This is...

...my baby telling me not to follow him in to his classroom to take a picture of him at his desk on his very first day of first grade.

BUT!! This is my baby holding a flower he picked for me when I met him after he got off the bus.

Double Rainbow

Over Richfield! We saw it on our way to Ferron. I know, it would be a lot cooler if this had happened in 2010. Not that I admit to watching Tosh and Jimmy Kimmel. Nor do I admit to my YouTube addiction. But I DO love a double rainbow.

Dear Justin

I miss your handsome face and your big hugs.  I miss your laugh and your smart mouth and I miss talking about stupid things.  I miss your reassuring presence and bigness.  I miss your movie lines.  I miss your Saturday pancakes and I miss Deadliest Catch.  I miss your scratchy feet, do you miss my cold ones?  I miss when we go to bed and you tuck my cold feet into your warm legs and hold my cold hands.  I miss your nose whistle when you sleep.  I miss texting you.  I miss kissing you and I miss your big hugs.  I miss all your shenanigans and I miss how much you love dogs.  I miss your logic.  I wish you were just sleeping on the couch and I could just go wake you up to go to bed.  I miss how you line up all your tools biggest to smallest.  I miss how you can't stop buying big shelves and other storage solutions for the garage.  I miss talking to you on long road trips and I miss your sweaty hugs after you go to the gym.  I miss VH1's Best 100 countdowns and I miss when you make fun of me.  I miss that day you and Drew laid down on the benches in Old Navy while you were waiting for me and I feel bad about that day I didn't share my granola bar with you.  I miss putting my face in your neck when we hug.  I can still feel what your warm neck  feels like against my cheek and whenever I think about it I hold really still so that feeling wont go away. I worry you I haven't told you all of this enough and that you don't know how much I love you.  I keep you in my heart all the time, please keep me in yours too.  I imagine myself there when I can't get to sleep at night.  I picture myself all snug in your heart, behind your ACUs and your body armor.   I am so proud of you and I am so grateful for all these things I miss because these are all the things I look forward to when you come home.  Please take care of yourself because you are so so precious to me and Drew.
Love,
Me

Easter Revelations

This Easter we went to my parents house and we had an awesome time, we just don't have any  pictures to prove it.  This blurry cell phone pic of my handsome little church goer is the one and only picture I took all weekend.

I know.  I'm so lame.  But at least now we have proof we attended church.  Drew even stayed for primary.  I asked him what he learned and he said 

"That Jesus died and went to heaven, but he's comin' back in 3 months."  

So mark your calendar. 

He wont even notice...

This morning after breakfast Justin sat on Drew's favorite toy gun and broke it.  From the picture you can tell it's pretty hard to miss and I find it odd that Justin didn't see it first and I feel like this fact further illustrates my point in this post.  But back to the gun.  His grandparents have bought this gun for Drew at least twice that I know of but it really feels like he is on his third.  He loves it.  So this morning,  I hear the loud crack of the barrel breaking off followed by "Shit." And he sounds worried.  So I go investigate because usually the crack of a toy being broke is followed by a "don't leave your toys out" talk with Drew.  So I knew it had to be bad, and it was.  Fortunately it was a clean break so I told Justin I had some Gorilla Glue in the shelves above my desk he could fix it with and then if he put it somewhere that Drew couldn't see that Drew never even had to know about it.  So when he goes upstairs, I assume this is what he is doing.  No.

This was Justin's idea of inconspicuous:

Yes.  That's a book balanced on top of it.  A big Fleetwood Mac coffee table book.

