PB & S

Remember peanut butter and syrup sandwiches? Yum!! We ran out of bread yesterday so I made all of us waffles. Seeing as myson's only lunch to date ever was PB/J sandwiches, I slapped some peanut butter on his waffles then drenched them in syrup. That brought back the nostalgia. I had forgotten how my brothers and would toast bread, spread on peanut butter and soak in syrup. The syrup would have to drip over the edges of the toast to get on the plate. Then you could put the toast on top of the syrup and have it soak in through the bottom.

Of course I don't have any cavities!!

Another thought: I love my new jeans that either wife or her mom gave me. I put them on the morning without a belt and I had a hard time keeping them on. It made me feel I didn't have any hips or read end to hold them up. When you get older, that's a pretty good feeling -- even for gawky me.

That's my random thoughts for today. I'll see you all later this week after we get back from Utah. After that, I'll be able to visit your local playground and spot all the dangers that lie within. MWA HA HA HA! (wife's going to be so bored when I subject her to conversations of that nature)

Short(er) Blog

This will be a somewhat shorter blog to be followed up by a longer blog with pictures and videos next week. You'll just have to wait till then. ;)

The reason I'm not posting a longer blog till next week is that Mike is going to Utah for some work related training. We leave on Monday afternoon, when Mike gets off of work, and come home Thursday evening. Our kids will be staying with their Grandma and Grandpa Aitken. Emily has become very clingy and needy lately. I wish them all the luck in the world in dealing with her. But, rather than tell you all our plans, I'll just tell you what happened when we get back.

Emily is doing a little bit better with her motor skills, although she still isn't crawling. We met with a case worker for the Infant Toddler Program who is trying to get us set up with a physical therapist who will come out to our house once a week to work with Emily. Until then, Mike and I are just trying to do all we can to encourage her to use her legs. She can drag herself with her arms and propel herself forward a little by pushing off with her toes. She can get around to wherever she wants to go, but it still isn't quite crawling. Lately though, she has been jumping in her Exersaucer (bouncy saucer toy thing) which I think has been helping her to build some much needed leg muscles. I don't think it'll be much longer before she really does crawl.

Emily is also starting to talk more. Currently, her vocabulary consists of Dad, Mom (pronounced "Bob"), brother, DeeDee (the cat's name), kitty, duck, bath, and hooray (as she lifts her arm into the air). She's so adorable!

Good news for Hyrum! He got accepted into the early intervention preschool we've been trying to get him into. We have a meeting with his teacher and the rest of the staff on November 13th. He'll start some time after that, attending 4 days a week, 2 hours a day. We are SO anxious for him to start talking. He turns 4 on November 17th, and still can't successfully communicate with us.

We got a good scare the other day. Mike let Hyrum outside to play for a little while, but he didn't expect him to go very far because it was raining. After less than 5 min, I asked Mike where he was. Mike told me he was right outside the door, but he wasn't. Mike stuck his head out and called for him, but no answer. A quick walk up and down the row of condos set us into a panic. Hyrum wasn't anywhere! Mike walked around several blocks before he came home and got the car to help him look better. I bundled Emily up and strapped her in her stroller and went out on foot. We looked everywhere. I was about to call the police and Mike was about to check the major road near our house to see if he had gone to watch the trucks or tried to walk to Jack-in-the-Box. He loves their french toast sticks. As Mike headed off to search some more, he passed by the alley that our house sits in. There in the driveway, perched atop a pink and purple tricycle, was Hyrum. We tried to ask Hyrum where the tricycle went.. told him to put it away, but he only tried to park it in our garage. Mike took him around to some of the neighbors who we know have young kids, but we never found the owner. To this day, I still have no idea where Hyrum went. It couldn't have been any of our nearby neighbors, because we checked with all of them. We parked the tricycle next to the road hoping someone would recognize it and pick it up. It sat there for half a week before it finally disappeared. I guess we need to get Hyrum one of his own so he doesn't do that again.

I was lazy this year for Halloween. I usually make the kids' costumes, but this year, I bought them. Yay for eBay! They won't be as cute or of as good a quality as when I make them myself, but it's so much easier this way! I'll probably go back to making them again next year. I've updated the poll for you to guess what they will be. The question will be answered in the form of pictures when we get home. Those of you who already know the answer, feel free to vote, but don't spoil it for everyone else!

Haddorkus

Cristtin's blog entry a few days ago was just too good to not link to it.

http://haddorkus.blogspot.com/2007/10/danisms.html

My then silent office was interrupted by my peircing laugh... Boss gave me a perplexed look. He understood after I sent him the link, so I still have my job :)

New Family Number!

Woohoo!

I just signed up with GrandCentral and got a new phone number that will reach me at all of my existing phones.

Now you can reach me everywhere (cell, work, home) with a single number. And if I move, switch jobs, or buy a new phone...this number never changes. It doesn't get much simpler than that.

