::pirate party::

To celebrate the last day of September I'd like to show you a wonderful birthday party that our friends threw for their kid Max's age. It was about a month ago. Luckily I had already gotten these photos all ready before the unfortunate computer incident! And there are a LOT of photos. So for those of you that have claimed to miss me, this is the ultimate test.
I'm practicing shooting in different situations as much as possible, and this was a fun one.

It was a pirate party. The first thing we did was make little beards out of yarn for the kids to wear. It was such a cute idea.

Of course my Max didn't want to wear his. It reminds me a little of Cammon crying his eyes out because he was supposed to wear a big white night shirt to be an angel in the christmas pagent. Hah.

But at least he kept it on long enough for the photo.
Here's the birthday boy. Henry. He's now 5 and very proud of it.

Arrrrrr.
And his sister Lucy. I think she looks especially fetching when bearded.

Here's sweet Lucy unbearded. Isn't she absolutely adorable/gorgeous?


After the beards we moved on to a hunt--for pieces of a treasure map. It was exciting.
There were pieces hidden all over the house. When it all was found and put together it looked like this.

Here's Max contributing to putting the pieces together. Classic.

He definitely gets that from his dad. For sure.

The treasure map led the kids to the treasure. It was a pinata treasure chest. How cool is that?



And they went for it!

Go Lucy!

Go Max! (This is before he got whacked with the stick)

Go Henry! Henry is very intense. I wouldn't get between him and that pinata for anything.

Here are Max and Lucy looking on. How adorable is this?

Lucy is such a sweetheart.


Of course they couldn't break the pinata. When can little kids ever pull it off? So it moved to the ground.

Yeah, that didn't do any good either, so eventually it just got ripped open.

And out spilled the BOOTY!


Can somebody come teach Max how to use a spy glass?

After all the booty was gathered we assembled to eat the fabulous cake. Check out the cake.

Awesome, huh? I love love love the fish.

Lighting the candles.

Natalie says, "Who wants cake?"



Yeah, we always want cake.

And bendy straws. What's a birthday party without bendy straws?

And that's all I've got. Oh wait. Except that I couldn't resist Lucy's feet while she was enjoying her cake.


So sweet.
Happy birthday Henry (just a month late).

::it wasn't max::

I just wanted to set the record straight and let everybody know that my broken computer was my fault and mine alone.
I was sitting on the couch, with the laptop in my lap, as always, and I turned my head to say something to Max. When I looked back around the computer was falling towards the hardwood floor. My reaching wasn't fast enough, and it hit hard, with the screen open.

Sad, huh? It's crazy that dumb things like that can just happen and mess everything up.

After I dropped it I was pretty upset. Max said, "Did I break it?" I assured him he didn't. But I thought the question was funny.

Right now I'm hooked up to a small tv that we have. So I can still do my work. I can't do much with my photos right now though. They look terrible on the monitor.

Eventually (hopefully sooner than later) we're going to ship my machine out to a repair place and get it fixed.

And maybe I'll never hold it on my lap again. We'll see...

::ouch and boo hoo::

Yesterday was not a good day.


I may not be too involved in the blogging world for the next little while. I hope you miss me!

::being green::

Max came out of his bedroom this morning all dressed for church. Kris said "he decided to be all green today."
I don't know if you can tell in the photo, but his pants are actually green too. They're dark green corduroys.

Turns out later after I get the whole story that Kris actually picked 95% of the outfit--so the green theme I would say belongs to Dad. Max just picked the tie. He loves the tie which came from Kelly and Lechelle's wedding.
I can hardly believe how exactly it matches his shirt. I'm not sure what the green theme was all about, but since being "green" is all the rage these days I guess he's keeping up with the times.

Guess what. He's wearing green socks too. Impressive huh?
So I asked him to show me his socks. This is what happened.

Pretty sultry pose there, wouldn't you say?

And what about this pose?

What I want to know is since when did my front doorway turn into the end of a runway at a fashion show?
And who taught my kid to stand like that?
I need to take some lessons from him, maybe I could get some modeling gigs.
Maybe I should try this head to toe green thing. I'll get back to you on that.

::temple trip::

Kris and I got to visit the Boston temple this morning.
Our lovely friends Rex & Natalie watched Max for us. They have a 5 year old and a 3 year old (as well as a baby), so Max fits right in.

It's a beautiful temple, and it was a beautiful clear fallish day.
We had a good time. Even though we missed the first session and had to wait a long time. They don't have them every 15 minutes out here like they do in Utah.

There's Kris walking in, turning off his cell phone or something.

I'm excited that we got to go. While we were living in Kansas City I never once made it to the St. Louis temple. The logistics of going were next to impossible to work out. It was about 3 and a half hours away, and between little baby Max and work things just didn't work out for me. Kris went a couple of times though. I went in Utah whenever we would visit. It was doable there, so many babysitting options, and so many temples so close.

