Happy Halloween!

Halloween was a lot of fun this year. I think every year I get more and more excited. Maci got to carve her first pumpkin. She really had a good time and liked to look at the big orange pumpkins. We carved Einstein and Sponge Bob. Sponge Bob got a lot of comments, I don't think the Trick or Treaters even knew who Einstein was. We also got to have Adam, Eric's little brother with us this year. He came down for a couple of days and we had a pretty fun weekend.




While Adam was here, they also went on a 40 mile bike ride on Halloween morning. Sam and Zane joined them for the ride. Lots of good exercise!


Now the real fun began Halloween evening. I had been working on our costumes for a couple of weeks and knowing that Adam was coming to visit, we made sure he fit right in with our theme. The star of the show was Maci! We borrowed her costume from my sister and so we made them theme around her costume.



Our Little Mermaid, Ariel. She didn't even mind wearing the wig. She didn't even pull at it. She looks like a little Cabbage Patch Doll.


I was Ursula the Sea Witch, Eric was Sebastian the Crab, and Adam was King Triton. At the ward party, I couldn't believe the attention Adam got as King Triton. All the little girls knew who he was and kept coming up to him and wanting to talk to him. It was like he was Cinderella at Disneyland.

Brittny and Zane joined us as a witch and and the witch's broom. Quite clever! Julie and Sam and their girls also joined us for the evening party at our house. Sam was a black spiderman with an afro and Julie was a beautiful lady with crazy hair! I didn't catch the girls costumes on film before they changed, but we had a real fun time. We had all the food you could imagine, Halloween games, and ping pong. Thanks to Mo and D for the great Christmas present, the ping pong table has gotten a lot of use this weekend.

Blast from the Past!

Here is a little glimpse of Eric and Andrea throughout the ages!
ENJOY!

GUESS WHO'S CRAWLING??



BEFORE

This is Andrea, being home with Maci is so much fun and I was able to trick her into crawling for the camera. Maci is six and a half months now and has decided she would like to crawl. She hasn't crawled a lot but if there is something she wants bad enough, she definitely can move to get it. ( I don't know what is wrong with our camera, it videos in black and white and accents any yellow that is in the picture.)

AFTER

I GOT IT!!!























Maci loves playing with her toys now. She is easily entertained.
She loves them so much she sometimes lays right down in the toy box.

Alaska Trip

This year my Mom's side of the family decided to do a "Guy's Week" trip to Ketchikan Alaska. My cousin Jeremy generously funded the most expensive parts of the trip (i.e. transportation, lodging, fishing charters etc) and my uncle Dale, who goes to Alaska every year, planned and coordinated the activities. So this was really the opportunity of a lifetime for me.

This is me, my brother, bro-in-laws, uncle and dad before getting on my cousins Cheyene at the SLC executive airport. Notice they rolled out the red carpet for us. No security barrier, no baggage check, that's the way to fly.

This is my bro-in-law Rich and uncle Scott (bro-in-law Nick is back there too).

We had to stop in Seattle to pick up some fuel. Here I am stretching my legs.

This is Ketchikan as seen from the airplane. It's just a bunch of awesome little islands.

Southeast Alaska has a climate unlike any I have ever visited and I had a hard time categorizing it. On the one hand it rained all the time so it was humid and there was lots of jungle-like foliage, but the temperature was lower (about 65 degrees almost year round) so you also had large evergreens and pine trees. Quite the place.

My brother called this little gem the "Shrieking Shack". It's just a creepy old abandoned house a few miles outside of town. Those are 2 bald eagles perched on top of it.

We did fly fishing in the river the first day. This is everyone in dawning their fishing gear.

Bro-in-law Nick, Myself, and bro-in-laws Josh next to Ward Creek. For someone who likes to fly fish this place was an absolute dream come true. Fly fishing will likely never be the same for me again.

This was one of my first catches. It occurred to me later that I hide half of the fish with my hands when I hold them like that. Oh well, you get the idea.

Out of everyone in our group I think my dad was the least excited about the fly fishing initially, but I also think he ended up having the most fun. He camped out at this same spot the whole 5 hours and made a killing. My brother downstream estimated he caught 40+ fish there. Every time I looked over there he had one on his line.

Me Nick and Josh followed a bear trail upstream to this hole just below the falls. The density of fish in the stop was incredible. You could see them everywhere.

Nick caught the biggest fish I saw that day. I am guessing this fish was 7-8 pounds and took Nick about 30 minutes to bring in. It took him so long we gave the fish a name (Frank).

Nick's fish "Frank" could have eaten most of the fish I caught. But there is no question these were the biggest fish I've ever caught with a fly rod. It was a life changing good time.

Most of the time we were "spot fishing". This means we could see the fish we wanted to catch and cast our lines just in front of him, then just as the fish bit the fly you could raise your rod and set the hook. This is by far the funnest kind of fishing in my opinion.

We weren't the only ones fishing for salmon. Luckily we never had any real close encounters with these guys. That's a black bear with a salmon in its mouth in case you can't tell.

My bro Adam and dad at Chico's Mexican restaurant. This place was funny, they served Mexican food (of course) and quite a few types of pizza (Italian), hamburgers (American) and I believe they had a few Asian dishes. So everyone can probably find something they like there. We ate there 2 of the 3 nights we were in Ketchikan.

This is my uncle Dale who organized the event. He and his boys did the deep sea charter the same day as us (his vessel is in the background). Our boat looked very similar to the one you see here. The weather was awful so I got really sick and lost my breakfast over the side 3 time, so did my brother Adam. The fishing wasn't great either but we landed some decent sized Halibut.

Here is the day's catch. This is much less than a crew of 6 usually gets in 9 hours fishing out there. Especially the Salmon. But I have tasted these Halibut and they are delicious.