For obvious privacy reasons, I'm not listing my number here, but you can use the button below or on the sidebar to have GrandCentral call you, after which it will call me! Just one thing, don't use all my minutes! :P

We're Expecting!!!

--just not a baby. We're expecting a lot of other things, though. I'm expecting Friday to come tomorrow. I'm also expecting bills to come in the mail. I'm expecting a Tax Refund next year, but then expecting it to go straight to pay off my Commerce and Labor debt. I'm also expecting to be debt free (excluding student loans... and something else) by March next year!!

Yes, I did have news before, but it fell through. We may have that news next Spring, but we won't know for sure until then.

On with other things!!

Family First. We're all doing much better now that we're out of the watchful eye of the evil landlord. We still haven't unpacked everything, but I'm not sure we ever will until we move again. This place is much too small to be able to fit everything.

Myson is scheduled for his screening today for speech therapy. He has a deficiency in motor and comprehension skills as well, but they believe it's from the lack of communication. For example, they would ask him to bring them the Red bear out of a few colored bears and he wouldn't do anything, but when they asked him, "What color is this bear?" He would respond with the color. We know he has a huge imagination and is intelligent, but not being able to communicate with him causes a lot of hindrance in him being able to learn and obey, which in turn leads to tantrums because hes not very patient with us. But the boy is dang-cute! He loves his mom and goes to her for comfort all the time, and goes to dad for a tickle victim and wacky fun ("Ok, son. When that car comes closer, walk out in front of it and Daddy will get a nice big paycheck!")

Thegirl is cute as ever! She's still happy most all the time, but not as much as her first several months of life. The veil definitely thinned. She's gained teeth -- I finally saw them! Jessica told me a few weeks ago she had them but when she'd try to show them she just wanted to hang her tongue out for me to see and blow raspberries. The most she's crawled was about 3 inches, the rest of the time she just goes in circles.

In other news... My CEO may fold the portion of the company I work for. It is still a long way off before he decides, and he's investing $ in my to get trained in Utah, so I'm not too concerned yet. However, it would be stupid of me not to have alternate plans as well. My backup plan is to move to Utah and take over sales in that area. We plan to buy the house from mom and find a place nearby where she can visit us everyday.

-- That, my family, was a joke --

Utah is for crazy drivers, and now I am a slow Idahoan. I enjoy the happiness of waving nicely to someone who allows me to merge in front of them on the freeway. I also enjoy reading the speed limit and not adding an additional 30 mph. We would, however, LOVE living close to mo-tab and the music environment of the Salt Lake Valley.

Moment of Inspiration!!
So, as some of you know from hearing me whine in my e-mails, I worked a lot last week... a lot. A very, very, lotted lot. 40 hours M-F on my daytime job and 45 hours Sun-Sun on my nighttime/weekend job. It was a pain not seeing my family. But beautiful Jay (adjective added for mum) in her wisdom and for her sanity would bring the kids by EatFreshway to see dad. It was soooo good seeing them. Emily would see me and say "DuD!" then push her face in Jay's shoulder being the shy girl she is. Anyway, that all sucked very much. I was able to see the kids and spend a bit of time with them Saturday morning, but it wasn't enough after finally being able to sleep in and then go back to work at 3.00pm. So, after slaving away all week, I was finally able to have Monday night off with my family.

I tell you, family is where it is at. It only took 10 mins of playing playing with myson to realize how much I missed him. I was overcome with a great feeling of peace, happiness, joy, etc. I couldn't exactly describe what it was, but I knew that I was doing the right thing by being with my family. It wasn't until later that night we had a knock on our door. I opened it to find 2 young men dressed in suits standing in front of me. They asked if they could talk with us about having our family be "together forever." I had never really thought that much about family after we get old and they my progeny going to college, so we invited them in. They told me a story about a 14-year old boy who went out to pray in the woods to find out which church was tru--

Can you guess where I started fibbing? Needless to say, I LOVE MY FAMILY! I even told Jay I loved her -- Crap! Did I just type that out loud?
-- Moment over --

Oh, you all know by now, but we won't be going to Utah this weekend. Earlier I told Jen, "We can't afford to go to Utah, but we also can't afford not to go." That statement would probably be profound if it wasn't so minimalistic. It simply means we have not the $ to go to Utah, but it's more important to forsake fiances finances and be with family, especially since we won't be seeing Dave/Karen/mini-DKs for a very long time. In the end, we crunched our numbers and just couldn't make it happen. Part of the reason being we need to save up $ to go to Utah the following month.

Which leads me to discuss this trip. I'll be going down to Utah on business from Sunday to Thursday/Friday, October 28th-November 1st-ish. I would love to meet up with my family one of those evenings. We'd like to have dinner at a restaurant or mum's with as many people as can make it. I'd like to say we can do other things on other nights, but this trip is for business -- and a break for Jay and I from... everything. I'll also be studying most nights for my exam on Thursday. I'm not sure if we're driving back to Idaho on Thursday night or Friday morning. The boss drives back the morning after on his trips to Utah, but -- you know -- he's the boss.

