Grandma with the twins

I’m WAY late writing about the twins’ blessing so I apologize. Sunday, May 18th was a great day. The babies looked adorable in their little white outfits. Roman was a little fussy during his blessing which was kind of funny considering I think I mentioned something about him being such a happy little guy. And he normally is. But even though they had both eaten right before, Little Tank had to have some more I guess. (Actually, it’s kind of funny – if you look at the pictures, Roman is fussy and eating in about half of them – sometimes that kid never can get enough!) We had a bunch of family come and enjoy the day with us and that was great.

Gramps and the shotgun with Tagg

Perhaps the highlight of the “after-party”, though, was when Tagg got the shotgun treatment from my Dad. When I was setting up the table Sunday morning, I saw my shotgun in the closet where we keep the table leaves and thought how great it would have been for my Dad to have used it the day before when Tagg met my parents for the first time. My Dad decided he could still use it, however, so he kept it in their room awaiting the appropriate moment. Since Katie and Tagg had both slept at our house Saturday night, it was a great setup for the shotgun to be used, just to “remind” Tagg that he and Katie aren’t married YET. Megan had her boyfriend (and quasi-future-fiance?) Richard at the house and I’m not sure if she was amused or mortified, but everyone else enjoyed it, even Tagg.

Here are the rest of the blessing day photos.

I think I’m a closet marketer.  I probably should have studied marketing instead of international law.  I love to analyze product messaging.  I think that’s part of the reason I love marketing agency web development like I do at McCann. 

I am baffled by the Carl’s Jr. ads where you have to watch (and listen to) someone loudly and sloppily eating a hamburger with sauce and toppings falling off of it and stuff all over their face.  Seriously, it’s disgusting.  Certainly it meets one of marketing’s main goals – be memorable.  But does it really influence people to DO something?  The only thing it’s ever influenced me to do is change the channel, which I do EVERY time a Carl’s Jr. commercial comes on.  Am I in the minority here?  Seriously, what kind of ROI has Carl’s Jr. seen on those commercials? 

But then there’s the all time classic commercials like Toyota – Oh what a feeling! and the Mean Joe Greene Coke commercial that I remember 25+ years later because of the feelings they invoked.  As I showered this morning, I realized that I think about one of these classics probably every time I shower.  It’s the old Coast soap commercial.  In it, a bleary eyed, sleepy guy stumbles into the bathroom in the morning and gets in the shower.  He turns the water on and the music starts, at a slow speed.  He groggily picks up the soap, lifts it to his nose and smells it, and his eyes open wider –

Coast, the scent opens your eyes,

He starts to wash and the lather builds as does the volume and speed of the song –

Coast, lather and you realize,

The song is now cranking.  Lather is flying everywhere.  He’s shaking his hair under the shower water and smiling –

that Coast is the way to make you feel alive,

Suddenly, he’s done with the shower, dressed already, smiling, energetic, and attacking the day –

Coast, feel alive with Coast!

What a great commercial!  I think it speaks to that universal desire to feel unconquerable and have endless energy and always feel great.  And you could achieve all of this if you just had some Coast soap.  I think of it every time I grab the soap in the shower.  Does anyone else remember that commercial?  It’s probably mid-80′s so you have to be a Gen-X’er at least to remember it.  What about other commercials?  Are there any memorable ones that anyone wants to contribute?

Okay so I have never posted anything on this blog so we shall see if this works. I just wanted to wish my husband a very happy birthday. 33 years old today! Whoo! Hoo! Thanks for being a great father to six rambunctious kids and a wonderful friend to me. I hope you have a great day. And we are all looking forward to the annual 7 layer (?) chocolate cake from Costco. It is a must now for Derek. Happy Birthday Scucione!

I took a couple hours today and met Soren at the zoo. Of course winter never is going to end so it was FREEZING and rainy (but hey, I guess it wasn’t snowing at least), but we still had a good time. The animals were pretty active so the kids really liked that. Of course soren’s favorite part was watching the giraffes pee. WOW!!!

I had to take a picture of my most recent fillup of the Suburban. This actually wasn’t the final tally either. The pump caps your purchase at 100 bucks. So after that I reset it and put in another 10 bucks before the tank was filled. OUCH. 

Last night Julie and all the kids met me at Costco in Bountiful on my way home from work. When we walked out of the frozen foods aisle, I looked across to the books section and was surprised to see President Uchtdorf and his wife, pushing a shopping cart. President Uchtdorf looked very casual in khaki pants and a black and white aloha shirt. He turned into the main aisle and started heading towards the front. It was kind of weird because no one was talking to him. It looked like he was able to shop in relative peace. Oh well, not anymore! I grabbed Peyton and Soren (Julie, Eden, and Logan were in a different aisle with their cart) and pushed our cart with the twins in it to chase him down from behind. I called “President!” and it took a little bit for him to turn around. Maybe, he’s still getting used to that title? But he turned around and was very friendly. He shook our hands and asked Peyton and Soren their names and how old they were. Meanwhile, his wife had gone around to the cart and was oohing and aahing over the twins. She called her husband over and they both played with the twins for a bit. He said they have twin grandsons who are 18 years old. It was kind of funny because while we were talking to him, this lady was walking by talking on her cell phone and got all flustered. “Oh my gosh, uhh, hi, uhh, umm, elder, no, umm, president…ooohh…” and he shook her hand and she walked off.

On the way home, Soren rode in the truck with me. He was in charge of the Family Home Evening lesson last night so I figured we better take advantage of the situation and we planned a little lesson about having prophets on the earth and how cool it was that we got to shake a prophet’s hand. For the lesson we pulled out the conference Ensign and the boys got excited when they saw him in there and could easily pick him out as the man they had met earlier. Peyton and Soren each shared how good they felt inside when they shook his hand and we talked about the spirit. It was a great experience. I’m kicking myself though. I just got this new phone that does EVERYTHING (PDA, Phone, GPS, camera, etc, etc). The phone I’ve had for a while doesn’t have a camera and I’m not in that mode at all. So I missed out on a great photo op. President Uchtdorf in an aloha shirt with Peyton and Soren – that would have been classic!

I’ve taken the next 2 days off from work so I can stay home while Julie goes to Women’s Conference down at BYU. She gets to go and enjoy a couple days listening to great speakers and hanging out with her mom and sisters. Well, actually only ONE day with her sisters because the other husbands were too afraid to spend 2 DAYS home alone taking care of their kids (c’mon, guys, MAN UP! ). So I’m here with the 6 kids. This will definitely be the longest I’ve ever been in charge of that many kids. Hopefully we’ll be able to do something fun in addition to just keeping my head above water. I wanted to take the kids over to the park later. But as I sit here looking out the window at the SWIRLING SNOW IN FREAKING MAY I guess that’s not going to be possible. Oh, when will it end??? I just have to remind myself that (supposedly) summer really is coming and McCann announced their quasi-annual 4 free Fridays yesterday. Apparently most years they give you 4 additional Fridays that you can take off between Memorial Day and Labor Day that don’t count against your paid time off. Woohoo! That’ll be nice. I just hope it stops snowing in time for me to use them. Well, I’d write more, but Eden just started screaming, Roman just woke up, and I need to work on a book report with Soren . . . so more later!