Leftovers

The sign of a great weekend is lots of leftovers - sure I like food leftovers, and there are some of those, but more than that I mean leftover good feelings, leftover fun memories, and leftover energy to attack the new week.  So I guess that means this weekend was a good one...

When you have a big extended family like I do, it's hard to get everyone together on a regular basis.  But when you can swing it, it's always fun.  We had a great family dinner, celebrating five recent birthdays, and eating some amazing food.  OK, the bulk of the food was all really good, but the frosted orange rolls were downright amazing.  Even Angela had three...  It was fun to see the family, and catch up with everyone.

I took Brig to the BYU-Utah rugby game up at Rio Tinto stadium on Saturday.  Man would I have liked to play on that ground when I was playing for BYU!  The Cougs dominated the game, as I expected them to, but it wasn't a pushover, it was a physical match with some darn good play by BYU especially.  Brig liked it, and I love having him go with me to stuff like that because I hope to see him out there himself someday.  We ran into some of my old teammates and friends, which was really cool, but it would've even been better if Spencer was there with me.

I got outside on my bike on Saturday for the first time since our move to Utah.  It was heaven!  That's something I've really missed about California - year round riding.  I would've liked to go farther, but in the end I was really happy with 22 miles at a pretty decent clip.  It seems like I have pretty good legs already, thanks to running and to some garage trainer sessions.  Can't wait for consistently better weather to get out there lots more this spring!

I have a new project.  Furniture.  As we watch our house start to go up, it's time to start thinking about filling it with stuff we need (or want, let's be honest).  We visited my sister and her husband in their apartment yesterday because he's been an animal in my Dad's garage workshop, building multiple pieces with some very nice results.  So I wanted to see what he's done, and get some ideas as to what I can do for us.  I've definitely got some fun ideas and can't wait for some weekend trips up to the workshop.

Finally, I've been meaning to write about our friends the Werners for a few weeks now, but I keep either forgetting or not writing in the blog for days.  They're our friends from Los Altos who also have a nice home here in Provo.  We're excited because they're planning to move out and live in their home, so it'll be fun to have some CA friends here.  We had a breakfast with them a few weeks ago and it was great to catch up, see their home, and think about more associations in the future.  Sean's a fire/police man in Santa Clara and may have to commute back there for a while until he gets on the force in Utah, but he's got a pretty good schedule that will allow him to do it.  Hope to see more of them.  (and, I love their kitchen table ... speaking of furniture...).

Huge Bundle of Awesomeness!

Yesterday afternoon, March 2, 2011, digging commenced on our new home!  It seems like we've been waiting forever, so we're super psyched to have ground broken and things underway.  It's right on the way to and from work, and in fact we'll be able to see it going up when I drop Micah off at school, so I'll post periodic updates.  We expect it to go up pretty quickly, and it'll be fun to walk through and see the progress.  Very excited and a little nervous...

Also, I mentioned previously that I'm getting Lasik.  After my prep appointment this morning, I'm officially scheduled for next Friday morning, 3/11, which is great news.  It was kind of a grueling process today as they had to first assess that my eyes are now making enough tears, and then they had to run a whole bunch of other tests to make sure things were good to go.  My eyes have been doing better making tears, but I didn't want to take any chances, so when they put the tear strips in my eyes and left the room, I worked hard to make sure I was tearing up.  I couldn't really get any good tears going by thinking of the kids, so I resorted to physical "persuasions", repeatedly punching myself in the nose, and then finally going to the ever popular nose hair pull.  It worked.

So the whole reason for doing Lasik now is that I've been having problems with my contact lens in my right eye because of some previous and recurring infections.  Well, that's rearing its ugly head again because the scarring on the eye from the infections is going to force me to have one procedure on the right eye - which takes lots longer to heal - and one procedure on the left eye - which will heal quickly, so at least I'll have one good eye...  The other bummer is I can't swim for a couple weeks post surgery, but small price to pay, and it'll give me a chance to hit running and biking harder.  Anyway, I'm excited about all that too.

And in the not-so-awesome category, we've still got our taxes hanging over our heads.  It's time we just bite the bullet and do them, but we're pretty sure we're going to have to pay, so while it will be good to know the damage, I'm not anxious to fork over our $$$.  Oh well, nothing we can do about it ... that's legal anyway.

Kennan

Our beautiful Kennan turned 11 years old last week.  Yep, I said 11.  I know, it's hard to believe - she's growing up.  It was really fun to celebrate with her, and I could tell she was very happy to have family and friends around her on that special day.  She woke up to balloons and birthday signs, and we had muffin tops as a fun replacement for our traditional donuts.  She took Sundance suckers for all the kids in her class, which probably made them happy it was her birthday too!  Then that evening we had a fun dinner at Pizza Factory - with the amazing garlic breadsticks on a stick - and then opened presents before eating our free (BYU bball tickets) Magleby's chocolate cake.  I've had some good chocolate cake in my time, but that cake might just be the best ever.

