 to 30 minutes which basically kept her up so she was incredibly tired. She ate breakfast and then the contractions came back. This time they were 10 minutes apart and stayed that way for about five hours. It meant we didn't go to church because we weren't sure if they would get closer together and Holly obviously didn't want to deal with the scene of having a bad contraction in public, who can blame her.

Anyways, at about 3:00pm she fell asleep on the couch from the exhaustion of being awake the entire night and the contractions slowed down quite a bit. They were just scattered throughout the rest of the day, but never consistent until about 8:30pm when they came back with a vengeance.

By 10:00 she had been having them 5-7 minutes apart for almost two hours, and I called the hospital to check what we should be watching for before driving over to check in. They said to wait until midnight and if they stayed at the same pace to come in then. That's what we did and by midnight she was 3-4 minutes apart and getting more pain from the contractions.

So, we grabbed the packed bag and pillow and headed to the hospital. We took the elevator up to the 5th floor where the Labor and Delivery area is and on the way Holly's water had broken. By the time they got her to sign one or two papers and changed into her fancy hospital smock she was dilated to 5cm and well on her way to having a baby. She was relieved because she was worried that they were going to send us home and she'd have to deal with the contractions at home all night long before taking finals the next morning. They told her she was going to be having a baby before the sun came up, which made her pretty happy.

The nurses got her all situated with an IV, heart and contraction monitors, etc and then settled down to watch her and check her progress. After another hour she was dilated to 6cm so the guy showed up to give her the epidural and make sure that was ready to go. Not too long after the epidural kicked in, Jack started to show some weird signs of stress as his heartbeat started to do some funny stuff following each contraction. Apparently they don't like that to happen because within minutes every single one of the 8 nurses on duty that night were in the room doing something. They had to turn Holly from side to side to see if they could get Jack to calm down and at one point they even had her up on her hands and knees to see if that would work. They wound up calling in the Dr. Harrison early just to be safe because they thought they might have to do a C-section if Jack's heart didn't start behaving.

Eventually the shot they gave her to stop the contractions got him back to where he was supposed to be and as it wore off over the next half hour or so he didn't act up, just dealt with it like he was intended to. That's when the nurses and Dr. Harrison said to just take it easy and go to sleep.

While we were asleep until about 5:30am Holly finished dilating from her 6cm all the way to the full 10cm and the nurses quickly got the stuff ready for Jack to arrive. Holly started pushing at about 5:50am and had to push three times each through about 15 contractions and Jack was out and in the world.

He arrived at 6:27am and weighed 7 lbs, 10 oz while measuring in at a healthy 19 1/2 inches long. He was quite purple when he got here, just like all babies are, and his hands are quite large for a newborn, so who knows what is going on with that at the moment. He has passed all of his fancy tests and hasn't had any problems so it looks like we should be heading home either this evening, or tomorrow morning unless a new complication arises.

Desktop for Holly

After I posted my desktops the other day, Holly wanted one that would fit on her computer, so I made the one she liked most into a 1024x768 size just for her. Enjoy sweetheart!

Can't Sleep? Do a Survery Thingie

Once again, I cannot sleep. Holly is the lucky one being pregnant these days because she can get to sleep pretty easily once she settles in for the night, like tonight, when she dozed off while we were watching Memento from Netflix.

Anyways, I'm up late (and probably will be for a while yet if the trend is the same as always), so I figured I would read some blogs. As it turns out, Shyla tagged me to do a survey on hers so I'll pass the late night hours doing my duty as a tagee.

Crazy 8s Tag

8 Favorite TV Shows:

1. The Big Bang Theory
2. The Mentalist
3. The Office
4. Dirty Jobs
5. Knight Rider
6. Las Vegas
7. Deadliest Catch
8. Sportscenter

8 Favorite Restaurants:

1. El Burrito
2. McDonalds
3. Olive Garden
4. Chili's
5. Village Inn
6. P.F. Changs
7. Carraba's
8. Del Taco

8 Things that Happened Yesterday:

1. Rode my scooter
2. Went to class
3. Worked on my CHum 345 Mid-Term
4. Watched "The Office"
5. Wrote on my blog
6. Worked on Jack's blanket
7. Figured out how to use Adobe Kuler
8. Visited Paul and Molly Burkinshaw

