Missing Child

Amber had a dental cleaning appointment yesterday and she wanted to hook up with me so that I could take Alayna while she went into her exam. All of the other kids were in school, so that plan was that I would take Alayna home with me for lunch and watch her until Amber returned.

Amber was originally going to drop her off at Novell for me. However, plans changed and she called to see if I could pick her up at Sams club. Amber had to check on some things there. I told her that we could meet there.

By the time I got to Sams Club, Amber was already in the store doing her shopping. I walked the store and found her peering into a refrigeration device comparing details on different items. Alayna was sitting in the cart behind her, being a good little girl. I quietly went up to Alayna and put my finger to my mouth to indicate that she needed to be quiet. I then lifted her out of the cart and hurried off around the corner.

In the process of doing there, there was a man watching me very intently. He nonchalantly moved his cart a bit slower so that he could keep an eye on what was going on. I could tell he was nervous. I tried to flash a wink at him to let him know it was all a ruse, but I knew he was still very apprehensive at what I was doing. I waited around the corner for a few more seconds. Amber turned toward the cart to check on Alayna and found her missing. Oh...what a sight it was - she was pretty panicked. I didn't want to cause a scene so Alayna and I hopped out into Amber's vision. Man, she just about killed me. It was pretty funny.

Amber didn't like the joke too much, but I keep telling her it is one of those things she will look back upon with a smile.

Root Canal

About six weeks ago I had a crown replaced on my back molar. The crown was one from my teenage years - it was not seated too smoothly and it was harboring decay. The dentist had been watching it for a while and finally decided that it was time to replace it.

The tooth was sore for a few days thereafter as the dentist has predicted it would be. However, after three weeks, the soreness was still there. I called the dentist and he had me come in. He worked on the tooth a bit and tried to improve the bite to releive the pressure. I waited another week and the pain progressively worsened. I would wake up at night in terrible pain.

Dr. Verne Reed II suggested that I take some heavy doses of ibuprofin and give it a few days. I did this, and while the pain was relieved somewhat with the ibuprofin, it was still there. Reed told me that I probably had a Root Canal coming up if the pain did not go away. I called my dentist and he agreed. He quickly scheduled an emergency root canal for me.

The procedure started monday morning. He finished up the root canal today. I am now scheduled to return two more times in the next month to get a new crown on my tooth where the root canal was performed. The dentist was cool about it though and said that he would not charge me for the new crown. So I will be getting that done without having to fork over twice the money for two crowns.

I'm still in a lot of pain from the procedure, but I pumped myself up on some lortab. I should be good to go here soon.

Dad's Money

Winter is slowly coming to Utah Valley. With the drop in temperature comes the winds and the frost. Our kids have had a hard time throughout the summer keeping the doors to our house closed when leaving or entering our sanctuary. With the lower temperatures, we really feel it when one of them leaves the door open to the weather outside.

In an effort to curb this habit, Amber and I have been talking to the kids about how expensive it is to heat our home. Amber mentioned to them that when they leave the door open, dad's money goes flying out of the house.

Well, they seem to have caught on to the idea. In fact, as we left the house to walk to church on Sunday, Johnathan was skipping the entire two blocks to the chapel singing a new song at the top of his lungs. It went something like this:

Dad's money! Dad's Money! It's flying out the door!
Dad's money, Dad's money! It's flying out the door!
Catch it, Catch it, Catch it!!!

His little chorus would then repeat itself nonstop. The smaller kids started to join in. I turned a little red and pushed onward to the church as our fellow neighborhood saints walked behind us with curious muses regarding Johnathan's new anthem.

Happy Anniversary!

Happy Anniversary Dad and Mom, thanks for letting us spend some time with you this weekend. We love you!

Happy Anniversary

Happy Anniversary Dad and Mom, thanks for letting us spend some time with you this weekend. We love you!

Faith and the Brother of Jared

On Sunday morning Amber bolted the bedroom door so that she could work on her lesson before church. I was with the kids and was feeling a bit guilty for spending so much time over the past couple of weeks on school work. So we got together and made this corny little video.

For slower connections it may take a little while to load, but wait for it, it will be worth it! Also, enjoy the credits at the end of the film.

Waiting on a Story

I hear Dad has a story to tell. I am pretty excited to hear about it. Looks like someone got a photo of the event, anyway!

