April 22nd is Anna Day

Though the rest of the world may consider this "Earth" day, for me, that's a distant second to the more important "Anna" day!

Today is Anna's birthday, and to celebrate, I thought I'd put up a bunch of pictures for us all to look at. They're not in any particular order, but they're all great, non the less.


This is a picture I've posted on my blog before. It's a picture of Anna from before she knew me. The interesting thing about it is I'm sitting across from her at this very moment. This is the mid 90s; grungy (music wise) hippy chicks with long straight hair were totally hot, and I definitely took notice.




This picture of Anna was taken in our first tiny apartment. I don't remember if we were playing darts or what, but Anna was looking so super cute, I had to take a picture. Anna on the other hand is looking a little like "What are you doing, silly boy?"





This picture is one of my all time favorites. I am sitting in Nelly while Anna is pumping gas (she insisted). I don't remember if we were married at this point or not, but I remember thinking Anna was looking particularly beautiful that day, and I had to take some pictures. I really liked how this one turned out. (There are other pictures I took at this time from out of the car, while she's pumping gas, and she has that "What are you doing, silly boy?" look again.)




This silly picture is from our honeymoon trip to the San Diego zoo. If you didn't know, Anna's got a thing for hippos, so when she saw this hippo statue she had to have her picture with it.

Here is Anna with a very young Angus in our tiny apartment. Angus is about 7 weeks old here. I love Anna's hair in this picture.

Have you ever seen a picture of someone doing something they love? If not, here you go. Anna LOVES being in the field doing geological work. Here she is doing some mapping, her favorite type of field work.

Here is another of my all time favorite pictures of Anna. She thinks she looks funny, I think she looks awesome. This is in her room when she lived at home. She wore a lot of vintage clothes at the time, and like I said before, grunge music was in, and so were the new generation of hippy chicks. wur-wurr!

I had to throw one of these in.

This last weekend, Anna attended a geologic conference. One of the things she signed up for was a field trip (of course) to see pillow basalts in the Santa Monica mountains. See... she's sleeping on the "pillow" basalt... that's geologic humor for you. But again, you can't help but smile to see someone who enjoys their work.

And finally, the only picture I did choose to put in a particular spot. One of my newest all time favorite pictures of Anna and I. It was taken last year at my grandfather's wedding reception. There are a lot of reasons why I really love this picture. We're not as young as we used to be, but I think Anna looks as amazing here, as any of the other all time favorite pictures I have of her, if not more. Her smile makes my heart skip a beat. This picture reminds me of how lucky I am to have her as my wife and best friend. I really love this picture.
I love you, Anna.



So, to everyone out there... have a happy Anna day!

(Then go do something productive for earth day.)

Go Small

Looks like the new "Super-size" is "mini" in the fast food burger wars.

Right now there are two companies that have new mini hamburgers: Burger King and Jack in the Box.

I haven't tried either of their new mini burgers, so this is not a comparison of their taste, actual size, or value... this is about their commercials.

Here is the Burger King commercial...



And here is the Jack in the Box commercial...



The JitB commercial is funny (I guess), but the first 10 seconds of the BK commercial makes me laugh every time. The reaction from those two guys is hilarious. The rest of the commercial, the guy might as well be holding a little puppy; it's not as good as the first ten.

Anyway, based on the commercials, I would choose the BK burger shots over the mini sirloin burgers. The next step should probably be buying and eating them, for a more accurate assessment. Anyone up for some mini burgers? Bring some on over and we'll give them a taste.

Fell Down

Last night after baths, the kids were watching some TV before bed time. I was finishing the day's dishes when I heard a thump, and immediate crying.

I rushed in to find Tegan standing and crying. Her forehead and upper lip were red. I could tell a layer of skin had been scraped off her lip. Once she calmed down, I got some ice for her head. She didn't care for the cold, and her head didn't seem to be forming a bump so I cleaned her up and started the bedtime routine.

I thought that she must have slipped on the fireplace, or leaned back in the small chair that was in the living room and hit the fireplace, or something along those lines.


Here's what it looks like this morning. Looks like I cut off the raspberry on her forehead.

