Summer, Softball, and Scoundrels

Last Saturday, I Brad, decided to go back in time to when I was 10 years old and actually knew how to play softball/baseball. I joined a team at school and played in a tournament that started at 10am and lasted until you lost 2 games. We lost our first game mainly because we all hadn't played in so long, we didn't know the rules, and we really hadn't touched a ball, couldn't catch a ball, and hadn't hit a ball in ages. But then the second game began and I summoned my inner child who used to bat 1000, and I hit two spankingly amazing home runs. We beat the second team with room to spare. So we played a third team, and beat them. Then we were forced to Replay the first team that beat us and we beat them. And before we knew it, we were in the final game! We let them win because, well for one thing, we had played 5 games and they had only played 3, and we were tired. Oh and they were really angry looking, like the black hawks from Mighty Ducks. But anyways my muscles were sore for 3 days I'm telling you I was shocked, but I guess that's what 7 hours of high scoring softball will do to you.

My favorite part was coming into home with Isaac pounding on the fence yelling, "Hello dada allo dadda!" EVERYONE wanted to eat him up, he was so sweet and cute.

Amy is getting very pregnant looking now and she's keeping track of her womb size. We only have about 70 days left!

Schools also about a month till it's over and I'll officially be a 2nd year student! Can you believe it?

Isaac is being a greedy grump that gives Amy headaches almost every day now. He is getting whinier and smarter but at the same time he knows how to be sweet and cute and get exactly what he wants. I hope he doesn't turn into a bully at nursery, that's my biggest worry so far. I'm proud to say that I'm still smarter than him and I was able to trick him into enjoying his dinner last night.

Amy's becoming very involved in the ward and many sisters are befriending her. A sister in our ward suffered a miscarriage and Amy felt that she needed to make her family dinner, so she spent all day baking roles and making them a dinner more beautiful than anything we've had in a month! I'm lucky to be married to such a charitable lady!

Oh and bad news. A cockroach came into our kitchen and I saw him. I chased his ugly butt around the sink, the window, through the cupboards, and at last he dashed down the drain and I flipped on the garbage disposal, hoping to annilate him.

An hour later, Amy came home and I stood telling her the miserable story in our bedroom. When I had finished explaining how the cockroach ran down the sink, Amy talked to me about how she wish I had actually smashed it, and then there was a little rustle sound from the bag next to my feet. The hunt in the kitchen had made me jumpy and so I jumped and Amy laughed at me, We both thought, that would be funny if that noise had come from a cockroach in the bag, but it was probably just my own foot bumping the bag.

And then the devil cockroach stuck his head out and rustled the bag some more, and Amy ran for the bed and I couldn't believe it. I chased the thing but it took cover under the dressor. I sprayed fuming poisons all around and finally he came coughing out and I chased him as he was running back to the kitchen. Finally in one quick move, I smashed him against the wall. I really feel it was the same cockroach, spying on me while I reported his story back to my wife. I think he wanted to murder me in my sleep, but luckily he was put to an end.

This is the one reason Amy doesn't like Houston. For me, it's this reason plus allergies.

Besides that though we're doing GREAT!

The Third Trimester, The begining of the end.

Saturday we had a ward Texan Chili cook-off.

It was really fun. Our ward members really do have quite the sense of humor. We're a small ward and so we all are getting to know each other and it's just more like a family reunion.

There were 4 trophies given out for the chili:

1 best overall
2 most unusual
3 hottest
4 best bean chili (apparently a "true texan chili" has no beans in it, so it's mostly like a slob of pasty meat, still pretty good, you'd have to try it.

But guess what?
I WON THE AWARD FOR MOST UNUSUAL CHILI!

I finally won something, I'm so happy! I've always wanted to brag about my cooking, and now I finally have recognition. Here's some pictures!

As you can see the trophy was a golden painted bowling pin, dressed as a cowboy!

Afterwards, Isaac surprised us all! He snuck away from our dinner table to dance with the Young Women! They were all line dancing and Isaac LOVED the beat of the music apparently and just had to join. A handful of the ward members hurried to take out their cell phones to get a good picture of him. He's so surprising, all this time we thought he was so shy around strangers!

Once again, Amy is found in these pictures, you can see her belly but nothing else! She's so sneaky!

Oh and in case you were wondering what was the name of my award winning chili?

"Grown-up Rainbow."

It's official recipe consists of

Purplish red kidney beans

Whitish pinto beans

Black beans

Green bell pepper

Red bell pepper

Yellow bell pepper

Orange Habanero pepper

and Blue hamburger (thanks to food coloring)

(cilantro gives it a unique chili flavoring)

oh and in case you didn't know, my sister, Brittany is getting married in May! Hooray Hooray!

I'm sick of Brad and Isaac, Want Amy belly picture!

Here's a belly picture!!!

In 15 days Amy will begin her Third trimester!!

It's just grow grow grow now! If you're bored please call Amy and remind her to take those darn vitamins and promise her chocolate if she does it.

She's been kinda sleepy lately but then suddenly she'll feel like staying up all night watching TV.

We have our next doctor's appointment in about 6 days, so no really new news. Baby's doing great.

Today Amy sent me this message:
"So I put Homeward Bound on for Isaac. While I was in the bedroom all of a sudden I heard Isaac crying. It was sad enough crying I thought he had gotten hurt or something. So I ran to find him sitting on his little chair watching the cat in the movie drown down the waterfall. He was crying purely out of concern for the "baow."
Amy said that Isaac didn't wanna watch the movie anymore.

I'm sick of Brad, more Isaac Pictures!

We've heard your cries for more Isaac and less Brad so here you go. So on Saturday we had a family day. Went out for a walk to go see the duckies at our pond and play at the park.












The crazy thing is how Isaac has decided that he is terribly scared of the swings. But instead he's become very very brave and bold about the slippery slides! He goes up those stairs and down the slides without hardly any hesitation! Amy nor I need to cheer him on to push off the top, he just goes! And not just the simple slides, Isaac barrels down the big tube slides too!

As you can see Isaac loves his sunglasses and hat. He looks so funny but he refuses to play without them!

And then Isaac became wierd. He fell and got "derdee" all over his arm. He ran over and we helped him wipe his hands off. Then he noticed that his crocs sandals were full of "durdee" too so he walked back to us on his heels so we could clean his shoes. That crazy boy came back yelling "durdee durdee derdy" to us so much that after we had a good laugh we got tired of cleaning a piece of dirt off his shoes and we just told him to deal with it. I think Isaac's dirty shoes reminded me of Rhones behavior with sticky food in his nice car :-) The last picture is of him checking out the dirty on his shoes.

We decided that Isaac has gotten fatter since Christmas. As he runs around and jiggles we start to think that we should get him outside running around more often! Amy just says that the extra chub on him is a sign that he's about to sprout up again.

Beard-Off Results

Last Thursday was the day of all days. 20 of us men who had designed our beards according to several 2nd year optometric artists went up for display unto our school. There were 5 awards. The first award was given to Dr. Bergmanson's favorite beard. He is our faculty from Sweeden and so he considers himself to be a Viking, with thorough beard experience. There were 3 "golden razors" given out to the man with the greatest-thickest beard, to the greatest mustache, and then to the person who "should never ever try and grow a beard again."
I did not get any of those awards because the audience was saving me for the grand award. The Beard-Off gold cup. When it came down to it, the audience was actually the judge, the loudest cheer would win. I got an incredible uproar from the crowd, but so did 2 other men. There was one guy who had his beard in the design of a thong, and he ended up coming in 3rd place. The President of the beard-off decided to give the award to a guy named Jason Cave, who wore the "Clinic Attire" His was great because he actually was clean shaven, but then he took off his shirt to display his chest hair had been cut into the shape of a full length tie, from his neck to his stomach.
They determined that although the audience loved me the most, his design was the most manly, and so he walked away with the trophy and with the job of organizing the whole competition next year. I had fun keeping my clothes on. This was the first and only time I've ever grown a beard and will be the only beard you'll see on me for a very long time.



Here you can see that my beard design was the "peace sign" made famous by the hippies of the '70's. I got the clothes and stuff from a couple in our ward who were hippies for halloween, (thanks Bravos!)
Enjoy the picture! It'll be worth money when I'm a general authority ha ha



























And now that I'm back to normal people who know me very well say that I look really wierd. Amy just sits and stares at me and it's kinda confusing, it's as if she's not sure it's me. Some of my friends in school ask me to not look at them cause I look wierd to them. I guess it'll take time for them all to get used to my white face. Some people say that I have a baby face, but it's ok with me, I've noticed that at walmart, old ladies smile at me now.

The End. Thanks for having enjoyed these posts exclusively about Brad. We know that you don't care much about him in comparison to Isaac and the pregnant Amy, but he needs some attention and nows a good time to have it. Thank you.

The Greatest Grandparents

Over the Christmas vacation, we made it a goal to visit family as much as possible. This turns out to be a difficult task when your so blessed as we are. In Salt Lake City we have Brad's parents, Amy's parents, siblings who live east and west, grandparents living in West Valley, South Jordan, and Taylorsville, AND a few hours south in Las Vegas there's more of them!

Although we would've liked to have seen more of our cousins aunts and uncles, there really just was no time with all the festivities.

One thing for sure is that it was probably the most wonderful dilemma anyone could ask for... Too much family.

We really are the luckiest people ever and although big family can be hectic and emotional and busy busy busy, we really enjoy having so much love and support no matter which way we turn.
Isaac is indeed the most spoiled grand and great grand baby of the decade. A couple weeks ago, Amy and I realized that we had never ever actually purchased any toys for him. He's just had a room full of it since before he was born thanks to eager family members who were baby hungry.

We really really love our family and this post is mainly for the grandparents of Amy and Brad who we really cherish so much. We'd like to believe that all 8 of them are going to be around to watch Isaac and his new baby brother grow up. There's some doctors out there who say otherwise, and so we just want to say that we love you all. Although we didn't spend much time visiting with you, it doesn't reflect how much we wish we could. We miss you alot and so don't be surprised if we call you up on Sundays when we have time to chat. Be healthy if ya can cause to be honest, we want our children be able to know how great you are too. You've taught us the value of family, and we see the fruits of the sacrifice of having kids in your lives. Having babies is incredibly tuff but you guys did it and now look at you. You're surrounded by family and love in all directions. We hope that someday we can be as blessed as all of you and that our current baby-pregnant situation will turn out to be as awesome as your lives have become. Thanks for your examples, not to mention your golden marriages. Wow, you're all getting along as if you still like each other! We couldn't have asked for a more perfect family.
Love Brad and Amy (and Isaac and Duddly McBradington Jr.)

the before and after

The movie star jacket is courtesy of Rhone who had the heart to let me have it for my birthday last year.