8 Things I'm Looking Forward To:

1. Holding Jack
   
2. Finishing Jack's blanket
3. Finishing my CHum 345 final project
4. Graduating from college
5. Being a dad
6. Getting a web development job
7. Leaving Utah
8. Visiting Bartlesville, OK with Holly

8 Things I Love About Fall:

1. The leaves changing color
2. Wind blowing
3. Cooler temperatures
4. Football season
5. Colorado Avalanche hockey
6. BYU Basketball
7. Thanksgiving Day food
8. The first snowfall

8 Things on My Wish List:

1. New computer monitor
2. A solution to my sleeping problems
3. Jack
4. CODA software
5. Tickets to a Colorado Avalanche game
6. To win my fantasy hockey league
7. Good grades this semester
8. To fully understand PHP someday

8 People I Tag:

1. Holly
2. Roxy
3. Julie
4. Shelley
5. Joelle
6. Mom
7. Cooper
8. Cymbre

The Halloween of 1000 Miles

Happy Halloween! It's a day that I don't really do much different than any other day, except answer the door more often during the evening hours, but it's fun nonetheless I suppose. Holly is dressed up like the character Juno from one of her favorite movies, which works out perfectly since that character is pregnant in the movie and so is Holly. Me, I don't really like to dress up for Halloween, as I think I've sort of grown out of that excitement. Holly really like Halloween though, so I let her do her thing.

Today was a milestone day for the scooter as well. On the way to campus I rolled the odometer over to 1,000 total miles. That's pretty impressive for only owning the thing for 3 months. I've certainly gotten a lot of use out of it, and I think I can make it at least another week or two before I'll have to switch back to the car for the winter cold. We'll see though, I've gotten pretty good at finding ways to stay warm when the air is cold outside, so maybe I can use the scooter longer than I had originally planned.

Yesterday I got a phone call from Paul Burkinshaw. He had borrowed one of my books a few weeks ago and wanted to make sure I got it back before he forgot again. I stopped by his place on the way home from working on some stuff for Russell's class and picked the book up. The twins were there, and as I walked in the door Paul said, "Hey, wanna hold a baby?" I thought that was pretty funny and proceeded to hold Aislee (sp?) for a few minutes while Paul did something, although I'm not sure what. They are pretty cute kids, but had just had their first shots earlier that day, so they were crying in a kind of start and stop fashion. Nothing too bad though.

I had the chance to catch up with Paul and Molly, which is always good, and we set up a dinner date for a week from Sunday. That should be fun. It was last time and there weren't twins around to play with then.

Time for a Big Post

Well, I'll be honest and say that I had no clue it had been so long since my last post, although I did realize I had been away for a little bit, so perhaps I just didn't think about it much. However, I've got plenty to talk about, so this one should be nice and long for everyone.

First and foremost, school is now in session. Tuition has been paid for both Holly and I, same with books purchased, health insurance paid, and school supplies bought. As was the case last semester Holly is excited to be using her "war backpack" as she calls it, and seems to be enjoying her classes so far. She is in Book of Mormon, French, Early British Literature, and American Novel.

After the first week of school, I feel a little better about my classes, although the reading load is going to be pretty high here at the beginning while we tackle Moby Dick in one of my classes. I've never read it before, so I guess I'll have to pay attention. I'm enrolled in Web Databases (with Russell as the teacher), Late British Literature, American Novel, Career Strategies, and German. I'm not that excited about the German class, but it is turning out better than the previous two classes, so that is promising.

I'm a little worried as to whether or not I'll be able to keep up in my Web Databases class due to my weak, actually incredibly weak, skills in Javascript, but I've been hunting for some online tutorials to get me up to speed on the basics as fast as I can. We also have a reading project for that class where we have to read a book on some aspect of web design, so I figure I'll read one on Javascript to make up for my deficiencies. I will say that class yesterday was promising for me as I was able to understand what was going on and not get confused or frustrated.

