Game Changer

It's weird how something major in your life can happen, and while you're waiting for it to happen you can know so little about it and wonder so much, but then soon after it happens, it feels like it's always been that way the whole time. It felt that way with going into the mission field, coming back from serving a mission, getting married, and most recently with having Jane.

I remember wondering so much about what it would be like to have a kid - to not be able to go to movies freely anymore, or to doing a round of 9 with Amy for FHE, or any of the other things that are easy to do when you don't have kids. (Incidentally, shouldn't there be a word for married people without children? MWOC? Maybe I'll just use that.)

Every so often Amy and I will get out on a date night and all of sudden it comes back how easy it is to be MWOC. You get in and out of a car without having to pick anything else up. You walk into a restaurant and don't have to pick up a high chair. Heck, you walk in and don't even have to worry about what it is that your kid is going to eat for a meal. You can walk into a movie theater and hold hands and it makes sense and doesn't feel forced. That's how it feels, by the way, when you try and hold hands with your spouse and you're also carrying a baby, or pushing a stroller, or holding onto whatever else. It just doesn't make sense to do that, let alone to do the whole door opening thing at the car.

It's so refreshing and nice to have those date nights because it is so easy to just focus on the one that you're with. It becomes such an important thing to do.

And it's during these times that makes me realize how much purpose having Jane brings into my life. I don't just live for myself. Things start to change somewhat when you get married because you can see the impact with immediacy of what your actions and decisions do to the other person, but with a child, it becomes so much bigger. Amy can take care of herself at the restaurant, but Jane doesn't eat if I/we don't think of her. Jane doesn't survive from today through tomorrow if her needs aren't one of the first things that I think of in the day.

That's how it felt a few weeks ago when Amy and I went out. It's not that you can't have meaning when you don't have kids, but having your own family thrusts meaning full force to the very front and center of everything that you do. It is easily one of the most challenging things that I've ever confronted, not because the task of changing diapers, getting food, or anything else you do with babies is difficult, but because it is so constant. And then those needs grow in importance over time.

The nice thing is how rewarding it is. Jane is such a vibrant source of happiness for me. I wonder all the time what it is that filled up my life before this and I really don't know. I guess I just never had any idea then.

I'm a Rambling Man

Really we're a rambling family. I think I already mentioned how much we drove this past summer somewhere on here, but I had a flight to New York a couple weeks ago for a flyback with Citi (don't worry, I didn't get it) and that meant that I ended up touching down in my 20 state THIS YEAR. Since January. Isn't that crazy? Highlighted in red is every state that we spent at least some amount of time in since January.

It's been an amazing year for us as a family. It's so crazy to me when I lay it all out like that on a map. 

Lonely Dad

It's funny, but I was going to post last week about how important social interactions class. Being that I have spent a few to several years of schooling studying social psychology and am now taking a class in the program called Teams and Work Groups, I was going to talk about how important social interactions are. How they increase life expectancy, decrease depression, have a salubrious effect on all of these health outcomes that outdoes not-smoking, exercising regularly, and even eating healthy, among other things. (Mind you, this effect has only been demonstrated for actual social interactions, and nothing media based. We often pretend like that's a legitimate outlet, but it's not.)

In the week and half that we had been home when I was going to write that post, we had gone to a barbecue with three other couples from the MBA program, been invited to dinner twice in our new ward, visited Scott and Elisha, hung out with a few other couples, and I was in school, teaching a bowling class, sitting down with every other student/friend in the program that I could whenever I had a free minute, and I was just loving it.

And then my wife and now 1-year old went out of town.

I have been able to exercise consistently for the first time in months, catch up on things that had to get done, oversee our house and make sure everything is getting completed, and I just feel so empty. I don't sleep well.

Normally, when Amy is home, I have the easiest time falling asleep, but now, even on days when I'm feeling tired and should be ready to go to bed, it takes me an hour or more to really fall asleep. I will doze in and out, but if I'm down for bed at midnight, it's often like 1:30 AM before I'm actually asleep. It's interesting the ways you get affected by things.

I can't even begin to explain the amount of joy that comes from being a father and husband. My knees get weak when I can come home and I know that Jane has heard me walk in and to see her turn around and start crawling quickly for me...it just melts me right into the ground. I love it.

To be honest, sometimes it's hard juggling the balance of wanting to spend my evening with Amy and connect with her and while also feeling like I need to get things done. But after having the last 5 or 6 days to myself doing whatever I feel like, all I want is for them to come home.

