Fountain Green Lamb Days

A week ago I returned from Utah where I spent a week visiting my family and attending Lamb Days (Ivan joined for the weekend). My second favorite holiday is Lamb Days, which happens to be the third weekend in July. I have fond memories from my childhood of this special weekend, which kicks off with the Sheep Show on Friday afternoon. Yes, my parents made us earn and pay for our own school clothes. So as an twelve year old, I trained with a halter/leash, washed and showed a lamb. I never placed very high, but one year I received Reserved Champion (2nd place). On Saturday, the lambs are sold at an auction. I remember thinking $325 dollars was a lot of money when my lamb placed high. However, now the lambs are selling between $630 and $350. A lamb is not really worth that much, but they have donations that help “boost” the price. There are about 20-30 youth that participate in the show, so a lot of donations make it possible for these lambs to sell.

Friday evening there is a Sourdough and Mutton dinner followed by the Youth Talent Show. Each participant earns a $5 dollar bill, which is usually spent the following day at Lamb Days. I think there is an age limit and I stopped once I met the limitations. Every year I mostly danced for my talent, so yeah, I danced to "Animal Crackers, a beach themed Wash Out (my mom hired a woman to make a shark costume for my brother to run around in the back), Twist & Shout, the list goes on...

Saturday morning begins with sirens from the FGFD (volunteers of course) and the Fun Run begins at 6:30 a.m. This year, I ran the 5K. My competition was a bit stiff. I think there were about 45 women and I came in 4th place. My time was 21:26. I’ve won the women’s race a couple times, but this year my butt was dragging. Seriously, I wasn’t used to the higher elevation 5,000 feet compared to our 500 feet. I had a side ache 30 seconds into the race. The breakfast with pancakes, eggs, ham, cantaloupe, and hot chocolate is so delicious and well deserved after the run. The young Scouts and local Military veterans perform the flag ceremony. The Wooly Mammoth parade and the program take way before the lamb sandwich stand opens. I always make lamb sandwiches in the stand. (About 33 lambs are roasted in big 10 yard rock-lined fire pits all Friday night.)

The rest of the days’ events include the mutton bustin, craft fair, saw dust race, games for kids, mechanical bull, climbing wall, co-ed softball tournament, youth dance, and fireworks. This year the fireworks were AMAZING!!! Seriously, they were the bomb. It was such a fun weekend, but like all things, they must come to an end.

We also enjoyed another celebration for Maks’ 1st birthday with family on Sunday. We had WAY too much food and I made two cakes. It was nice to have our family there to celebrate and we enjoyed watching Maks have his cake and eat it too!


It all begins with the Sheep Show on Friday. This girl knew exactly how to control her little lamb.


The parade in the morning is the kids' favorite part, as they stock up on sugar.


Biggest reason to come to Lamb Day is to see all the friends. Here is my brother, Sean, and his friend Junior talking to their buddies.


Yes, the men cutting meat for the lamb sandwiches!


Hard to explain why kids love digging up candy and money in this saw dust, but they do.


Ivan had a chance to sell several of his prints at the craft fair.


It all ends with fireworks.

SF Airport Tip

We'll have a more detailed post later about all we've been up to in the past few weeks, but I thought I'd share a quick tip with our readers. If you're flying into the Bay area, and you have an option to avoid the SF airport, do it. On Sunday we were flying from SLC to SFO (tickets were cheaper when we bought them) and our flight to SF was delayed by two hours. Come to find out, this is a normal practice when there is a fog cover over SF (which is probably at least 200 days a year), and when this happens, the aiplanes are only allowed to land one-at-a-time on one runway, causing delay for all other aircrafts. It's nothing to be surprised about when you're flying into SF.

Solution - fly into Oakland or San Jose. Both airports are close enough to SF and are not covered by fog as much as San Francisco.

His 1st Birthday

After debating for several weeks what we should do for Maks' first birthday (as caring father, more than once I suggested we don't do anything), we decided to invite a few of our friends with their young kids for a birthday party in the park. The heat is on in San Jose, but we managed to find a park where we could escape the heat, eat some food (including my signature dish, Russian salad), and even open Maks' first birthday presents. Below is a photo story of the event.


Right as we arrived, most of his friends have not showed up yet, and Maks began to wonder whether he has any friends in this world and if this will be the worst birthday party ever.


Never mind. His friends are all here, and Maks continues to be popular among girls, even the older ones.


And here comes his first cake! I'm happy to report that his mom prepared it from scratch, and it was a good one.


OK, time to open up some presents and find out how much his friends truly value him. Or not.


Who gave me a brick for a present? Father, that's not funny.



Ah yes.. Did I say the cake was good? Some kids still like riding in a stroller.



And here is the whole crew. Maks may never again in his life have as many guests at his birthday party.

Thanks to Darbys, Ericksons, Hales, Ashcrafts and their kids for his best birthday ever! I'll send you the link to the full photo gallery in a few days.

I'm Cooler than You

I have not had much time to get out and shoot outdoors lately. Besides, the weather is too hot, too boring for nature photography, and gas is too expensive.

So I thought I'd share one more picture of this little character. One other fun thing about this age is to see all the faces Maks pulls as he attempts to communicate with us a new level. I could easily turn it into a "100 faces of a 1 year old" project and complete it in one day.

Happy Birthday to Maks!

The long awaited first birthday finally arrived and today is a day of celebration in our little family, as Maks is finally no longer an infant. Now he’s a big boy (to compare what he looked like on his first day of his life, click here). The first year in a life of a human is always the most challenging. The life risks are many, but on top of that, they have to learn to see, to eat, to walk, to babble, and even to cheer at hockey games. Maks has succeeded on every front and no doubt we are the proud parents. Here are a few random highlights from his first year in our family.

• During this year, he almost trippled his weight and doubled his height (I think...)
• He simply doesn’t know how to stop talking. He babbles all the time, and now can say “dada” “blah blah” and “Blackberry”. Yes, papa’s Blackberry phone is his favorite toy, and we heard him repeat the word out loud after us once.
• He’s always ahead of our awareness in his development. Last November he learned to turn himself, and before we realized it, he flew head first from the bed to the floor. Luckily, it was a carpet floor, but this was probably the worst day last year, as it not only shocked him, it shocked us even more. No worries – a bruise and he’s fine.
• Maks was visited by his grandparents on both sides of the family. The flight from Moscow was not a fast one for my mom, but driving from Utah via Sierra mountains is not an easy task either.
• During his first year Maks flew to Utah five times (don’t ask me why), flew to Hawaii and back, and visited Yosemite National Park, along with numerous trips along the Pacific coast of Northern California.
• After we got back from the hospital, he’s been bathed every day last year but two days (you’ll also have to ask Becca as to why)
• The longest he’s been away from Becca is five hours
• His best time in 100m crawl is 43 seconds
• He’s been to 5 NHL hockey game, including opening match of the Stanley Cup final where San Jose Sharks faced Calgary Flames. Mama decided to go buy some food, and as she was gone, Maks started crying (we were losing that game, so he was just looking at the scoreboard). When Mama came back 15 minutes later, not only were Ivan and Maks relieved, so were several hundred fans sitting nearby.
• He can now sleep through the night for 8-9 hours straight, and generally acts as a good boy.

Happy Birthday Maks!

Happy Wedding Anniversary!

Although a day late, I'd like to wish happy anniversary to my wife Becca. We got married four years ago in Manti, Utah and wow - what a journey it has been. We both graduated from graduate school at BYU, we moved to California; we travelled all over the map in the United States; we've been to Russia and UK together; we've been to numerous hockey, basketball, football and soccer games together, again, all over the world; we changed jobs; we ran races together; we went to Becca's all-time favorite Lamb Days in Fountain Green, UT; we made many new friends and and overall, led a happiest four years of our lives together. Oh yeah, and we had an offspring, but more about it in the next post.

PS - the picture is from four years ago.

Retraction & Apology

On Sunday, June 22 a claim was made by Ivan stating that Maks weighed 21 lbs. Unfortunately, this is incorrect. I just weighed him on the same scales, fully clothed, and Maks only weighs 18 lbs. So either we are starving him or somebody misread the scale. Sorry Maks! Just because you are turning 1 year old on Thursday doesn't mean you get to sit front facing. Maybe, you and your dad should take another look at your diet... And I'll keep feeding you 7 times a day!

BTW, Sorry for the lack of blogging your blogs lately. We just moved yesterday and we are in between homes. Packing and cleaning was crazy. More info. later!