If You're REALLY Bored (i.e. unemployed...)

For those of you who role your eyes at posts like my political views or poetry (and a couple others that K made me delete), I have set up a separate blog into which I will spill the random contents of my thought process before I copy it over to a journal of some sort. This page that you're currently looking at will be solely reserved for cute family stuff. So if you really have NOTHING else to do, you're tired of playing internet games, and all your romance novels are starting to sound the same, you can go to http://www.phdsomeday.blogspot.com/ and have a good laugh at my expense. At the very least you'll roll your eyes and shake your head. I guarantee it.

Pumpkin Carving

Pumpkin carving was a blast this year at G& G's with the F's. We brought up the pumpkins we had grown and Grandma made a dinner out of brains and eyeballs and ghosts. B started out pretty excited about carving a pumpkin until he stuck his hand inside one and realized he was going to have to do that more than once to get all the seeds out. K wasn't exactly feeling up to carving one of her own as you might imagine and Little K was too busy to playing with E to worry about pumpkins. So any pumpkin carving that happened I had to do. I carved a little one for Little K, and then I carved the big ugly cancerous one so that it could eat the little one. I thought it turned out pretty well. Thankfully Uncle A helped me out and carved B's (it's the one that's puking... I love a puking pumpkin. I actually had a green pumpkin that I wanted to carve into a puking pumpkin, but there was no way I was going to get around to that). The snowman pumpkin was the brainchild of Uncle and Auntie A.

Costume Preview

Yeah, I know the title says preview and you're reading this after Halloween... I get a little behind sometimes. G & G had a little pumpkin carving costume party the other night and our kids couldn't wait. B was a fire fighter and Little K was a damsle in distress that slowly morphed into a princess the longer it took her to get into her costume... she just had to keep adding things. Who would'nt give these kids a pile of candy?

Chucky Cheese - Where Auntie A can be a Kid!

When K first got pregnant and then sick Nini told B and Little K that she was going to come up and take them to Chucky Cheese. Well, things come up and we all understand but some of us never forget. Every week since then the kids have asked me if they were going to get to go to Chucky Cheese that week. Well, they finally got lucky. Grandma was taking Auntie L to CC the other week and she asked if B and Little K wanted in. Are you kidding? Like anyone would have to ask. The kids had a blast (okay, we all did! Hey, who doesn't love skiball?!) No one had more fun than Auntie A however. She had never been there and you would never have guessed this girl made it to college. We only included one picture of her, but you see that silly grin that you almost want to slap off her face? Yeah, that was there the WHOLE time.

Practical Fashion Sense

Here we have another stunning example of Little K's ingenuity. She wanted to come with me to take B to preschool the other day, but she was not done drinking her milk. Normally she could just have carried it along. But that was what normal unthinking people would do. She wanted a way to bring her milk along with two free hands and no extra effort. Now don't expect this to show up on the runways of Paris anytime soon, but I think she's on to something here.

Bed Time

So this video is evidence of the reason that I wanted to the kids to stop napping during quiet time. This occured nearly an hour after their supposed bed time, and let us just say that I was up a couple more hours waiting for them to fall asleep in their rooms. K claims that it's me, and that I wind them up at night. I don't know what she's talking about.

Our New Barber...

I know I've mentioned about quiet time before, but we actually ran into a problem. The kids started taking long enough naps that it was interfering with the time that I wanted them to go to bed. So, being sneaky, I began to pretend that I didn't notice it when they snuck into each other's rooms to play during quiet time. That way they didn't nap and they were still under some control for an hour.

Well, unbeknownst to me, K was keeping a pair of scizzors in little K's room in a draw with some ribbon to make hair bows. Guess which draw was explored just the other day?

Now you should understand that K always cuts B's hair, and anything he watches his mommy do... he knows how to do. He can explain very well to you exactly what you have to do to cut hair. He can even describe some technique in detail. What he missed out on was that his mommy pays very close attention to LENGTH. The picture actually doesn't really show how bad it was. Let's just say that he has very short hair now. Oh, and little K got her first haircut. Thank goodness for long curly hair. It hides a bad hair cut almost perfectly.

