Happy 6th Birtday to Carter

Today is Carter's Birthday. 6 years old. Pretty crazy to think that he is already in Kindergarten. He is as good of a boy as we would want. As most of you know, Carter was a slow talker. He spoke about 3-5 words at the age of 3. Well, he is making up for lost time right now because if he is awake, he is talking...and talking...and talking...and talking.





Carter is a pretty cool kid. He was our little DC baby and we spent many days and nights down on the Mall checking out all of the historical sites. Brodi and I used to put him in his jogger and we would go and run on the Mall. Usually, he loved it. Sometimes he voiced his displeasure, but he always liked being outside. He was also the darling at my office in DC. Whether it was a huge babyshower in the office or just parading him around to my friends and co-workers, he was always the life of the party. Everyone loved his bald head and it was bald for the first two years of his life. Now, well, curls are everywhere.





He always needs to be moving. He always needs to be running. We would laugh that wherever we would go, he would need his time to run around, whether it be in circles around a large kitchen island or just run around the store or in the hallways of a church. He still, to this day, spends about 15 minutes every night running around just to burn off the excess energy he has.






As I have mentioned before on this blog, this boy knows how to wreck havoc on his body. He has had many falls and accidents--jumping off the couch and hitting his head against the coffee table (2-4 stitches below his eye)...running in our backyard and getting smacked with the lock of the gates right below his eye (2-4 stitches)...rough housing with his cousins and breaking his collar bone...crashing into an end table at the church (bruises all over his face) and having it fall down on top of him...nearly losing his finger when it got caught in the hinge of a door (15 stitches used to save the tip of his finger). He has done it all and he has done with his happy attitude.


He is a genius on the computer. He can play all kinds of games (kindergarten smart games, Harry Potter games, Lego Indiana Jones, etc.) on the computer, on his DS. He types his name and plays online games. He is scary good at it.


He loves soccer. The first year, not so much. But he still asks about playing on Saturdays even though I have made it clear that soccer won't begin again till Spring. He is really liking tennis right now...and he plays with a coach every Friday. He even has his own racket. He also likes to spend time on the couch at night watching the Utes or the Jazz play basketball.






His mind works in fabulous ways as he tries and understands what is going on in life. Yesterday in the car, he was watching a dvd. It was a looney tunes dvd. This was our conversation:
Carter: That bunny is faster than a train. He is really fast!
Sam: Good to hear Carter.
Carter: I think that bunny may even be faster than Jesus.
Sam: Carter, lets not talk about that right now.
Carter: Is Jesus as fast a train?
Sam: (not sure how to respond). Yeah, I guess he is.
Carter: Oh, I guess Jesus is faster than the bunny as well.
Sam: Yeah, I guess He is.
Carter: Is Jesus in the sky?
Sam: Yes, Jesus is in heaven right now
Carter: And heaven is in the sky...I am now going to take my rocket and visit him. Bye Daddy...5-4-3-2...
Sam: (Yeah, I didn't know how to respond to that)


And Carter loves his family. He talks of his Amma and Ampa (Brodi's parents) all the time...he talks of Grandma Kate and Grandpa Frank (Sam's parents) all the time...he talks of his best friends (Necie and Hope) and he loves the kids in our neighborhood. Though he often ends up competing with Beckham, he sure does his brother. And he always tell his parents how much he loves them.


Happy 6th Birthday to Carter. You are a good little dude.

Music with an odd selection...

I really like music and I am lucky to have a wife that has very similar tastes to me in regards to music.

Early on in our dating relationship, Brodi took me to go see the band 'Live' up at Wolf Mountain, or whatever they call that place now. We loved it...it was a great setting and some terrific music. It was even more entertaining with the different people around us. There were all types of people, including the couple in front of us who were busy making out and doing just about everything possible this side of getting thrown in jail for indecent exposure (If I had a cigarette, I would have probably had offered it to them). But overall, great concert and a lot of fun and it became a clear indication to me that Brodi was the one as how cool was it to have a girl not only buy the tickets for that concert but to also like it and love the music?