On the way home I got to ride in the cockpit of the Cheyene. How awesome am I? HA!

This is mount Rainier, an active volcano near Seattle.

This is Mount Saint Helens. It definitely used to be an active volcano. Very active. I Hope it's not any more.

House Warming Party. Mexican Style.

We held a house-warming party Saturday with a Mexican theme. My in-laws Sam and Julie (Julikins) Mills came with their clan as did our friends Brittny and Zane Jones. We made Cafe Rio BBQ pork salad, 2 different flavors of bean dip, and lime aid. My main contribution was a compilation CD of great Mexican tunes. So yeah, we had it all. Great food, great friends, and great music.

Julie and Sam's girls loved the crape paper on the fan blades. I knew that would be a hit with them.

Here is the whole group (minus yours truly). Many thanks to all those who contributed to this glorious feast.

We used Brittny's eyeliner to make these awesome mustaches. I don't really know why Brittny put one on herself, or why she made an Italian mustache instead of a Mexican one, but whatever. It's her eyeliner so I guess she can do as she pleases.

Andrea nailed every aspect of the Cafe Rio BBQ pork salad. In fact, I liked it more than the restaurants. And I'm not just saying that.

I love that Sam rocked Mexico's red, white and green, even if the clothing combination was peculiar. When Julie saw what he was wearing she said "You're not really wearing that are you?". While it may not be appropriate for every party, it was verrry appropriate at this one.



And of course it wouldn't be a party without Maci throwing up all over mom's arm.

Rooster Cogburn Ostrich Ranch

About 15 minutes North of our house is yet another gem of the American Southwest; the Rooster Cogburn Ostrich Ranch. Andrea and I were visited Saturday by our good friends Brittny and Zane Jones and we took them to the farm.

We started off feeding the deer. These docile creatures wouldn't hurt a fly.

Out of about 50 deer this was the only buck I saw. We finally convinced him to come over and grab a byte.
Then we moved on to the more adventurous ostrich feeding. These must be the meanest birds on earth. I'm not sure they're birds at all actually, probably more closely related to lions or maybe even dragons.



Here are my cute girls posing with the ugly ostriches, what contrast. You can see Picacho Peak in the background. We want to go hike/climb it soon. I've heard it's quite spectacular.

Then we fed the donkeys. What a sleeper! I'm surprised these guys get fed at all 'cause they're so boring.

Last we fed the Lorikeets. Probably the funnest activity of this particular outing.

Andrea was too funny with these guys. She was really excited to get in the bird area and feed them but as soon as one landed on her arm she started saying, "OK I'm done, I'm done!! Take the food, take the food!!". HAHAHA.

Look at the size of these bad boys. They sell ostrich eggs for eating during the winter months so we're going to come back here in January. Only $15! That the equivalent of about 23 regular eggs. I did get a stick of ostrich jerky for $2 and it was quite good.

Next time we go we're going to purchase the full tour ($14/person vs $5/person for just feeding) and we'll take a ride on this bad boy. We were really just trying the ostrich ranch on for size so-to-speak and I have to say we liked what we saw.

Moving In

Andrea and I moved into our new house about 3 weeks ago. I thought some of you might enjoy a little "virtual tour". It's been a lot of fun settling in but it's also a ton of work. Here are some pictures with commentary:

A shot from across the street. I gave myself heat exhaustion 2 weeks ago pulling this nasty spider infested ground cover out of the front yard. That's why the yard looks like a forest floor. That tree is going to need some TLC too when I get around to it.

Here is the living room (as seen from the kitchen). Never mind all the silk flowers and stuff lying around. Andrea has been arranging these for her cousin's wedding so cut us some slack!

So here is the kitchen! That's Andrea in the blue shirt and her sister Julikins (Julie Mills) arranging the flowers. They look really good now I wish we could keep all of them.

Here is the family room area (as seen from the kitchen). Maci mostly hangs out on this little patch of carpet behind the couch so she can see us while we're in the kitchen (we're in there a lot, no just eating though).

This is the view of the backyard you get from the family room. The grass is bumpy and patchy so I've got that on the to-do list as well. But the backyard is large and is one of my favorite things about this house.

If you head down the hall you'll run into this little sweetie (my office). Perhaps my second favorite thing we inherited with this home purchase was this fine office furniture. All I had to do was mount a few power strips and my office was up and running. Keep in mind this place was a mess when I took all of these.

Head up the stairs and you'll find this fun little bonus room at the top. I'm not crazy about the colors but I do see this being a pretty sweet game room or something (pool table, ping pong table etc). Perhaps even a home theatre down the road.

Down the hall you find the "crafts" room. Andrea will sew things here if she ever gets around to sewing again.

The paint job in here is a little crazy but it's growing on me and I'm not sure if we'll change it. Who knows, the next little one could be a boy. This room and the one before it are for the guests whenever you all decide to come visit.

If you come visit you will also get to use this colorful bathroom. Fully equipped with 2 sinks! I bet you're all booking your flights now!

And this is little Maci's room. It really worked out nicely that the room next to ours was already decorated for a little girl. Each wall is a different pastel color and the ceiling fan even has pastel colored blades.

And here is the master bedroom. I think this is where we'll hold our dance parties and stuff cause I can't imagine what we'll do with a room this size. Perhaps we'll divide it and make two rooms or something.

And this is the walk-in closet. Andrea really liked this, and I don't mind it either. I'm gonna leave out the picture of the master bath cause all our stuff was lying about. You know how it is.

I hope you've enjoyed this virtual house tour. I know those video tours are a lot better. I guess if you really want to see the place you'll have to take a trip to Tucson. Laters!!