It's The Climb

So, looking through the pictures on my phone to try to find something else to blog about so that I can narrow the gap between the number of posts I'm supposed to have at this point in the year, and the number of posts that I actually have--I discovered that Megan's sister's family came to town for some reason at the end of March.

I don't know.  I had to work, so I'm guessing it had to do with Spring Break or something.  Or perhaps it was that, being good, law-abiding citizens, they were simply leaving their native Indiana to follow the law stating that "baths may not be taken between the months of October and March."

Seriously though, we had a great time.  One of the activities that I was able to participate in was the visit to Inner Peaks.

Here Grant and Kaitlyn were able to climb to the top of the bouldering wall by using these protruding rock dealeos.

Max was successfully able to climb up to this point and then refuse all bribes, cajoling, and peer pressure to climb higher and touch the top of the wall.

 

Here Kaitlyn, Max, Grant and Garrison were able to show how they were not stuck.  Ali, Gabby, Jessica, and I were also around here somewhere doing something that probably saved someone's life and kept them from plummeting to their certain death.  Probably.

 

 

 

All in all, it was a great time and we were so happy that they came to visit!  Megan's parents were able to make the trip as well, so we had a great time being together.

 

(I think they did other things while they were here, but again...that pesky job.)

Signs, More Funny Signs

As you remember from 2011, I like funny signs. I'm always on the look out for funny, hilarious, comical, humorous, witty, jocular, hysterical, riotous, uproarious, and/or wacky or zany signs.  (But, those types only.)

 

My beloved family knows this.  For my birthday this year (only 2 months past--so I'm not that far behind), as they went to go acquire a delectable treat for us to consume in my honor, they saw the cookie cake below out on display for sale.

 

It didn't have any "sale" sign or "clearance" notification of any kind, so apparently they thought this was a perfectly legitimate, defect-free product.  It reads:

 

"Happy Birthday Day!"

 

 

Now, I'm no expert, but isn't that second "day" pretty much redundant, or superfluous?  Just sayin'.

 

Actually, I do need to go later to the ATM machine to enter my PIN number, and see if the LCD display will allow me to download in PDF format.

 

I bet what happened was that the baker had just come down with RAS syndrome and it hadn't passed yet.

 

Then, just 3 weeks ago, we went with the youth in our stake to visit the historical church sites in Palmyra (NY not Syria).  While we were visiting the location where the first editions of the Book of Mormon were published, we came across this little ditty on a first floor exit:

 

 

This sign was very effective.  In fact, probably one of the most I've ever seen as no one in any of the groups (over 220 kids!) tried to use that door, and further, there were no reports of lion attacks.

This sign also illustrates the importance of reading the footnotes--which is a good, secondary lesson.

 

(2016 Blog Post #12?  Check.)

Holding Down the Fort

 

So, last weekend Megan was out of town for her grandmother's funeral, and Ali and Kate were visiting my parents in Tucson.  That left me, alone, to take care of Max, Ava and Olivia.  (I was informed that it's not called "babysitting" if you're taking care of your own children.)

 

We weren't quite sure how we would survive without them for the weekend (and, in fact, some of us cried that night that we missed them!).  However, we did our best to be courageous and forge on.  If Ali and Kate were strong enough to fly across the country by themselves, surely we were strong enough to sleep in our own beds, in our own house, in our own state at night by ourselves.

 

With Dad in charge, that meant pizza, re-heated pizza, or cold day-old, leftover pizza for every meal until that was gone.  Then, we busted out the Mac and Cheese...er...vegetable platter with organically grown healthy, non-mutiny inciting comestibles. 

 

Food choices aside, we had a great time together.  Everyone piled on top of me and we watched a family movie together (Disney's "Brave").  We went to the park to play, played Just Dance, and did other such good-fathering things like helping write and gave a talk in Primary (before sacrament meeting even!), and pretend light saber fighting.  We even went to the pool together! 

 

(Almost equally as impressive, in my opinion, is that the kids were still bathed for church on Sunday and we didn't count the pool time as bathing!)

 

Here's some proof that the kids survived and were happy while we were together.

 

 

 

 

 

Of course, we all rejoiced when mom got home and helped us get things back on track.

 

I learned that being the "mom" is about as a tough of a job as there is out there--and I only had 60% of the crew!

 

Don't ever leave again!

Memories of Ruth

My extended family is having a reunion this summer that we won't be able to make as literally every week of summer is already called for.  However, as a part of that, the family reunion organizers asked for notes and stories about my grandma who passed away.

 

We had a great memory that we shared, so I thought I'd post it here too:

 

Living on the East Coast has made our trips back to Utah less frequent (and more difficult).  In 2012, there were several family reunions and events that brought us to Utah, but we weren't sure we were going to be able to make it up to Idaho to see Grandma (and Grandpa) Call with the available time we had.  Further, given the additional time in the car that that meant imposing on our young children in a too-small sedan, and the additional expense of taking a rental car another several hundred miles out of the way, we told ourselves, "we'll just make it a priority to get up there next time we're out this way."

But, shortly we realized that we didn't know when we'd be out west again and that there was no better time to drive up to Idaho Falls than at that time!

So, starting from where we were, we took some circuitous route through Wyoming and 5 hours later arrived at John Adams Parkway.  The toll from a long drive must have been evident because almost as soon as we came in, Grandma took the great-grandkids out to the backyard to play some games.  In her 80's, she had apparently been called to serve in the Stake Primary, and had a whole host of games they had just used at a stake activity.  According to the memories of our kids, she got out a tea party, a ring toss, a bean bag toss, a lacrosse-type catch game and some game involving a bucket and wet sponge.  She showed them how to do it and we played for a little bit, before the over-12 crowd became exhausted and left the under-12's to stay outside and keep playing.