Kennan has blossomed in the last year, for sure.  She exhibits a fun and often quirky sense of humor, filled with funny impressions, well-timed movie quotes, and a touch of dryness that goes over well.  It's awesome to see her "perform", because it's often unexpected.  She's a sweet girl with a ready smile and hug.  I love her very much!

Lots Going On

We've had an amazing last few days.  Many of our great friends from California came to Utah for Ski Week, and were kind enough to include us in their plans.  We stayed with a big group in a lodge/cabin up Big Cottonwood cabin by Solitude Ski Resort, and it was very fun...crowded, but fun.  Getting up there Saturday night was sketchy as it was snowing very hard, and we had only a vague idea of where the cabin actually was.  But we made it, and it turned out to be fun to have so much new snow (25 inches that day and night).  We skied Solitude on Monday, Presidents Day, and had a great time.

On Tuesday evening we also visited some very close CA friends who were staying at The Canyons - a bit of a drive, but totally worth it.  So good to see Jared and Becca and their family.  We ate dinner, hot-tubbed, talked, cleaned up puke, and had a later-than-we-should-have-on-a-school-night fun evening.

Then last night we met the gang for a trip to the BYU basketball game (which the refs did their best to completely take over), which was fun but another late-ish evening.  So now we have some very tired kids, and I think the next couple of days will be all about school and recovery.

I may have mentioned on the blog a couple of times over the last 8-9 months that my eyes and contacts have been bothering me pretty badly at times.  The struggles have continued periodically, and it's finally become necessary to think about other options.  So after a few Dr visits, lots of eye drops to overcome blepharitis and lack of tears, I'm now scheduled for Lasik on March 11th.  There's still a decent chance the Dr will decide to wait a little longer, but I'm hopeful we can just get it taken care of.  Fingers crossed...

Kennan had a fun project at school this week called a Wax Museum.  All the kids in her class picked a famous historical figure, wrote a biographical sketch, put together a costume and booth, and then would hold a pose until somebody pressed their button to speak.  Kennan did Althea Gibson, one of the first black tennis players to win a major tournament.  She enjoyed it.

Quick Hitter

I put in a reservation for my BYU football season tickets next season, and I'm psyched about it!  I always vowed that if/when we moved back here, that's something I would definitely do - and thankfully Ang is on board.  Should be fun to spend a few Saturday hours with Brig (or others) at the games.

No new news on the house.  Reportedly the new plans with all our changes are almost done at the architect, and then they'll go over to Provo City for permits.  We can't wait until they get started so we have something tangible to see and follow.  Plus I want to see how big the house footprint will be on our lot.

The exercise has been going pretty well the last couple of weeks.  I haven't missed any days for a while, and I'm happy with the consistency.  Pretty soon it's going to be time to start into two-a-days as I ratchet up my training for a heavy triathlon schedule planned for this summer.  What makes it all about 10 times better is daily training check-ins and periodic race chats with my brother Dave - he's the best.

What's that smell?!

It's dutch oven lunch day today at work, so all the current and former scouters have brought in their best dutch oven food creations. I happily have designated myself as a QA tester. And with about an hour to go until we're called down to lunch, the smell has permeated the whole building, and I've got a puddle of drool next to my keyboard (ok, not really, but it smells dang good).

The other current smell that seems to be lingering around me is chlorine. I've been swimming a few mornings a week (I DON'T recommend waking up at 5:20am and going out into the freezing cold to drive to the gym!), and thanks to the highly chlorinated pool, I'm having a hard time ridding myself of traces of chlorine, no matter how many times I shower.

Morgan's suffering right now because she slipped on the ice last week at school and has a very sore tailbone. It didn't help that last night she slipped coming down the stairs in her footy pajamas and landed on the aforementioned ouchy. It's sad to see her hurting. Kennan seems to be finally getting over her sickness, probably thanks to the antibiotics we got her on. I hope no-one else gets sick or hurt.

You know how I said we made final decisions on our new home construction last week?  Well, we had three days to make additional changes, and thank goodness for that, because thanks to my amazing Mom, we realized there were things we could do a little bit better than we had planned.  So Angela's rushing around furiously today trying to make some final decisions on colors, textures, etc., and it looks like a few things that we had second thoughts on are falling into place.  There are a couple items I had to remind myself that it makes sense to spend some money on because we'll really want them in the long run.  That's hard for me to do...

Anyway, fun weekend.  We took the kids skiing at Sundance, and they all did great.  Each of them has their own likes and dislikes, and skill levels.  I was particularly pleased with how Brig did - his second day of skiing ever, and before too long he was going down the whole run by himself.  Angela's a great ski instructor!

We also hung out with the Richards clan on Saturday and Sunday, which was particularly nice since we hadn't been able to see any of them yet.  It's great to be close to family.