AHHH California!

I love it. I love it. I love it. We are here in California and it is wonderful. It is so great to give the kids a chance to play with their cousins, make cookies with their grandma and go to the train museum with their grandpa.
And I am in heaven having a chance to be home with most of my family for a little while.

Merry Christmas!

Sick cookies

Today we made some gingerbread cookies with the kids. I was starting to clean up when I heard Abby and Collin discussing the following:

"My gingerbread man is going to have chicken pox just like baby Evan." - Collin

"Hey, that's a great idea. I am going to decorate my angel with chicken pox too! Actually my angel will have jelly bean pox" - Abby

Even cookies around here aren't safe from disease!

Thanks for everyone's comments on the last post, Evan is getting better slowly but surely. In another few days I think he may actually not be contagious anymore.

Chicken Pox and vaccines (or lack the thereof)

These pictures don't quite do this justice; only the very worst pox are showing up.

We took Evan to the Doctor today with what the doctor said was one of the worst cases of chicken pox in a baby he has ever seen. At first I thought, "How is this possible? He is up to date on his vaccinations..." But it turns out the varicella (chicken pox vaccine) isn't given until 12 months. I talked to the Dr. and nurse a little about how he could have even gotten chicken pox - I thought it was virtually gone because of vaccinations. Turns out because so many parents avoid having their little ones get shots that would prevent huge diseases, lots of practically extinct diseases are making a come-back. So because some parents decided that their child didn't need a vaccine, my seven-month-old gets to suffer through an awful bout of these scratchy little polka dots. I'm just glad it was only chicken pox this time, not anything worse. He is miserable but at least it isn't life-threatening like polio or whooping cough or something.

So to all the parents out there who think their decision not to vaccinate or to do so very slowly only affects them, please think about my little guy. My older two have had their varicella and its booster and have shown no signs. I don't know where he picked this up, and I don't want people who live around here feeling guilty that they may have spread it to us. That isn't the point. I am just frustrated that I am doing all I can to protect my kids from life threatening illnesses, but because so many people are refusing to vaccinate, my children are still at risk. I simply am not allowed to vaccinate them quickly or early enough to keep them healthy. I know this is a bit of a rant - sorry about that. It has just been on my mind for a while and when this came up I couldn't hold back, especially after being up half the night with our miserable little Evan.

Give me some opinions. If you disagree let me know why, and if you agree I would love to hear that I am not alone feeling this way.

Like Father, Like Son

 

I was going through the pictures from the last year and found this gem that we took around Halloween. On the list of "proud dad" moments, this one is right up there at the top.

Five

Abby turned five this past week. We had Grandma Syl out here to celebrate with us, and boy did we ever. I can't believe she is already five, yet at times when she talks to me I think, "gosh you can't only be five you talk like a mini adult!" My little articulate one.

This month has been a very full one -- Abby had her first all girl party, Grandma took our whole family to Disney on Ice, Uncle Brian and Aunt Amanda came out for an interview with Logan's company (we hope they get to come out here so we can get some family out here in Austin), and Grandma and Grandpa Sheen come in a day to celebrate Thanksgiving. I think in the nearly 5 years that we have lived here we have never had such a steady stream of visitors. We are loving it! If anyone else wants to visit, just let us know!






Sorry this one is blurry, but I thought it was an awesome shot of Collin attempting to fly over Abby while she opened her presents.

Come again?!?

Today Abby was in the playroom when I called her for lunch.

"Abby, lunch time." - Nothing

Again I called "Abby, come for lunch." - again nothing.

Finally a little louder, "Abby, please come to lunch."

"Sorry mom, I didn't hear you the first two times you called me."

I love planning parties

Abby's Birthday is coming up in about a week and a half and I am so excited. Honestly, I love planning my kids birthday parties. Abby wanted a sleepover this year, problem is she is turning 5, so we opted for a pretend one. We'll have pizza, soda, movies, toe nail painting and much more during the evening then everybody can go sleep in their own homes.

