A.Maze.Ing.

We went to Lagoon today and no one cried. No one whined. No one voiced much discord at all. The kids even tried lots of rides and seemed

to have a great time. Levi went on Puff the Magic Dragon for the first time (he's ducking next to Erin but said it was fun):


The kids also rode on the airplanes, the boats, the Train, the sky ride, and the ferris wheel. This is a pretty HUGE breakthrough because last year, and the year before, they couldn't ride a ride without one of them bursting into tears and screaming/shrieking at the top of their lungs. Today was just incredible.

Erin and I each took turns riding Wicked. That was quite an experience for both of us. Oddly enough, we could both fit our girth into the seats comfortably, but got a pretty good scare because the attendants told us both that the lap bar hadn't latched. No big deal, right? Not exactly:


Yeah, that yellow tower is probably 6 or 7 stories high and gravity forces you forward against your lap bar the entire time you're basically free-falling downward. That same lap bar that the attendant had told us hadn't latched completely. I've never prayed so hard not to die in my entire life. I may just try it again if I ever get around to losing 130 pounds or so.

Other pictures from the day:

Learning photography and Photoshop

I like the texture on this rock across the sidewalk from my place. The random Cracks are interesting.

I added red to this picture to try to get it close to what the flower actually looks like. Still didn't succeed, but at least it's pretty.

"Last Man Standing". It's kind of sad to see the flowers Around our house shrivel and die. The one guy in the middle here seems to be thriving, though.

the pink against the Muted background creates a nice focal point. Rather than enhance the pink, I played with the color of the background instead.

I'm still learning how to play with color like I'd like. The purple in the flower looks close, but the blue is still too light. I like how the purple looks like a butterfly too.

This one's interesting to look at since you can still sense the beauty that it once had while it fades. Kind of the "Beginning of the End" and somewhat symbolic, though I'm not sure what it's symbolic of.

more conversations with/to Levi

"DON'T GIVE MAVIS A WASHDOWN WITH FRIDGE WATER!!!" He had just earned Mavis the toy diesel engine back and decided she was dirty, I guess.

I'm glad it was Erin to go handle that one. I was busy trying not to laugh in the sun room.

Figuratively or literally?

Over breakfast this morning: "Levi, close your mouth! ....not with your foot!!"

Yep, Levi was literally doing what his daddy has been known to do figuratively.

Kid Pictures Update

a great way to kill time

So at work there are a lot of times where I have to wait for the computer to finish doing its thing before I can continue with work. Sometimes I'm good about working on homework during those times, but more often I'm surfing the web. In my surfing, I found 2 awesome ways for muppet fans to kill time: The Muppet Wiki and the ToughPigs blog. Then there's my Muppets playlist on Youtube too. That serves the dual purpose of keeping me entertained while I work and keeping me from losing my cool when people make my job harder by not doing their jobs right.

I'm finding out about tons of Muppet specials that I just didn't know existed. Did you know there was a muppet TV Movie last Christmas called "A Muppets Christmas: Letters to Santa"? I didn't. And I bet it's not for sale anywhere, so I'll have to torrent it and hope it's legal to do that. (I'm constantly debating with myself on the legality of various torrents.)

Congrats all around

Found out this week that the (extended) family is continuing to expand. My Neice Presley will turn 19 in just a few days then get married next month. The engagement will be about a month and a half long, so I hope she can get all her planning done quickly!

Also, my sister Susie is pregnant again. I'm so excited for her to have baby #2. She's due in January.

In other "Holy cow, I'm OLD!" news, my college professor said that one of her students told her that she (the student) can't remember ever NOT having a computer in the house. I remember when Computers weighed a ton, were as big as a preschooler, and had no hard drive, so operated completely off floppy discs. For you kids in the readership (If there are any), yes there used to be square discs that entirely ran the computer. And they were literally floppy in the old days when we walked to school uphill, both ways, in the snow with barefeet and were grateful. Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to go recharge my hearing aids and soak my teeth. As soon as I can get up outta this rocking chair.

Emma-isms

(While playing video games): Oh! You can get father than me because two ones is the only farth I can get.

At dinner: Daddy, I don't want any more dinner because I'm already full of it.

On the way to Erin's Dr. appointment:
Erin: I can see the temple from here!
Emma: Oh good, so we're not lost.

New Pics

Okay, so here are a couple pics from Easter. Levi dyed cookies too but for some reason didn't make it into any of the pictures. I think by the time we were taking them, he had gotten bored and gone to play with his trains again.

And here are a few more recent ones that our friend Tina took when she and Eric came to visit.


Emma's getting so old now. Hard to believe she's only 5. In this pic, she almost looks like a teenager.



Levi got a bit punchy before losing consciousness about 3 hours after his normal bedtime. That's not to say he's not normally this goofy anyway, though. :)


The rare pic of Josh actually smiling. He's gotta be one of the most serious babies I've ever known. Not unhappy, just serious.


And these are our other babies. These cute little guys are about 4 weeks old in the picture and have since moved on to a pet store. I still have their parents, 1 older brother and 2 older sisters. (and the mates of all the siblings).

What? It's only been (almost) a month since my last update.

So somehow the promised pictures of Easter either got sucked into a black hole or are lost on the hard drive of my very fickle laptop, so I unfortunately don't have any to share. :( I also don't have any pictures of my new car - a 1999 Ford Contour. Maybe I can get some up soon, maybe not.