Then this morning during breakfast, Duncan asked why Tegan had a red lip and nose. I reminded him that Tegan fell down last night. He said, "Oh yeah, she was sitting on the couch part (indicating the arm of the couch), and she fell off..."

That makes a lot more sense looking at her scrapes. She was drinking from her sippy cup when she fell. The width of the scrape on her lip looks about the same width as the sippy cup spout. So as she started to fall, she pulled the cup out of her mouth just in time to land on in, and continued over onto her head.

I know she was drinking right before she fell because when I helped her up, she still had milk in her mouth.

So yeah, that's the cute little scraped face we get to see for the next week or so.

Monday Music 04.20.09

I chose today's music.

I was listening to my iPod the other day, and this song came on...

Lemonheads, "Into Your Arms"



That's my favorite Lemonheads song. It's just a great song in general. It always puts me in a good mood.

Friday Flashback 04.17.09

Today's flashback picture was randomly selected from "the pile" of pictures I have.

That's Anna, Kim, Kelly, and a mystery person, after they've TP-ed Kevin and Dawn's house at the compound.

Not sure where the mystery person is? It's not the person taking the picture. There's some one just to the right of Kelly. You can only see a faint image of their face. It seems as though they're facing to the right with their head turned toward the camera. My guess is that it's either Keith, or a friend of Kim and/or Kelly.

Anyway. I'm figuring that this is around the time that Kevin and Dawn were moving in. After they were married, they lived in Alhambra for a while, but when the house next to our mom and dad's house (which they own), became available, Kevin and Dawn decided to move in. So I'm guessing the TP-ing was for that. I could be totally wrong though.

I'm thinking this is in 1998 or 1999.

Can anyone confirm or correct my guesses?

The Results Are In

If you've been waiting on pins and needles to know who won the 2009 Mr. Sasquatch competition... wait no further!

The results are in!... Go Here to find out!

Easter Days

We had two Easter days this past weekend.

On Saturday, we went out to Anna's parents' house to have egg hunts and Easter dinner with her side of the family. I guess technically, it was Easter lunch. The kids had a great time playing with their cousins. We brought their scooters and they "scooted" up and down the sidewalk. Most of the other cousins brought scooters too.

The adults and the older kids got a chance to visit, which is always good. There was even an adult egg hunt. In that egg hunt, the eggs are the creme filled Cadbury eggs. Luckily I found mine in the first minute or so. Anna and Sara were the last to find theirs. In fact, I think there was a miss count, and Sara didn't find one at all. (I helped Anna find hers.)

Here are some pictures from that day...

The kids getting ready to "hunt"!


Liam with a quick smile while finding eggs.

Tegan enjoying her bounty.

Duncan and Jennan surveying the hunt.

We had a great time at grandma and grandpa McAlister's house. We were there most of the day. Anna and Sara even got to go on one of their sister dates. It's easy for me to watch the kids there when grandma's around to do most of it. Fun stuff, good times.

Then on Sunday, the kids woke up to Easter baskets with candy, Easter Pezz dispensers filled with Pezz candy, and new tooth brushes! (thanks Sara) Our Easter bunny is dentally conscientious. After we got home from church, there was more egg hunting for the kids.

This year, Duncan couldn't "find" any eggs on the ground. Luckily for him, there are plenty of places off the ground to hide eggs. Here he is finding the egg that was hid in the lemon tree.

Anna got a little creative with this shot of Jennan through our grapefruit tree. There were a few eggs hidden in there.

There's Tegan finding an egg next to the tangerine tree.

Here they all are after the hunt.

Here's Liam doing more finding than he's got hands.

It was a very fun Easter weekend. The kids were well behaved, we got to visit with family, ate good food, and had plenty of candy.

The other cool part of the kids growing up, is their understanding of gospel principals. We talked about how it was fun to find eggs and talk about the Easter bunny, but that there was a real meaning behind it all. That Jesus payed for our sins and he was resurrected and lives. It seems like subjects that would be over their heads, but they listened and asked questions, and seemed to take it all in. Of course, there's so much more for them to learn about those subjects, as we all do, and I greatly look forward to seeing them learn and grow in the gospel. It's more than happiness; it's true joy.

Hope you had a great Easter too.