'Tis the season for relatives

Oh what a wonderful time of the year. This is the season of family togetherness. A time when we all look forward to trying to cram work parties, ward parties, friend's parties, birthdays, anniversaries and maybe a holiday or two onto calendars that for some reason don't get any bigger. Why is that? This is probably one of my most frustrating times of the year as we have out-of-state relatives who pop in for brief vacations and coordinating schedules to be able to see each other can be a logistical nightmare. Fortunately, this year we cuaght a break. Well, I guess it depends on your definition of "fortunately". My work decided to cut back on expenses and drew the mighty budget sword, slaying our poor Christmas party and taking it's head back to the board members to glory in their slaughter. I wasn't too thrilled about that because it's something we've looked forward to every year since I started at my current company. It's slightly odd for me to realize that this will be my 6th Christmas there as I don't feel like it's been that long.

Anyway, all of this is on top of the inevitable who's house are we going to on Thanksgiving issue. You can read Aaron Ball's rant on this topic on his blog and I share some of that. The problem is that her parent's do a traditional and very good dinner and my family....well, sometimes traditional and mostly ok dinner. Her dad watches football before and after dinner...booyeah!! Ummm...where would you want to be?? And considering that I'm as close to my family emotionally as I am to them physically, I'd rather follow the food. Food, glorious food.

So here's a glass of eggnog to dayplanners, Outlook Calendars and a million sticky notes that desparately try to get us every where we want to be on time so we can see all of the people we care about during this holiday season.

Crying myself to sleep

I just spent 30 minutes composing a post about my 10th anniversary and what we did and blogger freaking errored out on me and I lost it all. I can't bear to re-create it. I'm just going to cry myself to sleep now. Stupid blogger.

Update: The post I thought got nuked is now posted below!!! Happy reading! 12-07-08

It's 6 o'clock on a Saturday...AM that is

So yesterday was our 10th anniversary. As blogged yesterday but that was early in the day so I'll give a recap of stuff. We spent most of the day together, even if it was just sitting next to each other while she looked at her crafting websites and I coded in Java for my computer science class. Lots of cuddling and kissing which Crickett said was, "dee-sgusting" and covered her eyes when we were doing it. It was funny and cute. After the kids got home we packed them all up and hauled them off to Michelle's friends house. Yvonne had volunteered to watch our kids for our anniversary so we dropped them off at a quarter to 5. She had dinner and a whole evenings worth of activities planned. We were thrilled but Michelle really wanted to pick them up by 9 to avoid the cranky, tired whining on the way home. We still ended up getting some from Adeena but most everybody else was pretty good. Then we went to a craft shop called 3 Wishes so Michelle could get a shuttle for her loom and some Merino wool to blend with some of her other fiber. I was surprised where it was at because I'd driven by it quite a bit as I went to the DI off of Redwood and 70th south and to Harbor Freight.

*Tangent: Harbor Freight has some of the best deals on stuff!! I got a bunch of work gloves for(nice leather and canvas ones) for Hearts for the Holidays there for 99 cents on one of their sales. The cool thing is they have quite a bit that is regularly priced better than I've seen it at Home Depot or Lowes. I also just got me an 8 gallon, 2 hp air compressor for $99! I had to do a little dance when I got home even though I still haven't taken it out of the box. /Tangent

After 3 Wishes, we went to Fantastic Sam's because Michelle said she was going to get her hair cut. For any of you who had seen it, her hair was down to her backside. It was just plain long. It was pretty but long hair gets pulled a lot on accident because it's EVERYWHERE!! Not a burden I have to worry about. Now, I grew up with 5 brothers and 1 sister. I have never actually seen a girl get her hair cut. I haven't even been in a barber shop in 9 years. Michelle kept looking at her watch and was suddenly quite nervous about whacking it all off. And whack she did. She cut off more than she kept. Which amazingly means she still has hair about 14" long and took off 16". But to watch the stylist cut her hair was so fascinating for me. I never knew they cut girl's hair that way. But she did it! And she looks very beautiful with her new cut.

