The Crawford Crew

Darth Vader Genealogy

2010-12-13T20:23:00.000-08:00

Jon, this post is for you.

It will also be helpful to any of you who can trace their family genealogy back through Darth Vader (as many people do) and who seem to find nothing but dead ends upon arriving there.

Our primary children sang "Christmas Bells" for the Ward Christmas Party last Friday evening. Here are the words:

Christmas bells are ringing.
Hear what they say to you.
Jesus was born,
In Bethlehem.
In Bethlehem.

As we were driving around last night I heard Lucas singing in the backseat:

Christmas bells are ringing.
Hear what they say to you.
Darth Vader was born,
In Bethlehem.
In Bethlehem.

Who knew that Darth Vader was born in Bethlehem?

I laughed uncontrollably for 5 minutes, knowing that when I was a boy I too would sing the primary songs and change the words to entertain myself and those around me. The one difference? I was 11! Lucas has figured this out at the age of 3. I'm a little afraid of what lies ahead for us, and yet, also excited to see what his little mind will create.

Whatever it is, I'll be sure to keep you posted.

Lucas Car Dancing

2010-10-27T10:07:00.000-07:00

This was Lucas dancing in the car. He says he is practicing for a dance contest. No more Dancing with the Stars or So You Think You Can Dance. (Lucas thinks he can dance. He can, to bad it is like his mom.)

2010-10-26T09:20:00.000-07:00

Thanks Grandma

2010-10-25T14:25:00.000-07:00

1st Day of School

2010-09-07T09:41:00.000-07:00

Lucas on his 1st day of preschool.

Austin on his first day of Kindergarten.

Dallin dancing in the car enjoy.

2010-08-11T15:14:00.000-07:00

Preschool Graduation. Already?

2010-06-04T08:23:00.000-07:00

I can not believe Austin is finished with preschool and headed to Kindergarten! Where has the time gone. We have LOVED his preschool teacher. She is wonderful. She has done a great job helping get Austin prepared for kindergarten. The good news I guess is that Lucas gets to start preschool with Mrs. Rumel in the fall.

Here is a little clip from Austins graduation. Way to go Austin!! Now on to elementary graduation, middle school graduation, High school graduation, college graduation. One down 4 or 5 to go.

T-Ball Time

2010-04-15T08:33:00.000-07:00

Tasty Toes

2010-03-03T08:27:00.000-08:00

Dallin enjoys a good toe now and then.

Things I Let My Kids Do

2010-03-01T14:48:00.000-08:00

I really needed to mop the dinning room floor and the boys wanted to help. This is what we ended up with.

Watch out Carrie

2009-12-07T12:48:00.000-08:00

Austin and Lucas love this song. They crack me up when they sing it. I hope it does the same to you. Enjoy!!

Lucas' Birthday. 3 really, already?

2009-12-06T21:21:00.000-08:00

Jason's parents were at our house this weekend for Dallin's blessing so we decided to celebrate Lucas' birthday a little early so they could be here. This is his special cake from my uncle. Lucas loves Spiderman. Can ya tell?

This is the action shot. There was only a little bit of spit on the cake.
I totally love watching my kids get truly excited. Being a mom is great. I can't wait until Christmas.

So I have a funny story about Luke. About a week ago we were sitting in our basement hanging out, when Luke started to pull his pants down. So I asked if he needed to go to the bathroom. He said emphatically, "NO". I was telling him to pull up his pants and trying to explain that we don't just go around pulling our pants down. By this point he was bent over grabbing his bum. He looked like Jim Carrey in Ace Ventura. Jason and I were trying not to laugh. I asked him what he was doing. He said "I am looking for my dice" Why was he looking in his pants you may ask? Well he loves pockets. And he loves filling his pockets. But he was wearing sweats, and his sweats don't have pockets so he put it inside his pants. When he went to get it, it was gone, but where could it be? So he started looking. Jason was able to show him that it had fallen down by his feet where the elastic trapped it. We had a good laugh.

Dallin's Blessing

2009-12-06T20:57:00.000-08:00

Dallin's Blessing was today. He is such a good baby. There was no crying and a couple of people even said they saw him smile when Jason held him up to "show" him off to the ward members.

Austin is a very proud big brother.

The blanket that Dallin is on is his great grandma's. She used it in the blessing of all of her children, they have used it with most of her grandchildren's blessings, and so far it has been used by all of her great grandchildren.

Final Soccer Game

2009-11-14T20:50:00.000-08:00

After a shaky start, Coach Crawford and the Earthquakes got on a roll. They finished the season 7-2 (though no one was keeping score, right? I was! We outscored opponents 51-8).

Here is Coach Crawford giving his team their last pregame pep-talk. This is what he told them:

"This is our last game of the season. Can't hold anything back."

I will say that for a group of 3 and 4 year-olds they did very well. Some of the other teams were all over the place. We watched other teams lay on the ground, play tag, and even run off the field.

After the game we had a team pizza party. What a cute team! (Cute? What's up w/ that? No one wants to be known as the "cute" team. We were 7-2, how bout fierce or indomitable? Honestly, cute? C'mon!)

Coach Crawford giving his end of the season talk.

Here He is passing out the trophies.

It was a lot of fun to watch Austin play soccer. I love being a "soccer"mom. It was also a lot of fun watching Jason coach. He definitely grew more comfortable in that role as the season went on. He was a trooper, this was a job that I volunteered him for. If he hadn't done it none of these kids would have had the opportunity to play. Not only did he do it, but he did a great job. He did so awesome that the other parents nominated him to be the T-ball coach. Or maybe none of them wanted to coach T-ball. I am going to go with the good job theory.

Good Example

2009-11-14T20:39:00.000-08:00

Thank you Jason for being a good example to our boys!!

I am very grateful to be married to someone that can show my boys what it means to be a good man and husband.

They are so cute!!

Good job dad!

Fort Friday

2009-11-14T19:48:00.000-08:00

On Friday it was raining. Image that! Rain in Washington! So the boys and I decided to make a Fort and we called it our Friday Fort. It was great, it kept the boys entertained all day!

The Fort went from one end of our house to the other. There were different rooms. They even ate their lunch in there. They had a ball.

Lucas in his "Science" room. He is my boy that likes to figure things out. He wants to know how everything works. He has a great imagination.

Austin is my little ring leader. He can get Lucas to do anything.

I LOVE it when the play together, it is so much fun to hear them make each other laugh!

Happy 5th Birthday Austin

2009-11-03T11:19:00.000-08:00

I cannot believe that Austin is 5. We have had SO much fun having him in our family. Austin is such a good big brother, and a wonderful helper.

For Austin's Birthday he wanted to go to Chuck E. Cheese. He actually wanted to go there last year but it was way too crazy to go in (lesson learned - avoid weekends there). He was a good sport last year and we did Glow Golf instead. The day before his birthday this year he asked if he was going to get to go to Chuck E. Cheese. I told him I was not sure. He went off on how he didn't get to go when he was 4 and now I wasn't going to let him go when he was 5 either. He reminded me that he had been asking for a year to go to Chuck E. Cheese, which he had, but with the craziness of having a baby 2 weeks ago I was not as prepared as I should have been - totally forgot about Chuck E.) I talked to Jason and we decided we should at least make the effort to go. It worked out and the whole family had a great time.

Austin had fun beating Jason at air hockey.

My uncle made this awesome Batman cake.
Thanks Dale and Michael!

I hope his wish comes true. He will not tell me what it was (because then it won't come true), but he assures me it was a good one.
Austin could hardly wait to get to his gifts. He had a great birthday.
We love you Austin!!!
Happy Birthday.

Happy Halloween

2009-11-01T10:45:00.000-08:00

We had a great Halloween! We were lucky enough to be able to spend this Halloween with some family who visited us from Utah. Grandma Joyce and Grandma and Grandpa Ouzts came to see Dallin and help me adjust to having 3 boys.

The first Halloween thing we did was carve pumpkins. Not just normal pumpkins, but huge pumpkins, that our friends Mike and Marjorie got for the boys from the local pumpkin patch. Thanks M&M!

Luke was having too much fun stabbing his pumpkin. Poor pumpkin.
Even Grandpa Ouzts got in on the fun. Austin picked Grandma Joyce to help him with his pumpkin. Who needs mom when grandma is around?

Austin, Grandma Joyce, and Lucas with their Jack-o-lanterns.

Good job guys!

The next fun project we got to do with grandma was paint ceramic pumpkins. These ones we can keep and use every year to remember our fun Halloween with grandma.

Lucas decided it was more fun to paint grandma's hand. Grandma was a good sport and played along.

Before long she was rubbing the pumpkin. This gives new meaning to hand painting! I was hoping for the pumpkin genie to pop out and grant me 3 wishes.

Before long, painting grandma's hand turned into painting themselves.

Austin had like 5 layers of paint. It was flaking off. Good Halloween look.

Lucas got a little help with his pumpkin belly. He had to get a picture with a ceramic tiger he painted.
And of course there were costumes and Trick-or-Treating.

Here is Dallin and his 1st Halloween costume. His shirt says "I love my mummy" Thanks to his cousin Allison for the shirt.

Austin , Dallin, and Lucas.

AKA: Ben 10, Mummy lover, and Buzz Lightyear.

Man they are cute, if I do say so myself.

Buzz is soo ready to go trick-or-treating.

Peter (our neighbor) Austin, and Lucas.

Off to get all the candy they can carry, and a little more in Buzz's case.

Dallin Todd Crawford is here!!

2009-10-20T15:27:00.001-07:00

Jason checking out his new little boy.

Dallin Todd Crawford
10-19-09
7lb 3oz
20 inches

This is Dr. Wiseman. She is the boys Dr. and she is great! Austin and Luke had to watch and of course ask a ton of questions. We love Dr. Wiseman!

Me and my 3, yes count them 3, boys.
I love how excited Austin and Luke were to see Dallin. They cannot stop telling Dallin how cute he is and how much they love him.
They are great big brothers!

Luke wanted to hold his baby brother. Thanks for the help Dad.

Austin is such a big boy, he made sure that he washed his hands, so he could hold Dallin's hand. He is so proud of his little brother.

Utah Trip

2009-10-16T19:49:00.001-07:00

The boys look forward to going to grandma Joyce's because they get to play in her kiddie pool. Jason likes playing in the pool too, but I think he likes it because it is so much hotter in Utah. Or maybe it is because he is just a big kid.
I love brother pictures, aren't they cute?

We were able to go to the Oquirrh Mt. Temple open house while we were in Utah. It was beautiful.

We went to Utah for a big family reunion. One day we went to the lake. Luke was the only one willing to go on the sailboat with me. Thanks to my uncle Phillip we were able to have a fun little ride.

One of my uncles had a really fun water toy. Austin had a ball playing on this with his cousins.

Another day of the reunion was spent at the church. We had a bunch of family pictures taken. This one is with my grandparents and my mom's kids and grandkids. There is starting to be a pretty big group of us.

We had fun visiting and playing games. Jason and I even won the Newlywed game. We had a great time at the reunion. It was so much fun to see our family.

Summer fun

2009-10-16T19:34:00.000-07:00

We got together with some of Jason's mission friends and all of our kids had a blast on the slip'n slide. Watch out here comes Austin.
I love this picture of Lucas.

We went to the Hogle Zoo. We love going to the zoo.

Swimming Lessons

2009-10-16T16:30:00.001-07:00

Austin waiting to start swimming lesson.

Austin waiting with his classmates for their turn.

He loved swimming lessons. By the end he was swimming underwater.

Way to go buddy!!

Kenny Chesney – Sun City Carnival Tour 2009

2009-08-20T15:12:00.000-07:00

Sorry, I’m bored and long-winded. Not a good combination for blog readers. Let me know if anyone actually reads this whole thing. I don’t think anyone will get as much enjoyment out of reading this as I got from writing it. I’ve thrown in a few pictures (snagged from a random blog I found) just to break up the monotony.

It’s been almost 3 weeks since the concert and still no sign of any blog from Angie on the event, I figure I’ll take it upon myself to finally post about it. Y’all feel free to give her a bad time about it. Especially, now that I’ve succumbed and joined the Facebook world, much to my displeasure I might add, I think it’s time for her to take on some blogging duties. Fair’s fair right?

It was a cold and wintry day in March, when tickets went on sale for the hottest summer concert to hit Seattle this year. I had previously spoken with my mom to make sure she could come up and watch the boys the night of the concert. Not too big a deal since she’s a teacher and would be off all summer. She happily agreed, so I confidently went online and purchased the tickets. I placed them in a sealed envelope, wrote “Do not open until July 31st” on the front, took it home and taped it to our bedroom door. This accomplished the desired response from Angie. She’s horrible when it comes to leaving presents alone and/or hiding things away for future dates. As expected she was equal parts excited, furious, and curious all at the same time. You should have seen her; she absolutely didn’t know what to do with herself. She complained to all of her friends and family telling them what I’d done, and soliciting from them any details she might be able to get them to give up. Problem is, none of them had any clue what I was up to. The only person who knew anything was my mom, and, bless her heart, she forgot as soon as I told her what we were doing, when she heard we were leaving her 2 grandsons with her for most of the day. It was perfect. I was the only one who knew what was inside and there was no way I was giving up this secret.

Time passed, and to help her forget about it, Angie took the envelope down and buried it in the sock drawer. We call it the sock drawer, but there are never any socks in it, thus I knew it would be perfectly safe because no one ever opens that drawer. I thought as time approached my plot would be foiled because of all the radio commercials and free giveaways, which is why I put the July 31st date on the envelope instead of the date of the event. It also helped that our anniversary is actually on the 3rd (I think?) so she was never really sure if this was for our anniversary, if it was on the 31st or sometime later. She asked a lot of questions though. What should I wear? How long are we going to be gone? Are we going somewhere? Is it just for us or are the boys coming? If not, who will be watching the boys? I honestly and truthfully answered each and every question, perhaps just not with the level of detail she expected and/or wanted.

As July progressed, Angie’s interest piqued and the questions were coming fast and furious. I bravely withheld the barrage. Interestingly enough, my dad was the only one who figured out where we were going. Finally, with less than a week to go, I gave in and let her open the envelope a few days early. My rationalization was such that the sooner she knew where we were going, the sooner she could take care of all the planning for it, right? I had taken care of the thoughtfulness part in purchasing the tickets, and besides, she’s a much better organizer than I am. My plan worked to perfection as we were well prepared with a backpack full of “vending machine sized foods” (Qwest field’s official description of their outside food/drink regulations) to last us all day at the concert.

We arrived right around 4 PM which was when the first act was set to take the stage. We lost a water bottle at the door despite being told that with the record heat we were having they were encouraging people to bring empty water bottles to the stadium to fill with water once inside. Apparently by “water bottle” they meant anything that’s not hard plastic and has “squishy” sides (so basically bottled water). Nevertheless, the other water bottle was in plain sight, strapped to the side of the backpack, which they thoroughly checked, and they said nothing about it, so at least we had one container with us. We laboriously walked all the switchbacks clear up to the top section and from there took the stairs some 20 odd rows up to our seats. We were way up there, but the stadium’s not too bad really. The seats were still pretty good for viewability (is that a word?).

Lady Antebellum took the stage first. We quickly realized the acoustics for the stadium weren’t the best. The stage was down on the field in one end-zone, and we were probably around the 40 yard line on the other end of the field, but the echo was pretty bad. Lady Antebellum was alright. They did their thing for about 25 minutes or so, and they have some decent songs, but the echo was just really bad so it was difficult to make out anything they were saying.

After Lady Antebellum wrapped, it took about 20 minutes to get the stage set for Miranda Lambert. I’ve never really been a fan of hers as I believe she barely hangs on to the border of country music. With her loud angry lyrics and general thrashing about in videos and other performances I think she’s more rock than anything else. Nevertheless she was there so we may as well watch her right? Turns out we would’ve been better off if we hadn’t. She was absolutely awful. Again with the echo, which admittedly isn’t her fault, but I did not understand a single word she said the entire 35 minutes she was on stage, and I only vaguely recognized ever her most popular of songs. You know how artists like to perform songs live slightly different than their radio versions? That was Miranda, and let me just say that I hate that. The song is popular for a reason, because people like how it sounds. Don’t change it just because you’re live, you screw the whole thing up. On top of that, she had a very bad attitude about being on stage. As would be expected by any sane person, the Kenny Chesney Sun City Carnival Tour is rampant with beach balls flying all over the place, which all the other performers were used to and, dare I say, even enjoyed, at times kicking them back into the crowd. Not so for Miranda. She was visibly upset anytime a ball landed on stage with her and actually took the time to find some sort of device which she then used to start popping all of them and dragging them off stage. Note to Miranda, You’re on the wrong tour if you don’t like beach balls! She was a horrible performer, had a bad attitude, couldn’t understand a word she said all night, and doesn’t even really sing country music in the first place, I couldn’t wait until her set was over.

