Carson's touchdown

While we are a baseball playing family, we encourage the kids to try other sports. Over the years Melissa played basketball and soccer, and the boys have played basketball and lacrosse.

This year, Carson is playing flag-football for his school, O'Roarke Elementary. Normally he plays safety on defense. He has excellent coaches and several friends on the team, so he's having fun and learning the game.

Yesterday they played two games, and Carson got the chance to play some offense in the second game. Late in the first half, while playing wide receiver, Carson ran a post route, slipped through the defense, and made a hard cut to the corner of the end zone -- and was all alone. The quarterback lofted a short spiral in his direction, and Carson cradled for a touchdown.
We were all very excited for Carson, but he (as you would expect from Carson) never broke a smile. He simply tossed the ball to the official and jogged down the field, getting ready for his role on the kickoff team.

Why we are Red Sox fans (the Hall finally calls)

Jason writes: Today, 20 years after he played his last game for the Boston Red Sox, my favorite baseball player as a kid, Jim Rice, was finally elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.


I became a Red Sox fan in the mid-1970s, after meeting a Sox minor leaguer named Dave Denton, who played church-league softball in the winter with my Uncle David. As a boy of 9 or 10, I remember watching Dave, then a young married man just drafted out of UNLV, play softball at the church fields down around Bonanza and Mojave in east Las Vegas. He had a great arm, fielded everything at shortstop, and simply crushed the ball over the fence -- when pitchers would dare pitch to him. He was also a great, humble guy -- he would play catch with me before the game and talk to me during the game. I figured if he was good enough for the Red Sox, the Red Sox were good enough for me.

I never saw Dave play in the majors, which made me even more impressed with the guys who played there. If they were good enough to keep Dave Denton off the field, they must have been superhuman.

The mid-to-late 1970s were a great time to become a Red Sox fan. They had tradition, lots of great young players (Fisk, Dewey Evans, Freddie Lynn, etc.) and some iconic veterans (Yaz, El Tiante, Spaceman Lee). And they had Jim Rice, a rookie in 1975, who was the best hitter in baseball by 1978, when I was 11 years old and immersed in the game and the Sox and saw him produce the best individual season I have ever seen -- .325 average, 213 hits, 25 doubles, 15 triples, 46 home runs, 139 rbis, 406 total bases, and a .600 slugging average. He led the American League in hits, home runs, rbis, total bases, triples, and slugging percentage. And, with 30 years of history as reference, it's even more impressive that he did it all WITHOUT steroids. He dominated the league for years -- the guy who routinely made pitchers wish they'd chosen a different profession when he stepped to the plate, who patroled Fenway's left field and tamed the green monster, and who personified how a professional hitter approached the game.


His rise to superstardom coincided with my deepening devotion to the Red Sox. I suffered with them in the 1978 playoff loss to the Yankees (Bucky "Bleeping" Dent). Agonized over the Sox snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in the 1986 World Series. Converted my wife (it wasn't difficult). Stuck with them through the mediocre 1990s. Died a little inside when Aaron "Bleeping" Boone crushed our dream in Game 7 of the 2003 playoffs. And then, in 2004, with a wife and four kids with Red Sox in their blood and an infant son who'd never seen them lose, watched our Red Sox (Tek, O.C., Manny, Ortiz, Wakey, and the rest) Cowboy Up and erase a 3-0 deficit to dump the Yankees and then was left stunned when the Red Sox went to the World Series and WON! Friends from my past and my present called for days to congratulate me. And then we won again in 2007! During our 2007 summer vacation, at Camden Yards in Baltimore, I watched my then two-and-half year old son Levi correctly call out players' names when they went to the plate as his dad, mom, sister, and brothers all wore their Sox jerseys and cheered a Josh Beckett-led, Jonathan Papelbon-saved victory. The list could go on, with other memories too countless to mention.

And for all the great memories, a lot of the credit goes to Jim Rice for making the game exciting for me as a budding fan. For that, he's always been in my Hall of Fame.

A clarification on our Christmas letter

Jason writes:

After our Christmas letter, we've had several people ask what we meant about moving sometime this year, including some who have been worried that I have lost my job.

To clear things up, I have not lost my job. I work for Bechtel Corporation, an engineering and construction company with offices and projects across the country and around the world. We are a company of projects -- we do a variety of work for others, under contracts. In Las Vegas, we have been the management and operating contractor for the U.S. Department of Energy on the Yucca Mountain Project.

