Braden and his dog

Tonight I did a little impromptu portrait session with Braden and the dog. I've never really taken a portrait before so I thought this would be a learning experience. Daisy stayed pretty calm and just sat there for the most part. It seems like the best pictures out of the bunch were candid moments like these ones between poses.

Turnover Special

I am clearly not a graphic designer, but I thought it would be fun to create this little advertisement in honor of Max Hall's 6 turnovers (5 interceptions and 1 fumble) in the recent Utah/BYU game. Pretty much all of my family, extended family, friends and neighbors are BYU fans and I like to rub it in. By the way, the Utes doubled up BYU 48-24 to finish off an undefeated regular season. They will now play in one of the BCS bowl games in January.

GO UTES!!!

The Fort

This last summer we took a trip up to northern Idaho. While we were there, we went to a BBQ at one of my cousin's house. He and his wife built a little fort in the woods behind his home and Braden fell in love with it. It seems like nearly every day since then he would ask if we could build a tree-house. Because our most mature tree would probably fall over if we put a bird-house in it, I thought it wouldn't be wise to build a tree-house. However, I finally decided to build a little fort for him to hang out with his buddies.


I decided to build it from scratch because I thought it would be a good experience for Braden and me to build together and we would save a lot of money over buying a kit. Well, I got in a little over my head (way over my head). I once built a toy box and that is about the extent of my building/wood-working skills. It took WAY longer and cost much more money than I anticipated. I kind of followed some plans from the internet, but I made a lot of changes to it. I put shingles on the roof and even installed a drip edge. Rain gutters would be going too far I decided. But I did install outdoor carpet to make it a little more comfortable on the knees. It has a trap-door with a ladder going up through it. You can also enter by a climbing wall. A slide provides a quick exit in the event of a raid by girls or the promise of an ice-cream sandwich by Mom. There is actually a pretty good view of downtown Salt Lake and the Wasatch mountains from the inside.

Braden and his friend Bridger helped a bit, but were bored pretty quickly. Here's Braden doing some sanding (wearing his safety glasses of course):


Braden likes to collect bugs and keep them in paper cups and plastic bottles in the fort. He even made a fort for his bugs underneath his fort. He used to check on them several times per day - first thing in the morning after he woke up, as soon as we return from being away from home, at night before bedtime, etc. Here are a couple photos of him after we went on a Sunday drive and he rushed out back to see if both his praying manti (mantis' ?) survived the cold day.



He names all the cool bugs (like the praying mantis and lady bugs), but doesn't give names to the spiders and bees. Unfortunately, they have all now succumbed to the cold weather and he gave them a proper burial.

I'm not quite finished with the fort, I'll probably put in a climbing rope and a few other things, but Braden has enjoyed it so far. I promised him that next summer we can have a sleep-out in it.

Old Video

I've never posted a video and I wanted to give it a shot, so here is an old video of Braden. He was 2 years old at the time and he was driving around the backyard in his little jeep. He's never liked to take naps and this was especially true that day. He fell asleep while driving his jeep, but he kept his foot on the pedal. He drove around in circles for 5-10 minutes while napping. Here is a short clip: