"My Favorite White New Land Grover" max

It's been a long, eventful life for this Land Grover (that's what Max calls them) since we first bought it about a year ago. I was itching for a new ride after the windows on the Saturn wagon quit working--naturally the AC was also broken and too old to be inexpensively fixed. I was driving to and from school, becoming drenched in sweat each time I got in it.
One fine day, I was out riding my bike when I spotted a white Land Rover for sale. It appeared to be in good condition and the asking price was low enough that I could actually afford it. Secretly, since the days of snapping the sway bars and ripping the skid plates off my dad's pickup, I had always wished for a true 4x4 to call my own. When I noticed the sticker in the window of the Rover stating "4x4 of the year", I knew we needed it. Sure enough, Ginna agreed and although we had to let a lot of air pressure out the tires to fit it in the garage it was ours.
We hadn't owned the thing more than a day when things started to go downhill. We took it to our "trusty" local mechanic to have it fully tuned and update all maintenance before we started to drive it. For about $1500 he changed the brakes, spark plugs and belts, then cracked the windshield (which they denied, but I took it whole and got it back cracked!), worsened the power steering leak and didn't put the wheels back on tight, so they almost fell off on the freeway!
Next came two wrecks in two months--both not our fault, and yes, the Favorite White New Land Grover kept Ginna safe in both instances.
We decided that since the cumulative insurance payouts were more than the value of the car and slightly less than the cost of fixing it in the body shop, we'd try to find something else. But, after having a Land Grover, it's really hard to shop for another type of car.

We looked at just about everything, including some mini-vans, but in the end, we knew what we wanted: another Land Grover. So, we bought the Red New Land Grover and we really like it. I kept the white grover in the garage since I couldn't really sell it and I honestly, I didn't want to.

If you read our posts then you'll know that our subaru recently died. Suddenly, we were at a crossroads. New car or fix the white grover? The choice was clear. We needed the grover back. I also needed to do it on a budget. So, I undertook the whole project myself. I have no knowledge of auto mechanics, bodywork or anything like that. Still, I needed to fix my grover. I took off all the broken panels and used a sledge hammer to straighten the big dents, I bought a true Australian safari bumper and put off-road tires on it.
I bought replacement lights from the junk yard and somehow managed to salvage the stock grill. The fenders are still not totally fixed and I couldn't get the hood straight, but oh well.

I also got ambitious and fixed the powersteering leak. I bought the tech manual for the car and took off a whole bunch of stuff, so I could get to the powersteering pump and fix the leak. I can't believe it worked. Now Max's favorite white new land grover is back in action and I'm using it to drive to school. There were some choice moments during the rehabilitation of the white grover and I still want to have the body work done by a shop someday, but until I'm rolling in the benjamins, we'll be rolling in the Favorite White New Land Grover.

Why do kids always get sick??

So here Max and I are. We flew to Orlando Florida to meet my mom, dad, youngest brother and sister at Disney World for a fun week. Guess where I am right now? In the hotel room. Guess where Max is? In bed asleep. He puked up his guts all morning.
So a question for all my friends out there--those of you that are parents and those that aren't. Is this something that just always happens? Is it just kids, or traveling or what? It seems like anytime we try to do anything he's either sick before we start or gets sick on the trip. Is it just bad luck? Or some other reason?
Any of youguys have any good stories about this kind of thing? Things that happened to your kids or to you yourself?

We'll be waiting to hear....

Things You Couldn't Even Imagine

The other day Kelly showed us some old home video he had on his computer from one of Kari's birthday parties when we were living in Morrison CO. Kari got one of those big 8balls that could "predict the future". You would ask it a question and then turn the ball over and an answer would display. In the video--which is super funny--Kelly grabs it and asks, "am I going to be famous?" Then Kari asks, "am I going to be a superstar?" Kari used to always tell us that she was going to marry a rich pineapple farmer from Hawaii and live the sweet life (sorry Aaron). Obviously those dreams rarely play out and that's probably good. Sometimes, though, I like to think about what my youth self would think of my current life. I'm not exactly sure what I expected. Maybe to be a rockstar trombonist. (btw, that picture would make a great desktop picture (: ) At any rate I'm pretty sure if someone told me that I was going to be a dentist I would have been pretty bummed out. Working in mouths isn't that glamorous.
Still, there is at least one thing about my current life that I would have been really excited about.
Nintendo emulator for personal computers. I couldn't have ever imagined that I would one day have nintendo and supernintendo on my computer, with every game at my fingertips. A few days ago, while I was flying home from California, I played nintendo games the whole time. You can even save your game and restart later. Kelly and I played a season of tecmo superbowl, by playing a game and emailing the saved version back and forth. Kelly won, back in the day I would have beat him up, but he's too big now, so I just pretended not to care.
Back when I was first learning Super Mario Bros. I would make Kelly and Kenny hide behind the chair while I played the difficult levels because I believed that their presence would mess me up. We were so serious about it that we played until there were indentations in our fingers from the triangles on the buttons. During my flight I got a serious cramp in my finger from using my keyboard as the joystick. It made me happy.
"8ball, am I going to have every nintnedo game ever?" Yes!!!!!!!!!

