An interesting blog

Okay, I have been slowly becoming more and more green. In some ways I think I drive Matt nuts (i.e. - constantly unplugging appliances that are not in use or turning off the computer instead of putting in sleep mode). I also am into clipping coupons and bargin shopping. My sister-in-law, Kim, sent me the link to her sister's blog that is all about being green and saving money. So I am going to post the link on my blog so that all of you can take a look. There are some really cool things on there, like a recipe for laundry detergent that costs about $0.02 a load. I am going to try it out and see how it works. She uses cloth diapers and it works really well for her, so I think it should work for my laundry. I'll let you know after I give it a try.

http://clippingcorners.blogspot.com/

Time for a change

Well, the Hanukkah background is gone. (sniff, sniff) We just wanted to hold onto it as long as possible, but change happens.

The latest in our life is not much. Anabelle has cut her first tooth (for real this time, last time I think it got scared and went back in). Now we are anxiously awaiting the second. She is also extremely close to walking (as stated before). She took about three steps last night, but she isn't steady enough to walk completely. My bet is that she will be walking by the end of the month. (That will be our goodbye gift for you to take on your mission, Mom Jacob) She is also getting more of a little personality. She is very determined and wont be distracted easily. She has mastered the stairs and unless you block them completely, she will find a way to play on them. Maybe if she would have a tumble on the stairs she wouldn't like them so much, but, fortunately, that has not happened yet.

Also, Belle has her own room now. The kids did fine together in one room, until Christmas. For whatever reason, sleeping at other people's houses has destroyed my kids sleeping habits. Beckett now comes and crawls into bed around 3 or 4 am. Due to the fact that Beckett leaves the door open when he comes to join us, he would let out all the warm air in their room, so Anabelle would then wake up around 5 or 6. When we tried to take him back to his bed, he would cry really loud, which would then wake Baby Belle. In the best sleeping interest of all, we moved Belle into the front room, across from our room, so that she wouldn't wake up when we return Beckett to his bed. She is sleeping fine now. Naps are working out better also because they can now take naps at the same time and Beckett doesn't wake up Anabelle playing for an hour before he conks out. So, all in all, this move has been good for everyone. (except that Beckett still crawls into bed with us, I think we just need to get one of those things you put on door knobs so kids can't open them, that should work for at least a month until he figures out how to work around the door knob thing)




This was the typical arrangement prior to the room switch. You can see Beckett's head resting right next to Matt's. When I got out of bed, Belle was more than happy to take up the space that I had been using.

Beckett is growing up more and more each day. Sometimes when I look at him I don't even recognize him. He now likes oranges. I shouldn't be surprised because the boy loves fruit, but I am. Neither Matt nor I like eating oranges. I don't like to peel them (which I now have to do so Beckett can eat them), and I especially don't like the stringy stuff leftover that you can't get off. But hey, it is one more food that Beckett does like, so that is a positive. Usually it is the other way around.

We are missing Matt terribly (and it is only the 3rd week of school). Hopefully he can test out of one of his classes and then he will be home one more night during the week. Hooray!! Keep your fingers crossed. It is also looking good for him to get his Bachelors in December. Things are looking good.

I am Matt, the fool - darn me to heck

So I wrote that last blog about me, me, and my new blog. You probably said to yourself, "well he sure is caught up in himself."
Clearly!
I apologize to all who wanted to know more than what I have been up to. (And to anyone who thought my Engrish comments were too racist - Lighten up!)
Alissa has been combating colds and miscellaneous rashes and suicide attempts at home. Both kids are fine and dandy and are growing like weed. Oops, I mean weeds, with an "s". I would have no clue what weed grows like. Heh.

Anabelle took her first steps without her training arms on (those would be our arms). I was helping her walk a little and she just seemed a little extra motivated. So I turned her towards me and let her go and she took two or three good steps and fell into my not-too-distant arms. Easy peasy. She's repeated the process several times now, especially when self-motivated. She walks but hasn't a tooth for her redneck smile. So I guess she has a 70-year-old-hobo smile.

Beckett ... still talks to stuff - walls, couches, windows, more walls, inner space, outter space, who-knows space. We haven't let him on Myspace yet, but we feel he has addressed it even in its absence.

