Utah Man, Sir, Utah Man am I...

Season opening game for the Utes today. (Some of you do not follow the Utes. Ya know that void in your life, it's the absence of the University of Utah. Easily fixable with this really corny video montage. Dr. Hig, this one is meant for you especially.)

Was I nervous? Of course I was nervous. Michigan is the winningest program in history. Don't believe me? Check out this Wikipedia article. It must be true. They have a fancy new coach. A Fancy stadium that seats basically twice the number of people that the Utes home stadium seats. Boosters who pay lots of money for good athletes. Now don't get me wrong, I don't mean to disparage the Wolverines or call them cheaters, but the tradition runs deep and the school expects to win.

The Utes on the other hand, are a good looking team. Many an expert has said that Utah has a chance at being a great team this year. Check here for one unbiased expert's opinion (Scroll down).

Diane even made a cake for the occasion:

Pretty talented wife I got there, huh? Looks AND cake making skills. Some guys have all the luck (by that I mean Tom Brady and myself. Sure he's got a lot more money and GQ cover guy looks, but can Gisele make a Utah cake? I doubt it. Plus he went to Michigan.....speaking of.....)

The game was great. The first half was amazing. Utah put up some impressive numbers. Scored some touchdowns and looked great on D. Sadly, Utah also got called for a bunch of penalties. Kinda lame, and something that has happened a little too much recently. But the Utes pulled out some great offense in the first half and pulled ahead 22-10 at the half.

While the second half was not as amazing, the Utes did hold on for the victory. The Utes defense looked good. The game really should not have been as close as it turned out to be. The Utes had more yards and looked much more efficient. The Utes also happened to have more penalty yards.

For a review check here.

How did the cake taste you ask? Like sweet victory. Go Utes!

Feed the birds

At the aquarium in Mystic they had a Birds of the Outback special exhibit. It was pretty cool actually. They gave you a popsicle stick with a bunch of bird seed on the end and then you went into this caged area where there were 100's of birds and you were able to feed them. The birds were very friendly and were not scared of us at all. This little bird crawled on my shoulder for awhile.
This bird loved Andrew's shirt.
Here is Ben feeding the birds.
This bird sat on my stick and posed for the picture.
We had a lot of fun feeding the birds ... until one pooped on my head. I guess it was inevitable.

Penguins!

While in Rhode Island we went to the Mystic aquarium in Connecticut. I love aquariums and this was actually a really nice one. Sorry for all of the pictures, but I couldn't pick just a few of them.

They had some really cute Beluga Whales. I love these whales because I think that their white color is so striking.


Colorful anemone.
I don't know why they had a big tarantula at the aquarium, but they did. I hate spiders!
Nemo!
Very cool jellyfish.
They had a lot of stingrays, or skates. I can't remember which one this is.
This was a huge sea lion. He just laid there the whole time. Very lazy.
Andrew's favorite animal is a penguin. So he was very excited to go to the penguin exhibit.

The only penguins they had were blackfooted african penguins. They were very cute.

I like this picture because those two penguins in the back are cleaning each other, which I thought was very sweet.

The penguins were really cute. It was interesting to see them swim because they would splash around crazily and then go under the water and swim very gracefully. We tried to get a good video.

West Coast to the East Coast

When we left Sacramento we flew to Rhode Island to visit Ben (Andrew's brother) and Katherine. Well, we actually flew to Boston and then drove to Providence. We spent 4 days there and had a lot of fun. I had been to Boston before, but never to Rhode Island. It is absolutely beautiful. I was amazed by all of the beautiful green trees that lined the freeways.

The first day there we drove out to Newport Beach. It is a really cute little tourist town. They have a large number of mansions that were built during the Gilded Age. We went and took a tour of one of the more famous ones, the Breaker. It was owned by the Vanderbilt family. We weren't allowed to take pictures of the inside of the house, but here is the outside.

The inside of the home is very ornate. We were allowed to take pictures of the outside balcony so here is a picture of the ceiling.
We also walked around Newport and did a little shopping. This is a picture of the town. It's not a very good one, but oh well.
The next day we walked around Providence, specifically around Brown University. That is where Ben and Katherine are both attending school. They have a beautiful campus with a lot of old buildings.

This is the Brown Bear, the mascot.

They had this special art exhibit outside. It was pretty interesting. I saw something similar at the Arboretum here in L.A.
This was a really old building that was used during the Revolutionary War to house the soldiers. Very cool! I love old buildings!
Beautiful clock tower.
Cool old building.
I wanted my picture taken in front of this building because it was old.

I don't remember why we took a picture of this building. But it's pretty.
After walking around Brown we went downtown to watch "Water Fire." It was pretty cool. Basically they light fires in the middle of the river. It was difficult to get a good picture, but I tried. Here we are with Ben waiting for it to start.
I don't know what kind of wood they burn but it smells really good. They do this a few different times during the summer. There were thousands of people lined up along the river waiting to see it.
This is a picture of the church building that we went to. I thought it was pretty unique looking so I took a picture.
We also went to the aquarium while we were there, but I am going to save that for another post.

The last day we were there we drove into Boston and went shopping on Newbury street. I love Boston and all the history there! I have no pictures because Andrew forgot the camera. We had a great time on our trip out there. Thanks Ben and Katherine!