It's amazing the way love can develop. It becomes this deep and abiding feeling that matures and swells, occupying every piece of you out to the tips of your fingers and toes. I find it crazy and wonderful that I get to experience this as my marriage draws out and my kid, now kids, grow and physically lengthen.

This is my jam lately. Listening to it almost broke me down yesterday.

Time to Disconnect

The bowling scene kills me. The idea is well executed and so true.

Now That Summer Is Almost Over

So much happened this past summer. We went to Michigan. I worked for Ford. We drove over 15,000 miles in less than a four month period which included stops in Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Toronto, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Idaho, Oregon, and California.

Then, during one of those fateful trips, a hinge on my laptop got broken. Turns out it is not a laptop that can be covered by warranty repair places and could not be salvaged, so a few weeks and about $500 later, I have a new laptop. Not great.

But with this new laptop I hope to finish my thesis (fingers crossed), edit the over 1,000 video clips I collected from over this summer, and search for a job for next year, and blog much about everything going on in our lives and that went on recently.

Starting...now!

Jane over time

Jane at birth.


At one month.


2 months.


3 months.


4 months.


5 months.


6 months.


7 months.


8 months.


9 months.


10 months.


Don't you just love her?

Can't Nobody Hold Us Down

Finally, a different kind of post, although I'm sure the five of you out there love hearing about Jane.





Something that Amy and I were determined to not have happen was to be a couple that stopped doing things just because they have kids. We've had some other good models to blaze trails for us, so we really wanted to make sure that we kept ourselves moving.


A lot of our ability to do that is just having such an awesome baby in Jane, but I have to think that part of it is just giving Jane every opportunity to adapt and learn to roll with things as we go and try and keep up with our adventures. I know that there are some people that would say that is selfish of us, but I think kids are really resilient and if we can give them a chance, they can get really good at adapting to whatever is thrown at them, provided that we still try and be sensitive to their needs and they know that while we might always be on the go, they can always know they'll find stability in their parents.



This year has been kind of amazing for us. Jane was born on September 12 of last year. Since then we've been to California twice, Vancouver, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arizona, Las Vegas, and driven across the country through Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana to finally arrive and live in Michigan for the summer. Since we've been in Michigan we have been to Toronto, Cleveland/Kirtland, Pittsburgh, Western Michigan (Holland and Grand Rapids), and Northern Michigan (Mackinac Island).





Just last week I was talking to my brother and telling him that we don't get to as many movies as we'd like, but we feel like we still do a lot. He kind of gave me a hard time about how I had supposedly commented on how funny I thought it was that he and his wife don't get out more. I took exception to that. We may not get to the movies as much, only because we don't have the army of available babysitters that we had in Utah, but this week alone we went to a Tigers game, Barenaked Ladies concert, and we are out of town for the third weekend in a row.





As I write, Jane is comfortably sleeping in her pack and play at the foot of the bed. Of the things that I value most in people, two of them are just being able to have fun and being able to roll with things. By September 12, 2014, I think Jane will be well on her way to figuring those things out.

Jane @ 10 months(!)

I can't believe this little girl is only a couple months away from a year. How does that happen?

Jane is just so amazing. Honestly. I think it was only last month that I was saying that Jane was kind of leery of strangers, men in particular. Well that went away just about as quick as it came. The other day some strange man picked her up while Amy had her at the pool and started splashing and playing with her and Jane couldn't have cared less. She just was happy to play in the water. And she courts interaction from strangers everywhere we go. She makes eye contact with anyone that talks to us, like waiters, and waits for them to notice her and she'll smile and make noises. That's another thing.

You can just tell she's understanding her voice and that it is the means to communicate with people. Probably my favorite thing that she does lately is when she's crawling around the apartment looking for me, she'll pause at the spot she sees me and makes her call which is something like, "ah!" And then I chirp back to her and she comes a crawling all smiling and giggly. She's really just so happy all of the time. For as much as we take her and do stuff - and we do a TON of stuff - she just rolls with everything. She can be totally tired and now she's just getting really good at falling asleep anywhere. Last night we went to an outdoor concert and even with the noise and the crowd (we were on the grass on the periphery), she just got really still in Amy's arms and fell asleep. Then I took her the rest of the show and she didn’t even stir while she laid on my chest. (Of course we’re the only bad parents there who had a baby in the first place, but that’s not the point.) 

She crawls with ease and stands every chance she gets. It’s really so fun and it feels like it’s just a matter of time before she just figures it out, although it felt that way with crawling and then it ended up taking her a couple months longer  than we would have guessed, but we’ll see. 

