Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Tyler's LiveJournal:

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Sunday, May 13th, 2012
10:51 pm	State Street This was a great weekend, which was just capped off by another Kings' victory. Hopefully they keep it up so they can make it to the Stanley Cup finals and so I can start going to bed earlier. This was a crazy week at work, with a few late nights at the office. Thankfully, these don't happen very often, but the great thing about working late at night is that the phone doesn't ring and there aren't any distractions. Really, it's the perfect work environment. Anyway, I got all my work done on Thursday afternoon and got everything filed in time, so mission accomplished. I headed home for 45 minutes or so before I had to go to the church to set up for the stake seminary dinner, where I had to be for both of my current callings. It was ok. I don't know if teenagers have always been like this, but it seems like they are really socially awkward. During one of the games, I noticed that like 5 or 6 kids were playing video games on their phones. Really? On Friday I taught seminary and then we dropped the kids off at mom and dad's and headed up to lovely Santa Barbara for a quick trip to celebrate our 10 year anniversary. For those of you who check out my twitter, you saw that Kbro fell asleep before we even made it to Pasadena. You would almost think she is narcoleptic the way she can sleep anywhere. She slept pretty much the entire time, but I had Jim Rome to listen to, so it wasn't a big deal. She has been doing this since day one, so I am used to it. In fact, she fell asleep on the way home from our first real date (we went to Disneyland). I was driving home when I looked over and noticed that she was asleep with her mouth wide open. I thought that was pretty strange for a first date, but at least she has been consistent ever since. We made it to Santa Barbara and found our hotel, which was right across from the beach and close to the great downtown area. I really love Santa Barbara. Too bad I don't have a few million dollars so I could move there. We walked around the pier area for a while and bought a cheap sushi lunch to split. Since we didn't have kids with us, we decided to do our favorite activity: take a nap. We ended up sleeping for a couple of hours and then dressed up and went out to dinner. I found a place on yelp that was a couple of blocks off of the main street and much cheaper than the other places that I looked at. It turned out to be a great choice and we had a great steak dinner. Kbro even ordered her steak "medium," which was the best anniversary gift that she could've given me. She didn't even eat steak when we first got married, so this is a huge step for her. I'm down to medium-rare, but I don't think I'll be going any lower than that. The best part of the dinner was the awesome side that came with my steak. You had your choice of a variety of potatoes, which I never am really interested, but this place also had spaghetti as a side, so you know I went with that. Every steakhouse should have that as an option. After dinner we walked around state street, which is a great downtown hangout. The shops probably go for a mile or so and there is a ton of nightlife with the local college students. We got some ice cream and then decided to go to a movie. We ended up seeing The Avengers at the 10:00 showing. It was pretty good. The story didn't really make sense, but the action scenes were fun to watch. When we got out of the movie after midnight, the downtown area was still pumping. I couldn't really believe how the local co-eds were dressed. Not really leaving much to the imagination. We ended up getting back to our hotel room around 12:30, which is about the latest we have been out for a long time. We went to bed and, thanks to my awesome genes, I woke up at 6:30 ready to start the day. Kbro was zonked out, so I took a bath for a couple of hours and read articles on the internet. It was great. By the way, if there is one huge bummer about Santa Barbara, it's the bums. They are everywhere. And they aren't the kind that just sit there asking for money. They are the crazy kind that talk to themselves and look to be pretty mentally unstable. There are also an inordinate amount of couples where the woman is taller than the man. Anyway, after Kbro awoke from her slumber we checked out of our hotel and walked around some more. We stopped for breakfast at a place that was recommended to Kbro by one of her highschool friends and it was pretty dang good. We checked out the courthouse (awesome) and the police department (definitely not the one that they use for the exterior shots in Psych) and then headed out. Kbro fell asleep and we hit a ton of traffic, so the drive home sucked a bit, but it was a great 30 hours that we had without the kids. Of course, we were only able to do it because of mom and dad, so a huge thank you to them for watching the kids. After getting the kids, we got a call from a lady from our old ward who wanted us to come check out her kittens. Now, Kbro had talked to her before about it, but has never wanted to get cat. I've always wanted to have a cat, but we were never really in a position where we could get one. I was even surprised that she told me about this lady's kittens, but I was hopeful that maybe we could get one. I always wanted to get a gray one with black stripes, but I really liked this tannish one and Kbro asked me if I wanted to get him, so of course I said yes. There were three other kittens, so I felt really bad separating him from his mom (Butterscotch) and his siblings. The lady gave us all the stuff we needed, including food, a new litter box and scoop, litter, etc., all for free. It was great. We talked about what to name him, but I had his name picked out a long time ago: General Bonkers. If you are wondering why we gave him such a dumb name, it comes from this: http://www.theonion.com/articles/war-on-string-may-be-unwinnable-says-cat-general,9636/ I saw this a few years ago and it made me laugh so hard that I told myself that if I ever got a cat, I would name him General Bonkers. What really makes me laugh is thinking about taking him to the vet and having to write his name down and having the nurse or whoever works there say his name. He's 7 weeks old now and he is most definitely not allowed in the house. Until he gets bigger, he is spending his time in our third garage. He seems to be doing ok, but of course the kids (well, Luc) make him a bit nervous. It will be fun when he gets older and we can let him out more, but for now we have to keep him in the garage. By the way, we aren't turning into really weird cat people. This is an outside cat and there is a strict hand washing policy immediately upon entering the house. We did find out that Adbo has a really awesome talent. He can meow exactly like the General. It's one of the only ways we can get him to come out of his hiding spot. Anyway, today was another good day. We made crepes for Kbro for breakfast and then we went for a nice walk before we put the kids down for a rest before church. At church, I was in charge of sharing time in Primary and was never given a plan or anything, so I really wasn't thrilled about that. Thankfully I don't think the kids noticed that I was bumbling around up there and it was over with pretty quickly. We then headed to the parents' for dinner with them and with John and Kelbo and his family. Thankfully, they took care of everything for dinner, so we didn't have to do anything except show up. I prepared my final seminary lesson tonight. My last class is Tuesday, but my last actual lesson is tomorrow. What a tough calling this has been. I would say that this one year of seminary has been harder than one year as a missionary. As a missionary, you don't have anything else to worry about. With seminary, you have your entire life plus you have to get a lesson ready and teach every day. I can't really say that I will miss it, but it has been nice having to study the scriptures every day, even if it's the old testament. There are some strange stories in there, but it helps put the other scriptures into perspective and gives a good historical background. Anyway, not much else to add and it's time for bed. Should be another busy week this week, but at least John let us borrow his season 2 of Downton Abbey dvds, so we have that to look forward to. Have a good week. (Comment on this)
Sunday, May 6th, 2012
8:33 pm	Aim and ignite This will be quick since I need to look at hotels for our big anniversary getaway next weekend. We are heading to Santa Barbara for Friday and Saturday to celebrate #10. Some highlights: 1. I started working on my new calling this week. Saturday I had to do the stake baptism and it went well. I also had to do a bunch of seminary certificates that night, so I spent quite a few hours on my calling on Saturday. I also had a meeting this morning followed by another not-so-fun meeting that I hope I won't have to do again for a long time. 2. We picked up Kbro's brother yesterday from LAX and then headed to Venice Beach. Wow, what a weird place that is. Not really a kid friendly boardwalk area, but the beach is beautiful and the weather was perfect. 3. Work work work. Thankfully, we have a lot of work right now in the office. Unfortunately, our secretary is leaving for her mission tomorrow with her husband, so we are without a secretary for now. Really couldn't have happened at a worse time. Maybe Meredith is interested in her old job? 4. We watched "We bought a zoo" this weekend. Not horrible, but not great. I guess it was worth that $1.20 we paid to rent it, but I don't think it's worth much more than that. Anyway, I feel like there was more stuff that was going on, but I have other stuff to do, so I'll cut this short. Go Kings. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, April 29th, 2012
8:20 pm	How silly can you get? This entry will be quick for two reasons: 1. Mad Men 2. Downton Abbey We've wanted to watch Downton Abbey for a while, but never could rent it. I went to Redbox on Friday to get a movie and there was season one for the same price as the rest of their dvds. What a great deal. We are only 3 episodes in, but we are really enjoying it. I'm a big fan of British tv and this is no exception. This was a very nice Sunday. I woke up and make homemade pancakes for breakfast (way better than Bisquick) and then some bread for our dinner tonight since mom and dad were coming over. At church I was sustained in my new calling and then mom and dad came at the end so dad could ordain me and so I could get set apart. In addition to my seminary duties (until the end of the year), I now have the same calling that Brian has. I was pretty surprised when Kbro and I had to go for an interview on Tuesday night, but I am looking forward to it. I don't know what my assignment is, but my guess is that I will be over seminary. Trust me, I would much rather be over it than teaching it. Yesterday was ok. We signed up for helping hands, but had no idea where to go since it was spread out over a bunch of parks. We tried calling some people, but never got an answer. Anyway, we decided to have helping hands in our yard, so we washed the cars inside and out, picked a bunch of weeds, and planted some tomato plants in the front yard (classy, I know, but our backyard garden isn't even close to being ready and we needed to get some in the ground). Mom and Kbro went shopping in the afternoon while I hung out with the kids, and then we went to the mall together later on. In the evening, we watched the awesome Kings game and hung out with Kbro's cousin, who I guarantee you is weirder than anyone else that anyone who reads this is related to. I actually think she has serious mental issues, because her behavior is way out there. It's like having a conversation with a doorknob. Anyway, she sat there quietly and watched us eat dinner and then left after a couple of hours. She said she was coming back today, but we haven't seen her yet. On Friday we didn't end up doing much. The only thing I can remember is that it took a long time to put the kids to bed and Kbro was angry that night, although I can't remember what she was angry about. We've lost kids before, but yesterday was the first time where we almost called the police. The two older boys went out to play street hockey in the front yard yesterday afternoon and after a while we went out to check on them and they were gone. They have some friends down the street, but we went over there and knocked and no one answered. We drove around the development looking for them and our neighbors also did the same thing, but no luck. We were really panicked after looking for about a half hour and then Kbro found them in the backyard of one of our neighbor's house. This is a neighbor that we don't know and we were not happy that they were playing in his backyard, even though he has kids. We had a long talk with them about disappearing and then sent them both to bed without dinner to remember never to do it again. It was a very unpleasant experience and I can't imagine what parents go through when they have a child that disappears. Anyway, time to get to more important things tonight. Have a good week. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, April 22nd, 2012
