Adventures in Brantland

I spent two days in Cleveland, OH early in the week at an environmental conference then when I returned I participating in a "management retreat". All managers at my place of work (Sherwin-Williams) attended a high adventure team building course. For the first part of the day we worked at a team to solve problems and in the afternoon we worked on challenging ourselves. I have to say that this was the most fun I have ever had on the clock. Here are a few pictures of the events.I'm the sexy one in the middle.

We were supposed to stand on this little platform and at the same time jump and grab the bar. My partner, Jay, was slightly leaning forward (which the instructors said would be helpful). When we jumped he reached the bar before me and it naturally moved forward and I was unable to grab it. This was one of the scariest experiences in my life. I knew that they had me by the ropes, but I free fell for a second or two trying to grab anything to stop my fall.

Ward Talent Show

Napoleon Dynamite made an appearance at our ward talent show. Sorry you can't hear the music on this. It was pretty funny!
I almost forgot I had a camera on my phone.

So who created the common cold?

I have been enlightened to the great scam. The engineers of the tissue created the common cold. They released the 1st nasty strand out into the public 1 month before they released the 1st tissue.
I think those engineers felt bad about it when they started to get this cold. By then it was too late to stop so, they designed the tissue with lotion so it won't tear your nose up too badly.

All in a days work ...

I'd like to see who else has a yard this green in the November!

Brant's turn to post.
Yesterday we started the day rapping up a brake project from the night before. Chris and I changed out the rotors, pads, repacked the bearings and bled the front brakes of our classy pickup truck. Then we went out to brunch, at a place called the Good Egg (compliments of our Realtor), and yes it was good. Afterwards we did some essential shopping. After we returned home from shopping we HAD to wash Cocoa because just looking at her was beginning to hurt your nose. We tied her up in the front post and washed her. Once she was clean we had to clean the front porch because standing there the stench burned your nose.

Then, late in the afternoon we decided it was finally time to do something about our front landscaping. So we went to a near by nursery and picked up several plants. When we got home and were ready to start planting it was around 3:30PM (not much daylight left). Part of this process also involved trying to find places for the plants so that they looked good and did not sit on top of the sprinkler lines. Finally, just before the sun went down we completed the planting process. All that we have left to do is bed/mulch work. I made the comment to Chris that it felt like we had worked on the truck brakes a week ago because we had been busy doing so many things that day.

We planted two decorative grasses (on either side of the garage). We planted a green leaf holly tree because I had always wanted one and then we picked several plants that would have vibrant colors throughout the year. 1 burning bush (the bright red one), 2 Forsythia that will get super bright yellow in the spring and two Henry Garnet Sweetspires that turn reddish in the fall and bright white flowers in the spring. To complete this hard working Saturday we went down stairs and began watching Spider Man Three (no surprise, we fell asleep before we could finish it).