So anyway it was a great day. We're lucky to only live an hour away from a beautiful temple, and we're lucky to have good friends who we can feel totally comfortable leaving Max with.


Happy.

::crises::

When listening to the news the last couple of days and hearing about all of the terrible crazy financial turmoil, it's hard for me to think about the fact that I've been supporting our family for the last few years by being involved in this market. The very market that is so sick and messed up now.

(For anybody that doesn't know, I've been working from home as a mortgage processor for about the last four years. It kept us alive and comfortable during school, but it's a tough job.)
I never would've gotten the processing job in the first place that led to me being able to keep doing it for so long, if it wasn't for the opportunistic market that let all the little guys start up mortgage companies. The sad thing is that a lot, if not most, of those guys didn't have any idea what they were doing. They were just in it to make an extra buck.

I hardly worked on any of those really bad mortgages--the ones that are really trying to take the economy down--those low low subprimes. But I did a few. And I was definitely in on doing a lot of those "creative" type programs. Interest only, negative amortization, 100% financing, etc. etc.

When I think about being involved in something historical I want it to be something good and positive and exciting. But this is not that. It's like I helped directly in all the stuff that had the combined effect of totally messing up the economy!

Strange...

And by the way. If anybody wants more info on the whole mortgage crises and situation I heard the best radio show on that a couple of months ago. It's an episode of This American Life. Click here to get to it. I highly recommend checking it out. I thought I understood all that was going on, but once I heard this I felt like I had a much better grasp on all of it.



On to a smaller scale crisis.

Can I tell you how mad I am at the Mountain West conference for doing the MTN network deal? Living outside of Utah (and maybe some of the other western states) it is next to impossible to watch a BYU football game. And that's NOT GOOD! I like to watch the BYU games.

I think I especially deserve to be able to watch them, since I'm totally not a fair weather fan. I've been a BYU fan for a long time, through a lot of bad football.(as is the rest of my family) And now that they're doing well I really really really want to watch the games.

It doesn't help that we don't have cable right now. We're trying to save a little cash and so we're doing without. So we can't even watch the games that are on VS at home.
Last week we went to our friends Derek and Angie's house and watched the game. It was really fun. We had a blast hanging out with them, and the way BYU completely creamed UCLA didn't hurt anything.

But I sure wish we could watch the games at home. In this day and age of information technology where we can get pretty much anything we want anytime we want it's hard to believe you can't watch a football game just because you're a mere 2,400 miles away, I mean come on!

So I hope that the MWC sometime changes it's mind and lets us expat fans in on the games. It sure would be nice.

(we drove out to Tulsa for the BYU game last year and Max got to meet Cosmo. It was fun. We would've loved it if there were a game close enough to go to this year but no. Maybe next?)

::traffic jam::

Now that school has started again and all the Brown, RISD and other random students are back, the traffic out here looks a lot like Max's little city.

Kris's mom made this adorable city blanket for Max and he loves it.
He has quite the collection of little matchbox/hotwheels. It's like every time we go to the store Kris or I find one that we like. And for just $1, who can resist? So now he has quite the collection.
He's always loved to line up his little cars too. This traffic jam is a culmination of a lot of things. He was excited to learn the term traffic jam and made me remind him of it about a dozen times.



It took about 48 full hours to get all the cars put away. I've been trying really hard to get him to clean up his own stuff. And it's quite the struggle.
I basically have to bribe him with anything he wants to do in order to get him to do anything. And it doesn't always work. Like when I was trying to get him to clean up the cars I told him he couldn't play the computer, eat a snack or watch the movie he wanted until all was cleaned up.
He decided he wasn't in the mood for computer games, movies or snacks. He just played cars until it was basically time to go to bed. Which was fine. Except that the dog kept lying down on his car blanket and shedding. So the longer it took to clean up the hairier things got.

Anyway, he finally did it. A full day after I started asking him to. It's a little frustrating. But I'm really glad he finally did it.

But I liked the traffic jam too. He's so cute.

::weird and/or annoying::

Our stove is old. And kind of nasty. It's obviously been around here for a long time and hasn't been treated that well. So I don't expect it to work great.
But one of the burners started creating a lot of smoke the other day. Enough that when I was cooking our breakfast oatmeal the fire alarm went off. It was beeping and yelling "FIRE! FIRE!" and so Max started screaming, and didn't stop until I climbed on a stool and pulled the dumb alarm down on my head.

So that wasn't very cool. I thought maybe the smoke was coming from a noodle or two I had dropped down there, but suddenly we started getting some weird ashy smoky looking marks around the burner. I couldn't really get them to come off too well.
I figured it was about time to try to clean the dang thing. Yuck.

And look what I found in the bowl of the burner when I took it all apart.

