The Water skiing/Lake blog

I've notices a similarity between all the blogs I've been reading this summer.... everyone has been water skiing. Well, now here comes our Water skiing/Lake blog: This weekend Madelyn and I hit Lake Travis with my family for some boating and water skiing. Most people wake up at 5am to get smooth water for skiing... but this weekend were able to find amazing water in the middle of the afternoon on a Saturday. The secret? Go boating at the same time as Austin City Limits festival and a UT Football home game. There was nobody on the lake and we had a great time with amazing water.

Madelyn and I were both unable to get up on 1 ski... after many, many, failed attempts. We were provided the following explanations:

1. The rented ski boat didn't have a powerful enough motor

2. The rope was too short

3. The water skis that came with the boat were in terrible condition

We both agree that 2 and 3 are the best excuses. Number 1 wasn't a good excuse because it implies that we are too heavy for a boat to pull us out of the water. Not only do we have to feel bad about not being able to ski on one ski, but now we have to feel guilty about the Taco Bell we had.

Not only could I not get up on 1 ski, but I couldn't even get up on the knee board. My step brother Jacob, 12 years old, popped right up, he was doing 360's and hitting the wake. I couldn't even get my knees on the board. I just lay there, getting dragged behind the boat, and having a ton of water go up my nose.... oh, and we were in front of a restaurant, so I was proving people with quite the show.

Unfortunately for us the wonderful smooth water we found was next to Austin's nude beach ( I won't mention the name so that people Google searching it will find our blog)..... fortunately we were too far to see any details, but you could definitely tell either everyone was wearing a flesh colored swimming suit or there were a whole lot of naked people on the shore. For those who are thinking "Nude beach? Hey... why is that a bad thing!?", just remember that a) Most are dudes b) most of them are old. For the SLC people, remember the Steiner locker rooms? Yeah... like that.

Luckily we still had fun skiing on two skis, the water was perfect and the weather was awesome. We even found a little place to throw down the anchor and swim for a while. It was a lot of fun. Some things you'll notice in the pictures.... the lake was really low and the giant structure behind Madelyn is NOT a hotel... it's a house. wow.

The rest of the weekend was spent watching football, doing some landscaping in our front yard (I'll add pictures later), eating birthday cake with Tobi, and installing a ceiling fan... BY MYSELF! Yeah.... me, large light fixtures, spinning blades, a lot of pieces and hanging something from the ceiling... It's a scary combination.

Look who we found in Austin...

Guess who came rolling into Austin yesterday? Only Salt Lake City's own "Good Morning Maxfield" (aka Fictionist). That's right, Madelyn and I headed down to Antone's last night to watch Stuart Maxfield and his band compete for a spot at the ACL festival. They were in a contest sponsored by Dell which started with 700 contestants and eventually whittled its way down to 6 bands who competed for the final spot last night.

Read about the contest here.

The band's website.

Hear their music here.

They were even on the news here in Austin... check out the segment here.

The show was great and we had an awesome time... and better yet we got to hang out with an old friend from Salt Lake (Stuart's dad and sister were also there). The band has really matured from the last time I saw them (in college) and I definitely see the potential for them to make it as musicians.... so get Stuart's autograph now.

For those of you who don't know, Madelyn and I went to high school with Stuart Maxfield, the lead singer and founder of this band.

This weekend is the big festival in Austin. Madelyn and I were too poor to buy tickets, but we might try and make some of the aftershows (although I think we waited too long on tickets for those).

I took my camera, but as soon as I tried to turn it on it was out of battery. So, I had to take cell phone pictures.... the quality is not so great.

(Stuart on the state at Antone's)

(Stuart and Robbie rocking out)

(a blurry picture... but some serious rocking)

Hopefully we'll see Stuart again before he leaves Austin on Sunday. If we do, I'll make sure my camera has batteries.

Rockband 2

For those of you who don't know.... Rockband 2, the sequel to the amazing Rockband came out last weekend. The song list was so awesome Madelyn and I of course had to throw a party for everyone to join the fun.

We sent out the invitation to everyone to come to dressed in some sort of "Rockstar Gear" and bring their favorite backstage snacks.

Rockband 2 has this awesome feature that lets you upload all of your Rockband 1 songs, so you can play all the Rockband 1 songs on Rockband 2... that's 147 songs (with our 25 songs we've downloaded from XBOX live). With all those songs I decided it would be helpful to create an Excel spreadsheet and send it to everyone so that they could fill in which instruments they wanted to play on which songs. I know that sending out an Excel spreadsheet is the exact opposite of a Rock.... but I was going for efficiency over style. I endured a lot of jokes and ridicule because of my Excel sheet... but when it came time to rock my Excel skills paid off.

This is a picture of the Excel sheet... I called it the "setlist" to make it seem cooler.

