Bend it like Beckham

As many may know, Matt is an avid sports fan. He is a fan of any sport, and not biased to any sport in particular. Lately, he has become a great Houston Dynamo Soccer fan. When we moved to Denver Matt started looking into the Colorado soccer team to see when they play the Dynamo. We then decided since we both like soccer to buy tickets to several games. Therefore, on Saturday night we went to our first soccer game here and it was the Colorado Rapids versus the LA Galaxy. You know what that means? Yup, David Beckham was coming to town. I was excited for this game because he is so famous and because I wanted to see him play. I wanted to see his infamous kicks and if he was really as good as they say. I would have to agree, he is great with his kicks not only from a free kick/corner kick point of view, but also during the game. He had some beautiful kicks that put the ball exactly were he wanted it. Too bad for him, that their are no other good players (besides Landon Donovan) so those perfectly placed balls were never taken advantage of.

One other fun thing about soccer is at the beginning of the game when the players are entering the field, they come out in a line, holding hands with little kids. These kids are probably grade school age soccer players. I would have loved that. I think this is a great and should be incorporated into other sports. I have attached a picture, but I am not sure you can see it very well.

All in all I had a great time. I enjoy my date night with Matt and going to sporting events, especially soccer.

Andrew Goes On A Mission

I never apologize for taking a long time between blogs. Sometimes, there just isn't a lot going on and so rather than bore people with the mundane day-to-day details. I mean who wants to hear that today I woke up, went to work, came home ate dinner played on the internet & then went to bed? Especially when that can describe many days recently.

It's not that I'm complaining. It's great to have a job that pays well to go to. It's great to have a wife that wants to make dinner. And isn't the internet amazing? But I'm sure that reading that would get tedious after awhile. But I wanted to mention one great thing that has happened recently.

My youngest brother Andrew is in the MTC. He's on his way to Samoa. It's a great opportunity for him to serve the people of Samoa and grow himself. I had the opportunity to do the same in Denver from 1999-2001 & enjoyed every minute of it. He joins Nathan (Tulsa, OK) & Adam (Baltimore, MD) who are also currently serving missions for our church at the same time.

I was grateful to be able to join him in Houston when he went through the temple. It was good to be home (isn't it always?) and the weather was great. I enjoyed spending a couple of days with him and being able to joke around. I have been greatly blessed to have spent time with my two youngest brothers when they were at BYU. Leaving when they were 11 & 10, they were always a part of me, but I have drawn closer to them as young adults (or whatever you call 19+ year olds). Everything was great, minus my grandpa falling and breaking his hip at 5:30 in morning, but that's another story entirely. While we were there we even ran into a local celebrity (well to two die-hard BYU fans he's a celebrity), Gifford Nielson!!! .

He even gave Andrew a pep talk telling him to not waste a moment and to go for it. I felt that all that was missing was a pat on the butt as Andrew ran out onto the field. It was a great.

When we returned from Houston, Andrew and my parents stopped by on their way to Provo. It was fun to show off our apartment and to get to spend a couple more days with Andrew. We went to the Mercer children's play, we played Guitar Hero & then he was off. It's always hard to send off my brothers (my mom's weeping gene seems to manifest itself at that point, kind of like in the X-Men where the children can't control their powers, except this isn't really a power). But it's great to see them become young adults instead of the teenagers they were.

We wish him the best, and you can do so to if you would like: asalt2@myldsmail.net