OK, actually we had green fuzzies a few weeks ago.  Now it’s actually starting to look like grass.  We hydroseeded and when you do that you get a lot of weeds for the first year or so, plus some bare spots that need filling in.  But we’ve heard nothing but positives in the long run from others who hydroseeded.  So that plus the fact that when doing a 1-acre yard it saves about $8000 compared to sodding an acre, means it’s worth it.  The big summer projects we’ve done in addition to the grass this year are:

• Fence: We put in Trex fencing which is beautiful and virtually maintenance free for 25 years.  Plus it gives us the wood look that looks so much better with our house than vinyl would.
• Concrete work: We poured a big basketball pad on the west and a back patio out of the basement and steps going down the east side to the new patio.
• Trampoline pit: Keep the kiddies safe.  I did this one with just cinderblock, some chain-link fence posts, and a lot of dirt to fill in the cinderblock holes.

So FINALLY, 3 years after moving in, things are starting to come together in our yard.  Here’s some photos showing the current status:

front yard weeds (and grass – honestly it’s there!)	see, there really is grass!
front yard with the new fence	back yard with the new fence on the right side and the new trampoline pit
basketball pad right after completion before the fence was put in	back patio as it was getting completed.  Soon this will be covered by a deck.

I took the day off yesterday to play at Timp Lodge at Sundance with Julie’s family.  In the morning I went to Julie’s brother Justin’s practice with the BYU football team.  Justin is probably 6′ 2″, 230 lbs, and ripped.  He holds the Utah high school state record in the powerclean and is the reigning national high school powerclean champion. He benches about 350 lbs, squats over 500 lbs and can clean over 340 lbs.

He’s also a kicker.

He wanted to play linebacker but his high school coach saw his kicking potential and told him that one day he would thank his coach for only letting him kick.  Now, Justin is one of the top freshman kickers in the country.  He’s got a killer leg, holding the Utah state record with a 63-yard field goal (and some 70-yarders in practice) and with kickoffs that often go through the goal posts, approaching 90+ yards long.  The publicity he’s gotten over the last year-and-a-half or so since BYU offered him a scholarship is crazy.  He’s probably the most popular BYU player to never play a down of football, and is interviewed and/or mentioned all the time in the paper and on the news.  So he’s got a ton of pressure on him going into this season.  The practices are only open to media and family members, so I took advantage of being down in Provo and went to watch.  It was a pretty good practice and I met Lavell Edwards (told him I was Buss Williams’ grandson – my grandpa was Lavell’s coach when he played at Utah State), Ian Dulan, and Mo Foketi in addition to talking with Justin and Danny (Julie and Justin’s cousin), a safety, about how things were going.  Anyway, here are a couple videos from byucougars.com and YouTube about Justin.

I think this is probably my favorite book ever. Actually all 4 books of the series are I guess. And I haven’t even read a page of them. Julie tried to read to me from one of them but I made her stop after “…Edward’s velvet voice…”. That kind of made me want throw up in my mouth a little bit. But nonetheless, this just may be my favorite book series ever. Why? Because Julie LOVES to snuggle when she’s reading these books. It’s strange because a friend warned me a year or so ago that if Julie ever read this series she would fall in love with Edward and compare me to him. So I was a bit nervous when she started reading these a month or so ago. But I have to say he was dead wrong and I’ve quite enjoyed this series. It’s lunchtime and Julie just called me to tell me she wished I was home because she’d been reading Breaking Dawn. What I’m bummed about is she also told me she finished it. No more books to read. So either Stephenie Meyer REALLY needs to start a daily serialized story on her website, or I’ve got to convince Julie that she really needs to go back and re-read them to catch the things she missed the first time around.

Last week we launched the new MightyDog.com website. We used some of the GMNext.com framework for this site, especially the social networking aspects of the site. This site ties in with a national ad campaign Purina is doing for their Mighty Dog line. So McCann also did the television ad production which meant there were a couple of days when we had a bunch of really smart, well-trained dogs and their trainers here in the office for filming. Anyway, check out the site – and send in some photos or videos of your dog!

OK, this is getting out of hand.  What is?  Well, 2 things actually – first that I haven’t blogged in over a month.  And second, gas.  This is the most I’ve ever paid for a fillup.  A couple months ago I posted my $100 gas station trip.  Well, that’s nothing.  Check this out…

So I am back in the office after one of the busiest vacations of my life. One of those vacations you need a vacation from when you’re done. Over the last week and a half, we visited or stayed at the following IN ORDER:

Lagoon, Layton, Provo, Layton, Park City, West Jordan, Park City, Lagoon, Layton, Pineview Reservoir, Layton, Logan, Layton, Logan, Layton, Provo, and finally back to Layton.