A haircut--old news, but still cute

Max got a haircut a week ago or so. It's not a drastic change, but enough that he can now see!
Here are some befores: Lots of hair!!



































The girl who cuts our hair did a really great job with him, and he was sort of brave. For once she actually did what we wanted and just cut off enough so he could see better, but left his essential Max-ness intact. She gave him a special purple comb he got to take home. He thought it was pretty nifty. So he admitted this time, the haircut didn't hurt. What a relief!

Some during and afters:
I love this one.

The finished product, what a stinkin' cute boy!

American Idol Bologna anyone?

Max and I were out at the grocery store shopping today. We got to the sandwich meat section and I said "hmmmm, what kind of bologna should we get?" Honestly I wasn't really asking for his opinion, I'm a little smarter than that. Anyway, I picked out the one I wanted, and as I reached for it he said, "No, no mom! I want the American Idol one!" I'm thinking, "what??!? American Idol bologna? Give me a break!"
However, there down at the bottom of the case, there was American Idol bologna. I guess Oscar Meyer is having some sort of strange "sing the jingle" contest or something weird, so some of the packages are festooned with the American Idol logo.
Anyway, this is a child that can't read, but he can recognize bologna with the American Idol logo on it for what it is? So strange. And mind you, this child has never watched American Idol.
Scary, huh? I'm not sure what this all means.....any ideas?

Maxes at work

So check it out. I was making dinner the other night, and Kris had Max set the table. When I turned around it looked like this.
Please take special note of the number of forks that the person sitting at the end of the table gets. I only made one course.....maybe I should be making more. Disregard the crumbs on the table, I'm sure I don't know where those came from!
My favorite part though, is the carefully pre-crumpled state of the napkins. Very deliberate and artisic I think. I think I'm going to get him a job at a fancy restaurant right away, probably a modern kind, where they would appreciate the true art of napkin crumpling. In the meantime I'm going to figure out what else we can eat with all those forks.

Katy Trail Camping and Biking Trip
Here's a picture of Sultan waiting in the back of the Red Grover for us to get packed for a trip to the Katy trail last weekend. The Katy is an old railroad trail that has been converted to a gravel cycling path that goes all the way across Missouri. Part of the trail travels along the Muddy MO (that's the Missouri for those of you who don't know). We took Max, Sultan and our bikes for a little trip. We went last year and had a really good time, so we had to have a repeat. Sultan loves camping, he'd wait in the car indefinitely just for the opportunity.
Max likes to camp too and so does Ginna, provided we do it "right". Here I am pumping up our air-mattress. We even have a hanging fan in the tent to cool off the hot summer nights.
The first time I automated the inflation I brought the gas leaf blower with us. Max got super scared and all the other people at the campground where looking at me like: "why did that moron bring his leaf-blower?" This little pump is quite an improvement.





Even Mama Fish got in on the action. You can see Max's little sleeping bag in the background. I was so excited when we got it. But, Max didn't sleep in it at all. All it has done is make me want to say bad words while trying to stuff it in a too tight stuff sack.


Here we are taking a little break during our ride. We decided to ride from Huntsdale to Rocheport. It's only about 7 miles each way. The trail was right along the MO. Max really wanted to practice his potty training during this break. He found that he prefers trees to toilets. I don't blame him, but you have to be careful with things like that around the house and at the local parks.