8:58 am	A Prehistoric Land Another lovely Sunday morning hanging out with the boys while they watch Planet Earth. Let's do this. Yesterday turned out to be a great day. I should post pictures on here, but to be honest, I'm not really sure how to do it. So, I guess I'll just tell you about it. It's been really hot this weekend and I didn't feel like sitting around all day, so I got up and washed the cars and then mowed my neighbor's lawn (they bought their house a few weeks ago, but haven't moved in yet, so their grass in the front is pretty out of control. I thought they could use a hand and I thought it would be a good way to introduce myself to my new neighbors. Unfortunately, they weren't there, but I decided that I would do it anyway, so I hope they appreciate it. Almost all of my neighbors are Asian and they seem like they prefer to keep to themselves, so I'm doing my best to go out of my way to say hi to them. When it comes to having a quiet neighborhood, you can't be Asians. Now if only I could get them to invite me to dinner. After the usual morning work, we decided to take the boys to the LA County Natural History Museum. Dad said I had been there before, but I don't remember it. It's right across the street from USC and there was a ton of traffic getting there. Actually, there was a ton of traffic all day yesterday. Sheesh, who knew so many people would be out in LA on a Saturday? Anyway, the museum was great. I really can't get enough of the dinosaur bones. Pretty fascinating stuff. They also had a great butterfly exhibit outside with tons of butterflies everywhere. As soon as we walked in, Adbo starting naming the butterflies from memory (at first I thought he was making them up, but then I got a card that I identified the butterflies and he was right). The kid may be socially awkward and generally ill-behaved, but man, the kid is smart. I don't want to make it sound like I am bragging, but he is much smarter than I was at that age. He's probably more like Steven in the brains department. He probably could've stayed in the museum all day and he was the only one that wanted to check out the gems and minerals, which he was fascinated with. We stayed for a few hours and the kids were pretty well behaved. Kate was fussy after a while, but she fell asleep and was fine after that. Since we were in the area, we decided to head to Pink's for lunch/dinner. It was supposed to take us 20 minutes, but after sitting in traffic, it took us way longer than that. When we finally got there, the line was around the building and we decided that it would be too hard to with the kids to wait outside for that long, so we left. The kids weren't happy about that (neither was I), but I think it was the right decision. We stopped at our favorite pizza place in La Verne and that seemed to be ok with them. When we got home, Grizz was waiting here and the kids were really happy to see him. They were exhausted, but as soon as they saw him, they were re-energized immediately. Kate was much happier too. That little girl loves her grandpa. It was a great day and I'm glad we took the kids out to experience something new. On Friday we went to the mall so I could get some new shorts and shoes. It had been a really long time since I bought some new shorts and my old ones were way too big. It had also been a few years since I bought some new "sneakers" so it was nice to replace those. Thankfully I don't wear them that much, so they should last me another 6 years or so. We went to a party on Friday night for new families in the ward (the couple that hosted it lives one street over from us) and had a really nice time. It's been tough trying to learn everyone's names, but I guess we'll be here for a long time so I'm not worried about it. Speaking of trying to learn new names, Kbro got a calling last week. They read our names into the ward and then sustained her as the 2nd counselor in the RS presidency. Kind of weird since no one in the ward really knows who we are, but it I guess it's a good way to get to know everyone. Hopefully the first counselor in the RS presidency doesn't realize that dad sued her about 10 years ago. Adbo had his first pinewood derby on Wednesday night. I had him pick out his paint and do as much of the work as he possibly could, but I ended up doing most of the work, which gives me no enjoyment at all. I told him that I had never won a pinewood derby and that it was likely that he wouldn't win either. Sure enough, we were one of the first cars out. You should've seen the look of contempt he gave me after we were eliminated. I'm sure it won't be the last time he will be disappointed in his old man. Last Sunday (after I typed my entry) we went for a long walk around the neighborhood. I almost wish I was a kid here because there are plenty of streets with empty homesites on them. We explored a bit and I hope the kids take out their bikes and go exploring in the neighborhood. Some people in the ward invited us on Sunday night to walk around with them and some other families in our ward that live in the neighborhood and we ended up having a great time hanging out and letting the kids run around. There are a ton of members here with kids that are the same age as ours and they are only a few minutes walk away from us. I think it will be a great place for the kids to grow up. Anyway, time to get breakfast ready for the kids. Kate just woke up and had a golfball size dook in her diaper. She's been constipated for 3 days, so I'm glad she finally got it out. It's so sad watching her face turn red and watching her scream when she is trying to get it out. Poor girl. Have a good week. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, April 15th, 2012
8:03 am	Keeping up appearances Today is out daughter's birthday. She's still sleeping right now, just like her mama, but we got her a free cake from the local grocery store, so that's how we'll celebrate. We didn't even get her a gift because we learned that it's pretty pointless at this point because she has no idea what is going on. I guess we bought her a new carseat, so that can be her present. This was a pretty nice weekend. Yesterday morning Kbro and I cleaned up the garage to the point where we can finally park all of the cars in the garage. We still have stuff to put away, but at least we can move around now. I also picked up my lawnmower from the repair shop and mowed my lawn for the first time. Because we don't have much grass in the yard, it took me about 20 minutes to mow and clean up the edges. By the way, I've never had a lawnmower repaired, but I learned that Asians really have cornered the lawnmower repair business, much like nail spas. The place I took it to was run by an older husband and wife. The husband was really nice (he does the repairs) and his wife was the complete opposite. She handles the customers and her husband must do a great job if they have any business at all because she is so rude. This is sad, but the situation kind of reminded me our grandparents. Anyway, we had to go to the scout store to get Adbo his uniform and some other stuff and we ended up spending about two hours there. They were having a 25% off sale and it was packed. While we were there, we ran into a few of our friends, so that made it nice. I don't know why they are always asking for money. There stuff is way expensive and it seems like they sell a ton of it. And based on where the store is, I can't imagine their overhead being very high. In the afternoon I decided to take the two older boys on a hike in the preserve behind the development where we live. This preserve is actually one of the reasons why I really liked this neighborhood since I know that there will never be any houses built behind us. It's a pretty easy hike and then you arrive at a nice little waterfall. I think the total roundtrip hike is 4 miles, but it's very easy to do. I wouldn't take Luc yet though, but the other boys did just fine. I'm sure I'll hike up there a million times while we live here because it's so nice. I also want to do a little more exploring up there, so maybe I'll go by myself a few times and check it out. We didn't do much last night except for flip between the Dodger game, Mystic River, Point Break, and Wedding Crashers. We also watched the season finale of Psych last night. It was probably the funniest episode of the season. I ended up falling asleep at 9:55. Total party animal. It was pouring rain on Friday, so we didn't do much in the afternoon. I picked up a pre-cut pinewood derby car for Adbo. I let him choose the paint colors (he went with green and red) and we started working on it yesterday. I'm trying to let him do as much work on this car as possible so it doesn't turn into the dad-wood derby, which is what it usually is. Mom and Dad volunteered to watch the kids on Friday night, so Kbro and I went to a local Mexican place for dinner and then walked around the mall for a bit. We didn't walk around long because it was cold and rainy, but it was nice to get out. I stayed up watching the Kings game while Kbro went to bed and then I kept reading the second "Game of Thrones" book. I'm totally hooked, but I only make it through a couple of chapters before I fall asleep. We did some fun stuff this week. Easter was a lot of fun and I think the kids all had a great time. We had FHE on Monday (sadly, we don't do this often), Tuesday we went to the Quakes game (free with 10 crv eligible cans, so for our family we only had to pay $4 for parking), Wednesday night our bishop came over (turns out he is from Malad and his sister was best friends with Kbro's mom), and Thursday night we had some our friends over for dinner. I think it's fun to be busy like this, but we'll probably take it easier this week. I also started teaching Seminary again this week. Only about a month left and the kids seem to be in a good mood now with the end being near. I think I am also in a better mood knowing that the end is near. Anyway, the weather is nice and I'm looking forward to going to church today and meeting some more new people. Hopefully there will be more than 5 guys in EQ unlike last week. I think everyone else left after sacrament meeting to go to Easter parties or whatever. That's what happens when you have crappy 1:00 church. Have a good week. (Comment on this)
Sunday, April 8th, 2012
9:26 am	Settling in It's a beautiful Easter Sunday and the only bummer about today so far is that church starts at 1:00. The kids were up super early, so I got up with them and Kris Van Winkle is snoozing away. I made blueberry muffins, got the vegetables ready for dinner tonight, set up my straw dispenser (courtesy of the Easter Bunny), cleaned up the kitchen, fed the kids, and here we are. We got the kids some candy and a little gift for Easter, but everything together probably cost us about $10-15. Big spenders, right? The fun for me on Easter was always the egg hunt in the grandparents' backyard along with the re-hiding of the eggs to try and make grandpa and grandma suffer later with the rotten egg smell in their backyard. For some reason, everytime we would go back later and look for the eggs we had hid, they would always be gone. Either grandpa knew what we were up to, or the animals in the backyard got them. Anyway, I was going to buy myself a giant Reese's peanut butter egg last night, but it was $3.99 and I figured that was too much to spend on one piece of candy. Yesterday was a pretty good day. I washed the cars and cleaned some more stuff out of the garage. I also took my lawnmower to get repaired now that I need to start cutting our grass again (thankfully, there isn't much, so it should take about 15 minutes each week). The place where I took it is over in Fontana and the area is dicey, but I drove my crappy pickup truck and I looked like crap, so hopefully they won't overcharge me. A little later on we left for Home Depot and they were having a craft day or whatever it is called, so we let the kids build and paint bird feeders and they had a great time. Apparently, Home Depot does this once a month, so I'm sure we'll go back again and do it. The kids were thrilled with our "new Home Depot" as they called it. They weren't as thrilled after that when they realized we were headed over to the mall, but we had a good time anyway (despite not remembering to bring Kate's pacifier). I did some more work around the house in the afternoon and we had dinner and put the kids to bed. My old high school friend and his wife and son stopped by for a visit and we had a great time talking to them. I don't hardly keep in touch with anyone from high school, but I talk to him (gchat/text/etc) almost on a daily basis, which seems weird to our wives that we are such good friends but we only hang out together once every couple of years. I think that will go up quite a bit in the future though. On Friday I picked up my new suits and was thrilled to finally have suit pants that fit again. I never knew I would be so excited about getting a new suit. I guess that's what happens when you wear one 6 days a week. I also picked up some new shoes and a new belt last week, so I'm all set to go. Hopefully I don't gain a bunch of weight again. I also got a haircut and did a bunch of work on the house. Slowly but surely, we are clearing out the garage and making room for the van to fit in. Kbro and the kids went to a easter egg hunt at the stake center and had a good time and met some new people. She also took Adbo to cub scouts for the first time last week and met some new people there, so we are making progress. I'm really excited to see what the ward is like today. I'm also a bit nervous as this is kind of like your first day at a new school. Friday night we watched "War Horse" and it was ok. Kbro didn't like the war scenes because they make her think about our kids going to war, but I think she liked the move overall. I just couldn't figure out why he liked that horse so much. Sheesh. I also couldn't figure out why the Germans all spoke English to each other but with a German accent. Just have them speak German and do subtitles already. I'm pretty sure anyone going to see War Horse is intelligent enough to read subtitles and understand that not everyone in the world speaks English. One good thing about the movie is seeing the villages in England where the movie was filmed. What a great place. And yes, I would go back to England in a heartbeat if given the chance. On Friday's eve (Thursday) I rented "Puss and Boots" and watched it with the boys. It was ok, but Humpty freaked me out. It's a good movie to watch with kids and Adbo and PJ really enjoyed it. I did learn that I shouldn't keep them up so late though because they were both really cranky the next day. Anyway, we have church and then we are headed to the parents for the egg hunt and for dinner. Should be a fun day. I'm back at seminary tomorrow, so we'll see how that goes. I did talk to the counselor in the stake presidency yesterday and it looks like this will be a one year gig. I'll definitely miss some things about teaching, but it will be nice to do something else. Have a good week. (Comment on this)
