Long Time, No Blog!!

It has been a number of months since I've posted. Little Grant is growing up quickly, as well as the 2 older boys. Last month, we took the day and went to the Desert Museum here in Tucson. The kids love going there and seeing all the animals. Here is a hummingbird from the Hummingbird Exhibit. These things are amazing.
And who can forget the otters? These are definitely my favorite animals at any zoo! They're just full of energy and they love to do tricks and show off for all the people. It kind of reminds me of my attempts woo the ladies back in the day. Not many were impressed.
Now, this is one of the stranger animals, a two-headed desert tortoise!! These hideous heads frequently snap at each other, sometimes resulting in scuffed knees and hurt feelings. Ha ha. These are my 2 older boys, Logan and Adam, being posers for a picture.
Look at the camera, Logan!! Okay, so he's a little shy when he has tomato sauce all over his face. Aiden, my nephew, came with us that day too. He's never really one to be shy. Adam's having a good laugh, likely at Logan's expense.
There's a good smile. Logan really liked the dinosaurs and was engrossed by their illustrated history (not!!)
This is the cave portion of the museum. There's about a 50-75 foot artificial cave that you get to hike through. The kids really liked this part. Everything is almost light free (without the flash or course) in most of the cave.
Why yes, I do have some Grey Poupon. Could you tell by the way I was standing?
Every once in a while, Grant would get in on the action, but most of the time he was a good boy in his stroller. He's now military-crawling and standing against the couch. Man, he's growing up quickly!! He's kind of a mix between Adam and Logan. What do you think?
This is at Gates Pass. It is one of the few places in the Tucson area that you have an unobstructed view of the sunset. It is at the boundary of Tucson and the Saguaro National Park. Many people come here to watch the sunset, but we were there in the middle of the day, so no such luck.

Grant Thomas Goodman

As stated in the previous post, Grant Thomas Goodman was brought into this world on July 24th. He's been a very sleepy baby and doesn't like to whine much, which is good. He's so sleepy though that he'd rather sleep than eat and that's getting his little liver into a some trouble. But, he's been doing better in the last couple of days. Mom is doing great. We've got people bringing us dinners and it's very appreciated. Heeeeereeee's Grant!!


Mommy and Grant the day after his birth.


Good ol' Grant, sleeping as usual


Mommy, Adam, Logan and Grant hungry for some attention for Mom after spending most of the day with Grandma and Daddy


Grant 2 days after he was born


This picture pretty much sums up how Logan (left) and Adam (right) feel about baby Grant. Logan is like "who in the heck does this kid think he is?" and Adam loves him "this much."

Baby Grant

Well. I brought the boys home from the hospital tonight after my wife gave birth to a beautiful boy. His name is Grant. We already call him Grunt. I have no pictures because she's still at the hospital and I left the camera there. He weighed 8 pounds and 6 ounces and is 20" even. And, he doesn't cry much. I'll post some pictures when we get them. Mom and baby Grant are both healthy and in great shape. Woohoo!!

Me and my brothers enter a dance contest!!

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An Announcement

Erin and I are expecting number 3. And guess what!! It's another boy. We're thrilled. He's due around July 18th!!! Yahhhhoooooo!!! Erin and I both thought it was going to be a girl, but Adam called it the whole time. What a kid!!!

A September to Remember

Well, if anyone can remember back to September, that's where I left off. That was back when it was warm and sunny and you had to get into the water to cool off...or else (in Arizona at least!!) This will show our lake trips during the months of September. Pictured above is Erin (my brother Vance's wife) and their trusty sidekick Bailey!! They are sitting in our boat waiting for some action.

This is my brother Caleb and his lovely young bride of about 6 months at that time, Sarah. Tubing is one of our family's national pasttimes. The goal is to see how quickly you can whip the boat around so that you hit your own wake and send the tube's occupant's flying!! Fun fun!

This is Erin's sister Genie and her husband Rugbert (or Robert). They came down from Provo to experience an AZ Lake trip. Robert likes to wear those silly boat hats that were popular back in the '60s. Genie sticks with the traditional baseball caps.

Here we have Erin (Vance's wife) again telling us where to go stick it...right before her wakeboarding prowess takes over.

Here's Jeff Mitchell of Casa Grande. He's a guy I went to Dental School with and him and his daughter (Hayley, pictured below) came with us to cool off a bit. He's holding Logan (my #2).

And there's the ever-adorable Hayley chilling on the boat waiting for the next trip.

Next, we have my brother Vance attempting a back/front/sideways (??) flip. I don't think he's gonna' make it, you'd better just cover your head and wait for impact!!
Okay, okay. If my brother tries it, I have to try it too. It looks like a little better form, but unfortunately, my flip attempt met with the same awful fate as my brother's.
There we go!! That's a nice jump. Wakeboarding is also another great pasttime that our family loves. It has definitely overtaken slalom skiing, which is what we kind of grew up on as everyone's favorite.

Here's my son Logan again!! He really looks like he enjoys the water, doesn't he? About 3 months ago, he loved the water and Adam couldn't stand it. Now they've switched places.

Here's Adam and I riding the wake surfer, just waiting for the perfect swell...It never came, but we were dragged behind the boat for a while. Adam really liked it!

To cap off the summer, I love this picture of Adam mid-splash, having fun with my little bro Vance. The lake is a terrific place to go in the middle of the summer in AZ and it's a lifesaver with the kids. It's one of the true beauties of the AZ landscape.

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.