Happy Easter

Yes that is one of those pre-packaged Easter baskets you get in the check out line at Smith's. We decided we were over doing the basket thing, mostly because of laziness, until we saw these. I went with the sports themed package and it was a huge hit. Jack really liked the golf balls and clubs. However, based on the way he kept try to just stab the balls I don't think he will pull a Tiger and be invited to Star Search at age 3. Not unless he is willing to put in some serious practice time at the range.

Sunday afternoon we gathered at the McEuens for dinner and an Easter egg hunt. Good times were had by all.
Jack was mostly interested in throwing the eggs anywhere he could . . .
and then trying to feed them to his mommy.
Don't let Jack's shorts and short sleeves fool you. It's still pretty cold, it was probably in the 40s. I keep telling Beth that he's an Emmett and it's fine to wear shorts 10 months a year. Porter is actually dressed more appropriately. Jack OD'ed on strawberries starting the night before at dinner and continuing on to breakfast and lunch. As a result he had a diaper that required a bath and new clothes Sunday afternoon. Luckily his Grandma McEuen had just given him his Easter outfit. It was meant for family pictures in June, once Beth and Jordan have their babies, but the outfit was life a saver that afternoon.

Cheyenne visits

You have no idea how crazy it is to dogsit your own freaking dog. The family we gave Cheyenne to Christmas Eve went out of town last week and asked us if we would watch her while they were gone. Of course we would. I admit in the back of my mind I was worried she would either act indifferent towards us or just not listen to us. But we picked up right where we left off. She was stoked to see us and obeyed the same rules we taught her. For example she remembered she's in charge of protecting the floor under Jack's high chair from food (see photo of her on guard).

Our first thought was that she was huge. As in fat. That's a bit harsh, she probably only gained 5 or 6 pounds but that was 10% of her previous weight. I always told Beth that one way to calm a dog down is to get them overweight. She can still run all day and night, maybe even faster (or maybe I'm just slower), but overall she does seem more content. Even Jack mimicked Beth's constant "good girl" praises.

I was chatting with one of our new neighbors on Saturday while outside working. Cheyenne was out with me and my neighbor started to ask about her. As I answered his questions, talking about this and that, mentioning she turns 3 next week I could read the confusion on his face. It said "obviously this dogs a part of his family and these past few months I had no idea there was a dog somewhere in the house." I smiled and decided not to go into the explanation. I was trying to tune my bike. The St. George Tri is around the corner and I need to get on it eventually.

Grandmas Everywhere

Last weekend we jumped in the car and headed to Logan for a couple days. Original plans included skiing the Beav but I elected to sleep in instead. There is something about a Grandma's basement that makes you want to sleep until noon. And the crazy thing is you actually can. Even Jack can't resist the magic of the basement. It was after 9:30 a.m. before we went to make sure he made it through the night. On Friday night Curtis and Jennie and Andy and his lady friend (sorry, just spaced her name) came over with their 1 and 1/2year olds to eat Grandma's spagetti. It was fun to watch the boys "play" together. Which basically means play by themselves while sitting next to the others. When we went to Grandma and Grandpa Emmett's to visit I said to Jack while getting him out of his car seat "let's go see Grandma and Grandpa Emmett." He looked up and around as if to say "where are we? That word "grandma" sure seems to be thrown around a lot lately."
In addition to visiting family Logan gives Beth and I chance to visit a couple of our favorite places. Beth loves the giant used book store next to my favorite place, Norda's. While Beth found 10 books in less than 120 seconds I pick up a new Beach Cruiser. I went with the Robert August . Pretty sweet, eh? Were giving my other cruiser to Beth's Grandpa McEuen.

Jack insisted on trying the raw potatoes he found and was very pleased when his Great Grandma cleaned it up for him

Thanks for playing Grandma!

Mmmmmmm, Yo-Gos.

Hey Snoop do you like Yo-Gos too?

Here try this. It's good, trust me.

Dang you Snoop! Eat this!

Poor bum

What's sadder at a Midnight diaper change . . .

1. A 17 month old crying his eyes out because of a diaper rash that won't quit.
2. Baby's momma crying her eyes out because the baby is crying his eyes out.
   
3. Dad catching the contagious cry.
   

Kicks like a little girl

When Beth was pregnant with Jack she always claimed that he was kicking her. I began to have my doubts when I still hadn't felt anything by the 8th month. Supposedly he just wasn't cooperative and would stop kicking as soon as I put my hand on her stomach. I think I maybe felt it once or twice the whole pregnancy, which you fathers will agree is a pretty awesome experience. It was hard to catch because he wouldn't do the kick, kick, kick . . . . kick, kick, kick thing. He preferred to get it all out with a single KICK!
This is not the case with Little Baby What's Her Name. As soon as Beth lies down (which is an annoying habit by the way) she starts her tap dance. It has been so wild for me the past week or so to feel her little taps. And they are all over the map. If you put your hand where the last series of kicks was she is sure to swim away and kick elsewhere a minute later. Some of them make Beth jerk in pain as a vital organ or two gets hit. I told Beth she needs to buck up, What's Her Name kicks like a little girl.
The Doctor suggested she might get everything out of her system and be a nice gentle baby. That would be nice but we'll see about that. If she is anything like her brother we'll spend the first year trying to get 8 seconds of stillness in our arms.

Jack at 7 months didn't feel well and actually feel asleep in Beth's arms. We had to document the occasion.