She still only has her bottom teeth. I’m excited for the other ones to pop in and fill out her mouth, but I still love just seeing those two little toofers on the bottom. 

She eats everything, but the fun part is seeing how she reacts to different foods. Amy gave her a lemon slice the other day and I was expecting more of a reaction from her, but she only seemed surprised by it initially, and then she wanted to hold it and ended up just licking it. That’s totally her mom coming out with that move. 

The best was her trying ice cream for the first time last week. We were at PNC Park in Pittsburgh just melting from the humidity so we decided to get a treat. She put her whole mouth on it, not really getting how to eat it at first. By the end, though, she started using her tongue and kept making her excited noises to let us know she wasn’t done. 

Jane is also pretty good with a sippy cup now. It took a little while, but she’s figured it out pretty well. Holding it upright is a still tricky for her when it gets low, but otherwise she’s got it mostly figured out. 

Jane is just so amazing. The two best things about her are just how happy she is and how she rolls with everything. She is so much like her mom that way and it honestly just makes life so easy for us. I could not feel more lucky to call her my own. 

Jane @ 9 months

So this is a week and change over due. I've been working most nights lately on my thesis. It's actually moving along. Shhh. Don't tell anyone, but I might actually finish it.

Jane at 9 months. She crawls. She army crawled for like two days and then all of a sudden she just figured it out. She's so independent now. I know it seems silly to say, but it feels like it. She's able to get where she wants to go, mostly. It's fun to watch her go for things or find her toys. She always takes a direct route too. She never goes around things, like it's not even an option. For example, our table in our nook has these wooden beams that are low and would obstruct a lesser baby, but not Jane. After a week or so, she figured out how to get herself over that little obstacle. She also likes crawling over my chest when I lay down. She goes face first, and sometimes she takes a hard spill, but she's getting better at protecting herself.

She claps now. A lot. It's so cute because she does it whenever she's happy or excited. She claps a lot. She's got two cute little bottom teeth, but her top ones haven't popped yet even though it feels like it's been awhile since the second of those bottom ones came out. That'll come up soon, I'm sure.

She tries to stand up against everything. Amy tells me that when she does the laundry now and brings the basket back, Jane just loves crawling into the basket and then pulling out all of the clothes.

She gets super excited for food, like verging on tears, especially in the mornings.

When I come home and she's just sitting in the living room, she puts down whatever she's playing with and crawls right over to me. It melts my heart. And when I pick her up she goes in for a hug, spreading her arms over me and putting her head on my chest.

She's also very wary of men lately. She just doesn't seem to like men. Any really, except for me.

It's indescribable what she makes me feel. Now when I hear single or newly married people talk about having kids in a way that isn't glowing, I mentally shake my head in disappointment for them. You have no idea what real joy is. Like it says in the temple, joy in your posterity. That's where it comes from. Joy comes from holding my petite little girl in my arms as she's falling asleep or when she squeals and kicks her legs out of excitement when I look back at her in the car.

I saw a video the other day with Louis CK, probably the top stand-up comic at the moment. He talks a lot about being a parent in his routines, although he's pretty vulgar a lot of the time. He said, "what the he** is an adult without kids? What's the point?" I loved it. I love being a dad. I love my little Jane at 9 months.

You can see the clip here, if you'd like. It's clean.

New Orleans...Finally.

Okay, forever ago we went to Mississippi to visit Greg and Laura. Amy blogged about it here. Well, I finally got around to producing the video. There are a lot of things I don't love about it, but it's done. So here it is.

Look out world!

Wedding Season

Before it gets too far distant, I should probably put together some thoughts about the wedding that I just attended for Annalee and Paul.

I went to California this past weekend and left my wife and child all by their lonesome. I felt bad that they couldn't come, but it just didn't work out. In any case, off I went. It was a 36 hour trip about 2000 miles across the country, but important for me to be there so I went.

I realized tonight that this was probably the last sealing that would take me out to California for the foreseeable future. All of the people that are in California that I feel close enough to to travel for are now married. There's nothing really important about that, but just kind of interesting to me. Annalee is the last of the Reid kids to get married. The sealer made note of that, and I have to think as a parent, that really does bear some significance. From now on, the only things that really matter to Greg and Joyce as far as their kids are concerned are that they remain true and faithful to their covenants and that they get (more) grandkids who grow up in the gospel.