My Irreverent Child

Every Sunday that goes by convinces me more and more that whatever I am teaching my children, it is not reverence. Usually it occurs that when I sing with the choir, I get my own little cheering section. Several times throughout the music even I can usually here a couple "That's my Dad!" This is usually followed by a "Way to go Dad!" with a big thumbs up and a high five while everybody is sitting back down. It makes K turn scarlett.

Without K lately, I haven't been singing in the choir which leaves my kids to come up with other rather loudly proclaimed comments. Last Sunday, however, I thought I was going to be in the clear. It was B's first primary program. He was going to be on stage and family was going to come watch him which should be enough to help keep little K quiet. Right?

Well, like I said, my kids have been REALLY into Halloween this year. So while B waived frequently from the stand, little K would sneak down the pew and yell "ROOOAARRRR!" to scare Auntie A. I can't win.

I Just Wanna Go Home!

Here we have video evidence that maybe it is possible to have your children spend a little too much time at Grandma's. Sorry, we know you don't agree Grandma. It's been a couple of weeks since the kids had a sleepover with Grandma and little K was really feeling it the other night. She just hates to be away from home...

Silly Dancers

So Auntie E and Uncle D may have been inspired by us to set up their own blog, but it was them and our friends the C's who inspired me to actually spend some time editing a little bit of video to put up on our blog. Little K loves to dance anyway, so when cousin E started shakin' booty to K's toy boombox things got a little wild. Sorry you weren't here cousin H, you would have loved it!

Vote for ME!

Alright, here's the deal. There is an online poem website called poetry.com which I thought was something of a legitimate thing at first. So I submitted a poem to them, actually, a couple I think. Anyway, as far as I can tell they make their money by telling you the poem is great and then asking if you want to purchase "a beautifully bound copy of your artwork" or a "plaque to commemorate your acheivement". Right. Well, supposedly they set up their own little competition and entered my poem, which I submitted to them for something else, into it. The way this one works is people are supposed to read the poem online and then vote for it, and if I get enough votes I win something (like an ipod... alright! one less christmas gift to buy myself...) So any of you who want to spend time getting me free stuff can go to http://www.poetry.com/voteforme/poemvote1.asp?PID=8154952. Remember.... vote me a 10!

K - When It's REALLY BAD

So having shown you what a bad day for K is like (see below), I thought I'd show you what a REALLY bad day is like. I know what you're thinking... you're thinking "hey, that's just a picture B took after he snuck the camera when Daddy wasn't looking because he knows Daddy probably wouldn't let him touch the camera anyway." You can think that if you want, but the fact of the matter is sometimes pregnancy is REALLY hard. Can you see now why she had a PICC line with the other two? Well, can you?

Cousin E Graces Us with Her Presence

Cousin E came to play today! We had a lot of fun with her... perhaps too much. Even as I write, my daughter is upstairs yelling in her room because she had to go to bed an hour ago. We danced, we played, we threw snow balls (well B did at Uncle M at least), we screamed our heads off until Daddy had thoughts of kenneling the kids for the night. You know, great day.

October 21 - SNOW!!!

In the 5 and a half years that we have lived in Provo, neither of K nor myself can remember having this much snow this early in October in our yard. This is actually after quite a bit of it had melted. Uncle M and E came and visited us today right before church started sooooooooo we waited till everyone went to church, then walked outside to play in the snow. Of course, that was just a good way to see who goes to church just to make an appearance and then walks home.... (we didn't get any pictures of those people though:).

Why Illiteracy is Tolerable

I know that there are a miriad of campaigns out there trying to nip illiteracy in the bud. However, I think that there can be an age when it's too early to teach a child to write. This would be the age where the only concept they grasp is: "Hey this is a pretty cool little stick!!" Despite the fact that B is actually smart enough to spell his own name and write out the alphabet, he recognizes that writing utensils can be used for pleasure as well as educational purposes. As evidenced by the permanent marker on his door.

Just Kickin' Back

I went outside to watch the kids today, and since none of their friends could play very long they actually decided to pay some attention to me! We took turns choking each other and then little K would show how funny she was by pushing me over while B showed how strong he was by rolling me back up.

In other news.... K actually made it out to eat at Olive Garden tonight! Unbelievable. She even made the ride home without adding her special bile based air freshener to the car. She claims I'll be back to work soon.