July Activities

Ye Olde Renegade

This is my trusty quad. It's a Can-Am Renegade and it's a really fun quad to drive. We took this and my wife's quad up to Richfield, UT to ride the hundreds and hundreds of miles of trails around the mountains there.

I went with my dad and my brother and we met my sister there. My brother Vance is in the middle and my sister Aubrey is on the right. Somehow, I'm the only one that catches all the dirt on my face. Notice how Vance still looks pretty happy?!! This was less than an hour before his big accident on my wife's 2-day old quad that pretty much totalled it along with a couple of his fingers.

The scenery is very green and beautiful with many lakes and meadows spread throughout. There's my bro again taking a picture of his own.

This is a picture of my dad and brother again planning the day's ride. That's my wife's orange and black quad in the background there pre-accident.

I don't remember exactly, but this might have been the ride into the hospital in Richfield (we were camping in the mountains about 30 miles away). My dad doesn't really have a Bell's Palsy. It's just a face he likes to make sometimes. I wish we'd thought to take a picture of his dislocated fingers, but we were a little in shock to do anything but stare.




A few weeks later, we had a big double family reunion with the Goodmans and Busbys. Our grandmas were twins and it was their 90th birthday celebration. We went up to Cyclone Lake in the White Mountains of Arizona. There were a couple hundred people there and I was assigned to take pictures, but I won't bore you with a bunch of my cousins. Erin and I were able to bring the kids and we stayed in a log cabin on a nearby Indian reservation. It was a lot of fun for all.

Here's Adam in front of the lake that nobody was allowed to swim in because "the indians drank the water downstream". Although, you were allowed to put fishing boats and other foreign objects in there. We cheated a bit and let the kids put their feet in. They ended up splashing each other and we had to take their clothes off.

Logan constantly had a handful of rocks and was always throwing them in the water to see the splash.

I thought this was kind of a cool shot at twilight (the best time of the day!)

This was another action shot of one of my distant cousins showing off one of the crawdads he caught from the lake.

Here's Erin and me in front of the lake before the splashing and soakedness began. We had a great time out there and it was so great to see (almost) all of our family up there in "them mountains over there."

To end this up, we snuck into town one day in Show Low/Pinetop area and test drove what Adam calls "a go-kart". He's quite obsessed with any type of off-road vehicle (almost as obsessed as I am!!), but at the same time he's hesitant to get in them himself. It took quite a while to talk him into this picture.

August First, Then July

Alright, well June was easy. Our office has been open for a few months now. I should probably take some pictures of it. It's pretty nice. Not quite as homey as our other office, but it's okay. Anyway, I uploaded a bunch of pictures and realized they were from August, so August first, then July...I had a Dental Conference in Santa Barbara, so we decided to take off one extra day and take the kiddos to Disneyland in Anaheim. Is that a good idea for a 1 and 2 year old? Well, we'll just let the pictures do the talking...Here's Logan at the hotel pool. He wasn't so sure about this whole water thing. He walked around and around the pool, but was content never to get in.


Adam, on the other hand, couldn't get enough of the water...as long as daddy was holding onto him extremely tightly. Smile!!!


I can't be sure, but it looks like they traveled to ancient Egypt during my conference as I know those plants and edifices aren't indigenous to California.

I don't think they went to THE Legoland, but there were some massive Lego structures in DisneyTown. This giraffe looked great until you got down to the feet. There was some type of squatting formation on one of its feet...


Logan has found his perch!!


Okay, on to actual Disneyland. Wow!!! This is pretty much the only picture we have of Disneyland. And that's about how long we stayed before the kids began to get restless. We actually rode the Dumbo ride and ate lunch there too, but then Logan was done!! So, we went back to the hotel.


Erin and the kids after about 2 hard hours of 95+ degree weather and 90% humidity at Disneyland. Not bad.


That night, we stayed in a different hotel with another swimming pool. This is Adam and I playing in the pool.

This is at the Santa Barbara Beach right across from my convention. Logan is a private person and gets really upset when the paparazzi tries to take his picture. I am, of course, up on the latest fashion craze with my BYU choker.

Once again, Adam had a lot better time than Logan in and around the water.

Finally, to end up the month of August, we got to take the youth in our ward on a Youth Lake Trip. CJ here had almost as good a time as I did.

Ode to June

Uhhh, well. It looks like not a whole lot happened in June. We were so busy doing stuff to get our new office open that we didn't have to time to take any trips or even take any pictures. Actually, I found about 10 pictures and they're all pretty much the same thing. Every Sunday, we go to my dad's house and have family dinner there with most of my family. It's a great family tradition that I hope we can also share with our kids when we're older.

This is Adam with his cousin Aiden in our backyard. This was also the Jeep that was hiding the Rattlesnake from the previous post. It's so hard to get them to look at the camera at the same time.

