Nice leather seats out of a Chevy suv..........fun.

Cruiser.

So winter is about here. You know, sometimes we get a good amount of snow in our driveway. Sometimes our cars get stuck there. That could be a problem, which sometimes results in me having to put my shoes on. Can't have that. So being the good family man that I am, I decided to be a forward thinker and buy this Land Cruiser project so we don't get stuck in our driveway this year.
In all seriousness, since I started buying, selling and obtaining cars since I was sixteen, I have owned about one hundred and fifty cars. My wife, (Emily Forscutt, the very first Miss Provo College, and a babe), said that I have a problem and need counseling. Well I have decided that this 1977 Toyota Land Cruiser will be my final car that I buy. Any future vehicles purchased will be by Emily with my help if she wants it but I am done.
I have my Mercedes coupe project and this Land Cruiser project. That should do it for me.
This Cruiser will be painted the original color code # 621 Rustic Green. Don't worry friends, except for that part in the back and a small hole here and there, it's all surface rust.

Mercedes 300cd

In the year 1978 Mercedes decided it might be interesting to make a two door coupe diesel automobile. Now there are many, many Mercedes 300 series diesels on the road. The diesel engines mercedes made from approximately 1978 to 1985 were made out of iron and were very durable. Engines with over 500,000 miles on them and still on the road are not uncommon. There are many one million mile Mercedes Benz vehicles out there still also. But they are almost all four doors, not two door coupes. The first year they made this somewhat rare two door coupe was 1978, and the only made about 1500 of them. So to find one in any kind of decent condition is a good deal. I traded my one hundred dollar Mercedes 300se for this one. It should be up and running after we fix a few things before it snows.

Salmon for dinner, perhaps?

Size matters

Now that's a compressor. A Saylor-Beall 120 gallon monster that will pump out 17 cfm when hooked up to the motor. Loving KSL classifieds.

Must...eat....meat.

P.E.T.A. this! And that's not even showing you the rest behind the front seats.

Frankenstein log splitter

Fabricating the power and hydraulics for my latest log splitter, "Nutbuster III". That one hundred pound, 220 volt, farm duty motor on the left is going to rotate that Vickers 20 to 45 gallon per minute hydraulic pump on the right and man oh man are we going to have fun splitting wood this fall.

It's a little early to go logging, with my log splitter not quite done and all.....but I still wont turn down some wood if it's good burning wood like Chinese Elm is.

"Come on girls, it will be fun, we will go slow, and you wont get wet!"

So we have decided to rename our blog site the Utah extreme weather site as this seems to be my latest obsession. So Emily is at work and I take off to where I think there will be some action up in the sky. You can see it's not even very dark yet.

It really started raining hard so we decided to get a few shots from the tree house in the back yard. Trees everywhere. Guess that's why it's called our treehouse.

It finally stopped raining, so we decided to make like lightning rods, and go back out to the desert and take a few more pics. It got a little hairy out there.

Last night too!

It's been a bad few summers as far as really good lightning storms go but last night we had a pretty good one come through town and for a few minutes it really rained hard.About 100 lame snapshot attempts can usually garner one decent picture.

Rene-bean

I love it when my sister comes to visit.

Isn't she pretty?

Time Flies....

Another Milestone in the life of Zacharaias:

LEARNER'S PERMIT!

In this one, he is CLEARLY humoring Mom:

There was a girl that came out of the testing area right before Zach finished... she was in tears because she failed the test for the second time. Poor girl! Good job on passing the test Zach!

Bubbles

Wife telling you that you collect too much junk, $500.00. Scoring what I used to call a seven woman, one man hot tub for free and getting it working and set up in the back yard before the wife can say no, priceless.

A pool is a must have for us every summer. This year I'm using the dump truck to lay down tons of sand under it.

Elijah keeping it nice and flat

Ouch

Nice gash. That one almost found some bone. Good thing I'm a doctor.

Hey nice wallpaper.

Cooking rice, frying eggs for the fried rice. Making a dessert in one oven while baking bread in the other. Eight burners, two griddles. With my twin Buick Roadmaster ovens, anything is possible. David supervising.

www.BountifulBaskets.org

We just picked up our first order of Bountiful Baskets - a local (Utah, Idaho, Arizona, & Nevada) food co-op. Fifteen dollars for all this, baby!!