It's really a neat thing for every child in a family to be married in the temple, and there are six of them no less. It's also a neat thing for me to be so close to that family that I actually attended every one of those sealings. I don't know that many people have that kind of closeness and opportunity with people that they feel close to, and I feel really privileged that that is the case for me. I love the Reids so much, and of all of the girls I know, Annalee is probably the closest thing I have to a sister, so that's kind of neat.

The wedding was great. One of my favorite things about sealings is the time in the waiting room when you enter in and you see who else is there in attendance and have conversations with old friends that you haven't seen in years. It's just neat how weddings bring people together like that. And probably the best part about weddings is that they are always so happy. It's such a joyous occasion.

At this point in my life it also causes me a lot of reflection about my own wedding day and the feelings I had that day.

I didn't get many pics, but I got at least I got this one.

As far as Tweeter's wedding, it seemed like everything really came off well. Putting these together is such a labor of love because it's so exhausting for everyone involved. So much work goes into picking out every little detail, and then of course, there is the part I dread most about these things - the clean-up.

These kinds of events always separate people into two categories. The low-lifes and the saints. Some people will just naturally pitch in and help out and close things up. They are the ones who put chairs away in church at the end of the meeting, clean up your kitchen when you've invited them over for dinner, and just make life run more smoothly.

Then there are the ones who just sit there and do absolutely nothing while everyone else is working to get home as quickly as they can. These are the low-lifes.

While I guess I'm a part of the group who helps, it's probably a strike against me that I can only look over at the low-lifes and resent them the whole time, wondering how they can watch other people do all of this work while they stand idly by. Honestly, does anyone really like cleaning these things up? But you just go ahead and do it because many hands make light work, right? Some people just never get that though. It's probably one of my biggest pet peeves in the whole world.

It was such a short trip, but just so much fun to be there with so many people that I love so much. And it's so great to feel the spirit of the temple and to feel the spirit testify to the sacredness of that particular ordinance. I just love it.

Nauvoo, Illinois

Sunday, May 5

It’s getting too far out for me to remember this in as much detail as I would like. Nauvoo was the centerpiece in this road trip and it lived up to every one of our expectations. 

While the weather was cold, windy, and rainy the two days before we arrived in Nauvoo, we arrived to perfect weather. We woke up and went to the Fort Madison branch in Iowa before going back to our hotel and heading into Nauvoo for the day. We got over to Nauvoo and the skies were just perfect. Hardly anyone was in town for the entire time that we were there. It was just perfect.

It’s amazing to me to think about the history of this place and how for anyone not associated with the church, Nauvoo, Illinois isn’t even a blip on their radars. They have no idea what it means to us as a people, and in the grand scheme of things, it is such a place of great importance in the history of the kingdom of God. I thought often about the blessings that the local people, not just the saints, lost in driving the Church from out of this area. Today it’s a totally insignificant little city that sits on the banks of the Mississippi. While some might debate about how important Salt Lake City is to the entire world, I can assure you that the blessings of urbanization, growth, and prosperity that are had in Utah are definitely not present to any degree in Nauvoo today.

We took pictures and walked around the temple. The edifice is just gorgeous. For the me, the only temples that really blow me away that I’ve seen in person are San Diego, Manti, and Salt Lake. Nauvoo probably supercedes all of those for me now. It would have been nice to go inside the building and actually perform ordinance work, but we came on a Sunday and left on a Monday, while also having an 8 month old baby so it just wasn’t going to happen this trip for us.

The highlight of the Sunday was visiting Carthage jail. As you can imagine, Carthage is just a tiny little town. It would bear no significance otherwise if it weren’t for its notorious connection in being the martyr site for the Prophet Joseph Smith.

The prison itself consists of only 3, maybe 4 rooms. It has been restored to resemble what it did in 1844. There is a distinct kind of spirit about the place that you can’t really sense anywhere else. Amy mentions in her post about this day thinking about this idea of whether the spirit is actually present, whether others can feel it, or if it holds significance and feels that way only because we’re members of the church. Obviously, I don’t know, but I tend to believe that the spirit can only attest to that kind of truth for someone open to its influence.

That evening we went out to eat at some bar and grill restaurant that turned out to be pretty good. Jane did much better that next day as we visited Nauvoo again. This time we stopped into the buildings and listened to the senior missionaries share with us the stories of those buildings and their part in contributing to the Nauvoo community. They were really all so sweet to talk to. You could just tell they had been starving for someone to visit with and tell their stories to.

The best part of the morning was walking down the Trail of Hope that has placards inscribed with journal entries of some of the pioneers who were forced to leave their homes and start new lives by trekking west. It was so sad to read. All of it makes me wonder about a lot of things. It’s kind of hard to put into words now.

