Living in Utah I hear people talk about droughts and pray for rain a lot. I think those people have a tendency to forget that we live in a desert. As such, it really doesn't rain much (we get plenty more snow than I would like but that's a whole different rant). So, when it's warm outside and it starts to rain you can usually count on it doing so lightly for about 30 seconds to a minute. You gotta take advantage of that rare warm summer rain.
This particular time it happened to not stop after 30-60 seconds but instead decided to intensify and dump hard with some nice thunder and lightning for a good long time. It was a good one to take advantage of.
We had already been out there for awhile running that circle when the video starts. Apparently a few of our neighbors saw us and, luckily, took it as a sign of good parenting instead of calling social services on us (I've got them fooled).
A little while ago Lincoln received a gift from his Grandpa Bob (Lincoln got his middle name from him too). He's been playing with it quite a bit so we thought we'd post a couple videos from when Grandma first brought it to him.
He knew exactly what to do with it but he did have a little bit of trouble figuring out the most efficient way to mount the beast.
He kept getting on and off this way for about five minutes.
Grandpa also sent along a cool wooden duck that Lincoln likes to pull around behind him and a tic-tac-toe game. Lincoln like to strategically place the circle pieces around the house (random is a strategy).
Thanks to Grandpa for the great stuff and the great example of charity and love in our lives. We love you Grandpa!
I had grand plans of writing up a wonderful Mother's Day post about... well, probably mothers I guess. Then, I didn't get it done before Mother's Day. Then, I sat down to the task on Mother's Day only to discover that we haven't taken a single picture on the nice camera since the last post. I did realize however, that I have a whole treasure trove of previously unreleased material locked inside my iPhone and Angel's iPod Touch. I spent a good while curating the material and transferring it to various more useful locations (my computer and YouTube). Then, I spent the rest of Mother's Day with the mothers in my life. Then I had stuff going on for a few days. Then, I sat down to write it again while Angel was at book club but blogger was down (so I played rock band instead). Then, I sat down just now to actually write this worthless information you hopefully haven't just read because I only wrote it as a poor justification of why this is a week late. Then, if you just read all of that I'll reward you with the knowledge that the word curating in the above wall of text is actually an unmarked link to some excellent bonus material that all the people who, like I would have, skipped the massive block of run on sentences to view the pictures and videos won't have the pleasure of viewing. Then, if you did read all this and viewed the bonus material you should leave a comment incorporating the word epic. Then, but actually before you leave the comment, you enjoy the other pictures and videos that I have some painstakingly arranged below. Enjoy!
Off we go! On a journey! Through pictures and video! And exclamation marks!
Make sure you're all packed up.
Don't forget the essential, like your glasses.
And your safety gear.
Make sure you've mailed off your taxes.
You could take your bike...
You might not get too far that way though.
Instead, maybe if you practice a lot (He did. For like an hour):
They may let you drive the train.
Just don't let them know about your narcolepsy...
Good times will be had by all! More exclamation marks!!!!!
Action and adventure!
There will be strange creatures!
Drama!
There will be weird cultural experiences!
Delicious Delicacies!
There will be, um... tea parties I guess!
There will be Krazy Kousins!
There will be family pictures!
There will definitely be shenanigans!
Now, you may be saying to yourself, "that sure was a fun journey but, it probably should have been like five posts instead of one." If you find yourself in that boat then to you I say, 'yup (and get out of my boat).'
Sunday, March 20, 2011
The hardest part of writing a blog post is the beginning. So, I'm not going to do that part...
BAM!!! Bowling pins!
It was Lincoln's birthday and these are the cupcakes we made for him. They were quite fun and I heard they were very good (I didn't actually eat one because I prefer not being diabetic). The cupcakes went along with a bowling theme because we held Lincoln's birthday party at... a bowling pin factory! ...I mean bowling alley! Here's a picture to prove it:
See, you can tell it's a bowling alley because you can kind of see some blurry non-descript balls in the dark background of the picture. Obviously a bowling alley. We also have some mental pictures to commemorate the occasion. (Note: you'll need to use you mind's eye to view these next few pictures (Some of those expensive home 3D glasses might work too but that's unverified)).
Here you see Lincoln pushing a ball down a little ramp thing towards the cowering pins.
Here's Lincoln's dad using all his manly muscles to hurl his ball at literally tens of miles per hour to destroy the poor defenseless pins' formation.
This is Lincoln's mom being thoroughly impressed with Lincoln's dad's bowling prowess and unmatched humility. The look on her face tells you that she is confident in the knowledge that the husband she chose has no equal.
If you asked me if we ever let Lincoln get up on the kitchen table I would say, "Absolutely not, that's not the kind of thing we tolerate at our house... at all... definitely not... and even if we did, we would at least make him take his shoes off.
Lincoln got a Buzz Lightyear Mr Potatohead...
...
I can't explain this picture any better than it explains itself.
Also, for any of you looking for comedy pointers, ramming a colorful sparkly thing in your mom's face is downright hilarious.
Lincoln also got a new bike for his birthday.
