2011/12/31 – Well, this is the last image of 2011 for my project 365. For New Years Eve, Lisa and I went out for Sushi. We had just had sushi for our anniversary back on the 20th, but it was so good we went again tonight. It was fantastic, but I ate way too much. This was just 3 of the 11 rolls Lisa and shared. Check out my Project 366 2012 starting tomorrow. Yes, I said 366. 2012 is a leap year so we get one extra day. I've never done a Project 366 and since you only get the chance every four years, I'm going to take it on.

2011/12/30 – Today was the last day of work for 2011 and after work, Lindsey Williams, the daughter of our CEO, Dave Williams, got married. It was a very nice reception. I've worked with Lindsey for a little over three years now. It is hard to believe she is actually married now. I don't like the camera in my iPhone, but it was all I had to shoot this photo. I guess it is better than nothing.

2011/12/29 – This was a big day in the history of Fishbowl. Earlier in the year we needed $1.5 million as a down payment to buy back the stock from our investor. Zions Bank was willing to give us $1 million and we had to come up with the other $500,000. The loan was for 7 years, but today, when the first principle payment was due, we paid off the entire million dollar debt. Our CEO had put everything he had on the line, including a family ranch in Southern Alberta that his extended family owns. This payment freed up the collateral and took that monkey off his back.

2011/12/28 – This evening I was at work and looked out the window in my office and saw this wonderful sunset. I grabbed the camera and ran downstairs and out into the parking lot to get this image. It was one of the best sunsets of the year.

2011/12/27 – We had a nice dinner at my parents home this evening. We had raclette. You cook on the raclette grill shown in the foreground. The entire meal you are cooking what you eat. It is a very social dinner. My cousin, Troy, and his family joined us. They were visiting from Sacramento, CA. Troy is at top center and my dad is on the right. We were done eating and just sitting around shooting the bull.

2011/12/26 – This photo has great meaning to me. When my cousin Troy visited on Christmas Eve he brought the photo for me since I always talk about it. Back in the early 60's, I'm guessing about 1964, we had gone to California to visit my cousins, my dad's older brother, Morlan's family. I think we were there for Christmas. Shortly after arriving I discovered a large hammer. If my memory is right it was about a five pound sledge hammer, or at least that is what it seemed to be when I was about 6 years old. Having discovered the hammer i now needed something to hammer on and found these very nice decorative cinder blocks lining the sidewalk from the driveway up to the front door. A few smacks later I had taken a nice chunk out of one of the blocks. When my parents and Morlan discovered the damage, all hell broke lose. I'm not sure who was the most mad at me, but there was no question I was in big trouble. Uncle Morlan used some kind of a glue to put the chunk back in place. Every time I visited over the decades that chunk mocked me when I walked by. I haven't been there for many years now. Uncle Morlan is dead, but my cousin Troy still owns the home. The chunk of block has long been lost, but the hole is still there after nearly 47 years. I was excited to get this picture simply because it is one of my best memories of going to Sacramento to visit Troy, Doug and Bruce when I was a very little kid.

2011/12/25 – Christmas day was a little strange. The only people home in our house were Lisa and I. We woke up about 10:00a to get ready for Sean's call from Germany at 11:30a, only to discover he had sent an email saying he could start at 11am. We scrambled and got the Mac Book set up so it displayed the Skype image on the 50" TV. It was wonderful to hear his voice and see his face. The video quality was very good. We spoke to him for about 2 hours. It was definitely the highlight of the day, so this image was appropriate. The two Christmas decorations are from Germany and are now a precious part of our holiday celebrations. We are multicultural since the other items on the right and left are Finnish decorations.

2011/12/24 – We made it back home from Logan and prepared a nice Christmas Eve dinner that we shared with my parents and Jessica and Chris. We missed Olin, Logan, Kristen and Sean, but still enjoyed a great meal and and evening of conversation. My cousin Troy Tanner from Sacramento, CA dropped by after dinner and joined in on the chit chat.

