Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Hair or no Hair, that is the question...

Okay, this weekend I did something I haven't done in over 7 years, I shaved my entire face. As I have been loosing weight I have been teasing my wife that I no longer needed the goatee to elongate my face. She has been telling me no. On Sunday I called her bluff (not advisable btw). She says that she is "still getting used to it" when I pushed for an opinion but followed that up with "I prefer you with a goatee".

To that end I decided what better way to solicit comments than to ask for a vote. Here are two recent pictures, one before and one from this morning. The shaved one is a bit out of focus but if you read two blogs down you will understand why I couldn't hold the camera steady at an arms length...

So tell me, with or without?

Funny things kids do

If you haven't noticed, I'm on vacation and finally have some free time to type. I just thought I would share something silly each of my kids has done in recent weeks that made me laugh. Maybe I shouldn't have laughed at some of them, but I did none the less.

Caleb was asked to sing a Solo in church as part of the primary program. We had practiced it quite a bit with him and knew that if he came in on beat and pitch he would nail it. Then a funny thing happened that was not his fault. The fill in pianist (the original got sick on performance day) started to play the wrong song! Brave little Caleb tried to fit "I Know my Father Lives" into the notes that pianist was playing, but it just wasn't working, it was bad. I didn't know if I should laugh, cry, run to his rescue, or just hide my head. The primary president caught the mistake and corrected the pianist. By this point however, Caleb was so flustered that he didn't know where he was. It wasn't until about halfway through the first verse that the two found a common timing and it was early in the second verse when Caleb finally found the right key. I was so proud of his stick to it attitude. By the end he was belting it out perfectly and everyone there commended him for his patience and lovely singing. I wasn't laughing at the time but I can laugh about it now!

The kids Grandmother sent them some books recently. Michaela found the 300 page Book of Amazing Facts and proceeded to read the entire thing over a 2 day period. The next morning as I awoke her from her sleep she rolled over, rubbed the sleepiness from her eyes, and before so much as a yawn or a "good morning dad" she blurted out quite matter of factly, "Did you know that when the dinosaurs were on the earth there were only two continents?" I don't want to know what her dream had been about!

This morning I found my youngest in the hall holding a butterfly net. She was hitting the floor where about half a dozen ants had stumbled across a frosted flake. The best part though was that while she was merrily whacking away, she was singing along "Da Da Da Daaaaa Daaaaaaaa, Da Da Da Daaaaaaaaaa Daaa, Da Da Da Daaaaaaaaaaaa Daaa, Da Da Da Daaaaaaaa..." For the untrained hummer, that is the Star Wars theme. I don't know if ants are part of the Rebel Alliance or the Empire but they were suffering a little light saber justice!

The funniest moment of all came last night from my little Josh Josh. Around 10pm we heard him crying upstairs. From experience we knew that that generally meant he has to go potty and is having problems. I ran upstairs unprepared for what I found. He had indeed woken up needing to use the restroom but some other factors had conspired against him. He was wearing a pair of jammies for the first time that snapped at the waist and had not figured out how to unsnap them. But worst of all, his left foot was asleep and he couldn't walk on it. In his groggy state this was too much for him to process simultaneously. I found him in the middle of his dark room, eyes closed, one hand pinching off the flow, the other hand pulling on his pajama bottoms, and hopping in circles on his one good foot. Unfortunately my laughter was not very consoling and he was mad at me despite the fact that I rescued him and carried him to the toilet...

The Price of Stupidity and Pride

I have not hid the fact that I find joy in running and it is my preferred exercise in my efforts to loose weight. While traveling I try to work out (go for a run) each night I am on the road. It is a luxury that I cannot afford here at home due to the many other duties, responsibilities, and distractions I have here. Now given the choice I would have those "distractions" over travel any day!

I have been running well of late and last week in Louisiana I actually ran a 27:10 5K, cutting 2:35 off of my race time I blogged about previously. Following that run I was feeling particularly strong, superhuman, and generally just proud of myself. It is funny how fast those humbling moments come after you have allowed yourself to let the pride in...

