Thanksgiving Break

Hello everyone!  I just got back to Provo.  I was in Boise for the weekend visiting my family and enjoying all of the comforts that home brings with it.  As Kevin put it: "Paul, how happy are you to be back in Provo on a scale of 1-10?  Because I'm at a negative 4." Well said.  Here were some highlights of the weekend:

-Seeing Grandma Dorothy and Grandpa Peter.  I haven't seen Grandma and Grandpa since I got off my mission, so it was good to see them again!  Along with telling me some funny stories about the latest things going on in her life, I was also able to enjoy some incredible, authentic Italian stuffed mushrooms that Grandma made.  Amazing.  It was great to see them.  As a side note, Grandma is the most loyal follower of this blog.  Love you Grandma!

-Free laundry.  This may sound petty, but having good quality, free laundry facilities is a luxury for a poor college student.  Imagine the look on my face when I woke up one morning to find all of my laundry washed and folded in my suitcase.  Thanks mommy!

-Food.  My mom's home-cooked food is absolutely incredible.  I know everyone says that about their mom's food, and sometimes it's true.  I have a lifetime trying other people's home-cooked food and sometimes it's pretty good.  But never as good as what Amy's Kitchen consistently provides day in and day out.  No one else can deliver like that.  It goes without being said, but Thanksgiving dinner was incredible.  The leftovers were also amazing.  And the downstairs fridge had unlimited cream soda and caffeine free Dr. Pepper.  I probably gained 10-15 lbs.

-Family.  Seeing my family is so much fun.  My mom is always caring and dad is always funny to talk to.  Upon my arrival, I immediately taught my brother Josh how to play Super Smash Bros.  Later, Travis, Tristan, Micah, Josh, Mark, and I all played indoor tackle football in our padded room called the "Riley Room" (named after my cousin Riley who has been known to be destructive to non-padded rooms.)  The football left everyone injured and crying.  Even I jammed my finger while I had 3 boys try to tackle me.  They almost succeeded. Almost.

-The baptisms of Travis, Rachel, and Tristan.  On Saturday, I got to see my little brother Travis and my little cousins Rachel and Tristan get baptized.  It was awesome to see them go in the water.  The highlight, however, was their confirmations.  You could tell that my dad was close to the Spirit as he confirmed them members of our church and gave them special blessings.

-BYU Basketball. Noah Hartsock made a clutch jump shot in a double overtime win over South Florida and the team later won the South Padre Island Invitational Championship when Jimmer made a last second 3 point shot close out the game against St. Mary's.  Good weekend for the basketball team.

Overall, it was a great weekend.  I'm glad I got to see my family and enjoy the weekend.  Here are a couple more tidbits to end off the post:

-Today is Andrew's birthday.  Andrew is currently serving a mission in the Ivory Coast and will celebrate his birthday in a hut made of straw that lets continuous rain pour in while he shivers in the cold with malaria and no food to eat..... just kidding.  He actually looks to be very spoiled out there despite the humble circumstances.  Happy birthday big guy.  See you in 7 months.

-3 more weeks before I head out to Oakland for Russell's wedding!  Russell was my mission companion and is now my roommate and one of my best friends.  He met the girl of his dreams, Claire, who is one of the sweetest and funniest girls on the planet.  They are both lucky and I can't wait to be one of the groomsmen in the wedding.  After the wedding, I'll fly back to Boise to enjoy the rest of Christmas break under my mother's care.

-One of my other best friends, Trent, will also get married on the same day as Russell!  I wish I could be at two places at once!  Congratulations to Trent and Star, whose wedding theme song should be "You Belong with Me" by Taylor Swift.  Told you so Trent.

-I FINALLY got my online class done!  Physical Science 100 online was a beast, but it has been slain.  I just need to take the final and the class will be out of my life forever.  Thank heavens!

-A quick note on the BYU game... I don't want to dwell on it for too long, but I can't think of a bigger tragedy than losing a game against someone you clearly outplayed for 4 quarters because of a bad call.  When the entire world, including Utah fans, saw Brandon Bradley's knee touch the ground before he had the ball stripped from him, everyone thought the game would pretty much be over.  But when the called fumbled stood, Utah scored and BYU lost the lead it had held 56 out of 60 minutes.  Granted, BYU just had some terrible luck in that game, including a punt hitting an unaware player, a tipped ball being intercepted by Utah, dropped balls that were perfectly thrown, etc. But the call the ref made was inexcusable.  Utah made a great block at the end of the game, but the events beforehand should never have led up to a block winning them the game.  As you can imagine, I'm devastated over the loss.  It truly was a heartbreaker.  BYU now awaits a New Mexico Bowl bid and it will probably be against Fresno State or a rematch against Nevada.

-New music for the blog is Christmas music!

That's all for now!  Check back for more posts later.