Max commented "She had lots of enthusiasm!"

When it was time for lunch outside on the patio, she gave the children containers and they went out again to the backyard where she showed them how to walk through the rows of plants in the garden and pick the ripe raspberries, green beans, and other vegetables.  (Ali remembers that an apple tree had recently fallen in the backyard.)  Ali thinks she literally had raspberries for lunch.  Max picked an ate a whole onion, which Grandma was surprised at, but reassured him that although his pick was unconventional, that there were probably some great health benefits!  Kaitlyn remembers having an almost unlimited supply of popsicles that Grandma gave them after lunch.

When the kids were done eating and had retired to the basement to play with toys and attempt to climb the metal support pole, we enjoyed talking for hours about life and politics and the gospel--all of which Grandma knew more about than all of us together.  That evening (at 1AM, according to Alison), we taught the kids how to play "Mormon Bridge" as we sat around the dining room table.  The other children had already passed out on the couches downstairs with individual boxes of cereal that Grandma had given them to eat while they watched cartoons.

Although we had to leave first thing the next morning, we had a "sweet breakfast!" according to the children, (which was surely more than we needed), and we were sent on our way with food for the road and hugs and words encouragement as we left.

We all remember taking that trip and we're so glad we did.

Max Said This

If I were on track, I would have, by my estimate, 16 blog posts by this point in the year if I had posted every week.  This is post #9.  So...I'm behind, but not so far behind that reaching my goal of 52 is totally out of reach.  Let's do this.

So, one of the things I occasionally do--some may even say it's something I like to do, though that's probably up for debate--is make crazy and purposefully lame raps to try to get the kids to laugh or smile or acknowledge my presence.  It's usually free style, which means that it's pretty terrible.

One of the kids' favorites from past attempts is:

Pajamas, pajimmas, I like to go swimming.

(Yes, you can see why I'm the guitarist in the band, not the singer or lyricist.)

Well, today I was at it again when Max stopped me and said, "Dad, you shouldn't rap.  Rappers use cuss words, and that's not good."

I then tried to explain to him that not all rappers used cuss words and attempted to demonstrate:

Sit down and press play on the recorder
Your room has lots of stuff in it because you are a hoarder

(Don't judge me.  They are purposefully bad.  Seriously.  Purposefully.)

Max then proceeded to explain, and I quote, "Dad, that is still offensive to me.  You called me a hoarder."

I'm glad that the boy has high standards.  But, I guess it's time for me to hang up the giant clock around my neck for good and stick with what I actually do well musically: listen to the radio at deafening volumes.

Olivia's Obstacle Course

So, I'm downstairs working on putting the living room back together after we brought desks, crayons, rolling chairs, floormats, "conference packets," , games, baby dolls, notebooks, pens, bowls of treats and dress up clothes downstairs to be able to watch General Conference and make sure we had all of the tools necessary to get as much out of it as possible.

From upstairs, Kaitlyn calls out, "Umm...Dad.  Can you up here for a minute?" in that tone of voice--the half-puzzled, half Houston-we-have-a-problem one.  I paused my vacuuming and sauntered upstairs to investigate what the problem, or potential problem, might be.

When I got there, Kaitlyn said, "Look what Olivia did--all by herself" and pointed to the most unique indoor obstacle course anyone in the family has ever assembled:

She had lined up the indoor slide at the top of the 2 stairs that step down into Alison and Kailyn's room to land on the indoor, mini trampoline.  From there, it stepped back up onto Kaitlyn's gymnastics pad which was folded in thirds. 

Next to that, she had dumped out one of the bins of toys from the play room and turned it upside down to serve as a giant step stool onto the kids play table which she had also brought in from the play room.

She then proceeded to show me how it worked (click to view):

Of course, once the older kids (who weren't too big to break the thing) saw how it was done, they wanted in on the action.

My first instinct was to bust them, but, then I thought, let's party!

Fortunately, they were able to cry hysterically when I asked them to take it down so that Ali and Kaitlyn could actually get in and out of their bedroom and go to bed.

Daddy Daughter Dance

So, our stake held a Daddy-Daughter dance yesterday for Activity Girls-aged girls and their Dads or Grandpas or Home Teachers, etc.  Since Kaitlyn met the necessary age requirements, and I met the necessary dad requirement, we were ready to rock!

As in every good dance, Kaitlyn told me what I needed to wear so that we appropriately matched, as much as possible.  The Activity Girls made cute little matching, teal-colored hair roses, so we found my most teal-like shirt, took a mandatory pre-dance photo, and then hopped in the car for our pre-dance Daddy-Daughter dinner at Panera with some of the others dads and daughters from the stake that we knew were going to be there.

At Panera, we split a "You Pick 2" that Kaitlyn had selected and that I finished while chatting about CCAR scenarios, the positives and negatives of using excess cash for stock buy backs in public companies, and the level of preparation for Sacrament Meeting speaking engagements.  And, that was just what the girls wanted to talk about!  (Well...maybe it was the dads having that conversation.  I'm not sure.)

Once we got there, we did our very best to dance to the "stomp left two times" song, some song about a "party in the USA" requiring "nodding your head like 'yeah'", and shaking some stuff off (I assume snow).

Then, they busted out the limbo stick.  Which I tried.  And, I'm sure the back ache that I'm feeling today is completed unrelated.  They didn't make us sign any waivers before attempting it, so I'm out of luck there.

Kaitlyn managed to start some very important trends while we were there: the conga line, the circle where people take turns dancing from one side to the other, and the DWTS spinning/twirling thingy from one side to the other (see photo below).

In all, we had a great time and it was inspiring to see the dads do anything (including dance like idiots--at least that's how it was in my case) to make sure their daughters were happy.

Dads.  Daughters.  Dancing.  Who knew?