Thursday, July 31, 2008

Are you ready for some Football!?




A few weeks ago, my sweet sister, Princess Gerty, sent me a link she thought I might be interested in. For the past three years, I have seen news coverage of the BYU Football Women's Clinic the day/night after it occurred. I kept telling myself 'I've gotta do that next year!' But of course never heard about it until afterwards. This year, (thank you Gerty!) I was able to reserve a spot for myself and my friend. And then the waiting began.

I can't tell you how excited I have been for this thing, or how much I truly love football! Let's just say I felt like a kid waiting for Christmas today! As I got the kids ready to go to the sitter I was literally bouncing on the couch I was so excited!

And it was AWESOME!!!


It was so fun to be there (albeit with 500 other women) with the coaches and players. Coach Lamb and Wayne Latu were hilarious, cracking one liners all night. It was fun to see the players interact with each other. For example, Dennis Pita and Max Hall are now brothers-in-law, having married sisters over the summer. So they traded "bro" comments back and forth. It was also hilarious to me how star struck some of the women were! But one of my favorite moments was when Jeff Bell was demonstrating DB (defensive back) stance and a footwork drill involving two bags on the ground and one we had to tackle. He went through the drill at speed. But some women seemed confused, so asked him to do it again. He did...in s- u- p- e- r s- l- o- w motion, totally playing it--wiggling his hips to get down into stance and almost dancing over the bags!...it was hilarious!

It was also fun to hear some of the comments the coaches and players gave as we went through the drills, "great form!' was particularly satisfying..."patty-cake is one way to tackle 'em!" (thankfully not to me!)... "nice paint!" (for the ladies that thought to wear grease paint under their eyes)...and best of all the grunts of approval after a well-completed drill. Some of the coaches/players were more gruff than others (I wouldn't want to cross Coach Kaufusi!) But Coach Lamb was funny as he tried to settle us all down to start the night...he kept having to hush people, and every time he said Quiet down, ladies would giggle/laugh! His comment "My players don't laugh when I say that!" brought even more laughter.

At the end of the evening, we got to watch highlights from the 2007 season. It was so fun to see those great moments again. And interesting to note that some of those moments were mentioned when the players were asked what their favorite moments from last year were (Fourth and 18! Blocked field goal in UCLA game!) We were sent home with posters, t-shirts, media guides, fridge magnets, instruction booklets, and best of all great memories! I plan on doing this again next year (and the next and the next!), so anyone interested in joining me for fun and football let me know!

Goodbye Tree!

And so the Tree Saga continues. I've already grossed you out with the apparently graphic wasp pics taken a couple years ago in my front yard, so I won't post those again. On Wednesday morning the five man crew came (at 7:30am!) and started removing the horse chestnut tree in our yard. After three and a half hours of work (with one break to empty the chipper hopper) the 100 year old, 75 foot tall tree was gone. Here are some pictures from that morning. This first pic shows how our tree decided it was time to lose the leaves.

The guy in the lift cut off most of the limbs and the other four picked them up and fed them to the chipper. They blocked off more than half the street in order to take care of this tree!

When I took this pic it looked like there was snow falling from the tree...just the saw dust!

Our good neighbor took the majority of the trunk wood for fire wood. After the main leads were cut down, only the trunk stump remained. They used a chain saw that was three of four feet long to cut the stump down to the ground.

Once they got the stump cut down, they brought in the back hoe to lift the stump into the truck to haul away.


These last two pics are a look at why the tree needed to come down ( and why it had started coming down in pieces by itself!)


There were so many little critters crawling around in this mulch!


I am so divided about saying goodbye to this tree! It was such a nice big tree, giving so much shade and a nice semi-barrier between our yard and the street. But it also has those horrible "pokey things" (the seed husks were especially sharp with barbs--OUCH!), and in recent years it has dropped significant limbs (thankfully with no personal or property damage). It is nice not to have to worry about it with every wind that blows, and knowing that we won't have to deal with the leaves and pokies this fall is a relief. But it does feel like a hole has been ripped in our world. I suppose we will get used to it not being there eventually. Mimi and Buddy are very sad to lose their climbing area and "sitting place", but hopefully will love the new tree we plan to get just as much.

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

Toddler Talk Tuesday


I'm going to copy my good friend, the Mommy, and share some common toddler speak from our family. Most of these are courtesy of Sweetsa, but I'll include a couple from Mimi and Buddy too.

Awe-THumb! (This is Buddy's favorite saying, hands down)

Mosquitoes are vampire helpers.

some-scream (what we put on before going out in the sun)

care-of-me!? (will you carry me?)

jalompy (the letters that come between 'I' and 'Q' in the alphabet)

sapeared (Sweetsa's answer when we're looking for something...It disappeared!)

Here is validation of Sweetsa's nickname: Sweetsa: Me hungwy Mommy! Me: Sweetsa, do you want noodles or ham and cheese for lunch? S: Tandy! M: Maybe after you eat some lunch you may have some candy. S: (Shaking her head regretfully) No me hungwy, Mommy! or even better(and I think she got this one from Buddy), Oh, me tired mommy (I'm too tired to eat real food, but if you offer me candy I just might survive the day!)

Sweetsa doesn't use the word not very often, instead shaking her head to negate her sentences. For example, "Me like!" or "Me want" while shaking her head no. This was really confusing at first! Recently she has begun to say no in front of some words, but I really have to be watching her when she talks to me so that I can catch the real meaning she's trying to get across.

And last but not least I love it when she says,"You make me so funny!" which of course means, "You make me laugh!"