a few things....

Most of you are already informed on the comings and goings of our family, but I'm going to still give a recap of a few latest happenings for y'all:

First, a few weeks ago, Jared got laid off. It was a bit of a surprise, but not at the same time. We're excited to be job searching again and have Daddy around all the time. We are REALLY hoping to stay here in Georgia, but the unemployment rate is pretty high so we're keeping our options open.

We're tightening our belts, too. Something interesting I noticed today - the last few months we've been trying a different approach to food storage. We have our 72-hour kits and emergency preparedness stuff, but we were told that a good idea to getting that 3-month supply is to just buy twice as much of your staples and usual foods when you go grocery shopping and you'll eventually have a nice little supply of food you actually eat. We now have a decent amount of the canned veggies and pasta and such on hand, so not having to grocery shop very much has been nice and comforting when you eye every penny going out more carefully. I wondered if we were nuts the last few months when we'd buy a big pile of one item and wonder when we'd eat it all, but now I'm grateful for our small stockpile :)

Oh, and speaking of food, there's a website I like that I wanted to share - http://mealplanningmommies.blogspot.com/ . It's a simple blog some nice ladies out there have where they plan meals and put them all out there - always simple, they give you the cost per serving and even put pictures of every step up! I haven't made too many of their meals, but I love the way they blog and make it all so easy and understandable - and it gives me ideas of my own.

Now, this last weekend was one heckuva whirlwind for us - my brother Quinn got married in San Diego and Jared and I flew out Friday, got there just before the ceremony, then flew back the next (EARLY!) morning and I rushed out to play a gig that night. We knew it was going to be exhausting but we also knew it would be worth it. It was wonderful to go to the temple and be around so much family and celebrate a new member of our family.

She is really, really short compared to Quinn and the rest of the family:

Quinn was really happy:

And I couldn't get enough of how beautiful it was, and mainly how GOOD it smelled on the temple grounds!:

I didn't get any family shots because - well, trying to get my family together to do anything really is like hearding cats. It drives Jared completely bonkers. But it was so, so good to see everyone and feel that happy feeling you can only get when the whole family is together. Our newest sister-in-law - Mara - is actually from Brasil so now Jared has someone to make snarky comments about the rest of us with in Portuguese. He still has to watch himself though - I still know about 4 words in Portuguese and I'm not afraid to use 'em.

Solei is still the smartest, weirdest and funniest kid we know. Her reading vocab has grown and she'll not beg us to help her "build a word." She can spell her name and loves learning new words to recognize - like sun, fun, mommy and daddy, cat, dog, etc., but she keeps begging us to teach her "bum." Weirdo.

Oh, and in case you didn't get the memo, I'm 5 months along now and the baby in my tummy is a dude. Still processing that - but please do NOT try to cheer me up about it - I was an only girl with 3 brothers so the idea of having to deal with a little boy is NOT something I relish. And if you tell me I'll love the boy when I meet him, remember I couldn't really stand Solei until she could talk - not a big fan of the baby stage, remember? Cool thing about Solei is she advances so fast, she is always quickly becoming something I can handle and dig. We do know Heavenly Father gives us no more than we can take, so we're expecting another genius kid (I'm REALLY hoping for a clone of my younger brother Dallin).

OH - and this is good for a laugh. A few weeks ago during Family Home Evening, Solei did something completely unexpected during lesson time and PAID ATTENTION. I was just shocked and realized I had to make this story about Easter and the ressurection good - but was unprepared since Im not used to her paying attention to my stories. How do you explain coming back to life to a 2 year old without her assuming really odd things about death?? I muddled through it and even Jared thought I'd made it as easy to understand as possible, as well as engaging (hey, she was paying attention!) When I got done, I asked her if she understood me, and she nodded her head gravely and whispered to me in a serious voice -

"Daddy's going to kill us."

WHAT?!?! I couldn't stop laughing and Jared was completely befuddled. Now, she adores daddy and knows he's wrapped securely around her little finger, so where she came up with that, we'll never know. But she took comfort in the fact that later we could be ressurected. I think I need to work on my lessons...

And, okay, one more bit of toddler hilarity - today I was standing in front of the silverware drawer that we was trying to open. She told me to move - which I didn't do, and reminded her (for the 74th time today) that NOT how we talk when we ask for something, so she sighed and said "May I PLEASE have a get out of the way??" This time it was Jared's turn to laugh.

And now you're all up to speed! We know we're not the only ones in the unemployment boat, and we're praying for those of you who are with us in that. Here's to hoping for good times ahead!

Deliciously religious!

