Internet death, great neighbors, freedom!

It happened out of the blue last Wednesday while I was at work. The internet at our house died. Not the usual playing dead where a good kick in the ribs will bring it back to life, but full on blood everywhere, no pulse dead. I called our provider which is run by a room full of monkeys flinging their crap at each other. The unsupportive tech person said I needed to be in front of my connection at my house because she couldn't send the ticket to the next level if she doesn't go through her 3 steps. We go through two of them every time it plays dead. I couldn't be there because I was at work. I had class that night. By the time I got home I had forgotten that I needed to call them because I was tired. So Thursday Michelle called and went through the whole 3-step process. Then a level 2 tech called to say we were definitely broken and he would have the scheduler call to schedule a tech. Then hours of silence. I called when I got home to find out that they are idiots and the monkeys were still covered in excrement and loving it. The scheduler wasn't in the office on Thursday. He would be back on Friday. Nobody else there did his job when he wasn't in. Good thing customer's don't have problems on a regular basis apparently. So we weren't going to hear anything from these yahoo's until Friday.

Fridays are special. I get to work from home on Fridays and that helps with Michelle's sanity as she can go shopping or rest or whatever without having to take or worry about all of the kids. Well, without internet, I can't work from home. Without internet there were a lot of things we couldn't do that we wanted to. After confirming that they don't know what good customer service is, I called our next door neighbors to see if we could 'borrow' their signal for a few days. I'd like to say we have the best neighbors in the world...but I don't have to because if you know them, you already know that they are! He came over and helped me get on their internet and I was able to work from home the next day. Well Friday came and went with no phone call from the primates. Maybe they were overwhelmed by the stench of their own idiocy. No word all weekend.

Today I called and asked what the heck was going on. Well apparently the scheduler lied in the notes and said he called but the number was disconnected or no longer in service. I verified the number she had for us and confirmed that I had just talked my wife on that same number less than 5 minutes earlier. I came as close to calling the guy a bald-faced liar as I could without using those words. The tech did in fact come out, did nothing with our equipment on our roof and left declaring it was fixed. Michelle still couldn't get on and my night post-class will be figuring out why. I of course demanded a credit for all of my down-time. And hopefully on Friday, our local carrier will show up and install better internet. Then I will finally be free of the missing link that has been our ISP.

I will not name them but feel free to ask me. I wouldn't recommend them to anyone. Unless of course you like dealing with stinky monkeys.

The good old days

"Do you remember the good old days?"
"When was that?"
"Oh you know, yesterday. Last week. When mammoths were mammoths and possums were possums?"
"Yep, those were the good old days."

Can you name the movie? I'll tell you at the end if you can't.

That line has been rolling around in my head along with the stabbing pain of what is hopefully just a sinus headache and not a precursor to a sinus infection. Do I remember the good old days? And what qualifies?

So the first days I thought of were those wonderful pre-return-to-college days when my wife and I spent time together after putting the kids to bed or she crafted while I watched movies or played video games. Back when I actually knew what was going on in some TV series'. Back when the stress in my life was only generated by my job and my children.

Then I went back further to that great summer after high school graduation when I played until way late every day and got up friggin' early for work. And for some reason that was the way I saw my life...play first, work later.

Good times. But then I thought about the line again. "You know, yesterday. Last week." Was yesterday a good day...what about last week? Decidedly no-ish. Valentine's Day was a saga that I'm not going to bother posting about at this point and then I'm still apparently sick and Michelle was getting sicker and life didn't stop or pause long enough for us to get better. Sure I made to church before primary started and we had a great lesson in Elders quorum. But unfortunately that didn't cure me.

So if you need me, I'll be sitting here trying to tape markers or pens or something to the side of my head to keep pressure on my throbbing temples. Merry George Franklin day.

P.S. The movie is Ice Age 2: the meltdown

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.