It’s a few days late, but I just wanted to give a shout out to my dad. Thanks for the years of family vacations to Lake Powell and Bear Lake. Thanks for teaching me to love football and hunting and camping and boating and all the other things I got to do as a kid. And most of all, thanks for helping me become the man I am today. Nobody could ask for a better dad. Happy Birthday!

Emily snapped this picture of the twins and we’re just wondering who of you out there can tell them apart from behind. You can try your luck and vote below…

UPDATE: I figure most of you have had a chance to vote at this point so I guess it’s time to reveal the answer… the majority of you were correct. Jack is on the left and Annie is on the right. You can tell by Jack’s chunky thunder thighs.

Or… Why you shouldn’t own oil based air fresheners.

Last weekend the girls decided they wanted to use their free rental card from Hollywood Video so Emily took them down and they rented the new straight to DVD Disney “Princess” movie about Tinker Bell and her fairy friends. I didn’t watch it myself, but from what I saw while walking through the front room it seemed to be on par with the slew of Barbie movies the girls have in their collection. Which is fine I guess. They enjoy them.

Anyway, before we had a chance to return Tinker Bell and friends to the land of Hollywood, she had a bit of an accident. In an effort to hide all of the less-than-inviting smells floating around our house these days (twin babies if you forgot), Emily has tried multiple air freshening systems. Her latest attempt was these little bottles of scented oil with sticks hanging out of them. I’m not positive what the purpose of the sticks was (maybe to soak up the oil and make them smellier), but the bottles themselves were open at the top. This designed proved to be less than ideal when one of the girls decided to put a book on top of the entertainment center. We’re not sure which daughter decided that the entertainment center was her personal book shelf, but whoever it was couldn’t see where the book was going when she shoved it up there and it ended up knocking the bottle of oil over. I discovered the spill when I grabbed the channel changer and started clicking. It took me a minute to figure out what the goo all over the remote was, but once I identified the consistency (it could have been anything around here), I started to notice that the plastic of the remote wasn’t just oily, but was in fact melting.

We did some quick oil spill cleanup, but by the time we found it, the oil had covered both the Tinker Bell dvd as well as a Netflix dvd on top of the entertainment center. The book that caused the incident also got covered, but didn’t seem to be effected too badly. Unfortunately though, both dvd’s were beyond rescue. I have no idea what’s in that oil, but it doesn’t like plastic much. We tried wiping off the dvd’s, but the oil had literally eaten into the bottom of the discs. The remote suffered some melting damage as well, but its already so near its deathbed that it didn’t matter much. In the end we had to buy Tinker Bell in all her melted glory and even after getting the disc resurfaced at Hollywood, the dvd still doesn’t work. So the lesson here is, don’t buy oil based air fresheners (or any air fresheners in my opinion) if you value any property they might chance to leak on. Apparently the oil they put in those things is made from a mixture between Alien saliva and Basilisk venom. Consider yourself warned.

We were over at Grandma and Grandpa’s a couple weeks ago for a Rock Band party and we discovered that Jack is a natural drummer. He hopped up on my lap and grabbed the stix and started banging away. He had a hard time keeping up with the notes once the song started so I decided to lend a hand, but give him a couple years and he’ll be playing drum solos for packed amphitheater crowds.

I don’t typically use this space for movie reviews, but I just wanted to share my thoughts on the latest Indiana Jones movie. As with most movies now days, I waited until it came out on dvd to see it. This has the effect of making the movie experience much cheaper, but it also means that there’s pretty much no way to avoid plot spoilers until I’ve seen it. As was the case with this movie. Over the last few months I had heard all the negative reviews and had heard at least the one major plot spoiler and because of that fact, I had pretty low expectations. And maybe that’s why I was surprised to find that I quite enjoyed it.

Against all odds (and critics), I actually liked Indy 4. I admit that there were some pretty unbelievable scenes, and the plot got a little “hokey” in places, but I think a lot of people conveniently forget that the previous three weren’t any less “hokey”. I mean, c’mon… faces being melted off by the Arc of the Covenant. A heart liberating shaman from a secret mystic cult. Not to mention Henry Jones senior being saved from a fatal bullet wound by drinking from the Holy Grail. Maybe it’s just because the plot involved aliens and people weren’t ready for it, but Indy 4 wasn’t based on any more reality than the others. In fact, I thought they did a pretty decent job working the story around existing myths and legends. Don’t get me wrong, I think Lucas is way past his prime and most everything he touches now days is crap (is it just me or did Episode III contain some of the worst dialog EVAR?) I think it’s a testament to Harrison Ford’s ability to act, but I thought this one turned out ok.