Sunday, April 1st, 2012
9:25 pm	A new hope Greetings from our new house. It feels great to be here, but I've quickly realized that moving into a new home definitely has its negatives. More on that in a bit. A lot of this week was spent getting ready for the move. We actually had all of our stuff moved on Wednesday, so I took the day off and the parents watched the kids for half of the day while the movers moved our stuff and while the Fios guy came and set up our tv/internet. We hired the cheapest moving company we could find and it seemed like a good deal. A couple of days before the move, I decided to check out some reviews of this company online and I found that the reviews were awful and the company had an "F" rating with the BBB (the BBB is a total joke, by the way, but you get the idea). Sure enough, these guys sucked, big time. Kbro stayed with them while they were moving the stuff out of the storage unit and had to keep getting on them about their smoke breaks and how slowly they were moving. Finally, she starting moving stuff and they got the idea and started moving quicker. Once they got to our house, the basically held our stuff hostage until we paid them in full. Did I mention the guys were total gangbangers with head tattoos? If you saw these guys in your neighborhood, you'd definitely call the police. Anyway, they were a lot quicker unloading than they were loading and I was really glad when they left. I think they were glad to leave too after dealing with Kbro. On a more positive note, the Verizon guy was awesome. Unfortunately, Fios tv isn't great. I still think dish network is the easiest to use, but they are all pretty good I guess. After work on Friday I came straight to the new house and we've been here since. We've moved quite a bit of stuff into the house, but still have a ton of stuff into the garage. We set up the furniture and got the kitchen all set, so the necessities are ready, but everything else still has to be put away. We just dumped all of our cardboard boxes in the backyard and fortunately for us, it poured last night and it made them a lot easier to rip up and put away in our garbage can. Here comes the negatives to moving in to a new house...first, this house is a lot bigger than anything else we have lived in, so we don't really have to stuff to fill it with. The stuff that we do have looks really old and outdated and doesn't match at all with our house. So, we've looked at a ton of furniture and have probably made 15-20 trips to furniture stores, almost all of them with the kids. They really hate furniture stores at this point, and I have to admit that I kind of do too. We had been saving up for a this a long time, but it's really painful to spend that kind of money on furniture. I know there are people out there who spend money to make themselves feel better, but it puts a sinking feeling in my stomach to drop a few grrrr like that. Never in my life have I ever spent this much money in a weekend (not including our house down payment) and I really didn't enjoy it. The house will look great, no doubt, but I don't like the feeling that comes with it. If nothing else, I think we spent enough this weekend for me to get a free flight on Southwest this month. The other negative to moving into a new house is finding the stuff that needs to be fixed. Here's a weird one for you: the drain in our shower is so loud. It's so loud that I have to put my foot over the drain while I shower to block it out. Anyway, to celebrate moving in to the new house I hooked myself up with some buffalo wings after priesthood. Remember, the main reason why we moved out here was so that I could be closer to my favorite wing spot, so it was great making the shorter drive home after picking the wings up. Unfortunately, I spent a long time in the bathroom today, but thankfully the general conference stream was awesome on my phone. Actually we don't get byutv, so I bought a cable and hooked up my computer to the tv and we watched it that way. It really looked great and it was a lot cheaper than paying $10 more per month just to have byutv. Today we had a family from our new ward stop by (both of them are from the stake we grew up in) and visit for a while. They knew we were moving in and when they saw the BYU stickers on the cars, they figured we were moved in. Then we had some friends from our old ward who had moved to another ward come over and visit for a while, so it's nice to show people the new house. It will be nice when we finally get a yard in, but that's not going to happen for a long time. Anyway, I have a ton of work this week and I'm looking forward to not juggling a bunch of stuff at once. Have a good week. (Comment on this)
Sunday, March 25th, 2012
5:24 pm	The most amazing things Greetings again from the parents' house. This is our last Sunday here and it will be kind of nice to spend our first Sunday in the new house watching general conference, even though I found out that I'm going to have to pay more for BYUtv with our new cable provider. Maybe we'll just watch it online. This was a pretty monumental week. On Monday we got word that the deeds had been recorded and escrow was closing on the old house. That was great news, but I wasn't completely relieved/ready to celebrate until all of the money was wired. Thankfully, that happened on Tuesday afternoon and I wired my money and we were all set to go. Selling a home has really been quite an experience, definitely not one that I would like to go through again any time soon. Hopefully I never hear from the buyers or their awful agent again. As soon as the money was wired, we turned out attention to closing escrow on the new home. Turns out we really didn't have much else to do besides sign all of the loan docs, which was a pretty painless process, especially since the notary met Kbro and I at my office. We used Wells Fargo as our lender and it could not have been a better experience. It also helped that the loan officer is the dad of a guy I go to church with (the dad isn't a member). Once we made that connection, it made the process even easier. We were originally supposed to close on the 30th, but everything was done early so we ended up closing escrow on Thursday. We picked up our keys on Friday and we are set to go. I thought we would take pictures of getting our keys, like the awesome ones that John had, but it was actually pretty anti-climactic. We just signed a couple more papers with the the builder's really gay agent (seriously) and got keys to the house, mailbox, and our garage door openers. We changed the code on the garage door and that was that. We've had a ton of painters and shutter people coming up at the house, so it's been a busy week for Kbro trying to get everyone scheduled. We chose our painters and they got to work yesterday. It's going to take a few days, but our movers are scheduled to move our stuff on Wednesday, so hopefully the painting is done by then. We also have the tv/internet guy coming on Wednesday, so we are moving right along. I'm not exactly sure when we'll actually move the kids over, but my guess is that our first night at the new house will be Friday. We don't have any window coverings and we won't for a month or so, so I'm not sure what we are going to do about that, especially with the big windows in the bathroom. On Friday we were going to celebrate getting the new house with an awesome dinner at a local steak place, but our we found out that our $25 gift certificate that I got a couple of years ago was only good Sunday through Thursday, so we ended up just going to a local mexican restaurant. It was still pretty good, but not as awesome as that prime rib that I had been thinking about all week. On Saturday we headed down to the OC to go to a furniture store that only sells furniture that was used in model homes. We were hoping to see some furniture like the awesome furniture we've seen in model homes where we are moving, but most of the stuff was pretty crappy. We were pretty disappointed, but then we noticed a restaurant supply store across the street and that made the drive down there worth it. We found some awesome 32 oz tumblers that will be perfect dinner glasses. In the afternoon, I headed to the mall with the old man and picked out some new suits for work. I'm really excited about them, but it's going to take almost 3 weeks for them to be ready. Sheesh. I went to Best Buy after that to check out tvs and then went home. We watched the Kings game and House Hunters International and called it a night. Today was our last day at our ward. We'll definitely miss some people, but we are pretty excited about moving to a new ward. It's not really a sad event or anything because we are staying in the stake, but it will be weird to move to a new ward after being in this one for the past seven years. Anyway, so this should be a fun week, but a lot of work. I have to pick up a new tv, so that's pretty exciting. It would be a lot more exciting if I didn't have a million other things to buy right now. Have a good week. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, March 18th, 2012
8:30 pm	So close Greetings from mom and dad's place. Obviously we are still here and it looks like we will be here for another week and a half or so. Not bad, right? After harassing the lender because he was late with the buyer's loan, they finally got everything into place to close on Friday. Unfortunately, the buyer's agent is a huge jerk and held of closing escrow because he didn't like the way we had installed the fire door going to the garage. He got into it with our agent and the email exchange between the two of them is pretty funny. And very childish on his part (including the misspelling of "you're"). So, he made some ridiculous demand and I am going to do it because we are pretty much guaranteed now that escrow will close tomorrow. All I can say about this experience is that is has definitely been one of the worst experiences of my life. It started off so well too. I hope that I don't have to sell another home for a really, really, really long time. There is good news on the other home front though. Our loan docs are all ready to go and we are signing them tomorrow. We will be closing escrow on the new house on Friday, which is great news. Unfortunately, we still have some things to do before we can move in, like painting, so that will delay us a bit. They installed the new flooring though and the house looks great. There is a big advantage to not buying a new home though. I hate having to pay for stuff like flooring, painting, window coverings, a backyard, etc. On the flipside, it's great living in a home that hasn't been rented by a nasty family for the past 15 years. After fixing up the other house, the last thing I wanted to do was fix up another house. Unfortunately, that can be pretty expensive and we are definitely paying for it. Sooooo, we are almost there and hopefully this will be a good week for us and a lot less stressful than the past 5 weeks have been. We didn't really do much this weekend, mainly because of the cold, rainy weather. I went outside to move the cars at it was 42 degrees. I know, I know, for you midwesterners that's pretty nice, but it's freezing for around here. I think the rain is mostly over at this point and I'm not sad to see it go. I would prefer it if it rained mid-week so it wouldn't ruin my weekend though. On Friday we went up to the house to check out the flooring only to find that they had covered all of the flooring with paper while it was setting in. We then went to a furniture place and bought a bunk bed for Adbo and Luc to share in their new room. The beds can be separated and look very nice, so we are happy with the purchase. What's better is that they didn't have the one we wanted in stock and all of the next shipment had sold out, so they sold us the floor model and took 10% off. I have no problem taking the floor model for cheaper, especially since it was in pretty good condition. That's actually one of the few items of furniture that we have purchased in recent memory. We never really spent any money on furniture because A) we have little kids and they mess stuff up, B) we never really had extra money to spend on furniture, and C) we always figured we would move at some point and would prefer our furniture to match at the new place. Thankfully we were aided in our endeavor to not purchase furniture by mom and dad remodeling their house and then moving to a different house. Our tv stand used to be in mom and dad's room, our bedroom dresser was the one that used