Going for it on 4th

Sabrina and I are having a disagreement about what to do on 4th down. Given these facts:

4th down

Ball on opponents 2 yard line

Down by 10

Under 3 minutes left in the game

Also, assume you'll probably need to get the onside kick because your defense hasn't forced many three and outs

The question is, do you go for a touchdown, knowing that you then only have to get a field goal? Or, do you kick the field goal, knowing that you need points on 2 possesions and that you are much more likely to get the field goal than the touchdown? There are some strong opinions around here about this. What do you think?

Living in Arizona, oh yea

All you people living in snow could be here too. (Truth be told, I miss snow, but I love this time of year here).

Getting my money's worth

Yea, so this isn't a blog post about our trip. Sabrina has said I can't blog about that until we blog about the rest of the year. Otherwise, we'll never blog about the first half of 2012.

Anyway, on to a discussion of my psyche. I'm the sort of person who is easily suckered in by the concept of "value". Meaning that if I can buy a little bag of M&Ms for $0.85, and a big bag for $3.00 which has more than 5 times as much as the little bag, of course I should buy the big bag. And of course, I don't waste any of the M&Ms. However, I don't know that I should be doing that all the time...

I signed up for Audible a couple of months ago in an effort to continue to expand my consumption of books. I've not been reading as much as I would like, so I thought audio books would be a good way to go. Because I'm buying a digital copy (or more accurately, I'm buying a license to a digital copy), I really have nothing to resell if I decide I don't like what I've bought. That makes me quite picky about what I get.

Then, of course, there's the consideration of cost. I certainly don't want to buy any book that I can potentially get somewhere else cheaper. Audible has a fixed fee structure that you sign up for (1 credit per month). Because of the fixed fee, I can get books that would normally cost more than my monthly fee. That incentivises me to try to get the most expensive book I can. Then there's also the concern about being able to listen to it multiple times. I'd like a book that I don't just listen to once and never again. However, there's always borrowing from the library. However, most of the books I'd like to listen to are on CD. That works while I'm in my car, it doesn't work elsewhere I'd like to listen to it.

In some ways, attempting to get the best deal makes me unhappy with the service I willingly signed up for. I want to get the most possible for my fee. Because it's a fixed fee, I feel I need to get everything I can for it. It's like going to an all-you-can-eat meat place. I'm usually there for a couple hours because I feel the need to "get my money's worth". I've done endless shrimp the past few years at Red Lobster, and out ate everyone in our group. I paid for it, and so I'm going to get everything I can. In the past, I have left restaurants not satisfied, but overly full. I left Disney World sore and hungry because we were on the go the entire day to "get our money's worth". I drove a rental car nearly 2000 miles on vacation because we could with the flat fee. It's all about making the relative cost as small as possible.

Anyway, I'm probably not going to change. I still hate finding out a month after I buy something that it went down in price. I still buy candy in bulk when possible. I really want to make sure I stretch the dollar whenever I can. However, I am open to suggestions for good audiobooks.

Halloween

Just a quick post because everyone has done it, our kids are cute. They had fun costumes. I think Sabrina did her best work this year. Also, I couldn't get Parker to look at the camera, he was too enthralled with the idea of candy. He's a pumpkin if you couldn't tell. Also, Chase as Bob the Builder put his hat backwards the whole night. He kept insisting that's how Bob has it.

The trip of a lifetime (or at least trip of my kid's lifetime to date)

To no one's surprise who knows us, Sabrina and I like to travel. We recently traveled to the tune of more than 4,500 miles in the air and 2,000 miles on the ground. My brother lives in Boston and we took a trip out to visit him and his family.

They were gracious enough to host us (and provide us with good food) for several days before we headed out on the longest vacation I've ever been on (not including my exchange program in high school). I have driven further on a trip before, and flown further on a trip before, but never spent so many days just enjoying time with my family.

 Sabrina and I referred to this trip as "the sampler". We got to do a lot of different things, visit a lot of different places, but for the most part, didn't spend nearly as much time as we could have at those places.

 Over the next few weeks (as we unwind and are able to write up some of these) we'll be posting about each day of the trip. For the mean time though, you can see where we went in the map below. The green markers are either places we visited, places we stayed, or places I put in to make the path behave itself.

Update, here's the picture I was going for. Sorry for those who didn't get it the first time

So it's been a while...

Dear Blog,

Yea, I know we really haven't hung out much lately. Kind of sad, isn't it? We were such good friends for a period of time. I know that I had a lot of fun as I tried to make you look your best. It always gave me a chance to play in Photoshop. I was always looking for a way to make you stand out.

