Joe & his team won FIRST PLACE in the City League.
Another team he was playing on also won FIRST PLACE in the intermurial games.
This all happened about a month 1/2 ago I believe.
He had some members on his team play on both teams just as he did.
They did SO WELL. Lynn & I had so much fun going & watching him play.
They played a lot of their games & 10:00 p.m. I thought that was quite an achivement in itself. That didn't bother Joe at all though.
He still plays a great game.

The Dog

Amber and I got to bed last night about midnight. Just as we got into bed, Aliece came into our room because she wasn't feeling well. We laid her on our floor and told her if she was quiet she could sleep there.

Just as we went to close our eyes we heard the loud, low howl of a neighboring dog. It was not just one or two howls, it was consistent. I have never been bothered by neighbor dogs at night before, but I was getting kind of frustrated.

In a moment of anger, I said out loud, we need to go out and shoot that dog.

Everyone knows how much Aliece loves and animals -- especially dogs. Well, she heard my comment and reacted by saying..."No dad!"

I was going to saying something to calm her down, but I guess she hadn't finished her sentence because she continued, "We don't have a gun!" Maybe the dog was getting to her too!

Bring your Daughter to Work - 2007

Thursday was "Bring your Daughter to Work Day". Novell has a policy that you need to be at least eight years old to attend, so Aylee was the sole attendee from our family.

We spent the morning going to some fun classes. Aylee got an ID badget as well as a bunch of cool spiffs. Our team had a team lunch at the Brick Oven in Provo. So we took our girls with us and had a lot of fun.

I had to give a presentation to a bunch of people from India in the late afternoon. Aylee opted to stay in my office and play video games rather than hear me rattle off on technical jargon for 90 minutes :).

It was fun to be able to take Aylee for the day. She sure is a great kid!

Could you do this when you were two?

I don't mean to sound like a bragging parent that likes to compare their kids to other kids, but Alayna has always been the master of any playground that we visit. Tonight she astounded us by becoming the champion of the playground climbing wall.

By the end of the night she was scaling this thing like it was the stairs in our home.



(Click on AlaynaClimbingLink if you cannot see the video)

Tip Toe through the Tulips

We went to the park tonight as a family and shared some Pizza and played around. Amber was feeling a little tipsy and ran off to "tip toe through the tulips" on me.

You'll need to really turn your sound up on this one!



(Click on TipToeThroughTheTulipsLink if you don't see the video)

Spring 2007 Hockey



Brad loves to play hockey - and we love to watch him! It's a pretty exciting sport.



Sometimes he does get distracted...by girls that is.

Nephi Builds a Ship

Here is a video of the kids - the fifth in their "Mr. Hansen" series. (You need to go to the actual blog on the internet to access the video).

Now what's the right term?

Today while we were in the van running to and fro, Johnathan was talking about babies. He kind of got his terminology mixed up a bit - probably from Easter having just come and gone. Anyway, he asked Amber, "Mom, sometimes mom's lay two babies instead of one, right?"

A "Deep Thought" Moment

My brother Joe used to always have a list of hilarious "Deep Thoughts" from by Jack Handy. He was always collecting them and sharing them with the rest of us. There is one deep thought that really applied today in our activities and I couldn't help but think of Joe.

Here is the Deep Thought:

One thing kids like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take my little nephew to Disneyland, but instead I drove him to an old burned-out warehouse. "Oh, no," I said. "Disneyland burned down." He cried and cried, but I think that deep down, he thought it was a pretty good joke. I started to drive over to the real Disneyland, but it was getting pretty late.

Well, today that happened to me. Let me share my experience...

We really had a busy day today. One of the things that I needed to fit into the fray of things to do was to spend some time with Johnathan on a Daddy-Son Date. Johnathan was so excited about the date that he spent a lot of consideration in trying to decide what we should do for our date. Amber decided to help him decide. There was a park Amber had heard about from a friend a while back and she has wanted our family to visit it ever since. We have never gotten there and so she suggested the idea to Johnathan.

Amber explained to Johnathan that there was a park with a lot of cool medieval themes and equipment. She suggested that he and I visit the park and take Johnathan's knight costume, shields, and swords. Johnathan got really excited, so we made that our date and headed off to the nearby town where the park was located. As we got there, I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. The only thing in the area was a swamp infested, boarded up, chained up, rotting, overgrown lot with decaying timber topped off with a "No Tresspassing" sign.

