Sorry, No Pictures

So, my zipper broke while at the office today. Let me tell you, when it is 1pm in the afternoon and you have a zipper that doesn't work, so your fly is open for all the world to see...well, lets just say that I spent most of the day at my desk.

Utah site: Alta to Brighton Hike

My family has an annual tradition that the family has done for over 30 years now...every July, we have the Alta to Brighton hike. We all get dropped off and we have 2-3 adults who then drive to the other side to leave the cars. We then do the hike.

Brodi was not able to come, but I took Carter and Beckham. About 10 minutes into the hike, Beckham decided he didn't want to walk, so I plopped him in the backpack and continued on with the hike. I have been getting in better shape, but I was not ready for a moving 35 pound lump of human boy on my back. But it went well as I lugged him up the hill for about 30 minutes and then all of a sudden, he decided he would hike. He ended up hiking for the next 90 minutes. Thank goodness for that little boy...my back was not going to last. He was a little trooper. Carter basically ran the entire way. That kid has too much energy.

After over 3 hours of hiking, we came home and headed out the door again to my sister's house for another 3 hours of swimming. Carter has been taking swimming classes this summer so he was having a great time showing me how he can swim by himself. Bekcham likes it, but he has yet to decide how much he likes it.

Great weekend, now I need a holiday to get a break from the holidays.

Fixin' it well

After a short 1.5 years, I finally put a faceplate on our light switches. I did not even have to hire someone to do it. I have no idea why the color is so off in the picture of the one without the faceplate, but it also looks like I painted too...which I didn't. I hate painting. A lot.

I also changed the flapper in our toilet so that our toilet works right now, instead of slowly leaking water in the toilet which led to our toilet flushing itself about every 10 minutes.

Feel free to call me HandySam whenever you want. I can be a metrosexual and a handyman. Pretty impressive.

Summer heat, swimming cooldown

Do you remember waaaaayyyyy back in June when we were all tired of the mid-70 degree temps? Well, we have gotten our wish and more...100+ degrees for the past couple of days.

Basically everywhere we go, if there is some kind of water feature then either the swimsuits go on or I take off their shirts and let them go crazy. They love Liberty Park and the Gateway because they get to be around a ton of other kids running around getting surprised by the water that shoots out of the ground. They love the Sportsmall pools because that is where Carter is learning to be a good swimmer. In this heat, much to all of neighbors' delight, I will whip off my shirt and just strut around the area as well.

They love going to my sister Eden's house because they get a beautiful hot swimming pool (when I say hot, I mean hot...this pool is smoking hot, hot tub like) with all of their cousins and various pool toys. Eden and her family truly spoil us by letting us go over anytime we want.

Kids--success. Parents--fail.

You gotta love the toughness of kids...even with parents can't hang in there and have to bail, the kids hold on for their lives (with a mixture of happiness and horror):

see more Fail Blog

Did he paint that lawn yellow?

It has been a rather strange summer for weather so far. During the month of June, it seemed to rain pretty much every single day. It was the rainiest June in the past 10 years. It would sprinkle in the morning and then rain at night. Almost every single day.

So, I was a little perplexed the other day when I drove by this home. Nice looking home with the worst lawn that I have ever seen. Now, don't get me wrong, I understand when some lawns can go a bit yellow as the summer progresses. A typical SLC summer will have weeks without a drop of rain and temps hovering around 100 degrees.

But now tell me thins--how did this lawn end up looking like this? It frakkin' rained every single day! You look up into our mountains and our mountains our green. I mean, even just plain dirt has green growing out of it here in the city. Seriously, for the life of me, I cannot figure out how the lawn could look like this after all of this rain.

There are really only 4 possible explanations for this happening:

1. This homeowner installed a reverse sprinkler system--basically instead of water coming out of the sprinkler heads, the sprinklers heads must be sucking up all moisture out of the lawn.
2. Covering the lawn when it rains--I can just picture the homeowner sending his kids out with tarps to cover the lawn every single time it rains.
3. Using hair dryers on the lawn--After each rainstorm, the homeowner goes out and uses a hair blower on the lawn to dry it out as soon as possible.
4. He has a dog that takes care of his business and is marking his territory over every single piece of grass.
   

These are the only possible ways that this lawn could look like this after such a rainy month. Now with all that said, I probably care too much about my own lawn and I am probably on the opposite extreme of this homeowner. And I can care less if he mocks me for the putting green lawn that I have in front of my house.

Hide and Seek...and seek...and seek...

Hide and Seek, with a very smart 2-year old:

GREENVILLE, Pa. -- A Pennsylvania toddler did such a remarkable job of hiding during a game of hide-and-seek that the family had to call police and firefighters to help find her. Two-year-old Natalie Jasmer was playing the game with her siblings Tuesday in their Pymatuning Township home. When the family couldn't find her, parents Dennis and Michelle Jasmer called authorities.

Emergency crews and friends frantically searched the neighborhood about 70 miles northwest of Pittsburgh for about an hour.

The family's dog, Copper, finally sniffed her out. She had fallen asleep in a drawer underneath the family's washing machine.

The little girl told her family she was sorry. Hide-and-seek is now banned in the Jasmer household.

I will have to keep my phone handy when Carter or Beckham go hiding. Though it would not be really fair to them if I have the police help me find them when they are hiding.

Fireworks, Danger, Internet Reunion, etc.

Sorry for the delay in between posts. A couple of random things:

Should I be concerned that Beckham was walking around our house with one of this hand held grill lighters? Should I be even more concerned that we had a huge bag of fireworks in the toy box in our family room? Yeah, I agree...I shouldn't be concerned at all.

Our internet best friend from Georgia came out and hung out with us on Tuesday night. If you haven't visited her site before, check it out, she has great stuff: ShellBell We had a good time hanging out and partying all night long. I think it is fair to say that she had a memorable night as she was finally introduced to Tab. As we all know, few things in life are better than Tab...she got to taste the goodness and if I remember our conversation correctly, she said something like: 'Thank you Sam for introducing me to Tab. This could be the turning point in my life.' Something like that. Glad to have you in town Shellie.

We had our annual Saturn Avenue raging 4th of July party a few days ago. Basically a bunch of families on our street and neighboring streets come on over to grill up some meat (I do have to say that my huge Ribeye steak dwarfed all of their puny hotdogs), cook up some s'mores at the firepit and set off fireworks. And when you get 8 families all bringing fireworks, well, you spend a lot of time hoping and praying that nobody will accidentally light one of the kids on fire. Thanks to the Jefferies, Tanners, Jankes, Deans, Pettys, Davies, Littles and Nielsons for the good times. We all survived. Can't wait for next year...