Mercifully it did finally come to an end, and after such a performance we had no choice but to take a break and eat the sandwiches Angie had packed. We trekked down the stairs out to the upper landing area, found an opening at a picnic table and ate our dinner overlooking Puget Sound, downtown Seattle, and the Seattle docks. It was quite nice I might add, and we saved beaucoup bucks bringing our own food than purchasing there. We figured we had about 20 minutes until Montgomery Gentry was set to take the stage. As we were finishing up, they actually started their set so Angie rushed in to the nearest section to see while I took a little restroom break. When I returned and found her, she said, “Follow me”. She then took me into the section she had been standing at; we walked up a few steps and took our seats in the front row of an otherwise completely empty section. Turns out we had traveled on the outside concourse down about 30 yards closer to the end of the stadium where the stage was, and though we were still in the top section we were now in the front row of that section instead of 20+ rows up, and the acoustics were so much better. Since there was absolutely no one sitting there, we figured we would enjoy the rest of the show right there, at least until someone kicked us out. Turns out the show was not completely sold out, so they didn’t care where you sat so long as you were on the same level as your purchased tickets. With better performers and much better acoustics, the rest of the show was amazing.

You want to talk performers, look no further than Montgomery Gentry. Those guys know how to have a good time onstage and put on a good show for people. Their set lasted for 45 minutes and it was nothing but all their top hits. They had fun with the beach balls, interacted with the crowd, and sang some good ‘ol country music for all to enjoy. They were incredible! Definitely worth the price of admission if you ever have a chance to see them live.

After Montgomery Gentry wrapped, it was another 20 minutes before Sugarland took the stage. There was some doubt as to their arrival because they had missed the prior couple tour dates because Jennifer Nettles was on bed rest after losing her voice. We were quite disappointed that they might be a no show, but after a couple weeks of rest, she was all set to go and they did indeed arrive in Seattle and put on a show to remember. They performed for about an hour, hitting all their popular songs and few others as well. Jennifer’s a fantastic storyteller and when she took the time to properly introduce a song, tell where it came from, and the emotions behind the lyrics, the same songs you’ve heard a hundred times on the radio take on a whole new meaning. It was very cool to understand a little more about some of the songs. Sugarland then delivered the most memorable moment of the entire evening, at least for me. Jennifer started introducing a song she said would be released on their upcoming album. It was a remake of a song she enjoyed and hoped we would enjoy it too. I literally got goosebumps when the music started. For the reaction the crowd gave her, I don’t think most people even recognized the song, let alone knew the band that originally performed it, and I certainly don’t think it got the reaction I think it deserved or that they thought it might get being performed in Seattle. However, the moment was not lost on me, and I sang every word with her as she belted out “Better Man” by Pearl Jam. The only way to describe it is awesome. Simply awesome. Sadly, I just don’t think the country fans of today were able to make the connection with the grunge rock that was 90’s Pearl Jam, even here in their birthplace of Seattle.

Finally, around 9:15 PM Kenny took the stage. Popping up from a hole in a tent at mid-field and soaring over the crowd on his way to the stage was quite a grand entrance. High energy hits rattled off consecutively for quite some time, then some down time performing slower songs and catching his breath, followed again by high energy, more down time, and finally an all out hyperactive finish. I’m not sure how I kept up, and I wasn’t the one running around all over the stage for 2 hours (or dancing spasmodically in the aisles I might add). It was a fantastic show, just like the first time I saw Kenny 9 years ago.

Times were different back then. It was the summer of 2000, I was fresh off my mission and still new to the country music scene, having recently converted partly because of Kenny’s newly released 4th album, “Everywhere We Go”. Of course Kenny was not Kenny back then, if you know what I mean. I had purchased the album and liked every song on it. Then I heard he was coming to the biggest annual event in Southwest Washington, the Clark County Fair. For $80 I purchased two seats near the stage (I paid $130 for the two seats in the nosebleeds at Qwest), grabbed a date, and headed down to the show. All told I’d guess there were maybe 1,000 people there that night. Kenny of course put on a fantastic show, singing all his brand new hits. It’s funny, if you check Wikipedia for Kenny Chesney his first listed Tour was 2001 Greatest Hits Tour, so this 2000 thing doesn’t even qualify as an official “tour”.

Contrast that with Aug. 1st at Qwest Field with easily 50,000+ in attendance, 4 opening acts, high-flying/soaring over the crowd entrance. Not to mention the intervening 8 albums, 8 tours, too many top hits to count, 6 CMA’s, and 6 ACM’s including 4 straight Entertainer of the Year awards. My little Kenny’s all growed up and done made himself into a country superstar!

Here’s some more pics:

And Now For Something Completely Random…

2009-08-04T07:41:00.000-07:00

Yesterday several potentially life-altering questions puzzled my mind. Yet, rather than post them, something within me said I should go with the Happy Anniversary message yesterday instead. So I saved them for you today. Here goes:

Is it wrong to use Burger King ketchup on a McDonald’s hashbrown?

I did just that yesterday, and I gotta tell you, I couldn’t really tell that much of a difference. I think it worked just fine.

As I pondered the above, I thought, is it ketchup, catchup, or catsup? Why do we have such options?

Finally, the age old question, Burger King or McDonald’s?

And so, I now pose to you. What say ye?

Happy Anniversary

2009-08-03T10:26:00.001-07:00

7 years ago this very day I was married in the Salt Lake City Temple. I’m told it was the best day of my life and I’d better not forget it. So here I am actively not forgetting it. Thank goodness for email alerts!

What have we accomplished? Well…

…3 different apartments (Provo downstairs, Provo upstairs, Renton)

…1 condo (Kent)

…1 home (Kent)

…2.5 kids (Austin, Lucas, HELP???)

…1 retirement (Angie from coaching)

…3 cars (Ford Focus, Chevy S-10, Ford Windstar)

…Several church callings, Jazz games, camping trips, even a few concerts

…and many, many happy memories

…but only 1 dishwasher for the span of exactly 1 year (in the apt. in Renton).

Despite all that, or probably because of all that, we still love each other today.

Happy Anniversary Angie. Maybe someday you’ll get that dishwasher you’ve always wanted.

P.S. Now that I’ve taught Angie how to blog, she has the “assignment” to cover the Kenny Chesney concert we attended this past Sat. night. Y’all be nice to her when she posts. We want to encourage more of this positive family history type of activity and less of the bad habit that is Facebook.

Hottest Day Ever!

2009-07-29T16:13:00.000-07:00

Seattle hit 103° today. It’s officially the hottest day ever on record, which dates back to 1891. I’ll take time to appreciate that as I sit in my air-conditioned office sipping on a Strawberries & Crème Frappuccino Blended Crème from Starbucks, while Angie and the boys are sweating in misery in our un-air-conditioned home. It just doesn’t get that hot up here so virtually no one has AC. Maybe she should go to my parent’s. They have AC and keep it nice and cool.

Anyway, that’s all. Hottest day ever. Dang it, my frappuccino’s gone.

Grilled Oysters...Yum!

2009-07-28T12:02:00.001-07:00

I did it. I actually ate one of these things. It looked not much different than this one, except it was lying in a pool of butter. Here’s how it went down (literally and figuratively).

This past weekend was our Ward picnic. We went last year and had a great time, plus, in addition to the typical hot dogs and hamburgers, they always have plenty of salmon on the menu. Can’t beat that! Well, this year someone also decided to pick up a few dozen oysters. I stayed with the boys while Angie went through the line to get them some food. I then stayed with the boys and instructed Angie to get herself some food, after which I had plans to then get myself something. Well, she came back with two heaping platefuls of food. One plate with salads for us to share and one with burgers, salmon, and this huge oyster sitting in its shell right on top.

She decided that since I am generally a fan of trying new foods, I would most certainly want to try a grilled oyster. I must admit, it is true that I enjoy trying new foods, however, I can honestly say I’ve never been tempted to even nibble on an oyster.

I watched another gentleman in our ward scoop up his oyster with his fingers and slide the entire thing into his mouth. I watched a missionary try to nibble at it and unsuccessfully quit after one little bite. If I was going to do this, I was going to go all the way. Why eat one little bite? You get all the taste, but no satisfaction in saying you were able to eat it. I psyched myself up, grabbed it with my hand and plopped the whole thing in my mouth.

It was much too big to swallow so there was definitely some chewing involved. And much to my surprise it was actually pretty good. I wouldn’t say it was fantastic, and I didn’t rush over to grab a bunch more, but it did have some pretty good flavor (see pool of butter reference above) and the texture wasn’t at all a problem. I would more than likely venture out and try another one sometime, perhaps next year’s Ward picnic.

My friend is the Best!!!

2009-07-21T21:13:00.000-07:00

Thanks MyR. I love my blog face lift!!! Your are great. You must have been really tired of looking at the same old pictures. We need to get a new computer, I can't download any of the 100's of cute pictures of my boys to put on the blog. Thanks again you are the best and I hope the next couple of weeks go quickly so you can see your cute new baby. You know Angie is a good name for a boy or girl.

Jason is making me do this.

2009-07-20T14:00:00.000-07:00

I am having a forced blogging message. I have no time to be doing this. We have people coming over for family home evening tonight and I have to clean my house!! But there should be a good blog to follow about FHE. Now over to Jason. Thanks for the lesson, I love you.

Something Better

2009-06-25T08:37:00.001-07:00

One of Austin’s favorite shows is ABC’s Wipeout. It was on last night so we sat downstairs as a family watching it. That has nothing to do with this story, other than to establish the fact that we were all together watching TV last night. Well, the College World Series was on too, so we were flipping back and forth. More specifically it was game 3 of the best-of-three Championship Round between Texas and LSU. It wasn’t all that close, but I definitely wanted to see the last out and subsequent dogpile celebration. When LSU finally won, the dogpile ensued.

Angie said to Austin, “Someday you’ll get to do that” in hopes that someday we’ll get to attend the College World Series and watch one of our boys celebrate a national championship. Are we setting expectations too high? Anyway, back to the story.

He vehemently denied that he would ever participate in any such celebration.

“I will not do that,” he said, “because I’m going to play something better than baseball.”

I blacked out for a moment, but Angie was able to resuscitate me. When I finally came to, we inquired as to what could possibly be better than baseball (both of us were quite worried at this point, with our dreams of a College World Series hanging by a thread).

Austin’s response?

“I’m going to play SOFTBALL” he exclaimed.

The rest of the night was a blur for me. Not from my brief fainting spell, but because Angie was literally bouncing off the walls with happiness and excitement. All I could see was a blur as she raced around the room dancing with joy.

I guess we’ll have to be a little more specific when we mention attendance at the "College World Series" next time. Baseball/Softball, Omaha/Oklahoma City, 60 feet 6 inches/43 feet, not much difference, right? Oh yeah, then there’s that whole men/women thing too.

Please Sir, I Want Some More

2009-06-11T08:36:00.000-07:00

Last night for dinner we had hot dogs. Once we were all seated, prayer was offered, and we were off. It wasn’t long before I heard, “I want some more.” Having consumed one hot dog, another was prepared.

Then, a few minutes later, “I want some more.” I examined the plate and sure enough hot dog #2 was gone, so another was given.

“I want some more.” #3 consumed, yet another given.

“I want some more.” #4 gone and, you guessed it, another given.

Finally, after five hot dogs had been wolfed down, I heard “I’m done.”

Are you kidding me? 5 hot dogs? 5 hot dogs? Who in their right mind sits down and eats 5 hot dogs in one sitting?

I couldn’t handle more than 2 myself. Must have been Jason you might be thinking. Oh no, that’s where you’d be wrong my friend. While he does do a miraculous job of making food disappear, he called it quits after a measly 3 dogs last night.

Austin? Nope, not this night. He had his customary 2 before he got distracted by something and took off.

It was Lucas! Yes, you read that right. Lucas! He polished off 5 hot dogs last night for dinner.

He’s 2 people! As in 2 years old. As in, still in nursery at church, just venturing into the world of big boy underwear and going potty on the big boy potty. Yeah, that 2. What 2 year old eats 5 hot dogs for one meal?

We are going to be in some serious trouble when these 3 boys are 18, 16, and 13 (probably before that really).

Drumroll Please....

2009-06-03T08:43:00.000-07:00

Baby #3 is......

.......wait for it........

.......wait for it........

IT'S A BOY!!!!!!!!!!

Due date Oct. 19th.

Snap, Snap

2009-03-20T12:38:00.000-07:00

Before anyone gets the wrong idea, I did NOT teach my son this. How could I? It doesn’t work when I do it, all I get is a punch in the face, okay maybe not the face, but at least in the arm, but it still hurts. But my point is, since I can’t do it how could I possibly teach it to Austin? Remember also that he’s an absolute sponge (http://crawford-crew.blogspot.com/2008/07/absorbent-and-yellow-and-porous-is-he.html). I have no idea where he gets half of the things he tells me. Now, on with the post.

The Date: March 18, 2009
The Time: About 9:30 AM
The Place: Downstairs family room at the Crawford residence
The Setting: It’s the first day of NCAA March Madness 2009. The brackets have been filled out and the tournament’s first games are just beginning.
The Players: Austin – 4 yrs. Old; Mom – “Not a day over fast cars and freedom”

Mom: “Austin, guess what today is?”

Austin: “I don’t know, what?”

Mom: “Today is the day they start playing the basketball games. So you will find out if you picked the winners or not.”

Austin runs and jumps into the brown recliner situated in front of the TV showing the games just starting.

Austin: “Mom, Mom! I need help. Mom, hurry, I need help.”

Mom [freaking out at first because that’s what she does]: “What is it?”

Austin: “I need it to recline!”

Mom reclines the chair. Austin situates himself so he can relax and watch the games.

[A few minutes go by].

Austin snaps his fingers loudly twice. Mom ignores, not knowing what he’s doing.

Austin: “Mom, when I do this [snaps fingers again] that means I need a blanket.”

Mom: “Did your no-good, low-down, dirty, rotten, [expletive], [expletive], [expletive] father tell you to say that? I’m calling him right now and giving him a piece of my mind!”

THE END

I Don’t Snore…I Speak Wolf

2009-03-16T13:08:00.001-07:00

Hello. My name is Jason. This is my first meeting, and I’m a little self-conscious about being here. I love my family and they say I need help, so here I am. I suppose the first step is admitting I need help. That’s why I’m here. I need help because I snore. I thought I could control it, but lately that’s not been the case. Not that it excuses my behavior, my choices are my own, but I grew up in a home where both my parents were chronic snorers. Sometimes they got out of control and I would hide under my pillow at night. I told myself I would never be like that. I would never be like them. But then I started snoring too. Just a little bit at first. I’d snore on the weekends with my friends, when I’d sleepover at their house. Our parent’s had no idea we were snoring into the early hours of the morning, and late morning/early afternoon when we could get away with it. We thought it was cool. But then I just couldn’t get enough. It wasn’t long before I was taking it to the next level. I began snoring every night shortly after going to bed. And when I woke up in the morning, all I could think about is laying back down and snoring some more. It escalated from there. Now I frequently snore alone, sometimes starting as early as 10 AM if I can sneak away for a nap that early. I know it’s a problem, but I just like how I it makes me feel.

But it’s wrong. I know it’s wrong. Now I see that my problem has started affecting my family, and I swore that I would never let that happen. This morning was the last straw. It started off normal enough. I woke up to find two kids snuggling between my wife and I. They’ve become quite adept at sneaking in during the night and climbing into bed with us. Neither of us wakes up so they get away with it. My oldest, Austin, knows it’s alright to come into Mom & Dad’s room when he wakes up in the night, but that he’s supposed to sleep in the sleeping bag on the mattress on the floor next to our bed. Yet most mornings we still wake up and find him there between us. My wife asked him this morning why he climbs into our bed instead of sleeping on the mattress on the floor. “I have nightmares,” he replied.”It scares me when I sleep on the floor and Dad is making those wolf sounds!”

I won’t let this happen! I won’t raise my kids like this. I won’t be that kind of father. I need my family more than I need to snore. My name is Jason. I snore, and I need help.

