Things that make you go, "hum?"

February can't be summed up by any other phrase than "Holy Cow". Honestly I cannot believe half of the stuff that has happened thus far this month. I will begin by saying that a month that is supposed to be full of love has been full of crap.

In February Abby lost not one tooth, but two. We started out with this dangling tooth that was impossible to pull. I had been so traumatized by my first attempt at pulling one of Hailee's teeth that there was no way that I was going to do the same thing to Abby. I had tried everything and finally ended up pulling one of Hailee's first teeth with pliers. I was not ever going to do that to another child again, until Abby's tooth had been hanging there for two weeks. Every time I tried to pull it with my fingers, it just kept hanging on. I tried paper towels to try to get a grip. Nothing worked. Abby, surprisingly, was being a good sport about the whole thing so I mentioned the pliers and she said, "Ok dad, that sounds awesome". What actually happened was that I told her about it, she said no. I sweetened the deal with, "If I get it out, you get a new toy. If I don't, we go to Maverick and you get anything you want." This was just as much for me as for her, cause I knew that I would need a stiff Mt.Dew after submitting myself to the same horror that I had experienced with Hailee. So I reluctantly pulled out my trusty pliers, grabbed a hold, and pulled. Nothing. Stupid tooth. We tried it a few more times and nothing. One day I decided that I was going to do the unthinkable and tie her face to a door knob and slam it shut. Every parent and child's dream. I tied her tooth to one side and then the door to the other and had Kim hold on to her. I decided to make sure that the string was short enough and it wasn't. I had Kim move her back and the string came off. I was putting the string back on when I had a brilliant thought. Pull the tooth with the string. It worked and it was only kind of traumatizing for me. She didn't even realize what had happened. 3-4 days later I did it again.

In February Abby got all jacked up after school. She decided that she was going to face plant as she ran from the bus. The problem wasn't that she fell. It was that she fell so fast and hard that she didn't have time to put her hands down. As you can see from the picture, she bruised her forehead, she scrapped her nose (somehow getting under her nose), and she scrapped the tops of her wrists. She was mildly upset, but Abby has turned a new leaf and is kinda funny about stuff now. She doesn't get upset or scared by literally everything now. It is kind of fun and amazing how far she has come in that way. She used to be a huge cry baby and now she is just a huge baby sometimes :)

In February our whole family has looked like this at one point or another, except Kim. We started out with Mia puking and sharting. A week later and she was still sharting and then it was my turn. Somewhere in the middle the rest of the kids had their turn. Poor Rooster has lost some weight. The funny thing is that no one lost their appetite. We are all slowly leaving the bathroom and headed back into real life. One of the funnier things that I heard was when Abby was sitting on the toilet screaming with excitement that she had diarrhea. So exciting!!! NOT!

In February Mia started walking. As usual I was nowhere around when it happened, but I got a glimpse of her doing her thing later that night. Since then she has decided that she is too cool for school and she tries to run, she walks sideways, she tries to walk up the stairs (scary), and she is right in the middle every time the girls are playing. From this video you can tell that she REALLY wants to color too. In short, she is crazy. In short, she is short. Here is a short video...

Thinking about my babies

I was looking through old photos of my girls and put a picture together of all of them at ~ 1 year old. Mia is not quite there and neither was Hailee but the other two are right on.

Might as well update the ol blog

So we have had an eventful December thus far. I grabbed Kim and Mia and stole away with them on our Anniversary to Seattle. I had a great time with my beautiful wife of 9 years and Mia actually slept well for the first time in a long time. We went to dinner at a great restaurant on the 2nd and the next day we just hung out in Seattle. We walked downtown and ate at a seafood restaurant.

We came home and have really enjoyed being around family. Mia is back to her old sleeping habits so I have been trying to let Kim sleep as much as possible but some nights it gets to be too much.

The kids are doing well in and out of school and I am so excited for our older two who are in piano. I love the sounds of the piano in our home.

I have taken up a new sport and am decent at it until I get tired. I tweaked my back playing it but still live to play squash. For those who don't know it is a bit like raquetball just on a smaller court, with a smaller squishy ball that doesn't bounce and a racquet that is smaller but longer. It is a lot of fun as a winter sport but I miss boogie boarding. I love the snow but summer is great.

We are looking forward to Christmas and have come up with ways that we can serve others this year. I love the way that Kim's family takes an active role in serving and I look forward to this time of year just for that reason.