When I was little my mom was so good about doing the cutest parties. I remember an upside down party I had once, we ate under the table, had upside down cake and a game where we tried to walk on our hands. It was probably 20 years ago, but I still remember how great it was. I want my kids to have those kinds of memories.

I was trying to come up with creative things to do and I thought up these little sleeping bags for the invites. I think they turned out pretty darn cute. A card with all the info slides inside.

Happy Halloween!

We hope you had as much fun as our Cinderella, Blue Dinosaur, and Baby Bumblebee!

Mighty Fine!

After my work's Halloween Spooktacular this evening, we decided to take the kids out for some food. We ended up going to "Mighty Fine Burgers" - it's managed/owned by the same people that have the Rudy's BBQ restaurants here in Texas. Anywho, we got Abby and Collin each a burger, and started feeding Evan some peaches. Collin, as it so often happens when we eat out, found something interesting under the table and was hanging out under then when this lady comes over to our table to tell us, "You have such well behaved children!" Just as she finished saying that, Collin popped back out from under the table, and blew a raspberry right in her face. What timing.

We kept going though, and crazy enough, about 10 minutes before we left, another person came over to our table and said, "You're children are so well behaved!" Thankfully, she was on the other side of the table, and I think Collin's raspberry reflex requires you to be within a two foot radius. So I'm pretty sure she still believed that as she walked away.

Mighty Fine? Mighty Fine indeed. The kids do usually act OK when we eat out, but this is first time we've gotten those comments without Amy having to wear her "please compliment me" sign... Ok, she doesn't a sign like that, but this was a first for us.

Easiest Pumpkin Carving EVER!!

I've seen some "jack-o-lanterns" over the last couple of Halloweens that looked more like Mr. Potato Heads. Admittedly, when I saw them, I thought, "Come on now - how hard is it really to carve a pumpkin for Halloween?" Well, tonight when I had the option to go and buy a few of those pieces or to carve the pumpkins that had been sitting outside for the last few weeks, it really was a no-brainer: Get the Mr. Potato Head pieces.

The kids each picked out a box of these for a whopping $3.50 each at Walmart, and bam! 7 instant "jack-o-lanterns"! No knives! No fire! No mess! Just good times!

Crazy

This morning I walked into Collin and Abby's room to see two step stools stacked on top of each other. Collin and I then had the following conversation:

Logan: "Why are there two step stools stacked on each other?... (after noticing a shirt on the ground)... Were you getting a shirt down?"
Collin: "Yeah!"
Logan: "Collin... sometimes-"
Collin: "-Me know. Me crazy."

One awesome weekend...

   
This past week, the family decided it was time we went camping. We'd been afraid of kids around the fire, around water, being out in the heat all day, etc. But two things happened that made us change our minds. First, the Westons - we've seen all these pictures of Dan, Kristina and their kids out and it just looked fun! Second, we looked at the next 2 months or so, and pretty much every weekend is booked solid with one thing or another. With the weather being so perfect right now, with low 50's in the morning and low 80's at the hottest, it was just time.

Three neat things

1. When we arrived at the campground we found out that in the time we were traveling there, they had enforced a no burn ordinance for the whole county! All we could think was "No smores!? That is just not going to work!" Well as it turns out a no burn ordinance means no wood fires or fires in fire pits, but you can still use charcoal. Luckily this campground has BBQ's and charcoal was still allowed in those. Who'd have thought smores could be so delicious over charcoal?

2. Well after a little while it started to get dark (it was only about 6:45 pm) and Abby announced "Mom, it is getting so dark let's go to bed." Awesome! We ended up keeping them up a little longer until about 7:30 and then they all slept through the night. It has always been a huge camping fear of mine that the kids would never go to sleep and we would have to pack up and go home at 2 am.

3. Fishing poles for kids are great! They were about $10 each and at Academy Sports they had about 20 different kinds of kid poles. Abby picked Disney princesses and Collin picked Scooby Doo (he has never seen the show, but went on the ride at 6 flags about 5 times and loved it). They come with a little rubber toy thing on the end to practice casting safely. They liked doing that way longer than actual fishing. Next time I am not even going to bring the worms and hooks (they were super gross anyways).

