Big news in the extended Richards family: Dan just got an internship offer from Google, so he and Hailey and Preston are headed for the Bay Area this summer! We're so stoked to have them come out and join us, and to have Dan working for my company is very exciting. Of course we're all hoping it turns into a full-time job after B-school, but we'll just worry about this summer for now and then go from there. Congratulations Dan and fam!

This week marked a fun little anniversary for me: my 1 year mark at Google. Yep, it's only been a year...feels like more doesn't it? Feb. 26th was my official start date last year, and it's been pedal to the medal ever since. I can say without reservation that I'm just as happy today that I made the change as I was a year ago, if not more.

And that, folks, is a wrap. Have a great weekend and I'll be back with you Monday or so...

Weekend skiing

I was going to report this on Monday because I couldn't wait to tell you, but I didn't want to steal Kennan's birthday thunder. Then I've been waiting for some pictures to come through, but they haven't arrived yet, so I decided to just go ahead and tell you about the weekend ski trip. If they're good, I'll post them when I get them.

I posed the question regarding whether the storms would bring great powder, or dangerous driving. The answer for Friday and Saturday was both. There was a heavy snow falling Friday morning as we made our way up to Kirkwood, and the roads were pretty slick. We had a little harmless sliding incident because they became slick much faster than I thought, and I wasn't in 4x4 yet. It was no problem because I knew how to correct it, but it definitely got the kids' attention. Needless to say they were alert for the rest of the trip up.

Friday was probably the best day of skiing I have ever had. There were easily three feet of soft powder - a little heavier than Utah powder, but so nice and soft. I skied with our YM president and another bishopric member, and what a day. Both guys are better than I am, so we pushed the limits of what the mountain had to offer. We skied several double black diamond runs, where we took the chair up as high as it went and then traversed sideways until we found these gorgeous, steep, untracked runs with chutes running down through trees. I'm not the world's best powder skier, but I noticed three things: I got much better as the day progressed, if I took my time and relaxed I could ski anything, and that much powder doesn't hurt to fall in. You know you're skiing your guts out when you can remember two instances through the course of the day where you swallowed so much powder that you couldn't breath (like swallowing water into your lungs). It was awesome!

Saturday was a little more mellow as some of the kids who had been in lessons on Saturday needed just a little more help to get out and skiing. So I skied for the morning with a couple of Tongan kids who were great sports, and despite not knowing how to put the boots on, turned out to be pretty good skiers once I taught them how to turn and stop. It was actually pretty fun to help them out.

A massive storm blew in around lunch time with high winds and driving snow, and since the leaders were pretty much the only ones who wanted to keep skiing at that point, and also because we were worried about getting stuck at the resort, we called it off early and headed home Saturday afternoon. Once again, pretty winterous driving conditions, but no incidents. I was very happy to have gone, and grateful to not blow out a knee or something crappy like that (two friends have recently done so...one guy in our ward blew out both at the same time).

Thanks to all of you for your birthday thoughts and notes to Kennan. She had a great birthday.

"We should put Mom on eBay..."

A funny thing from last night's dinner: We were making weird faces for reason (can't remember, that was too long ago...) and Angela was exhibiting a particularly funny face. Kennan said, "we should put Mom on eBay!" We think she meant YouTube, but you never can be sure...

MORE IMPORTANTLY:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KENNAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Kennan, or "Bens", turns 8 years old today. We're so glad we have Kennan in our family! She is such a joy and we love her so much. Kennan has such a big personality that we just love being around her. She is tender and kind-hearted, she is passionate and smart, she is talented and fun-loving.

We had our traditional donut birthday breakfast this morning, and tonight we'll continue our celebration with gifts, a requested salmon dinner, birthday cake, and a birthday FHE that will include looking at scrapbook pictures and journals to remember the day Kennan was born.

Kennan the girl scout

She's a great big sister

Helping Brig touch the sea creatures at Monterey Bay Aquarium

Kennan's gorgeous smile

With the family at the San Francisco Chinese New Year parade

We Love You Kennan!!!

Dangerous blizzard or Beautiful powder?

As I mentioned a few days ago, I'm driving a car full of YM/YW up to Tahoe for a couple days skiing. Sounds fun right? Yes... Only problem is, the weather service is calling for some serious snow up there on Saturday - like 4 feet - and that may present some interesting problems. I guess a 4-foot storm is all in the eye of the beholder: Skiers are stoked about it, as long as they can see going down the hill; Drivers are not so stoked about it. As I'll be doing both that day, I'll reserve judgment for now. Stay tuned for either the accident report, or the greatest ski day of all time...