So instead of hiding the gun he does this balancing act with a book and then displays everything, front and center on my desk.  In the room that is right next door to Drew's.  But I know nothing of this until a little while later I ask him about it and then he tells me its on my desk.  Only I've been sitting at my desk and, unlike him, there is no way I wouldn't notice a giant green toy gun.  So we go check and sure enough, there was no book balanced precariously on a toy gun above my head, unbeknownst to me the entire time I was working.  So we ask Drew who right away says "I don't want to talk about it"  He seriously thinks that this is an answer for his parents.  I cannot even count the number of times he says that like we are just going to be ok with it.  I have even started making it clear that it is not an acceptable answer when I ask him stuff.  Like,  "I know you don't want to talk about this, but do you know where ALL my measuring cups are?"  We tell him he is not in trouble and Justin starts explaining what happened but all I can think about is that there is a gun loaded with Gorilla Glue somewhere in my house. And Gorilla Glue is no joke.  There are some things you can never take back and Gorilla Glue is one of them.  So Drew goes and gets the bottom half of the gun from his toy box and we get the top half which fell behind my desk when he tried to take it down.   The glue wasn't dry yet so Justin recreates his work of art because I didn't believe his whole balance-a-huge-book-on-a-tiny-gun-barrel story and because he had a point, the instructions on the glue do say to apply pressure.  So we left it that way to dry so I could get a picture of it, but can you imagine how confusing that was for Drew?  To see his toy gun like that?  He had to have been wondering (among other things) if he was the one that did it and just forgot about it.  Why else wouldn't he have asked us about it?  He just went and put the remaining half away.  It makes me feel bad to think about him trying to figure out just what the hell happened.  And its funny to me that Justin read the directions in the first place because its not usually his style but even funnier is that this is how he chose to interpret these instructions.  But I'm glad he did because finally I have the photographic evidence I need to prove that this is where Drew gets it from. His nickname is Shenanigans because he is always up to something.  His life is a three ring circus of his own making and I used to wonder if it was because he is an only child but for some time now I've known that it is a genetic trait inherited from his dad.  If we tell him to go brush his teeth he will, in fact, go brush his teeth, but he does it standing on the counter next to the sink.  If I tell him to put his shoes away I will later find them and every other pair he owns loaded into the back of his big dump truck and "parked" in the laundry room.  Its like as soon as the thought "I know what I can do with all these shoes" enters his head he is powerless to resist.   He is almost compulsive about adding that extra bit of mischief to everything he does.  Exactly like Justin.  Only difference is in a 5 year old its hilarious, in a husband it is maddening.

March Madness

I could think of no other way to put my mine and Drew's bracket on my blog other than take a picture of it with my phone.  I did, however, waste a bunch of time trying to find a way.  Blogger is the biggest time vacuum there ever was. 

So this is how we did it: I read him the team names and he picked the winners based on the sound of the school name and his own personal associations.  For example, he has Duke over St. Johns for the championship.  Duke is his dog's name and John is his grandpa's name.  There are a few improbabilities but its a pretty solid bracket.  We really need Northern Colorado to be the Cinderella story this year and this may be the only bracket in the state that has Wofford over BYU but based on Drew's selection process, they really are the better choice, phonetically.  The pot is up to $200.00 so if we win maybe Drew will look back on this day as the day we started winning a $200.00 bet and not the day he was disappointed by the lack of leprechaun sightings.  Its been kind of a bummer for him.  If I had known he expected to see actual leprechauns on St Patrick's day I would have prepared him for this but I had no idea until this morning when we were picking out a green shirt and he said "Oh man, I hope I see a leprechaun today".  Looking back, I wish I would've tried harder to explain things to him instead of go get my phone and text it to Justin.  He has a trap set for one at his daycare and everything.  So for now I'm off to distract him with Richmond's victory over Vanderbilt and prepare him for Northern Colorado's elimination and hope he doesn't notice southern Utah's shortage of leprechauns this year.