During the week our friend Anna was making fun of my spreadsheet (of course), she jokingly said "I'd like to see some charts to go with your spreadsheets". Little did she know that I spend 50% of my life in Excel charts... so I sent everyone a bunch of charts.

Jessica replied that she'd like to see a pie chart... because "She likes pie", since I'm a good party host I created this chart too.

Madelyn and I moved all the furniture in the living room and created a venue inside our house. This included tons of candles to set the mood, two guitar stands for the bass and guitar, the drums in the center just like a band, and Jonathan even brought a mic stand and we tied some scarfs to it to give it a good look.

We started rocking at 7pm and didn't stop until 1am...

Madelyn's party attire, Rockgirl.... fake tattoo, converse all stars, lots of black, dark make-up

Cody's party attire: 1970's rockstar, brown three piece bell bottom suit, big collar, gold sunglasses, gold chains, and a handle bar mustache.

The girls of Rockband 2 party.... Heidi, Lorena, Madelyn and Jessica.

Lorena rocking the 80's rock gear, Jessica rocking the drums, Tobi on bass, Jonathan on the tambourine, and Madelyn singing "we got the beat" by the Go-Go's.

We got the beat, we got the beat, we got the beat... yeah! We got the beat! (powerful lyrics)

Jarrett dressed as a roadie... and me trying to sing something.

Lorena... the totally awesome 80s rocker.

Jessica's boots were made for walking.... and apparently drumming too.

The rocking got too hot.... I had to take it down to a two piece suit. Since we broke our old drums sticks from aggressive drumming... we made sure there were backups.

Here's a good picture of Madelyn's dragon tattoo.

The girls showing us how it's done.

More pictures (I stole some) here

Why I Love My Husband

He was so excited for football season this year that on the day of the first game of the regular season he came running out of the bedroom wearing his Cowboys Jersey (or what I usually refer to as his costume) and holding a football under his arm. He then proceeded to run around the living room doing football moves and repeatedly striking the Heisman trophy pose.

Crazy Dog Meter

This weekend our friend Heidi was telling us how if you read our blog you can see the "crazy dog person" meter rise with each posting. So, this posting should raise or "crazy dog person" meter even more!

I was playing with some settings on my camera and thought I could test them out on the dogs in the front yard. So we all went outside for some portraits. I can't even say that last sentence in a way that DOESN'T make me sound like an insane person!

Anyway, here are some pictures I snapped. Do you think I could get paid for taking pictures of peoples dogs? That would be awesome.

This is how we roll.... on a Tuesday night

Last night we met a bunch of friends at Chuy's to all have some Queso and Green Hatch Chile food.... it was excellent, of course.

After Chuys? It's a mid-week, spur of the moment, Rockband party back at our house.

Tuesday is the new Friday!

Our good friend Tobi did a great job of catching all the action.... see the photo's here.

Tonight it's a Project Runway party at Jessica's house.

The amazing Sugar

Some of you may remember these pictures.... but it's time to see Sugar's growth again.

The first week we got her (2.5 months old):

1 Month Ago (4.5 months old):

Today (5.5 months old):

Attack of the GIANT dog....

Weekend Recap

Is it already Monday again? How does that go so fast?!?!

This weekend's theme was "cookies". Ask yourself this question, if you had no obligations for the day, you were standing in line with a friend, and you had a husband who could bring you water and umbrellas.... How long could you stand in line for cookies? What about 2 dollar a dozen cookies from your favorite bakery?

Well, this weekend we found out Madelyn's answer: 3 hours.

The new Tiffs Treats (see more blogs here) opened this weekend in North Austin (right by our house), and for the grand opening they were giving away 2 dollar a dozen cookies (normally about 8 dollars). We showed up expecting to wait in line... but we weren't expecting a line that wrapped around the building. I guess that's a testament to the Tiffs Treats cookie. The limit was 5 dozen.... so of course, we have 5 dozen cookies at our house. Seriously. But, for those of you who make the trek down to Austin it's time for cookie delivery to our door! Hooray for the new Tiffs Treats.

(Cookie craziness)



(Not Pictured: Madelyn and Heidi... in the back of the line)

(Madelyn finally made it!)


(our friend Heidi with all of our cookies....11 dozen total!)


(That's a lot of cookies!)

Sunday of course was FOOTBALL SUNDAY! I had my computer open checking my fantasy team, I had my costume (What Madelyn calls my Romo jersey) on, and I wasn't going anywhere. The Cowboys won, I lost my fantasy game, but I was just so happy that football is back on TV. I can't say that Madelyn shares my excitement.... but she's very understanding of my obsession, which is so great. I also got to eat delicious cookies while watching football... could it be any better? How about Madelyn, feeling guilty about all the cookies she was having, doing about 10 laps around the couch between every cookie. Not only was this hilarious.... but the dogs could NOT figure out what she was doing.

I did peel myself away from he TV long enough to go outside (ahh! The sun!) and take some pictures of our house. All of our flowers were blooming and Madelyn wanted everyone to see.