Some Things I'm Grateful For

In lieu of the Thanksgiving season, here are just a few of the things that I'm grateful for:

-A family that loves me no matter what

-The best friends anyone could ever ask for who will always love and support me

-Good health... most of the time (don't say anything mom)

-The gospel, its teachings, the Savior, and the hope His Atonement brings to everyone

-That I live in the United States of America

-My job

-An optimistic attitude that it will all work out in the end, and that Heavenly Father has a plan for me

2011 BYU Schedule Almost Finalized

Today BYU and Ole Miss announced their season openers against each other.  This fills 11 of the 12 slots that BYU needs to have a full schedule in 2011.  Obviously since BYU will be independent next year, scheduling has been difficult.  Luckily, ESPN is helping us out by scheduling games that we can't find ourselves.  Here is what the 2011 schedule looks like for BYU so far:

Sept. 3 @ Ole Miss

Sept. 10 @ Texas

Sept. 17 v. Utah

Sept. 23 v. Central Florida

Sept. 30 v. Utah State

Oct. 15 @ Oregon State

Dates TBA for:

At home: Idaho, San Jose State, New Mexico State and likely a FCS opponent.

Away: Hawaii and Louisiana Tech.

Even though BYU will get to play at home a lot next year (7 out of the 12 games), the hardest games will all be on the road, other than Utah.  Playing in the south is hard, especially at Ole Miss and Texas.  Oregon State is looking better every year and strange things always happen in Hawaii.  I'm excited to see how Jake Heaps and the cougars do against nationally recognized programs on the road.  Hopefully a long spring and summer of throwing routes non-stop to his receivers will get the offense to where it needs to be to compete.  Only time will tell!

Meanwhile, BYU just needs to win tomorrow to get a bowl game.  Beating Utah never looked more realistic, however.  SDSU will at least batter the Utah team and hopefully BYU will be able to clean up in Salt Lake City.  If BYU wins out, we will get 2nd place in the Mountain West Conference.


Prediction for tomorrow's game:  BYU- 58  New Mexico- 3


Also, just as a side note, this is my 20th post since I've started the blog.  Since then, I've had over 1,000 views of this page.  Hope to keep writing in the future!

Brian Baugh Football

Our football season came to a close on Tuesday night.  There's not point in getting into the details, but we made some bad decisions with the football and played a terrible game.  We plan on playing 9 man football this winter and hopefully we'll have a better season than we had this fall.

Mid-November Update

It's been a while since I've written.... And that's mostly been because of a lack of events.  With that, here's a recap of anything meaningful that's happened the last 10 days:

-Frisbee season is over.  Despite the miraculous comeback in our first tournament game, we had an anti-climatic finish.  We had 8 people so that we could sub one at a time, but we were missing 2 of our best players.  We got off to a good start and we were winning at half time 6-5.  Unfortunately we kind of got lazy in the second half and made some bad decisions throwing the frisbee. The other team eventually won 10-8.

-Football season continues.  The night after we had a disappointing loss in frisbee, we played our first football game in the tournament.  We did awesome.  We went against a team that had  2 junior college football players that were incredible receivers.  Despite that, our offense kept us in the game. We scored on every possession that we had.  They scored on every possession they had, until the last one when we were able to make a great defensive stand.  My only regret in that game was that I felt like I didn't contribute much.  I'm glad I have another opportunity to make some plays next game.  Our next game is on Tuesday night at 9:15pm.  If we win that game, we'll play again Saturday.

-BYU won it's 3rd straight game and looked awesome doing it.  Jake Heaps has really come along and our receivers are finally coming along.  Luke Ashworth had the night of his career catching 4 passes, all for touchdowns.  The longest pass of the day was a 62 yard bomb that was perfectly thrown to Luke Ashworth.  Cody Hoffman had a fumble and so did Jake Heaps on a botched pitch to JJ DiLuigi, but other than that it was a really clean game.  CSU didn't score until our third string defense was put in in the 4th quarter.  Final score was 49-10 which puts BYU at 5-5 for the season.  It's almost as if BYU has had 2 different seasons.  The first 5 games they went 1-4, the next 5 games they have gone 4-1.  With New Mexico being the worst team in all of college football, we should easily beat them next week at home.  That win will make us bowl eligible.  After that, expect a great Holy War when BYU goes up to play the U.  With the way that the U has played, we should be able to beat them.

-Last night we made a Tucano's run.  My friend Sarah gave Kevin and I 2 for 1 coupons and we had to use them yesterday or they would expire.  It was a great night.  It was Kevin, Meridith, Darrik Cheney, and me.  About halfway through our great dinner, Kevin and I got into a tussle about who had eaten more.  We kept eating and eating, and before long we were asking the meat servers about who they thought had eaten more.  Kevin claimed that since he had eaten more vegetables and some of Meridith's food, that he had eaten more.  The meat servers said they had definitely given me more meat across the whole duration of the night.  Eventually, Kevin flipped over the little totem poll to red, indicating that I had been the victor.  It had come at a great cost, however.  I almost exploded a couple times and started literally going insane.  I would laugh at anything and in my insanity, Kevin and Darrik convinced me to leave my phone number for the waitress... Classy.  Either way, it was some good food for only half the price!