Bitter Bachelor

2009-03-03T17:21:00.000-08:00

First of all, I want to make it very clear that I DO NOT WATCH THIS SHOW!!! Why don’t I watch it? Hopefully that will all be made clear after reading this.

Second, why am I blogging about it if I don’t watch it? That’s a great question. For some unknown reason my otherwise completely sane, normal, beautiful, intelligent wife made me watch the finale last night. Literally, she had me bound and gagged with toothpicks keeping my eyes open, sitting in front of the TV watching. I had no choice in the matter.

After watching perhaps 30 minutes of the show I predicted the rest of the entire nights events. That’s why I don’t watch the show. It’s always the same and it’s always very, very lame. Also, I think the entire premise of the show is flawed from the very beginning. I absolutely do not believe that the proper way to go about finding someone with which to spend the rest of your life is to make out with as many strangers as possible. It just doesn’t work like that. I also believe that if a person is truly honest with themselves, deep down they will know that you can’t love two different people as much as they (the contestants) always say they do at the same time. Over the course of a lifetime you may in fact love several different people with the same intensity and passion as to want to spend the rest of your life with them. But to do so at the same time is impossible. You will always prefer one person over the other. That’s why I think this shows a complete crock of crap.

Anyway, back to last night. Let me first explain my background knowledge on this season, what little there is, before seeing last night’s episode. And let me also explain that the only reason I know any of this is because that idiot is from Seattle so he’s been all over the news everywhere up here, such that I couldn’t escape him no matter where I went. Prior to last night I knew that he was down to two girls and I knew that they decided to shoot the “After the Rose” show in private because of the extreme drama and emotions it would be causing. I had also seen the commercial showing his complete meltdown after telling Molly goodbye, although in the commercial it wasn’t divulged yet over whom he was crying.

That’s it. That’s the extent of the knowledge I had about the show. As soon as I saw the dates with Melissa and Molly, I knew exactly what was going to happen. I knew he was going to choose Melissa. I knew that his major breakdown from the commercial would be when he told Molly that he hadn’t chosen her. I knew things wouldn’t work out with Melissa. And I knew that the “After the Rose” segment would be devoted to the breakup with Melissa and the subsequent attempt to mend things with Molly. It was all so obvious and thus all the more painful to actually sit through and watch. Not emotionally painful, but physically painful, as in torturous.

Here’s the politically incorrect portion of my ranting. Right about now you’re asking yourself, how did I know all this? Well, I have seen one prior season of the show, and, as a reality show fan, I’ve seen plenty of other reality dating shows, and they all end the same way. They always, ALWAYS choose the “hot” girl and never the “beautiful” girl. It doesn’t take long, a couple of weeks in this case, to realize that you don’t really want to marry the “hot” girl. You might think you want to, but you don’t. You just want to fool around with her for a while, show her off to your friends, and perhaps even your family a time or two. But that soon wanes, and you quickly realize that you actually want to marry the “beautiful” girl. And deep down, this is something you’ve always known, you just weren’t honest enough to admit it (e.g. compare his reaction to letting Molly go where he was doubled over in pain, tears, and sorrow to his reaction when he dumped Melissa where it seemed like he couldn’t have cared less). Time will tell if Molly really is a “beautiful” girl, because, as I also contend, anyone who would go on a show like that isn’t really looking to get married and settle down for life, but rather some face time on camera, but in this scenario where each has to play one of the roles, Molly was definitely the “beautiful” girl and thus the better choice. It was all so very, very predictable.

For what it’s worth, I think Molly should’ve kicked him to the curb too, after what he did to her! Not that they’re showing their real feelings anyway, after all, it’s just a show right?

Is That a Banana in Your Pocket?

2009-03-02T09:35:00.000-08:00

We were out and about this weekend running some errands. Austin had informed me that McDonald’s now had Spiderman toys and that he definitely needed to go there and get one. So we made a deal. If he was good during all of Mom and Dad’s errands, we would stop for lunch at McDonald’s and he could get a Spiderman toy.

As it turned out, the errands didn’t take quite as long as expected so we had some time to kill. So off to DI we went (that’s Deseret Industries for those who don’t know, and it’s roughly equivalent to Goodwill, only this one’s run by Mormons). At any rate, there’s a DI in Federal Way that’s only about 15 minutes from our house, and we sometimes go there to kill some time. Our trips there usually end up with a new board game coming home with us. They cost at most $2, and we’ve come home from DI with some of our most often played and entertaining games. Austin gets to pick the game, and I enjoy picking through the book section where paperbacks are $0.50 and hardbacks are $3-$4.

This particular trip we ended up with an armload of books and the game Jumpin’ Monkeys (for a total cost of $13 – YEAH!). Austin couldn’t wait to get home and play it, after McDonald’s of course. Upon arriving home we put the game together. It’s a simple 4 piece tree with holes for the monkey’s to swing on. You simply place a monkey on your launcher and flip them up onto the tree, hoping one of their arms will catch in one of the holes. 4 players, 4 monkeys each, the first to get all their monkeys on the tree wins. This is the part of the game Austin loves. I found this picture of the game online which shows perfectly how it works:

The part that Luke loves is the bananas. Aside from flipping the monkeys onto the tree, every time you successfully land one, you get a cardboard banana. Thus, whoever lands all their monkeys in the tree and collects all their bananas wins the game. Luke could care less about the monkeys, but loves playing with the bananas. And this weekend he was wearing a little hoodie that has a pouch in the front. He loves to put things in his pouch and then show off what he has. He soon had all the bananas in his pouch and went running into the kitchen to show Angie.

“Mom, look. Is that a banana in my pocket?” he exclaimed. Sure enough, it was. A whole bunch of them!

Skate Connection

2009-02-20T14:59:00.000-08:00

The last time I went roller-skating was the best day of my life. I didn’t know it then. I didn’t even know it shortly thereafter. In fact, one could argue that to this day I still do not yet fully appreciate that day. What day was it? I have no idea! Boys don’t remember silly little things like that. What I can tell you is that it was 2001…I think. Okay, what I can definitely tell you is that it was late October. That much I know for sure. Because the last time I went roller-skating was on a blind date. Yeah, that’s right, I said it. It was a blind date. And the theme of that blind date was Halloween which inherently tells me it must have been late October…I think. At any rate I was set up by a girl in my FHE group in my singles ward in Provo, UT whilst I was attending BYU. That’s Family Home Evening for all you who don’t speak “Mormon-ese”. There was a group of at least 10, and we all met at this girl’s house. That’s the day I met this nice young lady named Angie. She was taken with me right away, I could tell. I must admit though, I did have an unfair advantage, but that’s another story entirely. Hint – it had something to do with a retro 70’s shirt I had procured from a friend for the evening (cut me some slack it was Disco Night at the rink…but then, isn’t every night Disco Night at the roller-rink?). At any rate, I’ll leave that story for Angie to tell, but don’t let her fool you, she was hooked from day one.

Let’s bring this full circle now. It’s been just over 7 years since that first night. We’ve since been through 2 graduations, 2 job promotions, 1 job retirement, 5 moves (1 really big one), 3 apartments, 1 condo, 1 home, 2 kids thrown in there somewhere…oh and there was a wedding in there somewhere too. And finally, last night we got back to where it all began, at the roller-rink.

It was a Ward Activity so that was fun, and by fun I mean free. And it was obviously the first skating experience for both Austin and Luke. Well, not so much Luke, but we’ll get to that. We had our neighbor kid, Peter, with us as well. Here’s Austin and Peter with their skates on:

After they walked me around a little bit…

I was ready to be on my own, thus freeing them up to go have fun. I was really surprised how quickly both of them caught on. Much quicker than me, I can tell you that much.

Here’s another one of Austin’s friends. His name is Jared:

And finally, here’s what Luke did all night:

Notice that he has no skates on. He wanted absolutely nothing to do with the skates. The closest we ever got was getting him to take his shoes off (notice no shoes either). Now, herein lies the problem. Having no skates on actually made him the fastest one in the entire building. No one could catch him because we were all in skates. And once he realized this, he had a fantastic time running all over the building, from the video games, to the middle of the rink, and back again. His favorite thing to do was run the length of the rink (right down the middle that is) with his head flopped back, looking up into all the flashing lights, and cutting off countless skaters as they tried not to plow over him. Luckily everyone there was in our ward so no one really cared.

So there you have it. That was our first family roller-skating adventure. Who knew so many years ago that one little blind date would result in all the fun we’ve had. Happy 7th Rink Anniversary Angie! Now go blog about that awesome shirt I was wearing. Everyone’s dying to hear the story now. Don’t forget the part where you totally fell for it!

Anyone Have a Spare Ark?

2009-01-08T12:25:00.000-08:00

You ever get to the point where you have so many emails in your inbox that you just delete them all and resolve to do better? Is that called email critical mass? Well, as you all know, I have a bad case of blog critical mass. It’s just too much to try to really go back and catch up on. So you all get the following update on the past 2 months of our lives:

Austin turned 4 – Happy Birthday!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Luke turned 2 – Happy Birthday!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Happy New Year Everyone!

Happy Birthday Myr!

Happy Birthday to Me!

See, you didn’t miss much. And now we’re back to today, or rather last night, which prompted the post today. Seriously, does anyone out there have an extra Ark your not using? We could use one in our house.

By my calculations we pumped out 1,260 gallons of water from our basement last night between the hours of 5 PM and 3 AM. And, as you all know, when I say “we” I really mean Angie. She’s amazing. I had a late night at work last night and didn’t get home until 10 PM. By then she had been sucking up water for 5 hours while watching the boys and cooking dinner for them, only taking a break to call a friend to see if we could borrow their shop-vac to use in conjuction with ours. Again, have I told you she’s amazing?

We had our 14 gallon shop-vac and our friends 20 gallon shop-vac running constantly from 7 PM to about 1:30 AM. That’s when it stopped raining (FINALLY) and we were able to keep up with just the one shop-vac running. From 5 PM to 1:30 AM each shop-vac took 5 minutes to fill up and it took us about 1 minute to empty it outside down our driveway. Thus, we were making 10 trips an hour with both shop-vacs and still just maintaining with the incoming water. We knew immediately when it stopped raining because we didn’t get wet when we went outside (ha ha – that was a joke if you didn’t catch it). But honestly, we could tell when it stopped raining because we finally started making progress on the water. Over the next hour and a half the seepage slowed dramatically, until finally the last bucket took 25 minutes to fill and after another 20 minutes there was no visible puddle of water under our stairs. So at 3 AM we finally called it quits and went to bed.

Cross your fingers, knock on wood, say Hail Mary’s, whatever it is you do, we need no rain for a while. We have 2 spots along the edge where the basement floor meets the wall in the unfinished portion of our basement that allow seepage to come up. The one in the back of the house isn’t too bad, a slow trickle that if left unchecked will produce a decent sized puddle overnight. The one in the front of the house, just under our stairs at the front door, is like a lake. When we’d shut off the shop-vacs to empty them, you could sit there and literally watch the water level rise in seconds. It seeps in along an 8 foot section of wall right in that area. There’s not just one noticeable spot that clearly lets the water in, it just kind of oozes inside all along that section.

So there you have it. By the way, the boys were awake that entire time. With two shop-vacs running there was no way they were going to sleep. They were wide awake eating ice cream at 2 AM watching Kung Fu Panda and loving it. Of course they had to sit in the bean bag directly in front of the TV with the volume cranked way up to even hear the movie.

Now, about that Ark. Anyone?

Health and Wellness…and Emergency Response Fair?

2008-11-18T14:21:00.000-08:00

Today my company hosted a Health and Wellness Fair. They brought in a dozen or so vendors relating to, what else, health and wellness, all offering free testing, special offers, etc. One of the offers was for free flu shots. I thought, heck, why not go get a free shot. I’m fairly certain I’ve never had a flu shot before and the price is never going to be better, right? So I went over with a co-worker and we both got shots. Since this was my first shot I was asked to remain in the area for at least 10 minutes and check back in with the nurse before leaving. No problem.

Shots don’t bother me, and the same held true for this occasion as well. I got my shot, and since I had to hang around for a while I talked to some of the vendors. I got a complimentary toothbrush, dental floss, 5 minute massage, even a bone density scan (ha ha for those of you who know what my current favorite commercial is right now – my bone density is fine by the way). I checked back in with the nurse, she signed me out, and I was good to go.

I made the short walk back to my building and was joined in the elevator by 2 other co-workers and a couple of other gentlemen. One co-worker was directly in front of me, the other on the other side of the elevator with the other guys between. We made a couple of stops and all that remained were myself, 2 co-workers, and another gentleman, each in our respective corners of the elevator. All of a sudden my co-worker who was directly in front of me face planted against the front of the elevator. No one did anything. Perhaps he just lost his balance right? No need to embarrass the guy, just let him collect himself and be on with it. He remained upright, adjusted his glasses, but I noticed he had a death grip on the hand-rail. All of a sudden, he face plants again. At that point I step up behind him and ask if he’s alright. He mumbles something about getting a flu shot and collapses against me. For a brief moment I was supporting most of his weight, and then my other co-worker jumps in and takes one side of the now passed out guy. Meanwhile the elevator stops on the 17th floor and opens up. The 4th guy props the door open while we attempt to carry him out of the elevator. We don’t make it far at first, we seem to be stuck on something. I realize at that point that he still has a death grip on the hand rail. So while the two of us are supporting him I simultaneously am attempting to pry his hand off of the hand rail. Finally his hand is free and we drag him out of the elevator and sit him down on the floor against the far wall. He’s still completely out at this point. We ask some passersby to call 911 at which point the guy wakes up. He’s really out of it, but says he’ll be alright, just needs to remain sitting for a while. No one had left to call 911 yet, so we changed it to have someone call security. No one knows how to do that so the 4th guy goes back down to the lobby to get building security. Meanwhile someone has brought water which really helped bring the guy around. He was really pale and sweating heavily, but was a lot more alert. He maintained that he would be alright, but we all continued to stay there while he rested and sipped on water. Security showed up and cancelled any and all calls for 911 after verifying everyone was alright. A few minutes later I accompanied the guy back to his cubicle on the 18th floor and made sure his cube-mates knew what happened so they could keep an eye on him. We encouraged him to go home if he continued feeling ill effects. Nothing’s so important here that can’t wait for his return tomorrow. He said that he’s passed out a couple of times from shots before and that he’ll be fine with some rest. He said he felt fine after he got the shot and as he walked back to our building, but the elevator motion just got to him.

So there you have it. That’s what my last couple of hours has been like. My arm is a little tender. Go figure.

Welcome Eva

2008-11-17T11:45:00.000-08:00

We have a new niece! YEAH!!!!!

Her name is Eva Elizabeth Dobesh.

Birth Date: November 13, 2008 at 8:08 AM
Weight: 6 lbs.
Length: 19 inches

Eva comes to us via Angie's sister Lisa and proud papa Jeff.

Superheroes!

2008-11-12T09:10:00.001-08:00

We have some more pics on the camera of Halloween, but we’ve not downloaded those ones yet. So you’re stuck with this one, taken at the Trunk-or-Treat. Austin wanted to be Batman which worked out nicely because we already had the costume. Angie put together a Robin costume for Luke. There were some more details on the front of his shirt, but by this time they’d all fallen off. Still, didn’t she do a fantastic job? The part of Spiderman was played by our neighbor Peter.

Confession

2008-10-24T14:54:00.001-07:00

It’s confession time. I suppose I’m prepared to lose friends over this issue, however, I really hope it doesn’t come to that. Many of you may in fact be offended by what I’m about to say because, quite frankly, this post is a result of my visiting your blogs.

So, here goes….I HATE PLAYLISTS ON BLOGS!!!! There I said it. It’s out. I just can’t hide it anymore.

I have never identified a single good reason for having a playlist on a blog. If I wanted to listen to music, I’d go listen to the radio or go to a website that allows me to tune in to my favorite station. But that’s not why I’m visiting your blog. I’m visiting your blog because I want to READ about you and/or your family. I want to know what you’ve been up to lately. I want to follow up on how your latest weekend trip went. I want to know how your kids are doing. But I absolutely do not want to hear a random sampling of your favorite songs. I just don’t.