Well after a very fun two days we packed up and came home, and I started throwing everything into the washer. After about 2 loads the laundry room flooded with a few inches of water. I thought "Well I have been meaning to mop in here, now is as good of time as any, little more water than I would have used but oh well." Well on the next load the washer stopped working all together, it is now in about 50 pieces in the laundry room.

Motor Coupling piece to fix washer - $15
Time spent on a Saturday to fix the washer - 3 hours
Figuring out how to take apart, fix and put back together a washer without breaking it further - Priceless

Growing Up

Abby was invited to a birthday party today. She was very insistent that she was old enough to go to parties without mommy anymore. "Mom the card only had my name on it, so I just get to go. I want you to stay home and clean the house."

What the heck!

A princess to marry her King

Last night my little sister, Melissa, got engaged to her boyfriend. Congratulations Melissa and Taylor!
Ironically, she was always the little princess of the family and now she is marrying Taylor KING. I always wondered if she really would find a way to marry into royalty :)

Scripture Cake Recipe

A lot of people have been asking for this recipe so here it is:

It is from the Essential Mormon Cookbook by Julie Badger Jensen ( my very favorite cookbook!)

Some of the scriptures are a little bit of a stretch, but most of them contain the exact ingredient. So we put out all the ingredients ob the table and had the kids listen to each scripture and decide which ingredient came next.

1 cup Judges 5:25 (butter)
1/2 cup Exodus 27:20 (olive oil)
2 cups Proverbs 16:24 (Sugar)
2 tablespoons 1 Samuel 14:25 (honey)
3 Isaiah 10:14 (eggs)
1/4 cup Joshua 5:6 (milk)
2 cups 1 Kings 4:22 (white Flour)
1 cup D&C 89:14 (whole wheat flour)
1 teaspoon Leviticus 2:13 (salt)
1 teaspoon Amos 4:5 (baking soda)
2 teaspoons Exodus 30:23 (cinnamon)
3 cups Proverbs 25:11 (apples, peeled and grated)
1 cup Genesis 43:11 (chopped pecans or walnuts)

Cream butter, oil and sugar. Add eggs and milk, beat until creamy. Mix dry ingredients together. Combine wet with dry and bake in a 9x13 at 350 degrees for 50 minutes.

Scripture Power! Cake!

Tonight we made cake based on a bunch of ingredients listed in different verses from the scriptures. It was pretty much just plain delicious, and the kids listened better than I ever thought they would. They're great kids!

More flags! More Fun!

So this past Saturday my work rented out the whole Six Flags Fiesta Texas amusement park, and it was AWESOME! The kids rode roller coasters (little ones), log rides, airplanes, Scooby Doo rides (like Buzz Light Year at Disneyland), a wave runner ride and best of all bumper cars... and a train too. Towards the end of the day, we were able to find some friends to swap baby sitting with and Amy and I hit 4 rides in an hour! It was so much fun! Here are some pics from our day:

Fashion consultant for hire

As I have grown up, my mom has always given me great fashion advice. (Anyone who knows my mom knows exactly what I am talking about! Love you mom.)I was excited to have my own little girl and help her learn what is cute on her. Well today I learned that being fashionable may have just skipped a generation because now my daughter is telling me what is cute and she is right!

This morning I was getting Abby ready for preschool. I thought she looked pretty cute in a pink long sleeved top and a denim skirt. As I went to do her hair she insisted on wearing a yellow headband with the pink ponytail holder I was putting in her hair. I thought "Oh, no, my little girl wants some weird 80's hair style, all kinds of crazy mismatched things in her hair." But she convinced me to try it. It was adorable! I didn't get a picture because I didn't think to take one until after preschool and by then it wasn't really done anymore. But take my word for it, she looked like she was in a gapkids ad!

So as it turns out it doesn't look good for me ever really knowing what is cute all on my own. But between my mom and Abby, I might be saved from ever wearing socks with sandals or any other major faux pas.

