New Nephew

I have another nephew. It looks like he is a cute content little man being held by a cute and very active little man. (-:

I got to see the cute active little man come into the world and still can't believe I stayed in the delivery room to watch and take pictures. Yikes.

But, it was a wonderful experience and apparently this little man came even faster than the last (less than an hour?).

Congrats to Chris and Jessica!

Ode to Procrastination Blog

My brother never acknowledges my yearly shout out to his very funny blog Pro-cast-nation.

In my head it is hilarious that he still hasn't written another post in over a year.

And so, here it goes, another Ode to the procrastinating of posting to the procrastination blog.

http://pro-cast-nation.blogspot.com/

The list of "citizens" in the "nation" have not grown much in the past year or more either.

Forever Strong movie

We went and saw the Forever Strong movie yesterday. It was a good movie that wasn't just all about rugby - focused on the change we can go through if we are willing to repent and improve.

There were a few scenes of my brother Craig, but they were too fast. I don't know if they were just too fast in general or too fast because I wanted to be able to say - "Hey, did you see my brother Craig in that Forever Strong movie in the xxxxx scene...."

From Rugby games and cousins - California 2007

He was in the opening scrum or something and then in a lot of scenes in the final championship game. 

In honor of the haka dance in the movie, and at the numerous BYU rugby games played, here's Chris and Jared performing this at a mini-family gathering. It's always fun to re-watch.

From Hakaa - Chris and Jared

Memory Lane - shirtless brothers?

Warning! Shirtless brothers.


A few years ago I scanned about 50 family photo albums and about 20 slide trays into the computer. All of those pictures were fairly normal. They covered the 1800s through until about they year 2000. These were the growing up years of the four girls (oldest) and the younger years of my four brothers. It was also before digital cameras.

Now, I've secured a whole slew of pictures from my parent's computers that were taken over the last 9-10 years. I've been uploading them to Picasa so we can share all our photographs.

Interesting stuff. Lots of pictures of trips, of relatives, of flowers, of house remodeling and all of my brothers taking turns posing for the camera. Yes, that's right. We always think women are spending all the time in front of the mirror, but I'm fairly sure that I have evidence that this is not so. There are hundreds of pictures of boys flexing their muscles, boys posing in the mirror sucking in their cheeks to make their cheekbones look more defined and hundreds of pictures of partial haircuts and beard growth/beard shavings. To me they are basically all one in the same. We might as well save 5-6 of the pictures and that covers them all. But, alas, each has significant meaning that only people who know will know.

Don't believe me? Proof below:









Like I said - hundreds of these throughout all of the digital folders.

I mean, how else would we know that Brett used TWO shavers to get his head ready for a swim meet?

Very important historical documentation.

Rugby Movie - Forever Strong

I really enjoy rugby. I don't fully understand it, but all of my brothers play, make it the final four championships every year and give me a chance to fly out to Palo Alto to see the play offs and a few relatives. This is the first year in a while where no brother will be playing. But, when Brett comes off his mission, I'm sure he will be back on the playing field and I'll have another trip to look forward to.

A new movie will be coming out in September - Forever Strong. It's based upon a true story about the Highland rugby team (Utah high school) , but that's about all I know. Oh, wait, that's not all I know.

My brother Craig is in the movie playing rugby. He, along with a lot of other All-American rugby players from BYU and University of Utah in 2006, are real rugby players in the movie. The town they filmed in is outside of Toelle, Utah. The town is smaller than Toelle - so it might not actually be a town. I know, I was there. At least for one day. Believe it or not, I had to sleep in my rental car at a truck stop the night before because Salt Lake City had so many conventions that week. All hotels were booked in every direction. After driving around Toelle type towns (late at night- spooky feeling) and finding no hotels (not even Bates hotels), I finally realized I'd have to do the Hawaii vacation trick. That would be putting t-shirts over all the windows and trying to squeeze my six foot frame into the backseat of the smallest size rental car. Those kind of experiences are only good for journal entries at later dates. Anyway...off topic at hand.I sat next to this dummy in the stands and pretended to cheer. We weren't allowed to make any noise while we cheered. Silent cheer. I guess I had nothing else to do while I sat and waited for my brother to finish playing in some rugby scenes.