Jack's back, but not for a while

Jack Bauer that is. It's official that Season 7 of 24 has been postponed until next January. However, there was some good news for Jack Bauer fans (like us) earlier this week. Sometime this fall there is going to be a two-hour T.V. movie set between seasons 6 and 7. The movie is supposed to help bridge the gap between the two seasons. I don't know how it's going to work but I have a feeling it will be awesome. It will especially be good as long as no members of Jack's family manage to get themselves in trouble (that was exhausted by the second season). I just want to see Jack vs. the bad guys.

You might be asking yourself "what do I do in the meantime." Let me make a suggestion, read a book or eight. If you haven't already discovered Vince Flynn and his books you are missing out. Especially if you are a fan of American Counter Terrorist Agents and their exploits. Mitch Rapp is the recurring character. He is the CIA's top counter terrorist agent and was waterboarding bad guys way before it became cool. Without giving anything away I'll just say that he has saved the U.S. and other civilized countries from countless tragedies and rid the world of some pretty evil people. In one of the books set before the Iraq War he even went undercover after the Hussein brothers. Protect and Defend came out last Fall and has been the only book I've read (other than on our vacation) by choice since school began. I feel guilty reading for pleasure when there is so much school reading that I can't get to. It was worth it to catch up with Mitch. If you haven't read any then I recommend starting at the beginning, you can thank me later.

Oahu

After Kauai we hopped on Aloha Air for the 29 minute flight to Oahu. Aloha has replaced Jet Blue as my favorite airline. Granted they have the built in advantage in the fact that you will always be flying to or from the Hawaiin Islands but they also serve up fresh baked chocolate chip cookies on the flights. Delicious. This part of the trip was on our own and not part of the Novell trip. Needless to say when I'm in charge and use Priceline to plan the trip it isn't as luxurious. It didn't matter though because we were very busy and had a great time.

The first order of business was Pearl Harbor. One bonus was that since I was there last the Battleship Missouri Memorial opened.

My favorite part of the Missouri was seeing where a Kamikazee pilot penetrated the air defenses and hit the Missouri. It left these cute little dents in the side of the ship. The only casualty was the pilot.

We also toured the Bowfin and I was able to confirm that I would never be able to serve on a submarine without going crazy in the confined space. I'm so grateful there are others that can.

The Arizona Memorial was as powerful as ever. If you've never been it is a floating memorial over the sunken battleship. You can still see most of the ship just below the surface. Over 1,000 sailors were killed and still lay with the ship. There is a wall with the names of all that died. We didn't find any Emmetts or McEuens but wouldn't you know we found some Millers . . .

and some Smiths . . .
and Elvis.
After Pearl Harbor we drove to Kailua to visit some friends or ours, the Westbrooks, from BYU. Lynn made a great dinner and Ben and I were able to talk about how great it is to be a Lakers fan again. The next morning we hopped in our rental car to spend the day on the North Shore. We asked for the Michael Scott special and were excited they had the grey Sebring convertible. It turned out that you need to pay close attention to where you park in the touristy lots because apparently we weren't the only ones with the Sebring on the island.
First stop on the way was the Dole Pineapple plantation. I went with the chocolate covered pineapple and Beth elected the pineapple ice cream. We both shared the pineapple muffin. Thinking about it makes me hungry.
We spent the first half of the day lounging around Waimea Bay before lounging around Pipeline. I love seeing surf spots that I've seen and heard so much about. The surf was only 5-8 feet when we were there. We heard the old "you should have been here last week" and from what I read the swell was 25 ft+ the week before we got there. The Pipe Masters bodyboard contest was going on while we were there, so unfortuneately I couldn't paddle out. It's always overhead for those guys. I took a short video of one of the sets.

I picked up boardshorts pair #19 while we were there and no, that's not the British flag. It's the State of Hawaii flag. I convinced Beth that while I may not need another pair it would be a great conversation piece. "Why are you sporting the British flag on your trunks?" "Actually it's not the British . . . ."
After checking out Sunset Beach we went to Laie to see the temple and visit the Polynesian Culture Center. We saw the standard shows with hula dancing, fire starting, tree climbing. The evening performance was great. Beth clapped a lot in approval. I was pleased to find that the PCC has less white kids from Idaho pretending to be from Polynesia than I remembered from 10 years ago. The PCC is owned by the Church and proceeds help support BYU-Hawaii. I tried to get a discount with my BYU i.d. but it didn't work. We still had to pay a bundle to get in.
Our last day in Hawaii was spent snorkeling at some state park bay and then hanging out at Waikiki. At Waikiki I rented a surfboard and paddled out with the crowds for a while. The board was the biggest piece of junk I've ever seen but I still had a lot of fun. The surf is pretty small this time of the year on the south side but there was enough for everybody.
The last night we were pretty exhausted but when I mentioned something about the Cheesecake Factory Beth perked right up and was convinced it would be the perfect place to go on our last night in Hawaii. Waikiki is so different from the rest of Oahu and the rest of islands. It's like Vegas on the beach. It was fun to see but it's pretty low on my list of places to return to.

Sorry for the travel log but I'll forget everything if I didn't do it. We were so pumped to go home and see Jack. We got the feeling that we missed him more than he missed us. My mom said he was perfect and didn't seem to miss a beat without either of us there. We don't want a kid that falls apart without us but come on buddy! at least make us feel needed.