Visiting Nauvoo was really powerful to me. This trip has been really neat for me just because I have never had the opportunity to go and visit any of these church history sites, besides what’s available in Utah. It’s incredible to walk in that city and think about how those trees were witness to all of those trials and difficulties that the saints faced. You can actually walk the ground and look across the river to the other side where these people looked and think about what a bleak future that must have been in their minds, even if they were looking with an eye of faith. There had to be many moments of doubt. There had to be so much fear about what lay ahead for them, particularly as they were being forced out in the dead of winter to a frontier part of the America that was wild and mostly unknown to anyone.

I just totally fell in love with Nauvoo. I would love to revisit it someday with my own family, anyone who is close to me. Being there made me excited to learn more about church history. Even though it’s not exactly my family that has passed through their, it was so exciting to me to think that my wife’s forbearers had a place in Nauvoo. It all becomes so real and that’s where I think the real value lies in being able to visit these kinds of places and stand in the places of such importance.

I am so grateful to be a member of The Church. I know it is the true church of Christ and our Father. I am grateful for the history of the saints and the sacrifices that they made so that I could benefit from their faithfulness 150 years later when I would be able to partake of the blessings of the gospel myself.

Jane @ 8 months

I know you'll never believe this, but Jane just keeps on getting more fun. She's getting more and more interactive. She just gets games more. She gets when you're being playful, and if you're kind of coming after her, she'll turn and bury herself into the arms of whoever is holding her. She's so darling.

Her second tooth started coming in and that has just started some sleeping issues recently, but otherwise she is just awesome. The traveling kind of messed her up too, but she's normalizing since we haven't stuck her in her car seat for hours at a time and not changing rooms and locations every night.

Tonight we gave her some Tylenol and she started kind of crying and moaning as soon as I put her down for bed, but calmed down when she realized that I was staying to hang out with her. It was the cutest thing. She'd just kind of roll over and change positions, reach her hand up to touch my face, and I just rubbed her back until she fell asleep a few minutes later.

Probably the sweetest thing ever, though, was on our road trip over to Michigan. There would be times when we didn't have too much left in our car ride, but she had woken up or was just plain getting tired of being in her car seat, and if one of us could reach back and hold her hand, she would calm down immediately, set her head off to one side, and just fall asleep, reaching up her one little hand to hold one of ours.

She constantly melts my heart. I was not a person who just filled with love the second she came into my life, but my heart is brimful and overflowing whenever I think about her now. She's just such a happy little baby. I love my sweet little Jane.

Omaha, Somewhere in middle America

Saturday, May 4

The highlight of this stop would be in the morning as were able to stop into Winter Quarters to see the visitor center there. I thought there would be more to the area. The visitor’s center was nice, and there is the cemetery adjacent that also includes the temple right there. It’s a nice little area, but we got saddled with a cold, windy, rainy day. I think I would have liked the visitor’s center more if we would have been able to look around by ourselves.

A sister missionary accompanied us, and while she was great, she was also just such an awkward person. Amy wanted me to take a picture of her pulling a handcart, and so I asked the sister (who had also just mentioned that of all things about home she misses, who she misses most are her nieces and nephews) to hold Jane while I took the picture. So I go to hand her Jane, the sister holds her hands outstretched and holds Jane away from her, just holding her up by her armpits, but then settles Jane on her knee while standing. I don’t know if that paints enough of a picture, but it was clear she had never held a baby before. The best part, though, was that she stayed in view of the picture and I just didn’t have the heart to tell her to get out. It was funny.

The best part of this stop for me was that there just happened to be a display of Liz Lemon Swindle’s artwork on display in the basement(No joke, it is actually Liz Lemon. Funny, huh?). I am one to appreciate art, but I’ve never really been touched emotionally the way I was when I saw her work. On display were about two dozen pieces of paintings from the bible about the Savior. The artist has an amazing ability to capture emotion and just seeing those pictures really made me reflect on the Lord and his mission. It was very impressive. What a talent to be able to be able to visualize so clearly the Savior and then translate that to a canvas. That kind of perfect communication of thoughts and feelings is very rare. (I'll sprinkle my favorite pieces throughout this post.)

Afterward, we dropped by a restaurant featured on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. It was pretty amazing.

We spent the rest of the day driving through Iowa to our next stop in Nauvoo. We have one friend who lived in Iowa for a time, and she just loved it, but outside of her, I had never really known much about Iowa. Iowa is a beautiful state. It has been pretty wet for us today, but we went and found a covered bridge, drove the countryside a bit, and stopped for dinner in Ottumwa. We had the funniest experience there.

