Jason has seen the twiLIGHT!

It is true. Last Saturday night Jason went with some of his football coaching buddies and saw the movie Twilight! And he LOVED it!!! Well...he said it wasn't as bad as he thought it was going to be. But he did say it had a good story and could have been a good movie if it didn't have so much cheese. What is to be learned from this? Never say never. (I guess I should mention that the wives of all the guys were there too. But is sounded much better saying that just the guys went.) Have I gone too far posting this?

Jason’s rebuttal:

Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Let’s not get carried away with half truths on an issue that could jeopardize my man card. Yes, I did see Twilight and yes I said “it was not as bad as expected”, but I did not say it had a good story and I did not enjoy it. Frankly, the whole thing was disturbing. Vampires with excessive white powder and lipstick who live in a multi-million dollar mansion, drive luxury cars and move around the forest like flying squirrels is a little too freakish for me. Also, as a general rule, I don’t hang around with people whose every instinct is to kill me so I had a hard time understanding the premise of the movie. Overall, I left the movie feeling like I had just bathed in cheese whiz, and that was the best part. From young girls behind us crying to watching the Big 12 Conference championship on my phone, it was an unforgettable experience. Can I have my eight dollars back?

Happy Birthday Owen!

Owen just celebrated his 3rd birthday last week. He is growing up so fast, also. He's my first child to be completely potty trained before their 3rd birthday. Owen loves balloons, but usually lets go of the string outside and gets upset when the balloon flies up through the air, so he wanted to have a balloon cake this year. We decided to get him a real bike with training wheels for his birthday. He has a lot to work on, his 2 older brothers could ride their bikes without training wheels when they were 3. Ryan actually learned a couple weeks before he was 3. Owen also likes cars and trains, so Grandma got him some more tracks for his GeoTrax train. He had a great birthday.

Happy Birthday Zach!

Zach celebrated his 9th birthday just over a week ago. (I would have posted sooner but I thought I was locked out of the blog. I wasn't.) Zach got to celebrate his birthday over the weekend. First he had a late night with a couple of friends. He wanted to go bowling because he had to miss Ryan's birthday bowling night because of football. Then on Saturday, which was his actual birthday, we went out to dinner. Zach was in the mood for ribs, so we went to Famous Dave's. Not as good as Jason's BBQ, but not bad. Then on Sunday he got to celebrate with family. Zach is about all things Bingham HS, so he asked for a Bingham Miners cake this year. Much easier, and less time consuming than the guitar. I can't believe my first baby is 9 yrs old. It's amazing how fast they grow up.

Laura has gone too far!

Hello everyone, this is Jason. To provide an example of my longstanding patience and tolerance I have posted the photo above. To celebrate the opening of Twilight, Laura decided to get a temporary tattoo (or bumper sticker for those who are familiar with white trash vernacular) of the name Edward. Normally, I patiently endure Laura’s erratic behavior, but I have decided to take action since the Twilight obsession has gone too far this time. Regretfully, I have decided to hack into the blog, change the password and post this message. This information (and possibly more) will remain on the blog until Laura has done ten nice things for me. If any of you have ideas for something Laura can do nice, please be sure to share.

Halloween

The kids had a great time on Halloween. Zach and Ryan were so excited to be able to paint their faces, although Ryan's face paint only lasted about 5 minutes. Just after I had painted his face he went downstairs and rolled all over the sofa and most of the makeup ended up on the sofa cushions. Owen didn't quite remember what Halloween was all about until we finally went trick or treating. He was so excited that people were giving him candy but he was still polite and said thank you to everyone even without prompting from me. I hope Zach and Ryan were polite, but I don't know because as soon as we were out the door and they saw some friends they were off running. When Owen and I made it back to the house and hour later Zach and Ryan were home and done with their trick or treating. It was a fun night.

"RAIDER NATION"
Baseball player

Soldier, or as Ryan says, an Army Guy

End of the season

The football season has come to a close. Unfortunately, Zach's team wasn't able to pull off a win today, but they played a good, strong, close game. We had a great season and are proud of Zach for his dedication and hard work this year. We look forward to another great football season next year.

Are you ready for some FOOTBALL?

Now that football season is coming to a close I thought I'd post a few pictures of Zach. It's been a busy, fun, exciting past few months. I wasn't sure how things would work out with his hearing aids, but it's been fine. We have all had a great time. Zach has done really well playing defensive end and his team has had a great season. This Saturday his team (Bingham Black) takes on Alta in their first playoff game. (The FON's son Landon is on the Alta team.) Zach's number is 19 and he's tough. GO BINGHAM!!!

