Suburbs...

The phone rang just a few minutes ago.  It was our neighbor.

She says, "I wanted you to know that I am out in the backyard and there is someone walking through our backyards.  Can you turn on the light in the backyard?  I'm out here with my firearm.  Can you come outside?"

Normally the neighbor asking you to come out into hte backyard because there was someone out there and they were armed would not be something one would like to do.  But, our neighbor is a police officer.

I got the shotgun out of the basement and loaded two rounds.  Tomorrow I'm going to buy the strongest floodlight I can find.  

I love living in the suburbs...

Happy day!

Background: Potty training has been coming along. Usually, it's us sitting her down on the toilet and certain times in the day and she can go like a champ. She has on occasion told us when she needed to go potty, but we usually are doing the directing.

Just a few minutes ago, I was tapping along on the computer when I saw Solei walking around my bedroom stripped down to her diaper. "What are you doing? Where are your jammies?" I asked her.

Solei announced, "I am going peepee in the potty."

Huh? Okay, I ran around to the bathroom to put her little helper seat on our toilet and when I came back, she was sitting sans diaper on her little potty that she'd dragged out into the room and put right in front of Curious George on the TV. Without. Me. And then, on further inspection, I realized she'd already gone potty. All by her blasted self. She didn't even want me to make a big deal about it becayse then she couldn't hear George.

Who would have ever thought urine could make me cry happy tears???

Freebie

I may be behind the boat here, but I found a faaabulous FREE program online called Picnik - a easy fabulous alternative to the expensive and confusing Photoshop. With just a bit of tweaking, check out what I did to this picture of Solei I adore:

There's so much you can do, I want to go tweaking and playing with my wedding photos now! Enjoy!

I'll take credit for this one

Nana to Solei, whole musing over pictures on a bulletin board at church: "Who is that?"

Our genius 2 year old: "Thomas Monson!"

Heck. YEAH!!!!!!!!!

Possibly the funniest 4 minutes of TV EH-VAH!!

Why yes, I am insane. Thanks for asking.

For the last few years I have had two life goals. One was to make cheese. I don’t exactly know what makes cheese so infatuating to me, but I think if I could go back and pick a career again, it might just be making fine cheeses (although I’m not sure I have the patience for it). My first birthday after I was married my wife was sweet enough to buy me a “home cheese kit” which allowed me to accomplish this goal. Since it was mozzarella, the patience thing wasn’t even an issue.

Life goal number two is just as random. After watching about a million episodes of MASH while I was in grad school I thought that watching those helicopters flying around looked pretty cool. Now, I do have this fear of falling. It’s not abnormal, but the same fear of standing on a ledge that I think most people have. Nevertheless, I think that flying in a helicopter would be really cool. Since it seems like an uncommon, yet accessible thing to do, I want to do it.

During 2008 I think I added one (or maybe two) to my list. My new life goal for 2008 is a little time sensitive due to inevitable mortality. My new life goal is to meet Mr T. Honestly, I would have loved to meet Fred (Mr) Rogers before he died, but never had the chance. All the interviews and presentations that I ever saw him give were so loving. Now, Mr T is not Mr Rogers and they are not the same, but if you look around enough, you can find some very touching personal interviews that Mr T has given about his life. He loves God and is grateful for everything he has. A small part of me thinks that he would make a great president (of the USA). He’s loving and tough at the same time.

Now, my final goal is most likely not going to happen for a few reasons. Reason one is that I fear bodyguards and what they could do to me. Reason two is that I am generally a pacifist and don’t typically attack people randomly. Reason three is that I most likely won’t ever get the chance to meet Dave Matthews. Yes, my “non” life goal is to punch Dave Matthews in the nose. I swear he is the anti-Christ and I want him to know that I will not stand for his tacit destruction of Christianity. EVIL I say!

My wife says that I need to keep these “Crazy” things to myself because her friends and family won’t be jealous that she got a great guy if they think I’m insane. Hm….

Budding Photographister

SO - The company I work for makes digital cameras. We started making them for preschoolers. a few weeks ago we sold off some functioning returns that we had and I bought one for my daughter. She LOVES the idea of taking pictures, but most of them come out like this:


They come out like this because, basically, my child thinks that the camera should always face you (she has a career in TV). Well, after some time and some long (and repetitive) conversations, she figured out that the camera goes the other way (most of the time).

So, now we get pictures like this:



Then we moved to a good picture of daddy (from the prospective of Solei of course):
I had to jump into this one:
Here's a close-up of our friend Pascal:
One of the cool things about this camera is that you can superimpose disney charactors on your picure (or just ignore your friends completely as seen below):

Here's mommy! (It took a lot of self control to not post the picture of mommy on the potty that our little girl took).
And FINALLY - she seems to have figured it out!