Hallelujah

Ella has reached the most important milestone of a young life. She has reached 18 months of age, which means she finally goes to the nursery on Sunday.

If you don't go to church, or haven't ever had a child between 12-18 months in age, I don't think you could possibly know the relief I feel at this moment.

I had to celebrate by taking this picture. I think taking it through a dark window caused it to lose some of it's quality.

The bishop's wife wondered why I was taking pictures of the nursery. She asked if I was trying to get "evidence". I told her yes, because I didn't want to tell her it was going on my blog.

Boredom... the bloggers workshop

My fantasy football league has entered the playoffs. This year, I actually made them. I am playing Matt otherwise known as "The Bloodsucking Ticks". I am winning by 16.5 going into tonight, but Matt has his kicker playing the Monday Night game.

You would think under such intense conditions, I'd be watching the Monday Night game, but no... it's on cable now. Instead of watching the NFL, I'm watching the AFL. That's right, Australian Rules Football on channel 9-2.

It's been a pretty good game between the Swans and the Kangaroos. The refs have made some pretty bad calls. For example. The ref called a behind for the 'roos, when it was clearly a goal. The other ref made up for that bad call though by awarding a goal to the 'roos, when the guy didn't kick it in time.

Yesterday, we went to grandma's house, and helped set up her tree while Ange studied Chemistry. This is a grainy picture taken on my cell phone of Lincoln and Ella playing in the Christmas Tree box, with their aunt Karen.


This is one of Ange's favorite pictures. It was taken a couple of months ago at her aunt's cabin in Idaho. I think she likes it because Lincoln looks so old and mature.

Angela's grandma (dad's side) died last week. She (Phyllis) was a nice lady, almost queen like, but she was in so much pain. The first time I met Phyllis was in church at the old fifth ward. My dad had moved out by then, but Clark, Ange's brother was being confirmed. I sat next to her grandma, and was doing the usual shaking my leg routine. Before I knew it, her grandma's hand clamps down on my leg. I guess she didn't like the constant shaking. It was more jarring than anything.

I'm glad they moved up to Utah for the last few years of her life, and I'm glad that she got to see her great grandchildren. Until last week, Ella and Lincoln had a higher percentage of great grandparents alive than grandparents. And here's another stat for you. Of the 120 decedents of Ange's great grandma and great grandpa, Phyllis was the first one to die. Ange sure has the long life genes... to bad she married someone seven years older than her that insists on drinking tons of eggnog.

I'd better hurry and see if the Swans pulled this one off.

A disturbing development

Earlier this year, on April Fools, we had our minivan broken into so someone could steal our DVD player. Details are here. We have acquired another DVD player, also with two screens, after enduring a summer without said player. It was a nightmare, and I will tip my cap to those parents who raised children without a DVD player in the car. My cap gets untipped to you guys now that I remember that you didn't put your children in car seats, but rather, let them roam all over the place whilst driving.


Anyway, Lincoln will tell Ange from the car seat to push play on the DVD. This is usually how the conversation goes: "Mommy, push play!" Mommy then pushes play. Then Lincoln says: "Daddy, die!" I am usually stunned by this development, because I've been innocently driving, minding my own business.


I figured I should try to post pictures at least once a month. I didn't realize that kids grew up, but after some of the comments when I last posted pictures, you'd think nobody recognized my children anymore.

Just a word to the wise: if you blow up the above picture, you might spot a booger forming under Link's right nostril. If that's going to gross you out, you might not want to blow up the picture.

Lincoln loves abc's and numbers more than I thought imaginable. He goes around singing the alphabet song now, with a few omissions. He's known letter sounds and how to sign them since he was barely 1. He can recognize and spell a few words too. Among the notables are: Lincoln, Ella, Mom, Dad, zoo, cat, and his all time favorite, happy.

He also likes to change our alarm clock's time. So far I haven't shown up to work an hour early or late but stay tuned...

My little girl is awesome at ping pong.


My favorite part about the bottom picture is how I whited out our license plate. If anyone needs training on how to use 'Paint', then let me know. My other favorite part is how my girl has outgrown the huge jacket we bought for her only a couple of months ago. Geez.

Luckily, said jacket was purchased at DI for a cool $3.

In conclusion, it's hard to take the kids together to Costco, because they both want to push the cart. This necessitates us getting two carts. But if there is only one of us, Lincoln usually ends up being disappointed.

For a very strange one, we don't have this problem at Wal-mart* because our kids don't want to push shopping carts at Wal-mart*, only at Costco.

A mystery solved...

Earlier this year, like in August, I had left for school, and Ange was getting ready to go. She took a shower, and set Lincoln up with something to do. Lincoln has the attention span of the average Obamanicac (cheap shots are always welcome), so of course he looked for something else to do.

He has got some cooking skillz, and yes I did spell it with a 'z'. So he opened up some Children's Tylenol, found some Kool-Aid in the pantry, and mixed it all together into one gooey mess on the floor. By the time Ange got out of the shower, our boy had licked a good portion of Kool-Aid mixed Tylenol off the floor.

