A couple weeks ago the girls and I were home alone. Like most late Saturday afternoons, they had exhausted all of their playing ideas and they were complaining of boredom. Up to that point in the day they had watched a Barbie movie, had played with Barbies, had danced for a while in the front room and had done who knows what else. Unfortunately they had grown tired of all these distractions and needed something else to do. As I tried to figure out what I could do to help, it dawned on me. I headed downstairs to rummage through the boxes of stuff sitting down there and after a few minutes of intense searching came back upstairs with my old Nintendo Entertainment System. That old gray box and I had shared countless hours together growing up and I figured it was about time to introduce my girls to someone who had a pretty big influence on me as a kid. It was time to meet Mario!

After a bit of blowing into carts, I got Mario Bros up and running for them. It took them a good half an hour to really get the hang of it, and even then neither of them made it to the end of world 1-1, but they had fun. We played a little Excite Bike, some Wild Gunman, some Duck Hunt, and we tried to play some Rad Racer as well with some pretty sad results. The only game they really “get” at this point is Duck Hunt, but they had a blast blowing ducks out of the sky. They’ll need some more practice before they’re really any good at Mario, but at least it’s an activity I can get excited about. I know it’s wrong and I know I should be happy just to spend time with them, but I just have a really hard time getting excited about playing Barbies.

The weather men have been telling us that snow was on the way all week, but the first 2 nights we were supposed to get snow it just drizzled. Last night however, much to the relief of weather guessers everywhere, brought the snow they told us to watch for. There were a few flakes coming down when I went to bed last night, but when I woke up we had a good 3 inches of snow.

In the past, snow has been somewhat troublesome for us because it turned our whole yard into a gigantic mud pit. However, this year we have grass. This is good for a couple reasons… first, the yard won’t be a vat of muddy sinkhole ready to claim any victim dumb enough to leave the sidewalk, and second, because the girls can now go out and play in the snow. Hailey and Mallory have been a little deprived the last few years because they couldn’t really go out and enjoy the snow because we were worried they’d get stuck in the mud and, much like the dinosaurs, would never be seen again. So to celebrate this occasion of being able to play in our yard now, we went out and made a snowman.

It’s kinda been a busy week, but that’s really no excuse for this post being late. But since Mallory can’t read yet, I don’t think she’ll really mind.

On Thursday Mallory turned 4 years old. Which is odd because she seems older than that to me. I think it’s just because of the fact that she tends to play on Hailey’s level a lot so it makes her seem older than she is. She was excited for her birthday and for all the presents she expected to get and I’m pretty sure she wasn’t disappointed. She got lots of good presents (with more to come on Sunday) and she even got to go get a Frosty with Nolan for lunch on Thursday. She was apparently expecting decorations to be put up for her “celebration”, but the fact that we didn’t decorate didn’t seem to effect her much.

Anyways… Happy Birthday Mal!! Only 1 more year till she’s school age (yikes).

Another year has come and gone and you’re one year closer to the end…

Just kidding…

I just wanted to let you know how much we all love and appreciate you. All growing up I had a healthy respect (fear) for you and I thought I appreciated everything you did for us. As I get older though, my respect grows as I come to realize how much you sacrificed and gave for us. I think of all the evenings at football practice, all the weekends at Lake Powell, all the days we went skiing. The list goes on and on and I just wanted to say thanks for that. I just hope I can be as good a Dad to my kids as you were to us.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!!!

Well, I’m just hangin’ out on this glorious day after thanksgiving and pitying all those fools that are out shopping on this day. I can understand people wanting to get good deals and all, but when getting a good deal means lining up at 12:30 am and sleeping in front of Target… count me out.

Anyway… yesterday started out pretty good as Christopher and I decided to go play some football in our neighborhood Turkey Bowl. Our team won with a final score of 21 – 0, but by the end we were ready to be done. 2 hours of football was about all our flabby out-of-shape bodies could take. We limped through the remainder of the day (and I woke up quite sore today).

After that we headed over to Grandma and Grandpa’s house around noon for dinner and had a great Thanksgiving day feast. All the Laursen girls were there with their families so it was a pretty full house. It was good having Jessie and Dell in town for a visit. Not only was there a lot of food, but there were also quite a few babies laying around the house this year. We had Georgia, Owen and the twins all taking up couch space while napping. After dinner we all sat around talking, watching football and playing some Guitar Hero while waiting for for our food to settle so we could break out the pies. As you can see from the pictures below, a little napping took place as well. It was another great Thanksgiving.