So there you have it. Now you can apologize for having thought me so self-centered. Just kidding.

*Stay Tuned for a Very Important News Bulletin*

*beep beep bip bip beep beep*
And now back to completely useless information!
It's about time we blogged again, so I decided tonight's the night ... we'll make history (Nice one, Billy Joel, but no one would have caught that one.)
We are done with Holidays. No mas. Nein. Nyet. Jamais.
They were great and lovely and we thoroughly enjoyed every bloody moment we spent with the bulk of you at your parties and get-togethers.
I particularly enjoyed my boss closing the shop three days in two weeks. It was just fantastic and I hope that all you who still work in retail will find employment elsewhere so you, too, can feel the benefits of temporary unemployment. 'Tis a blessed thing.
To those of you who sought to spoil our children -- Shaaaaaame on you! A pox upon thine house!
And to those of you who didn't -- shaaaaame on you! Now I got pox all over my house!

I began school today. I set myself up for a tear-wrenching disaster by taking 18 credit hours whilst I work nearly full-time at the shop. For those of you who can't remember (or were never acquainted with) how college works, slave labor is tallied in credit hours. If you earn enough of these hours, you are released into the green pastures of LalaLand where you are allowed to think for yourself (usually meaning less liberally) and work for money (usually meaning not much). I am, as of tonight, signed up for two management classes (small business management and project management), two communication courses (advanced audio/visual production and interpersonal/small group communication), two English courses (Eminent Authors: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Intro to Fiction) and finally two Engrish courses (Japanese-American authors and Japanese poriticar phirosophy).

I do have an announcement to make as well. I will begin my new blog. My good friend Mike Wheeler came up with the title for me: Intermittent Ridiculousness. So come one or come none. Go there. It'll be good. Or maybe it won't. It shouldn't suck outright, though. So there you have it. I'll have silly columns, and maybe a couple videos, clowns and maybe even Batman (ya know, for the kids.) Whatever I put there will at least be funnier than this post. I'm actually surprised you made it this far. That's really incredible. Truly.

Happy Hallowgivingmas!

So, this update is a long time coming. I thought I would cover the last two holidays and a little bit of the present holiday all at once. Well, we have been kind of busy for the last few months. Matt and I got to go out to a nice steak dinner for Matt's birthday. It was great! (Thanks Ben & Kim for making it possible!) The place was decorated with lots of random antiques that had been collected over the years and lots of Tiffany lamps. It was a really fun place. We were way overdressed.

Halloween was fun. In my family, there are several birthdays in the month of October and one in November, so we decided to have big family birthday party on Halloween and then all of the grandkids went out trick-or-treating. Beckett really got into it this year. The first house we went to he saw a Hershey bar and grabbed that and started to eat it right away. At the second house he let us put the candy in the bag though. He had a great time. Anabelle survived, too. Unfortunately, no one gave her candy, so that meant that Matt and I didn't get any candy either. We had an easy time getting Belle into her Minnie Mouse costume, Beckett on the other hand... I think he thinks that his giraffe costume was a real giraffe or something because he refused to put it on or even let it get too close to him. So, the only thing he would let us put on him was a baseball outfit. (He was twins with his cousin Grant and we didn't even plan it)

A week after Halloween, my sister, Christa, and I "got out of Dodge" and ran away to San Diego. It was a fun trip and we survived driving in California. We stayed in a nice hotel and just relaxed. They had the coolest pools at the hotel.

There were water slides that emptied into two of the pools and a sand pit off to the side of another (I think that is to make up for the fact that it isn't located off of a beach). Everywhere we went, peopled just loved Anabelle. We got so many comments on how cute she is. I have to admit that they are right. She is a pretty cute baby (and these pictures prove it). We also did some shopping, went to the beach, did mud masks in our hotel room, and got a massage. It was a lot of fun. (Thanks Mom and Dad!)