Many of the blogs I follow do in fact have playlists, and the first thing I do is turn it off. And as if having the playlist in the first place isn’t irksome enough, most of the time I have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page to find it, then I have to scroll all the way back to the top to read the latest post. GRRRRR!!!! But the absolute worst offense? Putting up a video on your blog for everyone to watch, and then reminding them to first turn off your playlist. DOUBLE GRRRRR!!!! It’s like you’re admitting that you know it’s an annoyance and yet it’s still there.

Am I alone in this fight? Please tell me someone out there is with me on this?

That’s all. I relinquish my soapbox for the day. Have a great weekend everyone.

Gladys Knight

2008-10-20T11:01:00.000-07:00

According to Wikipedia, purveyor of all truth and knowledge on the Internet (right?), “Gladys Knight joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1997. She had occasionally teased LDS Church President, the late Gordon B. Hinckley, that his flock needs to inject some "pep" into their music. Knight created and now directs the Mormon-themed choir Saints Unified Voices (http://www.suvchoir.org/). SUV has released a Grammy Award-winning CD titled One Voice, and occasionally performs at Mormon church firesides.”

One such fireside was held in Seattle this past weekend, and Angie and I were able to attend. If I had to sum it all up in one word, I would say “WOW”. If I had to sum it up in a few paragraphs, well, that’s what you’re going to get now.

This was definitely not your typical, run-of-the-mill, LDS fireside. In fact, it was quite uncomfortable at first. After all, have you ever been in the chapel clapping and cheering during I Am a Child of God, Because I Have Been Given Much, and throughout someone’s personal testimony? Have you ever been in a chapel fully decked out with rock band regalia, including keyboards, electric guitars, and speakers bigger than you are? It took some getting used to. I believe I adjusted a little quicker than Angie did. To me it simply felt like I was back in Oklahoma at a typical Baptist service.

As the choir first entered, the music was blaring, everyone was on their feet and many were clapping to the beat. After everyone was settled, the meeting was opened by a local leader who advised, “I felt as if some of the clapping was a bit timid for the occasion. Don’t worry, we’ve checked with Salt lake and they’ve confirmed that this building is structurally sound enough to withstand whatever level of clapping you can attain this evening. So relax, have a good time, and let the choir and Sis. Knight know you appreciate their talents they’ve decided to share with us tonight.”

After that, everyone loosened up. Despite the uneasy feeling at first, the performance of Sis. Knight and the choir was simply amazing, such that one could hardly keep from clapping in beat and applauding at the conclusion of each song. And yet at the same time one would’ve been hard pressed to not feel the spirit that attended throughout the entire performance. The songs were simply amazing. The choir and its members were phenomenal. Throughout the evening there were several soloists who performed, all of which were incredible. There were songs performed in Spanish and Hawaiian (is that the name of the native tongue???) which were beautiful. I just don’t know that there’s anything I can say that will let you fully appreciate how great this event was. As an official fireside there was no charge for attending, however, tickets had to be obtained as there was limited seating available. I don’t think I’ve seen a stake center that full of people before. In short, if any of you hear about this fireside coming to your stake, do yourself a favor and plan on attending. Not in any way to discount the wonderful performances, the highlight of the night by far was hearing Sis. Knight’s personal testimony and conversion to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Here’s a little tidbit of info for any of you mission friends who may be reading this. In the pamphlet of information that was distributed to the wards in promotion of this event, one stake president said, “You can’t emphasize enough what a powerful missionary tool this event is. Until you are there and hear the testimonies of Sis. Knight and her husband, you cannot appreciate the opportunity you are about to be given.” That stake president was none other than Gordon Bean, Stake President of the Oklahoma City South Stake. I couldn’t believe it when I read it. I mean, I can believe it, Bishop Bean was always amazing, and his family is incredible, I was just really surprised to see his name listed there and to know that he’s now the stake president. Anyone who served in the Moore Ward, coming up on about 10 years ago now (yikes I’m old), will know what I’m talking about. The Beans fed the missionaries every week, Tuesday’s if I’m not mistaken. And I don’t just mean that they fed 2 missionaries, they fed all the missionaries in the ward, which, when I was there, numbered no less than 6 at any given time, and was sometimes upwards of 8. My first mission Christmas was spent at the Bean’s home. Every missionary loved the Bean’s and they took care of every missionary. They were every missionaries mission family away from home. I am very happy to see them ever progressing in the Gospel.

House Pictures

2008-10-07T08:14:00.000-07:00

On more than one occasion my life has been threatened due to a lack of pictures of the inside of our house, that we’ve been working on since we moved in. Thus, motivated by nothing more than a desire to save my own life, here are the most recent pics we have:

Dining Room During: Notice the custom 1970’s light fixture. This thing actually pulls down from the ceiling to whatever height you’d prefer at any given time, then releases back into the ceiling when done. You’ll notice too that the wainscoting is not finished in the far right and left corners of the room.

Dining Room After: New ceiling fan, wainscoting finished, trimwork completed, and a few decorative touches finally hung.

Living Room After: New paint, new baseboards, old window (that has been replaced now), insert taken out of fireplace, new area rug, again with the decorative touches hung on the wall.

Office After: New paint, new baseboards, old window (which you can’t see and which has been replaced now anyway), new blinds. The desk is around the corner to the left.

Boy’s Room After: New paint, new chair rail around the room, new baseboards, old window (which you can’t see and which has been replaced now anyway), new blinds, new curtains, new rug, and new big boy bed for Luke (we finally had room to pick up the matching twin bed from my parent’s house).

Master Bedroom After: New paint, new baseboards, old window (which you can’t see and which has been replaced now anyway), new blinds (also can’t see), new curtains (again, can’t see), new rugs. This picture is taken from the doorway of our ½ bathroom (sorry, no pics of that either).

Main Bathroom After: New paint, new shower rod, new shower curtain, new floor, new toilet (seat that is), new vanity (barely seen), and new mirror (not seen).

As yet unseen: The entire downstairs wherein is contained a family room/play room/ TV viewing area, 2 unfinished bedrooms, 1 unfinished bathroom, and 1 unfinished laundry room.

So there you have it. That’s our house. Having just had all the windows replaced on Sep. 22nd, I’m sure there will be some “new window” pictures coming sometime down the road.

Command

2008-10-06T09:48:00.001-07:00

Command is a fairly strong word. By definition it reads:

1. To direct with specific authority or prerogative; order.
2. To require authoritatively; demand.
3. To have or exercise authority or control over, be master of; have at one’s bidding or disposal.

This past weekend I attended the Saturday night Priesthood session of General Conference, as all good Mormom boys ages 12 and older are to do. I tend to rather enjoy the Priesthood session as I find that those who speak usually don’t sugar-coat things so much for the guys, the way they do when there are women and children present. It’s a time for great directness, leaving little room for wavering or doubt, in regards to the way one should be living his life.

At any rate, on Saturday night, President Monson shared a couple of fairly humorous stories, one of which I’ll be sharing here today, but both of which I immediately went home and shared with my family.

President Monson related the following story that happened to a friend of his, Bro. Borrup (sp?), as he was a fighter pilot during WWII. Bro. Borrup was assigned to a high risk mission to take out an oil refinery somewhere in the South Pacific. This mission was to be the longest flight as yet attempted by the military, and Bro. Borrup knew right away that he would be assigned to this detail. As it turns out he was assigned, and they did take fire to the point where all on board had to jump from the plane. Bro. Borrup landed in the water, attempted in vain to inflate his life raft, passed out, came to enough to attempt again to inflate his raft, and this time being successful, had just enough energy to climb into the raft before passing out again. He awoke and found that he had 2 comrades with him. They tethered their rafts together and floated for 3 days in enemy territory without food or water. How they were not seen by the numerous enemy ships and planes was the first miracle noted by Bro. Borrup. His 2 companions asked Bro. Borrup if he prayed. He noted that indeed he does pray, and that indeed he’d been praying almost continuously since he’d awoken.

One day they saw a U.S. submarine approaching. They thought for sure they’d been rescued. But to their dismay the submarine continued on right past them. A little while later the submarine approached again, and this time it again went right past them. At that time, Bro. Borrup relates that he heard a voice in his head tell him, “You have the Priesthood. Command that submarine to return and pick you up.” So that’s what he did. And immediately the sumbmarine returned and picked up the 3 fighter pilots. The captain of the submarine relayed that he had no idea the 3 pilots were lost at sea, and indeed had not been on any sort of rescue mission to pick them up. He all of a sudden simply knew that they were there and needed rescuing.

I returned home after the session to the wonderful smell of stew and biscuits that Angie had made for dinner. I relayed this story to Angie and the boys as we ate. They too thought it was comical to simply command a submarine to rescue you. Okay, Angie and Austin thought it was funny, Luke just laughs whenever anyone else is laughing.

A little while later, as we were preparing for bed, Angie had the boys in our room putting them into their pajamas, while I was brushing my teeth. This is the conversation I overheard:

Austin: “Mom, can I tell you a question?” (He likes to tell questions, not ask them).

Angie: “Sure.”

Austin: “Mom, I command you to go get me a biscuit.”

I spent the next few minutes cleaning the toothpaste off the bathroom mirror while Austin received an important lesson about how he did not yet have the Priesthood, and that even if he did he couldn’t go around commanding people, least of all his mother, to do things for him that he wanted done, that the Priesthood is only to be used for blessing other people’s lives, and that we would soon be having a Family Home Evening lesson to help us all understand more about the Priesthood and its proper uses.

Austin's First Day of Preschool

2008-09-23T14:16:00.000-07:00

Austin started preschool on Sep. 3rd. He goes Mondays and Wednesdays for 2.5 hours. A lady in our stake has taught preschool for 25 years and we were fortunate enough to get him into her class. She also agreed to put him in the same class as all his Sunbeam classmates from church, which is technically the 4 year-old class, although Austin is only 3. It’s hard to imagine that Austin still has 2 full years before he can start kindergarten, while the rest of his classmates will all start next year. We’ve been told the drop-dead date for testing in early is Oct. 31st. Austin’s birthday isn’t until Nov. 2nd. We may still inquire to see whether we can get him in next year, but we’re not holding our breath.

Anyway, here he is on his 1st day:

Myr's House

2008-09-23T14:00:00.001-07:00

As always we got to make pit-stops at Myr’s house on the way to and from UT this year. We’ve loved having Myr in Kuna as it’s about the half-way point in our trip. More often than not we stay the night and continue the journey the next day, which makes the whole trip that much more relaxing.

Well, Myr is getting ready to move on us so this year was the last year we’ll enjoy our pit-stop at her house. Here’s some pics from our visit:

Old Friends Austin and Tyann:

New Friends Lucas and Cameron:

A couple crazy noodles (and their pool toys):
Lucas hiding:

Nielson's and BYU

2008-09-02T08:31:00.003-07:00

We took a day on our vacation and went down to Provo/Orem/Springville to visit friends and stop by BYU. Okay, in all honesty, we really went so Angie could get her fix of Café Rio. We know there’s closer locations to Layton, but it’s just part of the tradition to hit the one in Provo so off we went.

We first headed down to Springville to see Sara and Luke. They boys apparently were in some kind of crazy mood I guess. This was the best shot we got of Luke and Austin together, and it appears that Austin has grown a 3rd arm, but rest assured, Lucas is back there somewhere and that’s his arm you see.

For those of you who don’t know Sara and Luke, they were in our ward when we moved up to WA and lived in Renton. Luke is a few months older than Austin, so they quickly became best friends. Sara and Luke moved back to UT last year and we’ve been missing them ever since. So in our household we have to distinguish between “Buddy Luke” and our Lucas/Luke. We miss Buddy Luke a lot and are always very excited to see him every chance we get.

After Springville we headed north to Provo. We like to stop and visit the old stomping grounds. Only problem this year was that our vacation was so late in the summer that it was Education Week at BYU. Holy cow there were tons of people there. We ended up parking south of campus and walking up the dreaded hill. Never thought I’d have to traverse that hill again, but it actually brought back some good memories. However, I never had to push a stroller up that hill, and especially not one w/ 2 kids on it. Wow, that was tough!

We headed to the bookstore to load up on some BYU gear for the upcoming football game. BYU came up to Seattle and played UW on Sep. 6th and we went with some members of our old Scenic Hill ward in Kent. The football game is another post entirely, look for that one shortly. The preparation for the football game took place while on vacation. At any rate, it’d been somewhat of a long day already. The boys were both tired from playing at Sara and Luke’s house. It was early afternoon and definitely nap time. The bookstore was crammed with Education Week participants. We were slowly making our way through the clothing section to get T-shirts and hats for the football game and Austin was not happy with us. He was ready to go home (to grandma’s house that is). At any rate, Angie found a couple of cute BYU hats for the boys and brought them over to try them on. Lucas loved his, but Austin threw a fit. He ripped off his hat and proceeded to scream, “I don’t want to wear the hat. I HATE BYU!” I swear the entire bookstore went dead silent. Instantly all eyes were upon us. To be quite honest, the next few minutes were something of a blur. I don’t think I passed out totally, but there was definitely a lack of oxygen flowing to my brain. Luckily Angie knew exactly what to do. She picked him up and beat the UTE right out of him! I’m kidding, I’m kidding, nobody run off and go reporting us to the authorities. I’m just saying that before I knew it I had armfuls of hats, T-shirts, and glow-in-the-dark basketballs with instructions to “Buy these, I’ll be back in a minute” and off she whisked with the stroller and the boys.

After I recovered from the shock of the moment, the lack of oxygen to my brain, and the sudden disappearence of my entire family, I slowly proceeded to the cash registers. Luckily, for my sake, all the registers were down, which gave me plenty of time to stand there and gather myself, as well as for others to recover from the blasphemy that had so recently been thrust upon their ears. Soon enough, my family returned with several Jamba Juice’s in hand and all was restored to its natural order. Not only that, but a deep and meaningful conversion had taken place along the way as well. For no sooner had they returned with the drinks, but that we found Austin now singing praises to beloved BYU, purveyors of his new favorite drink, the Jamba Juice. Thank you Jamba Juice, for making all in the world right again.

After the bookstore we let the boys play on the hill by the library for a while. First, because this gave them a chance to get out of the stroller and run around a bit, and second, to facilitate the finishing of our drinks. Here’s the boys having fun rolling down the hill:

After they worked out all their wiggles, we proceeded over to the new Student athlete building where they have displays of all the sports memorabilia. We received a fantastic tour from the gentleman working there. He had lots of fun stories to tell us, things we’d have never known just roaming around on our own. Here’s some fun shots from our visit.

With the Cougar:

With Ty Detmer’s 1990 Heisman Trophy:

Austin with Shawn Bradley (well, sort of):

We had a great day. It was a lot of fun. Alas, we finally accomplished what we’d set out for that day, and stopped by to get Angie her Café Rio shredded pork salad on our way back to Grandma Joyce’s house.

Utah's Hogle Zoo

2008-09-02T08:31:00.001-07:00

Another of our yearly stops when we visit Utah is Hogle Zoo.

We actually purchase our zoo memberships from Hogle because we visit every year, and with that membership we get into both Seattle and Tacoma zoos free. It works out quite nicely really. Angie and the boys go to both zoos up here with some regularity. Austin really loves the Tacoma zoo because of the beluga whales and walruses. Go figure.

At any rate, we were excited to see the new cat exhibit at Hogle, but we needed an expert map reader in order to find it. Luckily we brought Austin along for just such an occasion:

We missed the grand opening of the cat exhibit by a day last year. Lucas loves tigers so he was really excited to see this:

All they need now are some lions and they’ll be set. Seattle has some great lions so Luke gets his fix up here often enough.

Luke also really enjoyed the white alligator currently on display there. He’s got this thing with alligators. He walks around going “chomp, chomp”, moving his arms up and down, and then he comes and “chomps” on you. He thinks it’s the greatest thing. It’s quite cute really so we encourage it of course.

The baby giraffe was neat to see, although apparently not all that neat since we have no pics of that. The boys also really enjoyed the bird show:

Luke and I were sitting on the end of a row just a few rows up from the presenters so many of the birds came swooping right over our heads. He’s really fascinated with birds so he loved every minute of the show, including the low flying birds, which I thought would’ve kind of freaked him out. But it didn’t, he loved it.

Austin’s favorite part may have been eating lunch with the zebras. Note to self: lunch with zebras is not the most pleasing olfactory experience. But hey, how often do you get to each lunch with zebras, right?

We saw rhinos, snakes, camels, gorillas, orangutans, lemurs, bears, penguins, and sloths! Austin has taken to hanging onto my legs and being a sloth, wherein, you guessed it, he just sits there and hangs on and does nothing else. He thinks it’s the funniest thing.

