Claire Gives us a Tour

Claire loves to hold and use the camera. So I helped her give us a tour of her toys...

March Madness and Jimmermania

Being the sports addict that I am, I've been teaching Claire a phrase over the past several weeks. Here it is...

Okay, one more...

So my last post was a video of people dancing in Belgium, it was a marketing promotion for a television show there. A friend sent me a link to this video of a marketing promotion done by T-Mobile in Liverpool's train station. Enjoy...

So the past several days I have been working heavily on my practicum project, the MBA equivalent of a masters thesis, and my project has proven to be quite... challenging. I won't bore you with the details, but it has been nice to have diversions such as these videos to occasionally break up the monotony and frustration I have been encountering while working on my project. Thankfully, it will all be done soon, though I still don't have a job...

The Sound of Music - Must Watch Video!

So we have been kinda boring bloggers of late. Not much to say about what is going on here. However, today I came across this fantastically fun video on YouTube and it brought a smile to my face and made my afternoon. Take 4 minutes out of your busy day to be cheered up and watch this video. Enjoy...

Claire's First Walk

The weather is FINALLY starting to warm up a bit. I've been waiting for spring since October. We took Claire on her first walk last week. I've taken her for two walks this week, and it was almost 60 today! We have a great little trail not to far from our home. I like it because it goes through this interesting swampy/woodsy/lakey area where there are lots of trees and wildlife. Its also nice that there are just enough people on the trail that its still relatively quiet, but you know there would be someone else around it some creepy guy were to meet up with you on the trail (am I the only one who worries about stuff like that, Casey thinks I'm weird).

This is evidence of the wildlife in the area. You can see lots of trees that the beavers are working on. You can also see their dams. Casey and I actually saw one last fall, but we haven't see any yet this spring. Just lots of ducks.

Casey sporting shorts, although it really wasn't all that warm that day.

Catching Sleep Whenever Possible

This past week has gone by in a blur. I sat back for a second yesterday to catch my breath and realized, February is nearly over! Suzy and I are doing about as can be expected for new parents. At school people are always telling me I look exhausted, and I got a phone call yesterday evening and the caller thought he woke me up, even though he didn't.

Claire has been busy being a normal newborn, sleeping when we want her to be awake, and being awake when we want her to be sleeping. Last night was actually her best night yet, she fell asleep before 1 a.m. and then only woke up twice to eat, and each time fell right back asleep. Wonderful!

Two nights ago, Claire and I enjoyed the first of many Jazz games together as we stayed up together into the wee hours of the morning watching the Jazz beat the mighty Celtics. Some sad news last night . . . Larry H. Miller passed away. He is as much a part of my Jazz as Stockton, Malone, and Sloan were/are. I feel the same void now as I did when I watched the first Jazz game without Stockton and Malone. He will definitely be missed; he was a great owner and a great philanthropist to the entire state of Utah.

Included below are some new pictures of Claire. She is always pulling the strangest faces and doing the funniest things with her arms and legs that it sends us racing for the camera only to barely miss the shot. Anyway, enjoy the pics!

This one is one of my favorites.

We finally caught one of her sleeping stretches on camera! She will be sleeping soundly then suddenly her arms will shoot straight up, jiggle for a second, then slowly fall back down to her side.

Suzy with a sleeping Claire. Suzy looks so amazing. No one can believe that she just gave birth 2 weeks ago.

Claire enjoys looking around to see what is happening. Often as we are holding her she stares up at the lights.

Watch this video!

Since campus is closed until 11, I was cruising around the Internet and happened upon this very funny video clip. Click on the link to go to the page. I hope that you enjoy it. . .

Double Decker Car Racing

My latest project

I have been wanting to make a quilt for the baby for a while now, and for Christmas I got some new quilting tools and supplies for the quilt. Casey helped me pick out the fabrics. He was satisfied with the frog print we ended up getting, but was really pushing for the monkeys. They were cute too, but didn't really match anything else.

I'm a novice quilter. I am still working on a big quilt I started back when we were in Payson. I underestimated the amount of time it would take to hand quilt the whole thing together. I learned from that and I knew this time I wanted to make something much smaller that could be machine quilted. I finished it in one week, which is a vast improvement on the two years and counting I've been working on my other one. I had to teach myself a lot, so it was kind of an experiment, but I think overall it turned out well.

Me and the quilt

A close up so you can better see the different fabrics.

I hope she likes it! Thanks for the advice you given so far on my last post. If any of you haven't written anything yet, I'm still waiting for your words of wisdom. Thanks!

4th of July

Yesterday we went to the Tampa Bay game. The Devil Rays played the Royals. The Rays are the #1 baseball team in the country right now. They just swept the Red Sox. It was a fun game and they won 11-2. It was also $1 hot dog night. :) That always makes the game a little more fun. It kind of evened out the $5 soda we bought.

On the way home there was a really nice almost sunset on the bridge. It was a beautiful day and we really liked the clouds on one side.

This picture is from the other day when it rained a lot. We found a tree frog on our back sliding glass door. We see toads a lot, but the frogs usually stay in the water.

This is a turtle that we saw at the gator river. He was right up by the dock where we look for gators. He was just eating away.

On my birthday we went miniature golfing at a place I like to call Gator Golf, although that's not the real name. They had a pit with probably 20 gators stuffed in it. They didn't look all that comfortable. This one had a turtle on its back and didn't really even seem to notice.

This is a bird that we see a lot around here. It likes to stand like this to dry off its wings.

Thats all the random things we've been up to. Hope you're having a fun summer too!

Gone With the Wind

With all the free time I've been having, I've gotten a chance to read a lot of good books. I just finished Gone With the Wind and although it was a big time investment, it was well worth it. It comes in at over 1000 pages, but is an amazing novel that gives you an interesting historical perspective with characters and themes that are timeless. I just rented the movie at the library, so now I have another 4 hour commitment to see it! If anybody needs a good book recommendation and you have some spare time, or your patient enough to read it slowly over time, I highly suggest trying Gone With the Wind.

West Coast Fans, East Coast Time Zone

Out here we don't get too many opportunities to watch Casey's favorite teams - the Jazz and BYU Football. This week we got the chance to watch both, two nights in a row. Unfortunately they come on VERY late out here. The Jazz game didn't start until 10:30 and BYU until 9:00. On Wednesday we watched the exciting Jazz game when Deron Williams raced down the court to make a layup and win the game at the buzzer (this sentence provided by Casey, I don't remember the details this well, or recall them with such excitement). It got over at 1:30, that part I remember. Yesterday we went to a friends house to watch the BYU game which got over at 12:30 and then we had a 30 minute drive home. We had fun supporting our teams, but are feeling a little sleep deprived now. Thank goodness for weekends!