Rusty's Batman Birthday Party

Rusty's 3rd birthday is on August 13, but we started celebrating early. He was so excited to go to Chuck E Cheese as you can tell by the picture.

















Stone and Rusty riding the Monster Truck.












My camoflauge boys.













Rusty wanted to have a Batman birthday party. He has been waiting for weeks. Finally the day comes. He had a lot of friends show up and everyone had a good time. They played a game where they had to place the Batman sticker on the correct spot on Batman. The Batman pinata was Rusty's favorite part.





































When his friend handed him the present in a spider man bag, Rusty said "But it is a Batman birthday party!" He got a lot of fun presents. And enough candy for the rest of the year.




























Van slept through most of the party.

Rockies sweep the Yankees

Yesterday we were lucky to be treated to the Rockies v. Yankees game with Roger Clemens pitching for the Yankees. The best part was that work paid for it and I was able to bring Stone and Rusty. Downtown was pretty lively and parking was $40-50 if you could even find a place to park. We had Janna drop us off up in Englewood and we took the train into downtown. This was Derek Jeter at bat. He and A-Rod had decent games with 2 hits each, but their hits were untimely. I think they were 1-21 with Runners in Scoring Position the entire 3 game series. Rockies won all 3 games for the sweep, giving up only 5 runs the entire series.
The hard part was that it was during nap time. Rusty got pretty tired after about the 4th inning. Stone was pretty interested for most of the game. I brought my binoculars and they kept him busy. He asked a lot of questions about the game and would point out when they didn't hit the ball for a long time.
Stone also stayed busy with the camera. He took a lot of crazy pictures but then deleted most of them. He took this one of me below. We had a good time and got plenty to eat, also provided by my work. One day the boys will be able to tell their boys that they saw Roger Clemens pitch, even if he only lasted 4.1 innings.

Rusty's Growing

Little Van is doing great. He sleeps in his crib next our bed at night and even though I'm not the one waking up with him, Janna said he has been going about 4 hours between feedings. I am a pretty deep sleeper and don't hear him when he wakes up since he does not cry. His cord fell off yesterday and it made him a little fussy before bedtime, but I would probably be the same way. I still haven't had a chance to bring the camera to work to upload recent photos. We don't have the net at home so we either have to go to the clubhouse or I do it at work on my own time.

Rusty sure is getting big. Recently we have noticed he is getting really thick, or what the rest of the world calls "normal." In my family normal means tall and thin. All of the boys who have hit puberty are all between 6'2" to 6'5 1/4." We are hoping Scottie's leukemia and all of the chemotherapy will not be a deterrant to his height and growth. They have had to pump him full of so many different drugs that you can only wonder how it will affect him.

For those of you who don't know my brother Scott, 14, born 7th of 8, was diagnosed with ALL,
Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia. He is the one on our laps in the picture. You can read about ALL at: http://www.leukemia-lymphoma.org/all_page?item_id=7049&viewmode=print. Many of the signs you won't even realize are signs of it. The local paper just did a story on him and the football our great uncle Gene got for him. The article does a good job of catching Scott's dry sense of humor. You can read it at: http://www.cdapress.com/articles/2007/05/10/sports/sports01.txt. The football was signed by the entire 2006 MWC Champion BYU football team and Coaching Staff. Uncle Gene is friends with the BYU Alumni Director who we also want to thank, and they got it done. For updates on Scott's health: http://www.ldschinese.com/scott/. My brother Josh maintains the site and my mom (and sometimes dad) post updates.

I have to say that as a brother who lives so far away I often have an ongoing battle in my head. Scott is my Mini-Me. We look like twins born 14 years apart. Our pictures when we were young show that. My battle comes from wanting to be there as a brother and support him and help where I can, yet having my own family to care for and support. We live 1000 miles away and there isn't a lot I can do to help. I won't get into it any more than that, but that is one of my internal thought processes.

My other battle comes from trying to balance my time. I am gone from 6am to 6pm every day, sometimes 7pm. I have not been able to make time to exercise the past couple of months and it is bugging me. Part of it has been my hamstring bugging me and a sore ankle, but I think most of it is just lack of motivation. I played on a flag football team this spring and that was good motivation but now I am lacking that except for pick-up ball on Saturdays. And we won't be able to go to the beach house in Newport this year, so I lost that motivation as well. If anyone has some motivation besides just not wanting to be fat and die young of heart disease, let me know. I have a good attitude about it earlier in the day but by the time I get home I am too tired to work out and I need to be there to help with the kids and dinner. Other than that, Life is good.