False Start

Well that little stinker has done it to us. Alayna has refused to use the toilet this week. Every time I tried to put her on the throne she gets her body all rigid like a board, and will not sit on the toilet. I guess we have a false start. And I do not know why each one of our children insist upon teasing us so, by first getting excited about using the bathroom, and then refusing to do so for a while. So it could be a few weeks, or a few months he for we are free of the diapers.

Disclaimer

Amber made me post this. She claims that my last few blog posts were a little error prone - laiden with confusing words that didn't quite fit. Lest anyone feel that I am losing my mental capacities, or fear that I had a pint too many while Amber was at her church meeting last night, I confess that I was too busy to type the blogs so I used some Speech Recognition Software that converts speech to text. I am not very good at it, and it is not perfect - hence I had quite a few words that were typed that were not really what I meant to say, it is just how the software translated my speech. I have to admit, it did pretty good, though.

I did happen to also use it on some of my homework last night, too...I hope I don't get penalized too badly for the errors the software made!

Disclaimer #2...This message was typed manually, thus any mistakes, unintelligible phrases, etc are the sole responsibility of the author and not that of any speech recognition software.

Potty Warrior

On Monday morning when we woke up to start our journey home to Provo, Amber discovered that Alayna had a dry diaper that morning. Amber was quick enough to ask Alayna is she would like to go and use the bathroom. Alayna agreed. I took Alayna into the bathroom and sure enough she went to the bathroom.

Alayna managed to to get through the whole trip keeping her diaper mostly dry. Every stop that we made, Amber would take Alayna into the bathroom and she would use the bathroom.

Today all of the kids have been in a bad mood. I think it is because of lack of sleep. Alayna is of no exception. In her bad mood today, she has refused to go to the bathroom, or rather has been unable to. Thus it remains to be seen, if yesterday's potty adventures will continue on into a habit of a regular potty program.

Fall fun in Spokane

Last Wednesday, we took the kids out of school early and headed off for Spokane. We arrived in Spokane at about midnight. I was very worried about how well Evee would handle the long trip. I have even searched high and low in our house for some ear plugs. I was afraid that that healthy long the little girl would have a lot to complain about during the 11 hour journey.

Evee and the rest of the children did awesome. We hardly heard a cry or complaints the whole trip. We also made a record of two stops along our way. One stop was that Dell MT. Ann and Verne had suggested a small cafe that serve the large portions of the very yummy food. We found ourselves at the small cafe that was once an old wooden schoolhouse. It was nostalgic and the food was terrific. There was no way we would have been able to eat all the food that was given to us. After our brief stop there, we continued on our way to Liberty Lake.

Ann and Verne both had commitments on Thursday. After getting rested up, amber and I dressed the kids up and got them days, and spent a couple of hours taking photos of them for some portraits that will go in our house. The pictures turned out well and we hope to have them hung here soon. (The pictures not the children).

On Friday, the kids road bikes and played while Ann and Amber did some shopping. That night, Verne and Ann had a dinner appointment with the stake president. Amber and I hooked up the karaoke microphone and had a jamming evening with the children.


Saturday was a beautiful day. We did a little Geo caching. We also spend some time up at Green Bluff at the Apple Festival. I believe that everyone else in the valley have the same idea as we did. For there were many people kicking up dust and waiting in lines. It was so bad, that we were stopped in long lines of traffic, just to get out of there when we were done. I was glad that I had asked amber to drive, as I fell right to sleep and didn't notice the traffic hassles on our return trip.

Shortly after our visit to the Apple Festival, we went to the nearby Liberty Lake County Park and set things up in for a barbecue picnic. While the adults worked on getting the food cooked, I played with the kids at the playground. Johnathan and Aylee had contests to see who could cross the monkey bars the fastest. Johnathan was very fast. He beat Aylee several times. However Aylee had more stamina. As they raised over and over again, Aylee started to be Johnathan more and more often. They wanted to continue the races, but I in my great wisdom told them they had better stop. I was a bit too late, however, for Aylee discovered she had popped in a blister that had formed while they were competing at the monkey bars. Aylee had never experienced a blister or a popped blister. This was a very big deal to her, and we heard her complaints for quite some time thereafter.

The night started to get cold, so we can grab the food from the picnic and ran home to have dinner at the house. Ann had cooked some delicious steaks and we enjoyed the need to and the barbecue vegetables in the warm house.