2011/12/23 – It is Christmas eve eve, or what Lisa's dad called, "Christmas Adam because Adam came before Eve." We picked up these lanterns and candles at IKEA and placed them on Raija's grave above Logan, seen in the distance. We stood there in the freezing cold and sang Silent Night. When we finished and stood in the silence to take in the lanterns we realized it wasn't silent. The coyotes had joined in song with us during Silent Night and obviously knew one more verse than we knew. It was spooky how close they sounded.

2011/12/22 – We drove to Logan to visit Lisa's dad and her sister's family briefly before Christmas. While there I shot this image of Lisa's dad's grandfather clock. I've always loved this clock. This image shows you how amazing the face details are.

2011/12/21 – Have you ever been sitting there feeling like someone is watching you? Well that's exactly what I was doing when I noticed the plug socket on the wall. Have you noticed they look like little faces? I snapped a shot of the socket and then had a little fun in Photoshop to create this series of four different faces. Your plugs might not be this animated.

2011/12/20 – Today Lisa and I celebrated our 31st wedding anniversary. Hard to believe we've been married that long. We went to dinner and a movie. For dinner we had all-you-can-eat sushi at The Sushi House in American Fork. These are the lamps that hang above each of the tables. The Food was wonderful. Then we saw the new Sherlock Holmes movie. It was also great.

2011/12/19 – A couple of days ago I did family photos for some good friends in our ward – Daril and Dana Mableby. I did individual photos as well as several different family shots. This was my personal favorite of the family shots. Kyle, the big guy second from the left, goes into the MTC on Wednesday 12/21 just before Christmas. He is going to serve in Russia. Christmas will be hard on the family without their oldest son.

2011/12/18 - I was playing with the macro feature on one of my cameras and decided to try it out on the watch I was wearing that evening. The face is a bright orange so I was trying to capture the richness of the color, as well as get a sharp Invicta logo. This was the best of the images.

2011/12/17 - Mid month I shot photos of all the employee families that wanted a photo with Santa (Rick, my designer at work). This little guy didn't really want to leave when he was done and was exploring around behind Santa's chair. When he peeked over the back of the chair at me I quickly snapped this shot. I was lucky Santa had his head up as well.

2011/12/16 – Still haven't cleaned out my side of the garage so the Z3 has to be parked on the driveway this winter. To prevent the snow and frost from damaging the convertible top I ordered this California Pop Top. It goes on and off quickly and is made of Tyvek so the ice, water or snow just slides right off. Seems to work great. It is intended to keep the car cool in the summer and prevent the sun from damaging the fabric, so I'll get good use out of it once the warm weather arrives - can't wait for the warmer weather.

2011/12/15 – Santa and his little elf visited all the employees at Fishbowl today. They handed out early Christmas gifts to every employee. They gave everyone a 2GB Apple Shuffle. Ironically one of our partners sent nice headphones for every employee. There was no collaboration between the two so it was a surprise that they happened on the same day. The elf is our president (Mary) and Santa in the blue shirt on the right is our CEO (Dave).

2011/12/14 – Funny guys! Some of the guys in my marketing department put this big poster in my office. What made it so funny was the fact that I was so focused on a project I didn't see it for the longest time. They kept coming in making Justin Bieber comments. Finally when there were four of them in my office all at the same time I looked up long enough to see the poster. They had a good laugh saying I knew it was there all along but just didn't want to let on that I was a big fan.

2011/12/13 - Glogg... one of my favorite holiday drinks. Both bottles are from IKEA, but the bottle on the right is a Swedish brand they brought in last year. The bottle on the left is made in Sweden for IKEA. Unfortunately the new Gloog made for IKEA is lacking in quality. It is made from fruit flavors while the 1911 has real mulled wine and fruit juices.

