Poo foot and other great Saturday activities

Oh yes...there is nothing quite like your toddler limping towards you crying like he hurt his foot. Then you kiss your fingers(cause I only kiss baby feet when they can't walk on them) and touch them to his little injured foot only to stick them into poo. Seriously.

I don't know where it came from or how it got there but somehow poo got on the floor in the twins room and Lance stepped in it. Then limped out of his room leaving a brown spotted trail(rated better than bread crumbs by 4 our of 5 fairytale characters) to me. Luckily I was in the recliner not very far from their room. I scooped him up and hauled him to a sink to wash us both off.

Then I grabbed the 409 and a damp wash cloth and began following the trail from the recliner into their room. It even ended in this nice little loop. It was the smelliest Family Circus impression I've ever witnessed. And now I'm considering just blowing kisses to their feet cause you just never know what's going on underneath!

Double your pleasure

So there have been many times this past couple of years that I have said I wouldn't wish twins on my worst enemy. They have definitely been a struggle for Michelle and I at many times. But so often the moments of joy are overwhelmed with the other moments. Those times I sit on the couch with one little turkey on each side just leaning on daddy and watching a movie. Having Cameron tell me "Boo!" while I'm changing his diaper and I say "AAHHH!" and he responds with a "Yay!" and claps for himself.

Or like this morning when I walked into their room to get them up and they are both bouncing in their cribs with their hats on. These are the hats that Michelle knit for them for Christmas. I don't know how they got them both but there they were grinning with their hats. It was so cute.

Some mornings only one will be awake and being kinda noisy but as soon as I walk in the room I get "ssssh"-ed by them because the other one is still sleeping.

And I have officially become a huge proponent of PBS. My three youngest are all sitting here totally engaged by Reading Rainbow and now Between the Lions. I can't get this kinda of concentration out of them for Disney movies. Plus it's teaching them.

Know when to hold 'em, know when to run...

Ok, so she's sticking to her guns and we are all going to be casulties. Who? What? Huh? Exactly. I'm in class and my teacher has been building this semester project since summer when I took her class. Well she has this idea that this calculator we are making should be on a handheld calculator because....I really don't know. Common sense says there is no freaking way an Electrical Engineer is going to design a circuit on a freaking handheld calculator instead of in a cool computer program that we built last semester. It's like pulling out the abacus because you don't like using the calculator on your laptop. Good grief. But she is sticking to this ridiculous idea and forcing our class to suffer through her deranged end result.

It almost makes me want to cry. She's old but she teaches computer programming in Java. This isn't an old language! This isn't 1980 when computers were huge and expensive! An EE is going to have a very good computer they can pull up our cool app on and do their design work. Why not improve that? I swear that if I make it out of this class alive....I will forever despise handheld calculators. Or old people. Or people who can't open their minds to common sense.

I do a lot of flying by the seat of my pants. Not as much as I did in high school granted but my days aren't really structured at work and our team has to be fairly flexible because new projects walk in the door all the time with very close deadlines. But I don't feel like a teacher should fly by the seat of their pants. It doesn't instill confidence that they know what they are talking about. And when she throws out a statement and then retracts that statement and you watch her think outloud in class(like she just did as I was typing this) I actually yearn for a math class where there is structure and a syllabus! If you need me, I'll be banging my head on the table because it seems like that will do as much good as trying to follow her teaching method.

Resolutions

For this new year I have decided I need some resolutions...and for Family Home Evening last night I decided our family needed at least one too. So after the song and prayer and talking about what a resolution is, I asked my three older kids(the ones who can say more than "Daddy" and "[S]now wet") what they felt we should do as a family. Bless is heart it was Ethan who raised his hand and said we should read scriptures. He only started to like reading this summer so he could play my Wii. And here he is the one suggesting we do it. So I said that was a great idea. Then he follows that with this gem, "I don't know how to read the words in the scriptures." He feels he can't read them and yet he knows we should be reading them as a family. I would have hugged him but was afraid in my joy I might break some ribs.

I guess this is where I reveal some of our short comings because we have never had family scripture study. But this year we, as a family, are resolving to have family scripture study twice a week. I have great kids.

My personal resolutions are less spiritual. I resolve to get my Associates Degree. I resolve to do my best to get A's in all of my classes. I resolve to keep myself under 200 lbs and I'd like to get under 190. I resolve to do 100% Home Teaching this year and invite my Home Teachers over at least once a quarter to help them do theirs. I resolve to do better in my calling.

I think that's enough for this year. *horn blows* And I'm off!!!

Rating and reviewing and such

So here it is, the first part of 2009. What a year 2008 was. On a scale of 1-10....yes I would put it somewhere in there. :) So let me review the major developments and such and maybe when I get through, I'll have a more solid number.

2008 IN REVIEW

- The year started with planning: a family vacation and going back to school.
- The twins started walking finally.
- We went to Disneyland for the first time as a family and my first time in 2 decades
- Ethan met Buzz Lightyear in person and has never been happier.
- I started school again and it has consumed me as only school work can.
- Shortly after starting school I changed jobs from IT Helpdesk to Software Tester in the same company and saw my stress level drop dramatically.
- Michelle discovered spinning and has found many exotic new things to fill her craftroom with.
- I got a 4.0 GPA for summer semester...my first 4.0 EVER!
- We got Ethan into soccer in the fall and he loved it.
- Ethan was forced to read a book before he could play my Wii over the summer and went from a so-so reader to one of the top 6 in his class. Who knew video games would make my son a better reader??
- Cameron started saying words we could understand.
- Adeena continued to read like there was little else in life.
- Crickett finally had a real growth spurt and actually outgrew her 2T clothes.
- Michelle and I celebrated 10 wonderful years together.
- Michelle had a birthday and still looks 18.
- Christmas snuck up on us and the kids were lucky to have a tree up this year.
- I posted my second 4.0 thanks to the support and butt-kicking from my beautiful wife.
- Lance started saying, "Momma".
- Cameron will tell you the snow is wet as often as you will let him.
- I took 2 weeks off from work for the first time (voluntarily) ever.
- Christmas came and went with all of the usual hustle and bustle and horrific weather.
- Adeena got a 623- page book from my parent's the Sunday before Christmas and finished it a little over two weeks later.
- The twins continued to get into every little thing they could find regardless of how many times we told them to stop causing much stress, many broken items and a lot of poor dead eggs.

Despite the economy and high gas prices we have survived. We had enough car repairs to pay for another car but we now have two decent vehicles. There were no major accidents or injuries. While school consumes my life, it usually isn't until after the kids go to bed except for the nights I have class. Our long term financial and family goals are still intact and we are moving forward.

We had rough spots and by no stretch was this a perfect year. But we got wonderful new neighbors across the street and right next door. We made new friends and rediscovered some old ones. We decided that two weeks is just about right for me to be home....too much more and things will go south REALLY quickly. I'd rate this year a 7 overall with hopes for an 8 or 9 in 2009.