We had an epic journey trying to find a restaurant for our anniversary. We considered places like La Caille, The Roof and got some recommendations from friends for the Tiberon. Michelle wanted French food but the only other French restaurant in Salt Lake, outside of La Caille, wasn't any cheaper and not really the ambiance we wanted. After looking at a ton of menus, she decided she really kinda wanted seafood and none of those places had a good seafood selection. So instead of someplace fancy, we went to Red Lobster. Which is apparently a very popular anniversary dinner spot as 3 other tables right around us were also celebrating their anniversaries. The food was good and we got very stuffed.

Oh and Michelle wore her shawl. It took her 5 months to complete. You can see pictures of it on her blog which is in my blog list called My Wife's Design Studio. I'm very proud of her and it looked fabulous.

And for some inexplicable reason, I woke up at 6 am and couldn't go back to sleep. Almost as if there was some impending danger. I can't really explain it. Nothing is wrong but I couldn't sleep so here I am blogging. It's taken me a long time to write this and the twins are stirring now that it's 7 am. Keeping them up late doesn't buy us any time in the morning. I'm not sure why. It works with the other 3.

Anyway, I'm just sending this out into the void, good morning dear void.

10 years ago

10 years and 50 minutes ago I married the most amazing woman. She dazzled me with her cooking and sewing skills and her wacky spontaneity. Today not much has changed. Her crafting skills have expanded into card-making, scrapbooking, knitting, spinning, and soon weaving. She has helped me expand my cooking skills to help out in the kitchen. Her wacky spontaneity has been worn down by years of children and financial frugality. My love for her has only deepened over the years. We have been through a lot of hard time together: 3 layoffs, school the first time and now school the second, me working two jobs for 2 and half years, 4 pregnancies, 5 kids, twins, me being stupid over and over and over. But we've made it so far.

So here is to the next 10 years and no more children than we already have and hopefully better times down the road.

Saving the economy

I have done it!! I have figured out how to save the economy without getting us into another bad situation later from it. And it will help the auto industry. After 9/11, Bush told everyone to go out and buy a car. Well that got people into car payments and when you have some debt, why not have more?? Joe-Six-Pack can't afford to go out and buy a $15-20K car when he's only making $40K a year! BUT he can afford to go out and spend $30-$40 seeing a movie. So encourage average Americans to go out and see a movie one weekend a month. Then turn to all of those rich Hollywood stars and tell them to spend just 1 of their millions of dollars buying regular cars(no luxury models or trucks or SUVs) and giving them away to average Americans across the country. That will get people out of car payments because they get a free car, it will stimulate the economy because car payment money now can go for other spending. It won't put the average American into a financial bind and pump money into the auto industry. Plus, it will only cost the rich Hollywood actor/ress 1 of their many millions. If they start a charity first and run it through that it would even be a tax write-off.

Someone forward this to Obama please.

Knock and it shall be opened...or do it yourself.

*heavy sigh* This has been a long time coming and they have been at it for a while now but the twins are opening doors. Our last safe guard of all things we don't want them touching is gone. The one comfort that we could let them play without having to keep an eye or ear on them at all times has vanished in one big cloud of baby powder - one more thing I'm glad we don't use anymore. At first it was just the inside doors....so we lost bedroom and bathroom privacy if we don't lock the door. All of the little things in the older kids rooms are now fair game. I don't think Adeena and Crickett will have much make-up leftover if the twins ever grow out of this.

There are some upsides however. They can now go downstairs on their own and if an older sibling shuts the door, they can open it instead of crying and screaming about it. Because they travel together a lot, if I need the wipes when changing a diaper, the other one can retrieve them. Cameron does not like having a messy or really wet diaper. Many times he will come to us and pat his bum babbling. We ask if he needs a new diaper and he says, "Huh" - closest thing to yes he says. So we can tell him to go get a diaper and lay down. And he does! It's very cute and very helpful.