2011/12/12 – I helped Lisa decorate her library at Orem Elementary. Once done I took this photo of my favorite Santa in the library. I liked how the image turned out with the lights on the tree blurry in the background. If I hadn't told you it was in an elementary school library you would never have guessed.

2011/12/11 – We finally got our Christmas decorations up in the house. We've been so busy I was thinking we might not have any decorations, but we spent most of Saturday getting the tree up and everything else in place around the house. One of my personal favorites is the Santa collection Lisa puts on the fireplace mantle. She picks up a new one every now and then. There was at least one I recognized as being new this year.

2011/12/10 – This was an early Christmas gift I got for myself. I picked up the tournament quality bristle board about a week ago, then this weekend I built a nice framed cork board and mounted everything in our downstairs family room. Now I can get a little practice for the competition at work.

2011/12/19 – Lisa and I have been enjoying a variety of different holiday events. Tonight we attended the IKEA Swedish Christmas Smorgasbord. We were surrounded by a large number of Europeans trying to capture a little of the magic of Scandinavia. Pretty much what Lisa and I were doing. For $9.99 each it was a great holiday date night. My favorite was the smoked salmon. We ate way too much, but it was really fun.

2011/12/8 – Today Fishbowl was recognized as Utah's Best Kept Secret by the Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum. This is the nice crystal award we received. A great new prize to add to the other awards we've gotten this year.

2011/12/7 – We have these posters all around the office. Rick, my designer made them. We borrowed $1 million dollars from Zions Bank nearly six months ago as a down payment to buy our company back from our investor. The first payment is due December 20th, but we plan on all marching into Zions on the 20th with a million dollar check to pay off the loan completely. It will be a big day for us.

2011/12/6 – This was my first test shot in the new studio. Andrew was leaving for the day with his big bag of cereal. I had him come into the studio were I shot him against the green screen. Once I had the shot I looked for something fun put in the background. I like the irony of Andrew holding a big bag of Honey Buzzards cereal while standing in a very fancy sushi restaurant. Looks like he is really there.

2011/12/5 – At work I've been setting up a small photo/video studio. It isn't very big, but much better than what we've had previously. The green screen is great for both video and photos, but it is primarily for some of the videos we produce, like Kirk's Tackle Shop, a video series I've been doing. The green screen is 10'X16' so we can really do some fun things with it.

2011/12/4 – We woud like to decorate for Christmas but haven't gotten to it yet. I pulled this Ukrainian egg apart to display the individual elements and put it on a shelf in the family room. We got this just before Christmas in 2004 when we went to pick up Logan in Ukraine from his mission. It is one of my favorite nativity scenes we have in our small collection.

2011/12/3 – We continue to do some deep house cleaning, dumping things we don't need or will never use. This Saturday we did a little of that as we pulled about 35 VHS videos out. We are going to donate them to the assisted living center were Lisa's dad stays. They'll get plenty of use out of them.

2011/12/2 – My sister Danna had this custom made for my little grandson, Olin. She thought he might like it for the cold winters in Boston. You pull the cap on then pull the tan part down over the face. We thought is was so funny because it is made to look like a beard. We think Logan should put it on Olin and then have a picture taken of the two of them with their man and child beards. I hope he will keep it on long enough for at least one picture.

2011/12/1 – I was in the basement family room and noticed this piece on the wall. I've taken it for granted for many years, but each year it becomes a little cooler to own. I got it in 1989 for the 20th anniversary of the Lunar landing on the moon in July of 1069. That 20 years has become 42 years now. The painting was painted by astronaut Alan Bean, who flew the lunar module in 1969 for the Apollo 11 moon landing. What makes the poster so nice is the fact that I personally met Alan Bean and had him sign the poster.

2011/11/30 – I was walking down the stairs this morning to leave for work when the image of our main floor family room caught my attention. I loved the rich colors of the room as the early morning sun crept in through the windows. It made me want to just sit down and relax in the warm rays of the sun. I grabbed my camera and got the picture before the sun rose higher and the light changed.