Alas, despite all the cool animals and shows, the biggest hit of all just may have been the playground. They seriously need some shade at that place! The kids would love nothing more than to spend hours on end playing, but ultimately every parent gets tired of standing out in the sun, roasting alive, and thus call the kids to order and march on to other attractions, no doubt ones with shade. If there was shade at the playground, the parents could sit forever, the kids could play forever, and all would be happy, except perhaps the animals waiting to be seen. Here’s a few playground shots:

When all was seen and done, we stopped in to let the boys get little souvenirs. Austin picked out a huge plastic coloring mat, and Lucas ended up with a little rotating puzzle toy. In fact, Luke ended up with a little spin top as well, which we didn’t find until unloading the stroller back at the car (yes we returned it).

Thus concluded another great vacation day.

Lagoon Day

2008-09-02T08:30:00.000-07:00

We spent Monday Aug. 18th at Lagoon with the boys and the fam. It was a great time. Austin didn’t know what to do with himself he was so excited. It was quite hot so we started out at Lagoon-A-Beach. Austin, Taylir, and Tylir (cousins) ran around together while I took Luke around to all the kiddie slides. Truth be told, I’m not much of a fan of the bigger adult slides in the first place, so I had a great time taking Luke down the kiddie slides. He was laughing and having so much fun, despite the fact that he would always cover his eyes while we were coming down the slides.

I took both Austin and Lucas out into the deeper pool (up to 5 ft. deep) and both were actually pretty freaked out by that. They didn’t really like that one too much. We need to get those boys into some swimming lessons! They wouldn’t even let go of my neck long enough to pretend to swim. Guess that’s what happens when neither Mom or Dad are big into swimming.

After about an hour at Lagoon-A-Beach, we changed clothes and hit the kiddie rides. Austin knew only that he wanted to ride Puff the Dragon first, and second, and third, then maybe try some other rides. I took Lucas on Puff the first time, and he was all set to go….until it started moving that is. Then he was NOT happy. He wasn’t having any more of Puff the rest of the day, despite Austin’s repeated rides. Austin's in the 2nd car on the left below:

We eventually hit the Cars:

Bumper Cars:

Little Swings: Angie, Taylir, Austin w/ back to the camera

Boats: Austin & Taylir share a boat, Tylir behind

Helicopters: Austin & Tylir

And Airplanes: Austin with his back to camera again! w/ unknown boy

Many of them we rode several times.

Luke’s favorite was definitely the Merry-Go-Round, which he got to do twice. I took him the first time and did alright, but my vertigo didn’t allow me to do anything but stare at the ground in front of us for most of the ride. Angie took him on the 2nd go round.

All in all, we had a great day. We topped it off by hitting Rattlesnake Rapids:

Luke was not quite big enough yet to go on that with us, so we left him with Lisa while we all rode. I was so hot that I thoroughly enjoyed being the one to get hit with the waterfall at the end of the ride. I really needed it. We’re told that Lucas was watching for us and was excited to see us, but then when we went past, this was the face he made…

It was a great day, and is one of the things we make part of our yearly trip. Looking forward to it next year already!

6th Anniversary!

2008-08-04T09:33:00.001-07:00

We celebrated our 6th Anniversary this weekend, yesterday to be exact. Six years it’s been already. Holy Cow, where does the time go? In six years we’ve lived in five places (Provo downstairs apt., Provo upstairs apt., Renton apt., Kent condo, and Kent house), I’ve had 5 different positions within the same company (salesperson, client support rep., billing specialist, accounting specialist, and now payroll specialist), Angie’s been gainfully employed as a hotel front desk clerk, junior college assistant softball coach (they took 2nd in the nation), junior college head softball coach, Division 1 head softball coach, and substitute teacher in no less than three different school districts. She’s also been woefully underpaid at home as a wife, mother, gourmet chef (most of the time), not-so-gourmet chef (only occassionally), chauffeur, maid, nurse, therapist, and no doubt countless other things that escape me for now. One thing she’s definitely mastered is hand washing dishes. Of the six years we’ve been married we’ve had a functional dishwasher in our place of residence for approximately two years, and we are back to not having one in the home we just bought. A kitchen remodeling is in the cards, but we’re not sure when that’ll be as more important on the list right now is new windows for the entire house. Kitchen may have to wait a while.

We’ve had no more and no less than two amazing little boys during this time. Austin in 3 ½ and has been the subject of probably 99% of the posts on our blog, so you know all about him if you’ve been following us for any length of time. Lucas is 1 ½ and is starting to talk a lot more now, so he’ll no doubt be providing plenty of blog fodder shortly. We are continually amazed by the things our boys do and say, the hugging, kissing nice times, and more often than not the no holds barred hand to hand combat.

We celebrated this weekend with a little mini vacation with my parents. Originally we were supposed to head off to Long Beach, where my mom’s friend has a cabin we were going to stay at. We were set with substitutes for our Sunday classes and everything. However, the cabin fell through so mom and dad just decided to come stay at our house for the weekend. They insisted that vacation rules applied though, so there was absolutely no cooking at home allowed. We went out for every meal. It’s been a long time since we’ve been out for breakfast, perhaps even it was the first time for us come to think of it. On Saturday we hit the “Speed” exhibit at the Pacific Science Center. I must say I was actually a bit disappointed really. It was alright, but nothing great I thought. But it did serve it’s purpose, as Austin absolutely loved it (he’s got the gash and bruise above his right eye to prove it)! On Sunday (our actual anniversary date) we hit the Mariners game, which is always a good time. It was Dave Niehaus day, he’s been the Mariner’s broadcaster since the organization started, and he’s the 2008 winner of the Ford C. Frick Award, recognizing excellence in baseball broadcasting, and results in his entrance into the baseball Hall of Fame, the first Seattle Mariner to be inducted. We all got collectible bobbleheads, which I must say are quite heavy and very well made. None of this crappy free give-away plastic junk. At any rate, free bobbleheads, free showing of the Navy’s Blue Angels (in town for Seattle’s SeaFair), who flew over the stadium a couple times during the game, and the M’s actually won, a rarity this season for sure, it was just a great overall day.

Alas, the weekend, as all good things, came to an end. Grandma and Grandpa returned home Sunday evening, I’m back here at work now, joy of all joys, and the boys, well one of them always has to be sick else all things would not be right in the universe. Luke is headed to the doctor’s today as he’s not been feeling well the past couple of days and the glands in his neck are visibly swollen. By visibly I mean you can see them from across the room, not simply upon close inspection. Hopefully we can get him feeling better before we head to UT in T-Minus 9 days and counting.

Wanted: Law Abiding Bicyclists

2008-07-29T08:29:00.000-07:00

My co-worker Diana really got me riled up today. Not with anything work related. You see, she’s a very diligent “blogger” (is that an adjective now?) and her latest post was about some vigilante bicyclists here in Seattle. Here’s what she had to say:

“Yesterday a group of 100 bicyclists - called Critical Mass - were doing their monthly demonstration - they ride in a large group and block off cars to try and make a point that we should share the road. They blocked one driver from being able to pull out of a parking spot - he got nervous as he was surrounded - he nudged his car forward bumping into some of the cyclists - they in turn surrounded his car - banging on it - and ended up smashing the rear window, punching the driver through his open window, and slashing all 4 of the tires.”

Just last night I saw this same story on the news and I went on my own little rant to Angie about the bicyclists I’ve seen here in the Seattle area. It is my opinion that they (the bicyclists) themselves are the cause of most of their troubles. I am not exagerating when I say that 75% of the bicyclists I have seen in the Seattle area do NOT obey the traffic laws when riding. Yet the whole point of their "Critical Mass" protest is to make drivers aware of them and to get us to "share the road." Just this week I have seen bicyclists weaving in and out of traffic at their pleasure, riding between cars stopped at a traffic light so as to work their way to the front of the line, coming to a complete stop IN the bus lane and refusing to move when a bus comes along that needs to get through, running red lights, riding on the sidewalks when they otherwise would have to stop at a red light on the street...I really could go on and on. Bikers demand respect on the road, but I contend that they'll never get it until they start giving it.

Also, just a little note about their little “Critical Mass” rides. Their route has on a couple of occasions taken them right past my bus stop. I must say that the spirit that infuses these “bikers” while on their demonstration is quite hostile. It does not surprise me at all the way they all rallied together to attack the man in the car, causing extensive auto damage and personal injury. As they ride down the road, completely shutting down traffic, they spew forth loud-mouthed obscenities at people on the street watching them go by. Mind you, there are no cars in sight because they’ve blocked them all from getting on the streets. So they’re out there yelling and screaming at people who are waiting to take the bus. How much sense does that make?

In my opinion, these bicyclists at Critical Mass are out there looking for a fight, and when someone gives it to them they immediately turn into the poor downtrodden outcasts of society just trying to make the world a better place and just look at how the rest of of the world treats them. Poor, poor bicyclists, boo hoo.

As John Stossel says, “Gimme a Break!”

To Infinity And Beyond!

2008-07-28T16:36:00.001-07:00

The conversation as it was reported to me:

Angie: “I love you, Austin.”

Austin: “I love you too.”

Angie: “I love you three.”

Austin: “I love you four.”

Skip a few steps

Angie: “I love you infinity.”

Austin: “I love you And Beyond!”

Absorbent And Yellow And Porous Is He

2008-07-23T16:11:00.001-07:00

Okay, so maybe not so yellow or porous, but Austin is absolutely every bit as absorbent as his hero SpongeBob SquarePants. And maybe SpongeBob isn’t his hero, per se, but he does greatly enjoy watching him (to the dismay of his mother), so much so that even Lucas loves it now and stands there singing “SpongeBob SquarePants” over and over again as the theme song plays.

Forget all that, this post is not about SpongeBob. It is about Austin. He did/said something last night that had Angie and I rolling with laughter yet again. It was bedtime and the routine had been started. He was on the brushing teeth stage when this event occurred. Angie had started him out in the bathroom (of course), while I was sitting in the living room. As he began brushing his teeth Austin walked out into the living room, shoved the toothbrush to the side of his mouth, thus greatly extending his cheek outward, and loudly proclaimed, “This is ridiculous. I need a Reach toothbrush!”

Are you rolling yet? Well we were. If you don’t get the joke, perhaps you don’t watch enough television. Right now there’s a commercial out for whoever it is that manufactures Reach toothbrushes showing a guy brushing his teeth, except that in his attempt to reach the back of his back teeth, he repeatedly “misses” and jabs the toothbrush into his cheek. That’s when he exclaims something to the effect of needing a Reach toothbrush. What made it all the funnier was that Austin was absolutely dead serious. He really wanted a Reach toothbrush to be able to brush his teeth properly. He was so mad that he couldn’t reach his back teach and he just kept getting madder the longer we were laughing at him.

Exterior House Pics

2008-07-21T15:07:00.000-07:00

As promised, here’s a few before and after shots of the house and yard:

Front of house looking South:

Before

During (kind of): Flower box in front of house is cleared out, but fence and shrubs in the background are still there. Notice the lovely extension cord hanging from the window!

After: Fence and shrubs removed in background

View from front door across the street:

Before: Note that you can't even see the fence that's hiding underneath all that shrubbery.

After: Shrubs and fence removed.

Front of house looking North:

Before

After

Southwest corner of front yard:
Before: Again, there's a fence rotting away underneath there somewhere.

After

So there you have it. One rotten old fence, numerous bushes and shrubbery, a rotten tree stump, and a random rose bush in the middle of the yard all removed. Notice too that our yard went from being fairly green to completely brown. We figure we'll start watering and taking care of it as soon as there's more grass than weeds. Until that time, well...

Now, on to the backyard!

Austin's Allergy Eyes

2008-07-15T16:54:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note here as I finally brought some pictures from home today. I have some of the yard and the house. I’ll get to posting those later. Today I wanted to show some proof of Austin’s allergies. For a refresher, revisit our post of June 16th here http://crawford-crew.blogspot.com/2008/06/monkey-vision-eye-hurting-goes-to.html.

Keep in mind that this picture was NOT from when we went to the hospital. It’s a completely separate event, and you can see that we’re giving him some Benadryl to keep it from getting worse. The day we took him to the hospital for this same problem he was so swollen he couldn’t even blink his eyes.

So there you have it. Pretty gross huh?

Pushing 30

2008-07-02T09:46:00.001-07:00

Angie and I both teach on Sundays. She teaches the Mia Maids and I teach the Teachers, so we both have the 14-15 year-olds. Last Sunday evening I was standing at the sink doing the dishes (shocker I know) and Angie tells me that she talked to her girls about me today and hoped that was okay with me.
“Well that depends,” I replied. “What did you tell them?”
She proceeds to tell me that her lesson was about influences in your life. How certain people, situations, and things can influence your thoughts, actions, and behavior. She used me as an example of how music can influence your actions.
You see, fairly early on in our marriage (and probably even before we were married to tell the truth), Angie became quite aware that when it comes to manual labor, I’m virtually no help whatsoever. I am simply terrible at manual labor. I openly admit this and it doesn’t bother me in the least bit. The way I see it, there’s a big difference between being a hard worker and being good at manual labor. I am quite dedicated to my job and my career and put in a lot of hours at work, but the fact is, I’m an accountant. That’s what I do. Manual labor is simply not one of my strong suits.
Anyway, back to the point. Angie knows and understands this about me, but she also has a secret weapon to use against me. The one thing that can and often does turn me into a manual labor working machine is listening to Metallica. For some reason, that music just gets me into a good rhythm and allows me to keep working for hours on end.
Back to the church lesson. Angie told the girls that when she has a project involving manual labor that she wants me to tackle, she sets the task before me, puts on my Metallica CD’s and leaves me be. That music totally has an effect on me, and, bad as it may be (the music that is, at least spiritually speaking), I’ve learned to channel that into getting work done, which, all things considered, is typically a very good thing.
So Angie’s telling me that she shared this with the girls, and I’m thinking, okay, no big deal. But that’s not where the story ends. She told them that she puts on my Metallica CD’s and that helps me to work hard and get the job done. She then proceeds to tell me that their stunned faces and silence clearly indicated they had no clue who Metallica is. One girl asks, “Who’s Metallica?” Another girl quickly adds “Oh that’s like really old rock music.”
OUCH!!!

Scary Dream

2008-06-25T09:15:00.001-07:00

I got a phone call at work today. It was Austin.

“Dad can I tell you a story about my scary dream?”

“Sure”, I replied.

“But you have to be very brave, okay?” he says.

“I’ll try my best”, I respond.

“I dreamed I was outside and slipped and fell over a cliff. I hid under a bush. It was kind of junkyardy. It was where the raccoons live.”

I asked, “Were you scared?”
“No, Dad, it was just my imagination!”

I just thought this was a hilarious story for a 3 ½ year old to be telling. And the setup to the story was fantastic. “You have to be very brave, okay?” He just makes me laugh so much.

So here’s a little background on the raccoon story. We’ve been working on our yard, specifically the front yard, and clearing out all the bushes and junk that have encumbered it for years. We have a street light in one corner of our yard that allows us to work fairly late into the night if we so desire. Angie happened to be doing just that a month or two ago while I was in putting the boys to bed (for some reason they wanted Dad that night). After a while Angie came rushing into the house rather frantically. She said she had been working on cutting out some bushes when a huge raccoon came toddling out of a bush over in the corner of our yard. It looked at her, but then slowly meandered along the side of our house and into our jungle of a backyard.

We’ve since conversed about this incident with some neighbors who’ve lived there a while and confirmed that they too have seen and had some run-ins with a raccoon family that meanders our neighborhood. No real problems to speak of, just that they are about and have been there for years. I think it’s kind of neat and would really actually like to see them, but no luck yet for me. Angie, on the other hand, has had her fill of them already and has proceeded to instill that same fear into Austin.

They had a picnic out on the deck one day and Austin threw part of his sandwich over the railing. Angie got mad at him and told him if he kept throwing food in the yard the raccoons would come eat it, then they would keep coming to our house for food, and might even get inside the house and eat all our food. So, Austin now is quite concerned about raccoons coming and eating all our food and is somewhat scared of them in general now.

Perhaps when we get our jungle cleaned up, our raccoon family will reside elsewhere. I hope I get to see them at least once before they leave though.