to be in Mark's room, our toy cabinet was left on the street by one of our neighbors, and Adbo's desk used to be Merebo's and she gave it to us when she moved to OK (I can't believe that thing has held up because it is a total piece of crap). The only bedframe we have is for the small bed that PJ slept in and that was a baby gift when Kate was born. The rest of our beds are just sitting on the floor. Pretty classy, huh? Our crib was a baby gift when Adbo was born, and we bought our two couches when we moved from Provo to Davis. I've always wanted to have nice, matching furniture, but we've really never been able to do it. Of course, now that it's time to have nice, matching furniture, we can't afford it. I guess our other furniture has been good for us for the past few years, so should be good for us for another few years. We didn't do much else Friday except watch the Kings game. On Saturday I let Kbro sleep in because Kate was awake most of the night with a cold (which kept her home from church). I woke her up around 10:00 because I had to leave to meet up with my buddy and his dad at the new house. They are both contractors and we have our walk-through this week, so I wanted their opinions beforehand. They gave me some good suggestions and it was nice to see the house in rainy conditions because I could see that there are two huge rivers that run out of the yard when it's raining. I'm sure that will be fun to deal with. In the afternoon we went to the mall and Target, mainly to get out of the house, and then we took it easy the rest of the night. Not the most exciting day, but it was cheap and there's not much you can do when it's pouring rain outside all day. Today I took the boys to church, but before church I stopped by the old house to drop off the keys and garage door opener in anticipation for closing tomorrow. They had all the utilities turned back on, so it looks like they (the buyers) are ready too. I said my final goodbye to that house/dusted off my feet and went to church. We only have one more week at that ward and I'll definitely miss a lot of people there (and definitely WON'T miss a few people). The good thing is that we are still in the same stake, so I will get to see a lot of these guys on a regular basis. Anyway, with the two closings this week and Bahamas Tuesday night (and three court appearances) it will be a busy week, but hopefully it ends up being a great week. Have a good week. (Comment on this)
Sunday, March 11th, 2012
6:26 pm	A small fortune Greetings from mom and dad's house. Not really as exotic as China or wherever Merebo is, but it's different from where I usually write these entries. Let me give you an update on where we are at with our houses. Escrow was supposed to close on our old house on Wednesday. That day came and went, which really cheesed me off. The buyers are still waiting for loan docs to be ready, so we are waiting. They have signed off on everything, so now we are just waiting. Everything is supposed to be ready by next Friday, so pray that happens so we can submit everything else for our next loan. On that front, everything is looking good. They laid the new flooring in the house and asked if we wanted to close a week early. That would be nice, but with this small problem with the other house, we will probably just wait until it is supposed to close. By the way, what a huge pain in the butt this process is. It really could not end soon enough. Anyway, last weekend was absolutely crazy. I took the day off of work on Thursday and Kbro and I spent the day going back and forth between our house and the storage unit. We did about 5 loads before we ran out of time. We actually couldn't move anything else because we had to live in our house through the weekend because Kbro's mom came into town for the baptism. We picked her up on Friday went to mom and dad's to have a birthday party for Adam. B & P were here, so we decided we would have a spa/pizza party. Unfortunately, mom tripped earlier in the day, so mom and dad went to the ER while we used their house. On Saturday we had the baptism, which was a good experience for pretty much everyone except for Adam because the water wasn't warm enough for him. Actually, considering his negative personality, I would've thought it was really weird if he came out and told me what a great experience he has. He's known amongst my friends as "Captain Contrarian" because he pretty much hates everything. Weird kid. After the baptism, we had a nice luncheon and then went to show the new house to MS and to John and Kelbo. It was great walking around the house and the model home with Kelbo because she has an opinion and is not afraid to share it. I much prefer that over "oh yeah, it looks great blah blah blah." It looks like I'm getting outvoted on the house color, which bums me out a bit, but at least I'm getting my cat. One last thing about the baptism, I asked Grandpa to confirm him and he did a great job. I think he was happy that I asked him and a lot of people complimented him on his blessing. Good work, Gramps. On Sunday we went to church and then spent the rest of the day packing up stuff. I picked up the Uhaul and got ready for our big day on Monday. We got up at 5:30 and got to work. A few guys came over at 6:00 and we got crackin on moving. We ended up finishing at 7:30 pm, so it was a really, really long day. We got everything cleaned out and the storage unit completely packed, including the Suburban and my little pickup truck. I wasn't feeling great before the move, and I definitely wasn't feeling great afterward. I ended up with pink eye in both eyes and I got ear infections in both of my ears. We decided that we are going to hire someone to move our stuff from the storage unit up to the new house because this last move almost killed us. It was a lot easier moving when it was just Kbro and I. Who knew that you could accumulate so much crap in 7 years? Anyway, I spent the rest of the week in the office, which I think helped me feel better because I was able to take it easy. I'm feeling better now, but still not 100%. I've got a feeling that I probably won't feel completely better until we are in the new house and completely done moving. We also moved back in with mom and dad on Monday, which is a dream come true. Actually, it's not that bad. The kids certainly love it and I'm pretty sure mom and dad are ok with it. Kbro and I would obviously rather live in our own house, but as far as living with your parents goes, this is about as good as it can get. I know dad likes it because he gets dinner every night. We started off having all four kids sleeping in the same room, but now we have the older two sleeping downstairs and the younger two upstairs by us. The kids seem to be doing ok, but Luc has asked a few times if he can go home. We try to explain that this is our home now, but he really doesn't understand it. We asked the kids if they wanted to stay here or move into the new house and they all said they wanted to stay here. Maybe we can work something out where we leave them here and we just visit them on the weekend. On Friday we didn't so much, but after we put the kids to bed, Kbro and I went out to eat. It's been a while since we had had a date, so it was great to get out, even if it was for a couple of hours. We have both been really stressed out/sick/exhausted, so it was nice to think about something else for a while. We came home and went to bed, even though it was like 9:30. Total party animalz. We've been going to bed between 9:00 and 9:30 each night to try and catch up on our sleep. Saturday was Luc's birthday. I washed the cars in the morning and then we had some pancakes for breakfast. We decided to go to the mall so I could find some new shorts, but the kids were absolutely awful, so that trip didn't last long. We came home and everyone went to bed (except me). PJ woke up from his nap with a bloody nose and managed to trip blood all the way down the parents' hallway upstairs. Later he put a nice scratch into dad's car when he tried to get his bike out of the garage by himself. He's having a bit of a rough time lately and he was so nervous about grandpa coming home and seeing the scratch. Thankfully dad is a lot more mellow now than he was when we were kids. Luc chose the local pizza place for his birthday lunch, so we went there and them came back and had cake and ice cream. We were going to get in the spa, but we got home too late, so we'll turn it on tomorrow night well ahead of time. It was a good day and we are 3/4 done with our birthday season. Today we went to church at our ward instead of the parents'. Kbro had to give a talk and she did a really good job. Plus, she looked hot doing it, which is what is most important. We had a nice dinner and then I took the boys over to visit the grandparents. Grandma zonked out right after we got there, so Grandpa and I took the boys into the backyard and let them run around. It's been a nice day and a great way to celebrate one of my favorite days of the year, the beginning of daylight savings time. I love the fact that it's lighter later, even if it makes it harder to put the kids to bed. Anyway, time to pay attention to the kids (and the tv). Have a good week. (Comment on this)
Sunday, February 26th, 2012
6:38 pm	Stressful days, Sleepless nights Man, I don't think I could've ever imagined the stress that involves moving and selling a house, especially trying to do it with a bunch of kids. I don't remember the last time I had a good night's rest. There is just so much going on that my mind can't relax. I've even tried sleeping pills and those don't seem to work either. It seems like more often than not I will wake up in the middle of the night and Kbro will be awake as well. You know that "Hey, are you awake?" conversation that you have when neither one of you can sleep? It really really sucks. A lot of the stress right now involves selling this house. Based on how quickly we sold it, we thought it would be a piece of cake. Between repairs, termite tenting, and trying to figure out a move-out date and what to do with our stuff, it's making what's left of my hair fall out. As it stands right now, we are supposed to be out of this house on the 7th and we'll be moving all of our stuff (and possibly one of our vehicles) into an over-size storage unit and moving in with the parents. We are still trying to rent our house back from the new owners, but I'm not sure that is going to happen. Oh, and they asked us to remove a tree and fix the driveway before they move in, or give them $3,000 instead. This is the kind of crap I'm dealing with right now. Sheesh. Things are going smoothly with the other house, other than the serious scratch we had to pay out to get the flooring in our house. This was why we were down in OC. Our builder's office is down in Irvine, so we had to go down to pick out the floor. It was a pretty brutal process because the flooring is unbelievably expensive. It was so expensive that we ended up just putting vinyl in the bathrooms and laundry room. We have vinyl in our kitchen and bathrooms right now and I absolutely hate it. I was really looking forward to having a bathroom with ceramic tiles in it, but that will have to wait a little bit longer. I can see how people go crazy with upgrades, but we just told the lady that we had a budget and had to stick to it and she seemed ok with that. Anyway, they won't put the flooring in until the buyer's loan on our current house is funded, so hopefully that happens this week. Anyway, PJ's birthday was on Monday. I took half of the day off from work and met Kbro and the kids at McDonald's. After that, we put all the kids to sleep and took a nap. We went to hockey and then came home for PJ's big birthday dinner of pancakes, bacon, and eggs. I think he had a good day and it was funny because he kept asking to do things and saying he should be able to do them because it was his birthday. Total milked it. On Thursday we went down to the OC for the flooring. Thankfully Kelbo helped us out and watched the three younger kids while Dad hung out with the oldest. After we finished up at the design place, we hung out with Kelbo for a while while we envied her situation having tons of kids in her neighborhood for her kids to play with. When John finally showed up (and after we waited a half hour for John to go to the bathroom) we went and had dinner. The highlight was watching Brody spill his ranch on John's arm and then John's face turning red like it used to when he would throw his mattress on the floor. Also, for those of you who don't get to spend time with Brody, his voice and mannerisms are exactly like John's when he was younger. It's pretty dang amazing. on Friday we went to a furniture store and then worked on the house a bit before spending the evening watching boring tv and going to bed early. On Saturday we spent about 7 hours working on cleaning out our garage and throwing things away. The youth are having a garage sale next week to help them go to camp, so we've been able to get rid of a ton of stuff that way. What's great is that the house where you drop the stuff off for the sale is on the same street that we live on. Anyway, on account of the dust and pollen in the garage, we spent the rest of the day sneezing and blowing our noses, which isn't a great way to spend the day. We watched some more tv last night and then went to bed early again. Today was business as usual, except Adbo had his baptismal interview before church and we had our temple interviews at the stake center. Some of the people in our new ward talked to us about moving there, so I guess the word is out. It's nice that we already know some of the people in that ward, so it should make for a smooth transition. Anyway, K8 is climbing all over me, so I should pay attention to her. Have a good week (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, February 19th, 2012