That's pretty much everything that has been going on as of late.  I'm excited to make my way back home for Thanksgiving and see my family (and eat my mom's cooking.)  I'm also making some important decisions about what to do next semester and whether or not I should quit my job at Simply Mac.  It's been an awesome job, but I need to focus on school and get it done.

With that, I'll sign out.  Look for more posts later this week.

Comeback

As I walked on to West Stadium Field #3, I was alone.  I looked on as my opponents began warming up 15 minutes before the game was scheduled to start.  They looked good, I immediately thought.  It was colder than I thought it would be and I didn't have my Under Armor on.  But for some reason, thinking about the fact that this was the first game of the playoffs made me giddy and excited.  Tonight could be the last game we played if we lost.  Or it could be the first step to win the championship.  The future was in our hands.  My ankle wasn't feeling that bad, but I had some pain lingering from other injuries.  Still, I was ready to play.

About 10 minutes before game time, I saw Kevin and Brian walk over and check in.  We immediately began throwing around the frisbee.  I caught some, dropped others, kind of indifferently.  Brian helped me work on my pivot foot and throwing more accurately.  Our other teammates jogged over right as the game was about to begin.  We had 7 exactly, the amount we needed on the field.  That means there would be no subs.  We would have to play the whole game.  I looked over at our opponents.  They had 10, meaning they could sub in 3 people at any given time.  I immediately knew it would be tough.  Were we up for it?  We would soon find out.

As soon as we started playing, they started scoring.  They scored 2 quick points and one person even commented, "You guys should get some more strategy on offense, just saying."  They scored 3 more, making the game 5-0, until finally we had a lucky break.  Kevin grabbed the frisbee and quickly tossed it to me, scoring our very first point.  They scored again, and we went to half time with the score being 6-1.  Normally, a standard frisbee game is first to 12, but the game was taking so long that the referee announced the game would be the first to 10, which hurt us.  They only needed 4 more points, we needed 9.  But we kept playing.

The second half was looking awesome for us.  We picked up our game big time and started scoring points.  Before we knew it, it was 7-4.  A devastating turnover made it 8-4, and our hopes started dwindling.    We called a timeout, got pumped up, and starting playing our hearts out again.  We started coming back!  Despite them yet another goal, we were able to bring the score to 9-7.  It was game point for them, and we knew we had to pick it up.

Keep a couple things in mind.  I was gimping around the field.  We had no subs, and at this point, we had been running around for over an hour and a half.  They had 3 subs and were keeping fresh legs on the field.  We were tired.  Both teams started to bicker, a lot.  We called several LEGIT fouls on them that they got angry about.  The trash talking started and everyone was on the brink of losing their tempers.  Not to mention, it was game point for them.  They needed 1 more point!  We needed 3.  The task seemed impossible, but we kept playing.

After bringing the game to a tie, 9-9, we threw the frisbee to them to kick off what would be the final series of the game.  Despite the other team turning the frisbee over 2-3 times, we couldn't seem to seal the deal!  They threw the winning pass (so we thought) and the game was over.... until we called a foul.  A player dove into one of our players and we made the call.  After getting in position, we got them to miss a pass.  We got the frisbee back, attacked down the field, and scored the game winning touchdown!  It was an amazing feeling to know that we had come back from such a huge deficit and won in the playoffs!  Despite being outnumbered, out conditioned, and outplayed in the first half, we were able to make the biggest comeback that I have ever been a part of, outscoring them 9-3 in the second half.  It was a sweet victory after a long, hard played game.

I will never forget the game I played in tonight.  The lesson learned here is to never, ever give up!  Never accept failure, even when you are inches away from it.  Maybe everything is telling you that you can't do it.  But guess what?  You still can!  Choose to not fail.  Choose to achieve victory in whatever setting you are in.  No one can take it from you if you want it bad enough and work hard enough for it.  Choose to be great.  If you're in a hole, if things aren't going the way you want, if you're injured or hurt, if you're struggling to just get by, choose, like we did tonight, to make a comeback.

People Are Amazing

Watch the video below to see what people can do when they put their minds to something.  I love watching people push themselves to the limits of what they think they can do, and then going a little bit farther than that.  I also love the idea of trying to be good at something.  It doesn't have to be something athletic... You could just be someone that everyone knows is a good friend.  Or someone who is honest no matter what.  Maybe you are always doing service.  Either way, try to be known for something, anything, that you're good at.  Be good at something and keep working at it!  Everyone can be amazing if they just try.