Here's the video...

The happiness of bringing home a newborn. No work stress. The health and endurance to outplay three grade-school boys. Warm weather. Bike rides. Daily trips to the park. Baseball. Sunflower seeds. Disc golf. Adding checkmarks to the to-do list. A newborn’s mother’s glow. A boy’s perseverance paying off and a newly found swagger.

Quality time.

My 2 week paternity leave.

That’s how I feel as I’m getting older. I’m sure this is perfectly natural and is my preference to the alternative.

I’m not saying that I was ever really that cool to begin with, but I’m less so now than before. I don’t care much about what my peers think; in fact, people my age who still worry about being cool, fitting in, and being popular sadden me. What worries me is that I’m losing a bonding tool I’ve leaned on over the past 10 years to influence and guide kids.

Grandpa Jensen has the best sledding hill just a few blocks from their home in Idaho Falls. They are sand dunes and provide a fun, long, safe ride down the snow covered sand. The main hill provides an awesomely long, helix-shaped ride from top to bottom. The saucer ride starts with a big curve to the right, followed by a couple of moguls you're better off avoiding, followed by a big curve to the left. If you've managed to stay on the saucer with enough momentum, you'll reach a second, smaller hill with two more little curves: first to right, then to left.

I'm tired, but the pressure of keeping my new year's resolutions is driving me to blog -- sorry if this entry is boring and incoherent.

This weekend has been busy. I spent many hours painting the kitchen and now I'm halfway done. Primer - clean up - paint - clean up - paint - clean up - touch up - repeat. Sara has always dreamed of having a yellow kitchen, and so it is.

Late last year, as I thought about areas of self-improvement and personal goals for 2011, I decided I need to write more. I also need to read more, exercise more, be more energetic, bond more with my kids, pray more, read scriptures, develop spiritually, convert to a GTD lifestyle, freelance more, expand my portfolio, fix this blog, fix our 2nd car, schmooze more, be more outgoing, make more friends, eat less, finish painting the house, build my wood shop in the garage, rewire the house, learn to lay tile, lay tile, learn to build cabinets, build cabinets, learn to build furniture, build furniture, learn Spanish, and finish my degree. This list is not an invitation to comment with other areas of self-improvement that you think I've missed; I'm already overwhelmed. :)

After much prioritizing, tweaking, pruning, and postponing, the 'write more' resolution made this year's cut (y hasta la vista, Espanol). I want to be a better, quicker writer and enjoy the therapeutic effects of organizing thoughts and writing often. So, I negotiated with myself for while and we agreed that I will write 52+ blog entries this year. Originally, the agreement was one blog entry per week, but the creeping pressure of 52 deadlines had me mentally preparing my concession speech. 52+ blog entries just seems less intimidating than a rigid, weekly, publishing schedule. Blog entries are being defined as posts with multiple sentences and paragraphs ("Here are pictures from..." type of posts don't count).

Hopefully, sharing fragments of my internal dialog doesn't bore people to death. Hopefully, I'm better at this than my journal keeping: every page begins with, "Well, it's been a few years since the last time I wrote."

I'm already having second thoughts (or third, or hundredth). Maybe I should just adopt Sara's method of making new year's resolutions that are fun and easy to achieve. Maybe I will steal her resolution from last year and resolve to eat more cheesecake. She is so much wiser than I am.

(1/52+)

The Rossels visited us this past Labor Day weekend. Friends in which both couples get along well, who both have litters of kids who also get along well, are a lot of fun.

Because Sara is currently vertically challenged (ie: unable to sit up for long without needing to barf), her activities were limited. Keeping Sara's secret prego status was pretty much impossible too. We (as in I) did drag her along to a couple of restaurants and she participated in some good couch conversations. She was a good sport. She enjoyed the company, but felt bad she couldn't be more playful and engaged.

Most mornings were spend at the park for disc golf and playground time. We'd start early to beat the heat. For some sadistic reason, I enjoy watching the paralyzing effects that 110 degree temperatures have on unaccustomed people - like these Southern Californians whose home has no nor needs AC. Actually, most braved the heat quite well (for tourists). I'm hoping I successfully infected Philippe with the same disc golf bug that my father-in-law infected me with last summer. My kids put in a couple of rounds, and Evan managed to finish 2.5 holes. Summer and Philippe played a few holes together and the rest of the bunch hung around the playground. Slushies are a good way to end an active morning.

Our afternoon activities centered around the swimming pool: lots of swimming kids; lots of kids being thrown around. Philippe got the bright idea to challenge me, on film, to a belly flop contest. Who am I to back down to challenge? The kids were thoroughly entertained by our painful contest and decided to join in. Such good influences we are. After reviewing the footage, I crowned myself the winner. Xander and Elijah tied on the kid's contest.

The evenings were spent visiting and eating. We ate out at one of our favorite mexican restaurants: Villalpondo's. We love that place because it's never busy and the food is good. We also introduced them to Oregano's, a local favorite pizza and pizookie joint.

Long, active days with the kids must make us loopy at night because many memorable, silly slips of the tongue happen during our dinner conversations (and usually by Philippe). This visit it was, "I love sour cream so much that I could bathe in it and lick myself." That kinda popped out from nowhere and led to some very disturbing mental images.

One night, we set out on a scorpion hunt. At night, Scorpions glow in the dark under black/UV lights. I led them to the South Mountain Preserve, a remote part of Phoenix that's still natural. After an hour of hiking without one sighting, the majority became discouraged and we decided to head back. Luckily, we found a large scorpion on our way back. The kids oohed and aahed; the adults too. Some of the kids got a little creeped out when we prodded it to move. At one point, I got it running full speed towards the scattering crowd and even Philippe, who was trying to catch it with a plastic bottle, ran away screaming.

Good, good times.

Sara wanted to squeeze in one more weekend of fun before school started and her prego nausea set in. Our plan was to beat the heat in Flagstaff, but it was flooded. Instead, we took a last minute trip to California. Good friends that love last minute visits are awesome.

Unfortunately for Sara, nausea set in half way through the weekend.

My disc golf obsession must be contagious. Either that, or Jen can't resist my charm (aka: harassment). These Photos were taken June 17th.

Wonder where Xander is? Home, sick, and laying on the floor.