Need a laugh? Check out these Book of Mormon stories, by a bunch of marshmallow peeps.

Easter dressy

Happy Easter!

Today was just spectacular and a very happy day. Jared spoke in church - wonderfully, I might add, we had pretty Easter dresses to wear (Solei and I, not Jared) and had an Easter egg hunt! It's late or I'd write more, but for now here are some pictures Jared took of our Easter finery:

play dough fun

The weather yesterday was INCREDIBLE! Unfortunately, it was also St. Patty's Day and as a celtic musician I was running all over town and didn't get to spent it with Solei, who spent it with friends and then Nana (she got Chuck E. Cheese for lunch!!). So I felt like there was a little pressure to make TODAY awesome too... but the weather started out cloudy (I don't go outside on cloudy days) and didn't clear up until just now.

So, I improvised. I found a bunch of good homeade play dough recipes here, and settled on the super easy oatmeal recipe - so easy a 2 year old could do it. Allow her to illustrate:

Start with a half cup water, and half cup flour:

One cup Oatmeal:

Mix well

Moosh it up nice and good with your hands:

You're ready to play!!

Some things we did were make a gingerbread man and then poke holes in him:

Make a cat and poke holes in that:

SQUISH IT!!!!

Make a family - with a baby in Mommy AND Daddy's tummies:

Plus lots of alphabet fun, including Solei's favorite word, her own name:

Since she's known her alphabet for over a year now and she has started reading, she gets a bored quick with alphabet stuff so making her own letters (I did make those though:) was a new twist.

Oh, and for some dumb reason, she got really excited about giving mommy a tail:

Long Overdue

I know, I know. It's been forever since you guys did any posts and we want to know what is new with you guys and it's making us really sad that you don't ever write and we are super depressed and can't go on with life. Okay, I get it.

Things have been going fairly uneventfully for the last little while. So, I decided to give you a quick run-down of our weekend, which will give you a good feel for what life is like in general.

Friday night was big. Some friends of ours from the ward invited us to go to dinner and play games at Dave and Busters. We usually don't get invited along to things like that (I blame it on my stunning good looks). So, we PAID for a sitter (more on that later) and went out for a night on the town. We had a wonderful time and since half of the couples (there were 4 total) were still in the pre-marriage stages of thier relationships we felt like we were dating again - at least for a night.

We played lots of games and won tons of tickets (unfortunately a good portion of them were from the quiz game - I apparently am a geek). All the tickets we won got us a small basketball - which would have been just stupid, had we not had a kid at home who now LOVES her new basketball. We stayed out late and when we got home the sitter was still asleep. (By the way, the Wife STRONGLY recommends the snowmobile game).

Saturday morning I was up at 7am for a church basketball game. I haven't played any sports regularly in years and when I have played them I usually either ended up on the ground choking for air or throwing up or both. I'm woefully out of shape. Since I'm starting to get some tasty love handles, I made a goal to play on our church basketball team. Thankfully the team is bad enough that the fact that I have a pulse and know the basics of the sport qualify me for participation. We actually won a game two weeks ago, our first win of the season. Well, that didn't happen this week. In fact we lost by 40 or so points. We actually were in the lead for the first 5 minutes or so, but then we got tired and since only 5 people showed up (you need 5 people to play basketball for all you non-sporters out there) there was no rest. By the time we hit the half I thought perhaps I would die and was seriously questioning my goal to play. Thankfully a 6th man showed up at the half and I was able to sit down for a while. There was no heaving on the ground or throwing up in the bushes, so I considered the game on Saturday to be a success.

I think a mommy roach and a daddy roach loved each other very much in our bathroom a few months ago, because there is always one in there when we turned on the lights. (Either that or their is some sort of super roach that is able to reconstruct itself from the smooshed remains that are flushed down the toilet after I kill it - but occam's razor leads me to believe that there is more than just one).

Because I find finding roaches in my own personal bathroom unacceptable, I decided to do something about it. Now, when it comes to bugs or animals living in my house I am a "no holds barred" kind of guy. So, in order to rid us of this plague, I spend my Saturday cleaning out our bathroom and bug-bombing it. Somehow I managed to get a full trash bag worth of trash out of a room that is 6x8 and is mostly bathtub. I scrubbed EVERYTHING. I even scrubbed the floor with a sponge on my hands and knees. I set off the bug bomb and waited. All that work and only 1 roach came out laying on it's back. So - maybe occam's razor is wrong.

While the big bomb went off, we went grocery shopping. WooHoo! Nothing like taking a 2 year old to the grocery store. When we got home she actually took a NAP!!

