The Best Decision I Ever Made

My freshman year at Utah State I remember having a conversation with a flight instructor that has stuck with me. After our flight we were reviewing my timeline and progress when my plan to serve a mission came up. He had served a mission and I remember specifically something he said to me. "I won't say it is the best thing I have ever done, but it is the best decision I have ever made."

That comment sort of confused me. Did he have a bad mission experience or was he disappointed with something about it? It is only recently that I figured out what he meant and I totally understand.

I was not pressured at all into serving a mission. In fact, I am sure if I had said I just wanted to go to school my parents would have supported that decision. But the decision was mine and I made it when I was about 17 and a half. When the time finally arrived I was called to serve in the Brasil Porto Alegre South Mission. I will spare you the details of my mission and just say it set the tone for the rest of my life.

Without my mission I never would have developed skills and habits that have shaped my life. But the best decision I ever made led me down the path to the best thing I have ever done. Totally schooling Kirsten into marrying me. My two years in Brasil are not the best two years of my life. They are the most important. I hope I can always say the best two years are the past two and the next best two are the two years to come.

As fate would have it, that flight instructor works now at Skywest with me and we flew together not too long ago. I reminded him of what he said to me 11 years ago and he had no recollection of saying it. Funny how I had wondered for YEARS what he meant and when I finally figured it out and had the chance to tell him, he didn't even know he had said it.

Being an Only Child

I have heard all of the myths about only children. We are bored, spoiled, anti-social, attention seekers, lonely, selfish, bratty, etc...I want to clear up some misconceptions and share some insight on this unique way to grow up at least as it pertains to me as an only child.

I was anything but bored. Only children still have friends. I think people imagine us in our rooms playing with legos and trying to entertain ourselves all day. I was rarely ever home alone growing up as I had lots of friends to spend lots of time with. I also spent lots of time outside shooting hoops which explains why I am a pro level "horse" player but not much good in a real game.

The most spoiled kids I knew were always the young kids from the biggest families or some kids from just plain rich families. Remember I am the youngest AND the oldest. I don't think most parents plan on having just one so for the most part they are conservative in raising the first. I never felt spoiled at all as I worked all through high school and paid for most everything myself.

We are very close to our parents. My mom is also an only child. My dad has one sister and she has two kids which gives me a grand total of 1 aunt and 2 cousins. So my family is very very small. I talk to my mom and dad each on the phone 2 or 3 times per week. It interested me so much after getting married to see how little Kirsten speaks with her parents. They never talk to one another just to see how things are going. That to me has been the most obvious difference between our own families.

Along with that comes the fact that I know pretty much everything about my mom. I have always known how much money we have, where it all is, how it is invested etc. It seems to me that lots of kids never knew how much money their parents made or where it was kept. I always appreciated this information and it kept things real for me as to how we were doing in life. I think often about how I want to handle this information with my own kids. I am still not sure.

Sometimes I hear of kids who resent their parents for not having more kids. I never felt like this. Just like with my adoption, I never even thought about the fact that I was an only child. I had an awesome childhood full of sports, vacations and other memories. I will say now though, that having married into a HUGE family, that I absolutely love them! I can see now what I missed and I am so appreciative to be a part of this new huge family but I will never regret or be upset by the awesome family and childhood I had. Even so I do hope to break the only child streak in my family :)

P.s. It is nice to have the "only child" disclaimer to fall back on if I ever seem to exhibit any of the aforementioned negative qualities...

Politics 2011

Back in 2008 both Kirsten and I were very vocal about politics on our blogs.  As you may have noticed the issue has not come up yet this year and I think it is safe to say that this is the only post I will do this election year about it.  Why?  Because it frustrates me.

Obama.  I think he is truly a genuine guy and is trying to make good decisions.  I gave him a clean slate and unfortunately when I said that his being elected president could have some big repercussions on me personally I was right.  He has killed Kirsten and me on taxes.  Small business suffers GREATLY with him in office.  Kirsten pays over 40% of everything she makes to the government as a small business owner!  Do you know what we would love to do?  Hire a few employees thus creating jobs but Obama has made this impossible.  We cannot afford it.  I would love to see the aviation industry rebound but President Obama has chosen to tax both the industry and the consumer buying the tickets heavier than ever before.  So in short I do not want him to be my president anymore, but I think he will be for another 5 years.