We drove around the area for a few minutes and I tried to think of something to tell Johnathan. Finally, I had to break the news to him. He was quite disappointed and I had to think fast. While we were thinking of things to do for our date, I had run across a new park that was located kind of near Jacob and Shantell's house in south east Provo. We quickly turned around and headed off for that park.

After a little searching we found the park, and to my relief, this park had a ton of cool non-standard park equipment. It was the perfect alternative. Johnathan and I were able to spend a fun date together climbing, sliding, jumping, etc. He wore a smile the entire time and I think he was satisfied in the end.

Our Family's First 5k Fun Run

Our stake hosts a 5k fun run/walk once or twice each year. This is the first time that things have worked out for our entire family to participate in the fun run. We didn't know how the kids would do, so we brought the jogging stroller with us. We figured that after the 3.2 mile race all of the kids would have had a turn in the stroller.

We started off the race with Johnathan and Aylee running off ahead. I figured we would have to pick them up off the trail somewhere up ahead, so I told them to run on and we would catch up. To our astonishment, Aylee and Johnathan ran the entire race with only a small walking break. We never caught up to them, they passed us near the half way point where you turn around to go back to the finish line. They were still chugging away at the race.

Another surprise for us was that we figured Aliece and Alayna would be begging for the stroller. The opposite was true. We had to force them into the stroller in tears because they wanted to continue running. We didn't want them to hurt themselves so periodically we would make them ride in the stroller. Poor Alayna was very upset each time we did this. She wanted to be out there running with the rest of the group! One time she was holding her side saying "ooowwww", but she wouldn't stop running!

Amber and I had a great walk despite staying at Aliece and Alayna's pace.

We had a great time this morning on the run. We all got our certificates and times. Here were our times:
Aylee - 39:48
Johnathan - 39:53
Aliece - 46:15
John & Alayna - 46:33
Amber - 46:37

For your viewing pleasure, I have included this video clip showing various highlights of the run:

Interpretive Dance

For one of our recent FHE activities, Alayna chose to do Dancing. Amber cranked up some tunes and this video is the type of stuff we saw! (Click on the play button on the video screen to play it).

Now That's Got to be Comfortable!

I couldn't help but share this photo. I caught Alayna climbing up on the counter to get some cereal early the other morning. Before I could chastise her for being up on the counter, I noticed that her day looked like it was already starting off "eschew" - so I decided not to "wedge" criticisms into her day.

After I shot the picture, I helped her down, offered her some cereal, and assisted her in straightening things out a bit.

A-Mazing Kids

My friend, Dan Miller, from work has been to our house a few times. The other day he had been cleaning out his room and found this puzzle toy. He didn't know if the kids were old enough for it or not, but he have me give it to them.

The toy was a plastic rectangular box that had a small BB inside. The inside of the plastic formed a 3-dimensional maze. You had to maneuver the BB through the maze into a particular spot that was actually a button. If you pressed the button then the center of the box would pop out and the winner would get to keep the Two Dollar bill stored inside.

The kids were mesmerized by it on the first day. While Aylee was out of the house, Johnathan got a hold of it. He was thinking it through very well and before I knew it, he was yelling with excitement. I couldn't believe he got the puzzle finished so quickly. I gave him the two dollar bill and replaced it with a $1.00 bill.

With a little help from Johnathan, Aylee soon had it. Before long they were solving the puzzle in just minutes at a time. They decided to put notes inside and pass it to each other to solve, read, and then store a new note for the other person.

The kids used that puzzle box so much that in just a couple of days, the locking mechanism broke and we had to throw it away.

Sometimes these kids amaze me!

West Coast Easter

We drove to Portland/Vancouver for Easter weekend. It was so beautiful and GREEN! We stayed at Kyle's brother's house. We did have to write the Easter Bunny and tell him where we were going to be....and he found us just fine.

Before YOU get laid off...

A few months ago, the company where I work gave a notice to shareholders that there would be some restructuring (Layoffs) in the coming months. Trying to seize a recruiting opportunity, a smaller software company put up this billboard to try to attract our company's employees into leaving.

As fate would have it, the other company just had it's first ever layoff of 10%. I guess their marketers should have heeded their own advice!