For Thanksgiving we went to Nate and Jana's in Colorado. We had a blast. We only wish we could have spent more time out there when Eric and Julia were there. The food was amazing and we played some really fun games, Speed Scrabble and a card game called "Rage". It is a lot like Trump (or Trumps, depending on which family is reading this) but has wild cards that change the trump color and different things like that. We also played Mexican Train, a domino game. That was a lot of fun too. Here is a picture of said Mexican train game:

I have to toot my horn here a little bit. I beat Nate at Speed Scrabble. This is no small feat. Speed Scrabble is where you have two piles of 12 or 14 scrabble tiles and then you flip over one of the piles and try to make as many words as fast as you can using all your tiles. Two letter words count too. Then, once you have used all your tiles, you say "Pick" and everybody flips over one tile from the second pile and that continues until all of the tiles are gone. Whoever gets rid of their tiles first wins. I think Nate won all of the times we played but maybe two or three and I was one of those. I know I just got lucky in my tile drawing, but I will take it. Thank you, Nate and Jana, for letting us come and feeding us so well.

Matt, during all this time, has been busy doing school work. He has made two short films (very short - they are both only about a minute long) with his friend, Kevin, for one of his classes. You can look them up on Youtube.com. Search for "Boxing for Keeps" and "That was not easy - Dial a Climber". Check 'em out. (I would put them on the blog, but it took so stinkin' long in my last blog to figure out how to get those videos on here that I just don't want to even try this time. I am not a tech geek at all. Plus, Matt will be adding them to his silly personal playground blog later...should he ever get around to it.) He finished up his finals this week. We are so glad to have his undivided attention again. And, if all goes according to plan, Matt will be all done with school this time next year. Keep your fingers crossed.

Another thing happening this week is that Mom Jacob is staying with us. We have made some yummy cookies (no, not my famous ones. We are making those this weekend), we have gone shopping, played games, and watched some of our new favorite movies, "Lars and the Real Girl" and "Penelope". We are hoping to see the lights on Temple Square while she is here and some other fun things, but mostly we are planning on just bumming around and just enjoying her company before she leaves on her mission to Melbourne, Australia.

Last you heard, Anabelle was starting to crawl. Well, she is full on crawling now and even "runs" away from me when she shouldn't be eating something she has found on the floor. She is pretty quick too. She loves us to help her walk around the house. She will be standing up to something and will cry until one of us comes and helps her walk to wherever it is she wants to go. I will not be surprised if she is walking by the end of January. She is getting more and more of a personality each day. She gets mad at Beckett if he does not share with her something that she really wants (usually food). She is still really good at pouting and looks at us to make sure we can see her bottom lip sticking out. She loves to clap and now expects us to clap for everything that she does. I think she is finally getting solids down (pun). She hasn't really liked baby food until this month. If she had her way, she would skip baby food all together and go right to whatever the rest of us are eating. We added dry cereal to her diet and she seems content for now.

Beckett got a haircut while I was in San Diego. Due to his hatred of haircuts, my mom cut it really short. He looked like a recovering cancer patient. It has grown in now and looks much better now. Although, on the Christmas card that we are sending out, he and Anabelle look almost like the same kid at first glance. I should have put him in a different color from Belle.

I have been to see "Twilight" twice now and I still love it. I give it a B+. I thought they did a decent job of adabting the book to movie. It isn't the greatest movie ever made, but I think it is cute and enjoyed it lots. I am getting excited for Christmas this year. It will be a lot of fun with Beckett. I have really been thinking on the true meaning of Christmas this year. In Relief Society last week, the member of the presidency that gave the lesson talked about how the wise men gave Christ gifts, and today, we give gifts to everybody but Christ. She then challenged us to give a gift to the Savior. It can be not gossiping as much, living more Christ-like, being more charitable, etc. I am taking that challenge and I encourage each of you to do it too. She gave us a little while stalking to put in a little piece of paper that we write down our gift on. You don't have to do that, but I am sure writing it down somewhere is a good idea.

Well, I wish you all a merry Christmas and a fun New Years. We love you all!

A reminder of what is funny! (to me that is)

Okay, so Matt has been the one to post random rambling thus far. So it is my turn. I just want to post some Youtube videos that are my favs.* Some are new (at least to me) and some are old. I hope you all enjoy and get some good laughs.

