Famous Fans

Famous Fans: Denver Broncos Addition

Now that we are well into football season, it’s time that I presented the famous fans of my favorite football team the Denver Broncos.

Actress Jessica Biel
grew up in Boulder Colorado and when asked by ESPN if she was a fan of Colorado or LA she said, “I am definitely a Broncos fan”.

Tim Allen is most famous for his roll as Tim-The Tool Man-Taylor on “Home Improvement” where he is often seen rooting for the Detroit Lions but it turns out Tim is a Broncos fan. Tim spent lived in Colorado for a time and he even had Hall of Fame Broncos quarter back John Elway on the show.

In his latest show, Tim Allen’s character, Mike Baxter is a Broncos fan.  The October 18th episode opened with Mike Baxter sitting at the table holding his grandson.  While reading the paper, he points out, with a hint of frustration in his voice, that the Broncos would have won five Super Bowls if Elway had receivers like Jerry Rice.  A few minutes later, while the family is discussing the grandson’s attachment to his blanket, Mike Baxter’s wife points out that everyone has something they hold on to – Mike’s being his irrational attachment to the Denver Broncos!

Patrick Warburton who is best known for his dead pan style voice has done work in animated works such as Kronk in “The Emperors New Groove”, Brock Samson on “The Venture Brothers” and Joe Swanson on “Family Guy” or from “Seinfeld” where he played one of Elian’s boy friends Puddy.

Although he was born in Kansas, Don Cheadle moved to Colorado where he graduated from Denver’s East High School. He did several commercials for the NFL promoting the Super Bowl from 2002 to 2005

Pam Grier became famous in the early 1970s, after starring in a string of moderately successful women in prison and blaxploitation films such as 1974's “Foxy Brown”. Her career was revitalized in 1997 after her appearance in Quentin Tarantino's film “Jackie Brown”.   She also attended East High School in Denver and was a cheerleader for the Broncos at the age of 19; but quit after two months. 




Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of “South Park” are huge Broncos fans and often reference them on the show. These guys may be the two that I am least proud of.

NASCAR driver Kyle Busch is a big Broncos fan and attends games as often as he can. Being a Broncos fan can be a little risky for him since he races for Joe Gibbs Racing, who is a former Super Bowl winning coach of the Washington Redskins.  ESPN asked Kyle if to make friends with the folks at Joe Gibbs Racing, was he obliged to be a Redskins fan? Kyle responded, “No, not at all. I'm actually more of a Denver Broncos fan than anything. That's my team. I've met Rod Smith and John Elway before. It's been cool to get to know those guys.”

Quiet a bit different from the Cardinals edition, no country singers and more actors which really surprised me.

Television With Lucy

It’s time for another installment of “Television With Lucy”, where we take a look at what entertains four year old.

Today we’re talking about “Wild Kratts”, a PBS show that follow the adventures of Chris and Martin Kratt and their friends as they travel the globe to study different animals. Being a PBS show this is marketed as an educational show for kids. The theme song drives Ariane nuts because it’s pretty catchy and gets stuck in her head easily.

The show is mostly cartoon but does start and end with the real Chris and Martin along with some real animals.

The cartoon portion, which is the bulk of the show, has the Kratt brothers traveling to a different part of the world to study a new animal and usually involves them saving that animal from one of the many bumbling idiot villains who have some reason for wanting to capture animal. They save the animal by using that animals “creature power” and their special creature suits.

The Kratt brothers have been doing some kind of animal themed show for PBS on and off for about the last 15 years. It’s undergone several changes moving from all live actors and animals to actors with puppets and now to mostly cartoons. I guess you gotta keep changing to keep the kids interested.

It’s defiantly not the most entertaining show for adults to watch with their kids but it occupies Lucy for a little while and is somewhat educational so I don’t feel like as bad of a parent for turning it on for her.

Photo Shoot

We recently had some family pictures done. My cousin Amy came down from Idaho and was able to fit us in to her busy schedule. This time around the theme was firefighter, so I brought my bunkers and helmet from the station so we could have a few props and we all wore out firefighter shirts. I think they turned out pretty good.

Some of Lucy

We took some of Jack

And some of both the kids

We got some shots of me with the kids

And Ariane and Jack

(Lucy was finished by the time we got to this phase so no Lucy and Ariane)

Also some of the whole family

I think they turned out really good. Amy did I good job as always, she is also available for hire if you are looking for someone to take some pictures. She does great work and highly recommend her.

Now we just gotta figure out which ones should go on our wall. Let us know what you think.

The winner of the Photo Caption contest would be my brother Greg who wrote "I have herd lucy talk so I know there is NO WAY that you could put what she said into such a small box" 

Jacks Blessing

Last weekend we blessed our new baby Jack in church. This is the same outfit that my Father and I were blessed in, the booties were crocheted by Mother and that blanket was made by Larianns Grandmother.

It was about 4 and half years ago that I blessed Lucy in church. At the time Lariann had finished her radiation therapy and had begun chemotherapy for her brain tumor. I remember thinking at the time that I didn’t think that day would come; with Larianns cancer we just weren’t sure if Lucy or Lariann would be there. Fortunately we were blessed to have Lariann be healthy enough to give birth to a healthy little girl.
Last Sunday while blessing Jack I was thinking the same thing that I didn’t think this day would ever come. With Larianns cancer I was sure we wouldn’t have any more kids, it would just be to risky to ever try, and after she passed away the idea of having another child seemed impossible. Once again though I have been blessed with something that I wasn’t sure was possible.

