New Baby Blake!

I've seen cute babies before - but I don't think I've ever seen such a cute BRAND NEW baby. I mean Blake is the cutest little bug! Nice job Andrea!!! Congrats to Paul too!!!

Griff was super happy to have a new little cousin, he was telling anyone who would listen the rest of the day. :-D

Happy Easter!

I'm not sure why, but since I've been in charge of Easter for Griff a couple of times in the last few years, I've realized that I don't put a lot of thought into the part of Easter surrounding the Easter Bunny. I'm not sure why, we always dyed eggs and had easter egg hunts growing up, but for some reason - I always forget that part.

SO, Lance told me about the Lindon city Easter Egg Hunt and I decided to take Griffin down there. It started at 9, we got there at 9:03 and it was OVER! It was like piranhas stripping a cow who has wandered into the Amazon river! Just a buzz-saw of little kids stripping that park of all it's easter egg goodies. So, I decided we'd go over to Walmart and get a few things so Griff could do an easter egg hunt. We invited Griff's buddy Kamas over too, so it would be a bit more fun, and it was, despite the bad weather - it did stop raining long enough for us to get out there and hunt eggs! Here are a couple of pictures and some video:

34 candy filled Eggs and a sports-themed basket. The footballs and camo eggs proved hardest to find - or if I placed the eggs at eye level (as you'll see :-D )

Griff with the Easter goodies, pre-hunt.

Griff and Kamas start the hunt!

Soccer egg - part 1 (the boys try to find an egg at eye level :-D )

Finding the Soccer egg - part 2 (I begin to worry)

The finale (the last egg was a football egg - watch Griff walk right over it :-D )

Restaurant Review - Mikado

Since I've been adhering to my resolution to not eat out more than 2 times a week (doing very well with that by the way, thank you!) I haven't had the chance to file a restaurant review in a while. So here's one - Mikado Japanese Restaurant (just East of Southtowne Mall, next to 5-guys Burgers). My mission buddy Jeff Christensen and I have been trying to get to lunch for a while and it finally worked out the other day, and he recommended Mikado. I'd never been, and I like Sushi, so I was glad to go along. The ambience is nice, the service was good, and that's about where the "good" ended for me - or at least the great. I guess I've become somewhat of a Sushi snob (if that's possible in Utah???) but seriously if it's not Tsunami, I just don't like it much. We got several rolls that were on the lunch special (maybe that was a hint?) and we got one or two that weren't. The two we got that weren't specials were OK. The specials were not very good at all. The ingredients seemed fresh and the rolls were well made, but they just didn't have very good taste. And, they weren't super inexpensive - not too bad, but for the money, I would have rather had Tsunami all day long. I guess the silver lining is I know I'm not missing out on anything by never going to Mikado again. Really, I feel the same way about Happy Sumo too. The way I am, I'd just prefer to go to the place I KNOW is fantastic and not chance it with places I don't know. The cool thing about going to Mikado with Jeff, beside catching up with an old friend, was he has a frequent diner card there and it ended up cutting our bill in half, so that was nice - Thanks Jeff!!!

So overall, I'd give Mikado about a 2.5 out of 5. The food wasn't horrible it was just OK, and for the normal prices, I'd expect GREAT. If you like Sushi, go to Tsunami. ;-)

It's officially Mountain Biking season!

That's right, I went out for the first ride of the season this morning (and it's about stinkin time!!!) The weather was so nice yesterday that I resolved to hit the trails first thing this morning. So, I pumped up my tires, lubed up the chain and derailleurs, filled up the camelpack, threw on some warm under clothes, just in case, and headed out to see how the Bonneville shoreline trail was shaping up!

Since this was my first foray into mountain biking for 2009, I decided to take the road up Traverse Mountain to Mike Weir Drive to catch the trailhead there. Much to my dismay the trail looked like this:

Yep, there was still snow out there. Undaunted (and since I had just peddled halfway up Traverse Mountain, I wasn't about to turn back for a little snow and mud) I struck out on the trail anyway. In many places the trail was fine and I was able to cruise along at a decent pace. In other places, it looked like this behind me:

I swear I had to peddle twice around in the mud to get as far as once around would normally propel me! It got exhausting, especially for the first day. And yes, those are coyote prints in the trail, they were all over the place along with a few small deer prints. I was hoping to be able to tell Griff I saw a mountain lion, but no such luck.

I got out to about the Temple:

And decided to turn around as the trail was only getting worse as I went further up. I guess that only makes sense. :-D

On the way back I got covered in mud, but it was so much fun! Almost like a mountain bike slip-n-slide in some muddy areas. Funny how mud is still fun even now! I got home just fine:

But had to throw my clothes in the wash immediately and hop right in the shower. Unfortunately, since I didn't have anyone with me to take this picture, you can't tell how muddy my legs are or how muddy the bike is. You can see some of the specks on the shirt, but I'd already wiped my face off at this point.

Next ride will be on the lower section above the Draper pool to see if it's a bit dried down there. It looked like it was, so I'll keep my fingers crossed! B-)

Go Speed Racer!

Watched Speed Racer on DVR.

Obviously this one has been out for a while if it's already on the movie channels, but I never saw it. I think someone back then told me it wasn't any good. Well, they were wrong, I actually liked it a lot! I liked the stylized way they made it kind of look like a cartoon while still using real-life actors (and a lot of CGI, I know, but it was good CGI). I like Emil Hirsch, he's a good actor, and even Christina Ricci is good in this. Plus John Goodman is usually good, but he wasn't funny in this one.

The story follows young Speed Racer as he becomes a professional race car driver in the shadow of his dead brother, who was also a race car driver. He is beguiled by the rich and powerful team owner, but rejects his lucrative offer and spends the rest of the show avoiding the attmepts on his life as he races his car.

I'm not a Speed Racer afficionado, but I always thought Racer X was the bad guy who was trying to ruin Speed and his racing career, but in this he's a good guy. Matthew Fox plays Racer X, Jack for those of you who are LOST fans. He was good as well in the movie. Susan Sarandon plays Speed's mom and even she's tolerable, though usually I'm not a fan (not since Bull Durham anyway).

So, I'd go with a 4 out of 5. The story is a bit long, but actually I didn't mind as much as I thought I might when I saw it was 2 hours and 15 minutes long. For a movie based on a comic/cartoon, it was actually very well done and not cheesy at all. If you have the movie channels, it was on Cinemax I believe. If not, see if you can find it on Redbox, or I saved it on DVR if you want to come over, I'll definitely watch it again.

Playtime with Griff and Q

Quincy loves other kids, so when Griffin is over, they have a pretty good time playing. Mostly Griff running around and Q trying to catch him. At least this time they slowed down long enough to play this ball game. Griff also lost another tooth (not this night, but a couple nights before)! And yes, the tattoo was an April fool's joke ;-)

The pics are a little blurry because these kids don't sit still for long :-D

New Tattoo!

Yeah, I got bored and finally found a place that could do this tattoo right (Anchor Ink tattoo in SLC - thanks guys!!! )

It really hurt, it took 4 hours to complete. I'll get the old school Jazz logo when this one is healed up.

Here are the pics:





When it's healed up, I'm adding "GLORY GLORY" above it. It was just hurting too much to continue after 4 hours - and actually there is a little touch up to do on this too.

I'm pretty happy with it, now let's hope they win the quintuple!!! Come on you Devils!!!