Full Time Four Wheel Drive

Every year, after the first snow I learn the same embarrassing lesson.  Really it’s not so much that I learn a lesson as repeat the same embarrassing mistake.   I never remember to take my car out of four-wheel drive when it is no longer necessary.  I’ve been doing this since I got this car few years ago.  Justin expects me to believe the Auto 4WD button will solve this problem.   If I just push that button then my car will magically know when there is snow and when four-wheel drive is needed and adjust itself accordingly.  I’m not buying it.  Trusting my big stupid car to determine whether four-wheel drive is needed seems a little reckless. This isn’t like the Driver 1 and Driver 2 option that moves the seat up and changes the radio station.  This is life or death and I’d like to have a little control over that.  I like to pull over, put it in neutral, and push the 4WD button.   Not leave it up to some crazy car magic.  The problem with this is the days after the storm when I am still in awkward, hard to steer, bumpy four-wheel drive and wondering what the hell is wrong with my car.  The slushy day after it snows is not too bad.  I can’t turn into a parking spot and I can hear the tires rubbing but I’m kicking ass in all this slush so I don’t worry much.  The next day I am concerned, and on the third day I am pissed.  One year this little mind slip went public when I started telling people something was wrong with my car and this a-hole I work with asked if it was still in four wheel drive.  I could not hide my reaction to this.  I would have loved to say, “Of course I remembered to take it out of four wheel drive, A-hole” and later, when no one was around, fix it.  But the look on my face let the cat out of the bag and I will never live it down.  Just when all the laughing was winding down someone called to tell my husband who said “Again?” and it was off to the races again.  But this year, in an interesting and dangerous turn of events, Justin took it OUT of four-wheel drive BEFORE the slushy day.  I understand that he was just trying to be proactive and save me the confusion later.  I can see how he thought that since the sun was out and the snow had stopped, the danger was over.  I get that.  I’m just still a little upset that he tried to kill me.  He knows that the street where I work has never ever been plowed.  Seriously never.  Everyone clears their parking lots but this just leaves all the snow from their parking lots in big piles in the street.  So I was almost to work, driving on frozen snow and dodging giant snow banks in two-wheel drive.  Except I don’t know that.  I think I’m in four-wheel drive so I’m bouncing through this frozen tundra like I’m on a Chevy commercial.  Until I tried to steer around a car (parked stupidly next to the snow piles I've been talking about).  I fishtailed and slid sideways halfway down the street into another snow mound.  While my car was sliding, it was weird how unemotional I was.  It was like all the panic I SHOULD have felt kept going straight towards my office and then turned around and came back when it noticed I crashed.  Like “Whoops, didn’t know you were going to swerve back there, sorry.  But here I am, go ahead and freak out.”  Physically, I was doing everything right.  Tapping my brakes and screaming like they teach you in drivers ed.  But I didn’t feel that instant panic and adrenaline until after, when I more than made up for my lack of reaction during.  Anyway, no damage to me or my car.   When I was done freaking out I just went about my day, I wasn’t even that mad at Justin when he got home.  We made a deal.  He will NEVER take it out of four-wheel drive EVER as long as I promise to take it out before summer time.  Which is fair.  Except writing this is making me mad at him again.

Scuba Steve and Other Missed Pictures

Due to our recent (and ongoing) move, I don’t know where most of my possessions are.   Among the missing is my camera. I have an idea where it might be but I’m afraid to go look in case its not there.  So I’ve missed out on a lot of good pictures.  So I don’t forget the things that have happened, the following is a list of pictures I WOULD have taken if I’d only had my camera.

1.  Drew showers with goggles. 

A few years ago Drew started asking to take showers.  He wanted to be a big boy and I think he feels like he doesn’t see enough action in a bath.  Plus his dad showers and he wants to do everything Justin does and this is where the goggles come in.  To be fair, Drew had this idea first.  His goggles have been showing up in the shower for years and we call him Scuba Steve like on Big Daddy.  Justin recently had lasik surgery and needed to protect his eyes when he showered so he also started using his goggles.  When Drew saw Justin’s goggles in our tub he was over the moon.  I heard him saying “I do that too Dad! I shower with my goggles too!”  But Justin didn’t act very enthused about them having this in common and I got a vibe like he wanted to change the subject.  I asked him about it later, why he acted too cool for shower goggles.  He said because he’s the dad and he doesn’t want Drew to think that he’s in there wearing his goggles, playing and sliding around on his bum like Drew does.   This made me laugh for 20 minutes.  First because it’s so funny when Drew does all those things, and second because I couldn’t stop picturing Justin doing all those things.   That night Drew’s goggles made a come back and I had no camera.  He’s SO cute with his crazy shower hair and his goggles, laughing and sliding from one end of the tub to the other on his bum.  This isn’t a picture I would have posted here but I wish I had one.  Because someday he will be too cool to wear his goggles at bath time and I’ll need a reminder.  

2.  Drew fixes the wall.

I’ve hung somewhere around 2000 pictures in my old house so I had somewhere around 2000 nail holes to fix.  I was using some spackle on a few holes in his room where he was watching a movie on his little DVD player and he asked me what it was.  When I told him he said, “That is awesome.” with more seriousness than I thought a tub of spackle warranted.  This was the first warning that I missed.  The second came a couple minutes later when he when he kicked his dog out of that room and shut the door.  He doesn’t like to misbehave in front of our dog Duke, I’ve yet to find out why.  Maybe he is uncomfortable with the idea of any witness, even a dog.  Shutting the door is also a red flag.  Since Halloween he has been a big scaredy cat about being in any room by himself.  We go through this every October.  My third warning was the length of silence coming from that room. Always a bad sign.  So it should have been no surprise when I walked in to find the entire container of spackle on the wall and my little boy making a beeline for the door.  It was a perfect circle, probably 2 feet wide.  I sent him to time out and I wish I could say he learned his lesson but I’m not optimistic.  We tried so hard to not laugh but Justin failed spectacularly.  When I could finally hold it together enough to take him in there and explain why he was in trouble I didn’t dare to even look at the part of the wall he “fixed” because it was so funny.  Justin tried to participate but couldn’t keep a straight face.  I’m not sure it would have been a good idea to take a picture of this because our parental authority was hanging by a thread with all the laughing and I think it would have sent the wrong message.  But still.  I wish I had something to remember it by.