Busy as life gets

Life has been nuts lately. I was gone last week after hurting my back. I drove 7.5 hours in pain last Sunday and I was in Spokane for 5 days. I drove 7.5 hours back Thursday night. I have been home 3 days and am headed to Phoenix for 3 days starting tomorrow. As much as I enjoy work, I am tired. I sit here in church after hours of meetings with my back still hurting. I miss my wife. She is at home with sick kids. I want to take a break for a few days and just spend time with her. Then I want to take a few days and just do stuff with my kids and her. Money and time takes away from me being able to do that. My girls are growing up and I miss out on it.

Hailee got chased by a dog the other day while she was riding her bike. She is such a funny girl. She was so excited to tell me about it.

Abigail is growing up so fast. She is learning to control her emotions. She makes me laugh when I tease her and she gets mad and comes at me swinging. She likes to wrestle me and I never would have figured that a year ago. I am proud of her doing well in school.

Natalie is a little tank. She gets mad and drives her mom crazy with her super scream but it makes me just want to cuddle her more. She is getting so smart and loves racing to help out.

Mia is getting bigger and sweeter. She still likes held but she is much more content. It makes life easier.

Kim is my world. She struggles with me being gone and I feel horrible. We are working on a few ways to get her off of her paper route. I enjoy every second that we have to spend together and I relish the opportunity to be a better man.

Girls will be Girls

We took the girls to the fair and were showing them the cows getting milked. Abby so gently asked why our milk doesn't taste like barn. Not sure how to answer that we went and looked at all the animals. We had fun at the fair, but were lightly afraid for our lives with all the scary tube tops and mullets. Rooster shows up to my office today and Kim asked me if I liked how she was dressed. I looked at her and thought, "Holy Cow, she really needs to start caring what the girls look like before they leave the house. Nice snow boots in August Rooster.

Mia has been WAY better, but has been really touchy while she sleeps. She will wake up and scream every 15 minutes if you don't stay on top of her. She is sure getting cute. She smiles at me every time I get home from work. It gets me so much that I have to sit there with her for a while. Abby and Hailee are about to start school again and I am excited for that. I really hope that Hailee continues what she started last year and I hope that Abby stops with her gang building skills. She is the biggest ring leader I have ever seen. She teams up with other girls and picks on the boys. I see it every day when I get home because she gets all the girls all pumped up and they jump on me almost every day. Rooster is getting so smart, we are starting to be able to have conversations but she also realized a few weeks ago that throwing a fit is somehow fun. She throws them so much now that I can hardly stand it. Kim is still Kim, the best woman in the world. Sorry all you other women out there reading this. It is true, you have no chance at taking that title away from her.

CUTE GIRLS

We just got the girls pictures taken and they turned out great. Good thing you cannot see me behind the camera because I was pulling out every trick in the book to get them to stay in the picture and look the direction of the camera. I wasn't even asking for a smile, a smile was a bonus. Natalie had a bottle of bubbles in almost every picture, but she would scream and cry if we took it away. Hailee was my big helper with the baby. Abby was tired and hot...it was very hot that day so I completely understand the grumpiness. Mia was a good sport. With all of that...Christie did a WONDERFUL job. We are getting ready for school to start and are very excited. It will be nice to get on a regular schedule. Hopefully. We have had a fun summer. The girls are lots of fun and make me laugh a lot all the time.

At least I didn't die!!!

So I went on my first High Adventure as YM President and let me tell you, at least I didn't die. We left at 6:30 from my house. I had been up since 2:00. I drove all the way there and felt SUPER tired, but at least I didn't die. Steve Davis and I were both swerving all over the road while the boys in his car rested, not knowing how tired we both were, but hey, at least I didn't die.

We got up to McCall and stopped at the store for some stuff, when we left McCall I made it as far as Warren Wagon Road (outskirts of McCall) and I started feeling stomach cramps and a HUGE urge to throw up. I kept driving in hopes that it would go away...it didn't. At least I didn't die!!!. We got to the end of Payette Lake and I had to stop at the Restroom there. It took a while, and a woman almost bursting in on me since the door wouldn't lock, for my stomach to settle. I went out and walked around for a bit to make sure that I was good to go. We all got back in the car and I made it just far enough to make it stupid to turn around when my stomach pitched a fit.

