The Kite Runner

Yesterday was the 42nd Annual Smithsonian Kite Festival on the National Mall. Neil dropped by Target and picked us all up some kites, and we headed to the festivities to meet up with Pari and make fools of ourselves. Or at least I did.


Everybody else that was there (including the people with grocery bags tied to string on a toilet paper tube) seemed to be able to get their kites in the air, but not me.



This was me on my 642nd try.

I was not successful. And I got all tangled up with the little girl in blue.


I hogged the goldfish kite all to myself and made my family watch on as I continued to fail miserably. We broke for lunch and came back in the afternoon in search of a better spot. I was sure it was the wind, the kite, or the gods that were cursing me.


In the afternoon, when I put the kite back together, I realized that I had attached the cross beam upside down. After that, my kite could hardly be kept in my hands, it leaped in the air at every opportunity.


Here is Megan when I finally let her have a turn.



Thanks to our success, we ended the day on a happy note. Hopefully Neil and Pari will still want to hang out with us.

Happy Easter

Ha ha! With this opening picture and title I've suckered all you women into thinking that you were going to scroll down and see pictures of Megan dyeing eggs, running around like a loon looking for candy and then passing out in a diabetic coma. I have all of those pictures, but that is not what this post is about.

It's about shoes.


These shoes.






I love these shoes. I am somewhat of a shoe snob -- I see shoes as a quick and easy way to get to know a person, and I am very particular about the message that I send across with my shoes. Kim almost didn't make the cut when we first started dating because she had these terrible backless black leather clogs. I'm shuddering just thinking about them. Luckily, I quickly talked her out of those, and she has made better shoe decisions ever since.

As I was saying, I am picky when it comes to my shoes. I had shopped for a full two years before settling on these beautiful slip-ons. They send just the right message -- They have no exterior branding (I am not a walking advertisement), they're tweed (Tweed!), which shows that I am studious, they have no laces, demonstrating how practical (read: lazy) I am, and they are lined with felt and double as slippers, which highlights my preferred informality. They even have a great name -- The Castro. I can just imagine Fidel himself strolling around Havana in these beauties. They look great with any pants, from jeans to slacks, and they can be worn anywhere from a club in Austin to church on Sunday, although I haven't been able to convince Kim of the latter.

Sadly, as you can see from this next picture, I loved my shoes a little too much.


That hole you see in the toe was bearable right up until it actually wore through and compromised the lining of the shoe -- I couldn't handle getting my socks wet when I'd slip them on to take out the trash.

Easter came, and with it came the opportunity to get myself a present. The problem was, where would I find a better pair of shoes? The answer -- Zappos.com. Zappos is a wonderful site with a plethora of fantastic footwear to choose from. You are far more likely to find the perfect shoe when you have thousands to browse through than if you simply showed up at the mall, hoping that just the right shoe would be located among the ten pair that Foot Locker carries. I know you are saying to yourself, "I couldn't order shoes on line, how would I know if they fit right?" Well, Zappo has free shipping, and will pay for you to return your shoes within 365 days. "But," you may be thinking, "I'm the kind of person that can't wait for my purchase, it'll take too long." Au contraire, I placed my order on Sunday, and they arrived today, Tuesday, and I didn't have to drag Megan all over the place while I tried on and discarded every shoe in town.

But what would I get to replace the perfect shoes....




...why, the same shoe, of course (notice how they come in the cool cigar box)!

Here they are looking great with my slacks as I sit and watch one of my favorite shows.

The Education of Taylor Bear

This week my sister brought a hairy individual to visit. Megan wasn't quite sure what to make of him, but she quickly decided that all that hair could only mean one thing -- he was a "Taylor Bear"


The Taylor Bear is an animal indigenous to the Wasatch Front and high Uintahs, but my sister seemed determined to domesticate him so we did our best to help out. We took them to the National Cathedral,


and later dressed him up in some of my nice clothes and took him to see the National Symphony play Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev at the Kennedy Center.


That's us in the upper left corner behind the orchestra, on the second row.


This is looking out from our seats. You won't see many pictures like this because it clearly states that there is no photography inside the concert hall. Good thing I didn't read that until after I took my pictures.


We even took him to some of our favorite restaurants. Here the Taylor Bear gave some kind of hand signal to rate his dinner.


He preferred eating with his hands in the fresh air outside, so we tried our favorite Peruvian rotisserie chicken and ate it outside of the Jefferson Memorial.


