Jason Lezak Celebration!

As most of you know, our swim team sponsors Jason Lezak. It obviously was a very exciting Olympics for us to watch as we were proud to see him represent Rose Bowl so well. A few months ago we had a welcome home celebration for him. It was really exciting for all of my little swimmers to be able to hear him speak about his exciting experiences and also be able to get an autograph and picture with him.

He has had a lot of opportunities to speak about his incredible relay performance, and I think I have watched all of his tv appearances, but it was much more exciting to hear him speak about it in person.  It was also fun to listen to all of the questions that the swimmers had for him.  (except for the annoying people that kept asking questions about Michael Phelps ... I don't care what kind of toothpaste he uses ...)  The kids were funny and asked him if he liked the food in China and if it was anything like Panda Express.  

Even though I try to act cool, I still get excited and wanted to get my picture taken with him too.  Here I am with one of the other coaches, Amber.
He also let me hold and even wear his gold medal.  It was heavier than I thought.  Isn't it beautiful?

If you were living in a cave over the summer and didn't get a chance to see the incredible relay, here is a clip I found on You Tube.  

Here is the whole relay:

And here is a clip of just the highlights:

I have seen it a million times, but I still get chills everytime I watch it.  It truly was the most incredible performance at the Olympics!  Phelps would not have been able to win all of his Gold Medals if Jason hadn't had the race of his life!  

Viva Las Vegas!

I am still catching up on my posting, so some of these are really old and that's why I am posting so much all at once.  I am determined to be caught up!

In September I went with the other swim coaches to the American Swim Coaches Association convention in Las Vegas. It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot while I was there. I already wrote a little bit about the convention in a previous post. Click here to read it.  While we were there, we went to a Nike party.  (Our team is sponsored by Nike.)  It was at the Palms Hotel in the fantasy suite in the Sky Tower.  It was incredible.  I got a glimpse at what $10,000 a night looks like.  They had great appetizers and desserts.  We had a lot of fun checking out the suite and taking pictures all over.  Here are just a few:

They had one of those round beds that spins around.  Pretty fancy.

The bath tub was huge!  (and the showers were really big too!)

Every room had a really nice tv, even the bathrooms!
Each suite had their own pool.  It extends out over the edge and is surrounded by plexiglass so it looks like you are out over the city.  We didn't get to swim in it though.

I loved this light fixture.
Here is the group of coaches that went to the Nike party.
We also went to one of the clubs at the hotel there.  This was the incredible view from the roof up there.

This is where we also ran into Matt Grevers and Michael Phelps.  I already wrote about that, but again, you can read about it here.  
While in Vegas we all went out to eat at Benihanas.  Delicious.  We got these souvenir buddha drinks.  
Jeff, Amber and I were the only brave ones that went on the rides at the Stratosphere.  I love thrill rides and I had heard great things about the Stratosphere rides.  We went on two of them.  The X-Scream which propels you 27 feet over the edge of the tower, 866 feet over the ground, was pretty good.  But the best one was Insanity, which extends 64 feet over the edge of the tower and spins you around at a force of 3 G's.  It was amazing.  We had a lot of fun.
I am not a big fan of Las Vegas, but this was definitely a fun trip.  

A Disney Halloween

Andrew and I decided to take advantage of our Disneyland passes and check out the Halloween decorations this year. We finally made it down there on the last day that they had them out. We actually spent the entire time at California Adventure, which was a lot of fun. We were greeted with giant candy corns, which used to be my favorite Halloween treat! This spider almost got me! But Andrew saved me.

That's one big candy corn!

The inside of California Adventure was decorated so creatively. I loved it.

We spent some time in "Candy Corn Acres."

They had all sorts of crazy things growing there.

Candy Corn Carrots ...

Candy Corn Grapes ...

Candy Corn Corn ... (don't worry, he didn't really eat it.)

It wasn't very crowded so we were able to go on quite a few of our favorite rides. We went on Soaring California which is awesome. We also went on our favorite ride ever, California Screaming, hands down the best roller coaster. We also tried a couple rides we haven't been on. We went on Mulholland Madness (which I do not recommend). We also were finally able to go on the new Toy Story ride. It was a-ma-zing! If you like the Buzz Lightyear ride, you will love this ride. It is so creative and so fun.

