Dancing all over the world

I saw this video over a year ago and even today, when I see it, it makes me laugh. If you have already seen it, enjoy. If you haven't, check it out.

The world could have been my oyster

So, today, I realized that I had made the bigtime. I opened the mailbox and took out a beautiful and stylish black envelope. Guess what was inside? An invitation to join the Rich and Famous. A chance for people to understand just how awesome I am with the quiet wave of a card. The Visa Black card. I hurriedly ran inside and showed Brodi to which she replied: 'Why did they send that to you?' I responded with: 'What girlfriend? Don't you realize that I am the man!' She just shook her head and walked away.

As I thought more about it, I realized that I had no clue why they sent it to me. Its not a card given to people for their pure metrosexualness...nor is it a card for someone who loves poptarts or coaches little kids soccer games. So, I don't know why it was sent to me.

For those interested, here are a few details of the card--if I were to sign myself and Brodi for the card, it would cost us $695 annually. Yes, you read that right, almost $700 for a piece of black plastic (actually, its not plastic, its something cool like carbon fiber or something) and I get a whole 1% back on all my purchases (I get that already with my cheap cards). So, yes, I turned it down. I will have to live like most of us peasants, with just a Delta American Express and a Chase Visa card.

Showing your love of Peace

You know you love 'peace' when you are ready to dedicate a 15 foot high pole with a Christmas light-ed 'Peace' sign in your front yard.

1st Grade

Holy crap...my oldest kid is now in 1st grade. How frakkin' crazy is that?

After two days of going to school, I have received very little feedback from him except for 2 things: what he has eaten for lunch during those two days (hot dog and cheeseburger) and what he did for P.E. I have no idea what he has done in his class yet. He likes it though and that is about all that I can ask for. Go Carter!

Rocky Mountain High, Colorado (sung in a totally metrosexual John Denver kinda way)

We had a great trip to Winter Park/Granby, Colorado. We went with Brodi's parents and Brodi's sister Erin and family. This is the Rocky Mountain National Park area. Even though we lived in Denver for a little bit, we never made it to this area, so it was fun to check it out.

This area is all at around 8500 feet in elevation and it just got worse when we moved up higher into the Rocky Mountain National Park. We hit 12,000 feet and even went up a few more hundred feet as we did some more hiking. This area was simply built for biking and hiking. 6 days of that along with swimming, tennis and soccer made up our days. The tree line tops out around 10,000 feet, so it is desert like as you hit this altitude...and windy. We got some nice hail coming down on us as we hiked to the top.

Carter learned how to ride his bike this summer and he was a star out there...we did some mountain, single trail riding and Carter led the pack with his cousin Necie. There was also a little dirt biking with little hills obstacle course that he went after and did great on it as well. I have been amazed by how good he has gotten on a bike in such a short time. He wants to ride everywhere every day (can I ride to Amma's house? Can I ride to school? Can I ride to Grandma Kate's?)

Now, figure this out with me...you decide to build some condos and you want to include a hot tub with each unit. So, what do you do? Put the hot tub on the balcony? Put the hot tub in a seperate room with glass doors? Put it in the living room? NONE OF THE ABOVE. This genius put it right in the master bedroom, about 4 feet away from the bed. Any of you own a hot tub...if you haven't, then you should know they are not quiet. They constantly whirrrllll and hummmm. These didn't turn off so every couple of hours, it booms to life to re-heat the water. Awesome. Because of the noise, Brodi slept in the living room in a pull out couch. Carter slept in the living room on another pull out couch. Beckham slept in the 2nd bedroom. I slept next to the sexy hot tub. Lucky me.



We rented out a Pontoon and went out onto Grand Lake. Half of the homes/cabins on this lake are not accessable by walking or by car so they have to drive their boats to it where the have boat garages that they drive into. The weather changes quickly in this area where one minute it will be 75 degrees and partly cloudy skies and literally the next minute, it will be 60 degrees and beginning to rain. Luckily, the weather stayed nice and Carter and Beckham were both able to take their turns driving the boat.




One of the days, we headed off to Estes Park which is on the other side of the National Park...it is a nice little town similar to Park City. This is also where they filmed the Shining. It was a lot of fun to walk thru the hotel...Brodi gives a better description of that part of the trip, here

It was a great trip and we had a lot of fun, I would be curious as to what the area is like during the dead of winter. Anyway, crazy to get home only to send off Carter to his first day or 1st grade.

