144 beautiful Diet Cokes

Now, most of you know that we enjoy a good diet drink (Tab is usually the beverage of choice due to its fabulous nutrional content) but Diet Coke is also a fan favorite of ours.

I have been known to buy many 12 packs of these drinks at a time. But even I have to say that I was impressed as I walked by this person's car...I did not know the person and I usually do not spend a lot of time staring into the backseats of peoples cars, but its backseat contents made me stop and admire.

Yes, there are at least 12 of these 12-packs in the backseat. The reason that I love this is I can just see this person buying all of these 12 packs, and as you can see by the picture, they are not put in the backseat in an orderly way--they are just thrown back there. What does this mean? The person was probably so embarrassed to buy that many that they filled the shopping cart, paid for it and then jogged out to the car with the cart and hurriedly threw them in the back of the car so that nobody could see what they just bought. C'mon Diet Coke drinker...no need to be ashamed, be proud of your Diet Coke consumption. Its truly a badge of honor to be able to drink that many before they expire...and yes people, soda drinks usually expire--usually within 3 months of when you purchase them.

Now, if that car had that many Tab 12-packs in its backseats, lets just say, I would have stolen that car within a minute and being in Tab heaven.

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.