Can't wait for Kennan's 8th birthday next week!

James Blake and Mating

I just listened to James Blake speak as a part of our guest speaker program at work. He was awesome. It wasn't so much that he was a dynamic speaker who said amazing things, it was more that he just opened up really casually and shared things about himself and about playing professional tennis. He didn't give us canned or careful answers, he just answered questions with his true thoughts. He laughed easily, he was humble and self-effacing, he is very well-spoken and educated (Harvard, after all...), and he seems to be a person content with life - not just as a pro tennis player, but almost in spite of that. I've always liked him, and now I like him even more! I immediately ordered his book on Amazon - I'll let you know what I think, but I can already tell you I'm going to love it.

A funny thing I thought I'd share that Kennan said last night. Ang took the kids with some friends out to a place where you can watch a colony of Elephant Seals, both young and old, from very close range. Kennan told me excitedly how her favorite thing about it was watching the big male elephant seal mate with the females. Hmm, I guess you could say that's nature at it's finest.

YouTube

Here are a few cool YouTube videos you might enjoy:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=fPgV6-gnQaE

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ew-7SwLcHBg

http://youtube.com/watch?v=nQi5ENnOpBM

http://youtube.com/watch?v=sd0g7hTsDTw

http://youtube.com/watch?v=tc0Ut5y-GRc

Ski Week

Our school district has a fun little thing called winter break going on this week. Everyone calls it "Ski Week" because so many families head for the snow, but regardless of the activities of choice, the kids love a week off of school in mid February. We're not going skiing as a family this year, but Ang has some fun things planned, like a hike today to go see the elephant seals and their new babies, play dates, lunch at Google tomorrow, a trip to the beach as a family yesterday (thank you, President's Day), and more.

Speaking of skiing, I volunteered, out of the goodness of my heart, to assist our ward's youth on a ski trip to Tahoe this weekend. Yes, it will be a sacrifice to drive a carload of young men and young women up there, but I'm willing to do it ... just the kind of guy I am. So that's two days of skiing for me, and I'm definitely not sad about that! The original plan was to take Micah with me as my buddy, but unfortunately she has a bundle of play rehearsals she just can't miss. Too bad, would've been a fun daddy-daughter date.

Last night as a family we watched an old favorite of Angela's, Sweet Home Alabama. There seemed to be a little more swearing than we remembered, but that sometimes happens when you watch something with the kids that you originally watched without them. Anyway, it was a fun family movie night. We also watched Evan Almighty over the weekend and the kids thought that was great.

My Dad reported snow on their back deck as high as the tops of the deck chairs... hmm, makes me soooo jealous...

Happy Valentines Day

I have a weird habit of getting a bunch of flowers, making hand-made cards, and giving them to Ang and the girls a day or two before Valentines day. I think it started back when we were having to be very careful with our money, and I realized that flowers on Valentines day cost roughly 50% more than flowers a little before Valentines day. It doesn't matter so much now, not because we don't need to be careful with money, but because I found a great little local flower shop that keeps prices low throughout. But I still do it early - old habits die hard...

So I bought some flowers yesterday during lunch, went home while I knew nobody was there, and left my homemade cards and the flowers for the girls to find on the kitchen table when they got home. They all seemed happy about it, but later Angela told me the girls asked her, "does Dad know today's not Valentines day?" Man, they must think I'm an idiot. Oh well.

Anyway, happy V day.

Did anyone see that Texas-Kansas basketball game last night? Big time win for the Horns, but more than that it was just a downright tough game. Love to see serious athletes working like crazy, all acting like they care, and the crowd going nuts! Sort of gets me thinking March Madness...

On the personal exercise front, Angela and I have had a good year so far. Ang was running a lot and doing boot camps frequently until she was derailed last week by her sickness. She's anxious to get going again - it's funny how taking a week off while sick doesn't feel like a healing time, it feels more like you're falling behind. As for me, I've run 118 miles so far this year (not all at once). I also got back on my bike early this morning with a group from the ward and, despite the darkness and relatively cool temperatures, really enjoyed myself.

Ang and I had lunch with a good friend from B-school yesterday who was visiting from Austin - it was great to catch up with Jeremy again and it made us really miss our friends there. We feel blessed to have life-long friends wherever we have lived.

