First Steps

Recently Kennedy has been trying to walk. On Saturday, we captured some pretty funny video. Even though she isn't ready for the runway quite yet, she still has plenty of support - and a lot of love.

To view this movie, you'll need to download the Windows Media Player.

Brick Layer

After confessing my adiction to basketball last week, my church ball game yesterday brought me crashing back down to Earth. It's official - I hit rock bottom last night. We were playing against a bunch of guys that I've played with for a couple of years, so I wanted to play well. That didn't happen. I took my first shot, nothing but air. No problem I thought to myself. Next shot, almost broke the backboard. Still I kept shooting and shooting and shooting, and missing and missing and missing. By the game's end I shot 1 for 20 with a grand total of 5 pts. Of course we lost, but I think I just set a record for Church ball futility. I don't think I'm in such a hurry to play again next week.

The Birthday Week

Since joining my family, Jared has not only had to share his birthday with his twin brother Jason on January 22nd, but also with my sister Charlene (January 21st) and my brother Richard (January 23rd). Poor Jared. It was worse than usual this year. My sister turned the big 5-0 this year, so of course we had to celebrate big. We planned a big surprise birthday party at our house with the whole family on Saturday. We even topped it off with lots of "over the hill" decorations, black balloons (to Jared's dismay), black frosting, candles and cake and black presents. There were several geriatric items that showed up and even some nasty looking underwear. No one admitted to bringing those, but I have a hunch that my mom was somehow involved. I'm not sure if we actually surprised Charlene, but we had fun trying to pull it off. Everyone showed up and we ate lots of pizza, cake and ice cream and played Bunco (or as Jared calls it - "Mormon Gambling.") We all had a great time celebrating Char's 50th birthday.


Jared's birthday was Sunday and he celebrated by spending 9 hours at church while suffering with a cold. Then he came home to no leftover pizza (Kennedy was hungry and she loves pizza!) Okay, maybe I helped her eat some of it. Then we ate dinner at Jason and Kristin's house. The dinner was excellent, even if Jared didn't get exactly what he wanted. He did get the dessert he picked (after he and Jason did some bargaining). All in all, as Jared mentioned before, I don't think this will be the most memorable birthday for him, but come on, it was only 31, what do you expect! Happy birthday, Jared, Jason, Charlene and Richard!

31

Yesterday was my 31st birthday. Since I failed to even post about it yesterday you can tell that it wasn't really a big priority for me. There's nothing special about 31. No new decade milestone. I don't even change my status on the census (although they are probably hunting me down since our last encounter). There's no insurace break for turning 31. You can't find a birthday card that says "Happy 31st Birthday." Even the phrase, "So, how does it feel to be 31," sounds kinda stupid. So anyway, I'm 31. Happy Birthday to me.

One of Those Moments

Last night Tara and I went to the Temple with Evan and Alicia. We went to the Jordan River Temple which I think is the only place in West Jordan that's busier that WalMart on a Friday night! We sat down for the 7 pm session (both our Wards' selected session for the month) around 6:45 and we didn't even get in. After waiting around for the next session for 20 minutes we finally got to go on a session. Everything went well and we had a great attendance from our Ward (perhaps it was the change of venue, since we normally go to the Salt Lake Temple). As we headed home Evan told us about the funniest part of the session:

Evan: "Oh I had to tell you all about some guy who was sitting near me. I couldn't believe how loud his stomach was. Every time we stood up this guy sounded like some kind of battle was going on inside him! Man it was amazing!"

Everyone laughing.

Me: (sheepishly) "Um, that was me."

Isn't it great when your stomach goes crazy and you have no where to hide. I will always be known as the guy with the loud stomach on the 7:20 Session!