So... fake news, family, work... what's next?

Oh! I have officially quit FFXI. I don't have the time to do it + it was just taking too much time from the important things in my life: like my family and BSU football. I will miss my friends online, but the close ones I still intend to keep in contact via other means. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, read this section this way: "Mike's a geek. Mike's a geek. Mike's a geek. Mike's a geek."

Summarizing: I love you all, I'm lovin' life! My family is everything to me and I doubt I'd survive without them.

Nampa at last!

Yay! We finally moved! Have I ever said how much I hate moving? Well, I do. But I'm very glad to be away from our crazy landlord in Meridian. We had a few more run-ins with her before we left, however. The first involved a big Tonka dump truck that Hyrum liked to wheel his stuffed kitty around in out in the back yard. It was old and rusty, so we kept it tucked away in a hidden corner of the patio. As we were packing up, we found out that Dana had thrown it away because it didn't "show well." I love how she thinks she has ownership of not only the house, but the way we live our lives and even our personal property.

The second incident is a slightly longer story involving our back screen door and a forced entry. Basically, I like to lock the screen doors just for added security. Dana wanted to show the house to a prospective buyer and couldn't get a hold of us while we were at Mike's company picnic, so she forced the door open and broke it in the process. When we did the final walk through with her, she said she didn't remember doing it and it must have been the wind. So that will probably mean that she'll charge us for the damages.

She also conveniently doesn't remember that she got angry when she couldn't get a stain out of the dining room carpet and wasn't patient enough to wait for the professional steam cleaners to remove it and ended up bleaching the carpet white in that spot. Add on top of that the window that she broke while spraying the outside of the house with a pressure washer. Of course, she doesn't remember that either. I really wish we had picture documentation of all the damages she has done to the house while we were living there. Even if she takes our full deposit, I'll be ok with that. I just want to be done with her once and for all.

We're liking our new place so far. It's a little bit smaller, but not too bad. We had some difficulty with the move. We had plenty of help from our old ward in moving out of our old place, but no help at all moving into the new place. After moving what boxes and furniture Mike and I could do alone, we finally had to just call it good and leave the rest in the garage so we could return the truck. My brother James came out the next afternoon to help Mike move the rest of the heavy furniture in. We were so grateful since we know how busy he is with his wedding just a few days away.

Here is a video of the new place. Please forgive my voice. I've been sick for about 3 weeks with a nasty summer cold. (Let's hope this works. This is my first attempt at an embedded video.)

So that's the apartment! The biggest thing we miss has been having a yard for Hyrum to play in. I think he's getting pretty bored too. Last night while I was on the phone with my friend Sandi, I heard evil laughing from the kitchen and ran in to find Hyrum with the sink sprayer hose thingy spraying, well, everything. He had soaked the entire kitchen, two computers, the cushions on the bar stools, the carpet in front of the breakfast bar, the couches and end tables in the living room, the laundry I was folding and now have to dry and fold all over again, the living room carpet, and even the ceiling. Wow, that sprayer has good range. He had a lot of fun until he got caught. He got in BIG trouble!

Our neighbors are... interesting. There are tons of kids who live in these duplexes and they come over from time to time. On the day we moved in, 7 of them came to visit. I haven't let any of them come in to play with Hyrum since that first day though since one of the kids stole one of Hyrum's favorite trucks and he was quite upset about it. Most of the other neighbors who don't live in the duplexes are all related and own a family farm type of thing. It's not really a farm as much as it is a cow, some goats, and some chickens. They let Hyrum come and pet the animals and seemed very nice.

Emily got her first teeth! She seems to be getting more too. Either that, or she's just inexplicably cranky... I'll take some pictures and post them later, but it's hard to get her to show her teeth.

I got an email the other day about my 10 year high school reunion. I can hardly believe that I'm that old already! It's been kind of neat since it has given me an excuse to make contact with some old friends. They had only found 60 of us when they contacted me, and they didn't know where most of my friends were. Luckily, I do! Or at least I know who might know where they are. Boy, I wish I had kept up with them better. However, I've talked on the phone to a few friends since then, and my old friend Kristy is coming over for a visit today! I'm pretty excited to see her! She lived very close by when we lived in Meridian and we never saw each other even once.

Well, I've got lots to do today since it's Labor Day and Mike has the day off!! YAY! This is the first time in a long time that he's had a day off from both jobs, so we have lots of plans. Mike might post later on with another video he took once he figures out how to convert it. And hopefully we'll have some Labor Day fun pictures of us and the kids. Also, be expecting a surprise announcement from Mike! My mom already knows, but Mike hasn't told any of his family yet.