Break it down

This is made of awesome. Oh, and watch for the old dude.

Take that, Sarah!

i got quite the scolding from her for not updating my blog enough, so to answer her, i chose to give my blog a whole new makeover. i also intend to update it far more often, just to be able to say "in your face... what now?!"

indeed. in order prove Sarah wrong about my blog, i am doing exactly what she wants. go figure?

love you, Sarah. :)

A sad truth

It appears that Hakan will not be fulfilling his father's dream for him to become a world class body builder.

The other day I found him on our bathroom floor, staring intently at some pictures in one of Aaron's muscle magazines. When I asked what he was doing he replied, "I don't like dat guy. He's all yucky."

Sorry, Aaron, but I have to agree. Those guys are all yucky.

Hollywood here they come!!

I finally decided it's time to exploit....di mean, showcase those two little weirdos we know as pyper and hakan.  I'm sure you guys remember the videos I posted of them a while back; well, I finally decided to put them onto youtube.  You can find them by typing in "pyper gets puzzled" and "hakan is a sunbeam".  Tell your friends.

Good Times

This Memorial Day, Rachelle, Patrick and I took a trip down south for some down time. We had a really nice time, even though the weather forecast was not looking good. For some reason, I tend to forget how amazing the country is out here. Just the drive down would have been worth the trip. We spent the first night near Lower Calf Creek Falls, which turned out to be amazing.




Go figure, in the middle of the desert.





The next day, we stopped by the Petrified Forest near Escelante for a quick hike. It turned out to be really cool. Then we headed down to Bryce Canyon ( cause I've never been there) for a night. We got lucky, the weather wasn't too bad even though we did get some rain.




So, this picture is funny because it was almost the last one ever taken of us. Rachelle didn't tell me she was about to jump on my back and we came really close to falling over that little cliff behind us.






Sunrise






I can't wait until this summer, I am planning on living in the woods the entire time. Hope everyone is doing well.

My weirdos

While I was writing the latest post on my blog this morning, I noticed that the house was very quiet.
Eerily quiet.
Dangerously quiet.
I finished what I was doing and went to investigate, expecting the worst. When I turned the corner into the living room, this is what I found.


Have I mentioned that they're goofballs?

Competitive running

I ran my first 5k today and things went pretty well. I did the Cotton Row Run which is a 30 year Memorial Day tradition in Huntsville. I've never done a race on foot before, so it was a little intimidating. I ended up finishing strong and feeling good. My official time was a 22:35, but the photo of me clearly shows that I was well across the line with a 22:34. I finished 82nd overall out of 1677 and 6th in my age group (25-29) out of 70. Not bad for a first time. I think I could have gone a little faster if I had been a little more diligent in my training. The race day kind of snuck up on me, so I didn't really do much to prepare until the last week or so. My shins and calves were getting pretty sore by the time I finished, but I wasn't really all that tired. It's probably not something I'm going to get really into, but I might do it once or twice a year.



And in this week's episode of Zoey being a nut, we have her playing with our friend's Great Dane Patton. He's 5 times her size, but she uses her agility to try to out maneuver him.




I also meant to include this video a while ago, but I keep forgetting. It's from an Avett Brothers concert that Dena and I went to in April down in Birmingham. This is the end of the song that is the source of the quote at the top of the blog. The song is called "Murder in the City" if you're wondering. The title sounds a little dark and gruesome, but it's actually very touching. You can watch their video on YouTube if you want to hear the whole thing HERE.

Our trip to "boize"!!

I write "boize" because kristen keeps getting on my case about calling "boize" and not boise. Anyhoo...we went because one of kristen's friends from childhood was graduating from boise state.  We were going to leave friday after she got out of class but we bought a gps thingy and it took ALOT longer to load then i thought so we left at 3 o'clock saturday morning in order to get to boise by 8.  bah!!  So we got to the graduation and everything, which took like 2 or more hours. Even with a nap it felt like forever.  

We then went to Sarah's after that.  I played with the kids while Kris played with the baby.  The weather was gorgeous so we took them outside 

and played catch, 

throw, 

and get hit.  

It was a ton of fun.  I can't wait to see them again.

Hi

I don't really have much to say, but it's a lazy rainy Sunday afternoon, so I thought I'd take some pictures and post them up. I'm about halfway done with my fence, now. I'm pretty happy with how it's come out so far.