While Ariane was pregnant I would be asked, “Do you want a boy or a girl?” My response was usually something along the lines of, “I don’t really care what it is. For the longest time I never thought I would have another child so I am just grateful to be having another baby”.
I am so grateful to have this little baby boy in my life. Two and half years ago when Lariann passed away I was as more depressed then I had ever been in my entire life and now I am so much happier then I ever could have imagined being at that time.

Caption

We recently had some family photos taken (I’ll most more of those later) and we had this great shot of Lucy pointing out that the vacuum we had brought in to help quiet Jack down was sucking up a burp cloth. We thought it looked pretty funny and wanted to have a caption contest, so insert what you think would be funny for Lucy to be saying.

Halloween

It was a great Halloween for us this year; we’ve sure had a lot of fun this October.

It started out with our annual trip to Firghtmares at Lagoon with our friends Tiffany and Brandon Hopkins and their kids and also Marc & Hali Lunt and their two kids.

Marc’s mom Lori was nice enough to come along and watch kids so we could ride some adult rides. Since Ariane was pregnant all summer this was the first time all year she was able to ride some rides.

Lucy wanted to go as Tinkerbell this year, and with her blonde hair I’d say she makes a pretty good one.

Ariane worked really hard trying to get Lucy’s hair into a perfect bun.

We went to Lucy’s pre-school for their Halloween program which included a costume parade and some songs.

My favorites were the Storm trooper and the kid dressed as a roll of toilet paper but I was also told he may be a marshmallow instead.

We also took the time to carve a few pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns.

Nothing fancy but I think they turned out pretty good.


Jack went as a jack-in-the-box. It was fairly easy to do we just took a box, made it look fancy and placed him in it. The perfect costume for the boy that doesn’t care if he’s wearing and isn’t even aware that he’s in a costume.

We also thought it would be fun to put him in one of the jack-o-lanterns and take some pictures of him.

We went to my sister in law Rachel’s church for trunk-or-treat with Rachel and her kids.

After which we hit our neighbor hood and really raked in the candy. I’ve already helped my self to some of Lucy’s candy, I feel like I earned it since I took her trick-or-treating.

Lets not forget that the St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series this October as well, making this one of the best Octobers ever.

The World Series

Another World Series is in the books and this time my favorite team the St. Louis Cardinals won making it 11 championships for the Cards. This one feels extra special though since the Cards made huge comebacks and overcame a lot to get there and win it all. In August they were 10 and a half games out of the playoffs and managed, thanks to the Atlanta Braves collapse, sneak in. They beat the Philadelphia Phillies, the best team in baseball during the regular season, in the divisional series, the Milwaukee Brewers, champions of the National Leagues Central Division, in the National League Championship Series and then finally the Texas Rangers in the World Series. It’s been one crazy ride.

We made sure to have Jack already for his first World Series in his new Cardinals outfit.

We had a lot of family over to watch the games including my parents, the Evans’s and Arianes parents.

Some of my favorite moments from the series were when Albert Pujols hit three home runs in game three.

He’s only the third player in baseball history to do that in a World Series, Reggie Jackson and Babe Ruth are the others.

Chris Carpenter diving to first base to get the out in game one.

When Allen Craig robbed the rangers of a home run.

The best moments though came from game 6, if you missed watching it then you missed one of the greatest baseball games ever. The Cards won in 11 innnings thanks to a triple in the 9th inning by David Freese and his walk off homer in the 11th.

After which his teammates mobbed him and tore his jersey off his back.

All leading to the win in game seven.

After winning it all the Cardinals like to pile on each other and spray champagne on each other. I prefer to run around outside waving my Cardinals flag and cheering loudly.

What a season and it was the best World Series I have ever seen.

Television With Lucy

As a parent I have discovered that I end up watching a lot of what my child watches. Some of the shows are more entertaining than others. I feel that it is my duty as a parent to let other parents know about kids shows that are not annoying.

One of the shows that Lucy loves that Ariane and I also find entertaining is “Phineas and Ferb”. The show is made by Disney and involves two step brothers Phineas and Ferb who are able to build just about anything and then along with their friends go on crazy adventures, while all the while their older sister Candice tries to expose what they are doing to their mother, busting them, but before their Mom sees whatever it is they have made somehow manages to be gone before she can see it.

Perry is the boys pet platypus who unbeknownst to them is also a secret agent, agent P, who has regular battles with the evil but incompetent Dr. Doofenshmirtz. He’s also Lucy’s favorite character on the show. Check it out.



Arianes favorite part of the show is the music. In the tradition of classic Disney cartoons and movies every episode has a different musical number. The tunes are very catchy
Lucy’s favorite is the “Gitchee Gitchee Goo” from the episode Phineas and the Ferb-Tones, where the boys create their own one hit wonder.

Arianes favorite song is “Hey Ferb” from the episode “Musical Roller Coaster”. She prides herself in being able to identify every musical they parody in the song.

My favorite song is the “Perry the Platypus” theme song.

The show has gotten very popular and now has segments on Disney Channel and on line called “Take Two With Phineas and Ferb” where the boys interview various celebrities like Regis Philbin, Andy Samberg, Tony Hawk and Taylor Sift, just to name a few.

We find the show witty and funny, if you are a parent looking for a show for the kids to watch that won't annoy you or if your just a bored adult with nothing better to do, “Phineas and Ferb” may be just what you are looking for.