Pumpkins 2008

We went to a pumpkin carving party tonight, and as been the trend lately we were the hit of the party! Well I should say our pumpkins were. And by our pumpkins I really mean my pumpkins since daddy ended up carving 3 of them! Sydney saw me looking up patterns on the internet this afternoon, and decided she wanted to pick her own too. I steered her away from the Disney princesses, yes there are Disney princess pumpkin carving templates! So here they are in no particular order:

Aiden's Vampire

Sydney's Kitty Cat

My Mummy

Bridget's Jack Skellington from Tim Burtons A Nightmare Before Christmas!

Here is the Jack Skellington template I went off of:

I am the pumpkin carving master!

Guess who's #1 now!

As if there was ever any doubt......I won first place in the bowling league Halloween party! The prizes were pretty lame, I'm not sure it was worth the embarrassment...but I won! I had my choice of a wind sock, some flowers, and a Halloween plate. I chose the plate, I don't know what to do with it, but I chose it.

Claire won second place with her bowling pin poodle skirt, she chose the flowers.

Strangely, I bowled better with the skirt on..it was my highest game of the week. After they announced the winners I changed, and bowled two crappy games! I half considered putting just the skirt back on, but I couldn't bring myself to do it!

Halloween Fun

Worst idea I ever agreed to! I am supposed to be June Cleaver and Bridget is Ward. We wore these to a Halloween party tonight and we were the hit of the party! Definitely the best dressed couple at the party! Although on the drive across town to the party I was mortified, I refused to even look out of the window and I was really wondering why we didn't drive my car with the tinted windows! I think the worst part is that I have to wear this getup to bowling on Wednesday, any predictions on if I win one of the prizes for best costume?




Claire made the skirt for me, and the apron, and the pearl necklace. I found the shoes and shirt at Goodwill, and we found Bridget's entire "Ward" outfit there as well. I styled Bridget's hair for her, I used about a gallon of hair gel...it was awesome!

New Maserati

I was driving around downtown yesterday and I saw a guy on a test drive of a new Maserati. The window sticker was visible to me when he was next to me at a light so I was checking it out. 12 miles to the gallon in the city and 18 on the highway. Now I realize that people don't buy a car just for fuel economy, but this car didn't look like it was anything special. I would expect a new pickup to get those kind of numbers, even my 5 year old VW gets better mileage than that. Then there was another interesting tidbit on the window sticker, an environmental scale. I couldn't read the fine print, but it was a scale with a triangle marking the center which I'll assume meant average. This Maserati was about 1/3 of the way to average, so I'm guessing it has a pretty crappy impact on the environment. But for an entry price of $114,000 I guess I was asking a bit much for this car right?

Click here to get yours today!

In recognigition:

I just wanted to jot a little down about a great local triathlete, BJ Christenson. BJ works at my favorite local running store, Salt Lake Running Company. Last time I was in there he was super helpful and gave me lots of advice about the cramping issue I had in the Utah Half. I actually saw him run in the Shark Attack triathlon 2 years ago, I think he was on a relay team and he was the runner...he flew past me so fast, he must have been running 5 minute miles (seriously). It really isn't fair though he has legs that are 6 feet long each, his stride is equivalent to 3 of mine I'm sure of it! Anyway, super nice guy and somewhat of a triathlon legend here in the SLC area.

He competed in the Ironman Kona race this year, his second time I think. This is the ultimate triathlon, at the birthplace of the sport. I would say it is like a triathletes Graceland or something. Anyway he finished 129th out of 1736 and 21st in his age group. I think the amazing part are his times broken down by sport. Like his swim for example, 2.4 miles in 1 hour 25 seconds. That is really frickin fast! His bike was an average of 20.68 MPH for 112 miles, while that may seem slow one has to factor in the LAVA effect....riding through the lava fields of Hawaii in stiff winds and excruciating heat and humidity. And finally the run, a 26.2 mile marathon after 6 hours of hardcore exercise, and he completes in in 3:06:07, or just over 7 minutes per mile.

I think of BJ as an inspiration and one who's every move should be copied. Like I said earlier he is a super nice guy, step into the Running Company and he will be more than willing to answer your questions, and it will seem like he really wants to help.

Here is a race recap if you are interested.

Funny

Sydney came into our room last night and said she was cold and wanted to put on a sweatshirt. Bridget got up and took her back into her room and tried to tuck her in and as Bridget is walking out of the room Sydney yells:

"it's sweltering hot in here!"