We stopped at a place called the Canteen Lunch and we parked in a parking garage and walked around the back of the building to the front. As we walked in, the 6 or 7 people in the diner turned and looked at us. The lady who would eventually serve us just eyeballed us the whole time and asked us what we wanted. Another lady was scooping up what had to be the grossest ground beef I had ever seen. Amy asked for a burger. The lady asked what she would have on it, and as Amy started to say lettuce, tomato...she interrupts with, "Ketchup, Mustard, or Pickle." Amy paused before trying to politely decline their service and we just ended up walking away. I had never been in an establishment that was so unwelcoming. I couldn't stop laughing about it later. Our entrance reminds me of the scene in Pee Wee's Big Adventure when Pee Wee gets to the diner and says, "Large Marge sent me." So weird.

Otherwise Iowa has these beautiful stretches of green rolling hills with scattered barns that have been neglected for years, occasional car lots selling cars from all decades, and lonely solitary churches with a dozen or so headstones immediately adjacent to them. At one point Amy and I were both reminded of Sankt Steven's in Switzerland. This country really is so diverse thinking of the drive between California-Las Vegas-Arizona-Utah and now this. It's really captivating. If it weren't so wet and we weren't pressed to get our baby out of the car, there would have been many more photography stops.

We are staying at the cozy Knight's Inn just outside of Nauvoo tonight. It's exactly what you'd expect of a $55 a night kind of hotel. Jane is sleeping peacefully, but actually had a 102 temperature tonight. We gave her some Tylenol and it has done its job and she got back to her cute little excited-to-be-out-of-her-seat-self. Tomorrow is Nauvoo.

Onward to Cheyenne!

The next several posts will just be journal entries about our road trip. Proceed at your own risk!

Thursday, May 2

We ended up getting out a day later than we had originally planned because the weather was a little ugly leaving Utah and getting into Cheyenne, Wyoming. We left on a good day – nice temperatures, clear skies, and all of us were feeling good.

The few people we talked to that had been to Cheyenne didn’t have much good to say about it. What we had looked up about the city also seemed consistent with their judgments, but still, we were exciting for our cross country trek. The landscape was mostly pretty boring, but we still really enjoyed it because it was all new to us. I had never been out that direction and Amy hadn’t travelled that way either, so we took it all in. Snow was still very much present, and as we arrived in Cheyenne, the city was very much still in winter.

The first thing we wanted to see were the painted cowboy boot statues around town since that was all we had really heard about Cheyenne. That determination of ours ended up taking us over to downtown Cheyenne near the train museum. We took some pictures and video and then decided to pop into the Wrangler store just because the building looked kind of interesting and it was someplace warm.

The store turned out to be amazing and really turned us onto Cheyenne. It was filled with cowboy-ware; big expensive belt buckles, a huge display of cowboy/cowgirl boots and even little cowpolk boots, and other such things. The highlight of the store was talking to one of the workers. He was the perfect representation of a modern day cowboy stereotype. He had the cowboy drawl, showed us the residual damage of an injury he sustained while participating in a rodeo, and topped off with his ghost stories about the local area. We just loved him. He was the exact right person to talk to if you wanted a fledgling interest to grow into a full-blown one for Cheyenne. On his recommendation we ended up heading over to Pioneer Park and saw the stadium that served as the site where Lane Frost (of the movie 8 seconds) died in the arena and where a statue was dedicated to him. He also suggested we head over to try some bison meat and see the “Big Boy” locomotive that is on display.

The best obviously was his telling about the ghost of Tom Horn that haunts the Wrangler store because that building was formerly the holding area where condemned prisoners spent their last days and hours. Additionally, the bride ghost also walked those halls and our cowboy salesman shared with us that he had observed some of the paranormal activity he had seen. If we had any doubt, then his brother with the sixth sense had verified it with him one time when he wanted to see what kind of spirits resided in that building. I just loved that guy.

My favorite thing about Cheyenne is that it really is such frontier territory. Apparently with the execution of Tom Horn, that served as the end marker of the frontier days in the West and the United States, but the town still has such a great heritage of cowboy culture that it hangs onto, most obviously with the boots around town, but also in the annual rodeo that had made its annual appearance in July, since 1897. Cheyenne was great and I’d loved to pass through again someday. Definitely the last two weeks of July to hit up that rodeo.