You probably assume that I am still in favor of Mitt Romney for president.  You would be right.  But, I am frustrated with his campaign.  I think that both he and his campaign have screwed up in a few cases and I have no confidence that he will be the President.  I get annoyed with his lack of talking straight and he does flip flop a bit too often.  The democrats are also being very smart.  They are not attacking Newt at all.  They are salivating at the idea of him being the nominee because there is dirt in Newt that goes back for decades.  New Gingrich will not win.

So I will back away this year and not let the election take control of me.  Good luck to all those involved and to those who sacrifice time and effort into their candidates.  I hope it turns out for the best.  I hope our leaders can figure out how to stop spending money we don't have but in the end there is no other place I would rather live on earth.

Pearl Harbor and my Uncle Conway

Pearl Harbor Today

Last month I was flying with a pilot who shared his life's hobby with me.  He had a collection of aviation/military history that I cannot begin to describe.  He had signatures from every WWII veteran he had ever met.  He also had the signatures of the greatest aces from the U.S, Germany, and Japan and almost everyone that was involved in the Doolittle raid including some from men that died before he was ever born.  He had a collection of pictures and history that is no doubt worth thousands of dollars but that is invaluable to our country.  This pilot spent his days off traveling around the country and world meeting with old chapters of war veterans and writing down their stories.  We in aviation, I imagine, will owe a lot to him one day.


As I was flipping through the names of the American veterans he has met I found on his list Conway Benson, USS Tennessee.  I smiled as I thought of my amazing uncle Conway who had passed away just a couple of years ago.  I said to him,"This man is my uncle."  He grabbed his book from me and made a notation of "Uncle to Joshua Krason that I flew with" and told me my name would be going in a book.  He then proceeded to get any information out of me about my Uncle Conway that I could remember.   Unfortunately, it wasn't much.  Uncle Conway was awesome.  He was hilarious.  He was very proud of his service in the navy and Pearl Harbor.  He was head of a chapter of Pearl Harbor veterans.  He had a Pearl Harbor survivor sticker on the back of his car.  The pilot told me to never ever forget these things about him and to write them down.  He said that their biggest fear (WWII veterans) is that they would be forgotten in time.

I know the war changed my Uncle Conway.  He left the LDS church after his service and demanded that nobody ever talk religion to him.  Until one day about 4 or 5 years before he died when he told my grandma that he had been going to church.  He was reactivated, received a calling, became a faithful home teacher and went through the temple all in the last few years of his life.  It reminds me that we have no idea where people come from and we cannot judge a thing about them.  The effects of the war possibly stayed with him for almost 70 years until he could truly make peace.  He came to my wedding and I am so proud that I got to know him a little better then.  I wish now I could have sat down with him for hours.

So today I think of my 18 year old Uncle Conway at Pearl Harbor.   I hope I never forget what he and the other men and women there went through 70 years ago.  Thanks to that pilot for reminding me how important he was to my family and this country.

A Pilot's Wife

Kirsten with me on a trip

I give Kirsten a hard time sometimes for knowing nothing about my job.  She usually doesn't know where I am, when I will be home, or really what I am ever doing when I am at work.  It seems that she is somewhat different from the other pilot wives.  

I fly with many pilots whose wives know where they are at all times and know exactly when they will be to the hotels.  Some pilots place their schedules on the refrigerator door with the phone numbers to each hotel they are staying in.  I have even flown with pilots whose wives make them check in with them when they get to the hotel.  Once when checking in at the front desk of a hotel the pilot said to me, "I bet the phone rings while we are here checking in" and sure enough it did and it was his wife making sure he was where he was supposed to be.

Other wives seem to enjoy dropping their husbands off at the airport and picking them up sparing the pilot the hideousness of getting on the employee bus to the very large employee parking lot to get in a very cold car that has been sitting for days and get that extra 30 minutes with the husband.  Kirsten has no interest in doing this :)

Sometimes I am sad that Kirsten has become so numb to me being gone so often but my point of this post it that I am grateful.  I am grateful that Kirsten is the way she is.  Sooooo many pilots tell me they would rather have the situation that I have.  Personally, I sometimes think it would be nice if Kirsten worried about where I was, when I was going to be home, or what I was doing at work.  But the fact is that she is a very trusting and independent person who has created an awesome life for herself even when I am gone.  Ironically this leads to me wanting to call her each time I get to my hotel, text her in between long flight legs during the day and do a lot of the things that annoy the other pilots.

President Uchtdorf talked about how wonderful it was for him during his career to be married to someone similar to Kirsten.  Hopefully she can last another 35 years of me working :)

Kirsten coming with me on a trip.  Doesn't happen as often as I would like :)