They can now also open the front and garage doors too. Which wouldn't be too bad if it weren't getting so cold outside! Consequently, both doors have to remain locked during all waking-twins hours. *sigh*

I know I shouldn't be so surprised since I have 3 other kids but Ethan and Adeena were this age in our West Valley house that had much less to get into. And Crickett was so dang short for so long, by the time she could open doors, she knew better than to get into a lot the stuff she shouldn't! So it's been almost 5 years since we had a kid who could get into things but didn't/pretends to not know better. And I'm sorry but raising kids is NOT like riding a bike. I've endured a whole lot more pain with each child then I ever did every time I started riding a bike again. Bike don't pull hair(hey, I still have a little), poke eyes, pinch, headbutt or try and jam pointy little fingers into your mouth.

Give me the cloth and stand back!!

Hmmm....my laptop screen is really dirty. There must be a ton of dust in the air at work because I don't notice it there but I'm sitting here staring through a nice layer thinking it was just the brightness of my screen that was down...alas it was that too but with it up the dust isn't as noticable. Can you spit shine a laptop screen? Would that look proper in the Computer Science lab?

Seeing the world through blog eyes

The online world is quickly blurring the line between virtual and reality. We share so much of our lives sometimes in blogs that are readily accessible to the entire world. I know they did a news report on the danger of having public blogs. I didn't see it. That would require watching TV and I didn't even watch the new Simpson's Treehouse of Horror on Sunday despite actually wanting to. I totally forgot to record it as well. Good grief.

Anyway, so I was contemplating this as I sat here in class listening to my instructor say "um" more times than I'm comfortable with and reading Aaron's blog. I even posted a comment. I'm usually a long-time reader never-time commentor because I'm too lazy. Then I jumped over to his wife's blog and read a little more. They are very open and expressive in sharing about their family and I began to think more about the warnings when I went to the blog of a friend of mine from high school. She is taking her blog private out of those privacy fears and wanted people to post their email addresses for access.

Do I share too much? Do I care? Is this another instance of giving into the terrorists if I take this thing private? At last common sense arrived and I realized that nobody probably reads this thing anyway. I'm not in "the group" and neither is my wife. Her blog was just recently visited by some of them and I sent her my blog address. My latest check still showed no link to my blog on her site. *sigh* Not even my wife wants to read my blog. DOH!!

Well I reckon I should probably pay attention again and let this post to the world of one...that would be me. Perhaps the only way I will ever see much of the world until I graduate is through the eyes of their blogs. Perhaps.

Lyrically inclined

I don't know about you but I find myself singing songs in the car. Not to the radio necessary. Maybe it's just a result of loving to sing and being a writer. I sang in the shower as a kid - great acoustics. I didn't know until I was older that almost everyone in the house could hear me. DOH! But I loved to sing about my life, my heart-aches and frustrations. And I didn't know any songs that said exactly how I was feeling, so I made the lyrics up as I went. Now it's in the car not the shower so I don't wake my beautiful wife up.

Some of the lyrics I've written have come from other places but these came to me after listening to a song on the radio. I don't even remember which song it was but this one came out and if I could write music, I'd share the tune but alas, no such luck. Maybe one day I'll record it and post it on YouTube then link it here but we'll see.

I Wasn't

Where was I
when he fell and scraped his knee?
Where was I
when he called out for me?

Where was I
on her first day of school?
Where was I
when he first used a tool?
Where was I?

Where was I
when my family fell apart?
Where was I
to mend your broken heart?
Where was I
instead of doing my part?
Where, where, where, oh where was I?

Where was I
when she lost her first tooth?
Where was I
when you sat down and told them the truth?

Where was I
when you started to cry?
Where was I
when the tears filled their eyes?
Where was I?

Where was I
when my family fell apart?
Where was I
to mend your broken heart?
Where was I instead of doing my part?
Where, oh where, where was I?

On the road in some small motel,
hundreds of miles from home
but minutes from hell.
I pick up the phone
and listen to the tone
but I still don't have an answer
for "Where was I".

Where was I
when I tore my family apart?
Where was I
when I was breaking your heart?
Where was I
instead of doing my part?
Where, where, where, oh where was I?
Where, oh where......
where was I?


I know part of this came from feeling like I was missing out on my kids' lives. I delivered pizzas at night for 2 and a half years to pay the bills. Now I'm in semester 2 of 3 and a half years for a degree. I often find myself asking, "Where was I?"