Yes, the middle name is Puker

When I was a kid, I had a problem. I got carsick the minute that I got into a car. If I was not staring straight ahead, I would get sick. Two stories stick in my head specifically about this problem—

When I was in 4^th grade, we were living in Bountiful and we lived at the top of Cave Hollow Drive which was basically one of the highest points in all of the valley. We were going up the street when my older brother Josh took out a bag that he had…inside was a very large jumping grasshopper. Well, Josh being the very funny 9^th grader that he was, decided to quickly take it out and put it in my shirt. So my dad is driving and I have a grasshopper going crazy in my shirt. I start screaming and scrambling to get the grasshopper out of my shirt. With 15 seconds, not only was I in near complete meltdown to rid myself of the grasshopper, but I was getting carsick…fast. We pulled in the driveway, I jumped out of the car, threw the grasshopper out and proceeded to throw up on the driveway.

Story #2: Probably around 6^th grade. I went with my friends to Lagoon (for those not familiar with it, think a really, really crappy Disneyland for Salt Lake ). I loved Lagoon…rides everywhere and good friends…it was awesome. Well, we saw the ride that still gives me chills to this day: The Hammer. Basically it is a prison like contraption where you and a friend get in (barely fits two people in there...the ride has also been called the Looper) and it starts swinging side to side and getting higher and higher until it gets to the top and you go completely over into a circle motion and it just keeps doing that for like 3-4 minutes. Well, we got off…and nobody was in line (shocking I know for such an awesome ride) and we did it again. And again. And again. 4 times. I was laughing and walking around like a drunk. Well, my friend’s mom picked us up and we started driving home. We reached an intersection where I told the mom to stop the car, I popped open the door and proceeded to puke my guts out on the cement.

So, why am I telling you these stories? Well, my youngest adorable son Beckham inherited this from me. He is our little puker. He can watch videos in the car. But, if you give him his DS game system while driving, he will be puking within minutes. Give him a book to look at, he will begin puking. Well, driving up to Winter Park, Colorado can be a ‘long and winding road’ (that would make a good song title) and Becks got the look and proceeded to puke all over the place. We pulled over and cleaned him up…new clothes, etc. and you can see by the pic on the left that he was doing pretty well. Uh, 20 minutes later and roads kept winding and Beckham puked again. All over the place (our poor door). We had driven nearly 7 hours but in the final brutal 30 minutes before we arrived at our destination, Beckham puked liked there was no tomorrow. 2 years ago, we had a trip to Jackson Hole...he pulled off a single puke on that trip as well. Love the boy, hate the puke.

Random Random-ness

For some reason, known only to the road construction gods, they have decided to tear up 78% of the roads in Holladay. No joke. The best part is, the work begins at 7am, the trucks park in front of your house and traffic barely moves anywhere. I am sure it will look nice in a few weeks, but for now, it is a disaster.

I don't know if you had heard, but Michael Jackson died. With half of the stories in the first segment of the morning news about his death, I am assuming that he died just a couple of days ago.

If I was not already married, I would probably marry my iphone.

2 of the best cereals around? Honey Bunches of Oats and Chex. Some cereals are so simple yet delicious. One of the worst cereals around? Rice Krispies and Cocoa Krispies--the reason being, you have to eat about 14 bowls of it before you even feel remotely full.

Summer is almost over. How frakkin' crazy is that?

The tv show 'Better off Ted' is the first show that could rival Arrested Development in laugh out load moments. Very good stuff. The premise of the show is a research company named Veridian Dynamics that basically does some crazy research but everyone thinks that it is normal. Each episode has one of their commercials and their commercials are the best:

Utah Site: Creepy cool Gilgal Gardens

Ok, so I am home alone with the boys. Brodi ditched us for some writing thingamajiggy so the boys and I are just out partying. We have been jumping on the tramp, biking, swimming, etc..

Back in high school, I heard about a 'creepy' park downtown. I decided to take my kids today and experience another Utah site. Gilgal Gardens. It is located on 5th East and around 730 East, right behind the Wonderbread store downtown. It was the idea of a man named Thomas Child who ended up spending his money and his days finding stone and working on his sculptures for the gardens. It was his way of leaving his beliefs of the mormon church and christianity in a way through art (even if some of it is pretty strange and different art) Though he died over 40 years ago, the gardens is still going strong thanks to donations and volunteer efforts.