3.  Drew is reunited with long lost toys/Halloween costumes.

This actually would have been a slide show, that’s how many pictures I missed out on.  The worst part about moving is that all of your belongings multiply.  They hook up when you are not looking and produce offspring in the form of stuff you never knew you had.  Or stuff you forgot you had.  It’s the worst.  But not for Drew.  For him it’s like Christmas morning every five minutes and the celebrating can be heard down the street.  He found all kinds of things, but the most notable find were the pants to his army guy costume from 2 years ago.  He can’t zip them up and they don’t even go to his ankles.  More like army guy capris.  Also, they are made of a canvasy material so they couldn’t have offered much in the way of comfort but he still tried to wear them to bed every night.  And oddly, he preferred to go shirtless rather than wear the army guy shirt.   Every time he walked by in this get-up I grabbed him and hugged him until he got sick of it and started taking detours around me.  But how can you not hug a little munchkin wearing little tiny pants with his tummy sticking out?

 I was, however, able to get this pic with my phone. 

This is Drew in time out for pulling my drapes down.  By drapes I mean drapery liners hung with safety pins until the drapes I ordered arrive.  So I can understand why he didn’t see these as permanent fixtures and I think I was more upset by the way he pulled them down.  I was walking in to the front room from the kitchen and I turned the corner to see Drew, who is on his tippy toes with both arms wrapped around the left    drape(ery liner), drop to his knees.  This brought all the drapes and the rod down.  I fished him out of the yards of material and sent him to a temporary time out site already situated at the top of the stairs.  I sat down on the stairs talk to him about it and when I asked him why he would have done that.  He said he wanted it to be brighter in the front room but he was also claiming that it was an accident.   He looked so sad and cute so I took a picture and then let him out of time out. Because I’m such a push over.

Ready or not...

I know people usually start out public and go private.  I'm doing this backwards.  My blog has been private through all the these months and start-overs because I mostly use it as a journal.  I like for it to be private because I like to swear and complain but mostly because I'm nervous about posting pics and info about Drew.  He is the best ever.  My whole heart and soul and my best little friend.  And really the only thing I like to write about.  I mean, I like his dad and all, but most of the time I write about Drew.  In fact, I wish he was here right now.  Because I'm at work and he is at daycare.  See?  Writing so that other people know whats going on is a pain in the bum.  Notice I said bum and not ass like I normally would have.   So maybe I need to rethink this decision.  I see that aNOTHER explanation is in order.  Exhausting.  I heard about my blog through the grapevine the other day. Which was was odd because it is my private swearing journal. But when I started over this last time, blogger tricked me into filling in some blanks on my google account info.  I changed some of my settings and made my blog available to the public, hence the grapevine.  Neither here nor there:  I keep leaving the L out of public so it says pubic and I have to go back and change it.  So what was a good idea at the time (the time being 10 minutes ago) is now starting to really suck.  But I'll give it a try.  Plus I have to leave now and don't have time to make changes.  I will think more on this and get back to myself at a less busy time.  Until then my blog will be open to my one viewer.  You know who you are. 

My Two Little Veterans

Today is Veteran's day and I want to say how proud I am of Justin and Nicky.  Even though I'm pretty bummed about sending them both back to Iraq again, I am so proud of their service. 

These pictures, taken during their last deployment-



Justin



Nick



...are some of my least favorite pictures. 

Most pictures they sent home were of them posing next to someone or something.  Mostly pretending to hump someone or something.  Then I got these pictures and a different look at what it was like over there for them.  And I honestly missed the humping pictures.  But day to day life in Iraq isn't all posing and pretend humping.  During the summer months in Iraq, Worlds Suckiest Country, it is 115 degrees or hotter and they had to wear 50 pounds of body armour. And there are horrible sand storms.  I realize it sounds crazy to be talking about the weather when there were so many other greater dangers. I'm not making light of their service and sacrifice.  But the greater dangers are too hard to write about.  I tried to.  I kept starting and erasing sentences and crying.  Maybe when the news that they are going again is not so new I will be able to.  But 115 degrees while wearing all that gear would be effing miserable and not something you want your husband and little baby brother to do.  But Justin and Nick didn't complain.  Nick grew a mustache for fun and called to tell me all about how mexican and porn star-ish he looked.  Justin got a pink beanie in a care package from an elementary school and it is difficult to find a picture where he is not wearing it.  They took funny pictures and told me a million funny stories.  More so Nick than Justin with the stories.  It actually sometimes felt like Nick was at a different (funnier) base.  Proving that even though he had gone to war on the other side of the world, he was still in no danger of growing up. 
They made it easier for us at home to get through all 18 months, when they had it far worse.