She had to call poison control, which explains the lack of her taking a picture. He is still alive, so unless ODing on Tylenol kicks in 3 months later, I think we're fine.

But there was something strange about the whole incident. We were pretty sure we had put the lid back on the Tylenol. I mean, it's not like we have open bottles of Tylenol floating around the house all the time.

Then yesterday, Ange witnessed Lincoln opening a baby proof bottle of Tylenol. The boy is 3 years old, and he has already outsmarted the baby proof cap. What's next? Is he going to figure out how to undo the child safety lock on our car doors? Maybe he'll be able to get past the little plug stoppers that keep him from electrocuting himself. Perhaps he'll learn how to undo his seat belt. Needless to say, this is a bad turn of events. With how tall he is, and how smart he is, we've lost all our bar space. I suppose we're going to have to put medicine in the medicine cabinet from now on.

In other crappy news, BYU lost to Utah 48-24. I can't believe how good Brian Johnson played and how bad Max Hall played. I think the turning point of the game would be BYU's inability to recover Utah's and their own fumble. If they get both those, I'm convinced the running game would have been a bigger factor, and may have changed the complexion of the game. After all, BYU got 200+ yards on the ground.

Oh well, there's always basketball season and next year.

The end

An artist and his medium

Warning: This is a picture post. If you don't like to look at pictures of my cute kids, then do not proceed. You know who you are.

So, Lincoln found some of those paints that come in huge bottles, and used our kitchen as his canvas. It took hours to clean up, but at least Ange had the presence of mind to snap a few photos. (Note to the kids, 'snap' used to be what it sounded like to take pictures. Now with digital cameras, it's more of a beep.) He is a pretty good boy, you can see where he tried to clean up the purple paint on the ground.



This is Lincoln at Cornbelly's, one of the few places where he can jump without his parents thinking he's a weirdo.

Just wanted to prove to everybody that Ella's a little princess.
Leaves are fun to play in for little boys. Leaves are not fun to rake up. Fortunately, we have a huge tree in our front yard. Unfortunately, we have a huge tree in our front yard.

Little girls like leaves too, but usually their brothers get all the attention.

Sometimes, leaves need to be cleaned out of little girls' hair.

I'm pretty sure Lincoln isn't a monkey looking for food in that last picture, but I do wonder about that boy sometimes.

Kermit

I should probably stop neglecting this blog

As mentioned in the Parry Post, I will be conducting a poll. Hopefully it will be up and running just to the right. You should exercise your right to vote, unless, of course, you don't know what you're talking about and then you'd just ruin it for everybody. Yes we can.

Also, we were lucky enough to get to spend 3 grand to keep our house from flooding. The good news is that our basement doesn't flood with every rain storm. Now we can focus on finishing the basement. Yes we can.

In conclusion, I think fry sauce is the grossest thing to have to clean up. I've pretty much come to the conclusion that most mayo based products are nasty after they sit there for 5 days. Milk isn't as bad, the smell can be bad, but at least it comes out as a solid block. I should post a list of worst foods to have to clean up. Yes we can.

Ella might have pink eye, so those reading this post should go and wash your hands, and not pick at your eye. Yes we can.

The Bubs

The big one

So I just finished a post, was getting ready to post it, and lost the entire thing. It wouldn't be so bad if my keyboard didn't miss every fifth letter. The temptation was to not post, but as you can see, I'm toughing it out. (Bolded letters in this post were pushed on the keyboard, but didn't register on the computer. We need a new keyboard.)

I need to figure out some way to upload a file so others can download. I was thinking of going through the Parry Wiki, but I need a refresher. If only I had a cousin that was good with computers that could provide said refresher...

School is back in session, which as given me the chance to complain about things that I don't like about my current job. The list is pretty short when compared with the same list when I was at the junior high.

1. My room is constantly 90+ degrees.

2. During my second period class on A days, I have to teach 3 different subjects.

On the good news front, I am raising money by selling water. 50 cents for a watter bottle seems reasonable to me. Also, I won the balloon race thing for the faculty in an assembly today. By won, I mean that I was the last one to cross the line thus ensuring victory.

We decided that we will only go on vacations if they can be two weeks long. Such a vacation was recently had. We_spent the first week or so at Angela's aunt's cabin near Island Park. Very nice spot indeed. Needless to say, much fun was had on the water, and much dominating of Settlers of Catan was done by me.

The second week, we spent at Steve and Sharon Parry's cabin near Alpine Wyoming. We got to go rafting, which is always a blast. Unlike Matt, I will now post a picture.

I believe that is a picture of me guiding, and missing Kahuna. Thank you Steve and Sharon for the hospitality.

We did make it up to Jackson to eat and buy some candy. I'm not really sure why Jackson is so cool, but it is, and that's comming from the Bubs.

Our kids just loved the cabins and all the different people they got to play with. Ella loved the stairs until she fell down them. Seriously, kids shouldn't be able to walk until they can safely negotiate stairs.

In conclusin, I wish that I could go down the river every day.

Your friend, Bubs

PS Thanks also to Matt Parry, for telling us how to get a Lenovo tablet computer for way cheap. Ange has needed a laptop for some time, and she loves it.