Final Four Update

Well, time for an update. I think I will just tell you how my bracket is going, because Katie doesn't really care much about hers anymore, partially because it isn't looking too great. I have gotten lucky so far and this last week was really good to me. I didn't have Davidson beating Wisconsin, but other than that I picked all the Elite Eight correctly, and the Final four. On ESPN's bracket challenge I am in the 99.8th percentile, of course that sounds better than 7737th place, even if it is out of over 3 million brackets submitted. The great news is that I got my name in the BYU paper. I am the overall leader for BYU's bracket challenge, and so that was exciting to see today. At this point I am thinking that I will be out of the running next week because I have North Carolina and UCLA in the championship game, and I'm afraid that UCLA might lose to Memphis, Memphis has just been tearing through the tournament, and I just hope UCLA and Love can pull off a win. Here's a picture of the leaderboard as it was printed this morning.



On a more serious note, I have recently found out that I need surgery to repair a torn achilles that I suffered playing basketball a few weeks ago. I will be going in on Wednesday to get the surgery done, and then recovery should take 8-10 weeks. Well, if North Carolina beats UCLA in the Championship game I'll have a BOSE ipod system to listen to while I'm a gimp.

-Jesse

A Head of Lettuce!

So we were sitting down to dinner tonight and Katie had washed a couple very large pieces lettuce for our tuna melts, and I had an epiphany. It just looked so much like a wig, but it was too small for Katie and I, so the natural guinea pig had to be Alyssa. If you think this is cruel, well Katie was party to it since she couldn't stop laughing to make me take it off. Hope you enjoy

-Jesse

Easter Pictures

Well we have some pictures of Alyssa from Easter that we wanted to put up.

She loved finding the eggs!

Sweet Sixteen!

Well, it's time to check in with our brackets. Sorry that the links are broken, I haven't had time to fix them. Our scores based on the point system of automatic 64 points to start, one for each team, and then two for the next round and doubling each consecutive round.
Katie has a total of 132 points. The main upsets that Katie picked correctly were #13 Siena over #4 Vanderbilt and #12 Western Kentucky over #5 Drake. She also picked #10 Davidson over #7 Gonzaga.
Jesse has a total of 150 points on our bracket and a 86.5% rating on ESPN's bracket challenge. That is still only ranked around 400000 on there, but it looks good, we won't mention Katie's percentage because it is disproportionately low. The main upsets that Jesse picked correctly were #12 Villanova over #5 Clemson, #10 Davidson over #7 Gonzaga and then #10 Davidson over #2 Georgetown. He also picked #9 Arkansas over #8 Indiana.


So far the brackets look O.K for us. Katie had a few misques in the Sweet Sixteen with over half of her picks not making it there. Jesse has 4 teams he picked that didn't make it there, thanks in part to Duke for losing to West Virginia. As far as the Elite Eight that we have picked all of Katie's picks are still viable except for one, and All of Jesse's picks are still in the running.

We'll have some Alyssa Easter pictures and possible videos up soon hopefully. She had a blast looking for the eggs! Until next time.
-Jesse

March Madness!!

Well the madness starts tomorrow and so Katie and I decided to fill out a bracket. We mostly did it for BYU's bracket contest, but it is fun to fill them out and see how we are doing.

This bracket assigns 1 point for the first round and the points double each new round. Maybe if we have time we will keep an update of our points. Feel free to leave comments to let us know how your bracket is doing.

We also uploaded images of our bracket, if you want to see the entries click on it and hopefully it will be big enough to see.

This one is Jesse's

And this one is Katie's. Last year Katie was one of BYU's leaders after the second round. After that she dropped off though. Hopefully she picked all winners this time so we can win a Bose System!

Crazy week

This week has been crazy and I haven't had time to do much of anything. I had a take home test with two real life design problems that probably took about 20 hours. I had no idea how I was going to get everything done I needed to, but somehow I survived and managed to get it all done.

I love to cook so I thought I would post a picture of an interesting meal I made the other day.

This is Mexican Manicotti, it turned out really good, but we decided the stuffing in the manicotti shells could have used some taco seasoning. One really cool thing about this recipe is that you stuffed the shells without cooking them and then let them soak in water and salsa overnight before you cooked them. This is definitely something I'll cook again.

Here are a couple of pictures of Alyssa that I wanted to post earlier, but didn't have time.

