4th of July Extravaganza

It's been raining a wee bit here in Texas for the past month or two. The city postponed the fireworks show because of rain. To provide some source of pyrotechnic entertainment for the night, Jared and I went to a fireworks warehouse to get something we could light on fire. We spent a grand total of approximately $16.72. Some people were buying cart loads of stuff and racking up two or three hundred dollars worth of stuff. I guess their money was burning a hole in their pocket. Anyway, here are some pictures from the first annual Crookston / Carter fireworks extravaganza.

The crowd could hardly contain their excitement.

Oooooooooh. Ahhhhhhh. Sadly, that's about as good as it got.

Andi was into the sparklers.

You can almost feel the excitement.

Peyton observed the flames and carnage from a safe distance.

As you can see, we have no pictures of Dylan with a sparkler. I tried to give him one, but he ran away from me and after that he avoided me like I was trying to hand him the plague on a stick.

After the fireworks were over and the kids were in bed, the adults stayed up and watched "Better Off Dead". That's some good watching. Overall it was a pretty fun night. Hopefully we'll get to see some bigger fireworks on Saturday. Of course, we're only at about day 23 of the 40 days and 40 nights of rain, so it might not happen.

Supersize the Fries For the Little Woman

Yesterday was our seventh anniversary. I went all out and took Sam to Wendy's for dinner. I even let her Biggie Size her fries and drink. I'm a great husband. I didn't even get in trouble for making that our anniversary dinner. Why? Because before dinner we went to a Kenny Chesney concert. It was pretty darn cool. Taylor Swift and Sugarland were the opening acts. Sam just bought the Taylor Swift CD, so she was excited about seeing her in concert. Sugarland was pretty good. I knew more of their songs than I thought I did. Kenny Chesney was pretty awesome.

The concert was at Pizza Hut Park, which is an outdoor soccer stadium. It was also raining, a lot. We got soaked. Sam's wallet was in the back pack that we took. The money that was inside her wallet was soaking wet. Even though it was raning that much, we had a lot of fun. Now I need to get Sam to stop calling me Kenny.

Here are some pictures we took.


This is the view we had from our seats. Pretty good, eh? We ordered the tickets the first day we could, so we had a pretty good view. The blonde lady that's in the picture that was in front of us was hammered even before Taylor Swift started, so it was pretty funny to watch her try to stand on her chair when Kenny Chesney came on.


Taylor Swift's set was pretty good. I can't believe she's only 17 and is on tour.


As you can see I Was an idiot and didn't take a jacket or rain coat or anything. Brilliant! That's how wet I was before it really started raining.


That's just something they had up while they were setting up for Kenny.


Here's a picture of one of the big screens. He may be good looking with his hat on, but when he takes it off he looks like Gollum from "Lord of the Rings".


We could actually see him when all the drunk teenagers stopped standing on their chairs.

Let's Go Rangers

The Cub Scouts in our ward got group tickets to a Rangers game Tuesday night. Since Jared is in the Cub Scouts he knew about it, and since I have a way cool wife, she was willing to let me go to the game with Dylan. We had a pretty good time.

We had seats up in the nose bleeds, but you could still see the game pretty well. The first inning was pretty cool. The Rangers loaded the bases, and the fifth batter hit a Gran Slam. The next batter hit a triple, and they ended up scoring six runs in the first inning. We ate dinner there, which included a hot dog, a drink and a bag of Cracker Jacks, which all came to $16.75. I wonder why ballparks, Disneyland, and movie theaters have no sense of how much things cost in the real world. "How much is a hot dog? Let's say $4.50, that sound good. A cup of soda? $5.00, yeah that's about right." If I could get my hands on the people that makes those decisions, I would give them a stern talking to.

These (above) were not our seats

This is my attempt of a panoramic picture from where we were sitting.

Dylan lost interest in the game about the third inning. I took him walking around the park and I bought him a hat. He had no interest in wearing the hat at all. Its like the hat was a symbol of him missing his bedtime , and he was not happy with it. By the seventh inning he was crawling around me, the floor, other people desperately seeking comfort. He tried to eat stuff off the ground, but luckily I caught him before he got anything. I think.

He looked happy for a little while.

The Rangers closer Gagne got the save to end the game, and when I said the game was over, Dylan got excited and said "The game's over? Yeah!" It was the most excited he was all night. After the game was over, he would actually hold his new hat, and he said he had fun.

I thought it was way cool. Just walking in the stadium and seeing the size of it was amazing. We even got to see Sammy Sosa bat, so that was awesome. All in all it was a very fun, and we'll have to do it again sometime.

You can't really tell, but the white blip by home plate is Sammy Sosa.

Birthday Party

We had a quasi birthday party for Peyton yesterday. We had the Crookstons over for dinner and then opened presents and had cake and stuff. Here are some pictures from the festivities.

He didn't really do much of the opening by himself.

Cool Sesame Street thing.

This piggy bank was a hit with all the kids. Thanks, guys!

Ok, what do I do with this?

Oh, I get it.

Mmmm, cake.

Must have sugar.

Yeah, he ended up getting a little bit messy.

You only turn one once, might as well enjoy it.

Happy Birthday, and some other stuff

Sam's birthday was today. She is now the age that my mother claims to be (26). It's a little bit odd of my mom to claim that age because I'll be 29 this summer and my younger brother will be 26 himself. Mom needs to find a new age.

I took the day off from work and made sure Sam was happy to avoid any repercussions. The kids weren't necessarily nice to her, but they did sing "Happy Birthday" a couple of times which was fun. Andi and Dylan made her birthday notes, and Dylan was even nice enough to permanently enshrine part of his note on our couch. I guess he missed the paper a little bit. Overall I think it was a good day. It will really stink going in to work tomorrow after taking all day off today. But it was worth it.

On a side note, who am I kidding, everything I put on here is a side note. Anyway, I logged onto my Google homepage this morning and saw the following quote on one of the widgets. Usually the quotes are pretty lame, but this one fits in quite nicely with my life right now...

"I gotta work out. I keep saying it all the time. I keep saying I gotta start working out. It's been about two months since I've worked out. And I just don't have the time. Which uh..is odd. Because I have the time to go out to dinner. And uh..and watch tv. And get a bone density test. And uh.. try to figure out what my phone number spells in words." - Ellen DeGeneres

Another completely different subject. Have you noticed how quickly society is degrading because of bluetooth headsets? Back in the day if you saw someone having a one sided conversation with someone you couldn't see, you knew they were crazy and you should avoid that person. Nowadays so many people have the headset thing that you can't spot the crazy people. How are we supposed to tell the difference between a looney and a yuppie? Honestly. We went to lunch today and I saw a couple come in and sit at a table close to us. Both of them were wearing the stupid bluetooth things. I almost went up to them to say that they didn't need bluetooth to talk to the person right across the table, but I wasn't sure that they weren't crazy.

Easter Eggs

The kids dyed Easter Eggs last night. It was pretty fun. We even took pictures since it was Peyton's first go at it.

Dylan was showing me what he drew on his egg with the clear crayon. You can't see it in this picture, but he drew a rendition of The Starry Night.

Peyton's egg never made it to the dye.

Andi did a pretty good job of putting the eggs in the dye. She used the pink dye the most.

You can feel the excitement!

The finished product. They didn't turn out too bad.