Which gave me precious time with my wife, which we chose to use playing with our new toys instead of actually interacting with eachother. You see, we got iPhones.

Yes, the day came where I found such a good deal that I thougth purchasing an iPhone was worth it. Now, for you who know me - I am a gadget FREAK. I love gadgets and I love even more tweaking and breaking into them to make them even more awesome than they are supposed to be. Such is my iPhone. It is AWESOME. Go get one. The only problem is that I can't store files anywhere on the stupid thing and I can't create excel or word files either. Jerks.

Saturday evening we spent at a party for "young married couples" from our ward (or congregation for you non-mormons). We are not sure why we qualify as young married people. The wife even suggested that it might be about time for us to divorce and re-marry to be sure we qualify next time around. We had a good time and got to know some of the people we don't get to spend as much time with as we'd like to.

Papa watched our daughter why were were at that activity and they had a marvelous time. Papa and Nana introduced her to "Curly Temple" as our daughter calls her. She loves watching her. Our daughter is a lot like her as you will see in the below video:

Today was a little crazy. We had a wonderful service today at church. During Sunday the drizzle we had been "enjoying" turned to snow. All the teenagers' brains turned to mush and they went out to "frolic" as on called it. I love the south because it's not cold and it doesn't snow. Today the south failed me.

I invited an old boss and his wife and kiddos over to dinner tonight. We had a great time. I cooked a killer meal and spent WAY too much time cleaning up the house to get ready. The Daughter REFUSED to take a nap at all, even though she was going to take it in her new "rainbow" bed. She now has her own toddler bed, which we thought we would need to transition her into, but no, she slept in the new bed the first night with no problems at all.

Finally, we are also trying to potty train our little angel. We've done a good job of getting her to use the potty, but she doesn't always tell us when she needs to go. The obvious solution is to put her on the pot every few hours, which we do. Unfortunatly that only works for pee-pee. The solid stuff is a little bit less predictable. This week she got her first very own pack of "elmo" brand big girl underpants. This has actually been a big success, generally. She loves that she is wearing them and understands that she shouldn't go pee-pee in them. In fact she wore them all day today up until I caught her grunting. She apparently had to poo, but didn't feel the need to do so on the potty, so Elmo is now kind of a reddish-brown. This is the same girl who stripped herself down on Thursday morning and climed on the pot to do the number two - all by herself. We aren't there yet...

After cleaning up the kitchen, I'm exhausted. I need a nap and a day off. Unfortunately, tomorrow in Monday and I have to be up bright and early for work...

Did I mention that we all have colds and I lost my voice. That makes life AWESOME.

Have a good week.

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!

Awesome.

How to be the world's greatest houseguest

Words cannot describe how fabulous it is having Pascal here! He's the greatest houseguest for a myriad of reasons - let me count some ways!

* He entertains little children with greatest of ease!

* He doesn't get annoyed when certain tired and cranky pregnant people want to lay on the floor and do nothing - he'll just join you!

* He cooks. OH MY HECK does he cook!

*Jared and Mike actually like him. And they don't like ANYONE (except themselves).

* He'll teach your kid to use a climbing wall.

* He'll do this thing where he links all the computers and printers in your house and give you some music files that amounts to about 40-something days of continuous play before a song would repeat itself. YEAH. HE DID.

Only problem is, he keeps agreeing with Jared on all the dumb stuff he says. Like we need THAT. Aside from his obvious poor judgement, we are sure going to miss him. Thanks Pascal!!

the official 4th Year of Insanity video

4th Year from Reva Paget on Vimeo.

It's the annual year-in-recap video! It's shorter than usual because a broken hard-drive took about half of the pictures with it, but I gathered enough to highlight the good times of year 4. Enjoy!

4. Years. !!!!!!!

4 years ago today I went against my louder judgement and said "yes" to being sealed eternally to Jared. A few weeks ago when I realized we were closing in on year 4, I almost hyperventilated, realized how long ago the day was 4 years ago and how much had happened since then. I'm coming to terms with it - just finished out anniversary video (can't post it until Jared sees it first) - and I'm filled with a feeling of peace and joy.

A while back, my younger brother (you should really read his blog, it's HILARIOUS) asked me if this was how I'd pictured my life turning out. Honestly - no. I never expected to be this happy, loved, and have this much fun, all thanks to Jared. Nope, I'm not a rock star per se, but I'm supported in all I do and it makes my exploits that much more satisfying.

4 years - we've lived in one apartment, 2 continents and 4 houses, had 8 cars and 2 scooters, we're on 1. 2 kiddos now, 6 jobs between the 2 of us, and a few haircuts in between. Much love, sweetheart, thanks for 4 wonderful years!!!!