This is him pretending to ride it in the living room.
This is him pretending to ride it in the backyard.
This is him grappling with the concepts of peddling and steering (I'm sure he'll get it one day).
Luckily for him though the weather is starting to turn and that means he can get back into his element.
Because staying inside all winter can cause you to go into withdrawals. You'll start seeing slides in everything including, but not limited to, couch cushions, stairs, dad, and the hallway (you kind of have to do your own sliding on that last one since it's flat). When you're couped up inside though you have to deal with whatever playground equipment you can find:
Lincoln’s favorite spot—a wooden stool placed at the corner cabinet so he can “supervise” mom with all the sharp objects on her limited counter space.Today’s supervision requires a cheese grater, and a giant Costco-size brick of cheese.He struggles to lift the brick to the goal destination of the grater.After much effort (and grunting), he lifts the cheese into the vicinity of the grater.He thumps the brick on the counter, and takes a deep breath as he prepares for his reward of grated cheese.Up goes the grater…hmmm no cheese? Repeat the steps again and again.Still no cheese.One more time just to be sure.Then he sees the plate of already grated cheese…now it’s time to problem solve.He takes a handful of the cheese, and secretively places it under the grater.Lift the brick, thunk it down, and look underneath.“THERE IT IS!”
We just celebrated Linc's second birthday, so I decided to make a list things he’s problem solved
·Mom will change your bum a lot faster if you pull at your pants and say, “poopy.” (Just don’t confuse this word with “puppy.”)
·If mom takes your candy away, don’t cry, just ask for “Wendy.”
·Purposely lose the red heart that goes to the ball with different shaped holes.The heart is a pain--Dad says it only has one axis of symmetry.However, if you push hard enough most the shapes will fit in the hexagon hole…
·If you want mom to rerun the scene with the train from Toy Story, find the remote and take it to her.Things go faster that way.
·You can hold multiple balloons at the same time if you grab them by their belly button.
·Just because Nemo is on your Little Swimmer diaper, does not mean that it will play Nemo on the TV once placed in the DVD player
·Getting toys out the crib is a monkey trap
·Screaming “MOM” does not get Mom’s attention…”UH-OH” works much better. ( As a result Linc uses “uh-oh” similar to how teenagers use “like.”)
·If you see an arrow, make your finger follow it…especially if it’s a button on an ipod because that unlocks all kinds of possibities.
·If you want to go “Bye, bye” walk around the house: look for your hat with your hands on your head, find your shoes, find a coat, wear a belt on the outside of the coat, and turn off all the lights.Then get impatient when your parents aren’t ready.
·It is impossible to get your feet “unstuck” from the feetsie jammies
Story time in mom and dad's bed is the best time of the day.
We tried to start December off right by taking Lincoln to go see Santa Claus. Here's the best picture we got:
Not unlike many children, Lincoln wasn't too keen on the idea of going to see a large unfamiliar man with a beard all dressed in red. Well, see for yourself:
If you noticed, Lincoln had no problem taking candy from the stranger though (we may have failed as parents on that front but, the relatively recent Halloween experiences didn't help us much).
Christmas was lots of fun. We stayed home and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, and took almost no pictures. Here's the only good one:
Frog hat from Grandpa, trains from Grandma, riding on Mom's lap on my way to Wendy's house on Christmas morning. It doesn't get better (Wendy lives less than a mile away, don't turn us into social services please).
We did take a video of Christmas morning though when Lincoln came out to see what Santa brought him (it's kind of long, we won't feel bad if you don't watch the whole thing).
For New Years we took a trip up to Idaho to visit Grandma and Grandpa and play with long lost cousins. Hopefully, someone else got some pictures of the cousins together because apparently we didn't... Here's what we got:
Sledding
Cold
Still cold
If you're thinking to yourself, that looks cold, you've got a pretty good grasp of the situation.
You know Dad, someday in the not too distant future I'll probably fall into that creek around this time of year and make you jump in after to save me. Won't that be fun?
It wasn't actually all that cold, relative to say, liquid nitrogen but we really didn't stay out there too long. We did have a wonderful time playing with Chloe and Leyla, meeting Shane, talking with him and Kelsey (congratulations to them!) and just spending time with family. A good time was had by all.
So, it turns out, the only thing in November I found interesting enough to take pictures of were gingerbread houses. So, that's all you get. Here are the two annual gingerbread houses we made this year. The first one is the one we made to give to Grandma Whittier.
Such a festive scene.
Why does the man behind the door have a grenade!
What a beautiful design Tyson made (my main contribution).
Oh no! They're coming though the windows!
Sniper on the roof!
Thanks to all of our armed forces (especially Chuck).
And here's the gingerbread house we made to live at our house:
If you try really hard, you may be able to find one or two references to Disney and Mickey Mouse.
These are the Mickey hands I made to come out of the chimney (my only contribution to this one).
The Mickeys became a bit of a game of oneupmanship between Angel and her sister Wendy. I think Angel won.
They made it through the holidays mostly intact although Lincoln did manage to sneak a few Dots... from both of them.