The Sphinx is the most well known of his sculptures. He used a sphinx as a symbol of riddles and mystery with Joseph Smith's (mormon prophet) head symbolizing the answer to many religious questions.

This is my favorite sculpture and it is of Thomas Child and it shows his love of masonry and religion, mixing them both together. It is a tall structure. Child is said to be especially pleased with the great look of his coat that 'he' is wearing in the sculpture. I love the colors to it and it is one of the more normal sculptures in the gardens.

Here are various other sculptures which represent different things to him (ranging from the Priesthood to characters in the bible like Job and Daniel). All the sculptures are 40+ years old. Let me tell you...these are all some pretty cool things, but late at night when I would go with my friends, it was rather creepy. I don't know what appears to be a bunch of body parts strewn across a hillside (like the pic on the right), but at night, sheesh.

The gardens are filled with flat walking stones with carvings throughout. Probably 75+ of these stones have scriptures, quotations, etc. carved into the rocks for people to read. After many decades, some of them are fading, but plans are to restore it to its past glory. The gardens are very pretty and well maintained.

If you have a chance, it is an interesting and rather entertaining 30-45 minutes. www.gilgalgarden.org

Once again, if anyone has any ideas of other things to see in the SL Valley (besides DI), let me know as we are ready to do some exploring.

Dexter is coming back...soon

There is a show, Dexter, that we love. But, it is not an easy show. It is the show of a guy that works for the police in forensics. His job is to catch bad guys. His night job is to find the bad guys and kill them. Yeah, pretty dark premise. And a pretty fabulous show. Well, it is back for its 4th season on Showtime and here is the promo for it. Is it so wrong to actually like a serial killer? He is an extremely likeable guy on this show.

If you do not like blood, please do not watch this show. But I will say, it is horribly entertaining.

Utah site: Antelope Island

Over the years, Brodi and I have had a great chance to live in some cool cities. The benefit of living in interesting cities is that you get visitors and you get to go out and see things that you may not go to if you just lived there. London, DC and Denver all had some good tourist sites and fun things to do.

Salt Lake City is a pretty cool city...but since we live here and we haven't had a lot of people come and visit us here, we often don't go and check out new things. Well, that is changing baby! I want to find some hidden gems and some not-so-hidden gems and go and see these sites. It started this weekend with Antelope Island. I have seen this island every single day of my Utah life, yet I had not visited it.



We made the drive out there (exit 332, Syracuse) this past weekend. It costs $9 to get your car and off you go. A couple of facts about the island: Its home to around 600 bison (several of which we saw and one of them is pictured on the right). The island is over 28,000 acres and is surrounded by the Great Salt Lake. The are actually many smaller islands (I believe 10 of them) that are all around Antelope Island, but Antelope Island is the biggest and the only one with true access. The roads on the island are very nice and well maintained.






So, what to do? We got there and took a little bike ride all around. This was difficult because Beckham still is not too sure how much he wants to ride a bike. He looked stylish with his helmet on, but he wanted me to push him or he simply wanted to watch Carter ride around. Carter is becoming a biking pro.








The visitors center is pretty cool with all the information on the age of the rocks on the island (millions of years old) to the wildlife (bison, deer fawn, birds, etc.) and there is an exciting movie. They have a gift shop there as well and they keep it well maintained. It also has some nice views of the motorway to get out to the island and some of the beaches.










Probably the best option on the island is the hiking. We were able to do some pretty cool exploring. It is very desert like with few, if any, trees. There are some good high points on the island as well for nice views over Davis County. You also get the chance to see some of the bison and deer fawn hanging out grazing.







We did not do the swimming as the bugs were out in full force. You can see the Great Salt Lake water is receding a bit as the shores when out quite a bit until you get to water (the view on the left is one of the beaches, so you can see that the beach line goes out quite a distance to finally get to the salty water). There are many salt fields all around, but the actual Antelope Island is surrounded by water but as you go across the water closer to Davis County, you run into the salt fields.






We spent about 3-4 hours there, but if I had planned better, you easily can spend a day with hiking, biking and swimming out there. We were hungry and had to stop at the closest McDonalds for the boys to play and eat.

So, any suggestions for me on where to visit next? I have some ideas, but have you gone anywhere in the Salt Lake area that we need to try out. Give me some ideas.