3 Years

The LG had his 3rd birthday earlier this week. His little Curious George party went quite well if you are willing to give a 3 year old a free pass on participating in the games on his own birthday. While Grandma entertained the guests with jungle hunting games, the LG snuck around the outskirts of the room watching and commenting from time to time that he didn't feel very well. He seemed to snap out of it though once the pinata came out. Always a hit with the little ones.






I found the pinata whacking hysterical becuase it provided a keen insight into the variety in childrens' personalities - the tickler, the brute, the perfectionist, the fun-loving life of the party, the princess, the strongly-determined and the wallflower.

The LG is a pretty good cross between fun-loving and brute. He is a compact ball of energy. It was suggested that if we could somehow plug him into the grid, we could have our own energy source. True. How true. He is also kind, funny, curious, intelligent, handsome, sneaky, and good-natured. He is a handful, but there isn't anything I would rather have my hands full of. I'm pretty lucky to be his mom. I love you LG.

It Came to Pass...

I just tucked the LG in after a hysterical evening of scripture reading. When given the choice of going to bed or reading scripture, he makes the right choice every time ; ) Tonight, as I started reading, he took the book from my hand stating that he needed to, "see what came to pass". Here are a few of those things:

- "And it came to pass that Nephi was angry"

- "And it came to pass that the angel was going to bite him"

- "And it came to pass that the grass was going to be scratchy"

- "And it came to pass that Nephi was dangerous"

Goodnight LG. You crack me up.

Welcome Home Grandma & Grandpa!!!

Be Sure to Check Your Smoke Alarms

I am kind of a Halloween scrooge. It is about as much as I can do every year just to get my kids in a costume. It's just not my thing. However, this year I must say that I was inspired and excited to create a costume for the LG out of duct tape. Oh yes, my friends, my father would be proud. The LG was a fireman (this costume also required a quick stop by the local firehouse which is always a treat, ahhh firemen - I don't have to say fire people in this instance because it is not the female variety that makes me say ahhh). Coat is made out of duct tape, electricians tape and a garbage bag. It is pretty sweet if I do say so myself. And I do. The TP was an adorable, store-bought, hand-me-down flower.

Sorry for the quality of the pics but our real camera is on the outs thanks to a run-in with my foot, the ground and a toddler. I suppose I should be grateful that telephones now profess to take pictures. As you can see from the quality of the pics, however, I am pretty skeptical.

Also, you may notice that one of our pumpkins looks like a butt crack. Unintentional art is sometime the very best kind of art. Then again, the LG may have fully intended this result when he tossed the pumpkin out of the car onto the cement.

Triathlon

I just erased my original post about this which bored me to tears. In a nutshell, I crossed the finish line. Not last. That was sort of my goal for getting into this. I didn't drown, fall off my bike, or have to walk. I can even say that it was actually fun. I did put my wetsuit on backward (and kept wondering out loud to more than one person why I felt like it was choking me and was so stinking hard to get on - I finally figured it out at the beach and had to change), take my ankle/timing band off with my wetsuit, forget my gloves, had to go back to the staging area to retrieve both items, but did manage to pass my very slim cousin on the bike (in full disclosure she flew back by me on the run). All in all, however, it was a great experience, and I will definitely try for another. I will probably never win a trophy, but it was just nice to know that I didn't need an ambulance to take me home either.

I bought this cheap but pretty sweet bike on Bikes Direct It rides really nicely and I love it.


I also wanted to do this to lose some "baby weight", eh, from the TP. I exercised at least 5 days a week for 3+ months, and I still weigh only about 5 lbs less than when I walked out of the hospital. It's all muscle gain, right? Right.

Things that make me say hmmmmmmmm.

We are crazy. Have no doubt. We have been spending our "together time" as I call it doing a lot of road tripping (there is a VERY good reason it isn't called road vacationing). I am done. Beyond done. Finished. Caputo (this probably isn't a word). From Logan, UT, we thought it would be a good idea to take a 900+ mile roadtrip to Vancouver, BC. Hmmmm.

