The End MUST be Near

Because of a variety of incomprehensible situations, I realized the other day that the End must be nearing. Consider these items and try to convince me otherwise:

#3: Rob created a blog. That's really not a big deal to the rest of us, but to put this in perspective, I hear that the Town of Princeville will be awarding him the 'First Citizen to Log Onto That Darn In-Ter-Net Thing' award. And a banquet.

#2: Jenny, the consummate corporate professional on the fast-track, the know-it-all (in a good way) go-to-gal of user interfaceverything recently decided to stay home and raise CJ. Now that's great soup.

#1: I have a 6lb bag of protein in my pantry...I've been making one or two fruit smoothies a day...and I regularly *gasp* work out at Gold's Gym. Anybody that knows me, knows that this is simply not possible.

Yeah, just try to convince me otherwise. Actually, my feelings lately have been that there is a lot of great stuff going on around you in life if you just choose to look.

King Spam and the Toxic Peanut

I just thought that would be a cool title for a post.

Growing Up

This was a landmark weekend regarding how much fun it is starting to become to have older kids. We have had a great time playing games at a suprisingly comprehensive level, in addition to the fact that Mia and Cooper play together very well for extended periods of time now, so I was able to finish my taxes, etc. It's so nice not to have to babysit - for a few minutes at a time anyway!
One of the sweetest moments in recent memory happened while we were playing Pictionary on Saturday night. David and I on one team and Steve, Shanna, and Mia on the other team, which worked out well, since Steve's 30 second attention span lent itself to needing a 3rd player. Anyway, Mia was doing an awesome job drawing and guessing - she seriously beat Dave and I drawing a couple of times, no holds barred. One of those included "underwater camera", complete with a stickman diver wearing flippers, diving under the waterline while holding a camera. We came upon the word "small" and it was an all-play, so that left Mia and I drawing. I drew various contrasting objects and finally David guessed it right before the time ran out. But neither Shanna or Steve had guessed anything close to Mia's highly detailed little object, so they asked her what she was drawing. "A grasshopper." We totally died laughing. So then she says, "I guess a shoulda drawn a ladybug - they're even smaller..."
Here is pic of Mia, Coop and I playing Uno tonight. Cooper is fully functional and can get through an entire game without me having to tell him which card to play. Note the "I really don't care if anyone sees my cards" attitude, which means Mia just works him over when it's her turn to pick a color. Note2 the duration of which it takes Mia to play a card, routinely resulting in napping antics.

Hawkins lays down the law

Dan Hawkins (the previous Broncos coach) took on a huge challenge in building the Colorado football program back up - they were 2-10 this year. At at recent press conference, he decided he needed to set a minor detail straight. Now that is funny. Sounded a little like Howard Dean runnin' for president.

Tundra update

We saw a new Tundra in person this weekend at the local Toyota dealer (we seem to spend a lot of time there for some reason). My first impression is that the overall size is definitely in the 'real truck' category. It comes across no less than a Ford, Chevy, Dodge etc. So if that was one of the goals, I'd say it's been met. Shanna didn't really like the hood which is very short(depth), tall(height) and rounded(shape). I think it looks sweet - kinda like a semi-truck. We saw the double cab and single cab models, but no CrewMax yet. Because of the overall size issue, I'm sticking with the '06+ Tacoma Double Cab as the Current Truck of Choice. Shanna easily retained her Sequoia selection as Current SUV of Choice.

Toyota's new Tundra

Finally getting some good info on Toyota's new Tundra. This version is the first major competitor to GM and Ford, coming in at 3" longer than the F-150. I'm not a big 'big' truck fan, but I think it is very good looking in the CrewMax configuration shown below. Like an upsized version of our Tacoma with twice as much power. Now, where did I put that extra $38000 I had laying around....

Ooooohh, stock headers.....

Skiing with the kids (sort of)

I had been talking for quite a while about taking the kids skiing this winter, so we sort of did that last Saturday. Actually it was more of a field trip just to get them used to the idea. So we drove up to Bogus Basin to have a look around. They loved the chair lifts, the magic carpet, the lodge, the tubing hill etc. I think it's safe to say that we'll get back up as soon as possible and go skiing for real!

BSU Baskefootball Game

Went to the BSU basketball game last night, along with over 10,000 other fans, to see the football team honored at halftime for their Fiesta Bowl victory. Thought it was humorous that it takes the other ball team and $3 tickets to sell out a basketball game, but hey, whatever works. There are normally only about 3000 fans at a regular basketball game - for good reason - they are not that good. I like coach Graham, but I thought he would have been able to build the team up more in the last few years instead of just having the same old free throw shooting problems...anyway they brought the trophy and the players out and the place just went crazy!

He's gonna kill me later

Who needs to go to the ballet when you've got one in your own living room? Cooper is going to kill me if he sees this picture when he's about 18 years old. That darn In-ter-net will be broke by then anyway so I don't think I have to worry too much.
Mia is the instructor with the notepad and Coop is the somewhat obedient student. But when the camera comes out, he always zips right over and stands just like that.

1 times 2 equals 4

One iPod Shuffle times Two sets of ear buds equals Four entertained kids. Hey, whatever works on a boring Saturday afternoon!

Frozen toes to go

Went to lunch and never came back. Ended up snowboarding with Roger up at Bogus instead. Was a beautiful day with no wind, but it was a tidy 5 degrees F. Totally frozen nose, but still better than going back to work.

Final 2006-'07 season BSU post (I promise)

A friend gave me a couple of excellent videos on BSU football yesterday, so I stuck them on that darn in-ter-net so I could share them with everybody else. They are both pretty long, but totally worth the wait (like most things in life).

Click here to see why the future is bright for BSU (Ian Johnson is a sophomore!). This video summarizes the 2006 season with highlights from each game.


Click here to see an agonizing compilation that starts with Zabransky's pick 6 at the end of the game and really conveys the uphill battle of the entire game. Ending of course with a proposal to the Head Cheerleader. Doesn't get much better than that for the little guy.

Congratulations to the AP#5 Broncos, the only unbeaten team of the 2006 season.

Mia and Cooper do the (iPod)Shuffle

The fact that they are both listening to the same song with different reactions speaks volumes about their two unique personalities. Or Coop is just a clown.

Rack it

Made major progress toward being Baja Ready this weekend with the addition of a Yakima roof rack to the Tacoma. I was a little nervous about drilling holes in that nice Leer shell, but amazingly I got through it with nary a mistake. Take note, Dad, that it actually does make a difference to have sharp (and straight) drill bits and a tape measur that had never been broken, discarded, found, and then 'fixed'.

That thing on top is the Loadwarrior basket, with the optional extender. The great thing about the raingutter towers and sideloader brackets is that when the rack is removed, all that's left is a little 6-inch by 1-inch strip of black metal bolted to the shell. This is important to Shanna because she doesn't like driving around looking like a 'neck....

Boise State wins out!

Unless you live in a cave, you've surely seen the following info, so this only applies to those of you that do: Unbelievably, Boise State has run the table for the first 13-0 season in history with a huge win over Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl. FOX Sports has a bunch of video here. One of the coolest things about the win is that we went toe to toe with OK and played square football right up until the end, then switched into trick play mode to come from behind for the win. What a great way to end a perfect season (literally).