Friday Night No-lights

I had the privilege of covering the home opener for South Sevier's football team against Gunnison Friday night, Aug. 22. It's a whole different atmosphere being on the field, hearing what's actually happening and trying to capture the action to package it up nicely so everyone can get the gist of what happened who didn't make it.

That is one of the actually decent shots I pulled off, taking pictures while being  confined to certain areas around the field is harder than I expected.

Annie and Sophia joined me for the game, which was almost called at halftime because the power in Monroe was down for about three hours that night. In other words, halftime lasted almost an hour and the game went on until about 10:30. It was worth it though, as the Rams pulled of a second half upset — the final was 25-10.

Sophia was so cute at the game, I kept looking up to the stands to see how her and Annie were getting along. she was really good the whole time, which really surprised me considering how late things went. I think she was really into all of the excitement and the crowd, but the part I liked is every time we would catch each other's glance she would light up and want to come see me for a minute.

I'm looking forward to the football season a little bit now that I've gone to a game, even though I'll probably end up in North Sevier or Richfield half of the time I cover a game.

Doctors visit/Annie's new job/Wild weekend

Sophia had her nine month appointment Tuesday, Aug. 12, in American Fork. We love her pediatrician up there, so we're going to stick with him — unless he's not covered by our new insurance when we eventually switch over to that.

The doc said Sophie looked like the epitome of a healthy baby when he came into the office, as Sophie was busy trying to figure him out and play on the floor at the same time. This visit was also good because it involved no shots, which meant no screaming baby.

Since now going to a pediatrician means four hours of driving are involved, we made a day of it, leaving from Austin around noon. We made it to A.F. right in time for the appointment, and afterward decided to do a little shopping at Target and the mall. We made a real day of it. Plus I got to spend a good amount of time with Annie and Sophie during the week for once.

The day before the visit to the doctor, Annie had an interview with the school district on Monday, which she said went pretty good. It must have, considering she was contacted by Randy Brown, the principal at Richfield High, and offered a job as an aide for a blind girl for the school year. 

At first Annie seemed a little hesitant about calling him (since he contacted me first and since she wants to get in with the elementary schools, not high schools), but she said she felt really good about the position after talking to him about it. The principal was really excited to get Annie as an aide, too, since we was the principal at SSMS while we both were there. I'm really excited for her, I think she'll do well and learn a lot from this girl.

Dating even further back than both these events, we ended up going to Utah County over that weekend for a couple things. First, I had tickets for Lagoon from work so Annie and I went with Trent and Jessica Saturday morning and we went on all the newer rides — you know, the good rides.

Trent and Jessica hadn't been to Lagoon since the traditional SSHS Senior Day trip to the Farmington Factory of Fun (Lagoon), so they had never had the experience of being tossed like a salad on the Samurai. Turns out that even though they were worried about all the spinning pre-ride, it was one of their favorite rides of the day.

Another newer ride — I hadn't even been on this one, and I went last year — that we went on was Wicked. This coaster shoots you really fast all of a sudden from a tunnel straight up into the air and then you reach the top and start the decent straight back down. It also makes some awesome twists and turns and makes everyone's hair look real wind blown ala the '80s.

The next evening we went to one of Annie's mom's sister's house (they're possessive ... get it ... so, I'm a nerd) for a barbecue. It was fun, and I even made it into the top eight for this Fear Factor-esque competition they do every year. The goal was to do a sports-oriented obstacle course in the fastest time and getting time deducted for being good — making baskets and goals.

the competition usually evolves each round into people consuming really gross stuff — this year involved teams putting eggs in their mouths, spitting them out, and digging through the regurgitated egg; and last year people puked up curdling milk — so of course I was not disappointed when we were getting in the car to head for home when I found out that I made the top eight, but would not be able to continue on to round two.

All in all, we've had some fun over the past week — as you can probably tell.

Keep scrolling. Thanks.

So updates haven't been as radical as you might have thought. Get over yourself and check out my posts that were started earlier, but not posted until recently. sometimes my computer/blogger loves to play jokes on me and make it difficult to get longer posts polished and ready for public consumption.

Newly posted old posts (or you may want to call them newly appearing, but dated posts) include a few of them surrounding both Independence Day and Pioneer Day. Yes, I'm still trying to finish putting Hawaii posts together and get them up — don't hold your breath until they appear though, because you will probably never see them if you do (because if you would be dead because you're not exhaling anymore).

So, in short, scroll down through August and July and enjoy some fresh posts of past events. Also, these pictures are from a couple weekends ago while we were cleaning. Sophie was being such a cutie.

What a peach

Last Saturday, Aug. 2, we were at my Grandma and Grandpa Hunt's house. Grandma Hunt mentioned she had some peaches in the fridge, knowing I love peaches, so Sophia and I went to the fridge and washed up a peach for an afternoon snack.

I took a bite of the peach and was breaking off a piece of the inside small enough for Sophia when she leaned over to the peach and took a good-sized bite of it herself. Neither Annie nor I add any idea our little girl had such an affinity for fruits. In fact, she wasn't a huge fan of the baby food version of the same fruit.

Sophie continued to eat at the peach while I went out and got the camera out of the car, and afterwards while I snapped a bunch of shots of her eating for a good hour. She devoured about a quarter of the peach on her own probably.

When she finally decided she had had enough of the peach — and was sufficiently sticky — I finally got some of the peach I had been craving for a while.

The next night, Sunday, Aug. 3, Annie and I cleaned up the house and invited my family over for indoor s'mores. We broke out the indoor s'more maker my mom got us for Christmas a few years ago and they brought theirs over and we had a party in the kitchen.

Sophie even joined in on the s'more eating fun by repeating her peach thievery on one of Annie's s'mores. She got marshmallow and chocolate stuck to her cheeks, it was awesome. She's learning how to get what she wants to eat from mom and dad these days.

I'll try to post up a picture of the s'more when I get the picture and the internet in the same room. Until then, imagine one of those peach pictures and replace the peach with gooey marshmallow and melty chocolate wedged between two graham cracker squares — I bet you're wishing you had one right now, aren't you.