4:21 pm	LA-Z-BOYEEEEEE Before Adam was born, we looked for a chair that Kbro could use to rock/feed/hold the baby. I had always wanted a La-Z-Boy, so we ended up getting an awesome blue one that we put in front of the tv. Anyway, Adam was born and Kbro used it as we had intended. Then we moved down here and it was put in the baby room, which has been occupied by PJ and Luc and now Kate. Kbro has used it for each child and still uses it to feed Kate. Why am I telling you this? Because despite my wish to finally have a LZB that I could sit in in front of the tv, I have probably sat in this chair 10 times in the past 7 years. I love this chair and I never use it because there isn't a tv parked in front of it. Maybe when Kate gets older we can move this chair into a room where I can finally use it. I'm sitting in the chair right now and it's going to take a lot for me to move from this space. Have any of ever thought about you spouse's annoying habits and then thought about what your own annoying habits are? I guarantee you that you can find a lot more annoying habits that your spouse has than you have. I mean, here's a silly habit that Kbro has: say we are at a 4 way stop light and we are turning left to go east. There are two lanes going each way. Kbro will turn into the left lane and then immediately turn on her blinker and change into the right land. This drives me crazy because I can't for the life of me figure out why she doesn't just turn into the right lane to begin with. Anyway, the point of this is to describe a really annoying habit that I have, which is that I never close drawers and have a really hard time closing cupboard doors. Why is this? Because I hate the noise it makes when they close. It took me a long time to figure out why I have such a hard time with that noise and then it hit me. When I was a teenager, I would try and mix in a nap every once in a while in my bedroom. Unfortunately, I could also hear mom downstairs getting dinner ready or cleaning the kitchen and it sounded like she was always slamming the cupboard doors. I'm sure she really wasn't. She was probably just in a hurry, but I could hear it every time one of those was closed. Anyway, I think it would be fun if you guys that read this could list an annoying habit you have and where it came from. Don't ask your spouse what your annoying habits are because it will probably cause you to get into an argument. Of course, we all know that one of John's annoying habits is seeing really gay movies and then pretending afterwards that "it wasn't that bad" just so he can try and score some points with Kelbo. What a wuss. We didn't end up doing too much this weekend. On Friday night we watched 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, Up All Night, and some episode of "Triple D" before calling it a night at 9:30. We decided we would rather read than watch tv, so Kbro read one of the 9 books that she is reading right now (another weird habit to me because I like to read one book at a time) and I read "A Game of Thrones." Yes, I am still reading the first book, but I really, really like it so I am taking my sweet time finishing it. I think I only have 100 pages left, so I should finish it some time in April. I bought the other books (I think I shared this story before) so I will take my sweet time reading those as well. Anyway, it was a pretty exciting evening, but at least it was cheap. Last night we watched the Kings game and an "An Idiot Abroad" episode. It is by far the funniest show on tv right now. We had a frozen pizza and some frozen chicken wings. Talk about a hot and sexy date night. By the way, I don't know if any of you watch "Up All Night," but it is a pretty funny show. This week's episode was the funniest by far solely because of Will Arnett's Michael Keaton impression from "Mr. Mom." I kept rewinding it and watching it over and over because I thought it was so funny. Tomorrow is PJ's big 5th birthday, so we are having cake and ice cream with the parents tonight. I still don't know if our grandparents are going to show up, but I invited them anyway. We are giving him a bat, a Transformer, and some Angry Bird pajamas for his birthday, so he should be excited. I don't know what we'll be doing to celebrate, other than eating pancakes for dinner as he requested. I used to love breakfast for dinner, but I'm not huge on it anymore because I don't really want a big sugary meal for my only meal of the day. Kbro usually makes eggs and hash browns though, so that makes it better. Speaking of PJ, last week at hockey he faceplanted and knocked one of his front teeth way out of position. There was a lot of blood and it looked bad, so I took him to see Grandpa to see what his opinion was. Grandpa looked at it, then stuck his big wrinkly finger into PJ's mouth and shoved the tooth back into place. A couple of things surprised me about this. One, I thought he was going to pull the tooth out because it was pretty loose and two, PJ didn't cry or make any noise. Grandpa said it would probably be fine, but he was concerned about any damage to his permanent tooth in that spot. Sure enough, PJ was fine the next day and his tooth isn't noticeably out of place. As I'm sure you can all attest, it is great to have an awesome dentist in the family, even though he still refuses to wear gloves. Anyway, not much else going on. I'm taking the afternoon off tomorrow, so I'm looking forward to some midweek family time. I also have to go down to Irvine on Thursday afternoon, so we are going to meet up with John and Kelbo and hang out for a while. We don't hang out nearly enough as we should, so that should be fun. Have a good week. (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, February 12th, 2012
10:20 pm	Food blogging This was a long day, but an even longer week. We finally are sitting down now (it's 9:30) and watching "The Pioneer Woman." Honestly, I don't know why I like this show, but I'm not ashamed to admit that I look forward to watching it every week. I just wish this lady would pay a visit to a new hairdresser. Like I said before, this was a really, really long week, mainly because of our housing situation. We realized that we were faced with a problem that we didn't expect, which was that we were selling our house and did not have a place to live. It's a weird position to be in because we were expecting to not be able to sell our house while having plenty of options of homes to buy. That was not the case. I'm very particular on where I want to live and it turns out that the housing market in this area seems to be doing a lot better than the rest of the country right now. We found a house last week that was way out of our budget, but we decided to make an offer anyway. After going back and forth a couple times, it was still way out of our budget, so we decided that we had to move on from that house and try a couple of other homes. These homes were in the same development as the home that we originally wanted when we looked at the possibility of moving. There were two homes available that were right next to each other. When we looked at them, there was another couple that was looking at them as well. We made an offer on the house we liked more (even though we liked both of them) and waited to hear back. The lady told us that the couple had made an offer on the house as well, so we figured we probably wouldn't get the house because we made a low offer. Well, we were right. They ended up selling the home to the Asian couple for $24,000 more than our offer. Yikes. Great house, but we definitely wouldn't have paid that much for it. Anyway, we really liked the house next to the one we had just missed out on, so we made an offer on that one as well. This offer was actually $15,000 less than the offer we had made on the house next door, but we knew there weren't any offers on it so we figured that we didn't want to bargain against ourselves. This was on Thursday and we were supposed to hear back on Friday. Well, Friday came and went and we didn't hear anything. Saturday also came and went and we didn't hear anything. Finally, today while I was sitting in EQ I got a phone call from the lady saying that she had spoken with "corporate" and they made a counteroffer. When she told me the counteroffer, I said yes, but that I needed to talk to Kbro about it. I pulled her out of RS (she wasn't too sad about that) and told her and she said yes immediately. I called the lady back and told her we accepted the offer and we were ready to go. I still can't believe we got it for that price. I mean, the prices here are completely ridiculous, so I feel pretty stupid for even being excited about what we are paying for it. We came home from church and then met mom and dad up at the house so they could check it out. We looked at it and then they took the kids to their house while we stayed and signed the mountain of paperwork. It was a great feeling to sign everything and now the worrying starts about getting our house sold and then getting the loan in place for the other house. We had the termite inspection this week and we have to get the house fumigated, so that sucks. We also have to repair the wood on the front of our house, so there's more money out of our pocket. We had the house inspection yesterday and we'll see if they ask us to repair more stuff on the house, so we have a lot of work to do still. The house that we bought isn't listed on the internet, so here are some basic facts about it: it's new, it's about twice as big as our current home, it doesn't have any flooring or toilets yet, it's in the same city we live in now, but on the other side and up on the hill so it's about 15 minutes east of where we are now. So that's enough house stuff now. It's been consuming us and will for a while, but I just wish I could fast forward a couple of months until it's all over. On a more random note, I don't get why Adele is so popular. We didn't do much else this week. We did watch Contagion last night. I thought it was ok, but it seemed like it focused on too many different people. And what was up with Jude Law's teeth? And why did they have to kill off Kate Winslet? I mean, the movie started off great when they killed Gwenyth Paltrow at the beginning. That should be the beginning to every movie. I really enjoyed seeing Weeve's pictures and reading his recap. I've always wanted to go to China, so I'm pretty jealous. Kbro did promise me that if I bought her a house, I could go to China though, so I'm pretty pumped about that. She also promised me that I could get a cat, so I'm that much closer to General Bonkers joining our family. I had to give a talk today. I swear I've given like 9 talks in this ward, but I guess I had to get one more talk in before we move. I'm sure we'll have to give talks in our new ward, so I guess I should just hold onto the talk that I gave and see if I can give it there too. We threw a party for our friends that are moving to China next week. They are moving to Beijing for 4 months while he teaches over there. They have three fairly young children, so this will be a great experience for them. I would love to move our kids to another country for a while and let them experience a different culture. I guess my job doesn't really lend itself to doing that though. Kbro would still rather eat her computer and her phone than travel to China. Maybe I could convince her to meet me halfway and go to Japan. Anyway, that's enough for tonight. Have a good week. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, February 5th, 2012
