That's Amar'e.

I love the suns. I am a long time fan. When I was a kid I only liked the Celtics because my Aunt and Uncle lived in Boston and Ainge, Bird, McHale, DJ, and Parrish were great. I think that I became a Suns fan because we moved to Phoenix and the Suns were on TV a lot. Chambers, KJ, Dan Majerle and others were great. My favorite Sun's player ever is probably Kevin Johnson. He was great. Could score anytime, good leader and could dunk when he wanted. When they drafted Amare I started really liking him. I like Nash, I like others but Amare is why I watch. He does something once a game that is worth the time of watching. I hate it when the Radio/Papers/TV start to say that we need to trade him. He's great. He really makes us better. I don't care who you get for him in a trade, he's better. I don't trust the Suns, so he'll probably be on another team in a year or two. But I'll enjoy him while I can...

Here's his dunk from last night. I think that it was good. But the one when he was younger against the Timber Wolves was better. The thing about this one is it stopped the kid that he dunked on from dominating the game (which he had been doing before). So enjoy Amare in Purple while you can... it won't be long until he's some where else because Steve Kerr is terrible (www.firestevekerr.com)

ch-ch-changes!

I love newness. Or change, or anything that refocuses. I think that change is always good at some level. Sometimes change is bad, in part, but it usually refocuses me to do different things, better things or sometimes scary things. Things like a new year, a new job, a new boss, or a new home. I think that it gives me a chance to evaluate. I'm great at new year's resolutions. I keep them for a while. I'm not perfect. I give up or I stop doing them. BUT I love them. I really like new jobs too. I used to be a consultant. I'd get a new job about every 6-8 weeks. It was great. At first it was intimidating but after a while I liked it. I was "on" at all times. Absolutely no comfort level with co-workers or managers, and I had to prove myself over and over again. I even try to change my appearance. I think that my wife gets annoyed with this one. I get very bored very easy. Wake up, shower, shave, comb hair, put on deodorant, brush teeth, go to work, come home, go to bead, wake up, shower, shave, comb hair... you get the idea. So I change it. Quit shaving or grow a goatee, grow hair long, shave head, comb hair differently... anything to entertain myself. I need to do these things because 40+ miles to work, doing basically the same job for 8+ years day in day out gets a guy like me extremely bored.

I like my current job because it is stable, I'm home every night, I don't worry about much. However sometimes it gets stale. So I think of new ways to make it interesting. I think about applying for other jobs but always realize this is the one I want and want to keep food on the table. So my idea is to do something different. I can't have changes really (with 8 kids, a good job, a good home and a nice neighborhood, why change?), so I'm going to change my outlook on change. Stability in somethings is a change. There are some things I don't want to change... my family, my wife, my church calling, my friends and my hobbies (GO HORNETS!). But somethings I do want to change... and work to do just that! Hey, if you aren't improving (i.e. changing) then you are getting worse!

Sky's gonna be famous

Skylar my 11 year old is a good kid with a huge imagination. I call him 'demo' because he can't tell a story without "showing" or acting it out. It's pretty cool, but slows him down on his story telling. We laugh at him about that all the time. Last year he did stand up comedy at the school talent show. He was good. Very unique personality. He told me for his middle school next year he is dropping PE for Drama. He is very excited to be getting older and can't wait to get in front of an audience. He is the host for this years talent show (following in Drew's footsteps) and I'm sure he'll get to do some of his stand-up in that too.

Sky started writing raps recently. Not short ones either. He has full blown verse and chorus. He does it very well. He started doing these and we wondered about them a lot. We thought he was just messing around, he was even accused by the other kids of plagiarism. So he kept writing. He has a few now that are really pretty good. He decided today that he wanted to publish them somehow. So he asked how he could put them on the web. He decided that a blog would work. So he put them on http://djfluffman.blogspot.com so check him out. I'm not sure he's posted anything yet... but videos are sure to come soon. Marly is his camera man and creative director... this should be good (I'm nervous)

Utah in 72 hours or less

This weekend my nephew Colton was baptized. We were invited to go so we went. Trying to save vacation days and since I've already taken some for Derek's birth this year, we decided to go up early Friday morning and come home on Sunday. This was a good plan for a quick trip. However it didn't exactly work. The Van needed some work and they didn't finish till Friday about mid-day. We took off and made good time and got into Highland, UT at about 11PM. We had a very full Saturday with the Baptism, Mt. Timp Temple (me, Mom and my Sister Candice), Stacy, Derek and Anny to the BYU library for some homework and Grandpa taking the other kids (Drew, Katy, Tawny and Colton) sledding. Afterwards we went to Eric (my brother) and Lindsay's house in Sandy to check it out. They recently bought this home. Then back to Highland for an adult dinner out. AFTER all that we still ran down to this grocery store called Macey's for some shopping before we left for home and for our traditional KONG CONE ice cream treat. If you don't know about KONG CONES trust me just go if you are ever in Utah. Drew ate one and had a stomach ache that he couldn't get over for a few hours. So yesterday (Sunday) we got up and ate and were on the road by 7 AM. It was snowing in southern UT and Flagstaff area so we went to Las Vegas. This was fine until it took an hour to get across the dam. It was funny because we all made a bunch of dam jokes. Like "this is a lot of dam traffic" and "look there's the dam cops" (Hoover Dam does have it's one police department called the "Hoover Dam PD"). So even though it was slow it was still only 1pm and we were in good spirits. The rest of the trip was fine with mixed in rain Stacy studying (how she can type and ride in the car at the same time? I don't know). About ten miles outside of Wikenburg it stopped raining. I turned off the windshield wipers, but they wouldn't turn off. Stacy said: "I think you can turn them off now" I just smiled and said real softly "They won't turn off" She giggled then laughed then eventually just really belly laughed because each kid had the same conversation with me. "Dad you can turn them off, it's not raining anymore". To each I smiled and said "It's broke they won't turn off" Stacy laughing the whole time. I think she had finally gone nuts. We made it to Phoenix only to be delayed another 90 minutes with a huge semi-truck crash on I-10. It was amazing there were parts of the truck everywhere! We finally got home about 10:30 pm and in all were gone just about 60 hours. Vance, Marly and Sky stayed home and all was well (and clean) when we got home.

We have wonderful vacations, and this overall wasn't wonderful in the Van, but in Utah it was amazing and any trip you make it home safe from is a good one. We're glad Colton made the choice to be baptized and we are glad everyone was OK. I for one am glad I got to go to the Mt. Timp Temple and look forward to going to the SLC temple in the summer when we return (for a longer stay then one day).