Just a Saturday had been a beautiful day, Sunday was the stormy day of the week. We woke up to rain and enjoyed that the rain for the rest of the day. Aliece and Alayna were both sick through the night. I was selected to remain home with the two girls plus Evee while everyone else went to church. Ashlee and Brett and Michelle arrived to Spokane during church. I took the three girls to the airport to pick up the new arrivals. Michelle's brother had already come to pick her up, so I grabbed Brett and Ashlee and took them to their home.

Brett and Ashlee's new home is awesome. It has a lot of potential for some fun winter projects this year. Their yard is huge and it opens up into a Park with a cool little playground. Aliece asked over and over again if she could go and play at the Park, however she did not realize it was a Park she thought it was their playground.

After church we all got together for a delicious dinner of ham and potatoes. We had an enjoyable time visiting together and saying our good byes. On Monday morning we headed back to Provo.

A few days with Elyvia

Last week we had the great opportunity to have Elyvia stay at our house with us while Ashlee and Brett went to Chicago to visit to Reed and Michelle. As luck would have it, we had sick kids the very first day of Elyvia came to visit. Despite the illnesses that ran rampant in our home during her stay, we all were very excited to have Evee with us.

As you can see from this picture our children were very best friends with Evee while she was here with us. The first few days she was here, Aylee was the only person to home Evee would play with. If Aylee was not close by Evee would be very unhappy. Amber was considering keeping Aylee from school, so that she could be at home with Evee. However, once school started, Evee warmed up to amber quite quickly.

For the week that she was here, Evee was one of the kids. She had a great time playing with toys and dressing up with the rest of our crazy lot.

We are very grateful that we were able to have the Evee in our home.

Addresses

Hello Everyone!

As you all know, Adee is getting married the middle of November. She wants to send invitations to you all, but needs your addresses. If Jen & Dave, Jake & Shan, Joe, and Nae will send me their current addresses, I'll get them to her. Thanks everyone!

WishTips.com

Hey everyone, you may notice that I sent an invitation to you earlier today to view my WishList at www.WishTips.com. No, it is not because my birthday is coming up, though, hey that is a good idea! But, actually, this is a website I have been working on for the past five weeks.

It all came about from Amber who requested the service. It should be a great way for us all to see what each other wants and then claim items so that other people don't give the same gifts that you do. By the way, the person will not be able to see who has claimed or purchased items on the list, so they still won't know what their getting and they can enjoy a surprise or two :-).

You will be able to create your own lists also and share them with whomever you want.

Anyway, try it out and let me know what is confusing and what doesn't work. REMEMBER, this website is not done. I have just completed the bare minimums to get it functional right now. But if it doesn't work, let me know and I'll get it fixed.

Enjoy, and happy gifting (by the way, don't forget my birthday is coming up)! ;-)

Last Day: Wisconsin

On the last day of our trip with Reed and Michelle, we spent the day traveling. We started off by heading up into Wisconsin to say that we had been there. Our first stop was the Kohler Kitchen and Bath Design Center, just north of Milwaukee. It was a multi-level center that had all sorts of bathtubs, showers, sinks, kitchens, bathrooms, etc. It was dang fun to walk around and see the imagination and creativity. Some of their bathrooms were as large as our first apartment!

The next stop on our trip was the Jelly Belly Factory. We got there just before closing, so we didn't get into a tour at all, but we were able to sample many of their jelly belly flavors, including their new Harry Potter line that includes, Boogers, Earwax, etc. I enjoyed the Earwax flavor, personally. To testify that we were there, we each bought a large bag of "Belly Flops" - the Jelly Bellies, that just didn't make it.

While we were in the area we grabbed our first and only geocache from Wisconsin - it was a mile long hike overall on a wet trail that helped us burn the jelly belly calories.


On our way back to Chicago, we stopped at the Naval Base where Reed works and saw the different buildings, and watched all the Navy personel salute "Lt. Dr. Verne Reed II". The Navy base has its own beach, so we stopped there and took this handsome picture of Amber and I on the shores of Lake Michigan.

Reed and Michelle were awesome hosts. We enjoyed every minute of our trip with them. Each day included selfless giving of their time and touring expertise. Top that off with some gourmet meals and it made a very memorable experience.

Heck, since we had to share our wedding night with Reed nine years ago, I thought it was fitting that we made this trip our nine-year anniversary outing so that we could share it with Reed once again!