I am not totally without pictures, though. Emma has, several times (though, admittedly they were all a few months apart), thought it a good idea to color on walls, bricks, and doors when Mom and Dad aren't looking. Typically, she'll use a ballpoint pen or a marker, but she did get creative with blue nail polish on her white closet doors and walls once.

Until now, Erin and I have been talking to her about it and having her take responsibility by giving her best attempt at cleaning it up. So far, there are at least 4 places in our house she has redesigned and none of them have come off. The latest redecoration was a series of swirls across her bedroom doorway.

Since talking to her and having her try to clean it up has not worked, we're taking a new tactic. She was grounded from the Wii (her favorite addiction) for the weekend and we're trying to supply an outlet for her need to color walls by painting both sides of her bedroom door with black chalkboard paint. Eventually we'll do her closet doors too. Now if she gets the urge to draw on walls, she'll be able to grab some chalk and go nuts. I just hope we can convince the boys to only draw on these specific doors and nowhere else as they hit this stage.


Emma works on the bottom, Levi does the middle (they had just switched assignments) and Daddy does the top of the door.


Josh Supervises. "Stop working and pick me up!!!"



Emma does the bottom as best she can while Levi reloads his brush - the roller didn't work so well. It didn't roll once the paint was in it. We found sponge brushes work much better than the expensive stuff with this job.

Another shot of the kids working hard. One side of one door down, the other side and two more doors to go!

Conficked.

So The Conficker virus hit my work last week. (read about it at KSL's Site.)

We started noticing problems on Thursday and by Friday lunchtime, our internet was locked out by the desktop admins to try to eliminate further infections (except for university-ownerd sites, of course) and our access to network drives had been removed in order to protect all that data. Work for me had come to nearly a standstill, since much of my work is done from network drives and I need some outside websites (like the National Provider Index database) in order to work.

When I got back into work today, we have internet access again but Firefox has been blocked (mumble grumble) now I'm forced into using Internet Exploder. Maybe I'll just hook up my laptop and use that since it doesn't have the software that allows the desktop team to block things. In addition, it uses linux instead of windows so conficker won't hurt it. =-D

Our kids had a fun Easter and got very hopped up on Sugar. Levi had a realy hard time listeningto us and doing what was asked, but he sure had fun with all the candy. I'll get pictures (or maybe a movie) of all the egg dyeing up soon if any turned out well.

The Zoo

We went to the zoo on wednesday. This was taken outside of the zoo by the waterfall.


The kids weren't as interested in the animals as they were in the playground. Levi's riding a caterpillar of some kind. Let's go find some leaves to eat!!

Emma the spider.

Cousin Spencer climbed on the statue. Which one's the monkey?

Levi's not as tall as Muke.

Emma's not as big as muke.

Cousins came with us too and we all got a picture in the boat. Front row, left to right: Sagan (almsot 3), Spencer (almost 8), Isaac (9). Back row, Left to right: Scott (6), Emma (5), Levi (3).

More work on the floor

Okay, as promised, here are some more pictures of the floor:


Levi sweeps, Emma scrapes, and Josh is momentarily amused by it all.



Here's one end of the kitchen almost done. The edges were the hardest. getting the cut just right is TOUGH.


FIrst you measure, then you measure again. and just to make sure you're not bored of it yet, you measure again. then you start your cut and measure again. And even sometimes still, you go to put down the tile and it doesn't fit. so just for a change of pace you measure again.




The tiles we bought come in strips of 3 sqares each and have a glue strip along all 4 sides. 2 sides have the glue facing down and 2 have the glue facing up. Until the glue attaches to another tile, you have to cover it up with some wax paper that comes in the box so it doesn't get dust and grit, etc. in it. It's also really tacky, so grabs anything that touches it (skin, clothes, shoes) tends to stick pretty well.




My Dad's so awesome. He has walking pneumonia and still came to help. he did most of the really tough cuts and measurements and made the job look professionally done. Thanks again, Dad!


This is a washed out, fuzzy picture of the old and the new. You can sort of make out one of the glue strip sections of the tile against the black nasty carpet glue we couldn't get off.



Josh plays on the new floor. Now all we have to do is replace the base board moulding.

Total Insanity

We got tired of the carpet in the kitchen that my grandma put in when she owned the house and peeled that back to find some older, uglier carpet.


When that was pulled up, we found what appeared to be carpet glue so old that we could just scratch it off and enjoy the very old linoleum underneath:


No such luck. some of that carpet glue has basically become part of the linoleum, so now we're going to lay some other stuff over the top. Once we buy it, that is. (pictures to follow of us installing it, I'm sure.)

To add to the fun, when I was scooting the oven out so that we could get the carpet off the floor under it, we heard a POP! and the power to the stove died:

The wire on the right had worked itself out of its bracket/plug and tripped to breaker. Boy were we lucky that was all it was! I got it back in place and everything's fine now.

Here's hoping we can get the floor in before friday when we have a fun BBQ planned with some cousins.

English Lessons

After Josh's diaper leaked on the bed and Erin had stripped it:

Me, while carrying him into the bedroom: "Let's go put new shEEts on the bed. Just so you're not confused, I said 'shEEt'. Long e. Not short i."