Cruisin...the USA! (playlist)

Now that the semester is over, I'm going to try and be more regular with my blogposts on here. Hopefully that holds up. It also might turn more journal-ly, which has been kind of the direction it has gone anyway.

First order of business, road trip playlist. We ended up covering more than 1900 miles this first part of summer, meaning more than 29 hours in the car together. Wow, when you put it like that, I can't believe we weren't more tired of driving than we were.

I ended up assembling a pretty comprehensive playlist for the trip. If you're really interested, then you should jump on Spotify, find my profile, and then listen to the list there, but if you just want an idea of where to start, then take a gander below.

The playlist covers a wide range of songs, so it doesn't cater to everyone's taste, but it definitely skews classic rock. As it turns out a lot of music is about journeys, self-discovery, finding/reaching a destination, etc. Driving as a metaphor is a great vehicle (see!) for coming up with decent lyrics.

Without further ado, and in no particular order:
(Listed by Artist, Track, (Parenthetical remarks are mine))

• Incubus - Drive, Wish you were here
• Janis Joplin - Mercedez Benz
• Coldplay - Speed of sound
• Billy Ocean - Get out of my dreams/Get into my car
• Rollings Stones - Start me up, Gimme shelter
• Johnny Cash - I've been everywhere
• Depeche Mode - Route 66 (or many other artists cover this one)
• John Denver - Country roads (Me First and the Gimmie Gimmies do a punk cover of this that I grew up on and love), Rocky mountain high
• Ram Jam - Black betty
• Roy Orbison - I drove all night
• Tom Cochrane - Life is a highway (or the more popular Rascall Flatts version)
• Roxette - Joyride (Amy loves this one)
• Golden Earring - Radar Love (I love this one. I think it's so cool, especially the intro.)
• Eagles - Life in the fast lane, Hotel California, Take it easy, Peaceful easy feeling (definitely my fave road trip band.)
• Canned Heat - On the road again
• Wiz Khalifa - No Sleep
• Middle Class Rut - Are you on your way
• R Kelly - Ignition (because it's obviously about driving, right? And Hip Hop/R&B is short on this list)
• Pantera - Walk (probably too hard for most people, but this was a favorite in 9th grade)
• Willie Nelson - On the road again (different from above)
• ELO - Mr. Blue Sky (Mayer Hawthorne has a great cover of this)
• Don McClean - American Pie (just feels right for crossing the country)
• U2 - Elevation, Still haven't found what I'm looking for, Where the streets have no name
• Free - All right now
• RHCP - Road trippin' (I love this one right now, cool, subtle jam)
• Bruce Springsteen - Born to run
• The Cars - Drive (one of my all time favorites), Let the good times roll
• Stealers Wheel - Stuck in the middle (LOVE)
• Beach boys - I get around, Good vibrations (I rediscovered how good these guys were as I put this together.)
• Smokey Robinson - Cruisin' (Huey Lewis and Gwynneth Paltrow have a good cover.)
• Tracy Chapman - Fast car (Boyce Avenue has a really cool cover too.)
• The Allman Brothers - Ramblin Man
• Gary Numan - Cars (gotta love quirky 80s tracks)
• Chuck Berry - No particular place to go
• Ray Charles - Hit the road Jack
• Supertramp - Take the long way home
• Elton John - Goodbye yellow brick road, Tiny Dancer (this one probably because of an awesome scene from Almost Famous, and it's my favorite Elton John song)
• Jimi Hendrix - Crosstown Traffic
• Arcade Fire - Keep the car running (great)
• Kavinsky - Nightcall (from the Drive soundtrack, has a great 80s electric feel)
• Dire Straits - Sultans of swing
• Eve 6 - Open road song
• Heart - These dreams (not sure why)
• Bill Withers - Lovely day
• Daft Punk - Around the world
• Curtis Mayfield - Move on up
• Dave Matthews' - Where are you going
• Blues Traveler - Run around
• Steve Miller - Jet airliner (I know, it's not driving, but it's still traveling), The Joker (because, yes)
• Temper Trap - Sweet disposition (felt right)
• Neil Young - Long may you run
• Edward Sharpe and...- Home
• Christopher Cross - Ride like the wind
• Beastie Boys - Slow ride
• Beatles - Ticket to ride, Long and winding road
• James Taylor - Country road
• Boyz II Men - End of the road
• Mason Jennings - Lonely road
• AC/DC - Highway to hell
• Pennywise - Unknown road (favorite punk song in my teenage angst filled days)
• Black Keys - Have love/will travel

Phew. There you go. I threw in some others, but that should be at least 5 hours of driving. Here's a taste of one.