My American Novel class is with the same teacher that Holly and Roxy have it with, but not at the same time, so Holly and I saved a few bucks on textbooks because we can share them. I think I'll enjoy that class much more than I usually do a literature class due to the teacher. He has a very exciting persona as far as teaching is concerned. Not to mention we get to read actual fiction and not personal narratives or love sonnets.

Work was an absolute nightmare for the entire week of the training seminar right before school started, but there wasn't much I could do about that. Not to mention that once school started it was discovered that the BYU Bookstore botched about 15 book orders, including one order for over 600 textbooks for the English 316 class. Not good, not cool, and not something that made me very happy. It took 3 days to sort that mess out. Perhaps it is just me, but it seems that both the bookstore and the part-time/full-time faculty are getting progressively worse and worse to deal with this semester.

I'm back at Conquer Club now, but in a much more controlled manner. I spend about 60-90 minutes online each day rather than 4-5 hours, and it is working out for the best. That break was something that I desperately needed I think.

In scooter news I changed the oil for the first time and it was a success. Now, perhaps tonight I can get the gear oil changed out as I still need to do that. It is running great and working perfectly for transporting me to and from school. Holly also really likes not having to drive back and forth from Orem to get me each day after she gets home at lunchtime. The days that I have late evening classes it works perfectly for me to get home without making her put down her homework or work projects and spend 45 minutes getting me home from school.

Anniversary Number Two

It's been over a week since the actual day, but life has been busy. However, now I can make mention of Holly and I's second anniversary.

First off, I surprised Holly by staying home from work because she thought I was going to be gone most of the day. She was pretty excited that I got to stay home with her because it meant we could go on all of our adventures much earlier in the day.

After sleeping in for a little bit, and taking our time getting ready in the morning we made our way down to Spanish Fork to purchase my new scooter. It wasn't really an official anniversary present from Holly, but it sort of was because I had to have her permission to buy the thing anyways.

Then, we had a quick lunch at Taco Bell (because that is what Holly was craving at the time) and off we went to see what kind of adventures we could come up with. We started at the University Mall where Holly did a little bit of maternity shopping; she found a cute dress that she really likes. Then off to Thanksgiving Point where we perused the Dinosaur Museum because we had never been before.

I liked all the dinosaur bones, and I think perhaps the next time Mom, Dad, and the girls are around we'll have to take them to see it. It's one of the better ones I've been to, lots and lots of bones, and some fun things to do with younger kids.

After the museum we thought about going to wander around the gardens, but we decided it was a bit too hot, so we settled for a quiet dinner at the Thanksgiving Point Deli, which makes some delicious cheeseburgers and fries.

Then it was on to the movie theater for a showing of Mamma Mia! because I'm a big time ABBA fan (thanks a lot Mom), and Holly loves musicals. I liked it more than I thought I would, mostly because of the music, and Holly had a good time.

Finally, we went home, turned up the air conditioning real high, and read our books until we fell asleep. It was a fun day full of adventure, just how I like it.

As far as presents are concerned, Holly got me a popcorn popper, just like the one I talked about a few weeks ago here on this very blog, and I bought her the new vampire book "Breaking Dawn" by Stephanie Meyer. She literally finished it within... 6 hours or something like that.

An Old School Saturday

This weekend, I was determined to get 100% caught up in things around the house. That meant getting all of the dishes done, the laundry done, the house vacuumed, the rooms tidied up, and anything else I could think of. Holly had to do a bunch of text for work, so I was left to my own devices around the house while she spent several hours doing that. I'm pleased to say that I finally accomplished it all. The dishes were entirely done, the house was all nice and clean and I got lots of other things done that I wanted to finish as well. It made me feel good to finally have a weekend where I did that stuff instead of just being lazy and then stressing out about it during the week.

I also go the Vespa to fire up again after a couple of days where it didn't seem to want to work for me, and made a trip to the Creamery for a few groceries and such. Riding a scooter really is a lot of fun if you ask me.

Holly also needed to get out of the house for a little bit in the evening hours because she had been sitting on the couch working all day, so we went to see what types of things we could find for her in the maternity clothes area. We wound up at the Motherhood Maternity in the Towne Center mall and she came home with a new pair of blue jeans that she seems to think are marvelously comfortable, so I guess it was a good trip.