Happy Easter

Hope you all had a good Easter. This is Carter and Becks with their fabulous J cousins. We had a good trip to Zions this past week (pics to come) as well as fun activities like cooking knives and learning how to 'Trump' up my hair.

Carter's special gift

Carter already received probably the best gift he could have asked for...a present from his school teacher that gives him a 'coupon' to turn in place of one homework assignment. He told me that maybe he would save it for 6th grade because homework is really hard in 6th grade. I let him know that it doesn't really work that way and that he will have to use this year.

Merry Christmas to everyone. Party all weekend long.

rockin' Thanksgiving

Now for the obligatory Thanksgiving update. As usual, we spent the day before Thanksgiving making stuffing with Brodi's side of the family. Ashton stuffing consists of bread, sage and butter and it is fabulous. The kids love helping and the adults love snacking on it. It is generally a quieter affair with Brodi's side of the family, but we always have a great time.

We spent Thanksgiving with Brodi's family and then that evening we drove to our family ranch down in Central Utah, Castle Valley Outdoors. This has been a family tradition to go down the ranch for Thanksgiving weekend for well over a decade now. It is located just outside of Emery (about 45 minutes from Price). It is a working ranch as well as an executive retreat ranch so the accomodations are fabulous. There is the lodge which has 9 bedrooms and 9 bathrooms...then there are 3 apartments in a house each with its own bathroom and then there is another house with 3 bedrooms and a couple of bathrooms. Plenty of room to handle all of us, which by the size of our family is pretty impressive. The pic on the left is during the summer...while the pic on the right is from late November.




The Thanksgiving dinner is crazy. Though my brother and his family couldn't come...my 3 sisters and their families as well as my other brother and his family - well, lets just say, that adds up to a whole lot of people.









We spent the days hiking, horseback riding, hiking some more, playing games (pool, cardgames, karaoke, campfire games and songs, etc.) and a lot of talking. I can safely say that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.

Merry Christmas...have some special water!

I have given and received some interesting gifts over the years. When I was in college, my buddy Joey and I took pictures of ourselves and gave them to all of our friends. It was a wonderful gift, I am sure, to all of those friends. I have also given and received Chia Pets. I guess those are not strange gifts, those are simply awesome!

This Christmas though, I received a memorable gift from my barber. Now, I love this woman...she is a great hair cutter and always very entertaining to talk to...this year she gave me a gift that may fix all my ailments. She bought it from a customer and then she pass it along to me-- It is a gallon of anti-oxident water taken from somewhere in the Cajun South. I have no idea what to do with it. Do I bathe in it? Do I sniff it all up to fix my sinuses? Do I just drink it down with some ice and hope that it is not poisoned with something?

the Halloween recap you have all been dying for

Carter loves Halloween. It means that he can go as something really scary. Last year he was one of those Harry Potter death reavers. Pretty spooky. This year, he dressed up as the Grim Reaper. He was mainly excited about the scythe (yes, I had to look up that word to spell it). The parades were cool as both boys are pretty pumped to strut their stuffs around. Beckham went in two different costumes this year--Winnie the Pooh and a snake/lizard/alligator combo.



We also did the whole pumpkin carving thing. Brodi informed me that I should not be using a machete to do the carving. Huge accomplishment though--no fingers were lost. Brodi also decided to use the oven, and we had toasted pumpkin seeds. I would have put a picture of Brodi getting the seeds out of the pumpkin, but she would not have been pleased as she looked like she was going to be sick in every picture (she has a thing with goopy food things on her hands). The boys were pleased.



Halloween evening, we stopped by both sets of grandparents to show off the kids. They were a big hit and they scored some candy there.






The rest of the night was running around the neighborhood collecting candy. After we got home, some of Carter's friends stopped by and wanted him to go out with them again. So, Carter headed off. After about 30 minutes, I decided to go and make sure that they were doing OK. Let me just say, I may have creeped out some people in my area...I was slowly driving around in my truck trying to find him...so everytime I saw a group of kids, I would go real slow by them with me peering out the window. Yes, that night, I became THAT creepy guy prowling for kids. I did eventually find Carter again. Halloween is over.

