Happy Birthday Sydney

This morning we got up early and drove to Malibu to attend Sydney's birthday party. She turned two on Thursday. We were going to pick up Ben and Sharley and take them with us but they had school work to do and weren't able to come. The party started at 10:00AM and it was a lot of fun to watch all those little kids icing cup cakes and decorating them. They made a pretty good mess. As you can see, Sydney got a lot of cool presents and the other kids were right in there helping her out. Of course they saved the biggest present (the one Mom and I gave her) for last.

We gave her a rocking horse. Rocking horses have progressed quite a bit since our kids were little. Both Brandon and Sarah commented on how ripped off they felt because they only got stick horses when they were little. When you pinch the horses right ear he makes galloping sounds and neighs. His tail also randomly wags. If you pinch the left ear he doesn't gallop but only makes the neighing sound and wags his tail. It is pretty cool but it doesn't take long for the sound to drive you insane. All of the little kids loved it and they all tried to climb on the horse at once. Sydney didn't really grasp the concept of riding the horse so she didn't really mind other kids climbing on but once she figured out that you could sit on the horse no one else was going to get a chance to do so.

The party went until noon at which point Brandon went to his football practice and we pulled out the vacuum cleaner. Yes, you heard me correctly, Brandon went to football practice. It turns out that there are only two groups of guys at Pepperdine, the guys who go surfing and the guys who play flag football. Since he doesn't have a surfboard (or the time to go surfing) he decided to hang out with the football guys. It took some time to get an invitation to go and practice with the guys but today he had his first practice. He figures if he doesn't play football then he isn't going to have any friends at school. It seems like he had a lot of fun. He commented that it was easier to catch the football than he thought it would be.

Of course one of the things I was looking forward to the most was seeing Hayley. She is such a beautiful baby. She is also very mild mannered. As long as she has a clean diaper and a full belly she is quite content to just lay in your arms and enjoy the cuddling. I loved it.

After Brandon finished his practice we visited for a while and then headed down the road back home. We were going to drop some of Ben's things off at his house so instead of going down the 405 like we normally would have we continued on down the I-10. I will never go down that road again. I went that way once before for another reason and the road was just as bad this time as it was then. To make things worse there is no car pool lane on the I-10. I can't even imagine living in Los Angeles. How can those people stand it? It took us an hour and a half to make a drive that should only have taken forty five minutes. Very frustrating. The cool thing is that Ben called us and told us that they decided they would like to come home for the weekend. They actually left about the time we got to their house and they arrived home before we did. Too bad they didn't decide to leave before we got onto the I-10. It could have saved us nearly an hour if we had gone on the 405 instead.

One of the reasons we wanted to hurry home was because Alex is down for the week. The "U" has next week off so he decided to come home. He also brought a girl with him. Katlyn is a very sweet (and very tiny) girl from Lehi. Since Alex is home Frank came over and since Ben is here Patrick came over so it is a full house and I love that. I love it when there are a ton of people and a lot of noise. It has been very quiet here for a long time. The kids all decided to go to a movie so while Lisa was watching a movie I went for a run. I'm remembering how much I loved running and it is good to get back into it. The best part is that I'm feeling no pain in my knee at all. I am taking it easy though and so far I haven't gone over a mile and a half at a time. Just to give my knee's the best chance possible I'm going to increase my miles very slowly.

--------------------trivia--------------------

Shortly after the arrival of Columbus 95% of the native Americans were dead from small pox and other diseases. In some villages the death rate was as high as 99%.

---------------------------------------------