Griff and Unkie Sean fishing!

Sean and Stacy were nice enough to watch Griff while I went to the football game (see below :-D ) and Sean took Griff Fishing down on the Provo river. Sean has gotten into fly fishing and he lent Griff a regular pole. They didn't catch anything, and the excuses from Griff have included: "All the fish were in the deep end," "Sean didn't know what he was doing," "And the fish just weren't hungry." Yeah, he's a pretty funny kid.

Here are some pics Sean took and sent to me:

Utes take out the Beavers!

I went to the Utes game on Thursday 10/02 and it was EASILY in the top 3 or 4 sporting events I've attended in real life (D-Backs World Series win over the Yankees, Sun Devils win over #1 Nebraska, Utes Fiesta Bowl win over Pitt to be the first team to break the BCS and this - so top 4)

Utah about to score to go up 13-9 in the first half

My friend Rich Kent was out from Virginia and he's a huge Ute fan, like myself, so he was a worthy recipient of my other ticket. He and I were college roommates for a while at the U. We had known each other from Mtn View where were the only guys in Basketball class that weren't on the basketball team (yeah both of us should have been and we got screwed, so the coach let us in the class to "make up for it" whatever, my year they went 2-17 LOL). Anyway, I digress.

Rich, in his "Where's Waldo" Utah shirt and me in a tall hat! Jeez!

This game was all Utah in the first half for the most part, other than giving up a late touchdown. The second half was a different story and saw the Beav's go up by 8 with only 2:11 to go. All the "fans" that left missed the greatest 2:11 I've ever seen in sports, quite possibly. The Utes ran a pefect set of downs AND got the 2-point conversion to tie the game with 1:29 to go. The Beav's then proceeded to play for OT I guess cuz they gave the ball back to the UTES!!! With Louie Sakoda??? One of the, if not THE, best kickers in the NCAA right now???? CRAZY! We thought the Utes would get him a few yards and let him try a super long kick, but they actually pulled the trigger on a play down the field and IT WORKED!!!! They Utes were on the 20, and Sakoda (to the deafening chants of LOUIE, LOUIE, LOUIE!!!) buried the 37-yard FG to WIN the game, the place was crazy - as loud as any stadium I've been in and we all ran out onto the field, it was a blast!

Out on the field after the HUGE win!

What a great game, good to see you Rich, glad you could catch a great game!!!!!

Here's some video:

Utes vs Wildcats

After driving 6 hours on a beautiful Saturday to go to Idaho and back, I got back in time to go to the Utes game against Weber State. This was the first game I've been able to go to, I missed the first home game due to being in AZ for the ASU reunion. So, I was pretty excited to go.

The seats I got are pretty good - 1st row on the east side, looking at the south end zone. It makes it a bit hard to see the North end zone action, but anything south of midfield is pretty awesome. The crowd around us isn't super animated, but it was just Weber State. Some guys in our area had more fun making fun of the WSU cheerleaders that were right in front of us (super annoying after a while) because the game was in hand before halftime.

So, hopefully the rest of the games will have the same outcome! 5-0 is a nice start for the Utes, they may have a test this week with OSU, who just beat #1 USC again!

I got some video of a touchdown pass, though the quality doesn't appear too good. Still gives you an idea of where the seats are. It was pretty dang fun, and I'm excited to go to the rest of the games!

Nickelcade again!

Yep, Griff is addicted to the Nickelcade :-D

Here's some video:

Then we hit CPK and Sports Authority before enjoying a fresh peach shake at Taco Amigo!!!!

Nickelcade and Pizza!

I've known about this place for a long time but I've never been. Then I thought, Griff constantly wants to play the video games wherever we go but they're like $1 and he doesn't really know how to play. But here, a nickel or 2 or 3 is much easier to swallow as he "learns" to play the games. Plus, the have classic games that I know how to play :-D So, we went over to the NICKELCADE!!!! $2.25 per person to get in and then we got about 6 or 7 bucks in nickels and played for like 2.5 hours! It was pretty fun and Griff was into it the whole time. He especially likes the race car or motorcycle games.

That's Super Mario Brothers! Great classic game.

I was never good at this game and I'm still not :-D

Oh, yeah - BURGER TIME!!!

DK Junior, I used to be good at this game, let's just say it's not like riding a bike.

Then, I got a recommendation for a pizza place in the "plaza" or whatever you want to call it that never got finished in the middle of Orem (the place that was supposed to have the new Hale Center Theatre, condos, shops, restaurants, etc.) But Pizzeria 712 is the only shop in there I think. Some of the condos might be done as well? Anyway, turns out it a froofy pizza place not for kids. I was wondering why the host was looking at us weird when we came in, just Griff and I. Then the server didn't say 2 words to us the whole time - like warning us that the corn on the cob that Griff wanted was COVERED in sauce. I really liked it, Griff wouldn't touch it. The pizza was good and Griff ate plenty of that, but I think he would have been a lot happier at Chuck E. Cheese. Regardless, we had a good time sitting out on the porch enjoying some really nice weather.