We got to camp and got it all set up and I ate what I had for lunch, which was a sandwich from Boise that had been sitting in my car, not sure that was the best for my stomach. Anyways, after a few more minutes in the restroom I came out and the boys were ready to go on our bike ride. I decided not to be a pansy so I got ready to go. One of the boys had a horrible flat tire, so we attempted to fix it and finally got it working and we took off. The 2 mile warm up was nice and then we got to the trail that was / <== that steep most of the time and sometimes | <== that steep...at least I didn't die. :) According to the Forest service, the trail is a beginner level 10 mile course that should have looked like ==> --~-~ that.

After grinding my brakes, having everyone but two leaders eat it and having my legs lock up from cramping, we were half way to the half way point but at least I didn't die. Cliff and I ended up taking up the rear and walking most of the hills after that. The downhills were nice, but somehow most of the trail was uphill. To make a long story short, we got to the lake. No one felt like going back on that trail, that is except Steve. He was like an Iron Man. So we talked to some people and they told us that we could go out to the road on an easier trail and then ride the road for ~10 miles. We did that trail and it was WAY easier but by that time I could barely move from the ride in and so Cliff and I took our time. Oh, and at the lake we had 3 flat tires, one that I thought was irreparable. We got past two major hills and the rest was downhill. That was TONS of fun. We were about a mile from the campground when I saw a huge amount of tire SLIME© in the trail. It was Hayden's tire again. He blew his rear tire out completely and we found him pushing his bike not too far down the trail. Let me just say this one thing about SLIME©, it is great for small punctures, but not when your tube gets wrapped around your chain and gets shredded. It just didn't work that well in that scenario. I was extremely proud of Hayden for not throwing his bike into the bushes and walking away. I would have.

We get to the camp and Cliff hitched a ride with some gentlemen back to camp and we all took off riding to try to meet them half way. We felt like we had done that when I rode up on all the boys sitting in the middle of the road. We sat and sat and decided to push on, we made it 100 yards and sat some more. Then we saw Cliff and Gaylan driving up to meet us, at least I didn't die. YAAAAAY!!! was the cheer from all of us. We made it back to camp after our 10 hour bike ride.

Upon arriving we were met by a pungent odor from the RV hookups, at least I didn't die. We dealt with that all night as we ate and had our FHE (Family Home Evening) from the boys. I thought that FHE was very well thought out and put together, good job boys. They talked about Leadership in families with an emphasis on fatherhood. I thought it was a wonderful take on Leadership. Then we played Mafia and I was the Mafia 80% of the time. It was great. We went to bed and I still have a favorite quote from that evening thanks to Conrad Davis. I am sure that he had already fallen asleep and had a thought go through his mind, "What about Breakfast?" I heard him tiredly say, "If someone could get up early tomorrow and make some breakfast that would be great." It still makes me laugh.

So the next day we were going to hike to a lake and go to the hotsprings. We did and it was a great day for two things. Car sized boulders being pushed down a hill, off a cliff and into the water. Ok, I need to add one more thing, Davis' tennis ball canon that Conrad shot, empty of course, directly into my face with no ear protection, at least I didn't die. The boys thought it was so funny but I can still hear my ears ringing slightly. We went to the hotsprings that night and got eaten alive by all manner of biting fly. I am hatching baby horseflies from my back right now, but hey, at least I didn't die. It is kinda funny cause they look like me. We then went back to camp, ate (I don't like to brag about my cooking but it was pretty stinking good), and had a few spiritual discussions. It was definitely good to hear the boys testimonies and know that they are good kids from the inside out. After that it was a blur. I remember a little more Mafia, me being the Mafia a few more times and throwing a fit when I was Mafia to get a new card, but everyone wanted me to die anyways so they claimed I was Mafia right off the bat. That is fine boys, you all have interviews with the Bishop on Sunday.

Sleep :-P Steve snoring in 5 seperate patterns at once. Wake up. Eat, pack, leave.

Rafting!!! That was very fun, but I think the award for most fun has to go to Gaylan. The oldest and wisest of us all knows how to have fun on a river. We had him standing up in the middle of rapids, chanting, boarding the other boat to throw people off and initiating huge water fights where our whole boat stayed dry and theirs was soaked. Cliff has to get the award for colateral damage since I was trying to get everyone in our boat wet and he was always in the way. I am surprised that he didn't attempt to have me walk the plank. The thing that I enjoyed the most was seeing Steve and Garrison get ejected from their boat over a rapid, the second most enjoyable was getting to float the last mile or so in my life jacket. It was so relaxing, and at least I didn't die.

That was our trip. Pictures will come when I get them.