Catching up

10 days have gone by since my last entry. In my defense, work has been very busy, and family things have taken precedence at home. I am definitely not losing interest in the blog, and I will try to be better at posting.

I spent a very long day with my fellow employees at Disneyland, and had a surprisingly great time. We hit all the big rides multiple times, really enjoyed the huge, customized firework show, and ate a lot of free food (albeit Disneyland food).

Romney is now out of the presidential race. Too bad, but I thought it was classy that he dropped out when he realized it was time, unlike some of the other hangers-on who stole votes from him on Super Tuesday. I'm not happy with any of the remaining candidate, and am likely to stay firmly on the sidelines for a while.

The weather here has been fabulous lately. It seems like we're through the winter rains, and we sure enjoyed the 70 degree sunshine this weekend. We went on relaxing bike rides both days, and it was great to be out and about. It was just Morgan, Kennan, and I because Angela was still a bit sick from her week-long fever/cold/cough, and Micah was sick too. Brig was really ticked that he couldn't come on the bikes with us because we don't have a kid seat that he can sit on. We'll definitely have to get one, and probably another cruiser/mountain bike as well so we can all go as a family.

Brig is talking like crazy. He can communicate a lot of things, and it's so fun to have him tell you what he wants. Of course it sometimes takes a little deciphering to understand it all, but we can really tell he thinks through what he wants, and will tell us. He's such a cute kid, we just laugh at him even when he's doing things we probably shouldn't allow.

LOST started up again, and it's as gripping as ever. They've mastered the technique of flashing back and flashing forward, and you're sometimes not quite sure which way. I seriously have no idea who's good, who's bad, who's right, and who's wrong. It's the one show right now that we'll watch as soon after the live episode as we can. Others, like Prison Break, we record and then they sit on the DVR for weeks before we get to them.

It was fun to have Dan out here again this weekend for some internship interviews. We really hope it works out for them to join us later. If anyone's getting sick of the snow and would like a fun little spring vacation, we'd love to have some visitors.

150

This is my 150th blog post - that's a whole lot of blah, blah, blah... I estimate about 25% of the posts have actually been interesting to anyone, but truthfully it's pretty fun for me to do.

So here's something you may find interesting. My company is flying its employees down to Disneyland next week for a company 'team-building event'. It'll be a bit weird to be there without the kids and family, but since they all got to go there this last October, I don't feel too bad. Especially since 99% of our time there was spent doing kid things. So we fly down Monday, basically taking over Southwest's entire flight schedule for that day, and we flood all the hotels within a mile radius of Disneyland. Tuesday we have park hopper passes, and then when the park closes in the early evening, it shortly thereafter reopens only for our employees until 1am the next morning. Pretty cool, huh? Should be fun.

Before that, though, I'm looking forward to my daddy-daughter date with Kennan this Saturday. She gets to pick the restaurant, and we may do something fun after dinner too. She's a sweet girl and I look forward to this being the first of many dates as I'm making this a regular thing with my girls.

Other interesting things coming up that I have opinions on:

1. Super Bowl: I'm really rooting for the Patriots to go undefeated here. Typically I'm a big supporter of the underdogs, but a few things make me not want the Giants. First, I can't cheer for any team with Eli Manning as the quarterback. Second, everyone from New York thinks it's the greatest, so that makes me want them to lose. Third, it would be incredible to see a team go 19-0 and then we'd never again have to hear about the '72 Dolphins who were the last undefeated team and pop champagne each year when the last undefeated team loses. And fourth, I like the Patriots' team concept, how they get good players to stay because they're part of a team, not just players trying to make money (for the most part).

2. Super Duper Tuesday: I think the fat lady has sung, Mitt. I loathe John McCain, and find him so UN-presidential I can't understand how anyone would vote for him. Unfortunately, it doesn't matter what I think and he's going to pull this one out. I actually have a democrat friend who told me he's worried because he thinks McCain can beat the democratic contenders. I laughed at him. It's pretty sad that a candidate can win the top post in this land just because he's NOT Mormon, black, or a woman. If it comes down to McCain v. Obama, I truly don't know who I will vote for...

3. LOI signing day (Wednesday): This is the day where all the college football recruits sign their name on the bottom line and they're then bound to the school they sign with. Every college football fan who follows a certain team watches this day to see what players his team signs. BYU has a good crop of kids coming in, and they may just land a couple of big fish on that day...we'll see, but it should be interesting.