Here we are about to go on the ride. It's a 3D ride so you get to wear these sweet glasses. It's an interactive ride where you play carnival games. I loved it!

Here are our scores at the end of the game. Can you guess which player I was and which one Andrew was?

I can't wait to go down for the Christmas decorations!

I heart Disneyland!

It's a sign ...

About a month ago I hiked up to the Hollywood sign with my friends Laney and Krissy. It really wasn't that bad of a hike (I say that now that I am back home and not in the moment!). You obviously can't get up right next to it, but this was still pretty close. I love living so close to famous landmarks like this.

Here are a couple pictures of the great view from up there. Don't you love how clear the air is?

Turkey Shoot Game

This is a pretty fun game if you want to kill some time ...

http://www.southbank-design.co.uk/turkeyshoot/index.htm

My high score is 20005

Utah Man am I, BCS Busters are we....AGAIN!

"Who am I sir, 

a Utah man am I.

A Utah man sir, 

will be til I die!"

Well, what a great way to end another magical season for the Utes of Utah.  Utah has given me around 13 heart attacks this season.  From last second comebacks to barely hanging on, Utah has been a roller coaster of a ride.  One week looking absolutely dominant and unbeatable, and the next week pulling off some crazy 3 point victory. 

BYU on the other hand, had all the hype.  They had pinpointed this season as their debut onto the BCS scene.  Around a month ago, they faltered badly against a quick TCU team.  This game was their chance for validation.  Perhaps their quest for perfection was over, but this was the chance to ruin Utah's BCS bid and beat the hated rivals for a third year in a row, securing a share of MWC title.

I was invited over to a friend's house.  The food was amazing.  The TV was large and amazing.  The company...was all BYU (until late in the game when a fellow Utah grad showed up to say some funny comments).  But hey, being a Utah man is not about numbers, it's about looking good in red and winning football games.  I think I was very successful at both today.

Utah came out with an early lead, moving the ball down the field with ease.  BYU came crashing back.  Then, BYU QB Max Hall went from zoobie heartthrob to this:

Utah was all over Hall.  5 interceptions and one fumble.  It was obvious what made the difference in the game: Utah's Brian Johnson was having a tea party in the backfield finding receivers, while Hall was getting chased and throwing to guys in red.  QB play made the difference, and I'm happy it was on my side.

GO UTES!!!  Thanks again for the special BCS Buster season!  BCS Buster seasons are very special to me.  I met my wife the last time Utah crashed the big boy party.  She and I went to the Fiesta Bowl together.  Hopefully we'll be enjoying Utah's bowl game again this year.

Making room on the DVR

I've had this episode saved on my DVR for 5 months! It's finally time to delete it and make room for more great entertainment. This was my favorite dance from So You Think You Can Dance this past season. I loved it and watched it constantly. Don't really know why. I just thought it was super creative, and I love the song. So I erased it from my DVR and put here so I could still watch it when I wanted to.

TTV Holiday Bag Sale!

If you live anywhere near Pasadena you need to stop in to the Ten Thousand Villages store this Saturday. They are having their annual bag sale where everything you fit into the bag is 20% off. It would be a great start to your Christmas shopping!

(Sorry, Megan, that it's not a "Christmas" Sale ...)

If you don't know what Ten Thousand Villages is you can read about my post here.

A San Diego weekend

Last weekend Andrew and I decided to head down to San Diego to go to the University Utah vs. San Diego State football game. (I'm such a nice and supportive wife.) We invited Andrew's cousin Jason who lives down there to go along with us and he brought his friend Jen.


We left Saturday afternoon. Unfortunately we got stuck in a little bit of traffic, due to the large fires that have started out here. It was kind of scary driving in to this big cloud of smoke. I felt like we were going the wrong way. (but everyone else was going that way too) I tried to take pictures from the car, but they didn't turn out very well.