I Spy

2008-06-18T08:17:00.001-07:00

We play a lot of games in the car while we travel. Doesn’t matter if it’s two hours to Grandma and Grandpa’s house or 15 minutes to Target. We rarely get to listen to the radio as we’re always playing games. One of Austin’s favorites is the I Spy game. Austin’s turns starts like this: “I spy with my little eye something that is…..” And then of course we try to guess. Mom and Dad’s turn must start like this: “I spy with my big eye something that is…” Naturally we have big eyes as we’re big people.

Well, after Austin’s swollen eye problem and visit to the ER this past weekend he recently started the game with: “I spy with my swollen eye something that is…”

Again the patented “That’s our son and he’s a genius” look was exchanged (see previous post for history/derivation of this often used look).

Movies, Music, and More

2008-06-17T08:44:00.000-07:00

First of all, today is my Mom’s birthday, so Happy Birthday Mom.

Okay, now that that’s taken care of, lets move on with more fun stories about Austin. You know, all you parents of multiple children out there can attest that you love all your children the same, and Angie and I feel the same way with Austin and Lucas. But at this point in our lives, it’s Austin that provides us with all of our “blog fodder” and thus he’s the only one we ever seem to write about. We’ll have to watch Luke more closely I guess, and as he starts talking more and more I’m sure he’ll soon be making contributions here as well. But for now you get Austin Unscripted and Unedited (see Streaking post dated June 11th).

As we’ve mentioned before, Austin has an amazing ability to see and/or hear things and instantly commit them to memory. Here are but a few of our favorite examples of late:

1. Cruella Deville – Granted, Austin has seen 101 Dalmations more than once, but really, when compared to his other movies, I don’t know that I’d even put it in his top 10 favorite movies. So far as I know, he really has only seen it a few times. Yet, one of his favorite songs of late has been the Cruella Deville song. And he can sing the whole thing. And when I say sing, I mean really sing. He holds the notes he’s supposed to. He fluctuates his voice accordingly (I’m sure there’s some technical musical term for this, but neither Angie nor I have the first clue about singing so we have no idea where he gets his abilities – Jeff Corry can attest to my complete lack of singing ability from back in the mission days!). At any rate, Austin loves this song, loves to sing it, and sings it quite well.

2. “Panda”monium – Austin loves everything about Kung Fu Panda right now – AND HE HASN’T EVEN SEEN THE MOVIE YET!!! He even knows that Jack Black is the voice of Po the Panda. When Austin practices his Kung Fu he doesn’t say he’s Po the Panda, he says he’s Jack Black being Po the Panda. At any rate, as I said, he hasn’t even seen the movie yet, but a few days ago Angie and the boys were at the store and they saw Kung Fu Pez dispensers. Austin just had to have Po the Panda and said Lucas could have the tiger one, don’t know the name of that one. So Angie bought them for the boys, but they were put into the Crawford Store for Austin to earn. He gets Crawford Bucks for completing chores on his chore chart, and every Saturday we open the Crawford Store and he can buy whatever’s in the store (prizes and prices may vary as decided upon by Mom and Dad). At any rate, Austin decided to purchase his Pez dispenser this week from the Crawford Store and as he was playing with it he announced, “Prepare for pandamonium” and then proceeded with all his Kung Fu kicks and chops.

Angie and I just started laughing uncontrollably. Austin doesn’t really know why it’s funny, but then he just keeps saying it because it makes us laugh. I personally have never heard that on any of the commercials for the movie, but I’m sure it’s in there somewhere. It’s just something he heard and picked up on.

3. Indiana Jones – Again, Austin has never seen any of the Indiana Jones movies, yet inexplicably he knows the theme music. On Sunday we were at my aunt and uncle’s house (down in Molalla, OR) where they have quite a sizeable yard and surrounding wooded area. They have a rope swing strung between a couple of trees on their property which Austin was playing on for quite some time. Meanwhile, Angie and I were up on the deck sitting in the shade, chatting with relatives, and keeping an eye on Austin and his whereabouts. Suddenly Angie taps me and says “Listen to him” and points down to Austin. We could hear him over at the rope swing singing the Indiana Jones theme. You know how it goes,

Ba Da Dum Dummm
Ba Da Dummm
Ba Da Dum Dummm
Ba Da Dum Dum Dum
Ba Da Dum Dummm
Ba Da Dummm
Ba Da Dum Da, Da Dum Da, Da Dum Da…

We just gave each other our patented “Holy Cow, that’s our son and he’s a genius” look and started to laugh. Seriously, he amazes us all the time with his memory.

Monkey Vision Eye Hurting Goes To The Hospital

2008-06-16T09:47:00.001-07:00

Yes, you read that correctly. It’s not a typo. It’s not a babbling, incoherent sentence. It’s merely a stated and true fact, Monkey Vision Eye Hurting did indeed go to the Hospital, and I’ll tell you how (sorry, this is going to be a very long post, as it was a very long weekend, and worst of all – we forgot our camera so no pics)!

It all started innocently enough. We had no plans of going anywhere. Saturday was to be all day working in the yard. Sunday to church, then home to relax. Easy enough, right? Oh you couldn’t be more wrong.

Saturday morning we got a call from my aunt Laurie literally begging us to come to my cousin Brandon’s Homecoming talk that Sunday. He just recently returned from his mission in Brazil, and while we’d heard about the homecoming, we weren’t really planning on attending as they live in Molalla, OR which is about 4 hours from us. But, the guilt trip phone call worked. Angie and I immediately started calling to get subs for our lessons on Sunday, and called my parents and told them we were on our way. My parents are about 2 hours away, then we’d be traveling together the rest of the way down to OR on Sunday morning.

When we got to my parents house, Austin and Luke started running around in the yard playing as normal. After they came in, Austin had a quick bath and got into his pajamas. A few minutes later my Mom comes in from the family room and says she thinks Austin needs Benadryl because his eye is starting to get red and puffy. We take a look and it was looking pretty swollen so Angie held a cold washcloth to his eye while my Mom and sister went to Wal-Mart for some Benadryl. After just a couple more minutes, and long before they returned with the Benadryl, his eye was massively swollen to the point where he couldn’t even blink. The whole area around his eye was red and swollen, but the worst part was that his actual eyeball was swollen too. All the white parts of his right eye were flaming with irritation and visibly swollen around his pupil. It looked like his pupil was a big hole in the middle of his newly engorged eyeball. It was getting worse way too quickly to wait for Benadryl, and had started spreading to his other eye as well, so we loaded him into the car and trooped off to the Hospital in Longview.

Meanwhile, of course, he’s crying and screaming about his eye, not because it hurt, but because he was scared and didn’t know what to expect. Angie was talking to him, telling him stories, and when he would allow himself to be distracted he would stop crying. So we knew he wasn’t in pain, he just didn’t know what was going on. One time he thought he heard Angie say his eye was going to pop and he really freaked out then. I don’t remember what she said, it certainly wasn’t that, but it was similar enough where we could understand why he thought that. At any rate, he was admitted immediately and then we played the waiting game to be seen and treated. Angie kept talking to him, telling him stories, jokes, anything to keep his mind off his eye.

One of the things we tried was to give him a secret spy code name for this mission he was one. I thought Raccoon would be good, due to the obvious situation with his eyes, but he didn’t like that one. Angie came up with a couple and those were rejected as well. Finally he announced he had come up with his code name. Are you ready for this? “Monkey Vision Eye Hurting.” It took us two or three times before we could even realize/verify that we were hearing him correctly. But yes indeed, he was to be special agent Monkey Vision Eye Hurting for this very covert mission.

Shortly thereafter the doctor arrived and checked him out. He wasn’t in any real hurry so we figured it couldn’t have been all that serious. And then of course he prescribed some Benadryl to aid in the relief. But he did also prescribe some extra steroids to further combat the problem, which was officially diagnosed as nothing more than an allergic reaction. To what we don’t know, but an allergy of some sort.

Austin was a terrific patient, and always has been. He lets all his doctor’s check his ears, eyes, nose, and throat. He takes deep breaths when instructed. He’s just a great little patient. Until you try to give him medicine that is. That’s when it takes Angie and two other nurses pinning him to the bed to get him to swallow. Alas, he survived the ordeal, and even got a stuffed cow out of it, which he promptly named Otis. For those of you not in the know, that’s the name of the cow on the movie Barnyard.

So there you have it. That’s the story of Monkey Vision Eye Hurting’s trip to the hospital. For those of you keeping tally, this makes three ER visits for Austin, and yes he is just three years-old. You’ll remember that his other two visits were results of a broken arm and a broken leg, both of which occurred before he was two. But those are other stories and memories, perhaps for another day and time.

P.S. As soon as the mission was completed, i.e. we were on our way back to Grandma and Grandpa’s from the hospital, Austin promptly informed us his code name had changed to Monkey Vision Eye Feeling Better.

Whoa, Yes We Call Him ‘The Streak’

2008-06-11T09:57:00.001-07:00

He ain't crude.

Looka dat, looka dat!

He ain't rude.

Looka dat, looka dat!

He's just in the mood to run in the nude.

Whoa, yes they call him The Streak ("zipppp" kazoo sound)
Looka dat, looka dat!

He likes to turn the other cheek
Looka dat, looka dat!

He's always makin' the news wearin' just his tennis shoes,

Guess you could call him unique ("zipppp" kazoo sound)
- Ray Stevens

Tuesday is our garbage pickup day. As such, each Monday night we dutifully roll the garbage can out to the street for pickup the next morning. We also have recycling and yard waste pickup on rotating Tuesdays, such that each week we have two cans going out to the street. Yesterday happened to be yard waste day so we had put out our garbage can as well as our yard waste can. Both were picked up without incident.

So what’s all this talk about The Streak? Stay with me, I’m getting there.

Yesterday, after our garbage and yard waste had been picked up, I told the boys I was going outside to bring the garbage cans back up to the house. I’d only be gone a minute. Well, as many of you may know, we have been in the process of cleaning up our yard which is in a terrible state of disrepair. We now have all the bushes in the front yard cut down and sitting in three huge piles on the front lawn. As the yard waste bin was now empty I thought I’d stop off real quick and load it back up from one of these piles. Thus my one minute to grab the garbage cans turned into a few minutes as I filled the yard waste bin back up.

Finally as I was nearing completion, I heard Austin calling me from the house. I turned to see him and he had just come out the carport door and was hopping towards me. Why was he hopping? Well that’s what you do when your pants (and underwear) are down around your ankles!

Apparently, while I had been outside, he’d had to go potty. He’s a big boy and can easily go to the bathroom by himself. What he hasn’t quite mastered yet is wiping and pulling his pants back up when he’s done. He typically just calls for either Jason or I to come help him get cleaned up. But this time he called and called and no one came. So naturally he had to come find me.

Now, you have to understand the layout of our house to fully appreciate what he went through to find me. Our only two bathrooms are upstairs at one end of the house. The carport door (downstairs) is on that same end of the house, but the stairs are at the other end of the house. He had hopped the length of the house upstairs, down the stairs, then the length of the house again to get to the door he eventually came out, and ultimately had hopped a good portion of the distance to where I was before I could get to him and pull his pants up and usher him back inside.

And that my friends is why we call him The Streak!

Where Did He Come From?

2008-05-30T11:00:00.000-07:00

Last night we were all sitting downstairs watching our latest addiction “So You Think You Can Dance.” If any of you haven’t seen the show it’s akin to American Idol only for dancing, even to the point where the entertainment in watching the auditions is for the really bad dancers that inevitably show up because no one in their life loves them enough to honestly tell them “You can’t dance, and I won’t let you go on national television and make a fool of yourself.” Honestly, is it just me or does anyone else out there wonder where the constructive criticism in these people’s lives has disappeared to? Nevertheless it makes for great TV so I suppose one could argue it’s a necessary evil? If you’re a producer that is.

At any rate, as we sat there watching many a fool who thought they could dance, Austin and Lucas naturally decided they needed to start dancing too. So what did Angie and I do? We encouraged them! Austin was doing some sort of wacked out schizo’ dance which served only to cause Angie and I to laugh uncontrollably. Angie naturally quipped, “Where did he come from?”

Austin immediately stopped his dancing, walked over to both of us, and in all seriousness stated, “I came from Heavenly Father.” We shared a family hug and he merrily went back to his dancing as Angie and I sat there in utter amazement. It was definitely one of those “I can’t believe he is actually listening to anything said in Primary or Family Home Evening” moments.

On a separate note, this past Sunday was Austin’s first Scripture and Prayer assignment for opening exercises in Primary. He was so excited to speak into the microphone. We practiced all week on the assigned scripture as well as some appropriate things to say for a Primary prayer. Angie and I went in to watch him, and when his time came I proudly carried him to the front of the room (he wouldn’t walk), I delivered the scripture into the microphone, and I finished it off with a wonderful and simple Primary prayer. Austin sheepishly stood next to me the entire time, face buried in my shoulder. In his defense I must add that we have church from 1 – 4 and he fell asleep in Sacrament Meeting. So we had to wake him up just to get him to Primary in the first place. He’s quite talkative normally so we think he would’ve done just fine were it not for the fact that he had just been woken up.

Ready, Set, Stimulate the Economy

2008-05-16T11:01:00.001-07:00

So we received our stimulus payment via direct deposit last Friday. However, despite the urging of several well-intentioned advice givers, we’ve not yet run out and blown our allotment. In fact, we haven’t spent a single dime of it and it still remains untouched in our account. As much as we’d like to keep it that way, as new homeowners we do have some pressing needs that need to be addressed sooner rather than later.

And so it is that I find myself researching lawn mowers and weed-wackers online in preparation for what is sure to be a painful shopping experience this weekend. Though most of our yard is covered in moss which smothers any grass growth, nevertheless, we have several areas of our yard that are in desperate need of a good mowing/weed-wacking. So much so that our neighbor has even graciously offered us the use of her mower so we could get the job done. Not to worry, we got the hint loud and clear.

I can’t help but to wander back into the recesses of my mind to a time about 20 years ago when I, as a little kid, along with the rest of my family (Dad, Mom, big sister, and little brother) would all tackle the yard work together. Dad would come home from work and set about mowing the lawn. Mom would follow behind raking the clippings (no automatic baggers back then). And the 3 kids would bring up the rear loading the clippings into the wagon and hauling it off to the vacant lot across the street. I remember it being a lot of hard work on hot summer nights. I remember thinking that the work would never end, that our yard was just too big, it would take forever to complete! What I wouldn’t give now for a yard that size for my boys to play in. And the best part? After we were all finished, each of us received our eagerly anticipated compensation of …wait for it…$0.25. Oh how we coveted those big bright quarters. At that age you could do anything in the world with a quarter. Mine usually went for baseball cards or stickers for my Thundercats sticker book, seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkPnBRwD66Q.

Now it’s my turn to be the Dad and run the big lawn mower. But first we have to go get one.

Family Pictures

2008-05-13T14:49:00.000-07:00

We had pictures taken back in April by our good friend Shelbi Owens. She’s terrific. Just wanted to post a few for all to see.

If you look closely you can see that it’s actually hailing on us. Poor Austin and Luke’s hands are bright red from the cold. Why no jackets? Try reading our post from April 21st for a reminder on that. Enjoy!

The Whole Family

Just the boys

Austin

Lucas

Survivor's Ready

2008-05-11T13:35:00.000-07:00

Friday night when I got home from work I was greeted by the boys in the customary manner. Luke yells “Daaaaaaaaad!” and comes running to the top of the stairs. I always pick him up, then Austin’s right behind waiting for his hugs and asking if I brought him a surprise. Well, on this particular Friday, Austin couldn’t wait to ask me if I wanted to race him. “Sure, I replied.” So we got ready to race. We had to stand at one end of our house and would be racing to the other end of the house. But we needed Mom to start the racing.

So Austin ran to get Angie. She came out and started us racing:

“On your marks, Get set…”

“NO MOM! NO. YOU’RE NOT DOING IT RIGHT!”

“I’m sorry,” Angie replied, “what do I need to do?”

“Mom, you’re supposed to say Survivor’s Ready…Go.”

“Alright, alright. Survivor’s Ready…Go!”

And thus the racing began.

CBS must be so proud of us. So that’s how we start all races at our house now.
“Survivors Ready…Go!”

Sleep Punched

2008-05-07T11:17:00.000-07:00

Anyone ever been sleep punched? That is to say, punched by someone who is still 100% asleep? I’m not talking about the accidental slap in the face, kicked in the ribs or whatnot that occurs while rolling over, shifting, or whatever it is you do to get comfortable. I’m talking about manifestations of actual anger resulting in a full-out punch, all while sleeping. As funny as it was, it wasn’t funny last night when I got punched for something I didn’t even do. Let me explain.

