The Best Christmas Ever

For Beau this year has been capped off with what he calls the "best Christmas ever".

Vegas Bowl Behind the Scenes

It has been a busy week. I left Marta and the boys at home and headed to Vegas with Marta's dad to the Vegas Bowl. He and a few people from his office were running the hospitality suite for the players and their families so I went down to help him with that. It was fun to be behind the scenes and see all the preparation that goes into these games. I also got some pretty good tidbits from BYU football insiders. Here are some of the good ones: 1. we expect to sign a defensive lineman as a transfer from USC on Monday. The kid is a 5-star talent who just didn't click with USC and is a stud. 2. Heaps is apparently the real deal and we should expect him to play next year as a true freshman. 3. Two years ago in a game Max Hall suffered the same shoulder injury to the same degree as Sam Bradford. Max got up, finished the game, and never missed a start while Bradford was out for the year. 4. Sounds to me like Unga is going to declare for the draft and skip his senior year.

The game itself was great - except for the 50mph winds. BYU came to play and it was clear that they were there to make a statement. We made it home yesterday and Marta made it through as a single mom for a few days.

'Tis the Season

Our boys are all old enough now that Christmas is going to be a lot of fun this year. You've got to take the trip to Temple Square to see the decorations, and in doing so we learned that Cash is deathly afraid of statues. We saw on Halloween that a scarecrow or ghost in a tree scared him and you can understand that for a two year-old. But ANY statue - whether of Joseph Smith, a mom and kid, or a manger scene - scares the kid to death. We had our first big snowfall last weekend and Beau and I made a snowman. Yep, it scared Cash. Now he sits inside and points out to the front yard and says, "Snowman, mean!" Looks like we've somehow scarred him already.

Applesauce

Cash's current favorite food...

Playing at the Zoo

I think the best part of the Salt Lake zoo may be the kids playground. There are some caves with bats and some other animals to see, but there are also a lot of things to climb on, bounce off, and hang from. It's nice for a change to have them climb, bounce, and jump off things that are outside and that we don't own.