He seemed to enjoy the belly dancing at this Moroccan restaurant, but the Taylor Bear is notoriously near-sighted, and couldn't tell that there must not have been a lot of competition for this belly-dancing position


We rounded out the week by trying to inspire the Taylor Bear with a visit to Jefferson's home at Monticello.


He showed a great deal of interest in Jefferson's agricultural endeavors.


So did Megan. She chose to help the workers plant flowers rather than go on the tour.


On the days that I had to work, Crystal took the Taylor Bear to visit the National Art Gallery, the Holocaust Museum, The American History Museum, the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, and a host of other important cultural icons.

The Taylor Bear responded to all this culture by grilling up some meat in our backyard.


We were very glad to have visitors this week, and we had a lot of fun with Crystal and Taylor Bear. To see more of their adventures, click here, a post about it should be up soon.







BONUS: Here are a few more of our pictures from the week that didn't quite fit into my narrative. Back before I became a working man they probably would have been fodder for a second post, but now we're averaging one a week so I thought I'd better get them up. Here's Megan worn out after running all around the National Cathedral.


Here she is banging on a priceless antique organ once she got her second wind.


Megan LOVED having her Aunt Crystal here, and she borrowed everything Crystal had. Here she is carrying around Crytstal's purse.


Kim and I dressed up for the Kennedy Center.


This is the little plant that the workers at Monticello gave Megan for helping out (of course she didn't want me to take a picture of it, so she turned around.)


And here we are planting it in our backyard, now that the nice Spring weather seems like it is here to stay.


Finally, here is Megan making the most of the nice weather playing with her new sand and water table.

Maybe for my birthday!

For weeks, every time Megan has seen something in the store that interests her, she has said, "maybe for my birthday!"

She was pretty excited to get a big-girl bed, and we were glad to get her out of the crib before Henry takes it over so that she doesn't hold a grudge against him



Yesterday Kim threw a party for Megan. When we first sent out the invitations, I secretly thought to myself, "Only an hour? That's a pretty short party..." Well, I'm here to tell you that an hour was more than long enough. Since 2 and 3 year olds can't hold their focus for longer than it takes a hummingbird to flap its wings, we were still able to dance with balloons, eat marshmallows like fish, open presents, make crowns, blow out candles, go on a treasure hunt, eat donuts, make balloons stick to the wall, laugh, cry, fight, make friends and create an incredible mess.

Here are the culprits


Noah eating marshmallows like a fish


Spencer dancing with his balloon


Catherine playing with some of the treasure they found


Nathan trying to stick his grasshopper in my ear


Milan in mid-air


Ella contributing her hair to make the balloons "magic" enough to stick to the wall


Anderson getting ready to pull the New Year's eve pull-pop things that he so generously contributed to the festivities


And Queen Trouble herself, chomping down on her pink frosting birthday donut (which Kim finagled from the local grocery store. When they told her that they don't do pink frosting, Kim said, "You have donuts with white frosting, can't you just add some food coloring?" And indeed they could.)



And finally, the feeding frenzy:

A Lily and Thorns

Here they are, the long awaited pictures from the Philadelphia photo shoot.

It started out as most of our photo shoots do -- with a little reticence. There's the "closed eyes" shot


another capture of the "angry eyes" (but look at that porcelain skin and those long eyelashes)


the "staring off into the distance, or doing anything except smiling like you want me to" pose


But to Danica's credit, she finally got Megan to warm up


And pretty soon she was actually enjoying herself


(those smarties she's holding might have something to do with it)



She started to get a little tired of it all (and yes, she still sucks on her wrist)


so we revitalized her by dressing her up as a ballerina, which is a sure fire way to get her on her feet


You should have seen her in sacrament meeting doing pirouettes last week while Kim was home not feeling well. We were sitting on the first row of the overflow, and Megan garnered enough attention that when the Stake President started his talk he referred to how grateful he was to see young children enjoying themselves, and how we young parents didn't need to be embarrassed when our children acted up in church, because it was a big sacrifice to be there.





These are far and away the best pictures we've ever captured of Megan, and I love every one of them. They show her expressive eyes, overabundance of personality, her attitude and her beauty. If you haven't done so already, click on them and look a little closer at just how gorgeous my little girl is (they're pretty big files, so you may have to try more than once, and you'll have to scroll around. It's worth it.)


And here is the person responsible for all that beauty (and most of the attitude.) A lot of you have been requesting better photos of what Kim looks like pregnant, so here she is with 2 months to go.






We're very excited for Henry to join our family, and wonder (with a little trepidation) if he'll have as much personality as our daughter.

Thanks Danica for these fantastic shots. Check out more of her photography here.