We are also big fans of the band 'Everclear.' I had a chance to see them in concert in Salt Lake City as well as in Washington DC. We also met Art Alexakis, the lead singer of the band, at Disneyland of all places. I am a total idiot, but I went up to him at the Blue Bayou (restaurant there in Disneyland) and introduced myself. Just exactly what every lead singer of a famous band wants is some stinkin' MALE groupie coming up to him to tell him how much he likes their band. Now, if it was Brodi, I am sure it would have been awesome for him...but alas, it was me. He was very cool though, he made sure that I bought their newly released album and I controlled myself enough to not ask him for a hug.





So, my ipod is full of songs from Everclear, Live, Linkin Park, Metallica...are you seeing a trend here? I like music a bit on the harder side. But there is an exception band/performer. Ilike 'P!nk.' Yeah, nuts. But I have 4 or 5 of her songs (who knew...sober...Pill, among them) on my playlists and she has some great music. So, I guess she is my guilty artist pleasure.



With that said, I have a wide range of musical tastes from the bands that I mentioned above to 'My Chemical Romance' to 'Spoon' to 'Cat Stevens' to 'The Killers.' If you have any offbeat or guilty pleasures of music, let me know, as I am pretty open to trying different sounds.

6th grade awkwardness

Random Story Time: So I have been thinking of my growing up days on the mean streets of Bountiful, Utah. As a 6th grader, you think you are the most happenin' kid in town and that you can do no wrong and that you are as cool as a cucumber (yes, I realize that I am using some very uncool words). As 6th grade progressed, I met the new girl that had just moved into the neighborhood and she was new to the school. She seemed very cool, she was very pretty and she was very tall. She had me by a couple of inches. My eyes were even with her chin. After a couple of months of 'hi's, I guess I decided that our relationship had truly progressed to a point where the logical next step was to ask her to be my girlfriend.

I thought that I was a pretty smooth operator. I was good at sports, I was a very talkative kid and I could talk to girls or boys...but this did not go off as well as I had hoped.

I talked with my friends who talked with her friends and a meeting was set up at the afternoon recess where just the two of us would go out and talk on the playground. The recess bell went off and I assumed my place on the playground. Nikki followed out soon after. Our friends (about 20 of them, I believe) all watched from inside the building through the window. We both kinda said Hi and then I went for it:




Sam: How are you Nikki?
Nikki: Great, how are you?
Sam: Fine, thanks for asking
Sam: Good weather we are having, isn't it?
Nikki: Yep.
5-10 second awkward pause
Sam: So, I wanted to ask you: 'Do you want to go with me?' (my head was probably down and I was probably shuffling my feet a bit)
Nikki: Go where?
Awkward 2-3 second pause as I contemplated how to respond to that question
Nikki: Oh...Yes, Yes, I will 'go with you.'
Now, for those not familiar with 6th grade talk, 'going with you' meant to be boyfriend/girlfriend and thankfully she realized it after a few seconds.
Sam: Cool.
Nikki: Yeah
Another awkward 3-5 seconds and then this is where you see the genius of Sam...
Sam: So, how do you spell your name? Is it N.i.c.k.i?
Nikki: No, I spell it N.i.k.k.i
Sam: Thats great. I'll talk to you later?
Nikki: Sounds good. Thanks

Yes, one of the first orders of business after becoming a couple was to ask her how she spelled her name. I guess I needed to know how to spell her name so that I could put 'Sam+Nikki' in my notebooks and spell her name correctly...I mean, you can't spell your girlfriend's name incorrectly, how dumb would that be? Props to her for keeping her cool and having the presence of mind to not fill dead air with: So Sam, how do you spell your name?

We then both proceeded to casually go talk with their friends and let them know that they are now boyfriend and girlfriend and how cool was that? The friends cheered.

What did being a couple in the 6th grade mean?