(the crape myrtle on the side of our garage is in full bloom)

(our other crape myrtle is blooming... along with our hibiscus)


(another angle of our front yard)


(and again)

Lies, Truths, and Half Truths

It's political season again and we're all hearing speeches and comments from the candidates.... it's somewhat hard to know which statements are worth while, and which ones are straight up political lies.

I heard about this site yesterday on NPR... and after visiting it I was pretty impressed. They categorize the politicians statements by "True", "Half True", "False", and "Pants on Fire".

I thought they did a good job of fact checking without being too one sided (both candidates have both done their fair share of stretching the truth).

Check it out: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/

Hope that helps with the barrage of political talk these days! It's too bad we have to rely on fact checking to know which messages are accurate.... Oh well, I guess that's politics.

Austin Staycation

Lately Madelyn and I have been tied to our house. Every weekend it's working on the house, cleaning the house, buying stuff for the house, etc. We decided we need to enjoy the awesome city that we live in, so to kick it all off we decided to treat the Labor Day weekend like a vacation in our own city. Last week we made a list of things we had never done, restaurants we had never tried, or places we loved to go and put them on our "staycation" list. We had an awesome weekend... and tried to take lots of pictures.

On Friday my employer let me out at 2:00 for the holiday! So Madelyn and I made it to a matinee of Pineapple Express at our favorite (and voted America's BEST) theater, the Alamo Draft House. The movie was hilarious... but it's definitely not for those who don't like the occasional crude joke, pot humor (which all went over our heads!) and bad language. But it's recommended for those who liked "Knocked Up", "Superbad", or "40 year old virgin"... same group of people.

Later that night we went to Chuy's (local Mexican restaurant) for the Green Chile Fest... where they make everything (even margaritas... weird!) with green chilies. We had an AWESOME burrito that we want to make sure to have again before the Chile Fest is over. But of course... we were without our camera.

Saturday we got up and went out for some breakfast tacos at Taco Shack. Breakfast tacos are a staple in Austin.... and after living here I can see why. You would have an easier time in Austin finding breakfast tacos then pancakes. If any of you ever come down to visit, get ready for some yummy breakfast (or any meal) tacos.

(Madelyn eating her breakfast taco)

After tacos we took our dogs to Red Bud Isle, a small sort of island on Town Lake (now Lady Bird Lake) which is an off leash park. Our dogs loved it. In fact, they loved it a little too much and we chased them a number of time after they took off with new dog friends they kept finding..... luckily this was a an island (actually more like a peninsula), so there was only one way in and out. It's really cool to live in such a dog friendly city. You can really do a lot with dogs here... you can take them on any trail, you can take them to a ton of dog parks, and most restaurants even allow you to bring them on their patios!

(Sugar playing near the water on Red Bud Isle)

When we got back from Red Bud Isle we changed into our Utah gear and watched Utah beat Michigan! It was really fun to get to watch the Utah game (we don't get too many down here) and cheer all the way from Austin, Texas.

After the Utah game we invited a bunch of friends over for a BBQ and Rockband. Everyone brought a little something to eat and Madelyn and I provided burgers... everything was really good... and we rocked out Rockband.

(My burgers on the grill)


(Everyone eating all the delicious food)


(I guess I take Rockband WAY too seriously)

(Jonathan singing "Reptillia" on the ground... the best performance of the night)

Our staycation didn't end there.... we also went to Hamilton Pool for some relaxing and swimming. Hamilton Pool is the COOLEST place, it's a natural swimming pool with waterfalls, cold water, and a natural cave. It was awesome, I'll let the pictures do the talking...

After Hamilton we headed over to the Salt Lick, which is some of the most popular BBQ in central Texas. This place is so good. The meat and sauce tastes like candy.... it's not even fair. Let's just say that I'm glad it's 45 minutes out of town... or I would weigh a whole lot more.

(waiting for our table at the Salt Lick BBQ)

(This makes my burgers look terrible... this is the giant meat pit at the Salt Lick)

After the Salt Lick we headed to our Friend Lorena's for a postponed birthday BBQ and played some Wii Mario Kart. Although we had just seen all of our friends on Saturday it was still fun hanging out with them again... we really have met the coolest people here.

Monday we took it somewhat easy. We slept in, had a nice leisurely morning and then headed out to Old Navy... which was on the top of Madelyn's list for our staycation. She came away with a large bag of stuff (all great bargains of course)... so I would say it was a success. After shopping we came home and unpacked our FINAL boxes. Madelyn now has an unpacked and usable "Project Room"... the first project, unpack the project room, is now complete!

(Project Room before)

(Project Room after)


(Project Room after)


(Project Room after)

We completed the night at our neighbors' house watching the dogs chase each other around the yard and talking about how much we all didn't like the word "staycation".

We had a great weekend! I hope everyone enjoys the pictures... and I suggest everyone plan a "staycation" sometime soon.