Where did this disgusting gross weird old corroded thing come from? You can't tell, but it's like three inches long. So weird! It's like a creepy stake that came out of some vampire's heart or something.
And how long has it been there?

Anyway, that creeped me out a bit. There's been less smoke since that thing has been gone.

Today Max and I drove out to Target. It's not really that far away, but it feels like it is. It's in Massachusetts and you have to drive over like 5 rivers to get there. Anyway, I've been meaning to go for quite a while, but between work, Max's school and being a one car family it hasn't worked out.
Kris had to work late today, and we had the car so Max and I set off this afternoon. Of course hitting bad traffic on the way there, so it took three times as long as it should've.
We shopped. Max did his best to distract me the whole time. He's good at claiming he needs to go to the bathroom as soon as I get a cart full of stuff. It drives me crazy. He held it today.
I got everything I needed and went to pay. I realized I didn't have my wallet in my purse. I was sure I'd left it at home because I'd been using it there earlier. The lady told me I could write a check. So I did, while telling her that my wallet was at home, with my ID. She took the check and then asked for my ID. ARRGH. No ID. So I had to leave all the stuff there at the cash register and walk out empty handed.
Max was so confused--I don't blame him. I felt pretty confused myself. He kept asking me really embarrassing questions really loud. Like "WHY COULDN'T WE BUY OUR STUFF? DO WE HAVE NO MORE MONEY? WHY COULDN'T YOU PAY!?!"
Then we drove home. And when I pulled into our driveway I looked at the passenger seat and there was my wallet. In the car. The whole time.

Max thought that was pretty goofy. I guess we'll just have to go back in a couple of weeks and get all our stuff again.

What a silly (and annoying) day.

::day trip to boston::

Last saturday was really rainy. This was a big bummer because Kris and I had both come up with things we wanted to do for the day that involved being outdoors. He wanted to go to the beach (which of course Max and I are always up for) and I wanted to go to one of the farms in the area and pick raspberries. I still want to do that. I hope it happens sometime soon.

So, because of the rain we had to scrap our plans and come up with something else. And it needed to be fun.

We decided to head up to Beantown (boston--I don't know why they call it that) to check out the scene. So far we'd only been up to the town in MA where the IKEA is. Not exactly Boston.

We went to an outdoor downtown mall type area first. We wanted to go into the H&M there and hopefully finish out Max's fall/winter wardrobe. Kris remembered it from when he had dental school interviews out there. It was a great H&M. Big and nice with tons of stuff.

The view from the streets there was cool.



It was a cool area of town. Hard to find parking, but fun to walk around in.
It felt kind of new and old at the same time. Like the buildings in the above pictures look pretty new and nice--or at least very well upkept. But the brick streets where we were made me remember how long the city has been around.

And I'm sure these bricks aren't even near as old as the city really is.

We were favorably impressed with Boston. Kris and I both felt like it was a super cool city. Given, we didn't spend a ton of time there, but it just seemed more livable than most of NYC, and very cool.

After the shopping we went across the street to McDonalds to get Max a yummy ice cream cone, since we were trying to have fun.
He, true to form, got a brain freeze. I always feel bad for him when he gets them, but at the same time it's just so funny and cute.

See?

It didn't slow him down for long.

After the brain freeze we set out to find the Berklee School of Music. Kris and I both kind of wish we would've gotten to go there. But I'm sure we would've been eaten alive.
The area near the school was neat. Lots of cool buildings and it looked like a lot of fun stuff probably went on there.

There's supposed to be a really cool China town area in Boston, and we didn't get to go check it out, but I'm pretty sure we were close because I was able to take this picture from the car.

Gorgeous, isn't it?

After the driving tour we set the GPS to take us out to one of the suburby type areas so we could go to Five Guys Burgers. Yum. (Unfortunately for us, this location is the closest one to our house. Well, probably fortunately for our health!)
The GPS had us take the most ridiculous way there. It took forever and we felt a little bit like Michael Scott driving into the lake.
But we finally got there and the burgers made it all worthwhile.

Then we called it a day.

Boston is cool.

See?

::giraffes like the rain::

We had a lot of rain on tuesday afternoon. For a while it seemed like we might wash away. But luckily, since our house doesn't seem to be built on the sand, we stayed put.

I was visited by a giraffe several times on tuesday. Did you know that giraffes like the rain? That's what I was told anyway.

They like to watch the rain, and don't mind when it splashes them through the screen door.


Giraffes are Max's favorite animal. By far. Even over fish I think, which is kind of weird.
Out of nowhere last Halloween he told me he wanted to be a giraffe. That was the first glimpse we had into his giraffe love.


He wants to be a giraffe again for this coming Halloween.
The good news is that his costume still fits, and he's excited to wear it again.
That makes me happy. And he's excited to wear it any other time. Which is fine with me, especially now that he can put it on and remove it himself.


All I really know about giraffes is that they're silly. Really silly.