Then of course, there was the posts themselves. It was always exciting penning (still sounds better than typing) a new post in hopes of driving lots of comments. Sabrina was always the best at riling others up. She knew how to write about topics that got lots of page counts. I was really excited when we passed some of our good friends for number of followers. It was also fun to see where people were located at. I sometimes wondered if any of my old friends were hitting the blog when I would see people consistently checking the blog from random places across the country.

Somehow though, the novelty wore off. You just weren't cool any more. Don't worry though, I didn't two-time on you with Facebook. It never was my kind of place to go. I stayed true in my heart to you dear blog.

Now however, some of my friends are hooking back up with their blogs. Maybe it's getting cool again to write about stuff on blogs. Facebook is fading a bit (and I'm still mad I didn't short Facebook, I knew it was way overvalued). Others seem interested in starting up the blog communication network again, and I guess I'd best get back on the bandwagon. You might see me around these parts a little more frequently dear blog. Life's busy, but I suppose I can make time for you. I'm not promising anything, but perhaps there are still a few people out there who will come and read the good word.

Missed you,
Brett

Texas Time!

Well, here we are, approaching September and you haven't gotten a real update on our lives since Christmas. It's typical Sabrina behavior. Updating our blog with our end of 2011 and all of 2012 happenings have been on my to do list for a very long time. It's just not something that rises to the top of the priority list very often. I finally got some motivation to start. I am sure it has nothing to do with getting 5 points on my Feel Great in 8 Challenge for doing it :).

I am just going to pick right where we left off (besides that photo shoot we posted in March). We had a wonderful Christmas and fun family visitors. That very same Christmas day, after saying our goodbyes to the family, we packed up and started our trek toward Houston to visit Brett's sister, Carla, and her family. We made it to Van Horn, TX on the first leg of the trip and drove the rest of the way the next day. So really, the fun began on Dec 27th.

That is the day we headed to Galveston. We had lunch at the Rainforest Cafe and then spent time on the beach. It was a beautiful, clear day, The water was as clear as any Carla and her family had ever seen. Lucky us! We then headed to Moody Gardens and went to their aquarium and rainforest exhibits. They also had a big Christmas lights display that we walked through. The kids had such a great time catching up with their cousins.


The next day we stayed mostly at Carla's home, going to the local park, playing in piles of leaves and hanging out with the Kindreds. They got to meet Parker and then we went to dinner. It was soooo great to spend some time with them.


Because we can't sit still for long though, the next morning we packed up and headed to Dallas to watch BYU play in the Armed Forces Bowl. I love that we took this little extra vacation with Carla's family. We had a blast dressing up in BYU gear and cheering on the Cougars. It was a great game and as you can see from the pictures, our seats weren't too shabby - 2nd row if I remember correctly. I can't say I remember the final score though. I do know BYU won and it was an exciting game, so that's what counts.


We spent a lot of our time in Dallas just hanging out at the hotel, swimming, eating, playing with cousins. Adie's cousin, Amberlee, introduced her to the wonderful world of American Girl dolls. Before leaving Dallas, we took a trip to an American Girl store. It is insane and amazing in there. I remember reading the American Girl series and drooling over the AG catalog as a child, so it was even fun for me to walk around. Since that time, Adie has been working and saving all her extra money to buy herself her own AG doll. She is very close.


We made a trip to the Fort Worth Zoo on our final morning with the Gutkes. We did all the standard zoo stuff - saw animals big and small, rode the train, etc. Again, more than anything, it was just fun to be spending time together as a family. We went out to lunch and then said our goodbyes.

It was a whirlwind trip, spent mostly in the car, but the memories were priceless and the kids were champs as travelers. I think we've just subjected them to so many road trips they have given up even trying to complain about them. Carla and Jeff were wonderful hosts, their home is beautiful, their kids are so fun and we are so glad we were insane enough to drive to Utah and Idaho for Thanksgiving and then Houston right after Christmas. With those 2 trips we were able to see all of our siblings, parents and grandparents. This sentimental girls always loves the opportunity to do that. I'd do it again in a heartbeat!

The kids, circa March, 2012

It's been a while since we have printed pictures of the kids for the wall, almost 2 years to be exact (it's also been a while since we blogged about anything). It was high time we changed that. The weather was beautiful here in Arizona, so we packed up the kids and headed out for a photo shoot. Here are some of our favorites.