8:38 pm	Up down up down up down This has been a week of ups and downs for sure. Let's get to it. The fun started on Tuesday night when we had a buffalo wing EQ party at our house. I still can't believe they volunteered my house, but a lot of dudes turned up and brought some great wings. You know how much I love the atomic wings and they didn't disappoint. Not even the guy who brought the hottest wings would eat them, but I ended up eating 6 of them and even Kbro came down and pounded a couple. The rest of the guys took a bite and cried about it. Such wusses. Anyway, because wings always clog me up, I chased my wings with a big bowl of frosted mini wheats, which have the complete opposite effect on me. Turned out that it actually worked a little bit, but it definitely didn't help with my activity on Friday morning, which I'll get to in a second. On Tuesday we decided that it was time to move and so we would put the house up for sale. We called up the realtor we had spoken with before and we were all set to go. She put our house on MLS on Wednesday and by Thursday the sign was in front of it. It seems really weird to see that out there, but we figured we would give it a shot. Kbro spent a lot of time cleaning (we also hired a lady to come help clean since we didn't have a lot of time and Kbro had to wrangle the kids) and by Friday the house was ready to be seen, sort of. On Thursday I had to get ready for my flex sigmoidoscopy, so I couldn't eat anything and I had to drink a bottle of this horrible liquid that gave me a bad case of the runs all day. I mean, it was like being a missionary all over again, except this time I had a comfortable bathroom and toilet paper instead of some trees and some napkins. The reason I drank this solution in the morning was because my buddy invited me to the Clippers game that evening and I didn't want to spend the evening in the bathroom, even though I would've had some company because of the awesome bathroom attendant that hangs out there on the suites level. Blake Griffin is fun to watch, but basketball is pretty boring, especially when you don't really care who wins. It was a lot of fun to hang out with some of my buddies and it was great to spend time with John's old roommate, who is my buddy's cousin. Man, that guy gives a firm handshake. He must really work out with those grip strengtheners a lot. On Friday morning I went in for my awesome procedure. So, basically the exam consist of sticking a camera up your bum and then inflating your butt with air. Anyway, it started out ok, but the more air they shoot up there, the worse it got. By the end of it, I was in an extreme amount of pain, so much to the point where I started cold sweating and I thought I was going to pass out. It was like the worst case of bloating I have ever had times 10. Man, I can't believe how much it hurt. I drove home in pain and then tried walking around a park, but it hurt so bad I had to go home and throw up. Thankfully I didn't throw up, but I came close. I had to get out of there because more people were coming to see the house, so I went over to the parents house and proceeding to decompress on the guest room bed. After breaking wind for about 45 minutes, I felt a lot better. We still had to kill time though because people were checking out the house, so we ran a couple of errands and then went home. Since we had been up so late the night before, we went to bed at 9:00. Total party animals. On Saturday we did a bunch of work on the house and then got the heck out of there so people could come look. We had about 4 different people come on Friday and then 7 different people on Saturday. We ran errands and then it was back to the parents house to kill time. While we were there, I got a call from our realtor saying that she had received a written offer for $100 more than our asking price. Another person told her that they would be making an offer as well, so we are waiting until tomorrow to see what happens. Very exciting and nerve wracking. My allergies went crazy last night, so we didn't end up doing much besides going to bed early. Today we had church and then it was back out of the house so people could check it out. I asked mom and dad if they would come with us to check out the house that we have been waiting on for a few months and they agreed to come along. I had checked it earlier this week to make sure it was for sale and then called today to ask if we could check it out and they said it was fine. Anyway, we showed up and the house had a 'sold' sign in front of it. It was like someone punched me in the stomach. I can't describe how much I wanted that house. We checked out a few other houses, but my mind was on the house we missed out on. Man, I still can't believe it. It's killing me. I'm totally bummed by this. Now the house hunt really starts, which is really the last thing I want to do. So I was bummed when I came home, but I received some good news tonight. Turns out the Giants won the Super Bowl (I didn't watch this year and turned off Twitter so I wouldn't see the score), so that means Kbro's brother owes me a steak from Ruth's Chris. YES! I actually kind of wish that I had never gone there because now I crave it. Anyway, so it's been quite a weekend. Totally unrelaxing and full of good news and bad news. I feel like I need a day off to recover from this weekend. It will be nice when we stop having people look at the house. Who knew it was so hard to keep a house really clean with a bunch of little kids running around in it? It's also hard to be out of the house all of the time, so a big thanks to mom and dad for letting us come over and kill time there. Anyway, that's all I've got for now. Wish us luck with the house hunt and with the sale. (Comment on this)
Sunday, January 29th, 2012
8:13 pm	Where there's food, there's squatches Sorry about not updating last week. We had friends over late and I just ran out of time. We had friends over today, but they left earlier and now I'm watching Finding Bigfoot with the two older boys. Such a ridiculous show, but it's good for a few laughs. Any time you hear the term "squatchy area" you know you are in for a good time. Back to last week...On Friday Kbro took Adam to a dance at his school for mothers and their sons, or as the case may be in this area, mothers and their stepson or girlfriends and their boyfriends' sons. We were both pretty surprised that Adam wanted to go, but we are trying to encourage our kids to do different things, so we were happy that he wanted to try it out. I think they had a good time and from what Kbro told me, Adam was getting down on the dancefloor. I really hope our kids aren't embarrassed to dance, especially since I was and I always hated the fact that I was too nervous to dance. Our original plan was to take the kids on our 5k like we did the last time we did it, but the forecast called for rain, so mom and dad offered to watch the kids while we ran (or jogged or walked) in the 5k. We dropped them off around 6:30 and made the drive into LA for the 5k. There were a ton of people there, even with the bad weather. We checked in and got ready and then the race started. It rained the entire time we were running, which turned out to be a good thing because you couldn't see how badly I was sweating and I didn't worry about the snot pouring out my nose or the spit coming out of my mouth. The problems with the rain were that for some of the race the rain was blowing directly into our eyes and by the end of the race my sweatshirt was soaked, so it was pretty heavy to run in. Anyway, so Kbro had decided that she was going to run with me the whole time even though she is way faster than I am, so we ended up running together. I had to stop and walk a couple of times, but I did end up "running" the rest of it. We were getting close to finishing when I saw some heavyset dude in front of us wearing a Kings jersey. We had been going back and forth with this guy the whole race, so I told Kbro that I wanted to beat that guy, so I sped up. We passed the guy and Kbro, being the ultra-competitive person that she is (which is why we can't play tennis together anymore) decided to turn on the afterburners and left me in the dust to end the race. I had visions of us crossing the finish line together, but Kbro couldn't resist the opportunity to beat me at something. Anyway, my final time was 30:45, which was about 6 minutes faster than the last time I ran, so I was happy with that. After the race they had a raffle and handed out awesome prizes, including about 6 pairs of season tickets for next season, but we didn't win anything. We did get some bagels, Powerade, and some coupons for free food at other places, so that made the sheer pain of running for 30 minutes a little more tolerable. After changing into dry clothes in the car and picking up hot chocolate at 7-11, we headed home to pick up the kids. By the way, the hot chocolate at 7-11 is so awesome. Way better than Starbucks hot chocolate and it's cheaper. We all took naps in the afternoon and hung out at home since it was a bit rainy and then I took Luc to Bass Pro Shops and See's for a little father-son bonding. Man, that kid never stops talking. We did have fun together and it was nice to spend a little one on one time with him. Mom and dad came over that night to watch the kids while we went to the Kings game that night. The ticket to the game is the real reason why I run the 5k in the first place. We showed up a bit early for the game, so we decided to have dinner at Lawry's Carvery which is part of LA Live. We had never been there, but it was basically a sandwich shop that uses the regular Lawry's prime rib. It's way cheaper than the regular Lawry's and the sandwich was TOTALLY FREAKING AWESOME. Man, what a great restaurant that was and it was nice and quick. The game itself was a bit of a dud (the Kings lost 3-1) but it was a great day, pretty much entirely made possible by mom and dad. Kbro and I spent a lot of time together that day without the kids and it was great. Those times are pretty rare, so we enjoy ourselves as much as possible. On Sunday we had stake conference and we sat in the cultural hall, which is normally fine but the sound wasn't working so we had to try and listen from the regular speakers in the chapel. That didn't go over very well with the kids, so it made for a long two hours. I had a seminary fireside that night and then I hosted a "Finding Bigfoot" watch party at our house. I don't believe that bigfoot exists, but a few of my buddies do, so watching this show with them is hilarious. Anyway, it was a good weekend. This past week was pretty good. I had a few court appearances, including one about an hour and a half away. The hearing ending around 4:30, so I ended up getting stuck in awful traffic on the way home. It took about two hours to get home and most of that was spent in stop and go traffic, which really sucks when you drive a stick. The nice part was having some good time to think, but the bad part was having such a long drive. I really feel bad for people that have a long commute every day. That doesn't seem like a great way to spend your life. On Thursday night we had our weekly "Friday's eve" party, which consists of watching a movie. We watched the latest "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie. As far as I know, the movie is still going on. It was long and pretty boring, which is too bad because I really liked the first couple of movies. Thankfully, watching such a lame movie was good for the movie that we saw on Friday night. We tried to see "The Artist" back in December, but it wasn't playing anywhere near us. I saw that it was playing close to us, so we decided to go check it out. If you don't know what it is, it's a black and white silent movie about an actor at the end of the silent film era. The movie stars a couple of unknown (in America) actors and was easily one of the best movies I have seen in a long time. At first it seemed weird that you couldn't hear them talking (there is music playing) but after a while you don't really notice it. The two main actors were awesome and the movie was very entertaining. I really hope more people go see it and I would highly recommend it to all of you. It's nominated for Best Picture, so I really hope it wins. I'm sure it cost about 1/500th of what it cost to make the "Pirates" movie and was about 500 times better. On Saturday I gave both the cars a good clean on the inside and outside and then we had a nice crepe breakfast. Kbro also went on a 10k run, so it was a good morning for everyone. In the afternoon we took Adam to get some new shoes at the mall. Vans are cheap and look good, but man are they crappy shoes. I think we may have bought our last pair for the kids for a while. He ended up choosing the exact same Nikes that PJ has, which we thought was weird, but he's really happy with them because they supposedly make him run faster. I looked for some new work shoes for myself because both of them have holes in the bottom and that is pretty problematic when it rains outside, but I walked away empty handed. Oh well. We spend last night hanging out and watching tv, so nothing too exciting. We had church today and then some friends over for dinner, so it's been a nice day. After the rain earlier in the week, the weather has been so nice lately. If it doesn't keep raining, it's going to suck for our water bill a lot earlier than it usually sucks. Anyway, that's about it for tonight. Have a good week. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, January 16th, 2012
8:33 am	A day late Livejournal isn’t working tonight, so this will be posted tomorrow. Here we go. I had a major sneezing fit tonight. It seems as though the tree in our front yard makes both Kbro and I sneeze like crazy, especially at night. Thankfully, it started raining tonight so hopefully that will take care of that problem for a while. I also lit a fire in our fireplace thinking that maybe that will clean out the air. Not really sure why I thought of that, but I’m sure it probably won’t help. This was a pretty good weekend. On Friday we went over to the Graber House of Olives. I’m not sure why I like going there so much, but they have so many cool things to look. I picked up a few new decorations for my office that I’m pretty excited about. Since I don’t have clients come into my office, I can decorate it however I want, so I will have a few new things that are uniquely me in the office. They will be good additions to my buffalo stuck, my trout, and my Louisville Slugger. We’d wanted to see Mission Impossible for a while and we finally got the chance on Friday night. We put Kate to bed and had our favorite babysitter come over and watch the other kids while we saw a late showing (8:00) of the movie on the IMAX. I really enjoyed the Batman preview, even if I couldn’t understand Bane. Mission Impossible was very fun to watch as well, especially the Dubai scene on the IMAX. Our palms were sweating like crazy during that scene. Kbro and I couldn’t remember what the last movie we saw together in the theater was (it’s a total ripoff), but I think that scene made the price of admission worth it. On Saturday Kbro and I slept in until almost 8:30. Our kids didn’t, but we did and it felt great. After taking care of our usual Saturday jobs, we took the kids up to a lake that is close to Lake Arrowhead. It’s not as big, but there are a lot less people there and there is easier access to the lake. I want my kids to get out into nature as much as possible, and it’s really not that hard around here since the mountains are close. I didn’t take advantage of the nature around here as much as I should have when I was younger, so hopefully the kids will. On the way home we stopped at 7-11 and got the boys Slurpees while Kbro and I shared an awesome hot chocolate. Man, the hot chocolate at 7-11 is about 100 times better than the hot chocolate at Starbucks, and it’s way cheaper. We stopped at our friends’ house after the lake and checked out the addition he built on his house. Then it was home to hang out and put the kids to bed. After we put the kids to bed, we had dinner and watched Moneyball. It was a pretty good movie, even if it took quite a few liberties with the real story (like completely leaving out the part about Mulder, Zito, and Hudson). Today was business as usual and then we had some friends over for dinner and we watched some of the Golden Globes together. Ricky’s jokes were good, but he saved his best joke for the very end of the program. Totally good one. Anyway, that about sums up this weekend. I don’t think we did anything memorable during the week. I’m looking forward to next weekend because we are going to the Kings game on Saturday. Unfortunately, I have to run a 5k in the morning, so that should make the long walk to the top of Staples Center pretty uncomfortable that evening. Have a good week. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, January 8th, 2012