Weekend roundup

This long weekend was crazy but entertaining. From Thursday to Monday, we did/accomplished/perservered the following:

• Utah's first win of the football season, beating Utah State
• Kennecott Copper Mine tour--pics and discussion to come soon.
• The Living Aquarium--pics and discussion to come soon.
• Ensign Peak hike--pics and discussion to come soon.
• Midway--party up there with biking, games, hanging out and sleeping over.
• Swimming--lots of swimming at my sister E's house.
• Family Dinner Party--hanging out with my siblings families.
• Watched lots of nighttime tennis for the US Open. My favorite female player bowed out quickly...Brodi's favorite male player is still rocking it.

Things missed:

• No salsa dancing this week.
• No marathons run
• Did not win the lottery
• Did not win any metrosexual awards

Hope you all had a good weekend with good times.

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.

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...

Midway and Park City in a weekend

A nice Memorial weekend so far. We spent the weekend up at Brodi's parents condo in Midway where we played some tennis, went to a park, had a nice dinner and watched an entertaining NBA game. One of the nights was long as well as Beckham decided that he sleep was overrated and he just wanted to hang out and not sleep. The joys of being a parent.

We are also fans of Park City's Alpline Slide and Coaster rides. The kids love them. Beckham squealed and Carter yelled 'lets go back again, lets go back again' after every single ride. The coaster ride is actually pretty cool. You slowly go up the mountain but when you hit the top, it is hang on time as you pick up pretty good speed.





It is not cheap though. They know how to charge you a lot of money for what amounts to 10 minutes of action. We would have liked to have stayed longer but we realized that we were completely out of money so it was time to go. Definately a lot of fun though.






On another note, Carter had a few interesting things to say to us this weekend. The first was on our drive up to Midway and Brodi and I decided to have a conversation with each other (I know, crazy!). Carter asked something and Brodi told him just a minute to which Carter responded, 'I command you to listen to me now.'

Carter has allergies though not as bad as Beckham. Well, he says that he gets bubbles in his throat, so we have been giving him Zyrtec to make him more comfortable. He let me know right before he went to bed: "Sam, will you put the pill on my tongue to get rid of the bubbles." Yes, the new slogan of Zyrtec: Try Zyrtec and say good bye to the bubbles.

Random holiday stuff

We had a fabulous New Years Eve party at my sisters house where we eat food, we watch our nieces and nephews showing off their skills in a talent show and then we watch a real bad mormon cheesy movie. Mission Accomplished and it was a great time as usual.


So, I got a call from my buddy Brandon two weeks ago asking me to play in an open doubles Tennis tournament. I said yes simply because Brandon is a great player and I thought he would be able to carry me to glory. Well, we played in it and we won the tourney! We had some tough matches and we won the finals 6-4, 7-5. The biggest disappointment was not getting a Championship belt like they give in wrestling. I was wanting to wear one to work and around the house. I have put the trophy we won on display above our fireplace if any of you are wanting to come by and touch it though.

If anyone is interested, we would be happy to loan to you a 3-year old. The plan would be to loan him to you for about a year and then you could give him back to us when he turns 4. The other option is that we could drop him off at your house at 8am and then you could return him back to us around 7pm. If interested, give me a call.

My brother Josh and his family surprised the family by doing the 42 straight hour drive from DC and just showed up at my mom and dad's house announced. Fun to have them in town. Crazy of them to drive straight through.

After one of our matches, we went out with Brandon and Alissa to an ice cream place a few nights ago. Let me give you a couple of tips on when you should turn around and leave an ice cream store without ordering:

• Nobody is there and its only 8pm.
• You break out into a sweat when you enter the store because it is probably 95 degrees in there.
• They serve mexican food. Yes, it is an ice cream store that will also whip you up a burrito.
• Nobody is there and its only 8pm.

Yeah, we left without ordering anything.

Christmas with 27 nieces and nephews and 14 adults...well, lets just say, it was wild. There have been sleepovers, sledding excursions, games and other stuff. We need to all take a break now.

It is fun to see the Utes get to a big BCS bowl game and they play in the Sugar Bowl game tonight. Go Utes!

