Cliff Notes

We had a good week. The kids keep us on our toes. Sam has started deciding that he would rather get out of bed, turn on the light, and play after bedtime, in the middle of the night, and really early in the morning. We are going to have to nip that problem in the bud... and fast.

We switched Caroline's carseat from rear-facing to front-facing. She is much happier. She turns one in a couple of weeks and is all over the place.

Claire is as pleasant as can be.

Lily is ever-present.

You Too

I thought I would put a couple pictures up from Claire's birthday party last week. Claire's bestest friend in the whole world, Maggie, had a birthday a week earlier than Claire's so they shared the party. We rented a bounce house, heated up the pool, had some cake and spent the afternoon having a blast, making sure we left in plenty of time for the BYU-Florida game.

This week had another 2 big events. While it was Claire's actual birthday this week (March 30th), it was also April Fool's Day and the long anticipated U2 concert in La Plata, Argentina. We pulled a few pranks on some people and enjoyed hearing about the pranks being pulled. The best, in my book, is still the saran wrap on the toilet. A good friend's wife posted on Facebook about her subsequent cleanup. Juvenile? Yes. Appropriate? Maybe. Hilarious? Every time. Other pranks included moving a car (while also turning on windshield wipers, radio, etc), playing hurt (a spouse finding their maid collapsed at home upon arrival), covering up someone's favorite baseball team merchandise with the rival team logos, and putting shredded paper in kid's lunch boxes (while giving their teachers lunch passes). All in all, it was a fun day. Or should I say a Beautiful Day.

So when I was in Buenos Aires for my mission, U2 came to Argentina as part of its Popmart Tour. They played 2 shows at the River Plate Stadium. No, I did not go, but I knew families from my mission that went, and I was surprised at how much media attention the Irish band got. Well, fast forward. I have never seen U2, but have told Candace in every place we've lived that they are a band that I would go see if they came to where we were. Candace feels the same way about Josh Groban. So when U2 announced the South American leg of its current 360 degree tour, La Plata (an hour south of Buenos Aires) was on the docket and I got tickets along with a few friends.

In the end, U2 will end up playing three shows in La Plata (Capital of Buenos Aires Province in case you didn't know) on 30 March, and 2-3 April. I went to the 2 April Saturday night show. It was awesome.

Traffic was OK getting in and getting out of La Plata, and we were enjoying the experience on the way home until we got a flat tire. Luckily, we were all still going on adrenaline and were able to knock out the tire change pretty quickly. MUSE was the opening act and was also super cool. I would definitely go out of my way to see U2 again.

We Got Jimmered

March Madness is my favorite sporting event of the year. It's great basketball, no matter who your favorite team is. I, like many, have suffered year after year watching BYU earn its way to the tournament only to be rewarded with a double-digit seed, followed by a first round exit. Last year's double overtime victory over FL and close loss to Kansas State were so exciting. With all of the Jimmermania surrounding the team this year, we were excited for the possibility of another run in the tournament. I streamed many of the conference games, often staying up until 2 am to soak in as much of this season as I could.

When Brandon Davies made a mistake, I didn't despair. I defended the team against the fair weather fans that thought we were done. The announcers thought that was it after we went 3-2 to finish the regular season... while not mentioning that 1 loss was in the immediate aftermath of Davies' loss, and the other was to a top 7 team in the Mountain West Conference tournament finals. We took the 3 seed in the Southeast Region of the NCAA tournament, our best seed ever. I was so excited. We took care of Wofford. While I thought we could beat Gonzaga, I had no idea we would pummel them.

My analysis of BYU athletics, however, has remained consistent over the years in football and basketball. For some reason, we don't bring the necessary energy to the big games... somehow believing that it's enough to just be there. BYU fans were unexpectedly shown a rarity in the first 5 minutes of the second half of the Gonzaga game where BYU came out like they wanted to win. Unfortunately, that energy was nowhere to be found against Florida. It was really the first game I've watched where it looked like Jimmer was hogging the ball (just my opinion). While he has hoisted many shots in many games, he was digging deep against Florida and it was painful to watch. I was relieved the game went to OT. I thought we could have won it, and we came out dead in OT.

Now I don't say that to rail on Jimmertime at all, as there is no way to have such an enjoyable season without The Jimmer, only to point out that it was tough to watch The Jimmer Show end on such an off night with a spot in the Elite Eight on the line. Oh well. Thanks for the great season Jimmer, Jackson, Charles, Brandon, Logan, Chris, Kyle, James, Stephen, Noah, and the rest of the benchwarmers.

Our last two weekends have been planned pending BYU games, and we were successful. With the time difference, all of their games were in prime time after the kids were in bed. Couldn't have asked for more.

We had a birthday party for Claire this past week (her birthday is the 30th, but her best friend in Argentina's birthday was last week as well). We rented a big blowup bounce house, which is something really common down here. I was hesitant cause it seemed like it would be a lot of work with the insurance information, deposit, waivers, setup, etc... Well, if you remember my post about the horse back riding, safety and waivers are virtually non-existent here, for good or for bad. So I queried my neighbor (who recently had a bounce house for a party) how much it was, and she said about 150 - 200 for the day. For a birthday party and hours of entertainment, 150-200 dollars didn't sound totally outrageous. Imagine our surprise and joy when she corrected me that it was 150-200 pesos... which is 40-50 dollars... SOLD! The place dropped off the house about noon on Thursday and picked it up Friday morning... 210 pesos. Wow. We'll definitely be doing that again some time.

Later in the week, our ward had a campout planned at a Church-owned campsite about 45 minutes from Buenos Aires. While our kids are little and we didn't think the baby would do so well overnight, we spent about 4 hours up there playing with everyone. It was a great time. Now for those of you who served in soccer-dominant countries, you remember how goofy you looked, or felt, playing soccer when the 10 year olds would run circles around you. Well, we took up a few footballs, bats, mitts, and baseballs for the group of American families to play with... and when the Argentine members of our ward got involved... believe me... it made me realize what I must look like playing soccer. It's hard to imagine 14-15 year olds that have never thrown a football... or don't know how to swing a bat. Well, we found plenty.

The funniest thing about the campout was getting there. It was right off a freeway... but to get there, you passed under an overpass of an exit (intersection with another major road) and then turned off the freeway onto a dirt road running parallel to the freeway, then into the neighborhood where the campsite is. No street names... not listed on the maps... When the directions said, turn off onto the dirt road... it made me realize how we were growing accustomed to life here when I didn't think anything of it. I just said, "OK, I've got to look for the dirt road access point." Awesome.

Lastly, Claire played a funny trick on Caroline the other day. Caroline (almost 11 months) is still wearing the one-piece pajamas. As Caroline was crawling around the upstairs around the toys, Claire would drop a toy inside her pajamas. She was clicking around the upstairs. She knew something was in there and would shake her leg, and then just move on. It was hilarious. Claire has turned into quite the jokester, pulling all kinds of faces to make Caroline and Sam laugh all of the time.

We've got a busy week coming and hopefully there will be some good things to report next Sunday.