I'm proud of their uncomplaining endurance. 

I'm so proud of their eagerness to serve. 

I'm proud of the example Justin sets for our son. 

I'm proud Nicky's never ending good nature. 

 I'm so thankful for their strength.
I know that these things will see them through this next deployment as well.

I know, and I will never forget that God brought them safely home to me.  

Both of Justin's grandfathers have served.  When his Grandpa Webb died he had a military burial and Justin and his cousin Zach, who is in the Air Force, were able to do the ceremony and present the flag to their grandma.   It was an awesome experience, I feel lucky that Drew was able to see this great man laid to rest by his grandsons. 



Justin and Zach.



My  gratitude goes out to ALL those serving, past and present.

Family Pics

I planned to blog about all our adventures in moving since we sold our house but I am sick today.  Deadly sick.  I think this is the infection people get right before they turn into a zombie.  It's pretty advanced too, I'm probably in the final stages of human life.  So, good news: blogging will continue.  Bad news: it will continue at a slow, slow, zombie-level-of-intelligence rate.  It was critical even before this Resident Evil virus that I not lose momentum on my blog and so I am posting a slideshow of our recent family pics, taken by Parker Grimes. 

Blog Part III

I know, I know.  This is the 3rd time I've started over on my blog.  Its weird that I keep doing that because my blog is private and no one else can read it.  At least I think its private.  Even weirder is how the last time I started over I had like a paragraph long explanation about why I hadn't been keeping up on my blog.  Like I was making excuses to my (apparently mean) future self so I wouldn't get in trouble.  And now I'm wondering why I  have deleted the older posts.  Maybe I'm trying to destroy the evidence of my flakiness to avoid consequences there also.  ANYway, there are a few new happenings in my life that have inspired the third edition of my blog.  Number one: we got our family pictures.  And it was not the nightmare I thought it was going to be.  Mostly due to the photographer, Parker Grimes.  He's from Emery County too and his blog is amazing.  We didn't give him much to work with.  Drew had a brand new smile that day, in which his lower jaw was as far left as it could go and his upper jaw was as far right as he could get it.  Justin's was not new, just his usual non-smile.  And when  I smile my fat face makes my eyes disappear. And I have a giant ass.  But Parker is really laid back so we were more relaxed also.  He's really good at taking a picture at exactly the right time and he's awesome at giving directions.  In the past, Justin has been almost combative with photographers.  Like when they say "smile" he reacts like they are bossing him around and withholds his non-smile as punishment.  But this time it was kind of fun and we are very happy with the results.  The reason for our family pics is the second new happening in our lives: Justin's unit received their mobilization orders and he is going back to Iraq in the spring.  Because I cannot even think about that, I will be blogging about everything else but.  Which brings me to Jon Stewart's and Steven Colbert's Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.  I didn’t so much care about the rally as I did about the hilarious signs.  Well, that’s not true.  I started to care about the rally because of the signs.  Then I wished I could've been there.   Really bad.  This is new for me.  I haven’t really had a desire to attend any kind of rally until recently.  It started with Prop 8 because it’s just crazy that in 2010 America a citizen can be denied a basic civil liberty.  That 17 year old kids who are as dumb as they will ever be, what with hormones and being only 17, can get married, but two gay people can't.  THEN came the immigration debate.  I am boycotting Arizona and hope to someday have a chance to act on this boycott.  So this is how I started to maybe want to attend a protest rally.  But there really aren’t any in Cedar.  Or maybe there are and I just never hear about them.  But I could never come up with signs like these.  There were over 800 but I only looked through the first hundred or so. 

These were the political signs I laughed at...  

There was one that said "That's What She Said"
but I couldn't find it again

  

Not the Obama one, the homophobia one. 



From Princess Bride?

But the ones that didn't have anything to do with anything made me laugh too...







See? It looks like the funnest rally ever.  But can you imagine if there was a rally in Cedar and I did find out about it and I took a sign that said something like any of these?  But maybe no one else laughed at these...Lots of times I tell Justin something that had me in tears it was so funny and he doesn't even crack a smile.  No.  I'm pretty sure that has more to do with him being a fun hater.