Cameron Gibbs

Dear friends and family,

Happy New Year! 2009 was a great year for our little family and we’d like to share some of the year’s highlights with you.

The greatest thing that happened to us in 2009 was the birth of our youngest son, Edward Benjamin. He definitely has the coolest birthday in the family — 9/9/09! Noah (3) and Dallin (5) love their new little brother and enjoy holding him and playing with him. We are very proud of our three little boys.

In April, Heidi took the boys with her to visit her family in Peru for a month. Cameron joined them for the last week. Dallin and Noah picked up some Spanish and Dallin enjoyed working with Grandpa Bedoya making cars in Grandpa’s workshop. The highlight of our trip was visiting Caral, the oldest city of the Americas, which is just an hour and half drive from Heidi’s home. It was really neat.

In June, Cameron’s mom along with Paul, Heidi, and Maryanne (Cameron’s younger siblings) moved to Utah and found a home just 15 minutes from ours. We’re happy to have family so close — our boys love going to Grandma’s.

In August, Heidi’s mom came up to help Heidi during the last part of the pregnancy. We surprised her by having Heidi’s dad fly up for the last few weeks she was here. They were able to attend the General Conference of our church and later participate in the blessing of Edward.

This year Heidi and Cameron enjoyed starting up a small business with Matt and Jamee (Cameron’s brother and sister-in-law). The company is called memorybears.com. It’s been a gratifying side business and we look forward to growing it in 2010.

In November, we made a road trip to California to spend a week visiting Zion’s National Park, Las Vegas, Calico, Disneyland and family. It was a lot for one trip but we enjoyed every minute of it.

Heidi continues to do her best raising our three boys and loves being the only girl. Cameron continues working at ZAGG and can’t imagine enjoying any other job as much as the one he has now.

Reflecting upon the blessings of this past year, we can’t help but acknowledge the hand of God in our lives. We are so grateful to Him for His love and for sending His Son to save us. Without Christ’s sacrifice, we would not have the opportunity of being an eternal family and all of our experiences this past year would be just a memory and nothing more. Our hearts are full.

We wish you a prosperous and happy 2010.

Love,

Cameron and Heidi Gibbs

Just arrived in SF to attend the ad tech conference. I’m planning on writing a daily post for the 3-day event so stay tuned. This will be my first time attending ad tech so I’m anxious to see how good it is.

Hello, its me again.  I’m back. 

You know, its kind of hard to write a post when you’ve let so much time go by without writing.  I feel like the constantly drunk, wife-beating husband going back, pleading for forgiveness, promising to be a better man…”I will be a better blogger, I promise.”

Well, I think I’m back for good this time.  Just tired of being a consumer and not much of a producer.  Stay tuned…

Well, I’m back.  After posting daily for an entire month, I took a longer break than I anticipated.

Today was my first day of work at ShieldZone corp, makers of the InvisibleShield (a protective shield for your handheld devices).  The company has an incredible history despite the fact that it hasn’t even been in business for two full years yet and the future is very bright.  To read about how the company started, check out this article from connect, a Utah business magazine.

I’ve actually been surprised at how well-known the product already is.  Of everyone I’ve told about my new job, almost half of them have either heard of the InvisibileShield or have one.  Now I’ve just got to educate the other half.

I think I’ve discovered one of life’s hidden secrets… maybe…

With what life throws at you each day, the idea of coming home from work and unwinding watching tv, surfing the internet, eating, lying down to rest, etc, is very attractive.  It becomes easy to put things you know you need to do off and find excuses not to do them.  Well, t think I’ve re-learned a lesson I’ve tried to teach myself more than once: quit putting things off and just do ‘em!

Allow me to explain… over the last three months, I’ve spent a lot more time at home than I’ve had in a long time.  Because of this, I’ve had time to work on things (honey-do’s, for example) that I’ve been putting off for some time… and some of them are regular chores.  Life seems so much better when you just do things the first opportunity you have to tackle them… and for those regular things (like chores), its easier to go back and do them again and again after they’ve become habits.

Heidi and I played monopoly tonight.  It was the first time I’ve played in several years… but I haven’t forgotten how to win. :) 

As you already know, Monopoly is a game of real estate… and the rules of real life real estate apply in the game.  It’s all about location… owning boardwalk and park place (as well as the green property on the same street) and putting hotels on them.  It may cost you quite a bit up front, but in the long run, you’ll rarely lose.

Heidi and I have two boys with very good sleeping habits (both sleep soundly through the night). We’ve known several parents whom have not had such luck so we feel very fortunate. If it takes hours to get your little one to sleep or if he/she regularly gets up through the night, here’s what we do… it’s always worked great for us.

From the day we brought our boys home from the hospital, we got them in a nightly routine of taking a bath, feeding, clothing them warm, and putting them to bed. It’s a great one-two-three punch and it almost never fails. Try to do it about the same time every night and make sure that if they take a late nap, they don’t sleep too long; otherwise, you’ll be having a long night. By doing this, both of our boys were sleeping through the night at two months.

As I’m writing this, Noah is lying next to me wide awake and its almost midnight — knock on wood.

Yesterday I mentioned remarks I remembered that were made by my dad’s boss about my dad at his funeral. After writing the post, I thought I’d listen to his comments again (it was the first time I heard the recording since the funeral). Upon listening to it again, I realized that there were other very meaningful and insightful things said that I didn’t remember.

With permission, I’ve made the talk available for download (click here). I think what he said would be of benefit to any and every businessman or woman.

At my dad’s funeral back in September, my dad’s boss, Paul Spencer, spoke for a few minutes. One of the things he said that has really stuck with me was that ‘Ned’ (my dad) “had his priorities right… God, family, work and fun.” He talked about how great of an employee he was, how much he cared about others, and how much everyone admired him. As proud as I was of my dad, Paul’s words made me even prouder. I was so impressed that my dad was living in such a way that even his boss was able to tell what was most important to him. I’ve since wondered if the same thing could be said about me.

The events of the last couple of weeks of my life have brought me to a realization of what really matters. Over the last couple of years I think I really lost focus as my heart and mind were really caught up in work… which is fine while you’re at work but not when your at home.

Over the last couple of months, I gave a shot at owning and running my own business and I’ve learned that its not really what I want right now. It’s not that I was working more than 40 hours a week, but that it was hard to not think about the business and letting it have my attention 24/7. I’ve decided that no matter what business venture/job I pursue right now, that when I come home from work, I don’t bring it with me.

Of course, I plan on spending time outside of work to benefit my employer/career but to an extent that it doesn’t become a distraction at home.

I’m thinking about making a New Year’s resolution to post something to my blog every day. This would mean most of the entries would be short and may not have much meaning. Nonetheless, it would be better than what I’ve done so far.

I just thought I’d post this thought so I’ll take it more seriously. We’ll see. Happy New Year to all my faithful readers.