Real Man of Genius

Feel free to sing along, you've all heard the commercials.

Today we salute you Mr. Makes Children's Medicine Taste Yummy. If it wasn't for you Jack's ears would still be infected. He'd probably have bruises on his neck to match. No parent wants to strangle their child to get them to take a prescription. So here's to you! Sit down, relax, pop open a nice cold soda of your choice, this ones for you Mr. Makes Children's Medicine Taste Yummy. May you earn your spot amongst The Real Men Genius like Mr. Furniture Assembly Manual Writer, Mr. Professional Sports Leg Cramp Rubber Outer, and Mr. Oversized Fanny Pack Wearer.

Spring has sprung

With May just three days away I finally feel confident enough to bid farewell to winter. Even though we continue to get weekly snow showers, even as recent as yesterday. The snow around our house has melted but as you can see from the pictures we took on a walk this week the houses facing North still have quite the piles to deal with.

Here's a bit of advice for everyone looking for ways to better cope with next winter. Add Craig, Colorado to your Yahoo or Google weather watch. Craig is where Baby Brother Elder Mikey spent this winter while serving in the Denver South Mission. It was consistently 10+ degrees colder than Midway, or anywhere else I was for that matter. And this was a really cold and snowy winter. It always made me think twice before complaining. I didn't even have to be out in the elements if I didn't want to.

Though you wouldn't have known how miserable it was from Mikey's letters home. The kid definitely has the always positive attitude that comes with missionary service.

My friends Penny and Carl

If it wasn't for the photo you would probably never guess who was cruising the aisles on the flight home from San Diego today. It was Penny and her cousin Carl, Penguin Ambassadors from the San Diego Zoo. The top one is Penny and it's hard to see in the second photo but that is Carl walking away. It was one of the wildest things I've ever seen on a plane. Certainly better than the alternative. My eyes were closed when the flight attendant announced that the special guests were let of their cages to stretch. I opened my eyes to see what the heck she was talking about and right next to me was Penny. I gave her a pat, she felt like a soft duck.

Mel Kiper Jr.

Can we have the NFL draft already? I'm so tired of having to listen to this talking head every time I turn on ESPN. It's worse than the period in June and July when the NBA is over, there's no good golf or tennis tournaments, they've already shown the 9 seconds of Tour de France highlights, football is still months away and all we have is mid season baseball.

Updates

Beth had a second ultrasound and the countdown ticker to the right may be a couple weeks off. And depending what you are looking at it could be early or late. Based on Baby Girl's head she could go into labor the beginning of May. Based on Baby Girl's legs she and Beth could share a birthday in the middle of June. Taking everything together the baby looks healthy and the calculated date was May 19th. We are hoping to cook the baby at least until Memorial Day. Short legs and a big head? That sounds like it could be an Emmett.

Jack continues to love life. Seriously the kid is just perpetually stoked to be alive. It's a contagious attitude. One of our favorite things he has been doing recently is reading by himself. Only he won't read his kid books by himself. Those are only for mom and dad to read with him (as many times in a row as they can stand). He requires at least 300 pages and no pictures for his books. A couple times he has gone upstairs, pulled a book off the shelf, come back down to give Beth whatever book she happens to be reading that day and then sit next to her as they "read". Anymore he doesn't even need to be sitting next to us. We'll look up and he's climbed into the single chair to snuggle up with such classics as I, Elizabeth, Sahara, and A Summer to Remember. I find it interesting that he doesn't even require the book to be right side up as he reads. Now if we could only get him to talk.

Spring Game

Last Saturday we gathered with 17,000 of our closest friends to watch the annual Blue-White spring scrimmage. However, we spent the whole time cheering for a guy in green. Beth's baby brother Kurt is a walk-on QB currently battling for the #2 spot.
The scrimmage was designed to give the second and third teams a chance to show off. I thought the coaches did a great job with the structure. With so many returning starters there's no point to see what we already know, and at the same time risk an injury. It was a lot of fun to see the young players in a game setting.
Kurt did awesome. You can read a wrap up of the game here. I'm the first to admit that we are biased but in our opinion he looked the sharpest and most comfortable under center. He was 7-10 for 70 yards and was the only QB to consistently sustain drives. In his post game interviews Coach Mendenhall said "a real bright spot this Spring has been the play of Kurt McEuen." He went on to say the Kurt has "at least" pulled even for the backup job and the battle will continue into Fall. As for the rest of the team I'll just say I think we can go ahead and chalk up a couple more undefeated Mountain West Conference titles.
*I'll post more pictures as I gather them from various sources (once again no camera). We bought Jack a hat to protect his little white head and he just loved it.

California Adventure

This happened a couple weeks ago but our camera took the long way home so I'm just now getting to it. After all that wait we only had about 15 pictures anyways. At least there were others to document the events. Monday morning after Easter we loaded up the Yukon with Beth, Ann, Marci, Jack, Porter, and Seth. As we watched them drive away I remember thinking how bad I would miss them. Having said that I couldn't think of a place I wanted to be less than in that car. 10+ hours of driving with a 3 year old and two 1 year olds? Are you kidding me? Work seemed like a breeze that day. Beth said it went pretty good though.
Marci did a good job of summarizing what all they were up to while on their Spring Break here. I had a few customer visits in LA the next week and flew down early to join the party. California was just perfect. We had been asking for Spring for weeks now and finally got it 700 miles away. Thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Miller for the room and board and thanks to mom and and dad for the babysitting. And thank you to Tito's and Jalapeno's for the tacos!

Jack loved swimming and didn't really care for my help. Good sign that he likes his life vest this year. The last of the ice melted on Deer Creek this week but Jordanelle is still completely covered. No matter what it's about time to get the boat summerized.

These two absolutely loved being outside.

Redondo Beach at sunset. Not sure what Jack is pointing at.

Although it was fun feeding the seagulls on the pier and watching them fly just over our head I think it was a little traumatic for the boys that I was feeding THEIR churros to the birds.

Insert California Song Title Here

I dislike coming up with a title for a new post. At least this time I had all sorts of songs running through my head. I just couldn't pick one. Raise your hand if you've ever created a California themed mixed tape (or playlist) for the road trips home.

When I learned while writing for the Golden Arrow in high school that I didn't have to write the headline for my articles I thought that was pure genius. Then when the paper came out and I read the headline that somebody else (no offense but it was probably a girl (I was the sports guy))* wrote I was ticked off because it either a) made no sense or b) was just lame. Later on in my journalism career I became the editor and therefore had to write the headlines for other people's articles. Man did I hate that job. Minutes and minutes of agonizing only to come up with something that doesn't even come close to satisfying.

There must be a special brain wave that allows headline writers to come up with an endless supply of puns. And more often than not they actually relate and add value to the content of the article, or in this case a blog. And it's not just good newspaper people that can do it, I see it on a daily basis on other blogs, y'all know who you are. How do you do it?

This was supposed to be about our trip to California but this tangent took over. I'll have to make a separate post. The worst part is I have to come up with another title.

*I'm aware that by saying no offense I acknowledged I was about to offend. Would it be better if I said "I don't mean to disrespect but . . ." Whenever I hear that it's my cue to listen up because someone or something is about to get dissed.