Busy little bees

So it's been a hectic few days around here. Over the weekend we stayed in Park City, I was asked by the U of U department of Peds to talk to the spouses of the new residents. I think my talk went pretty well, this group of spouses didn't complain about the hours or the system nearly as much as my group of spouses from 2 years ago. Then on Sunday we went over to Ryan and Claire's house for the afternoon and ended up staying for dinner. Bridget, Claire, and I all solidified our Halloween costumes. It is nice to have a seamstress at my disposal! Claire is going to make all 3 costumes, and they should be pretty funny (especially mine). Then on Monday we went over to our friends Robyn and Brett's house for Monday Night Football. The game was a horrible disaster, but the company was pretty good. Brett ran for student body president at Colorado State University, he may be the biggest CSU fan I have ever met! Oh yeah speaking of CSU, we went to the CSU vs. Utah game on Saturday. Again, horrible game (for CSU that is) but the company was pretty good. We sat behind some drunk CSU frat boys who drove all the way from Ft. Collins. I have no idea how much they had to drink....but my guess is a lot. They made the game entertaining when it got out of control on the scoreboard. They actually made some good choices and left a little early, they were starting to pick fights with some Utah fans....too much more and it might have developed into a real brawl. About 1/2 of them tried to go sit in the Utah student section during halftime, but according to them the cops were standing in the portal and wouldn't let them in without seeing their tickets. Ahhh, those were the good ole days! But seriously, no good could have come from that!

Random thoughts

Why is it that in the diet world you can be rolling along on a perfect pace and then you have a bad eating day? Why can't every day be just perfect and then the dieter would reach the goal faster?

I bowled a 94, 143, and 180 on Wednesday. Why can't every game be a 180, wouldn't that just be easier? My average is up to a blistering 124, up 7 points since I bought the new ball.

Is it normal to have a list of house projects that is so long it leaves the owner of that list so confused about even where to start! Most days I think of "the list" and just write it off as too much work for that day...but still on other days I deem a project as too little, so I better not even start it!

Preschool Songs

Here is the new song that Sydney has learned for "insect" week!

Bowling Ball Bag

My friend Claire, one of the 3 bowlers on my bowling team, is also quite the seamstress. She made this bowling ball bag for me, I think it is pretty AWESOME!



It is so cool for the following reasons:
1. Somebody can take a pile of fabric, or a roll, or whatever and turn it into a usable thing.
2. It has a skull with bones made out of bowling pins,I think it strikes fear into the hearts of the 80 year old women I bowl against on Wednesday mornings.
3. Retro glitter styling, sort of pimps out the whole bag.
4. Bowling pin zipper pulls, c'mon that is too cool for school.

Sometimes I make myself laugh

Last week sometime Travis Henry, a former Denver Broncos running back, was arrested in some drug trafficking scheme. Anyway, they released him from jail today and put him on house arrest with an ankle monitor. I was reading about this on espn.com and I came up with a pretty witty comment, I said:

"Why did they put him on an ankle monitor? If they didn't want him to run they should have just told him it was 3rd and 1!"

I crack myself up

Weight Loss Update

About a month ago I blogged about my weight loss plans and set a goal for myself. Check it out here if you don't believe me! Unfortunately since that post we went on vacation for a week, this hurt my plan...but didn't kill it totally. I had to re-adjust my numbers a bit since I gained weight on that vacation to my parents house.

I am down 8 pounds since that vacation, and have 5 weeks to lose 21 more pounds. That comes down to 4.2 pounds per week, which is more than I would like to shoot for...but it is doable....maybe not enjoyable, but doable.

So like I said in that original post, I'll keep you posted on my progress since that creates a little bit of accountability on my part. And hopefully my post on November 12th will read 100 pounds lost!!!

Nothing to say

I was trying to think up something clever to write about today, but I got nothin'. So I thought I'd just write about nothing, and fill some space as an experiment to see if you would read it all the way to the end. Well, did you?

Sometimes you just don't know....

Sometimes you just don't know how nasty something is until you actually get around to cleaning it! Let me explain, I use my car almost everyday to haul the kids and get around. I finally couldn't take the mess in the back seat, the kids toys and wrappers from crackers, and God knows what else. I started by taking out all of the toys, there was some real interesting stuff back there. I found 1 whole chicken nugget, I think it was from Sonic because it was ring shaped (don't know what part of the chicken is a ring...but that is for a different blog on a different day!). I also learned that Aiden must not like Craisens, because there were a ton of them on the floor in front of his seat. Then there was layer upon layer of cracker crumbs. Our portable snack of choice are crackers, convenient, tasty, and the kids will always eat them.

After the trash and toys were gone I went to work with the vacuum. It seemed to take forever but I finally vacuumed the whole car....the amount of dog hair in the cargo area was unreal, it looked like one of those small yippie chihuahua dogs exploded. Then there was the smell in the car. Kinda like a mix between sweaty feet and really bad cologne! I busted out the Fabreeze, shot every inch of fabric and then closed all of the doors and let it bake in the sun for a while. I don't know why I did that, it just seemed like the thing to do! After an hour or so we were ready to roll and the car was great! It looked good, smelled good, and I had a clear conscience that there wasn't some sort of a cracker wrapper monster coming to life in the back seat!