Yesterday something happened that made Austin request to watch E.T. No, not Entertainment Tonight, the actual movie E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, originally released in 1982. I don’t know what he saw or how he even heard about it, but he really wanted to watch it. Luckily we own it, but unluckily this request began to be repeatedly called in around American Idol time. We’ve dealt with this situation many times before, and the only solution to stop the incessant requests is to let him watch the movie in our room while we watch whatever we want downstairs. Thus sets the stage for why later that night, as Angie and I were preparing for bed, we had a 3 year-old already soundly asleep there.

Knowing he would shortly be moved into his own bed, I decided to climb in next to him and cuddle for a few minutes while Angie continued getting ready. As I did so, Austin totally freaked out, yelled “No Mom! Ugh” and proceeded to punch me square on the chin. Then he rolled over and went back to sleep, or rather that is, continued to sleep, as he never once opened his eyes during this whole episode. He was still absolutely 100% asleep.

Angie was laughing hysterically, and after a few moments of complete shock and amazement, I too joined in the laughter. I don’t know what she did to deserve to be punched, but whatever it was, it must have been serious. A few minutes later she scooped him up and deposited him into his own bed without further incident. Why I should be the recipient of the punishment clearly earned by Mom’s actions is beyond me. Whatever the reason, we got a good laugh out of it, which, I suppose, is perhaps the most important thing really.

Long Awaited Home Photos

2008-05-01T11:49:00.001-07:00

Just a quick blurb today to show you the front of our home. Kind of weird actually, but some stranger actually took this picture and posted it to our home's profile on Zillow.com. Luckily it was after we cut down A LOT of the shrubbery out front such that you can actually see the front of our home. Believe me, before it was all cut down you wouldn't have been able to see our house at all from this view. In fact, here's a view of our yard from our front porch before the bushes were cut down:

You can't hardly tell that there's even another house on the other side of the street. Now we can see the road, the house, and everything. In fact, Austin's friend's with the little boy who lives there, Peter, and he contstantly looks out our window to see if Peter is home now.

At any rate, our inside work is almost all wrapped up. Pics of that are coming soon.

The Devious Mind of a 3 Year-Old

2008-04-22T14:06:00.000-07:00

This is a story I’ve been sitting on for a few days, as I just haven’t had time to write it up. Perhaps a week or so ago the boys were both having a really hard night. Neither wanted to go to bed in their own bed. Austin was crying and pleading to sleep in Mom and Dad’s bed, while Luke didn’t want to go to bed at all. Both of them just too tired to sit still and pass out for the night.

I had put Luke to bed (and placed him back into bed) several times already that night. Jason had gone in and had a talk with Austin to get him calmed down. Yet Luke still was crying and getting up right after I’d walk away.

After 5 or 6 trips into their room, Austin, finally being calmed down, said to me, “I don’t know why Lukie keeps getting out of bed. I try to get him to stop crying and stay in bed, but he just won’t do it.”

“Oh, are you trying to help get Lukie to bed?” I inquired.

“I sure am!” came the excited reply.

“Thank you so much Austin. You are such a good big brother” I told him.

Finally, I got Luke down again, not asleep, but at least laying down in his bed. I walked away yet again, and immediately the crying began again. This time, however, I just snuck out into hallway, I didn’t actually leave. This is what I heard:

“Lukie. Lukie. Go find Mommy. Go find Mommy, Lukie. Get out of bed and go find Mommy.”

Sure enough, then comes the pitter patter of little feet as Luke ventures out into the hallway to find me. I was laughing too hard to be mad at either of them. Finally I gave in and laid down with both of them until they fell asleep. The little stinkers totally conned me, and I totally fell for it. Clearly I’m no match for my 3 year-old and 1 year-old.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

2008-04-21T14:17:00.000-07:00

This past Saturday, April 19th, was, if nothing else, quite eventful for our family. We should have known better than to plan family pictures on the anniversaries of the Oklahoma City Bombing and the Branch Davidian debacle in Waco, TX. But we’ve been trying to have family pictures for about a year now, and by that I mean outside playing at a park, etc., and nothing was going to stop us this time. Here’s how our day panned out.

Friday night commenced with snowstorms throughout the greater Seattle area. Not too promising for the following day pictures. Saturday morning we were up and about and greeted with off and on hail storms. Our appointment wasn’t until 2:00 PM though so we hoped it’d clear up by then. As our time approached we were in contact with our photographer, Shelbi, a friend of ours, and she advised that she was willing to brave a few hail storms for the chance at a few intermittent sunny periods. So off we went to meet her at the park.

When we got there we were greeted with a good 10-15 minutes of hailing, easily the longest “on again” of the day. We waited it out all bundled in our coats, and even started taking some pictures huddled under an umbrella, catching the tiny hail in our hands and/or mouths. It was all still pretty fun really. I think/hope we got some good pics of the boys.

After a while, the sun did finally break through so we took advantage of the situation, lost the coats, and posed for some family pics. All the coats and some photography equipment went on the bench and we sat on a towel in the grass. Took lots of photos there, then got up again and followed the boys around as they played, sometimes coaxing some photo ops out of them. We meandered around for a while until we got back into view of where we sat and I noticed that the bench was empty. I asked Angie, “Isn’t that where all of our stuff was?”

“No,” she replied, “our stuff is on another bench around the corner.”

“I don’t think so,” I replied.

After a few minutes of debate Angie wanted to go check it out. I stayed with the boys and Shelbi while Angie went to prove me wrong. A few minutes later she returned and confirmed that there were no other benches, that that had to be the bench where our stuff was. While we were off shooting pictures someone had come along and stolen all our stuff. My jacket, Angie’s jacket, both the boy’s jackets, and some minor photography stuff. We couldn’t believe it, especially since we’d seen virtually no one at the park that day. I mean, it was hailing and all, who in their right mind would be at the park at that time? We saw one guy walking his 2 good sized dogs, he wouldn’t have been able to carry it all if he wanted to and keep his dogs in grasp. One guy was out jogging the trails, and that was it. Luckily neither of us had anything important in our pockets. Wallets and keys were all either on us or with the stroller, which we promptly went back to retrieve and kept with us the rest of the day.

Neither one of us has ever really had anything flat out stolen from us before. It was really rather shocking to say the least. I’ve had my truck broken into before, but there’s nothing in there to steal so someone was very disappointed in their efforts there. This was just right out from under our noses though. We were right there the whole time and didn’t see or hear a thing. We choose to believe at this point that some poor homeless person needed our jackets much more than we did. If that’s the case, then so be it. We’re out maybe $50. Austin lost a couple of mini-cars in the process because Dad was holding them in his pocket. He was pretty upset when we told him what happened and that his cars were gone. I think they’ve been replaced already today though with a trip to the store.

So that was our Saturday afternoon. We went from the good – family pictures, to the bad – not the best weather, to the ugly – petty crime, all in one afternoon.

Sicko

2008-03-21T10:56:00.000-07:00

It’s been a sad story around our house the past 2 weeks. We’ve honestly been to the doctor’s office no less than 6 times amongst the 4 of us. Lukie started us off with a trip to the doctor’s on the 7th and he got started on some antibiotics for his 2 ear infections. That weekend we went to Longview to help Jason’s parents with some things. Upon returning Sunday night Jason got hit hard by “the bug.” Nevertheless, Monday and Tuesday were payroll days at work so he had to go no matter how awful he was feeling. That same Monday I started feeling not so well. Jason ended up staying home Wednesday and Thursday last week. That Wednesday we both went to the doctor’s and tested negative for Flu A and Flu B, however, doc said there’s talk of a Flu C out there and he thinks that’s what we have. Nothing to do though really, so no drugs for us.

That morning Austin woke up with a very “goobery” eye so after our appointment, it was off to his ear doctor. They were booked for 2 weeks so off to the Pediatrician’s to see if they could squeeze us in. As it turns out they could, but probably would’ve been better if they hadn’t. We saw some old geezer doctor who diagnosed Austin with Pink Eye before he ever looked at him. Mind you, this is the same doctor who 2 ½ years ago wouldn’t acknowledge that Austin’s eye drainage was due to ear infections and back then also incorrectly diagnosed him with Pink Eye. Once we saw a real doctor who sent us to a specialist and both confirmed he needed ear tubes, he’s been great ever since. At any rate, one of Austin’s ear tubes recently came out and guess which eye was now draining? The same side as the missing ear tube, go figure. Nevertheless, more eye drops is what we got to treat the Pink Eye. Ever given eye drops to a 3 year-old who doesn’t want them? Impossible for one person to do! I literally have to sit on him pinning his arms to his side while Jason holds his head straight so he doesn’t shake the drops out of his eyes before they go in. What a nightmare.

Next day, we’re up to last Friday, the 14th now, Luke wasn’t getting any better after a week of antibiotics so Jason took a half day at work, still not feeling well himself, and that afternoon we were off for another appointment for Luke. He got some stronger antibiotics for the ear infections and we were told with Austin’s “Pink Eye” to start giving the drops to Luke too. We didn’t have enough drops for the both of them, so we got another prescription of those. Luke’s not too bad for those. I give it to him when he’s asleep and he doesn’t even stir. Austin on the other hand wakes up and starts throwing a fit. Luke loves taking his medicine and cries when it’s not for him. Austin hates it and cries when it is for him. We’ve taken to mixing it in a milkshake for him so now every night he gets milkshakes and couldn’t be happier. And you better not rat me out on this either because if he knew there was medicine in there he absolutely would not eat it, even if it is ice cream.

No church for me and the boys last Sunday because of the “Pink Eye” but Jason got up to go so he could accept his new calling of 1st counselor in YM’s. He’s primarily responsible for teaching the Sunday lessons to the Teachers, strike that, to the TEACHER aged boy in our ward. He’ll assist on Wednesday night activities insofar as his work schedule permits.

So we’re cruising along, feeling crummy all of this week, until Wednesday night. That’s when Austin woke up from his nap, came to the dinner table, and I noticed that half his face was swollen like a tennis ball. So I called the 24 hour nurse hotline. They say if it gets worse he needs to be seen immediately (i.e. Emergency Room), but if nothing happens then he needs to be seen the next day. Thursday morning I call and get him an appointment. Doctor comes in, not his doctor but at least not the geezer doctor either, examines him, looks very concerned and says he’s going to go consult with another doctor to get a second opinion. Another doctor comes in, examines Austin, they confer, and deliver the news that Austin may in fact have Mumps. Uh, hello, that’s what the MMR is for so they don’t get it. I don’t even know how serious mumps is at that point. At any rate, they tell me to watch it for 48 hours. If the swelling remains or worsens then he needs to come back on Friday the 21st for bloodwork to confirm mumps. But we’re supposed to go down to Longview this weekend for my cousin’s wedding and Easter weekend with Jason’s parents, and we’re taking the wedding cake! Doc’s advised that we may want to make alternate plans. OUCH! And, by the way, Luke was doing terrific, well ahead of the curve at his 9 month appointment, so they said to skip his 12 month and just come in at 15 months, at which time he’d be given his MMR. Not anymore! With Austin potentially having it, Luke got the shots that day, for which Austin later felt terrible. “Mom, I’m sorry I had to go to the doctor’s and Lukie had to get shots.”

I figure it can’t be all that bad if they’re sending me home to monitor for 2 days. So I call Jason at work and he does some research. He discovers that it really isn’t all that bad for children to get it, although it’s highly contagious, but mostly just involves swelling in the neck/cheek making them look like chipmunks. It actually has much more severe results in adult males who may contract it, but I’ll leave that research up to you.

At any rate, here we are now, on the 21st. Austin’s swelling has significantly decreased so the Doc’s are certain it’s not the mumps. They’ve given us clearance to go out in public once again. We can indeed go to Longview this weekend and enjoy a nice Easter weekend with the grandparents. My cousin’s wedding won’t be ruined by lack of a cake. Everything turned out beautiful, right? Well, except for the fact that Jason and I still feel only slightly better than the crummy we felt last week. I need my Mom!

Potty Humor

2008-03-05T16:10:00.001-08:00

Humor me for a moment as I share some potty humor with you. Angie has bee working diligently with Austin for quite some time to get him potty trained. She’s started and stopped numerous times due to several outstanding factors: holidays away from home, selling our home, not living at home, you name it, and it has probably distracted our potty training schedule. At any rate, I would say that since we’ve been in our own home once again, all of 2 or 3 weeks now, Austin has finally started getting the hang of it. Many fewer accidents of late, at least that I know about anyway. And lest any of you out there think I’m missing out on this whole experience, I get my share of “wiping” in the evenings and weekends. Notice I didn’t say fair share, as I’ll be the first to admit this usually falls to Angie, but I get a share, which is more than enough for me.

At any rate, this past weekend I was receiving my share of duties and accompanied Austin down the hall into the bathroom where I anticipated needing to help him get situated. I asked him if he needed help and he threw his hand up (as if to say STOP) and yelled “NO, I can do it myself!” So he proceeded to situate himself and when he was sitting there he looked up at me and said, “Well maybe you could go get me a stack of books.”

I couldn’t respond for quite some time because I was laughing so hard. Finally I got out, “A stack of books, huh? Are you going to be in here a while?”

To which he curtly replied, “Only until I’m done reading my books.”

“How bout I bring you one book then?” I responded.

“Well, maybe 3 books would be okay Dad.”

So off I went to get his 3 books. And when he was done with his books, well you know the rest from here…

Happy Leap Day

2008-02-29T10:49:00.001-08:00

That's it. Happy Leap Day everyone. And a very Happy Leap Birthday to my Uncle Paul. I think he's officially 13 today? Have a great day Paul!

CRAZY STRIPPER!

2008-02-29T10:26:00.001-08:00

Once upon a time, not all that long ago, a wonderful and devoted mother, me, woke up one morning and decided to make her 3 year-old son, Austin, a wonderful pancake breakfast. Austin can be quite picky about how he eats his food and/or has it served to him, and his desires can change on a whim. So whenever we have pancakes I always ask him if he wants butter on the pancakes or on the side. Syrup on the pancakes or on the side? Pancakes whole or cut up?

One day Austin decided he’d rather have his syrup on the side. Therefore I asked him if he wanted his pancakes cut into strips so he could more easily dunk the strips into the syrup, rather than trying to dip the whole pancake. He was very excited by this new proposition, so I proceeded to cut his pancakes into strips. Breakfast went very smoothly, cleanup proceeded just fine, and we were off on our day.

Much, much later that day, Austin became frustrated with me, about what I’ve long since forgotten. And because he doesn’t yet really know what real name-calling is, he often makes things up to call you when he gets mad. One of his favorite is “ipper.” I have no idea what an “ipper” is, but I’ve been accused of it more than once, as has Jason. Well on this particular day, Austin came up with what he considered a wonderfully new and derogatory insult. He was so frustrated with me he stomped his foot, looked me straight in the eye, and said,

“You crazy stripper!”

I was certain I had misunderstood him.

“What did you say?”

“I called you are a crazy stripper!”

“Where did you hear that?”

“From when you made my pancakes into strips this morning.”

Next came the gentle and calm explanation that we do not call people strippers or any other names for that matter, which, I might add, is a somewhat difficult conversation to have when you’re trying not to start laughing about the whole scene.

So there it is. My son thinks I’m a stripper, and as it turns out, I guess I am!

Curved Shower Rod

2008-02-28T08:25:00.000-08:00

So here’s the story of our Curved Shower Rod. I fear it may be somewhat of a let-down because it’s not all that great a story, but here goes anyway. By the way, the above picture is not actually of our bathroom, but does show the tremendous benefits afforded by having a curved shower rod.

Our condo was sold and we had long since moved out of it. Angie and the boys were living in Longview with my parents while I was staying at Angie’s Uncle’s house in Renton. On weekends I’d go down and visit, then drive back up on Sunday night. When at last we heard from escrow that they had the papers on our house and were ready for us to come sign, we arranged to get a hotel in Federal Way (close to escrow) and have Angie and the boys come up the night before our early AM signing appointment. We found a hotel with an indoor swimming pool so we could take the boys swimming, and fun was had by all.

Well, our hotel room happened to have a curved shower rod in it, and Angie and I both commented on how wonderful it was to take a shower and not have the curtain hanging on you the whole time. Those extra few inches really make a huge difference!