It’s been a CRAZY 10 days. But it was a lot of fun, and hopefully I’ll write a bit more about all the events later. In the meantime I wanted to post my winning guacamole recipe from the 4th of July party “Guac-Off” at Charlotte and Dave’s house, since there were many requests for it. Yes I was one of the judges, but even if I had given my recipe less than I honestly thought it deserved, it still would have won, so I don’t feel bad.

Here, then, is the recipe:

2 Avocados (ripe ones, Dad, not the Costco bulk supply!)
1/2 red onion
1 Serrano pepper chopped up with seeds removed
a bunch of cilantro chopped up (start with maybe 1/3 cup chopped up and increase to taste)
juice from 1 lime
1 tomato with the seeds and pulp removed, chopped (I used a yellow tomato but obviously any kind will work)
salt and pepper to taste

Obviously, any of the ingredients can be adjusted to taste, but the above is pretty close to the Guac-Off version I made. Be sure to let the flavors blend well for an hour or so in the fridge before adding final salt and cilantro. Throw the avocado pits in and/or cover with saran wrap touching the guacamole to prevent browning from oxidation.

All other participants, if you want, please add your recipes here (especially Jessica, whose chunky version was my second favorite) .

OK, so I have been absolutely slammed at work the last few weeks, working on a bunch of projects which include in no particular order:

• Sally Hansen Natural Beauty (a cosmetics company back east — woohoo!)
• GM
• Purina Mighty Dog
• American Airlines
• Microsoft Dynamics accounting software
• Liberty Fillmore, Cart Whisperer phases II AND III for VeriSign

I’m trying to get all that done so I can take a week and a half off starting Thursday when both Julie’s and my family have tons going on including Katie and Tagg getting married. So with all that, I haven’t had a chance to write but I do now as I sit on the train on the way to work. The new FrontRunner train is very nice. I can sit at a table, plug in my laptop and have wireless connectivity so I can work — or blog. So anyway, there’s a bunch of updates. The biggest is that we’re FINALLY getting our yard done!

The kids enjoying the tramp pit settling

The kids watching the basketball pad construction

Three weeks ago we got the trampoline pit completed. I laid a bed of gravel, leveled it out pretty well, then laid 128 cinder blocks in a ring 3 feet high and 13 feet wide. To get things settled I filled the pit with water and walked around on the blocks a bunch, to push the blocks and gravel into the nice muddy ground. The boys especially loved that part. We got all our concrete done 2 weeks ago – the back patio, side basketball court, and steps going down the east side of our house from the driveway to the back patio.

The new back patio

Last week the fence got started. All the posts are in and the concrete had to cure for about a week. But today they got started putting up the actual fence. We went to Julie’s Uncle Kimo’s house on Sunday and they had just redone their yard. They had done the Trex fence in exact same color and style as we’re doing so it was nice to see it “in vivo” so to speak instead of just in pictures. I LOVED it and can’t wait until ours is done. It should be done by tomorrow. Once that’s done, we’ll hydroseed! Then we have to stay off the yard for about 6 weeks, but it will be SO NICE to have that done.

Other random updates:

Logan must have been REALLY tired right after his bath a couple weeks ago. I snapped these pictures so you could see it from my point of view as I walked into the bathroom:

The twins are doing great. They’re both sitting up on their own, and rolling over a little bit. Roman LOVES to play with his feet:

And Maren LOVES to play with Roman:

And the other kids are having fun with summer break here. The other day, the boys decided to play prisoner with Eden, 2 laundry baskets and 3 soccer socks:

I’ve been had! I just got off the phone with Peyton and I’m busted. Well, actually the tooth fairy is busted. Peyt told me he knows I’m the tooth fairy. See, he lost a tooth yesterday and didn’t say anything. He said he wanted to test the tooth fairy. So he secretly put the tooth under his pillow and sadly there was no money there this morning. So now he knows. I figure if a kid can come up with a plan like that and say nothing about a lost tooth, which most kids are so excited about, then he deserves to know the truth anyway. I wonder what sort of plan he has for Christmas?

And by the way, perhaps the best part of the story is HOW he lost the tooth. When I told him I didn’t know he even had a loose tooth, he replied:

“Oh, I didn’t. Well, it was a LITTLE bit loose. But Soren kicked it out.”

Great.

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?