A slightly bloody yet always entertaining Christmas Eve ragin' party

Some quick Christmas pictures...

Christmas eve was spent with Brodi's parents and her sister and family. It was a ragin' party and you can tell how lucky the boys were all by their new stylin' pajamas.








Carter had a bell that he got to swing around and have it 'bong', 'bong', 'bong' until he got a little too excited with the ringing and it ended up bonging him in the nose. Blood flowed freely but I stepped in and took control of the situation.





With myself being the only adult male that is not actually a doctor (though I can probably tell if a cow has mastitis in the udder...that makes me a doctor somehow, doesn't it?), I put my skills to work as I expertly bandaged up my poor boy. After getting him fixed up, we listened to Brodi and Erin (both drunk on diet coke) play up a few Christmas carols on the piano. And then we called it a night.

Rockin' Thanksgiving

First off, let me just say that is shocking how much weight you can gain over a 3 day period. Shocking. But it is OK, all of that weight just went into my belly and face--hardly noticeable.

Thanksgiving was fabulous as usual. We spend the evening before Thanksgiving as well as Thanksgiving at Brodi's parents house where we make our stuffing (bread, sage and about 14 cubes of butter) and then we spend the rest of the time eating and eating and eating. I want to feel the pain of being full and trust me, I felt it. I felt it real good. The kids love this because they get the full attention of their grandma and grandpa as well as hanging out with their Gubler cousins. The kids had a contest of spelling different words at the dinner table and laughing their heads off at some of the words they had to spell. Lets just say that the older cousins did a bit better at this game than the younger ones.



The next day we head down to our family ranch down in central Utah where we spend a couple of days eating and playing hard. The ranch is beautiful and lodging is awesome. There is a bedroom and a bathroom for every adult couple as well as another bedroom and a bathroom for ever family's kids (14 bedrooms, 12 bathrooms, yes, you read that correct).





Carter and Beckham could not get enough of it all. Carter calls it: Grandma Kate's Desert House. We then spent the next 2 days hiking to see Indian art, riding four wheelers over thousands of acres and riding horses. They especially liked the hike. What could be better than having hilly desert land in front of you, a nice trail, all of your cousins and few rules? Beckham did have one of his silent tantrums. This tantrum consists of him getting angy over something, laying face first on the ground (or dirt as it was, as we were on a hike) and not moving for a couple of minutes. When he decides that he has won the argument, he gets up and acts like nothing happened. Adorable, unless it was your kid. And Beckham is my kid.



Carter rode the horse all by himself. In fact, he asked that Brodi not steer the horse for him after a while as well. Beckham loved it as well, but he wanted Brodi to sit with him (though he has also ridden a horse all by himself).







The four-wheeling was fun as it was open roads every where you went. The kids just sat in the four-wheeler, clenched their teeth and hung on, laughing and talking the whole way.








Dinner was massive as every family made it their duty to bring lots of food. Plenty of food. And overall the trip was as fun as expected even though Beckham was a bit confused with me sleeping in his bed with him (he wouldn't sleep in the crib or on blankets on the floor, so he got to join me in the bed...Carter slept with Brodi) so we spent about 3-hours in the middle of the night hanging out with my trying to convince him it was time to go to sleep and him trying to convince me that I was wrong.

Overall, a very nice weekend and it is back to the grind of school, work, etc...

obligatory Halloween pictures

So we showed Carter different costume options to see what he wanted to be. He wasn't sure but he happily looked through all of the different costumes. He finally found a Pumpkin costume which he thought was pretty cool and we thought we had a winner...until, he found another costume. A dementer. Yes, a very creepy Harry Potter dementer. He had his heart set on it. And we as parents caved in on it and decided to go for it. Let me tell you, that was one spooky costume and he could not have been happier.







Beckham also got very lucky and was a cow. I tried to say that he was a Pakistani cow, but in reality he was just a good old american one.







They both loaded up on the candy. Too much candy. Cool thing was that I could go thru their candy and take out the good stuff (Dots--oh yea, they were gone the minute they went into their bags...swedish fish? Same thing, gone in 10 seconds). Let me just say that I have managed to evenly distribute the extra 5 pounds of weight that I gained all thru my thighs and other regions.