They all did a pretty good job of looking at the camera here though. Out of the 10 or so pictures I took, this was about the only one where we had all of them looking relatively at the camera. This is the sidewalk next door to my dad's house where we have our family dinners. From left to right, Logan, Adam, Kyla (Alberts) and Jayden (Alberts). Kyla and Jayden are their cousins.

Intermssion--Rattlesnake Alert

Oh boy oh boy oh boy. I was going to continue on for the month of June tonight, but look what we discovered when I got home from work today.

An Arizona Rattlesnake was coiled up underneath my sons Power Wheels Jeep. As soon as he moved the Jeep forward a little bit, my wife was greeted by this little guy!!

Luckily, he had eaten pretty recently and was pretty groggy. In fact, he didn't even move until after I'd been home for about 20 minutes. Then, he started looking around.

So, we called the Fire Dept. They came and took the snake away in order to relocate it and while they were at our house, they deputized Adam and Logan with some badges. They were pretty excited.

Logan wasn't too worried about the whole thing!! He had his big brother watching over him!!!

MAY (Part 2)

Okay, I had to change computers because the rest of the May pictures are on this computer. This month, we take a look at a business/family trip to Vegas and delve into the concept of "rodding." I also got a new camera so that our blog would just look that much better. Anyway, we're off!!This is my dad and Logan when we arrived in Las Vegas at the Palazzo hotel where the conference was being held at. It was about midnight when we got there, so my dad...uhhh, the kids were pretty tired.

Here's a little picture of our room. It's definitely the nicest hotel I've ever stayed in and probably the nicest one I'll ever stay in.

While I was at the conference, the kids went to the animal park in The Mirage and they had a good time. Here's Adam on a statuesque liger!!

This is Erin and I in front of some crazy fountain if front of one of the hotels. My dad babysat for us one evening allowing us to go to dinner and to walk around the strip for a while and someone was nice enough to take our picture and not steal the camera.

Here's Logan in some mysterious black velvet portal. I'm honestly not sure what or where this is, but I'm sure it's some place that Erin took the kids while I was at my seminar in Vegas. After this, it was time to hit the road.

But, before we got too far out of town, we had to go by the Las Vegas temple and take some pictures in front of it. This is a gorgeous temple, especially at night.

Here's a parting night shot from across the street.


On our way out, I took a bunch of pictures of the new dam bridge they're building to bypass Hoover Dam. This is a truly incredible structure that looks about 1/5th of the way done so far. The picture doesn't really do it justice as this is a massive structure. If you ever go to Vegas, you'll likely have the pleasure of seeing it as it takes about an hour to get through all the traffic and checkpoints around it. And finally, a picture to hopefully make you laugh.


In my family, my dad is known as a "rodder!" That's Goodman/Brown speak for one who makes a rod out of everything. Of course, a rod is anything that is jerry-rigged together or made to serve as something its inventors never meant it to be used for. My dad is pretty much a professional rodder. This is something he does in his personal as well as professional life (when patients can't afford the best alternative, he rods something up to last them for as long as possible.) This is the IKEA in Tempe. We had to drive over 100 freeway miles to get all this stuff home. Most of it was furniture for our newly-opened office. Amazingly enough, his iron "rod" faith got us through once again as nothing was lost or damaged on the way home.

MAY (Part 1)

WAZZUP?!! This month, we took a couple of little trips. We went to the zoo and later (next post), we got to go to Las Vegas for a, guess what, dental convention!!! More on that later.

"Okay Jayden, you sneak around their base and distract them and I'll lob a grenade inside and we'll take 'em down!!" 'Time for dinner Adam!!' "Not now Mom, I'm busy!!"

This is a little trip to the zoo. Logan has been holding his poo for the last 4 days, but I think today's the day!!

Here's Adam's back side with a view of the Lion and Lioness just beyond the 3-foot thick glass.

Well, hello!! I've gotta' get me one of these in our backyard. Mom would never find me.

MOHAWK MONKEY SEE, MOHAWK MONKEY DO!!

APRIL

Okay then. On to April. This month is highlighted with one out-of-town trip up to Phoenix for a Dental Convention. The kids came up on the last day and we all got to go to the Children's Science Museum. Strangely enough, the little kid's water fountain/get wet exhibit is the first thing you see when you walk in.
This "wet" exhibit had some unexpected and slightly shocking consequences...

So, Adam got to walk around the rest of the museum in his skivvies!! It didn't seem to bother him too much. "Hello Ladies!!

There was a new dinosaur exhibit where they allowed pantless aspiring ballerinas. Adam was all over that one!!

Finally, something daddy can do!! This was a little wheelchair race. Man, that kid was sorry he was ever born!!! Erin didn't think I should make little kids cry at the Children's Science Museum. Oh yeah, well back in '83...

We'll end with a couple of pictures from the month of April that I thought were cute. This is Logan at the PlayPlace at the Tucson Mall.

Here's Adam in our backyard. He's been trying to ride bikes, trikes and whatever else has wheels since before he could walk. He really flies on his little bike!!

And to conclude, here's Logan getting ready to go 4-byin' in the mountains.