Alyssa has learned that she really likes to drink out of a cup without a lid. She actually does a pretty good job all by herself, although when she is not drinking she isn't very careful and will fling juice or milk out of her cup.

This was so cute. Alyssa put her coat on the couch and then laid her baby doll on top. She then proceeded to big the doll up and try to carry her around it was pretty funny to watch.

Alyssa loves to be outside. She must have been paying a lot of attention when I was trying to unlock the door from outside because she picked up my keys and went straight for the door. She can actually say "door" now. She knows that it leads to outside.

Alyssa is cutting a molar right now and its bleeding a little bit. This definitely explains the screaming she was during at night a couple of weeks ago. Besides saying door, she also tries to sing the them to "Signing Time", it's pretty darn cute.

got milk?

Well, we decided to put Alyssa to work earning her keep. We thought that making shoes would be a good start for her, but apparently she is a little young for that, so we decided the next best thing would be baby modeling. Of course we only want to endorse products we actually use, so the natural was milk. What do you think, will they buy it? Actually she just had a great milk mustache this morning that we had to take some pictures of it. Enjoy.

Jesse

What did I get into? Kind of Gross

Jesse here,

Just a warning for the faint of heart, if you have issues with potty humor, or potty in general you may not want to read on.

So Katie has this habit of letting Alyssa run around naked for a few minutes after her bath. Partially because Alyssa loves the freedom, and partially because she gets some wear and tear on her bum from the diaper and Katie likes to let it air out. Anyway, whenever I give Alyssa a bath I always go straight to getting her dressed, but for some reason tonight I decided to let her roam. I was checking out some of the comments on the blog, and remembered, "Oh yeah, Alyssa is still naked, better go get her dressed." I turn around and see her standing by the couch playing and notice she has something stuck to her bum. I thought it was a leaf or something, and then I realize it is growing. Sure enough it was a turd about 3 inches long and barely holding on. I make a diving catch to save our carpet(why I don't know) and not so calmly ask Katie to get me something to put it in. She has never peed on us when she was naked and this was definitely a first. Guess who's getting dressed right after baths from now on!

P.S. As a side note I have a favorite quote from the movie Nacho Libre, it is Incarnacion and she says in a Mexican accent, "My favorite animal is poopies and my favorite color is light tan." I think I have quoted that one just one too many times while changing Alyssa.

Oh and I saw this picture in a folder and assumed a bunch of you haven't seen it yet. It's just more proof that she is getting big!

More of Alyssa

Well, we have found a new reason to take pictures, that is so we can post them on here. This is the most recent family picture, we took it last night after Alyssa's bath. This is the reaction we get when we won't take Alyssa outside. She absolutely loves it out there and takes every opportunity possible to let us know that. This picture is of one such opportunity.

Aunt Sally thought Alyssa would look good in a mohawk, Alyssa thought it was pretty punk so she gave us her intense face!

Yesterday we went to the park and Alyssa got her first experience with a real swing. After about 5 minutes in there she was swinging herself back and forth with pretty good timing. it was about 40 degrees out there and she refused to get out of the swing, she absolutely loved it.

A Day in the Life of Alyssa

Last night started out like a regular night for Alyssa. Dad gave her a bath and made sure to make her onsie and t-shirt into a hat in the process of taking them off.

Then Alyssa and I got onto my bed and read some books. Alyssa loves to "read" books. As soon as she knows it is time to read some books she starts to sign book. Mostly she likes to flip through the pages and jibber jabber, occasionally she'll point to some mammal and start barking like a dog (buh buh, pant pant). Sometimes she'll let me read to her while she turns the pages, but most of the time I read to her from another book while she looks at her own.

Last night was pretty rough. Alyssa woke up every 2-3 hours and would just scream. I would hold her and she would just continue to scream, eventually she would go back to sleep, but only after 10-15 minutes of screaming. One time when she woke up I decided to put her in her swing and let her watch signing time. She fell asleep, but after about an hour was screaming again. She even woke up this morning screaming, so I tickled her and she finally started to laugh. I'm guessing she is probably teething or sick. Hopefully teething because she has been sick off and on all winter. Between her 9 and 12 month doctors appointments she went from the 75th to the 13th percentile. Kinda crazy. When we went back into the family room, Alyssa wanted to get back into her swing again. She just loves her dolly, but she always seems to take the diaper and pants off of her.