Happy Birthday, Ryan!

Ryan turned 7 this past weekend. He didn't have a friend birthday party, but he did get to celebrate all weekend. First, I took him and a couple of his friends bowling. They were very competitive always wanting to know who was winning and running smack at me. One of his friends even told me he thought I needed to take bowling lessons. Yeah...but I didn't have to have the bumpers up! Ryan was even running smack about an older lady a few lanes down from us until he went down and looked at her score. He came back to our lane with an astonished face and said, "Whoa, that lady has three strikes in a row!" That was the end of the smack talking.

The next night we took Ryan (and the rest of the family) out to dinner at his choice of restaurant. He chose Cafe Rio, or just Rio as he calls it. He snarfed down his salad like he hadn't eaten in a week. I think we need to work a little more on table manners.

Finally, on Labor Day we celebrated his birthday with family. He wanted a guitar cake this year, so I did my best. I know I'm not the "Ace of Cakes", but he thought it was cool. It took forever to make and only minutes to eat. All that hard work so quickly destroyed, but it was fun and Ryan liked it.

Fun in the Sun!

Last week our friends had a birthday party for their son Amani. For the party they bought this waterslide and the kids had a blast. They spent HOURS racing, sliding and having a great time enjoying the water. At first Owen was too scared to climb up the "ladder" to go down. We tried and tried to get him to climb up. Finally, Jason just lifted him up to the top and then he had to go down. After that we couldn't get him off the slide. Thanks for a great party. And thanks to Jason and Andrea for these pictures. I forgot my camera, of course.

Ryan got some good air up there at the top.

First Day of School!

It's hard to believe that the kids have already gone back to school, but yesterday was their first day. Zach is now in 3rd grade and Ryan is in 2nd grade. We have year round school and are on C track, which means we go for 3 weeks and then we have our first break for 3 weeks. So even though the kids have started school we still get to have a little more summer in a few weeks. They seemed fairly excited that morning to go back, but after school Ryan could not stop talking about how much fun he had and how he LOVED school. (I hope that attitude lasts throughout the year.) I think Zach's excitement for school was overshadowed by his excitement to start football. His first day for football workouts was yesterday also. Things went well after he faced the fact that he was just going to be HOT. He didn't even have all his pads on, just his helmet. He'll be really busy with practices for the next few weeks but we're excited to see him play in a real football game. Owen was not excited for his brothers to go back to school because he didn't get to go too. He was very upset that he was not old enough to go. After repeatedly telling him that he would get to go next year, and that not satisfying him, I gave up and told him we could have school at our house. So I got out some paper and colored pencils and told him he needed to learn his ABC's. That seemed to work, for today anyway. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

We love Grammy and Papa

We loved spending time with Grammy and Papa while they were here visiting from their temporary home in the Philippines. On the day before they returned to the Philippines, I took these pictures at our cousin Bradon's Eagle Court of Honor (hence the Scout uniform). We love you Grammy and Papa and are looking forward to when you come home next year.

4th of July

For the 4th of July we went up to Jordan Pines, with the Howes family, for a BBQ. We had a great time being with family, enjoying nature and, of course, eating.

Ryan loves to pose for the camera.
Owen had fun playing in the dirt until the ants got him.
Grammy and Zach spent time together taking a walk and just talking.

The wild flowers were beautiful when we were there. Just above our picnic site Grammy found this wild Columbine. We had to hike up a steep hill to get to it, but it was worth it.

Catchin' Crawdads!

A few weeks ago we went up to Strawberry Reservoir with our cousins to fish for crawdads. We had a great time being with family and catching buckets full of crawdads. We bought a crawdad trap to help with our efforts, but it wasn't a huge success. Of the 150-200 crawdads that were caught that day only 1 was caught in the trap. The crawdads were easy to catch by just walking along the shore and picking them up with our hands or scooping them up in a net. After the fishing was through we had a crawdad BOIL with corn on the cob and potatoes. Some ate a lot of crawdads, some ate a few and some didn't eat any. We had a great time and plan to go again.

Zach with one of the many catches of the day.

Ryan, being Ryan.
The crawdad trap and chicken leg bait.
Buckets o' crawdads!
Owen even caught a few in the net.


The BOIL!
Good Eats?