Great Weather out on the porch

Griff enjoying his wood-stove cheese pizza - pretty good, just not a kid's place really.

Park City

Sorry folks I have been severely slacking! Work has been insane lately. BUT, no excuses, here's a long awaited update:

Griff and I went to Park City to ride the Alpine Slide. When I looked it up online to see the schedule and cost, I noticed something I'd never seen before - the Alpine COASTER! Oh, we had to do both rides. I probably would have done the zipline too, but in all honesty it was a little pricey for one ride down each thing. SO, we stuck with the slide and the coaster and we were not disappointed! Plus as you can see, the weather was PERFECT! There is some video of each, and you'll hear me say I like that the only thing they tell you on the coaster is the car is attached to the rails and can't come off so there's no need to use the brake! LOL, OK - GAME ON - we went FAST!!!!!!!! Griff was a LITTLE tentative at first, but then he was totally into it and he loved it! I did too, it was pretty dang fun.






Getting set for the coaster!



Heading up the mountain! (couldn't get Griff in very well :-) )

Then we headed over to the slide. Griff was scared of this for some reason, but we saw a lot of people going down while we were going up Payday (the ski lift) and he got more and more excited. By the time we got to the top he was ready to RUN over to the slide to go down. And we had a blast - we went really fast again, though this ride doesn't move like the coaster (though you could potentially flip the cart out of the slide so it's exciting in its own right.

Heading up the ski lift

Heading down the slide!!!

After we did the coaster and slide we went and got some delicious dinner at the little restaurant right there at the foot of the lifts. It's amazing to me how good ski resort food can be sometimes, or maybe I was just REALLY hungry, but it was a tasty meal. Then we went and played in the maze for a while, but once Griff discovered you could short-cut the whole thing, he just kept doing that instead of exploring, it was pretty funny.

Griff is such a good boy and I can't believe how big he's getting and it sure is fun to go do stuff like this with him! I really like being his dad. :-)

Utah State Fair, or "how to eat fried foods"

I went to the Utah State Fair. I'm not sure I've ever been. I'm trying to remember if we used to go as kids in elementary school for a field trip, but I'm not sure. I THINK we did. Anyway, I had no idea what to expect, except they have deep fried PB&J sandwiches on a stick! I had to have one...or so I thought.

When we got there, we went into the displays in the first building we came upon. It was all weird sculpture, pottery, ceramics and carving. Seriously, it looked like you could pretty much submit ANYTHING to get a ribbon. There was also a huge display of scrap-book pages. I thought it was kind of weird you could get ribbons for scrap-book pages, but after seeing some of the aforementioned "sculptures" I wasn't surprised by anything anymore. It did appear that maybe 3 ladies and their kids had submitted scrap-book pages and won all the ribbons (and they seem to give away a LOT of ribbons!)

Then there was the butter sculpture:


Can you imagine how gross your hands would feel after doing this? Or would they be super soft like on Seinfeld? Anyway, seems like a weird excuse to play in butter.

We went and checked out a couple of other displays, it was kind of like a live infomercial for everything you never needed, it was kind of weird (have I stated that enough yet?) I don't know if we just missed it but there was no prize-winning pig, no Utah's biggest Watermelon, nothing! But you could buy a "Sham-WOW!!!" if you wanted to!

We did the big yellow slide that was kind of fun, and then I did the mechanical bull. Watch me wipe out in this video! My shoulder and neck are just now feeling good again. It is amazingly fun, yet really hard once he starts getting serious with the "bucking" part! It was so fun.


Then we got out to look for food. We had the DELICIOUS corn on the cob with a little butter and pepper, I also threw a little hot sauce on there, SO GOOD!!! WE really should have stopped with that, but we kept going. We had a corn dog and fries, a Navajo taco and a funnel cake. The funnel cake was the BIG mistake...BIG mistake. They taste good for a second then immediately go to work on your gastrointestinal track. HELLO pepto! Sheesh!

Back to the deep fried PB&J, we were in line to get one and we heard a kind of WT lady say they weren't good. If SHE didn't think they were good, there was no way I was going to waste $5 on one (Yeah, EVERYTHING at the fair is super pricey!) I bet she likes SPAM! ;-)

After that, we did the ferris wheel, but there were always doubts as to the safety of rides that are packed up and hauled around in semi's, so we didn't do anymore than that.

Still, it was pretty fun. Don't know that I'd go twice in one year, but there are many other fried foods to try! :-D