The players received free food for their efforts...and some exercise and bruises. Some of the volunteers that sat in the bleachers won free iPODs. I'm not sure how free that is after you've had to sit in the sun for 8 hours, but it was amazing to see the characters that came out of the woodwork to participate and await the chance to possibly win an iPOD and receive an over baked hot dog.

The main characters didn't know how to play rugby when they started shooting the film. Craig said they were told to be a little gentle when the main characters were running with the ball or being mauled. I would say tackle, but not sure if that is a rugby term.

Anyway, it should be a good movie. If anything, you will get to hear and see the rugby players doing a hauka (hakka?) dance at some point which is always interesting.

Other links:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMsVEyesEeM


• http://www.rugbymovie.com/


• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forever_Strong


• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigham_Young_University_Rugby_Team


• http://www.byurugby.com/

Ode to the Procrastination Blog

I would like to again point out the humor of the http://pro-cast-nation.blogspot.com/ blog. It would be shame if Chris ever posted to it again because it is so effectively living up to it's name. In fact, he should really start a new blog instead. Not sure if that will occur considering the state of the current blog medium, but I'm sure he would have something interesting things to share.

Rugby Championships - 2008

BYU played an awesome game on Friday night. It looked good most of the time. So, they beat Colorado. But, Saturday they got intimidated or something and lost to Cal-Berkley in the final championship game. So, they are 2nd place for the third year in a row. My brother brought his little son and he proved to be quite the cheerleader yelling "go, go, go" or "uuuurrrrggggh" really loud at appropriate, and inappropriate, times. It kept the audience on our end of the stadium entertained.

I took some pictures and put them in my Flickr account for the viewing pleasure of those that want to know. Feel free to add comments as well. I need help identifying some people in the pictures.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/11632617@N02/sets/72157604904552247

(Picture: Alma Chris, Little Alma, Brett, Rebecca)

Memory Lane - nooks and corners

I came home from work the other day and did what I always do. I put my keys and blackberry on the bookshelf and then went around my sofa chair and put my computer bag next to my church bag and stack of "to do" papers. It's a perfect hiding spot from the front door, but very accessible to me when I'm sitting and working on my laptop or watching the tube.

This is my favorite corner for keeping what I use on a daily basis. It's also grown to include a printer, purse, scriptures and other books I read. One would think I would use my extra bedroom for this type of stuff, but the reality requires me to have everything easily accessible while I'm doing my day to day activities in the main part of the house.

Growing up, my bedroom was my "corner," but now that the entire house is mine I guess I had to create a "mini-corner" to fit the bill.

I'm realizing that special "corners" or "nooks" aren't so rare when I look through old family pictures.


This was a special corner, for many reasons, in our Michigan house. First, the cabinet is built into the wall and accessible from the living room behind it. We would often try to crawl through the cabinet into the other room. One of the benefits of growing up in a Frank Lloyd Wright inspired home.

Plus, we stored the little record player (shown) in that cabinet so you could access it from either room. But, as you can see, the record player never strayed from the corner. We took it out and played it right there. In fact, it looks like the record that is playing is the Mary Poppins record. You can barely make out the men in black dancing on the roof. All of the songs heard in that corner are completely memorized and when someone says a trigger word at family gatherings we all start singing the tune. "Cast off the shackles of yesterday..." or "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" or "Hound dog howdy kidlets...this is huckleberry hooouuuunnnddd."

The boys found little nooks and corners everywhere. Little Scot apparently had a special corner in the garage. The horrible yellow paint with perfectly matching burnt orange carpet scraps to complement the decor. I'm sure that it wasn't that clean either even though sweeping the garage was one of the Saturday "duties."

Here's an interesting corner. When it rained, it became apparent that the deck had a slant because water would always pour down in one corner creating a puddle and a steady stream. For some reason we thought it was great that we could get our hair wet by standing in that location. Not sure why it was different than the rain pouring beyond the deck, but this special feature provided cheap entertainment for quite a few rain storms.