Here's a picture of me and my sweet little Zozo. She's getting all grown up. I hope you all get to meet her this fall. We're planning on taking her with us to NC for the wedding. If you're wondering why my hand looks so funny, I'm in the middle of snapping my finger to try to get her to look at the camera.



We also took a few family pictures that included the cat and the dog. I think we went through an entire package of turkey trying to keep the two of them occupied instead of trying to eat each other. This one is my favorite, even though it was kind of a disaster with my trying to keep the dog from running away and Dena keeping the cat from defacing the dog.




And here is a video of Zoey doing her favorite thing in the world, wrestling with another dog. I think she would do this until her heart gave up if we would let her.

It's tee ball season!

Pyper has recently begun her second foray into "organized" sports. I say "organized", but how organized is 5-year-old tee ball, really? One of the moms from our preschool group mentioned tee ball to me a few months ago when Pyper was still doing indoor soccer. I remember playing tee ball and baseball as a kid and having tons of fun. (Don't make fun- I had no control over my style at this age!)



I asked Pyper if she'd like to play and she seemed interested so we signed her up. She's had 3 practices so far and I'm really not sure how much of it she actually gets. It's obvious that she's enjoying herself, though. She gets to be silly with her friend, burn off some energy and she even got a new hat, team shirt, baseball pants, mitt & ball out of it (we bought the pants, mitt & ball). Her team is the Giants and she wears her hat EVERY. DAY. I think she even slept in it the first night she got it.

Another thing I'm not sure of is just how serious this league takes their games. With soccer they didn't even keep score. They just wanted all the kids to get to play and have a good time running around. I guess we'll see how it goes with this. Her first game is in a couple of weeks, so hopefully that will give them some time to learn a few more things.





There are a few older boys on the team who have obviously played before, but she doesn't mind. She was so funny at the first practice. I was trying to teach her how to throw by showing her that you step with your left foot as you throw with your right hand. Of course that got her thinking about it too much which made it even harder to do it the right way. She eventually got it, though. Then when they were running the bases at the end she decided that she needed to catch up with everyone in front of her and skipped first base all together and headed straight for second. She'll figure it out. I know she will. In the meantime she can have a grand time playing and we can have a grand time laughing. :)

What's Happening?

All right you guys - surely something is going on in your lives worth communicating! Things here at the park are getting busy, and there is always something going on. Broken water lines to fix, grant requests to write, new hiking trails to develop, patrols to make, wood to chop (Todd - where are you when I need you?), drinking fountains to fix, restrooms to clean and so on and so on. It never ends. Jennifer seems to be spending more time in town than at home with the end of the school year coming up.
You can also take this as a reminder to call you Mom on Mothers Day. We're looking forward to being able to talk to Kimberly on the phone tomorrow (one of 2 days in the year she's allowed to phone home). We got our tickets the other day for our flights to North Carolina in October, and as an extra added bonus, we got tickets for Grandma to go as well. She'll fly from Oakland to Las Vegas and meet us there and we'll all fly together after that. We're all looking forward to the trip.
You guys get busy and write something, OK? We love to hear what's going on with you. Dad

Best Week Ever!! (at least so far)

Since Kris and I haven't got any pictures of our wedding yet, I'm gonna go ahead and post pictures from our honeymoon down in Florida.  It actually started in Salt Lake.  We reserved a suite at this place called Anniversary Inn.  It took us a while to find it because it wasn't in the phonebook and we couldn't find it just looking ourselves.  So we finally googled it and found it. We didn't feel much better once we found it because it looked pretty ghetto on the outside and Kris was sure we'd have to get a tetnis shot afterwards or something.  However, once we were on the inside it wasn't that bad.  It was actually quite nice.  It was themed after Angel Falls or something like that.  We had a tree "growing" around the bed, a "waterfall" by the tub, and an upstairs loft where we could watch tv.

  

After that we flew to Orlando where uncle Chris and aunt Tricia picked us up and took us to their place.  We stayed in the cottage Popper built for great-grandma.  Tricia and Chris were nice enough to stock the fridge and freezer a little

 bit and leave some snacks for us.  The first full day we were there was pretty grim.  It was rainy, windy, and there was even a tornado watch for the area; so we just stayed inside or the few times it let up I took her around Auburndale to the shake shop or pet shop.  We still had fun regardless of the weather.

It wasn't too bad because the next day was absolutely gorgeous.  Tricia and Chris also let us borrow their extra car and gps thingy to go to Disney World.  We spent the entire day at Magic Kingdom.  Kris had never been before so she was super excited and so was I but that's because I'm a 6'2" 4 year old.

  

Anyhoo...we were able to go to all the rides we wanted to even if the wait was like an hour or more at some of them. Does anyone know if it's a federal law that you have to wait in line everywhere you go in Disney World?  They had two parades during the day and fireworks at night.  Anyone who knows mine and Kristen'

s story, knows that fireworks are a big part of it so that was alot of fun watching them.  They even had a real life Tinkerbell "flying" down from the castle.  It was a total mind blow.

The next day we went to Animal Kingdom (another disney 

world park).  It was basically a glorified zoo but Kris and I both love zoos so it was still fun.  Especially since she had a migraine the night before and probably couldn't have handled alot of crazy rides.  They had alot of cool aminals, even a safari ride you could go on.  That was really fun.  The one real ride we went on was a roller coaster set at Mt. Everest.  At one point you're going up but the tracks were broken by the Abominable Snowman so we rolled backwards down the track for a while.  It was one of the funnest I've ever been on.  

We only stayed at Animal Kingdom for half the day, the other half we went to Cocoa Beach.  We found a spot that hardly anyone was at so swa

m while Kris looked for seashells.  The water was actually really warm.  I missed the beach so much (especially since it snowed in Rexburg the week before we got married)  

We're back now in Rexburg, moving into our new apartment together.  We had alot of fun opening all of our presents (thank you sooo much everyone)  We're thinking of starting our own blog once we start having stuff to blog about.  We'll see.  Thanks again to everyone who was able to come to the wedding.  It really made us happy to see y'all.  

 

"hey, brother"

I have a crush. His name is Buster. I made a t-shirt to show how much he means to me.
Isn't he handsome?

I like my new t-shirt.

Thank you for introducing us Bryce & Dena! :)

Wonderful Weekend

Dad here. Sorry I’m so slow getting this post up. After driving 1300 miles over last weekend, we got back and had to catch back up with things here at home. But we really did have a wonderful weekend in Idaho for Todd and Kristen’s wedding and Finnley’s blessing. Sarah has posted a good bit on her blog, but I’ll add a bit here.
We were able to go up Wednesday evening and meet up in Salt Lake with Grandma, Cheryl, Ryan and Jan at Gabes. Jan’s aunt and uncle in Bountiful kindly put us up (put up with us?) for the night and we were able to go up to Rexburg on Thursday in time to go through the temple with Todd and Kristen in the evening. We were able to stay with my cousin Nadine and her husband Mike. With so many family there, we were pretty well spread out over about 3 counties, but it was great to get together again.

On Friday, after a few wedding preparations, we got together for Finn’s blessing in Idaho Falls, which was a wonderful event. He’s so much fun and cuter than humanly possible.
And of course, Saturday was the wedding. Kristen was beautiful and Todd’s face hurt from smiling so much.
The temple president, who performed the wedding, mentioned how important family support was for young couples, and he was pretty impressed when I told him we had family here from Florida, Alabama, Missouri, New Mexico, Utah and California as well as Idaho (hope I didn’t miss anyone!). We do thank you all for your love and support of our family. It really means a lot to all of us. The quote at the top of this blog is not an idle statement. The reception was great (especially since we were inside out of the rain!) and all in all a memorable event.
On Sunday, we got up and headed home, with a stop in Salt Lake at Keith’s for lunch (wedding luncheon leftovers). Todd and Kristen were there as well before leaving on their honeymoon to Florida. Mom and Jennifer had to get back to Kanab so Jennifer could get to class on Monday morning, but I was able to stay in Salt Lake over Monday and spend some time with Bryce before he flew home in the afternoon. We went up to Park City, walked around the Temple Square area, went up to the DUP museum and looked at Grandpa Patterson’s loom, and drove up to Antelope Island for a quick look at the park (and buffalo).
I’ve got quite a few pictures from the weekend already, but if those of you who took more will send copies to me (via CD would probably work the best) I’ll compile them all into one DVD and get everyone a copy who wants one. Thanks again for a happy and memorable weekend. I’ve got an idea! Let’s do it again in October! Only in North Carolina this time! See ya then, if not before.

What the...?

Did we just time-warp to June? Today we have...

...a freshly washed car...

... flip-flops...

... cut grass...

... and BBQ chicken in the crock pot.
If I wasn't wearing a hoodie right now I'd swear the weather just skipped ahead a couple of months. Thank goodness we're finally getting a break from that bloody wind!