All of the smoke made the sun really bright and red. Now that I think about it, the sun was probably just sporting red to cheer for the U!

As soon as we got into San Diego County the smoke cleared up. You can see the contrast here.


Luckily the fires have died down a little bit and the smoke is clearing out. It now seems like just a typical smoggy day here in L.A.



We made it down just in time to go to the game. Apparently SDSU isn't a very good team and their games are not heavily attended. The large stadium looked so empty. We got tickets in the U fans section, which was nice. (whenever Andrew takes me to BYU games he makes us sit in the other teams section where I am booooed and have food thrown at my head.) I don't necessarily like sitting in the U fans section because the people get way too drunk and yell inappropriate things. (And that's just Andrew!) Anyway, we had a fun time at the game and of course they won, which made it even better. (63-14). The weather was perfect and the football food was delicious. After the game we went back to Jason's new house (very nice) and he was nice enough to let us stay there overnight so we didn't have to drive back really late. Thanks Jason! It was a fun weekend.


Here is the view from our seats. Notice how empty the stadium is.

I read somewhere that women are more attractive when they wear red, so I agreed to wear red for the game.

We may look happy together now ... but wait until you see what we will be looking like this weekend ...

Double the pumpkin

What's better than pumpkin ice cream?

Pumpkin pie with pumpkin ice cream and whip cream on top. Delicious! (thanks for the pie Dave and Brittany!)

I love ...

Pumpkin Ice Cream! And because it's 1/2 the fat, I get to eat twice as much!

Six Flags, Science and Ice Cream

A few weeks ago my mom and sister came to visit. I was excited to have them here. We spent a lot of tim relaxing, shopping and just hanging out, but we also did some big things too.

Saturday we spent the day at Six Flags. I love theme parks and roller coasters. Last year when my sister came we went to Six Flags and she loved it. Since then she has now been back twice to go again. This time we wanted to go to ride the newly remodeled X2. Because it was a couple weeks before Halloween, they were having their "Fright Fest" and a few things were different at the park.

First of all, the white roller coaster, Colossus was going backwards. We thought that this would be the coolest thing, but we were wrong. It was absolutely horrible. Definitely not worth the huge headache that we all got from it. This was mine and Andrew's reaction:

Apparently this is what happens to your hair if you go on too many rides! :) It is a little hard to see because of the trees, but he has a huge mohawk!
I love the small rollercoaster goldrusher. It's fun but not too jerky. Here we all are riding it.

My mom bought us all flash passes so we didn't have to wait in any lines for the rides, except for X2. I think we ended up waiting in line for 2 hours. It was really long. The ride was great, but I don't know if it was worth the long wait. Also, after waiting 2 hours in line, I had to sit by myself on the ride because Andrew was too scared to go. One of the other big rides there is Tatsu. It's a crazy ride where you are laying face down the entire time. We usually don't buy the pictures that they take on these things, but we just couldn't pass this one up. It's hilarious. I don't know how my hair did that. (Also notice that Andrew did not join us on this ride either.)

Not wanting to spend a fortune on lousy theme park food, we held off our hunger until we left. By then we were all starving. We decided the best place to go would be a buffet, so we found the nearest Souplantation. The only problem was that when we walked in they said "we are closing in 10 minutes, so you can hurry through and just load up on everything before we start clearing everything out." So we did just that. It was too funny and I had to take a picture.

I think we did a pretty good job of eating most of it! (I feel sick again just looking at the pictures) They were really nice to let us do that, nice enough that we should have left a big tip ... but we all actually forgot to do that and so now we feel really bad. Oh well! Thanks Souplantation!

We also spent a day at the California Science Center. It is a pretty cool place, and it's free! They had some fun exhibits to look at. It's mostly for kids, but we had a good time. I liked this chair.

They had this pulley system outside where you could lift a pickup truck. We are so strong!

We then headed over to a cute little ice cream place recommended by my friend Laney, Scoops. They had really unique flavors. I think mine was Pistachio Lemon and my mom and sis got caramel, banana oreo or something like that. yummmm.... delicious!


I always love when family comes to visit! Thanks mom and Jonyce for a fun time.