5:42 pm	A bit of a bummer It was back to work this week. Unfortunately, Kbro was really sick on Monday, so I spent the day hanging out at home with the kids. If you know me, then you know that I hate hanging out at home. It drives me absolutely crazy to sit around in the house, especially since it feels like there are too many people in a tight space. I think it was good for Kbro to rest up, but unfortunately I started getting sick on Monday too, and that made going back to work the rest of the week not very pleasant. Kbro started feeling better mid-week, and then started getting sick again towards the end of the week, so she's been sick all weekend. I know it's worse for her, but it always sucks for the non-sick spouse, especially when the non-sick spouse is off work. Wah wah wah. I know. Cry me a river. I decided a while ago that I needed a new pair of glasses because I was tired of wearing glasses that were "bold," so we went to the mall an I checked out glasses. Let me just say that trying to look for glasses with 4 kids is a bad idea, especially when your youngest boy rips a big picture out of the display and your other kids are running around. Anyway, because of the medication I'm taking, my eyes are really sensitive to the sun. I'm like Powder outside. Anyway, my eye doctor (aka the optometrist at Wal Mart) told me that I have a growth on my eye which is caused by too much sunlight. He said the sun makes it worse and that I should be wearing sunglasses every time I'm outside. So in addition to regular glasses, I got a pair of prescription sunglasses. I feel like a retard wearing sunglasses. I've never worn them before, but it was actually quite nice and my eyes felt a lot better outside. I'm pretty happy with my new glasses though. They are a lot less noticeable than my previous glasses. Anyway, it was a long mall trip and the kids' behavior stunk, but I did get what I needed and we got some nice new clothes for Kbro. On Saturday I woke up and washed the cars and then we took the kids (with their bikes) for a run. It's been a long time since I went for a run and my legs/knees are feeling it today. The weather has been so nice though that it was great to get outside. Unfortunately, one of our children is a total wuss on his bike. He literally holds his brake the entire time he rides so he ends up going about 1/4 mph. I may have to cut his brake line to help him go a little faster. Anyway, the reason why we went running is because we are running in the Kings 5k in a couple weeks, so we figured we should get some practice beforehand. We ran a couple of years ago in this 5k and had a great time, so we are looking forward to doing it again. After our run we headed over to pick dad up and to go watch the local air show in the free seats (aka outside of the airport in a field across the street). It was pretty fun to watch and we all had a good time (except Kbro who wasn't feeling well). We had some lunch and went home and everyone was able to take a nap...except me because I took the burbs to Carmax to get it appraised. It took about two hours because there were so many people there and the appraisal stunk, so it looks like we are stuck with the burbs for a while longer. I know that Weeve has been selling a bunch of crap on Ebay. Maybe with the extra scratch he is in the market for some new wheelz. After the waste-of-time appraisal, I went to the mall to pick up a dress that we looked at the night before that was supposedly at a different store, but it was the wrong dress. It wasn't a great afternoon and I was not in a good mood. Meanwhile, Rip Van Winkle and the kids were rested up, so we changed our clothes and went to a reception for the daughter of some of our friends from church. We stayed there for about 10 minutes and then came home and put the kids to bed. We got a couple of sandwiches from this awesome place by us and watched "King of Kong." I highly recommend it to all of you. It's one of the better movies I have seen in a long time. It was even better than "Cowboys and Aliens" which we watched on Thursday night. Actually, that's not saying much because "Cowboys and Aliens" wasn't a great movie. It wasn't bad, wasn't great. Jon Favreau's movies are always good, but never close to being great. Anyway, not much else to say right now. I'm going to a "Finding Bigfoot" watch party tonight. Should be an interesting get-together because I am one of the non-believers there. We did this last season and it was a lot of fun because of the passion of the believers there. I know this all probably sounds really stupid, but when you get a bunch of dudes in a room watching a stupid show about bigfoot, it makes for a pretty fun evening. Unfortunately, the fun of the evening will come to a crashing halt when I have to go to sleep early because I have to teach in the morning. Ugghh. Is it May yet? To end this on a positive note, I started reading the first "A Game of Thrones" this week and I'm really enjoying it. Unfortunately, I'm averaging about 1 1/2 chapters a night, so I should finish this book sometime in July. Have a good week. (Comment on this)
Monday, January 2nd, 2012
8:10 am	Christmas, New Years, Birthday, etc. I tried to recap the year in my last entry (and did a poor job), so hopefully I can do a better job at recapping the past couple of weeks. Let's start off with my birthday. I already wrote about our trip to Lawry's, so I'll write about my actual birthday. I had to teach seminary in the morning, so I got up and left as usual and taught and then went to work. It was a very typical work day, but it got better at the end when mom brought me a cheese basket. I love this cheese basket and I wouldn't mind getting it every year. I still have some of the cheese left, but I need to hurry and finish it today because tomorrow it's back on the diet. Thankfully I have only gained a couple of pounds over the holidays. For dinner, I couldn't really think of anything awesome to eat, so I requested one of my favorites: spaghetti. We eat spaghetti like once a week, but I never get tired of it. We also had salad, french bread, party wieners wrapped in bacon, and Louisiana-style sausage. It was a great meal. After our meal, we headed up to the street that does all of the Christmas lights and walked around for a while. Then we came home and opened gifts and had some hot chocolate and donuts. Usually Kbro makes me a cherry-chocolate cake, but I didn't want to end up eating the whole thing this year, so I just had her pick up some donuts instead. Kbro gave me a couple of great gifts, including a clock for my desk at work and a normal-sized blanket. We have a couple of "throws" which literally means "blanket that is too small to be useful to an average-sized human being." We spent the rest of the evening watching the British Office Christmas Special. I always enjoy Christmas eve and this one started off well, but kind of fizzled at the end when we had to help grandma get home. She was in bad shape, so we had to walk her out to her car and then drive back to her house to help her get from her car to her chair. She's done a lot for us, so I can't really complain about helping her out, but by the time we got back, the party was pretty much dead. The food was good though and I enjoyed the Christmas questions that mom had. We got home, put the kids to bed, and watched A Christmas story while we waited for the kids to be really zonked out. Side note: we had a major double-dipper on our hands for Christmas eve dinner. Would it be inappropriate to put a sign next to the food next year that says "no double dipping?" The kids woke us up early and we got our presents on. Santa could've brought way fewer presents, but the kids seemed happy and it's always fun to watch them open their gifts. Kbro got me a new meat thermometer and a couple of books on sausage making and cheese making. Great gifts compared to the crap that I got her, which included some socks, an ironing board, a tool kit, and a new jewelry box. With how much it cost to do Christmas for 4 kids, I imagine that it will be slim pickins for Kbro and I these next few years, not that there is anything wrong with that. We got the kids ready for church and then went to our meeting. It was actually very nice. The meeting was short, hardly anyone was there, and it was great to see other friends on Christmas. I don't think I would mind going next year on Christmas. The kids had a nap and then we went over to mom and dad's house. For some reason, the kids always seems to like the presents that their grandparents give them more than they like the presents that Santa gives them. I guess they have the age and experience on their side in buying gifts for kids. We had dinner after that and it was really awesome. Mom had talked about having soup on Christmas, so I'm glad that didn't happen because that would've really ruined Christmas. Kelbo prepared the kids for the nativity and it went well. I like that we do it every year and I hope we keep doing it. The kids aren't really focused, but that's ok. They'll get it. Last year we drove up to Boise on the 26th, so I was more than happy to stay here and enjoy the day. I took the kids out riding their bikes in the morning and then picked up Steven from the airport, it what can be described as the most comfortable car ride he has ever had. We picked up In-N-Out and then went over to mom and dad's house and hung out for a while. The boys were all really happy to see him and gave him a big hug. He's the only uncle they hug, which may or may not have something to do with the fact that he is the only uncle that buys them donuts. I think we did a little shopping in the afternoon and then called it a day. I don't really remember too much of what we did last week, but here are some highlights: 1. Getting dumplings with dad and Steven. I remember watching Anthony Bourdain a few years ago when he went to China and watching him drink soup out of a dumpling. I've always wanted to try that and came pretty close at the place we went to. They weren't big like the ones I had seen on tv, but they did have soup in them and they were delicious. I was also a big fan of the noodles with spicy sauce, even if I embarrassed myself (twice) trying to get them from the bowl onto my plate. It was a little pricey and the wait was way too long, but I would definitely go back and probably just order some noodles with the soup dumplings. 2. It was also really fun to go shooting, even though we didn't have a lot of time to do it. The best part was John asking me to take a video of him shooting, which I did, but he had forgotten to put his cartridge in the gun and couldn't figure out why his gun wasn't firing. I wish he would post that video online. I can see a trip to the gun range being a regular family outing around Christmastime. 3. New Year's Eve was pretty low-key. We got a bunch of appetizers for dinner, including shrimp cocktail and party wieners, and I tried to re-create a sandwich I had eaten in Paris (good, but not even close to being as good as the one I ate there). We also had Martinelli's and Kbro did a toast, which they boys loved doing. We had banana splits for dessert and then let the boys stay up a little late and watch the Kings' game. After the kids went to bed, we watched "Warrior," which turned out to be a pretty good movie. We did stay up until midnight and then promptly went to bed. I have such a hard time watching Dick Clark now. Poor guy. It was really hard watching him try and kiss his wife too. Yesterday was business as usual at church. We are back on the 9:00 schedule and it is awesome. We came home and the kids all went down for a nap, as did Kbro who hasn't been feeling well. We had more appetizers for dinner and then went for a short walk. It was kind of a weird holiday season because the major holidays fell on Sundays, which made for a strange work schedule. I think the major holidays fall on Tuesday this year, which I am perfectly ok with. It's been a nice couple of weeks and I am ready to get back to work. Anyway, time to get the boys breakfast. Not sure what the plan is today, but we'll probably take it easy to Kbro can rest up before I go back to work. Have a good week. (Comment on this)
Sunday, January 1st, 2012