(the bread was another $9)

Thanks for telling us about this, Brandi! We're big fans!

Vultures

Yeah, we had some vultures hanging out in the tree by our house. Never saw those in Los Angeles, that's for sure.

After we went to Elijahs school board award event, we went to the cannery. They love it when we go like we do every month. Look at my boys working...contrary to popular belief, that is NOT me in the background.

That's me with my hottie wife.

Spelling bee.

Elijah being presented an award by the school board for 2nd place in the spelling bee. School board member looking at Elijah and wondering how he turned out so handsome just like his Dad.

Roomy

Lots of room inside.

Five bucks at D.I.

Whenever I see a big bag holding a tent that has poles at Deseret Industries, I usually just snag it. Kind of like a grab bag. Who knows what you will end up with. If its a dud, you at least have material or ropes or something to use for your emergency prep.

Someone dropped this off at D.I. Five bucks. Never used even once. Nice light summer tent. David looks on in amazement.

Hey look at me, I'm actually keeping up with Liz Thompson with two blog posts in two days! I'm sure it wont last. She will blog about anything. Her kids brushing teeth, dryer lint, the dog, whatever.

Anyway.....check out this HUGE Meade scope I scored at a pawnshop in Salt Lake! We will plant this monster on the porch of the cabin in Park City where we are camping in this summer and see the nose of a deer from ten miles away.....

That camping trip is gonna be the bomb.

"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.” ~Anonymous

I've finally gotten around to adding my own name as an author on this blog so that you no longer have to guess which one of us is doing the typing. I know it was probably easy what with Jay's humor and wit (along with his typos and picture malfunctions) but now it will be even easier!

I hope to use this as more of an outlet for my thoughts and feelings... taking a lesson from you, Greg! No longer will this be only pictures... because you don't always have to post pictures in each blog posting, right? I mean... I have interesting things to say that will make it worth reading without the eye-catching pics of my house and family, right?

Time will tell.

I've been loving 2010 so far. We've had some pretty amazing experiences as a family. If you are in our ward, or if you read Liz's post, or if you're a good friend of mine, then you know that we finally realized the twelve year old dream of ours to get to the temple!

While there are SO many things that I could say about this, it seems like every time I relate the story of that day some of it is lost. I think I'm finally beginning to understand what sacred really means. I've always understood the concept of things that are sacred, but this is the first time that knowing something and locking it away in my brain, pulling it out once in a while and thinking about it keeps it shiny and new... while talking about it sort of dulls it for me. It's hard to explain, but know this: the day was perfect and amazing! I LOVE temples! I LOVE my family! and WOW! I love my husband.... more now than ever!

While we're on the subject - how about that PAYSON temple announcement! Oh yay!! Jay and I plan on taking pictures of the construction over the next little while and helping out whenever and whatever as much as we can. I'm sure there will be plenty to blog about that later on.

I've decided that the word for 2010 (for me) is "meaningful". I've already had a year's worth of meaningful things happen to me in these few short weeks, but I plan on making this year one of my most meaningful years ever. It's going to be a time for reconnecting with what's important, forgiving, and healing. I can't wait!

So stick around... it's bound to be good, right?

Ice fishing.

Are you kidding me? Do people really go ice fishing and ENJOY it? Well here I am with the scouts and a few of my boys giving it a try. You can see Elijah there all bundled up wishing he was back home sitting with Mom next to the fire. The wood stove I made is in one of the pictures there. It kept the tent nice and warm. The event was a good experience. It solidified the fact that I don't mind fishing.....in July.

DIY wood stove.

More often in the past "ice fishing with the scouts" resulted in "ice freezing with the scouts" with us all in a tent not sleeping because it's so cold and miserable. This week-end we will be sleeping overnight at Fish Lake in Utah and I'm not going to be cold this time. Or any more times as far as that's concerned.

Here is my ten gauge thick nice big wood stove I built for the trip. It will be fun testing it out and see if it burns longer then my smaller one I've used before.

Our new old oven.

Now THAT'S what I'm talking about! We have been having a good time cooking all sorts of stuff on our cool oven that looks like a 1957 Cadillac with all it's chrome and steel. Definitely one of those items that falls under the category of "they don't make them like they used to". This baby bakes and cooks like nothing I've used since managing a resturaunt back in Los Angeles.