Family Pics

Before Christmas our cute neighbor took some family photos for us. It's been a while and we wanted something to put on our Christmas card. Our kids were being typical young children which means it was hard to get a decent picture of all of us at once. And then there is the issue of me still wanting to lose a few (or actually a lot) of pounds before doing much documentation of this time of life (the extra poundage from the third child is a bit more stubborn and I am a bit more tired and lazy about doing something about it). Despite these challenges there are a few we liked. She 'shopped a few of them in vintage style which I thought turned out pretty cute. I am so glad we don't have to do this too often.

 

This is the second best family picture that didn't quite make the Christmas card cut.

 

Adie may have gotten those awkward posing genes from me...we just can't seem to be able to look relaxed and normal in most photos, but we still think she is a cutie.

 

Here is our pensive-looking Chase who is actually just holding on for dear life because it freaked him out to be climbing on a train car. He really loves trains but apparently doesn't love climbing on them.

 

I think Brett looks great here. Yay for being married for 7.5 years!

 

And here is the winner. We put a black and white version on the Christmas card (and on my FB profile).

We didn't get a picture of Parker that day because it was rainy and there wasn't really a soft location to put him as we were in an orchard and then near train tracks. Now, Brett just needs to bust out our camera again and get some updated pictures of this kid because he is growing up so fast.

Oh Yeah, We Have a Blog

Now that we've gone almost 3 months without posting anything here, I guess it's high time we do. I was already unmotivated to take the time to blog before, but after rejoining Facebook and getting a smart phone, it's been really hard. It takes me less than a minute to throw up a picture with a small caption on Facebook. Let's just say it takes me forever here. Anyway, I am doing a quick wrap up of the year and thanks to Picasa's collage feature, this shouldn't take too long for you to scroll through.

 
In the middle of November my dad came for a visit. The kids adore their grandparents, so his visit was a very welcome event. He was here for a week but for some reason I only took out my camera one day. Luckily, it was the day we went on a random scenic drive to a very beautiful lake a couple hours from our home. I didn't know places like this existed in Southern Arizona. We all had a wonderful time spending time with Grandpa Savage and he was he even willing to brave driving back up to Utah with us when his trip was over, which brings us to our next set of pictures...


 
We spent Thanksgiving break in Utah and Idaho. My dad drove with the kids and me up to Utah the weekend before Thanksgiving and Brett flew in on Thanksgiving day where we met him in Idaho. We packed in as much family time as we could during that week and a half. The kids got to see all of their grandparents, great-grandparents and almost all of their cousins and aunts and uncles during that time. We played lots of games, stayed up too late, ate lots of good food, rode the Trax train, saw the Temple square lights and made many wonderful memories.



 

Since we were with so much family, we took advantage and blessed Parker while up in Idaho. Some of Brett's cousins and an aunt and uncle were even able to come, which was so nice of them. I wish we had gotten a better picture of Parker in his dapper little outfit, but he seems to be sleeping or kicking or being held in all sorts of awkward positions in most of these photos. You can barely tell from the photos, but Parker is wearing the cutest of shoes made by his own talented Aunt Camille. They were his early Christmas gift and a perfect addition for the blessing outfit. My favorite photos in this collage though are the ones of us trying to get some sort of normal family picture. As you can see, it didn't happen, but at least Brett and I are smiling so we must have been having a good time.



After Thanksgiving was busy, busy, like it is for practically everyone. We had some sad moments saying goodbye to a little friend who left us way too soon. We had lots of happy moments decorating our yard, Christmas trees and cookies. We made neighbor gifts and Adie learned to weave potholders. The kids jumped in bounce houses, acted out the nativity at preschool and at home just for the fun of it. Adie and her friend were Suzie Snowflakes, dancing ballet and tap for their winter performance. Christmas really is the most wonderful time of the year, even if it stresses me out a little.

 

This year we were so fortunate to have visitors at our house for Christmas. One of my cousins married a lovely lady in the Mesa temple a couple days after Christmas (congrats, Daniel and Lisa!) so his family was down here for the holidays, as were my mom, stepdad and grandparents, and though their stay was short, we packed in the fun. We ate lots of food (as always), played cards, saw the lights in our neighborhood (we have a lot of fun impressive displays here) and just spent time together. I am told it is nice to have little Christmas celebrations with just your immediate family. I am sure that is true, but in our 7.5 years of marriage we have yet to celebrate Christmas with just our immediate family and, truth be told, I am okay with that. I love having as much family around as possible. After a wonderful Christmas sacrament meeting in the morning, lots of gift-opening and a yummy brunch everyone packed up. My extended family headed to Mesa to get prepped for the upcoming wedding and Brett, the kids and I started our trek to Texas. More on that in another post...