Christmas came!

It's been a long time coming, but we finally put new floors in our kitchen. We chose Marmoleum for our floors, a flooring material made from linseed oil and wood flour. It's a similar mixture to original linoleum used a long time ago, but much better than the vinyl flooring that has been common for the last 30 years. Anyway, we are pleased with our new floors.

Election day is like Christmas, Hanukkah and Flag day all rolled into one. It's like the leap year of exercising your rights. It's like that last scene in Groundhog Day where Bill Murray finally escapes reliving the same day over and over again, in that you have a chance to make a difference and change the course of your life from the past x amount of years... Okay so that last one was a bit of a stretch, but still, voting is important. I hope you voted for my guy, but if not, that's okay too...just go vote today!

Thanks for everyone who dressed up and made my birthday party lots of fun. There were a bunch of really good costumes...also some conscientious objectors to costumes...but they were put in their place. This is shaping up into an annual event, so mark your calenders! Some weekend around the 26th of October it will be happening again.

Here are some pictures of some of the great costumes from the party. Sorry if you're not in here, but I didn't get pictures (or they were too drunk) of everyone.

Me as Dr. Horrible...if you don't know what that is, go here. You can't go wrong with super villian-ry, Neil Patrick Harris and a musical blog...

One cute pregnant pumpkin.

ein Maus.

A Future Farmer of America and a bicycle mechanic...

My cousin and her friend (who came sans-costume but were treated to our stash).

Couple of Gypsies.

Unfortunately you can't really get a great look at Katie's costume since she was sitting down, but she was a Guitar Hero, complete with wireless guitar, cape and spandex!

This was Marcus's penance for showing up without a costume...he had to be little red riding hood. If he comes without a costume next year, I think he will have to be an avid Yankees fan...

Also in this picture is one of my favorites, Aura as a toddler - those are not only legit footy pajamas that she found (that she can fit in!) but she also drove to the party like that. Awesome.

Beer pong table, Hula girl, and a Cat.

Our holy family.

And our resident conspiracy theorist.

All in all great showing guys! Thanks a lot!

So this past weekend was my Dad's surprise 60th birthday party, though his birthday isn't for another 2 weeks. It was the only weekend that worked and also made him more surprised. Gina, Katie and I planned pretty much everything, with Gina mostly handling the invites, Katie workin' out the food and location, and me being the Emcee. Everything went off without a hitch and my dad, who is notoriously un-foolable, was totally shocked. Awesome. Here are some pictures from the weekend! If I get permission, I might post some of the video that I made with pictures of my dad with sweet hair and sweeter shirts...but that will be later.

The reveal

Bunch of friends from Maryland (and Minnesota...)

Me, my Uncle John and my Dad

The kids and Dad.

What a punk.

Aww, aren't we cute?

My mom was having a good time.

These were the die-hards at the end of the evening. Way to go guys, you can still party!

The in-laws enjoying themselves.

My dad and his best friend since high school.

I was angry with my sister because she was mean...

But then she had to go and do something cute.

So we were in Boise this past weekend, and were mostly unprepared for the very cold and very snow. All in all it was a really fun weekend. So fun, infact, that I barely took my camera out. So everyone will just have to trust me when I say that there was a lot of drinking and a lot of good times.

This picture was right when we got in to the outlying areas of Boise. It will have to do as a good summation of our trip.

Boise: I'd probably go back. At least I wouldn't fight it?

The people have spoken! And they have said that their favorite CANstruction sculpture was....the Michael Phelps.

BUT! The judges also spoke and they said that our ribbon was the best overall. In addition we also won awards for best structural as well as most cans. 3 out of 5 awards is not too shabby. Way to go team.

I shamelessly stole this graphic from the CityWeekly blog from a post encouraging people to hurry up and register to vote.


I assume that everyone I know is registered to vote...but if that assumption is wrong, let's do something to make it right. Everyone should vote regardless of who you vote for. Even in Utah where, some may argue, that our presidential vote is already decided it's important to vote for local issues and local representatives.

If you don't vote you have zero right to complain about how poorly president/governor/city councilor X is doing. So everyone make sure you're registered, know where your polling place is and come November 4th, vote!

Fall is my favorite time of year. I took a little time from work to go walk around outside and shot these at our next door garden shop.






Except for this one. This is Kona. In the window.

Hey, I forgot to mention this! For everyone who lives in the one-city area (Salt Lake), I ask that you go to the downtown library and 1) see the awesome stuff and 2) vote for our sculpture. It's not that we need to sway the vote...it's that I want to.

So today was CANstruction day here in Salt Lake. Our firm participated (and by participated I mean destroyed all other teams that entered the competition). It was pretty exciting, as was expected, and the build went off pretty smoothly, mostly as was expected. Here are some pictures!

So, as many of you know, I have been working way too many hours recently (in fact I am about to head there right now, at 8 am on a Saturday!) which means, among other things, nothing is getting done on our house projects. I was able to get some work done on the basement one weekend, but the projects there are still in the works.


The stairs were needed because termite damage from before we purchased the house had turned the stringers and treads into mush. Also I took a sweet spill using my back to break about 3 of the treads, so that was good. If you look close you can see that part of the wall, which is sweet old school tongue and groove, was also in pretty bad shape so I replaced that as well. Our friend Steve, who is a carpenter, came over and gave me a lesson in stair building.



Much needed tool storage/organization.


The Foosball table lives again! Who wants some? This is what Katie refers to as my "man cave," which reminds me of the scene in Juno where Ellen Page says to Jason Bateman after seeing his room where he keeps all his cool stuff "She gave you your own room in... in your whole house? For your stuff?"