Day 5 - Another Fun Filled Day in Chicago

Last Saturday on our Chicago trip, Reed had the full day with us along with Michelle. We started off the day by first sleeping in a bit. After we got the zzz's out of our system we loaded up and headed back into Chicago. Our first stop this time was Millenium Park where we did a geocache that led us to this incredible mirrored structure. We had a lot of fun snapping cool photos in the reflective spherical attraction.

Following the park we hit another geocache in the city center. It was of a building that had parts of other buildings embedded in the building. It was cool. We each snapped a picture of ourselves by different buildings that we enjoyed. This picture was of Michelle by a piece of the Salt Lake Temple.

Our final In-Town Chicago stop was Chinatown where we snapped some pictures and hunted for gifts for the kids and some art for Reed and Michelle.

We topped off the evening with some fun Karaoke where we all got involved and crazy :-).

What's Different About Me?

In this rymm, see what you can find.
123 clus I'll give.
Figyor it out in a snap.
See what you can find, behined.

1.ihrautc
2.by mom
3.behind what you see

My Kids Browser is in the Marketplace!

Many of your have already heard about this since it happened early last week, but I thought that I would blog this. Granite Distribution, the company that sells My Kids Browser to store owners notified me that they have sold 135 browsers and that need me to bring them some more! They were sold to several Ma & Pop stores. Deseret Book and Seagull Book have still not taken it. That will be my next goal :).

My hope is that the small book stores will be able to sell the My Kids Browser quickly so that they reorder. This 135 could be the only big sell that I get.... It hopefully, however, is just the first of many orders.

Anyway, I thought I would give you all the update!

Labor Day . . for sure!

Well, Mom and I decided to brave the domestic world and do some canning this past weekend. It was a perfect weekend with an extra day off and then I also took Tuesday off to finish up our work and spend a little more time with mom. Since I had never actually done a lot with Pressure Cooking, I thought it would be much easier than it was. I was quite optomistic and thought the process would go much faster and also give us some lax time. . . mom on the other hand was more realistic.

We canned the beef first and was able to also use Julie's stove down stairs so we could have 2 pressure cookers going at once. The pressure cookers usually take some watching over, however, we had some problems and ended up needing to watch them constantly. So we finally set up our stations and got some reading material and waited for the 2 hour process to complete. We got started Saturday afternoon and continued on through Monday. Then on Tuesday we did a bushel of peaches. It was a lot of fun and also a lot of work. It was fun to spend some time with mom and to learn the skill of canning.

We did take some time to watch a couple movies and do a little shopping. We also went up to Jake and Shan's on Friday and had dinner and visited. It was fun to have mom here and didn't want to let her go home, but I think she was ready to see Dad again.

Day 4 - Downtown Chicago

Reed had to work our first real day there at Chicago. Michelle was gracious enough to show us our first glimpse of the Windy City (wherein Michelle explained why it was really called the windy city - I never knew!)

We traveled on the L-train throughout the city and hit several downtown sites. She snapped our picture for us out on the Navy Pier - a tourist attraction that was built up for the world's fair.

We took a tour of the Franklin Lloyd Wright house which espoused some incredible architecture. It was a cool tour - one that Amber had been wanting to see.

After the tour, we met up with Reed in the city and had some pizza. Then we caught a show called the "Blue Man Group". See some trailers at this link. At the beginning of the show a girl came up to me and asked me if I would participate with them in one of the acts. I told them I would. They gave me some black shoes to wear and told me that near the end of the show they would come and get me.

Just as the show was beginning, they had Reed stand up in the audience and they announced that he had just mapped out the human genome. They asked everyone to applaud him. That was pretty funny - and the evening continued on just a funny. It was a pretty entertaining event. Near the end of the show, as promised, I was "selected" by one of the blue men where they put me in a jumpsuit and whisked me off stage. Once we were off stage, they showed a film of me getting my feet tied up and being hoisted up off the ground, painted blue, and slapped against a huge white canvas to create "art". Meanwhile, in the backstage they were changing my jumpsuit to be one that was already painted blue. They showed me a short clip of what the audience was seeing and then stuffed me in a small metal box that was rolled out onto the stage. On the cart was a large thing of jello. They told me that once the blue men started to shake the jello, I was supposed to poke my head out into the Jello through the hole in the cart. I did so, and once my head was in there, they ripped up the jello and there was my head. It was pretty dang fun.