Watching Her Learn

I know Amy has mentioned it on her blog, but Jane is just the cutest when she eats food. She's a very clean eater. When it's time to eat Jane will hold her hands out, never touch the food with her hands, open her mouth and make excited noises and kick her feet. That's her food reaction.

Last night we were playing games with some friends. I had decided to have a dessert soda (Amy thinks it's weird that I call it that) and was sipping on a bottle of Mexican Coca Cola that the Mitchells always kept in stock for us. I happened to be holding Jane at the time - and to anyone else this is such a small thing - and I noticed that she kept watching me pick up the bottle and lift it to my lips. After a couple times of doing this, I picked up the bottle a few more times even when it was empty just to see if she really was tracking what I was doing, which she was. 

Just out of curiosity to see her reaction if I handed her the bottle, I picked it up and brought it to her. That's when she gave her food reaction. Instead of reaching for the bottle like she would anything else, she gave her food reaction knowing that there was something for consumption, not for play. It was just the neatest thing in the world for me to notice her do that. It made me so excited to watch her and realize that through her observation, she was learning what kinds of things we eat and how we take them in. I'm sure that is only among the first of many times I'll see those kinds of things, but I just loved it.

I almost felt bad that I didn't give her any. I can't start her that young, right?

Jane @ 7 months

Yeah, I'm a little behind on a lot of things. I'm hoping this writing (even if it's totally unrelated) will get me going with my studying this morning.

Jane is so fun right now. I think I probably always say that, but I really mean it. She's becoming more mobile. She's not crawling or scooting yet, but she's lunging, rolling, and wiggling her way to where she wants to go.

Just recently she started some more signs of stranger anxiety. It mostly has to do with when we are in groups of people that she's not familiar with and someone else takes her. I don't love that, but otherwise if it's just us and some friends, she's really good. She makes it easy for us to go out because even if it's passed her bed time, if we are hanging out with other people she is still really good and doesn't even cry at all. She's so easy on us.

She just started teething last week. We wouldn't have known it if Amy hadn't actually felt the tooth in her bottom gums, but if we wouldn't have found that out we would've realized something was up when she decided to stay up from 3am-6am the other night. Not awesome, but even still, as soon as she's with someone she's just happy as can be.

And that's probably the greatest thing about her. She's just happy pretty much all of the time. She has such a sweet little cry and really only whines if she's tired and alone.

The cutest thing in the world is that she's figured out how to play peek-a-boo. She'll take things and cover her face and wait for someone to play with her. She's just the sweetest thing in the whole world.



This is funny to me, but she likes when I whistle in her face. She's just funny with anything blowing/covering/near her face. It kind of makes her nervous and she'll giggle.



This is one of my favorite pictures in the whole world of her. Caption contest for this photo, go!

Love What I'm Doing

I'm feeling really good these days. There are at least a few times each week, and sometimes multiple times in a day when I actually think to myself, "I'm so glad I'm in the MBA program."

I feel so lucky to be apart of this program for so many reasons, and I count it as such a big blessing that I feel so content with exactly where I'm at in my life. Unfortunately, I feel like that is always kind of a fleeting feeling, you know? Maybe you're better than I am, but so often I feel like I'm looking to see what's over the next hill for what's ahead, not realizing that maybe where I'm currently at is a pretty great place to be.

I absolutely love the content of my program. I feel so lucky when it comes to that because I know so many people in graduate school who just hate the work they do in school (i.e. almost everyone I know that has or is attending law school). I was in my managerial accounting class today and we were looking at balance sheets trying to figure out what was wrong with the business and I just loved it. I couldn't have been more satisfied with what I was doing at that moment. And I don't even like accounting stuff. The professor is just awesome and the questions were so interesting. I loved it.

I love the people in my program. I'm so pleased with the friends I've made and the people that I'm learning so much from all of the time.

And I love the opportunities coming out of my program. I just got my specific assignment last Friday for this Ford this summer. I'll be working on some change management initiatives and revamping their onboarding for salaried new hires. Neat, right?

This summer we started laying out each of our weekends. The week we'll be coming back we will attend the JT/Jay-Z concert in Chicago on July 19th, then we'll go to the St. Louis game on Tuesday, Kansas City Royals game on Wednesday, and Colorado Rockies game on Thursday, or maybe Friday. Amazing, right? I can't believe all of that works out that way.

It's just nice to be so happy where you are, and where you will be. I don't think there's a better feeling.