SuperDad

Last night while Becca was visiting teaching, me and Calvin were craving something sweet to eat. I found a brownie mix in the cupboard and decided that was the answer to our craving. The only problem was that Calvin wasn't quite asleep and was being kind of fussy when I would put him down. I was determined to make some brownies though so I found this baby carrier that we have borrowed from my sister Brooke and decided to give it a try despite never having used it before. It proved to be somewhat complicated at first with various straps and buckles all over the place and Calvin's leg got stuck as I was trying to put him in it which he wasn't too happy about, but soon was as snug as a bug in a rug as you can see from this picture. I actually think he was just really tired from all the stress and difficulty of me trying to place him in that carrier. But at any rate, Cal and I had a bonding experience and the brownies were delicious!

Trip to the park

Lately, Becca and I have been making more excursions to some of the local parks in Provo. We would do this before Calvin arrived in an attempt to hasten his arrival and now we go because we are too afraid to take him anywhere else that is really public and sometimes we just need to get out of the house. Besides these reasons it is always so relaxing and refreshing being outside during the cool utah summer nights. But last nights decision to go to the park turned out to be quite an adventure for our new little family.
Becca and I gathered all the essential supplies and put Calvin into his car seat and off we went to the park. Yippee! The car seemed to be driving funny to me and after pulling out of our parking lot I stopped the car and got out to check one of the tires. Yep-totally flat! I was actually kind of glad that it happened then as I had noticed a bulge on the side of that particular tire a few weeks ago and had mentioned to Becca that we needed to replace it, but in the meantime I had been watching it like a hawk. Still determined to get to the park, I parked the car on the side of the road and we went to get in our other car to go to the park. We began to transfer all of our gear (diaper bag, car seat, base, etc.) when Becca noticed that Calvin was sitting unphased in a puddle of poo in the car seat. After spending 30 minutes in getting ready to leave and knowing it would take 30 more to get cleaned up and ready to go again, we decided we were too "pooped" out and threw in the towel. But at least we tried.

Treasure Hunting

I heard on the news last week that the state government had listed about 25,000 names of people who have claim to different types of property like lost paychecks, deposits, money forgotten in savings accounts, etc; which up to this point have gone unclaimed. A few days later I read an article in the paper about the same thing. The article mentioned that each year there is over $100 million of unclaimed property which the state invests or uses to pay for other government programs if not claimed, but the state is not responsible for contacting all of these people so they resort to just listing these names in the newspaper or online every so often. 25,000 people from October 2007 up until now alone!! Why not me? So on Sunday I decided to check and unfortunately I had no unclaimed property, but as I checked for other people that I knew I found that my Uncle and my cousin had some. Although Becca wasn't quite as amused as I was, I found it kind of exciting, almost like a modern day treasure hunt where you just didn't know what kind of treasure (unclaimed property) was going to pop up when you input a name. I passed the info along to my dad and told him to tell my Uncle. Hopefully I will get some sort of finder's fee for my discoveries.

Pregnancy powers

Although we don't play as much as we used to, Becca and I on occasion still love to break out the chess board for some intense battles. Luckily we have always been very evenly matched which has made for some really good games. But it seems like ever since Becca has been pregnant she has just been dominating me. The last few times we have played she has won pretty handly. But this last Sunday things were completely different. I was taking pieces left and right and before Becca even knew what hit her her King was mine. I guess it is just a sign that our baby boy is almost here and Becca's reign as the pregnant chess queen has come to a close.

Best class ever!

Right now I am currently enrolled in one class in order to get as many credits out of the way before the baby comes, but also not too many because the end of finals and our baby boy's birth fall on the same day (June 18). So I have two more weeks left for this class which is a surveying class. If you ever see those guys out in the streets with their tripods and gps systems, yep that's what I'm doing. Definitely not as fun as it looks. Another reason I took this class before the baby came is because it is known for being a pretty intense class. Luckily I am taking it from one of the easiest teachers I have ever had at BYU. He's an older guy who is super nice and I believe this is his first semester teaching at BYU.

I pretty much began to minimize my effort for this class about 3 weeks ago when the teacher said "I've only failed one person in my teaching career and that was because he didn't come to class and he didn't take the tests. So don't worry you are all pretty much going to get a C or better." Now let's face it, a C is not a grade that most people strive for but sometimes I get a C after trying fairly hard. And to top off this excellent class, today the professor went over the final and he gave us 5 different options to choose from; 1) closed book, testing center, time limit 2) open book, testing center, time limit 3) open book, testing center, no time limit 4) open book, take home, time limit, do all problems 5) open book, take home, no time limit, choose 5 out of 10 problems to do. After voting it was pretty much unanimous that option 5 was the winner (although 2 people voted for option 2. Some of those civil engineering students are a little strange). So, I will have a whole week to spend taking the test in the comforts of my own home or in the hospital depending on when little Miller decides to come.

Pictures & Memories

After several months, sincere pleas, and a few harsh threats I have decided to re-enter the blogging world.
So last night Becca and I were just browsing through some old pictures and I thought I would just comment on a few.
This first one is of Walt last year when we went up to Quinn & Lex's wedding in Boise. It definitely wasn't funny then, since a few hours after this picture was taken Walt was in the ER with a bad case of food poisoning and missed pretty much the entire wedding, but it's a little funny now looking at this picture. Sorry Walt.
This next picture is of me teaching Walt how to fish. While up in Boise for Quinn & Lex's wedding we took out Chris' parents boat to the lake and Walt mentioned how he had NEVER been fishing. I saw this as an excellent teaching opportunity.
This picture is of this past Christmas morning 07' up at Becca's parents house in Puyallup, WA. Nothing too special about this picture other than the extremely gorgeous woman, her awesome pajama bottoms, and a table full of incredible junk food for breakfast. We were also noticing how long Becca's hair was back then.

And finally, I don't know why Becca actually took a picture of this ham n' banana sandwich. First of all because it's just a sandwich and why would anybody take a picture of just a sandwich. And second of all it looks disgusting. I told Becca the other day as she was making one of these that I didn't want her feeding our boy that by eating one herself. To no avail Becca remains an avid fan of the sandwich.

Got Lice?

This past week Becca and I were up in Washington for Christmas. On Christmas Eve there was a family get together at Becca's parents house and among those in attendance was my little niece Emily who is almost 8 years old and can also be VERY outspoken and opinionated. Towards the end of the night Emily was sitting on my lap when she began to feel around in my hair like a mother monkey does to her little monklings (if thats not a word than it is now). She does this for a couple of minutes than diagnosis me with parasite infestation by exclaiming "you have lice". She was so emphatic about this that I almost began to believe her. She continued by diagnosing pretty much everybody at the party except for Grandpa because she said "he doesn't have enough hair." We finally got her to adjust her diagnosis just a little bit by saying that we had either a little case of dandruff or leftover hair product particles, but either way she told us "it was the beginning stages of lice" and that we needed "to be sure to shower." Whether Emily is right or not I have definitely been scrubbing my hair a little harder lately while showering.