Sacramento

While we were up in the San Francisco area we knew we would have to make time to go visit our friends the Higginbothams who moved to Sacramento in June. It was so great to see them and to spend time with them again. They were nice enough to let us stay in their really cute new apartment which I became very jealous of immediately. They have a lot more space, a washer and dryer, a fitness center and a swimming pool! Cory (Dr. H) was able to take a couple days off from work to hang out with us, which was good for Andrew's sake as they were able to catch up on all of their xbox playing madness, which left Jessica and I plenty of time to talk.

We were only there for a few days but we had a lot of fun and were able to do quite a few things. We spent a lot of time just relaxing and hanging out. Brady has grown up so much in the past two months. He seemed to remember us and warmed up to us quickly. He is saying so many new words. He also makes funny animal sounds. Our favorite was his lyon roar. Check out this video.



If you didn't know already, it's really hot in Sacramento. (When I asked Andrew what we should title this post he said "Sacramento ... more like ... really hot place." He thinks he's funny.) We spent a lot of time hanging out at the pool. Brady has become quite the little fish.


We also spent a lot of time watching the Olympics. We also learned that Jessica was a gymnast and we got to watch some of her home videos of her gymanstic performances ... amazing! (Where is that blog post Cory?)

The first night we were there we went to Costa Vida for dinner. That may be one of the things that I am most jealous of. They have a Costa Vida near them!! If any of you haven't been to Costa Vida then you are missing out. It's exactly the same as Cafe Rio ... only better ... in my opinion (more options).
I usually get the pork salad. Mmmmm...delicious. I am constantly craving one!
This moment was too cute to not take a picture.
Jessica and I drove to downtown Sacramento to check out our state capitol building. We were lucky enough to get there during some sort of rally. We aren't sure what it was for, something about water. We were also able to go in and watch a couple minutes of a Senate and Assembly session. I'm such a history/government nerd, so it was exciting to me. It always makes me wish that I gone into something where I could work with government in some way or another.
The capitol building is beautiful. This is a picture of the dome inside.

We went to Governor Schwarzenegger's office, but we didn't' see him.
You know you're important when you have a policeman standing outside your office.
Here's the outside of the building.
We then went and walked around Old Town Sacramento. It's nothing like Old Town Pasadena. It is set up like an actual old town with old candy stores and antique shops. It was really cool though and we got some delicious much needed ice cream.
I also got the grand tour of Rocklin, the city where they actually live. They have a lot of cool stores and restaurants near them. And all of the places actually have their own parking lot, which we are not used to here in Pasadena. It's a great little area and I am so happy for them that they found such a nice place to live (I just wish it was a little closer to us!)

San Fran..Day 2

Day 2 was the reason we came...The Giants! Giants love runs deep in my family. Joe Jarvis grew up in Arizona, very close to the spring training home of the New York/San Francisco Giants. While I will not reveal the age of Joe Jarvis, I will say that he was born the same year that Willie Mays made the catch. So he grew up listening to the Say Hey kid play spring ball just minutes from his house as he fell asleep. It's not hard to fall in love with a team that has the greatest player to ever put on a uniform. My mother, however, is a Dodgers fan. She grew up in sunny SoCal, where I now reside. I love the Angels, the Halos are my number 2 team. But the Dodgers are hated by Giants fans. It's a rivalry that runs deep and back to the New York and Brooklyn days of the two teams. It continued on in California when both teams switched coasts 50 years ago. So, for this reason we came to watch the Giants battle the Dodgers at AT&T Park. It truly is the most beautiful venue in all of sports.

Before catching the game at 6 pm local time, we had a few things we wanted to do. Diane and my Mom went to an Arts & Crafts thingy. What are Arts and Crafts you may ask... when you find out let my dad and I know, cause we'd love to figure that out. Anyways, they spent a bunch of hours there while Joe and I planned on picking up our tickets, buying some needed hoodies for the cold game and then eating some of San Fran's finest offerings from the ocean.

Just as we left the hotel, we crossed the street and happened upon this:
If you look closely you will see that all the T-Shirts are either in a foreign language or say something about the Philippines. This was a booth of T-Shirts, my favorite being the green one on the bottom-middle: National Hero Jose Rizal. That's right, we were in San Fran for the Filipino Day! Even Lou Seal was there:

We figured out that a parade was about to begin, what a great site that was
This guy is not wearing a coconut bra, he's dressed for a traditional dance where he has about 10 or so coconut shells on his body and he dances and slaps the shells together:

And then Joe and I took on the Ocean, and we won. Scoma's made up some delicious mussels and oysters on the half shell...oh so good:

We all met up and made our way to the cold cold game. Diane and I sported our jerseys over our new hoodies, while Joe and Meg showed off their new hoodies. My mom, good sport that she is, bought a Dodgers blanket that day and waved it proudly for her boys in blue:

It was a great game. It went 10 innings and the hero of the game was none other than Mr. funny stance (if you'll remember Diane's previous post about how Aaron Rowand stands to bat). Bottom of the 10th, down 1 run, the Giants loaded the bases for Rowand. He hit a walk-off single and was mobbed by the team. This must be a great feeling (even on a losing team):

My mom watched her boys in blue snatch defeat from the jaws of victory (and then repeat it the next night), but she sure was a lot of fun to see the game with (and eat hotdogs and peanuts with).

This was a sweet balloon man...I TOLD YOU AT&T PARK IS THE BEST!!!
Diane is such a good sport to go to all of the baseball games with me, even when it is freezing!

Another great trip to San Francisco!