Alyssa hasn't let me put stuff in her hair much, but it had been a while so I decided to try again. We ended up with a crazy pony tail and some curls in the back. She decided she wanted to help brush the curls in the back.

Alyssa decided to help me get dinner in the oven. She is quite the helper. In the process she stole a frozen tater tot and decided she wanted to eat it. She got sick of it pretty quickly.

While I was studying for my test, Alyssa decided she wanted to put my shoes on. She tried and tried, but to no avail, she couldn't get them on. I told her to bring the shoes on over and we finally got them on her. She wasn't very happy though when she tried to walk and they didn't stay on. I had Jesse put her Nikes on her even though she already had shoes on. The Nikes are a size six, two sizes too big, but they made her happy.

Nicer Weather = Surfing?

So I couldn't resist. The weather is getting nicer and I can't help but think about one of my new favorite pastimes. I work with a guy who has gotten me addicted to wake surfing. He has a pretty nice boat and he will take a group of us out to the lake for about 2 hours on Fridays before work when the weather permits. The following is a video of the last time that we went out, I think it was in November or late October, but the water was pretty cold, and so was the weather outside. That is why we are wearing a dry suit. Underneath the drysuit I am wearing a hoody and my regular shorts. It was great. Anyway I'm not putting this video to show off(ok maybe a little) but I'm really not very good so there's not much to show off. I'm just getting excited about the nice weather coming back.

hope you don't mind the Beach Boys

Some pictures 3-2-2008

Such a good helper around the house for mom (when she's not spreading her toys around like a tornado).
Alyssa relaxing in her armchair.
A basketball lover, just like Dad!
Alyssa loves her missionary Elder Didericksen.

Start of our Family Blog

Well, Katie was looking through the blogs of some people we know and really wanted to start one so I decided to get on here and see what we could do. Things are great in the May family right now. We are pretty busy with school, Katie has a heavier classload than I do, but we both keep busy most of the time. Katie and I both have a year left of school after this semester is over, and we are both excited about the idea of finishing. I have an internship in Houston for this summer, working for a company that does control systems for sub-sea trees. I'm not entirely sure what that will entail, but it sounds like the controls for underwater valve systems for oil harvesting. I'm excited about the work and opportunity to apply some of what I've been learning. Katie is hoping to get an internship there also since we will be living with some very reliable babysitters. We will be living with Mom and Dad Didericksen and we are all really excited about that. I'm sure they are mostly excited about being able to spend more time with Alyssa, but I can't blame them.

Alyssa is adorable. I may be slightly biased because she is my little Princess, but I'm sure most people can see it. We do actually get comments about her at church all the time. I think that has more to do with the fact that she is the most distracting child there than anything else. She loves open spaces, but is insistent that if there are open spaces she should be able to explore them. At church she refuses to be quiet if we are holding her, and so she gets to run all over the place. She is really cute, playing with all the people in the ward, but I wish we could keep her a little more stationary so she wouldn't be such a distraction for others. Right now people love it because we are in a married student ward, so there are a lot of little babies, but not too many little girls that can run around and play with them.
Alyssa is showing us more and more that she has her mom's intelligence. She loves to explore things and get into messes (that is more like her dad), and she is learning more and more signs. She recently has added "hot" to her sign language vocabulary. Whenever she sees something steaming whether on the stove or on the table, she will sign hot, and make a high pitched noise that is supposed to sound like hot. She is also trying to expand her verbal vocabulary. She knows momma, dad, pa (grandpa), ma (grandma), dsa (aunt Sally), gdaw(Uncle Garr), wawa, ball, baball(basketball), bu bu (the sound a dog makes, and most other hairy mammals for that matter), and a couple others that I can't remember right now. She wants to write right now so here is Alyssa's entry for the day. ku89klku8a9aalrktirilcgfttrfiehjiotrodtriropkfujfri b b nii9iiit9 She is a ham for the camera so we have plenty of cute pictures of her. My most recent acquisition is a picture of her stern face. I think she is imitating us when we tell her no or scold her, but she makes this face when she doesn't like something we are doing.

Here it is.

I think this face means "I don't like what you are doing right now" or "Don't mess with me!"

Well, that's it for my first post, we'll see how consistent we are about keeping it up to date. Until next time.