PS - Also - I had an ultrasound yesterday and the baby was DANCING! Wiggling and grooving, it was awesome!!

Totally Random...

Yesterday I filled the tank on my car for less than $15! That's amazing. That'll get me 300 miles or so. Not bad at all. I'm glad that we bought an old Saturn.

Today I came home from Church to find my daughter in the arms of my wife, their eyes linked as my beautiful wife told my daughter a story before nap time. Seeing two people you love love eachother that much is amazing. I feel very blessed.

Friday my wife and I had the chance to see a sealing (or wedding) in a temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. These are very sacred and special ceremonies. We were married almost 4 years ago in the same ceremony in a Temple in Denver. What an amazing blessing it is to be married for time and all eternity, instead of till death do you part. I am amazed how much I am able to love my wife and now our daughter and it brings me the greatest sence of comfort and joy to know that the three of us (soon to be four) will be able to live together as a family for eternity. I'm so happy for my friend who was married and know that she and her new husband will have that same joy and opportunity.

Finally - my headaches came back on Saturday with a vengence. Stress is my enemy. I'm working on massaging my own feet in the "headache" spots and I think it helped last night. I didn't get a headache and was able to sleep through the night. I'm grateful for my wife who loves me and helps me, even when she's the pregnant one...

Do they even make a fish autopsy??

Life has been really random these last few weeks. The wife, who currently carries our next offspring, is feeling the effects of said carriage. She's not the most happy of campers. Just as the holiday ended my headaches started coming back. For those of you who don't know - I get headaches once a year or so that (according to wikipedia) are the worst pain known to medical science. They are called cluster headaches. They were waking me up at 1am and keeping me up half the night. It's like training for a baby again.

So, I've tried everything for the headaches. The medication the doctor prescribes is $10 a pill - after insurance. I need at least one a day. So - the wife insisted that I try something different. So, I saw that melatonin is supposed to help. I started taking melatonin. Reflexology was suggested as a possible cure - so I subjected myself to an hour long foot massage. Oh the horrors. It was a very interesting experience. Look up reflexology on the interweb sometime if you are interested in knowing more.

As the woman rubbed my foot she would hit pressure points that actually hurt. These were tied to areas of my body or metaphysical aspects of my consciousness. Her findings were the following:
I am stressed.
I feel like I don't control my life at all.
I don't participate in anything that I enjoy (no stress outlet)
My creativity is being stifled

So - theoretically she rubbed the headache out of my body. Well - that night I didn't wake up with a headache. Then last night - I didn't have a headache. I think I might be better. I'm not sure I think that the reflexology was 100% the cause, I feel better and that's the most important thing.

Now for something totally random, our Daughter got two fish from Santa this year. She LOVES fish and we couldn't think of anything that she would want besides a fish tank. It was a good gift in theory.

Yesterday I got home from work and our daughter ran up to me and said "Daddy, it's almost time to feed the fish!" Well, I said okay. We went to the fish tank and the tank was empty. I turned to my wife and said "where are the fish??" Well, upon further inspection, I found one partialy sucked into the filter system (I assume he died before the filter got him). The other guy was totally gone - totally. Well, then came the interesting task - to start looking for the missing fish without our two year old understanding that the fish was gone. We spotted the fish on the floor. So, no more fish.

What I don't understand is how on earth did both fish die? One apparently committed suicide by jumping from the tank, the other was just dead. Maybe it was murder-suicide? I never trusted that gold colored fish. He was always a spaz and picking on the black fish. The Black fish was always sickly. There aren't fish autopsys, are there??

Reason #967 Jared is the awesomest guy ever

Today after our meal at the restaurant at Ikea, both of us decided we really needed a hot dog from the food place downstairs. Since lines all over were indecently long, he headed down to get them while I gathered up Solei's stuff and my parents and followed. Just before we got to him, Jared called and said "hey, the line was shorter than I thought, so I'm waiting for you. I already got your weiner."

.... "what??"

At this point, we could see each other, and he smiled big waved his arm at me and called across the lobby "I GOT YOUR WEINER!!!!"

(apparently, he also repeatedly asked the ladies at the food stand for weiners. "Ma'am, are those my weiners?") Sooooo mature.

Also, he actually REQUESTED I get him these jammies for Christmas:



Why yes, they do glow in the dark.

New Child

The wife has spread it all over the internet except here -

We are having another child. The expected delivery date is sometime in Mid- August. We are very excited. This week the eyes, nostrils and ears will develop (week 6).

We are both very excited!!