A co-worker wanted to stay at the gym a little longer and asked if I wanted to lift some weights with him. With a thump of the chest I eagerly dove right in. Now that I explained my mind set, let me also set the picture. My co-worker is 6 years my Sr., 100 lbs my Jr., but he also lifts almost daily. I have also not lifted weights on a regular basis in over 15 years. Seeing as our legs had been exercised with the run, we decided to work out our upper bodies.

Note to self, aerobic success does not directly translate to anaerobic strength. Note to anyone reading this just because your lifting buddy can do 3 reps of 8 on every weight machine in the place does not mean you should do the same PARTICULARLY if you are unwilling to move the pin because you think you will loose face to an older, smaller individual!

5 days have passed since that stupidity. I am probably 80% recovered. The pain is gone but the tight and worthless arms remain. For days I could not raise my hands to my neckline without letting out a blood curdling cry. I almost asked my wife to shampoo my hair, putting on my tie for church was torture, and holding up the music to sing with our ward choir truly required divine intervention!

From now on, I will stick to what I enjoy. Who cares if the fat is gone off of my legs while my gut and arms still suffer from Jello syndrome, in time that will rectify itself. Get your laughs in now, because you know, in person, I can catch you, even if my arms are too weak to do anything about it when I do!

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

It was Involuntary Pigslaughter your Honor

First thing first, as you read this post, do not think me cold hearted to make light of the events of last night. This is the only way I know to share my guilt.

As I put my daughters to bed last night I decided to check on our pet Guinea Pig, Foddy. (If you wonder about the odd name, lets just say that 4 year olds come up with some odd names if the power is left solely to them.) My daughter has done a very good job feeding and checking her water for the last two and a half years since Foddy joined our family. My role has always been to change her cage and just to double check that she has water. As I approached her cage my mind noted, as it had the previous night, that it was odd that her cage hadn't started to stink as much as normal. I had cleaned it early last week and normally it would be starting to smell by now.

As I lifted the lid I saw her laying on her side. My first reaction was, "wow, I've never seen her sleep before" but even before that thought was completed my epiphny struck and I let out an "Uh-oh". As soon as it came out of my mouth, I tried to pull it back. From my daughter's bed I heard, "what's uh-oh dad, is something wrong with Foddy?" Not knowing what to do I grabbed the cage and told her to go to sleep.

Upon investigating it became clear she was not just sick and had in fact been dead for quite some time. There was very little "waste" in the bedding, only a little of the food was gone and it didn't look like she had drank anything... She was cold and stiff. Rather than put off the inevitable, we wrapped her in a towel and took her back to my daughter to tell her. Our first attempt to explain went amiss when we just said that Foddy had "gotten sick". My little girl replied with "What can we do to help her? Take her to the animal doctor?" When we tried to regroup and delayed in our answer, she was perseptive enough to ask "Is she dead?"

We then told our sons what had happened. They took consolation in knowing that Foddy would now be able to play with Twinkle Toes, our pet ferret that died in the spring. Then I was taken quite off guard as both of my older two wanted to know what pet we would get next and started to explain to us what we needed for a fish tank. To see a six year old, with read eyes, still gulping air recovering after crying, explain that you need "a glass tank, some pretty rocks, or sand, and some fake plants, and water, and ..." I didn't know to laugh or cry!

We put them to bed and went back downstairs to the cage. Then I made the discovery that ripped my heart in two. The ball in her water bottle was jammed up the tube and wouldn't dispense any water! With one squeeze I freed it and water dripped into the corner of the cage. She had dug almost every scrap of bedding out of that corner of the cage and her head was laying under the water bottle when I found her. Indeed, when I cleaned her cage, and refilled her water bottle, I sealed her fate. Both my wife and I had checked on the water bottle throughout the week but both of us assumed the other had topped it off for her, not questioning why it was staying full. To add to the guilt, one of my first thoughts had been "great! no more cages to clean".

To echo a theme from the McBlunder post a few back, please don't tell my daughter what I did to her Foddy. With all this parental guilt she is going to make out just fine, she can have a whole school of fish if she plays her cards right!

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Random Photo's of Great Kids

Liesie Lu - Craft Casualty?

Crew Atop Stone Mountain

Easter Morning in the Front Yard

Dangers of Vacation in Florida