The great thing about projects is that you get to do a variety of work on important and interesting projects (I've worked on DOE projects in Idaho and Las Vegas, plus a project for FEMA in Mississippi, and I've consulted at other project sites). The bad thing (depending on your perspective) is that they eventually come to an end. We moved to Las Vegas after Bechtel won the Yucca Mountain contract in late 2000. Our contract ends March 31, 2009. The work on the project has changed, and DOE has chosen a new contractor to take over a new contract on April 1.

When contracts run out, we move on to new projects. Some in our company move every couple years; people who do what I do, external affairs, tend to move less frequently.

The uncertainty we face now is over where we'll move -- there are a lot of projects out there -- and what the timing will be, not over whether I'll be employed. Once we know where our next project is, we'll post it here on the blog (in fact, part of the reason we started blogging is that we know moves are part of our future and we wanted to be able to keep up with friends from across the country).

We appreciate the questions and words of concern -- it means a lot to know that others are watching out for us.

Big day for Dylan

Today, finally, was Dylan's baptism. We say finally because Dylan turned 8 on November 18, then waited through the holidays until today. Dylan was so excited he had a hard time sleeping last night -- the true reason for all of his yawns during this morning's program.

After an early start -- he and Jason were there to get dressed at 8:30 a.m. (early considering there has been no school the last two weeks), Dylan got pictures taken with his dad and with his best friend, Katie, who was also baptized today -- making the day even more special.

Levi sat right up front to watch Dylan be baptized a member of the church by Jason. As Jason and Dylan left the font, Katie and her dad entered the water, so Dylan, now wet, stood shivering on the side to see his friend be baptized.

It was a good day for all of us. Dylan's primary teacher and her husband were there, along with Jason's parents and sister Lisa, and Yvonne's aunt Jean and her cousins Steven and Debbie. The winter weather and holidays kept many out-of-town family from visiting, but we knew they were there in spirit.

It was an especially good day for Dylan -- a great day for a great kid. We enjoy having him as part of our family -- he's got a great sense of humor and an infectious laugh, loves to play and have fun, and is a good brother to his siblings.

Las Vegas...Snow Day?

The week before Christmas (we've been awfully busy, so we're a little slow on the postings) Las Vegas got snow -- twice.


On Monday (after a cool weekend in which Jason's team played in a local softball tournament), it snowed all day.

And it was real snow, not the typical tiny specks of ice crystals the locals call "snow flurries" in an effort to convince themselves it's really a snowstorm. By Tuesday it was still cold, but a light rain wiped out the snow.


Then on Wednesday it snowed again. And it snowed real snow, again, for all day and all of the night (to paraphrase the Kinks). Around 8:30 p.m., school closures for Thursday were broadcast over television. The cheer from Colin, Carson, and Dylan when they heard news of their first ever snow day was, in a word, loud.

So Thursday they played in the snow on an honest to goodness Las Vegas snow day -- the first for the school district since 1979, which Jason remembers clearly (he was in sixth grade and missed three days of school thanks to a few inches of snow). This time we got around 3 inches at our house, and 6 inches on the western edge of the valley (where Jason works). Being Las Vegas, though, the roads were clear, and the snow was pretty much gone by 9 a.m., but the kids were free all day to play.


School resumed on Friday -- and then the kids left for two week holiday break. One day of school in two and a half weeks is the kind of schedule they can live with.


(That's Carson, Dylan, and Levi in the top photo in front of our house. In the photos below, it's Carson, Dylan, and their good friend Alex in the park behind our house, then Alex and Carson in what's left of their snow fort.)

Levi calls it like he sees it

We've been talking about some of our favorite memories from 2008. One that Jason, Melissa, and Colin continue to laugh about features Levi during a trip the four of them took to Phoenix for one of Melissa's softball tournaments.

It was a big deal that Levi went without Yvonne -- even he says he's a momma's boy -- and he was a little homesick the first day. But he got over it and had a good time with Jason, Mel, and Colin over the course of the weekend (a highlight was Levi's drum solo at the Phoenix Guitar Center -- another story altogether).

As they were coming home they crossed over Hoover Dam just after nightfall. Colin couldn't resist an easy pun: "Hey, look at the dam lights!" Jason followed with: "Yeah, I'm getting tired of driving on this dam road."

Then Levi, from the darkness of the back seat, revealed his true feelings without missing a beat: "I just want to see my dam mom."