3:19 pm	2011 I feel like I have a lot to cover here, so let's do it. 2011 was certainly an interesting year. I know it was a bad year for a lot of people, but I didn't really think it was so bad. Here are some of the highlights and lowlights: 1. Obviously, adding a daughter to our family was a big highlight, even though I suck with newborns. Unless some miracle happens or unless we decide to adopt an 18 year old Swedish girl, we won't be having any more children. We knew that going in, and I think we appreciated this experience more than with our other children. How did her name come about? I've always loved the name Katherine, but we also really liked the name Kate (Kate "woman of the year" Middleton and Kate Winslet were good examples). Just please do not call her "Katie." Man, do we hate that name. You can guess where her middle name comes from, even though Kbro really doesn't like it very much. I guess we can both be unhappy with some part of our kids' names (I still wish that Luc was named Thomas). 2. A big lowlight was almost buying a house that was way way way out of our price range. I don't know what we were thinking, but it was a big wake up call into our financial situation when we sat down and really looked at what our income and expenses are/could be. If we would've bought that house, I wouldn't be typing this right now because we wouldn't be able to afford internet at our house and I would've pawned this computer to help cover our monthly expenses. I would probably be writing this on paper pads received from realtors in our mailboxes and writing this with pencils we received from the open house at the fire station. The home was recently offered to us at $50,000 less than what we almost paid for it. $50,000?!? That just tells you how overpriced it was. I still love that house and would buy it, but we still just can't afford it. I recently asked Kbro if she wanted to put our house up for sale and she just groaned. Looks like we'll be staying here for another year (barring some miracle), which is fine with me. That just means we can go on an awesome trip for our 10th anniversary. Italy? France? England? Cedar City? Maybe the house debacle was actually a positive for us. Who knows. 3. My non-daughter related highlight was taking a trip to England and France. It wasn't until about 10 years ago that I had any desire to visit England (this came after watching the Office). England was pretty low on my list of places that I wanted to visit up until that point. I started looking into our family history and became enamored with the thought of returning the the area where my ancestors came from. I almost went earlier in the year, but that didn't happen because we had a baby. Thankfully, Steven was able to go again for work and jumped at the chance to go. The trip didn't disappoint one bit. In fact, I would love to go back there again. Honestly, I don't think I would mind living over there one bit. They speak English, they look like me, their food is bland, what's not to like? Going to France was kind of a fluke, but I would definitely go back. Their food was much better and I had fun trying to speak French, which mainly consisted of hearty "huh huh huhs" and "oui oui ouis." This trip wouldn't have been possible without Steven. He helped me on every aspect of my trip and I would've been lost without his instructions. Actually, even with his instructions I got lost a few times, but I didn't mind because I loved walking around by myself and trying to figure it out. 4. A highlight was being released from my calling that I had for the previous four years. Unfortunately, that highlight quickly turned into a lowlight with my new calling. Well, I shouldn't call it a lowlight, but it's still definitely not my favorite calling. I just keep telling myself "5 more months, 5 more months, 5 more months." 5. Is it me or was it an awful year for movies? The fact that we just watched "Larry Crowne" doesn't help. Wow, what a bad movie that was. It would take me a couple of hours to fully explain just how bad and out of touch this movie was. Julia Roberts could've learned something from Tom Cruise a few years ago, ie, that it's never too late to get braces. Her teeth are starting to stick out so much it looks like she is growing a duck bill. And it's pretty obvious that Tom Hanks has had some pretty serious work done to his hairline and his face. How is it that he looks younger now than he did in Forrest Gump? Hey Tom Hanks, you know what is un-American? You churning out crappy movies and expecting people to pay to see them. There were a few good movies I saw this year. I really enjoyed "The Wrestler," "Bridesmaids" (easily the funniest movie I saw this year, which I'm sure the people sitting around me on the plane noticed), and I guess the new X-Men movie was pretty good. 6. (Skip down a ways of you don't care about music. I'm pretending I write for Rolling Stone here.) A highlight for this year was music. Easily the best album of the year was "Sigh No More" by Mumford and Sons. I've never been more amazed by a live performance than I was by this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtEasM--AQg I watched it about 5 times that night and then went out and bought their album the next day. Man, it's such a great album. They are releasing a new album next year and I can't wait to see what it sounds like. Other great albums this year: 1. Eddie Vedder "Ukulele Songs." I haven't been a fan of Pearl Jam in about 20 years, but this album came out of nowhere to be one of my favorites. I decided to check it out on NPR's first listen and I'm glad I did. I think this was my favorite song of the year: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxElzlI28rM&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PL81295F23D2D7C061 2. Bahamas "Pink Strat." Another album that came out of nowhere. I checked it out because it came out on Brushfire Records and it was much better than Jack Johnson's latest effort. His new album comes out on February 7th next year and I can't wait. Very simple music, very relaxing to listen to. I love this video and the way he plays the guitar: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z_ROQaLJJg This album came in a close second behind Mumford and Sons for album of the year. 3. Rodeo Ruby Love "This is why we don't have nice things." I think John first told me about these guys and I'm glad he did. I listened to this cd about 50 times online for free before I caved and just bought it. Now I listen to it all the time in the car. I love the fact that a ska/punk/rock band has a girl doing backup vocals. This is my favorite song (it takes a minute to get into it, but a song that talks about Hall & Oates is ok with me) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zx0uYRkkqPE 4. New Found Glory "Radiosurgery." Here's another one I can't figure out. I don't like pop-punk music at all, but I've bought every one of these guys' albums for the past ten years. Most of them have a couple of good songs, but the album itself isn't great (except for "Sticks and Stones"). I didn't expect much from this album either, but man, it's awesome. Seriously, I wish more people would give this album a chance. These guys write the catchiest choruses. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1w61bTlizc 5. Zee Avi "Ghostbird." This lady doesn't look anything like she sounds to me, but she has a beautiful voice. Sometimes when I listen to her I think about what I would've thought of this music at age 16, but who cares, good music is good music. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1w61bTlizc Now, for my bombs of 2011. 1. Jack Johnson "To The Sea." I don't know if I could call this a bomb since it's really not that bad of an album, but compared to his old records, it's not even close. I hope he strips it down for his next album and makes something that sounds more like In Between Dreams. 2. Mates of State "Mountaintops." Their first couple of albums were horrible, their third album "Rearrange Us" is one of my favorite albums ever, and this album completely bombed, which is too bad because the first song they released was awesome. Too bad it's the only good song on the album. They also made a very good video for it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbqrO9oxc7E 3. Toh Kay "Streelight Lullabies." This is a great example of an artist trying to squeeze a few bucks out of previously released material. This is worse than a "greatest hits" album. Sheesh. 7. I read quite a few books this year, but I can't think of any that our really standing out. Did I read The Passage this year or last year? Adam Carolla's book was the funniest book I have ever read, but I'm not sure if that was this year or last year. Winter's Bone was pretty good, as was the Great Gatsby. 8. The footage of the Japanese tsunami was pretty amazing, but I think this is probably the photo of the year: http://media.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/photo/rescuejpg-4aa3d96893140459.jpg This boy had been underwater for 20 minutes and was pretty much dead when they pulled him out of the water. They revived him later and apparently he has made a full recovery. As a parent, that's a hard picture to look at, but a pretty amazing story. Ok, the kids are waking up and it's time for lunch, so I'll have to cut this "short." Plenty of great things happened in 2011. Hopefully I'll get to the rest of them later. (Comment on this)
Sunday, December 18th, 2011
8:16 am	Waiting in half-hearted sleep This was a pretty good week. Unfortunately, we had to replace our dishwasher, so that took a little bit of fun out of the weekend. Who knew they were so expensive? We ended up buying a pretty cheap one because our goal is to move before it inevitably breaks down. We'll see if that happens. I got up early yesterday morning and took care of pretty much the last of my Christmas shopping. It was great early in the morning because the stores were pretty empty. I was actually very surprised by this. I don't know what people are doing at 8:00 am on Saturday morning, but it's the perfect time to do some shopping without having to deal with the crowds. I actually took Adam out with me in the afternoon to go to Bass Pro Shops and I'm pretty sure that we spent more time looking for a parking spot than we did in the store itself. Way too many people. I wasn't ready to go home yet, so we went to the next manliest place I could think of, Home Depot. We'd already been to Lowes earlier in the day, but I never get tired of going to these home improvement stores. I also watched the Kings get creamed by the Red Wings yesterday and managed to successfully stay out of the tv area while the kids watched the Smurfs. We ended off the evening by watching Fast Five. I hadn't seen one of these movies since Kbro and I watched the second movie at Movies 8 in Provo. It was awful, so I was so to re-visit this franchise. Fast Five actually wasn't that bad and had a couple of pretty cool car chase scenes. Not a great movie, but entertaining nonetheless. Friday night was my favorite night of the year. This was my third visit to Lawry's for my birthday dinner and it definitely didn't disappoint. The only thing that really sucked was the fact that we sat in a lot of traffic on the way there and the way home. I really love going there for dinner during the holidays when they have the carolers there. It's a very festive atmosphere and it's fun to go to a place where people are dressed up and celebrating special occasions. I ordered the biggest piece of prime rib on the menu (the beef bowl cut) and Kbro got a smaller cut. It was so good. I'm already looking forward to going again next year. We wanted to see "The Artist" after dinner but since mom was watching our kids, we didn't want to stay out too late. Since we were close, we decided to go to the LA Temple and check out the Christmas lights. I received a Starbucks gift card a few weeks ago from a salesman, so we decided to get some apple cider/hot chocolate to drink while we walked around. We thought about taking a picture for dad of us carrying around Starbucks cups while walking around the temple, but thought better of it. They actually didn't have any apple juice, so Kbro got a free drink. It was nice to see the lights, but the highlight was watching the tame raccoon walk around the bushes. It was a great evening. For those of you on Twitter, you probably saw the picture of Kbro and her new hair. Pretty weird, isn't it? We jokingly refer to it as her mid-life crisis, but I'm glad she decided to do something completely different. She also went and got her makeup done at Mac for our date, which I request every year. She got her eyes done nice and dark, which I think is pretty hot. Usually, the more makeup, the better (except for the big painted eyebrows). This week was also pretty interesting at work. We picked up a new case a couple of weeks ago (you can read about it here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/16/jonathan-white-tasered_n_1097488.html) and I spent the better part of this week trying to get the body from the coroner's office and getting a second autopsy done. One thing I learned this week is just how expensive the embalming/preparing/burying process is. To do all of that and to get a burial plot was going to be about $12,000.00. Sheesh. Who knew it was so expensive? Anyway, the case is moving right along and I'm hoping it turns out to be a good one for us. This should be another great week. I'm looking forward to my birthday tomorrow and then Christmas Eve and Christmas at the end of the week. I'm sure I will talk with all of you at some point this week, and I look forward to that. Have a good week. (Comment on this)