• 4-5 hand holds (sometimes after our friends would urge us to hold hands on the bus)
• Exclusive dancing (under our boyfriend/girlfriend arrangement, I don't think we danced with anyone else) at the school dance which consisted of being arms-length away and shuffling our feet to the music
• Giving each other Valentines Day cards
• Playing next to each other on the school playground...me with my friends with her and her friends doing something right next to us.
  
• About 10 phone calls to each other

I still don't remember how we 'broke' up or even if we did break up (she moved after our 6th grade year to SLC)...I am sure it was dramatic and tragic all at once. The one thing, looking back on all of this, that I now realize is how glad that I am that I am no longer in elementary school.

Scary thing is though that Brodi probably thinks that is how I acted with her the first time we went out.

It may kill you, but at least your belly would be full

I have been known to not eat too healthy. In high school, breakfast consisted of 'Mike and Ike's' candy and lunch was a snickers bar. Thankfully my mom was a great cook so I at least got a great dinner. Overall though, I am not a bad eater. With all that said, there is bad eating and then there is really, really bad eating.

There is a diner in Phoenix called 'the Heart Attack Grill'. Its meals consist simply of huge hamburger patties (half pounders) and are given names like the Single Bypass Burger. The Quadruple Bypass Burger (bacon, cheese and 4 half pound hamburger patties) has 8000 calories. Yes, 8000 calories. Yes, you still read that right, 8000 calories. I do have to say though that my favorite menu item from what I have seen is the Flatliner Fries (deep fried in pure lard). Nothing better than a fully deep fried lard fry. It is also nice to see that this hamburger joint serves up unfiltered cigarettes. Could life get any better than downing 2 pounds of hamburger meat, a nice extra large soft drink and top it off with a few puffs off the cigarette? Yeah, I doubt it too.




I would totally be there if they served Tab, but alas, they only serve sugar drinks, Beer and Jolt as beverages. So, I will just have to view this place admiringly from afar.

Rule #235

I have many rules that I live by. Brodi is hounding me to add the following rule to the list:

#235: When you put a drink in the freezer to get it extra cold, remember to take it out or better yet, don't put it in there in the first place.

You can tell how impressive this frozen-can explosion was in our freezer by just seeing that its entire top was blown clean away. It is tragic though to lose a Tab in the process.

Perched high above the water

So I gave Beckham a bath yesterday night. He decided when he got in the tub that he didn't want to have a bath. No, that is not a gargoyle, that is an almost three year old boy trying to stay clear of the water. Eventually he succumbed to the water and enjoyed his bath.

Battlestar and Science Fiction Geekdom

Brodi had a post the other day on her blog about science fiction movies. I am not a sci-fi geek. Brodi, on the other hand, is. Have a Stars Wars question? She is the gal. Want to know something about Aliens? Yeah, go to her...you get that kind of knowledge with hundreds of viewings, I think.

With that said, there have been several sci-fi shows/movies that I have loved. Serenity, a Joss Whedon production (based on a short lived tv show, Firefly, from around 2002), was a genius movie. Truly terrific....how can you beat a cowboy western science fiction movie? Trust me, you can't. The first Matrix? Wonderfully entertaining. But there are many sci-fi shows that I could never get in to such as 'Star Trek' and the 13 off-shoots of the original Star Trek.







But a few years ago, a little remake came to the television, Battlestar Galactica. Yes, that cheesy early 80s television show. Well, times have changed and it is not your mother's Battlestar any more. Brodi and I decided to give this show a chance during its first season and it is spectacular. It is rough and tumble, it is dark, it has great actors and actresses. It is probably the finest show on television. Well, the show ends its run this Spring, finishing off 5 full seasons. Starting in January, it has 10 episodes to go and it is finished. One of the main characters, James Callins who plays Balthar, summed up the finale of these shows and whether or not expectations would be too high on these final episodes with this line: "Honestly you can't be disappointed," he said. "I think if Adolf Hitler were back, he'd be crying in his handkerchief." Probably not the best analogy...but it sounds like expectations have been raised. But hey, if Adolf Hitler liked it...yeah, still probably not the best analogy.