Our new Piano!

Ham and Eggs

Ham and Eggs2

Ham and Eggs3

Concert

 By far the most fun part of the concert was Juliana and her two friends, who made signs saying “Future Mrs. Archuleta” and other things. They went crazy when David A. hit the stage. I just had to capture their excitement. Plus I couldn’t really get a great picture of the stage, but the 15 year old girls to my right were plenty of excitement for those around us.

Nerds

 They love David Archuleta’s face enough to wear this t-shirt on the second day of school.David Archuleta fans

David Archuleta fans

So today, I had this crazy thought. Although I grew up in Dallas, and have lived here for 20 years, I have no idea what to expect in after this weekend. I graduated High School in 2002. Since then I have not spent a fall in Dallas. I have spent them in Utah and Minnesota but I have not been in Dallas after September in a long time. As a result, I am excited to see what it is like once October and November come. I was talking about this with Andrea today and she said that she has been away from Texas for as many years as she has lived here.
Being a student is a strange time in life. It will be nice to get a little more normalcy in our lives, at least enough to know what the seasons should feel like.

Phelps v. Everyone

I was on NBC’s Olympics website today and saw an ad for two videos from this summers Olympic games.   One was the highlights of the entire 2008 Olympic Games for $19.95.   This DVD features numerous stories from the multiple venues and events including many gold medal performances.  For only an additional 5 cents you could buy the Michael Phelps DVD. This DVD shows all 8 memorable races he competed in as well as special behind the scenes footage of his time in Beijing.

I guess NBC believes Phelps’ performance is not only equal to all the others combined; it is worth 5 cents more.

Not only did I break my parent’s lawnmower, there was another near death experience that we encountered. A few days before Andrea’s parents returned home, we were watching the Olympics. As I sat there and watched Michael Phelps kick some serious butt I noticed that the there were some plants on the fireplace that needed some serious attention. As you can see from this photo, this plant was in ROUGH shape. I jumped up and poured about a half gallon of water onto the plant to try to revive it. I was amazed that just a few days later the plant was back and looking as good as ever, except for those brown spots on the leaves of course.

I killed some plants

This experience once again made me question if I was really ready for the house that we bought. I know, it is a little late to be learning these lessons, but I guess it will make it easier to move in some day. This brings me to another point. Unfortunately for our tenants they did not qualify for their mortgage by the time the got to closing. Due to rising interest rates and presumably poor credit, they now need to search for a new house. We decided to allow them to stay in our house for another month. This actually helps us out because I will be out of town 4 out of the 5 weeks in September Once again, if you planned a trip to stay at our new house you will need to make other arrangements, but on the other hand, if you just want to hang out with Andrea this might be a great time! Therefore, we will move in the first weekend of October and it could not be any sooner we are so excited.

So I yesterday I was trying to be a good son-in-law and mow my in-laws lawn while they were away on vacation.  I woke up early because it has been so hot here lately that mowing the lawn after work might just kill me.  When I got outside, I was amazed at how wonderful the weather was.  It was about 75ish degrees, which is quite amazing since it was 106 just a few days ago.  I thought to myself “this is going to be great!”  I can get the lawn mowed, get cleaned up and get to work, and I won’t even be that late.  So I started mowing.  It was going great but then all of the sudden the motor seized up and stopped working.  I tried to clean up the lawnmower but it still would not run so I gave up on getting it done.  As I went to put the lawnmower back in the garage, I thought I saw a large lizard scampering into the garage.  I did not want to go see what it was; I just thought it would resolve itself.  So I left the garage door open and went inside to get ready for the day.  I eventually closed the door and went about the rest of my day.

I had one of these in my garage...

Later in the evening, I came home and opened up the garage.  I was about to walk in it when I saw an armadillo walking between the cars in the garage.  So when I thought I saw the lizard slithering into the garage it was actually the tail of an armadillo.  It totally freaked me out.  The armadillo was not huge, but it was large enough to make me very nervous about walking into the garage.  So I stood there in the dark of night waiting for the armadillo to leave the garage.  After about 5 minutes of crouching down so I could see where it went.  I decided that I had to make a run for it.  I did not know anything about armadillos at the time.  I did not know if they were dangerous or if they had diseases.  As one might assume I was very cautious.  Once I confirmed that the armadillo was in the other corner of the garage I made a run for it and got into the house.  I left the garage door open so that hopefully, it would find its way out.  I went upstairs did a little Wikipedia research and found out the not only do that often care diseases like leprosy, they can also jump or hop about 2 feet high.  Well that is enough to freak anybody out.  However, against all better judgment I went back out to see what was going on.  I took my camera hoping to get a picture of the armadillo.  I was very cautious and used walked along the floorboards of my father-in-laws suburban trying to stay off the ground.  I was quiet for a few moments and tried to listen for the sound of its feet.  I eventually heard that it was just outside the garage.  I climbed around the back of the car and onto the bumper and used my camera’s flash to see the ground in front of me.  Much to my surprise as I pressed the shutter button and the strobe flash started going off me saw two armadillos running away.  Then I looked at where they were going and saw another one.  That makes three armadillos in total.  I do not know how many I locked up in my in-laws garage all day, but apparently, there were a lot of armadillos around.

This was a strange day.  I not only broke the lawn mower, I also locked one if not more armadillos in a garage.  I do not know if I am ready to have my own house.  I cannot even take care of someone other people’s houses.  Wish me luck…