Another tidbit of thought that may provide little value beyond a fun memory. However, a bunch of these little trips down memory lane are starting to add up.

Secret Happiness - Biking - the wind, the road, the freedom

I have a secret happiness today. Spring fever set in after having one nice day this week. Since the last couple of weeks have been filled with the "Portland Mist" and cool weather, it is a relief to finally see the sunshine and feel it's warmth.

I've had the urge to ride a bike lately and so I drove home and changed into appropriate attire to test out a good bike. My entire life I've ridden bikes. I rode them on my paper routes, sometimes to school, at college, my first year or two in the DC area and as my nightly transportation in grad school. I vowed I wouldn't buy a car until I turned 30 years old, but that goal lasted until I was 28. Even then, the car sat in the parking lot most the time. When I moved to my condo, I stopped riding my bike and finally donated it to Goodwill or gave it away. That's been 3-4 years ago. Not good.

Anyway, I got to the shop and the store manager (Buck) helped me pick out a couple of bikes that could suit my fancy. He let me out the back door and I got to take some test drives around the back of Walmart, Michaels and Target. The minute I got on the last bike I felt at home. I didn't realized how much I missed that feeling of riding high up off the ground with the wind blowing against me. There is such a sense of freedom that can't be felt in a car.

I took it on one test drive this evening, but realized that the first day on a bike after a few years means sore body the next day.

Oh, and I also bought a back pack. Maybe this is a mid-life crisis? I'm reverting to how I dressed when I was 20. Hmmm.

Ok, I'm up late and Jay Leno just asked a guy why he rides motorcycles and he said "the wind, the road, the freedom."

Picture: Campground near Toronto, Canada where we rented some funky bikes way back in the 80s.

Weird: Right after I wrote this and AFTER I posted the picture, the guy told Jay Leno that he was raised in Toronto. Also, my little "Ode to Chris" entry ends up being old because my brother just barely posted in his blog for the first time in over a year. Meaningless coincidences, but nevertheless interesting.

Ode to Chris - Pro-cast-nation

Am I the only one that think this blog is funny?

http://pro-cast-nation.blogspot.com/

Every day it becomes an even longer procrastination and maybe that's the point, but I just think it is funny that he actually hasn't updated it in a long time.

Rugby - Brett's turn to win the Wasatch Cup

Ok, so BYU takes rugby pictures with incorrect lighting on a consistent basis, but here's Brett's picture.

It looks like BYU won the Wasatch Cup for the third year in a row. I looked up the info on the BYU rugby site and found a little sports report.

I must say that I do enjoy watching rugby. Partially, it's because I can never really track the ball. I will think it's under some kind of pile of players, but out of the corner of my eye there will be swift movement in another part of the field and yep, the ball has somehow transfered over to the new location through some kind of strateg-ery that is beyond the grasp of the untrained eye.

Speaking of rugby, there is a movie that is supposed to come out with my brother Craig in it - Forever Strong - where he plays some rugby as well. Not sure on the movie status, but the premier seemed to bring positive reviews. Ok, at that link take special note that my brother Chris added me to the list of people on the movie. Yes, I did actually sit in the bleachers and do fake clapping and yelling while sitting by an actual dummy.

Mission Call - Mr. Brett goes to Washington

Brett got his mission call on Thursday, February 28th. He is going to the Washington Kennewick mission. Very cool. I thought he would go to Portland like me, but it's just as well because the new mission boundaries actually include one of my areas in eastern Oregon.

All of my brothers, and sister, went to central or South America. I just couldn't see that continuing. The odds were against it. So, the oldest child and the youngest child got/get to go to the pacific northwest.

My brother Chris called us all and set up a "gotomeeting" on Thursday and so all eight brothers and sisters were on the conference call while Brett opened the envelope with the mission call. What a neat experience! Half the time we couldn't tell who was talking because very few of us have distinct voices, but it felt like a mini-reunion. We're going to start a tradition as a result of it and set a call up for every couple of weeks.

Anyway, here's to Brett on the next two years of his life! And, here's a picture of me those many years ago and the link to my mission book.

P.S. You must check the link called "Chris." True to the name of the blog, it has not been updated in a while. (-: