It's the most wonderful time of the year

It is the season of joy, the one time of year when the NCAA doesn’t get it all completely upside down and backwards. The men’s basketball tournament starts on Thursday, providing ten days of upsets and thrillers. Over the coming weeks you will hear drastically inflated statistics that claim trillions of dollars in lost productivity at work, and formerly unknown college students will become heroes and household names (see Curry, Stephen, and Drew, Bryce) as the field of 64 is winnowed down to a single, undisputed champ. I invite all of you to test your skills against my own on espn.com’s Tournament Challenge. I have created a group that is available for anyone who is interested named I’ve got a fever. The password is cowbell. And I encourage you to all to participate, even those who know absolutely nothing about basketball. It is often you who win these things. Trust me, knowledge is of minimal assistance.



As you probably remember, Alixa has spent much of this week trying to recover from her near death experience last weekend. It has been a long and painful process, but she is almost back to normal. The only real nagging issue is a persistent cough that she hasn’t quite been able to shake. So she decided to take it easy this week, giving away all her shifts at the Olive Garden. She made an effort to go easy at her other job as well. In fact, on Wednesday she came home and informed Jarom that she did nothing but play minesweeper and spider solitaire all day long. Oh, Microsoft games, where would corporate America be without you? You should all be proud of her though, as she has decreased her time on expert from about 1000 seconds to 384. We are crossing our fingers that she will be able to turn pro soon.



Last week I began a new feature, albeit without informing any of you. The working title for this game is the polygraph game. It involves me placing a factual slip somewhere in the entry. Last week, I incorrectly labeled dolphins as fish. Annie was the first and possibly only person to catch my mistake, and thus is the inaugural winner. There may or may not be prizes for this, but at least you will know that you are the smartest and/or earliest reader if you win. Best of luck to you all, in this game and with your brackets!

For the Record...

First of all, I would just like thank all of you, especially my mother and mother-in-law for having the laugh of your life at my expense. I would like to assure all of you that while it may sound funny, it was not. I was there. It was GROSS! But I suppose looking back, it is a little humorous. Also, I would just like to clear up the fact that my throwing up had absolutely nothing to do with pregnancy or with being weak minded. I am still the psychologically strong person I always was, but when you have a sister bug to the flu, you can no longer control your vomiting. So, I would just like to remind everyone, that to this day, pregnancy has caused no vomiting because I am strong and have forced it away. That is right, I am awesome.

Blame Halo III

Jarom grew up with a terrible mother who never let him have a video game system, and now he lives with a terrible wife who will never let him have a video game system. Perhaps this is why.

To the...

The Winns started their spring season off with a bang. They were lucky enough to spend a week with Jarom’s parents, brother, and another friend in a nice house on Kiawah Island, just outside of Charleston, South Carolina. The vacation started on Monday morning around 9:00 as they began the 7-hour drive down there. As any folks from the northeast know, there was quite the snowstorm on March 1, and they had to drive through the tail end of it as they crossed the Smoky Mountains through North Carolina. But as they passed the city of Bat Cave (yes, it’s real, and how cool would it be to grow up there?!) it began to warm up. By the time they made it to the Atlantic coast, temperatures were around 50, and would get up into the high 70’s as the week progressed.

Sunset from the dock

Kiawah Island is a beautiful and secluded island. It is full of big trees with Spanish moss hanging from the branches, wonderfully manicured golf courses, quaint little shops and waterways everywhere. They stayed in a lovely home with a pool that was supposed to be heated (it wasn’t), a private dock, and access to a plethora of bike trails. Jarom’s immediate goal upon arrival was to befriend an alligator, and it didn’t take him much time. Steve Irwin would seriously be in heaven there. There were gators of all sizes pretty much everywhere you looked, up to about 12 feet long. He got within a few feet of them several times, once nearly stepping on a 5 or 6 footer and scaring the bejeepers out of both himself and the animal. Alixa spent many a childhood summer on Hilton Head Island, which is just a few clicks south and strikingly similar, so she felt right at home and had a blast. It was quite nice to be in such a pleasant environment with some family that they don’t get to see as often as they would like.

What kind of mother would let her children play around next to that monster?

As you might expect, Jarom took advantage of the opportunity to play a few rounds of golf with his dad, brother, and Mike Slaugh. The weather was nice and the golf was free (at least free to Jarom—He says thanks, Bruce), so the fact that he won both games was simply a bonus. I think that this is the first time that Jarom has beaten his dad at golf, which brought back memories of when he first started to beat him at basketball…at about age 12. After that they didn’t play hoops together nearly as much. Hopefully this doesn’t have a similar effect on their golfing frequency.

It must be tough to be a Charleston police officer.

As Jason said, "You can't spell segway without a g-a-y."

Another friendly Kiawah native

On Saturday, the weather was the best it had been all week, so they rented some kayaks to go play in the river. They were two person boats, so in the afternoon Jarom went out with Annie and Juliet and they were lucky enough to see a little pod of dolphins, two adults and two little ones. The fish seemed mildly curious about the kayak, and would let them get within about 20 feet before vanishing beneath the surface and reappearing 100 feet away. Jarom would paddle over to them again, and the process was repeated 3 or 4 times until he started to get tired and turned back to shore. Juliet was thrilled to see the baleine (that’s French for whale. Her parents think it’s cool to have a bilingual 18 month old, but they can’t even teach her to correctly identify an Atlantic bottlenose dolphin by its dorsal fin? C’mon people.)

The deer have to sprint across the roads in SC

Seriously, amazing sunsets

Unfortunately, Alixa did not get to ride the kayaks because she got herself sick on Friday afternoon. It seems to have been a combination of some sun stroke (she doesn’t believe in proper hydration) and a flu-like bug. She was bed ridden for much of Saturday, but the fun didn’t really start until the ride back to Knoxville. On Sunday Jarom and Lix were driving about 50 miles past Charleston [Jesse, stop reading here] when she started to throw up in the middle of her coughing. At first she kept it on the blanket that she was covered with, but there was more coming up. Trying to keep it from becoming too messy, she rolled down the window to hurl outside. Unfortunately they were on the freeway doing about 70. If any of you have ever spit into the wind, you can visualize what happened next. As Jarom slows down and tries to get off the road without causing an accident, he can feel little bits of wetness hitting his arm. So of course the rest of the car interior is receiving the same treatment. After coming to a stop, the damage was pretty severe. Alixa was covered, there were bits all over the inside of the car, and the entire right side of the Camry was plastered. Jarom literally could not see out of the window. They stopped at a hotel and a gas station for a clothes change and some paper towels and cleaner, and then kept on truckin’ to get home as soon as possible. They arrived at 5:30 and went straight to a walk-in clinic, which was closed. So it was off to the ER, where they spent the next 6 hours. Lix got an IV, some meds for her nausea and fever, and negative tests for the flu and strep, which was good news. As a result her vacation got extended a little bit, getting a day off on Monday and only going in for a few hours on Tuesday. She seems to be coming out of it, which is good. Amazingly, Jarom has managed to avoid catching whatever it was, knock on wood. He has tried to be supportive and help her get better. He does say that the highway puke event was possibly the most disgusting thing he has ever experienced. Even so, they had a good vacation and are glad that Bruce and Nancy invited them down.

Alixa wanted to send a shout out to her buddy Mandy Jo with her pants. We miss you, Carters.

Ashes, Ashes, we all fall down!

A few days ago I celebrated Ash Wednesday, marking the start of Lent. This year I have decided to give up painting my forehead with charcoal so that I don't look like I just escaped from a burning building.

It's a good look for Senor Biden

Alixa attended her first book club meeting this week with a group of women from the ward. She felt a little awkward because she didn’t really know any of them, but she enjoyed herself. The book they read this month was The Hiding Place, which deals with some issues from WWII. It didn’t go entirely smoothly, however. At one point they were discussing how it can be a person’s “time” to die, and the recent plane crash in Buffalo was cited as an example. Lix decided to make a joke about Octomom and how she needed the space here on earth or something. She told the joke to me later, and I thought it was funny, but I guess it didn’t fit with the middle-aged woman crowd.

Alixa did get to select the book for next month, and she chose The Glass Castle. I read this book this week, and it is quite an interesting read. I don’t want to give too much away, because I think you should all read it, but I will say that I have never been more appalled by parents than I was when reading the book. It is an autobiography of sorts, and recounts experiences like the time the author set herself on fire at 3 years of age because she was doing the cooking by herself, the time her dad used her as a prostitute to try and make some money to buy beer, and the time all 4 children (ages 8, 6, 3, and a newborn) were tossed into the back of a UHaul and driven across the country. The writing is really well done, and it is interesting to see how a productive member of society can emerge from such a bizarre past.



Alixa had another doctor’s appointment this week to make sure that everything is developing normally. Both baby and mama seem to be physically healthy. Psychologically…well that is another matter entirely. This particular day was what Lix refers to as one of her “weepy days”. Part of this checkup involved stepping onto a scale. This is something that no woman enjoys, and can be particularly traumatic for a pregnant lady, or so I would imagine. Alixa was not happy with the amount of weight she had gained. I will not divulge what that gain was, lest this be the last post I ever write. Anyway, she began sobbing uncontrollably and did not stop for several hours. Jarom tried to console her, but let’s face it, that has never been his strong suit. She has since recovered, making everyone around here much more comfortable.

This was the actual weight on Jarom's new scale

In other weight related news, Jarom got a scale this week to monitor his increasing fatness. In an effort to make Alixa feel really terrible, I volunteered to be weighed, and came in at a hefty 3 pounds. That’s about 195 less than Jarom, who ran a 10k later that night because he felt so terrible about himself. On Monday the Winns leave for a week in Kiawah Island, South Carolina with the parents Winn, Jasonannie, and the Mike Slaugh family. There are plans to do some golfing, some kayaking, some nothing, and possibly some more nothing. It should be a great time. Enjoy the first week of March!