I'm a proud father

Last night Bex grabbed a pen and note pad while we were sitting down for dinner. That was a little weird because we're used to fighting w/ Trey to get him to stop drawing or being creative in some way, but not Bex. After asking him to put it away a couple times he said, "Wait, I'm writing BYU." What! This kid can't draw a single letter let alone a word. He can't even draw a face like most kids his age. He is all about sports not art...then I looked at what he drew. He really had made his first letter B, his first letter Y and his first letter U. He drew it Davinci style - backwards, but hey, for your first word, skipping over learning letters we were impressed!

Maybe it is because BYU isn't really a word and there is a lot of the following around our house. Needless to say, I was pretty happy. The irony though is that he was wearing a U of U shirt while doing it. I know, I know, how could I even allow my child to wear that shirt when I myself only own one red shirt, that was given to me, and I really never wear that? I guess growing up a U fan, converting as a senior in high school to the correct team after "seeing the light" and liking to be antibandwagon...I don't mind keeping the little red shirt around that my brother gave Trey a few years ago when he was attending the U.

What happens at the Y


What happens at the U


Answered Prayer


Still Open!

FroYo

Our friend Jodee got us hooked on frozen yogurt and our local version of it, Red Mango. Being cheap like most of you are...c'mon admit it...we wanted to make our own version at home in our ice cream maker. I did a lot of googling to find a recipe which I couldn't. Fortunately Red Mango posts their ingredients online and at the store. We listed them out, used our science nerd skills obtained in college, broke the ingredients down into binders, tanginess ingredients, etc. and compared this to regular yogurt. We came up with our own recipe take 1. It was good, but not exactly the same. If you try it out and get something closer let us know.

Trial #1
8 c nonfat yogurt
2 c sugar
1 c powdered milk
2.5 tsp citric acid

Summersutra

Wow! That's all I can say about the BYU game. So glad I flew out there and was able to go with one of my best friends from high school and my dad.


While there I got to see my sister's condo that she recently bought and is remodeling.

The week before that we went to Marisa's 10 year high school reunion. The pix are bad, but that's all we had.

My parents flew out the weekend before to see the UW/BYU game. While here we were able to enjoy some great weather.

Squeezing it into summer

Things have been pretty busy as we have been trying to fit some fun things into summer before Trey headed back to school yesterday. Last Monday we went to the Mariner's second LDS night. I met up with a buddy from the mission and had a great time talking about the good old days from 13 years ago! My phone's camera took some weak shots...

On Friday Marisa and I went on a date night to get her some clothes for her class reunion next week. We got teriyaki before driving to the mall and had to wait 15 minutes for them to cook it so we walked next door to the Goodwill store. Goodwill was awesome, (I found a juicer, see below) except for the Barbi doll bin. That was kind of freaky...

On Monday we went with our friends the Chapmans to Bumbershoot. It is a Seattle music festival with multiple concerts all going on at the same time. We went to see Paramour so that I could hear my favorite song of the year, "Misery Business." I was a fan before all you guys became bandwagoners. We also hear offspring.

Saturday I went blackberry picking with the boys and we made blackberry popsicles and sorbet easily with my new juicer. You just drop in your fruit, spin the handle, the juice comes out and the pulp/seeds go out another way. So quick and easy to strain out those stupid seeds. Here are some pix of the boys doing their much anticipated yearly wild blackberry picking.


Bex loved the concert and his shirt that said, "Future Rock Star." He really thinks that is what he is going to be when he grows up. Here he is on Ronnie's shoulders.

I tease the boys when they are bad that I will spank them with the "spiky belt" and now it has become a family joke that anyone will get it if bad, including mom! There was a large paper at Bumbershoot for people to draw and be artistic on. Bex drew the following pictures and when asked afterwards what they were he informed us that they were the spiky belt. The hypothetical belt wasn't quite so scary in my mind.

Bumbershoot was a little too hippy for me at times. Trey kept asking what that sweet smell was. I didn't want to explain the whole MJ thing so I brushed it off. I started to get worried when he said he had the munchies...ok, he just said that he was hungry, but it made me wonder...