Progress

We are making progress folks. No we don't have the internet yet, but instead of posting from outside the fieldhouse I am posting from my office which is in the fieldhouse. This means that I don't have people looking at me like I am crazy. I would like to thank David for his comment about us going green by just using other peoples internet. I think we have saved 32.43 trees by not having our own internet. Now don't ask me how I arrived at that number, but I am pretty sure it is accurate.

This week so far has been fairly productive for me. Of course that doesn't take very much since I am usually a bum. I golfed on Monday with Nick Cottle since he and Lexie are moving to Oregon (jerks) and I actually didn't do too badly. For those of you who have seen me golf that only means that I lost like 2 balls instead of 10 and managed to look like a complete idiot once or twice instead of 5 or 6 times.

Yesterday I reluctantly helped move Nick's stuff into a truck and marveled at his dads tetris skills as he packed the truck. After that Carly and I had a co-ed playoff softball game against the number 1 ranked team and somehow won. Probably because Carly was catching fly balls like a pro. Normally I am quite confident in our intramural skills and our ability to go far in the playoffs, however we have 3 pregnant women on our team along with the slowest person on earth (me), so the fact that we beat a very good team with a couple of college softball players made me happy.

The rest of the week we will be getting ready to go down to Cancun for a week with the John clan in all its glory. Originally I wasn't going to go, but thanks to Carly and her persistence in trying to make me find a way I was able to find a fairly cheap ticket to leave this Saturday. Now you may say that I got lucky in finding a decent price the week of the flight, but I will be earning my trip as I have two connections and get to spend the night in the beautiful Cincinnati airport. In other words I take off on Saturday and arrive on Sunday, but hey it will be worth it.

So if we don't post again until after Cancun all two of you who read this don't get upset and know that we will have two trips worth of pictures to post when we get back.

Live from the Fieldhouse

The reason we are coming to you live from in front of the fieldhouse is that our old friends and neighbors, Jen and Phil Singer decided to up and move to Boston. Along with our friendship they took our internet that we split with them. And for that I will never forgive them, ok not really, but we are in the process of getting the internet again so more posts and pictures should be coming up shortly. It is kind of funny sitting here in our car though because everyone that walks by looks at us like we are crazy. Maybe we look like the cops that sit in vans on a stake out, but everyone knows they are there (I watch too much tv. I have also realized this week that I use the internet way too much.).

This last week we haven't done much of anything. We have pretty much just been hanging around and watching Arrested Development mixed in with a couple of afternoons of tennis. We did go to a Fletcher family reunion where Carly's grandpa on her mothers side had all of his siblings along with all of their kids, grandkids, and great grandkids there. I am sure that was just really confusing, but the gist of it is that there were tons and tons of people there.

Blood Family Reunion

The Blood family (Daniel's mother's side) had their every-other-yearly family reunion in Midway over the 4th of July. Daniel's mom (Carolyn Nielson the first) and sister Whitney came up to Utah for it.

Stewart Falls

We hiked up to Stewart Falls on July 5th. Look how photogenic we all are.

Courtney and Whitney tried to take a nice, scenic sisterly photo. I ruined it.

This is not just a picture of the falls. Daniel and his cousin Aaron are up there by it. You have to climb a pretty steep incline and then down another one to get there. Daniel tried to be the tough older cousin, but he is kind of afraid of heights. He ended up slipping and getting covered in mud.

Aaron got down much quicker. Daniel blamed it on his chicken legs.

Family Cookout
This is Daniel's mother's whole family except three.
Carolyn and her 4 siblings with their spouses.

Leader of Champions...Almost

This week I had another basketball camp, this time it was 10-18 year olds, and I decided to make Carly tag along to coach a team in one of the younger gyms. At the beginning of the week Carly wasn't too sure about her team being able to win even one game, but after a week of superb coaching and inspirational leadership she led her little band of misfits to the championship game. After arriving there her team ran out of gas and lost, but not without a fight to the finish as they lost in overtime. They were the only team to beat the champs this week in regular season play, so they have that memory to look back on. Anyways I just felt that after such an accomplishment Carly should be recognized as one of the all time greats in the coaching ranks, right up there with Red Auerbach.

Not too much has gone on in the last little bit, just a little bit of this and that. We went to my family reunion last weekend to watch the fireworks and hang out with the family, but pictures and details of that will be posted shortly so no need to go into detail. Anyways we are driving to Texas tomorrow with my mom and sister and then flying back in week. It should be a good time.

Surfing

Photographic proof that I surfed. I fault my parents for my inability to do water sports, but I am slowly overcoming it. Some day I'll be able to do it without the rope.

Probably the Most Boring Blog to Date

Here are highlights of the past week's activities in bulleted form and in no particular order:

• Saw Carrie! Ok, so that is the #1 thing we did. But the rest of these are in no particular order.
  
• Played with Palmer and Portia at the pool
• Played tennis. Carly won. Daniel cried like a baby that Carly "kept hitting it to his backhand"----This is not true, they weren't real tears it was really dusty and I got something in my eye.
  
• Visited with Grammie and Bobpa
  
• Lounged on beach chairs in the kiddie pool with Lexie (got sunburned)
• Played a coed softball game at 8 AM on Saturday!! Ask Carly how she managed to play both shortstop and right field every inning. It is an amazing story, really.
  
• Went boating with some MPA friends. Carly managed to surf behind the boat for about 30 seconds. Pictures to come soon. Daniel refused to come and missed out on the fun.
• Turned down another job offer for Carly. It was another really hard decision, but we are confident she'll find a great job for her soon.
  
• Ate dinner with friends multiple times
  
• Prepared for the girl's basketball camp next week. Carly will be working as a counselor and Daniel as a gym dictator. We will definitely have some great stories. Daniel better favor Carly's team when he refs.--Carly's team will receive no special treatment. And if she calls me a dictator she will be T'd up in a heartbeat.
  
• Hiked the Y. Daniel's idea. Terrible idea. Knees are still sore from running down.
  
• Played Cash Flow, a game that is supposed to mirror life. Everyone draws an occupation and starts out in the "rat race" of life. You try to get out of the rat race by increasing your passive cash flow (interest, dividends, real estate) and decreasing your expenses (mortgage and credit card payments, car and school loans, etc.). You win the game by buying your dream. Carly had one good big investment and got out. She then proceeded to buy her and everyone else's dreams. Kaylie declared that she was the Oprah of the game. If you are considering playing the game, just know it takes a long time (4 hours).---Carly cheated big time.
  
• Had a dream there was a terrorist attack and Jen Singer saved everyone on the floor we were on because she put a piece of wood in the vent they were shooting poisonous gases through. (Jen, yes, I had a dream about you saving my life. What does that mean?)
  
• Daniel and Nick beat Lexie and Carly twice in Spades.---One of those victories was by over 800 points, in fact the girls finished in the negatives.
  

The Blood Family Reunion is coming up this weekend and with a surname like Blood, there are bound to be great stories.