HIGHLIGHTS:
1 - Got a great deal on a 5-star hotel
2 - Ate some real and really good Chinese food
3 - Opportunity to check out a beautiful city and use the passports we got for our kids.

LOWLIGHTS:
1 - 2 small children. One approaching 3 years old whose mouth doesn't stop flapping unless he asleep, the other is 4 months and hates to ride in the car for even a mile to go to the grocery store. Double hmmmm.

2 - 2 children in diapers. Inevitably, we always gave the diapers more credit than they deserved. As a result our car smelled a lot like the rest stops we frequented.

3 - 2 children who are used to sleeping in their own rooms. One requires the door to be locked at night to keep him from running around like a madman until the wee hours of the morning. I don't care if your hotel has the milky way rating, we needed 3 rooms just to make the stay tolerable. One room plus the portable crib in the bathroom didn't cut it.

4 - Poor planning in the books-on-tape department. If you hear the LG using EXTREME profanity, you can blame it on the R-rated language emanating from our speakers. One benefit of this debacle is that I plan to blame all his bad language until he moves out on this one trip. (You may say, turn it off. Hmmmm. That, like many other things is much to simple to be a solution we would employ).

5 - Poor planning in the not-bringing-a-sitter department. Let's just say that eating with chopsticks with a squirmy worm on my lap doesn't go to far in helping me enjoy ANY dining experience. Again, wouldn't matter too much if the food received the milky way rating.

6 - As a woman still recovering from the ill-effects of bearing children on my style, body image, and any sense of self worth - take note: don't go to cities with your two obnoxious children in tow where there are an abundance of thin Asians, sharply dressed 20-somethings, and plenty of store fronts reminding me that there is a whole world of fashion out there I can no longer relate to.

7 - Staying with friends/family. We learned that relying on the good graces of your peeps along the way may result in your loss of these people as friends, especially if you have your own version of the LG to mismanage. Let's see...where to begin? How about with the sharpie he located and proceeded to use in marking his territory on the steering wheel and leather seats of our friends' car? Or, maybe with the pink finger nail polish he used to paint a small wooden chair, some white carpet and a dining room chair (don't be fooled by the small size of those nail polish bottles, I had NO idea how many square feet a 2-year old could cover in 5 minutes).

As you can see, the lowlights far outweigh the highlights. As crazy as this may seem, we just got back from another 3 day adventure down to Lake Powell for my Triathalon. Stay posted for Triathalon highlights. I promise to leave out my complaints about traveling with kids.

Holy Crap.....It's a bird...It's a plane....No, it's a humanoid.

So, one of the benefits of having a lot of unemployed adults sitting around is that you can watch a lot of History Channel together. This is particularly exciting considering that the History Channel no longer airs shows about history, but rather much more salacious and exciting programs like Monster Quest, UFO Hunters, Band of Bloggers, Ice Road Truckers, etc. If you don't believe in monsters just yet, you need to start watching Monster Quest, although that would probably require that you also become unemployed. It's trade off. The latest episode we saw involves a "HUMANOID" that has been sighted floating over Mexico and in Arizona. Below is footage of the flying creature.



So, we have been keeping our eyes peeled, and decided to head to the park down the street and do some "humanoid" watching. Tuesday, at approximately 7:04pm, we officially captured footage of a humanoid hovering over Lundstrom Park....ominous.




What the what??? I saw it with my own eyes, and I will defend to the end that this is not a Photoshop job. There are also a bunch of middle school football players I can round up who will also verify the sighting. I will post the video footage we also have if you make special requests, but the quality of the image is much less credible.

Terrorism. What? Huh? No, I don't mean that humanoids are a form of terrorism, but rather that there is a VERY strong connection between both phenomenon - unemployment. When grown men have nothing productive to do, they watch too much TV, and devise mischievous ways to keep busy. Like planning, building and launching a floating humanoid. Enough said. If you haven't already been praying for us to find legitimate means of employment, you should start now. Otherwise, you should probably expect to start following your local Fox News at 9 more closely for future sightings.

Just for the record, there were multiple unemployed males involved in this venture.