Pop Goes the Monkey

Sandy came and brought the kids up to my work tonight so that we could drive over to Thanksgiving Point. They’ve got a lot of fun stuff going on right now. We decided to do their Barnyard Boo since Cassie’s still pretty young and we had to lug Peter around.

We did the the Barnyard Boo last year as well with Sam and Jessie for Cadence’s birthday. It’s pretty fun for the little ones. There’s a lot of random activities and lots of animals to look at. It’s fun because Cassie knows how to say the names of all the farm animals, but this is the first time she’s seen them all in person while knowing what they are.

She’s pretty bashful around them, though and she never really wanted to get too close. She also didn’t want to try the pony rides again this year. She just likes to keep her distance and name the animals from afar. She does pretty good with the names and sounds, but for some reason she thinks pigs are really pirate piggies. Weird?!

Yesterday we went to the Spanish Fork Kite Festival. What’s a kite festival? Well, I’m not exactly sure. Over in one area, there was some wave runners riding around a small man-made lake dragging giant kites behind them. And over in another area, a bunch of people got to bring kites from home and fly them. All told, it wasn’t the most exciting thing we’ve ever done, but I applaud Spanish Fork city for constantly trying to put together unique events to get the community involved.

Here’s a quick video from the event.

Here are some pictures. Note how well Cassie takes pictures with her dad these days

I just finished reading three books by Brandon Sanderson, and I wanted to give the books a quick plug. For those of you who are fantasy fans, Sanderson is a great up-and-coming author and I would highly recommend him to you.

Sanderson’s trademark is to take a conventional fantasy plot, and turn it on his head. For example, how often have we heard the story of a hero who goes on an epic quest to defeat the dark lord, and after many trials, the hero triumphs over evil. In his novel Mistborn, Sanderson asks the question, what would happen if the Hero of the Ages failed in his quest and the Dark Lord triumphed?

Or, have you ever read a story about a hero who wakes up one morning with special powers? In Elantris, Sanderson writes about city whose inhabitants all have godlike powers. Only, when we begin the book, an unknown event has taken away those powers and turned everyone in the city into zombie-like creatures.

Another trademark of Sanderson is to leave the reader satisfied at the end of his books. Even though Mistborn and its sequel, the Well of Ascension, are part of a trilogy, Sanderson makes sure that his stories give you answers.

Sanderson currently has the three aforementioned published, with the third book in the Mistborn trilogy set to publish later this year. He has a new book called Warbreaker coming out early next year. After that comes the big one: A Memory of Light. Sanderson has been commissioned to finish Robert Jordan’s beloved Wheel of Time series. This is a huge honor for Sanderson, having the opportunity to complete Jordan’s life work. If you haven’t had the pleasure to read the Wheel of Time, take a year or so and give it a try (the 11 book series has almost 10,000 pages). Book twelve will be arriving in 2009 or 2010 so you have some time.