This picture was taken in front of a little bakery in Rocheport. We bought some cookies to help us recharge for the ride back to Huntsdale. Just up the street from this place is where Sultan had an altercation with a killer cat. The cat stalked us and scratched Sultan on the nose. Still, in the end the dumb cat got a little bite from the big guy's dentition.
Sultan did an amazing run. He went at least 10 miles before he started to slow. He got so tired about a mile from the end that when I slowed down for him, he just sat down. He must have been super cramped and sore, because nothing slows that dog down. He limped for 2 days afterward, but he's fine now and more excited than ever about going on rides.
We packed up the Red Grover at the end of the trip. Sultan was going to make sure he didn't get left behind. He even offered to ride home on the bumper. We upgraded him to business class and he got to ride with Max on the middle bench. Sultan and Max slept the whole way home. We even made it back in time to watch BYU lose a football game.

KC RenFest

On labor day Kris, Max, Sultan and I went to Kansas City's Renaissance Festival. I write festival with a capital F because it is quite the fest!! It goes on weekends all through September and halfway through October.
There are shows and performances galore, and miles of stalls and booths all winding through a large piece of land in Kansas. They are all in renaissance style and look very cool and old. Take a look at the picture below. Please note the crazy man in the foreground with the huge stick of feathers. He went around goosing people with that. Yikes. Unfortunately I don't think you can see the enthusiatic look in his eye in this picture, but maybe click on it and see if you can see it any better.

Many different types of people frequent the renaissance fair. We saw fairies, knights, ladies, shakespearian folks, wizards, vampires, wenches and all sorts of other idividuals that defy category. The best part about it is you really can't tell who is working at the fair and who is just visiting. Except for the people that look like tourists. They're pretty unmistakable. I'm afraid we fell more into that category this time, but that's ok for now.
We started out by taking a crack at the hippie stick twirling thing. It wasn't as easy as it looks. Max mostly liked it because he got really dirty. The dirtiness of the festival was definitely authentic. Kris and I tried the sticks for a minute, but got discouraged pretty quickly as the sticks hit the dirt over and over, and Max started throwing handfuls of dirt into the crowd. So we moved on.


Next Kris and Max went to the swordfighting area where they got to whack at each other and others with foamy swords. It was pretty exciting, but I don't have a very good picture. It was really dusty and shadowy. I tried.
Max and I bought cool leather bracelets at the leather booth.

Since we just were at Disneyland a couple of weeks ago Max had his eye out for rides. And boy did he find them. The first one he rode was a big wooden ship shaped like a swan. It was hung by strings and swung back and forth. It was pushed by a strapping young bare chested man and the ride went on for about 10 minutes. Seriously it was soooo long. We waited for him though.

He thought it was really fun.
But the real winner was the ride that was a whole bunch of little swings suspended in the air that some more strapping young shirtless men pushed around in a circle. He loved it. He squealed and screamed until a couple of mothers in the area rushed up, concerned he was in distress. Which he wasn't. He was thrilled.
This ride also lasted FOREVER. He could've ridden Dumbo probably 10 times, including the waiting in line by the time he got off this thing. All the better as far as Max was concerned! It obviously gave me a good opportunity for many pictures, so enjoy.

So that wraps up our visit to the RenFest. It was great. We highly recommend it for anyone that likes peoplewatching, foot long corndogs, squishy boobs, spinny rides, swordfighting and hippie stick twirling. Oh yeah, and if you like to buy handmade leather shoes or maces you should definitely check it out.

Big A little a, what begins with A??

Most of you know that Max goes to preschool. He loves it. We have this great little school just a block away from our house called the Purple Dragon. He started going there a couple of months ago. It's a small school with no more than about 40 kids at any one time. The lady that runs it is very serious about learning, but so far she's done a great job combining learning and fun. He brought home a different art project every day during the summer.
Now that it's fall they've started in on their curriculum. For the kids Max's age it's the sounds in the alphabet.
Last week was A. Or aaahhhh I guess. They talked about apples and alligators and anteaters. They have a big bulletin board up on the wall of the school which has a big A and a little a in the middle, and then quite a few pictures pinned up illustrating a words. I took a quick look and saw an armadillo, a picture of the apostles, a big pile of aluminum, alligators, etc., etc....It's great.
Here's a picture of Max with his Aquarium he created during the week.

They eat snacks that fit in with the sound of the week too. Last week they ate acorn squash (Max supposedly asked for 2nds), asparagus and apples.
One day they talked about anteaters, which made Max happy since he has an anteater, which he loves.

Did you know that anteaters' tongues can be two feet long??


So that's the letter A. And remember, there's a difference between alligators and crocodiles. We don't mix them up at the Purple Dragon.