Baby food!

Amy picked up a high chair today after Evan's doctor's appointment, and so begins the introduction of baby food. He didn't take too well to the stuff on his first taste this afternoon, but for dinner he was doing so much better we decided to give Abby and Collin a shot at feeding him. Check out the pictures below!

First day of school!

Yesterday morning was Abby and Collin's first day of preschool - they were both really excited and both had a great first day. Abby learned that spiders have exoskeletons ("bones on the outside") and people have endoskeletons ("bones on the inside"). Collin learned his teachers name and that blowing in and out on your juice box can have negative effects, like, oh, throwing up all over yourself. :) Turns out Collin's already the class clown because he reportedly had the whole class laughing before he let his lunch go. Criminitly, trigger.

Anyhow, here are some pictures of them on their first day:

My first 10k

So this past weekend I ran/walked my first 10k as part of the Nike+ human race. I've been running more and more since Evan was born and have loved tracking my progress with the Nike+ tools. It's also been pretty inspiring to see what Dan and Amy's parents have been able to accomplish over the last couple of years. But more than anything, I had a bit of scare a few months ago when I went to donate blood and got turned away because my blood pressure was too high. I sat there, eating the Nutter Butter and drinking the caffeine-free Dr. Pepper the blood donation people let me eat and thought, "You've got to be kidding me - I'm not even 30 yet." It was quite a rude awakening. I've been regularly running and walking with the family and am about 2 miles shy of 100 miles run and walked over the last 4 months, and the BP is looking much better.

Nike+ tools record my pace for each run or walk and here's what my 10k looks like:


So I'm not the fastest guy out there, but if I've looked at totals correctly, I'm in the top half of people that ran the race. Ta-dow - not bad for guy who played offensive line in high school.

Bad Words

So, I love my kids. They are the best, and they have the best intentions...

Lately the word "poop" in our house has become a bad word. It simply was being used in way too many ways and names that Abby and Collin were calling each other. Thus it became outlawed! Sent to the land of bad words. Well the kids understood this and agreed that we shouldn't say that word anymore.

Last week one day that Logan came home from work they excitedly met him at the door and Abby said, "Daddy, daddy guess what I didn't say poop all day, I didn't call Collin a poop head, or poopy, or poopers, or anything. But baby Evan did poop a lot today. But even then I didn't say poop. But Collin said poop once today. But not me, I didn't say poop even once. Did I mom? Did I say poop?" After that Collin agreed and found all the ways that he hadn't said poop also, by using the word as much as he possibly could.

At this point Logan and I are almost in tears trying not to laugh. They were truly so excited that they were being obedient.

Looks like we have to work on that one a little harder.

An Engineering Mind

So I went to school with this guy named Todd who now works here at NI. A couple of weeks ago we had a conference for work (which I'm guessing no one who reads this blog cares about) where they showed videos that he had put together and posted on a blog called An Engineering Mind. I didn't get to see them for whatever reason, but watched them during lunch today at my desk, and laughed out loud. Perhaps it's just because I'm an engineer, but I like to think that with comic education steeped in Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, Tommy Boy, Scrubs, and the Office, I can't be alone in thinking these are funny.

Engineering Bedtime Stories



Dealing with Bullies



Superman is no Engineer

There ain't no bugs on me!

So there's a couple of commercials out there of this puppy that sings "There ain't no bugs on me!" We saw one this evening and Collin shouted out "Me want dog that sings! Me want dog that talks!" It was awesome.

Let me explain...

So just a couple of things that I (Logan) thought I should explain. First, I got jealous of Brant and Chris and their playlist on their blog so I copied them and added it to this hummer, but I wonder if I'm the only one that ever wonders if other people wonder "What the heck" when they hear some of the songs. So here's my reasoning behind a few:

"Cry me a river" - not the normal tune for me, but when I was teaching seminary, and would ask the kids to do something that the moaned about (which is pretty much every day for teenagers), I would often say, "As J.T. says, 'Cry me a river'." in the same high pitch that he sings. I thought it was funny, and I think just maybe, the kids thought it was funny too.