So the other day we were at Lowes buying supplies for the many projects going on in our new house and we sought out the shower rods to see how much a curved rod would be. It ended up being about $40 but neither one of us flinched at that price. We both just knew it had to be part of our new bathroom. We got it, my Dad helped us install it, which was really quite simple, and we’ve been enjoying it for a couple weeks now.

Seriously, if you’ve not experienced the luxuries of the curved shower rod I would highly recommend booking a night at your local hotel. Be sure to call around and make sure they’ve got a room with one installed. After you try it, you’ll be headed out to get your own!

P.S. I have not been paid for endorsements by either the curved shower rod people or the hotel industry.

A Home of Our Very Own

2008-02-27T16:37:00.000-08:00

After what turned out to be 2 months of waiting to get into our house, we’re finally in. And by in I mean we have absolutely nothing stored in any storage units that we have to pay monthly rent on. After all, don’t we all have stuff stored at Mom and Dad’s house no matter how old we are? I know I do, and I know Angie does. But finally even that could be remedied soon. We actually have a real house with enough room to store everything we have in what would typically be considered storage areas, not stacked under the bed, not piled in the closets. A place for everything and everything in it’s place.

Okay, so we don’t yet have everything in it’s place, but it’s comforting knowing there is a place for it to eventually go. We are actually still living in some state of disarray. After we took possession of the house, but before we emptied the storage units, we undertook several projects upstairs. First of all, paint for every wall. Living room, dining room, kitchen, entryway (took some daredevil painting to complete that), hallway, both bathrooms and 3 bedrooms, all got painted. The main bathroom was subject to a much bigger makeover. Toilet taken up, vanity and mirror ripped out, new floor put down, toilet back in, new vanity in, new mirror up, electrical outlet put it (can you believe there was no outlet in the bathroom?), and new curtain rod put in. Actually, the curtain rod may be my favorite part, and there’s a little story about that too. Maybe I’ll save that for another day. We then commenced to rip out the carpet throughout the entire upstairs and haul it down to our newly designated garbage pile in the unfinished portion of the basement (everywhere except the dining room as we still have some work to complete in there). Underneath this nasty “who knows how many decades old” carpet was absolutely beautiful looking wood floors. We’re talking real wood floors here! The carpet was actually just taped down so removal was easy, but the best part is there’s no holes from nailing the carpet in and no messy glue from gluing it in. These floors literally need nothing more than sweeping and mopping and they look fantastic! We’re so excited about the floors.

We’ve since purchased new blinds that have been installed in the 3 bedrooms (way to go Angie)! Curtains have been put up in our room and the boys room. Fireplace insert has been removed and the entire outside chimney has been weatherized and sealed. Plans are still to redo all the baseboards throughout the upstairs, wainscot above the baseboards in the dining room (hence the carpet is still there), replace all the outlets (we have the really old style that have just two prongs instead of 3), and who knows what else. I’m sure Angie’s got a lot more plans. And don’t get me started on the half finished downstairs which currently has no heating. We’ll get to all that someday. Not to mention that as the weather heats up we’ve got some serious work to do in the yard to restore it to some semblance of life. That too, will come some day, probably sooner rather than later.

We’re just excited to finally be in our place and be doing some work on it. Things look great so far, and hopefully will keep getting better. HUGE THANKS to my Mom and Dad for coming up 2 weekends in a row to help do all that work. Couldn’t have done it without them. Not to mention the fact that Angie and boys lived with them for 2 months waiting to get into the house. We’ll have to do something big for them.

Good news, the digital camera is out of storage, so pics should be coming soon!

50 Cent In Our House?

2008-02-20T16:16:00.000-08:00

Last night we were sitting in the boy’s room watching TV, because we haven’t hooked up cable yet and so far we get the best reception in their room. So we’re all sitting on the floor, no furniture yet mind you, watching TV and Luke decides he wants to listen to the radio. He long ago figured out that on our little TV there’s a button you can push that will change it from TV to Radio and he loves hearing the music. So he goes over, pushes the button, what do we care it’s on commercial anyway, the music comes on and he starts dancing up a storm. So Angie and I start encouraging him by bobbing our heads and otherwise doing our best to “dance” from a seated position.

Next thing we know, here’s Austin putting words to the music:

“Go Lukie, it’s your Birthday!”
“Go Lukie, it’s your Birthday!”
“Go Lukie, it’s your Birthday!”

That’s when we lost it. We were literally rolling on the floor laughing, aided of course by the fact that we were already on the floor, but nevertheless, we were rolling. Don’t know where he heard it or where he picked it up from, but 50 Cent was definitely “in da house” last night!

Where have we been?

2008-01-17T15:55:00.001-08:00

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!! And for that matter, Happy Thanksgiving and Christmas too, since we seem to have missed the second half of November, all of December, and the first half of January. Boy has life been crazy. Let’s get started with some updates.

First of all, big thanks to our dear friend Myr for taking our plain old blog and jazzing it up for us. She’s so creative! Great job Myr. Now it’ll not only be an adventure for all of our friends to log in and see what’s going on, but for us as well.

Second, and partial explanation for the long hiatus, we’ve sold our condo in Kent. YEAH!!!!!! Or as Austin would once say, “Phew, Finally.” Actually it didn’t take that long really. Once we were on the market, we got an offer after 3 days. So it went quickly, but still takes some time to wrap everything up. So here’s what the wrap up process consisted of:

1. Oct. 31st (Yes, Halloween night) – We decided we were done with the condo and our Association. We’d just had enough and it was getting to be time to have a yard for the boys to run around in anyway.

2. All of November – We got ourselves a real estate agent and told her our plans. We started first by finding the house we wanted to buy. This we accomplished near the end of Nov. so our offer went in. Something went haywire in our brains though and we didn’t make our offer contingent on the sale of our condo b/c we really wanted this house. A day or two later we were informed that the seller had accepted our offer. Inspection on the place was great. It’s all but officially ours at this point. Seller just has a few legal things to wrap up on their end. Now we were really scared.

3. Early December – With the house we wanted secured, but not closed upon, we set our sites to selling the condo. Our agent wanted us out so she could use some of our stuff and some of her stuff to professionally stage it for showing. We got a storage unit and moved about half our stuff into it, at the discretion of our agent. Then, Dec. 3rd, Angie and the boys moved out of the condo and into my parent’s house down in Longview, WA (about a 2 hours drive from Kent). I alone remained in the condo because I’m almost never there anyway. By Friday, Dec. 7th, our condo was on the market to be sold.

4. Dec. 11th or 12th – I can’t remember which day it was, but we got an offer on the condo. It was way low so we countered and dropped our price just a little bit, and they accepted our counter-offer. Inspection went well on the condo as well, we touched up a few minor things, but that was all good. Then the Holidays hit and everything came to a standstill. I went down and joined my family at my family’s (I hope you followed that) and had a great Christmas and New Year. As the condo was all but closed, Angie and the boys accompanied me back home to get the rest of our stuff packed up. But where would we be moving it to?

5. Jan. 11th – We were informed that the target close date for the condo was the 11th and we would have to be out by 9 PM that night. No word yet from the seller of our house though so off we went to get another storage unit (by “we” I mean Angie took care of this while I was playing around at work all day). “We” packed up the rest of our stuff and with the help of my parents loaded it all into the second storage unit. By Jan. 7th Angie once again trooped off with the boys and moved in with my parents. I remained in the condo until the morning of the 11th, and spent my time at home running the rest of our stuff over to storage and making sure nothing was left. When I closed up shop to go to work that morning, we were officially done. Lock the door, leave the key, and drive away forever.

6. Today – And this is the situation we find ourselves in today, homeless, basically. Still no word from the seller of our home, although things are getting closer all the time. Angie and the boys are still with my parents in Longview. I’m staying with Angie’s uncle in Renton. We’re just one big happy family…living 2 hours apart!

We hope to be in our new home by the end of the month though, so shouldn’t have too much longer to wait. The killer is that I haven’t even been able to go down on weekends to visit because it’s year-end at work and I’ve been working every Saturday. Since I can’t go on Saturday, I figure I may as well stay and perform my Sunday duties too. And such is our life these days.

Soon we’ll be in the new house, and have lots of fun stuff to blog about. Until then, I just want to point out, that although our boys may not have any clothes, please take note that they are standing at the TV watching Jeopardy! They’re perhaps the smartest little nudists around.

Halloween Pics!

2007-11-16T16:35:00.000-08:00

Don't have time to write much, but wanted to post some Halloween pics. Enjoy!

Lightning McQueen and Mater Side View

Lightning McQueen and Mater Front View

I did take Austin out Trick-or-Treat'ing which he did fairly well at. He wouldn't say Trick or Treat, but he always said Thank you when prompted. Everyone loved his costume. Other kids would stop and stare as Lightning McQueen went by. We had lots of fun!

Portland Zoo

2007-10-19T15:32:00.001-07:00

At the end of September Jason had his 10 year High School Reunion. We decided that we would attend, and we ultimately had an alright time, but my favorite part of the weekend had nothing to do with the reunion at all. To facilitate the weekend trip to Longview, Jason took that Friday off and we headed down to his parents house Thursday night after he got off work. Reunion activities didn’t start until Friday night, so we decided to get up early on Friday and take the boys down to the Portland Zoo. After all, Jason’s parents were both at work and his siblings were off at school so we’d have been hanging out at their house alone all day anyway.

So off we trooped to the zoo. It was a typical Pacific Northwest day weather wise – overcast and slightly drizzling. This was actually our second trip to the Portland Zoo and we love it because of their Sea Lion exhibit. You ever notice how each zoo seems to have their own specialty exhibit? To me the Seattle Zoo’s Bear and Otter exhibit can’t be beat. Tacoma is definitely the Beluga Whale. Salt Lake has a relatively new and terrific Elephant exhibit. You just have to go to them all to see the different animals and habitats. At any rate, Portland excels with their Sea Lions which are just enormous. They swim laps around their habitat and always swim right in front of the huge underwater glass. You can see Austin (red hood) standing in front of one of the sea lions as it passes.

We also met a very nice Sea Otter family while we were there.

Here's Sea Otter Mom

Sea Otter Austin

And Sea Otter Lucas

Sea Otter Dad was taking the pics and for whatever reason we didn’t think to switch places and get a picture of him so I’ll throw in one of him and Austin by the bears at the front gate.

And just to wrap things up, later that weekend, Jason’s brother, James, brought several pumpkins he’d received free of charge to his parents house. We brought 2 of the smaller ones home, but there was one gigantic pumpkin that was for Grandma Crawford’s Kindergarten classroom. It was so big we just had to get some pics of Luke standing by it. Luke is 9 ½ months old in this picture and just a head taller than this 70 pound behemoth. Thanks for the pumpkins James!

Ward Campout 2007

2007-10-11T16:02:00.000-07:00

We participated in our Ward Campout in August of this year held at Ensign Ranch. It’s a church owned facility located in or around Cle Elum, WA which is only about an hour drive from our home. I know it’s been a couple months since then, but we just got our pics developed so I thought I’d share. I swear we’re the only family in the civilized world without a digital camera!

Jason took Friday off so we could head up early. That’s because 2 years ago, while members of the Renton Stake Tiffany Park Ward, we also went to Ensign Ranch for the Ward Campout. Austin was less than a year old at that time, my how the time flies. At any rate, that year we didn’t leave until after Jason got home from work. We realized we’d made a critical mistake about halfway through setting up our tent in the dark. Then we relaxed by sitting in camp chairs around the cooler inside the tent eating tuna fish sandwiches by the romantic glow of our flashlights, once we found them that is. I remember that what Austin loved most about that trip was being inside the tent crawling around on the air mattress. He thought that was so neat and loved it whenever Jason or I would bounce him on it.

Austin’s been camping a couple times since, but this trip was Luke’s first adventure into the great outdoors. Not surprisingly, he too loved being in the tent crawling around on the air mattress. Only this time Jason and I weren’t the ones doing the bouncing. Austin was bouncing enough for all of us, and Luke couldn’t get enough of it. Hard to tell him to stop jumping when they’re both just cackling with laughter.

On Saturday we signed up to take the paddleboat out on the lake. We all got our life jackets on and waited our turn. Austin was scared at first to get in, so we were going to leave him with some ward members on the shore. As soon as we started pulling away he realized he’d rather be in the boat with us than on the shore without us. So we went back and picked him up and off we went. It was quite windy that day and the paddleboat had a canopy on it so we simply got ourselves out into the middle of the lake and let the wind push us for a while. After about 15 minutes we decided to head back and quickly realized the mistake we’d made. Remember the wind and the canopy that had been so great to push us down the lake? Now we were fighting against that wind trying to make our way back. And we had nothing but Mom and Dad leg power to do it with, and I was holding Luke on my lap the whole time. We quickly remembered how old and out of shape we are. We eventually made it back to shore, docked the boat, and collapsed to the ground! Austin didn’t know what was wrong, he wasn’t tired at all.

Our favorite adventure though was when Jason and Austin went exploring and found their way down to a river that runs through the ranch. We sat out there by the side of the river for hours while Austin threw rocks, sand, grass, and whatever he could get his hands on into the water. We all had our feet in the water just cooling off and relaxing. The weather was amazing by Washington standards and we all had a great time. I guess we may have more camping adventures in our future.

He told me so.

2007-09-12T17:10:00.000-07:00

“Mom, Mom come here quick. You gotta check this out!”

“What is it Austin?”

“It’s Mack, he’s under the bed. It’s Mack Mom, it’s Mack.”

Instantly my heart sank in despair. He wasn’t supposed to find it. His birthday’s not for another month and a half. Jason told me he’d find it. I knew better than that and insisted that I could keep it hidden until the big day.

So it was that two days ago, yep count’em two days, I pulled out Mack the truck, which we’d purchased a couple weeks ago, and which had up until this time been hiding in the trunk of our car, and began to assemble him there on our living room floor, after Austin had gone to bed of course, so it’d be ready for its big debut on Nov. 2nd. I just wanted to make sure it was all there and that it was all put together so we didn’t have to try assembling it when Austin would immediately want to play with it. At least that’s what I told myself. Okay, so maybe there was a small part of me that was excited, no, REALLY EXCITED, to play with it first. But what’s the harm in that? Isn’t that half the fun of having kids anyway is getting to play with all their cool toys that you buy to play with, I mean for them to play with? And so I felt completely justified in my actions. Besides, I had the perfect hiding place for Mack. There’s so much stuff under our bed even if he did look under there, there’s no way he’d find him.

Nevertheless this afternoon, after taking a nap on our bed, Austin woke up and began playing with his toys that had taken a nap with him. Wouldn’t you know it, one of them fell off the bed. He proceeded to climb down onto the floor and start snooping around looking for it. And then, well you know the rest.

I had to call Jason at work and go through the usual routine.

“I’m stupid, you’re smart. I was wrong, you were right. You’re the best, I’m the worst. You’re very good-looking, I’m not attractive.”

Our first blog.

2007-08-31T09:36:00.000-07:00

This blog is for Myr. She made us do this. We didn't want to, but Myr said we had to. So here I am creating the first blog posting for The Crawford Crew. I just started playing around and clicking on things and apparently found how to upload an image. So I chose the boys' picture which we had taken quite some time ago (Luke is 6 weeks old and Austin is a couple months past 2 years in this pic). Luke's now 8 months old and Austin's set to turn 3 on Nov. 2nd, just ask him. He'll also tell you everything he's going to get for his birthday too. He's now started asking for things for every holiday. Right now he's working on his Halloween list.

So all the blogs I see from all my friends have funny stories or neat things that happen to them. I feel like I have to dredge up something of that sort to post here. You can't just post for the sake of posting. You have to say something or relate something, right?

So let's see. Last night as Austin and I were enjoying the opening of the 2007 college football season together, he was playing with his cars and books which were scattered all over the living room. As he was running around he tripped over something and banged his knee on one of his cars. Mom was busy, so Dad got to play the role of caretaker as he came over with his blanket in one hand and snuggled up to me.

"Dad I fell and hurt my knee," he proceeded to tell me.

"I'm sorry," I replied.

"Dad, you didn't have anything to do with it!" Austin heatedly replied.

So I simply proceeded to kiss it better and not apologize for what I had nothing to do with, and we sat and watched more football together. It was a good father son bonding moment, only made possible because Mom was busy.

Alright, that's my first foray into the world of posting. Perhaps there'll be more ventures later, but given my past performance in journal keeping and responding to emails, perhaps there won't be. Myr, you just let me know when it's time to post again. Family pics coming soon so perhaps another post is just around the corner.