*Disclaimer-The following opinions are strictly the author's and do not reflect the group's opinion in anyway. Thank you.*


First we have probably my all time favorite Youtube video. It is "Ok Go - Here It Goes Again". The things people can up with when they have 8 treadmills just lying around. I would say this is a brilliant way to advertise your band. We have a fitness equipment retailer near our home that reminds me of this video every time I pass it. Why, you ask? Because, when I first noticed them, they had their mail box attached to a stationary bike next to the street. Now they are much more advanced. They have constructed and stick-figure-ish robot that is on an elliptical machine with the mailbox attached to that. I guess if any person were to be on an elliptical machine as long as that robot is on that machine, you would look like a stick figure too. Anyway, back to the video. The first time I saw this, I laughed so hard, I almost peed my pants. This one is tops in my book. (you may want to put down a towel underneath you before you start playing this and the other videos)

Alright, now the next video involves on of my favorite Olympic sports, women's gymnastics. There are actually several videos from this particular gymnast. I recommend you go and watch all of them. Good stuff.




On to the next. This one I saw for the first time this week. I think it is the epitome of Mormon culture. Here is to you Mormons! Just cause we can't drink or do drugs, does not mean that we can't act like we are stoned. (side note-the gymnast in the above movie is a Mormon and from Utah, just wanted to prove my case) I also love the song they chose for their music. It is one of my favorites.




And lastly, I would like to pay tribute to the movie of the week, coming out this Friday, "Twilight". Don't get me wrong, I am totally going to go see it. And I am pretty sure I will love it, but I couldn't help but laugh at this parody of the Twilight trailers. I am sorry if there are some die hard Twilighters out there that get offended by this, but it was too good to not pass along.




Well, I hope this has made your day a little bit brighter and your abs a little bit stronger. I would like to say that there are other videos that I could have put on here, but I didn't want to make this too long of a post.

Woo Wooo!!

No, I am not cat-calling a hottie walking past. That is the sound my son makes anytime he sees anything that as to do with trains, not just trains themselves. He loves trains. We have a picture of a train on the underpass at our exit from the freeway. One time we weren't stopped by the light and so we kept on driving and he got so mad at me. He didn't get a good look at his beloved train. If I watch one of my movies and it happens to have a train in it (such as While You Were Sleeping), he will want to watch it over and over again. I say again, he loves trains.

It all began with Thomas the train. I put it on when we moved into our house so I could unpack boxes without him under foot. It didn't take long for him to get into it. He already loved anything with wheels. So the obsession began. My Aunt Karen, bought him his first train in April which only made the obsession worse. In May, my sister-in-law, Kim, and her son Brayden, took us to go see Thomas at the Heber Creeper. He didn't want to ride the train, he wanted to go see Thomas and watch his wheels go around. After we did ride the train, we went inside a tent at the station that they had set up with several trains sets. Beckett had died and gone to heaven. It was tough to get him to share the multiple trains he had gathered. (I just have to say that that was one of the smartest marketing schemes I have ever seen. When you are finally able to drag your child out of that tent, kicking and screaming, you then have to pass the tent where you can purchase those exact train sets. Evil people!) It was a lot of fun (thanks Kim and Brayden), even if it was rough getting out of there without buying the whole gift shop.

The obsession is still strong, 6 months later. When I go to visit my parent's, I typically get Beckett out first and let him run around while I get the baby out of the car before we go inside. I noticed that he kept saying "train, train" while I was getting Belle out. I didn't think much of it. He says train a lot. I just thought he wanted his train to play with or something like that. Well, one time I noticed where he was saying it. My parent's have big 50 gallon water barrels outside by their garbage cans. Those barrels are on two 2x4's. It looked like a train track. I couldn't believe it. That was why he kept saying train. Smart as a whip!

More evidence of his obsession, the other day, Matt left his belt out on the couch. Beckett than picked it up and placed it on the floor between his Winnie the Pooh push train and his dump truck. The belt was now a train track. This kid has a one track mind I tell you.

He also got new sippy cups with Thomas on them this last week. I have never seen him drink more than since he got those cups.

I just have to say I love my son! He brings so much happiness into my life, even if it means that I have to buy a Thomas balloon at the grocery store because he has eyes like a hawk and can spot Thomas anywhere, no matter how small Thomas is. These are the things that make him Beckett. I kind of, secretly wish I had something that I loved that much.