"Save Ginny Weasley" - Well if you're a Harry Potter nerd like me (my computer name is HPvsTMR - if you know what that is, you're probably a nerd too), just listen to the song a couple of times. It's just awesome. I found it when I was looking for soundtrack clips from the movies, and just added it to the list.

"Particle Man" - This dates back to the days of Tiny Toons, but it recently came back when I found that Evan smiles a bunch whenever I sing to him. I don't know why he smiles so much, but it's definitely not a fluke. I can get him to smile every time - perhaps I'm like one of the American Idol contestants that you can't help but laugh at. I seriously doubt it though - I'm awesome...

Six Great Years

Yesterday was our 6th anniversary! We copied Kristina and Dan a little and looked through a bunch of wedding pictures and pictures throughout our marriage yesterday and it was a ton of fun. Here are a few photos that we have to share.










We had intended to do a slide show, but Collin has been feverish for 9 days now, so I just haven't had the time. Yes I have taken him to the Dr. and ER, and the Dr. has been calling each day to check in on him. They say it is just a really bad virus that has given him fevers of over 105 degrees! (Anyone that has had a similar experience and has any advice please comment.)

Slowly But Surely!

Well after two long weeks, all the tiles are cut and set! We have been working at night once the kids go to bed for 3-5 hours. (It would be a little easier if Evan would consistently sleep through the night, but he is our little miracle child and I have nothing to complain about.) We still need to grout and put new baseboards on. I don't think we will quite make it by our anniversary on Saturday, especially with Logan's work participating in his work's huge expo this week called NI week. But it will be close and it will be beautiful! Oh, Amelia asked what areas of the house we are tiling. It is basically all of the main areas. The entry, the dining room, the family room, kitchen, and breakfast area. Our only carpet is now in the bedrooms and a little hallway between the playroom and a bedroom! We hope to even replace all of that carpet with new carpet in the near future. Already it is so much nicer to clean up after the kids and know that it is all clean. Evan's spit up is a simple wipe up instead of hauling out the carpet cleaner each and every time to scrub at the carpet only to have it look ratty and stained after it dried.


Our First Night of Tiling


One of the many really hard cuts Logan was able to do without even splitting the tile!


The Kitchen with most of the tiles cut and set. Baseboards and grout are soon to come!

Let the tiling begin!

Howdy! This is Logan posting. So for our anniversary this year we decided it was time to get rid of a bunch of carpet and the rest of the linoleum in our house. I know, I know - we go crazy for our anniversary. But seriously, we're the second young family to live in this house, and despite our best efforts to keep things clean and in good shape, the flooring just kept getting worse. It was just time to get rid of it.

Now we've been taking pictures of our progress so we'll post those soon enough, but being the nerd that I am, I actually wanted to post a link to a tool called Google SketchUp that I've been playing with to plan this out. I played with it a couple of years ago and thought then, "Why would anyone use this?" But let me tell you, when you're planning to tile the bulk of your living space, plotting things out isn't a bad thing, and this thing made it easy.

I walked around the house and took measurements of the space and after a twiddle here and a tinker there, and two hours later (finishing up around 2am) Google SketchUp and I came up with this:



On top of that, it told me that I had 714.988 square feet to tile.

Ok, so I could have just guessed like Amy and got about the same estimate. Amy took like 5 minutes and came up with 720 square feet, but come on, this is cool, isn't it? And totally worth the late night? Right?

Abby's Cast Kicks the Bucket

Amy took the kids to the doctor's office today to get Abby's cast removed and managed to take a few pics with her camera phone. Check 'em out below:





When Abby got her cast put on we were feeling awfully guilty about it taking such a long time to realize her arm was broken so we let her choose her favorite place to go eat. She mentioned that if she got to choose when her cast was put on she should also get to choose when it comes off. We said sure why not and haven't talked about it for the past month. The crazy thing is, she remembered that and was insistent that we go to Gattiland (a sort of Chuck E. Cheese type place with much better pizza). Needless to say we had a lot of fun.