Daddy/Daughter Evening

To appease all my blog-going fans out there -- but mostly to appease my wife, who demanded it -- Emma and I had a Daddy/Daughter evening last Thursday night. As you may recall, I used to spend each Monday at home with Emma while Lauralee worked, until "The Man" told me I couldn't work 4 10-hour days any more and couldn't have Mondays off.

Last Thursday Lauralee went straight from work up to Ogden to spend the evening with friends, leaving me (in a very bold move) to watch Emma all evening. I got home from work and found that she had been good for my mom all day. I naturally assumed that she had therefore used up her allotted good behavior for the day and would be a pill for the rest of the evening. But she was great. She drank her whole bottle and had fun playing with me on the floor. Then we went outside for a little while. I thought it would be a good time to get some cute pictures of her. She especially makes funny faces on the grass -- she has a love/hate relationship with the lawn. She loves to feel it with her hands but not so much with her feet, legs, neck, arms, neck and head.

Here she is in an abnormally happy mood for sitting on the grass.

Then I thought it would be cute to get a self-picture of the two of us. I was so concerned about getting the camera at the right angle that I didn't realize what Emma was doing until I took the picture and looked at the camera screen to see this:

Yes, she's eating a leaf.

After that, I fed her a lovely dinner of apple/cinnamon/granola mush and mixed vegetable mush. For dessert? A handful of those baby food thingys that kind of look like the non-marshmallow Lucky Charms bits -- you know, the ones you eat first so that you end up with bowl full of milk and marshmallows....mmmmmm....

Pssst! Emma! Ya got a little sumthin on your face!

She was such a good baby all night. She was happy and fun and went right to sleep for me too, which left me with plenty of time to slide around the hardwood floors in my underwear singing "Old Time Rock and Roll" into a mop handle. In sunglasses. And my underwear.

Just some updated pictures

Our baby grows cuter everyday. I can't believe she is already 9 months old. She is doing the army crawl now and getting into a lot more things. I've even seen her pull herself to her feet a few times. She has also started to hear the work "no" alot but just pauses for a second, gives me big smile and then continues doing what she wants. Her new thing is waving to people. We had a neighborhood party tonight and she just sat there all cute waving at everyone she saw. So here are some cute updated pictures of our little girl.

Bucket Head!

Emma discovered the videos!

Doing pull-ups on the coffee table.

Trying to get that remote - she loves it.

Helping me with the laundry!

Summer Fest!

About two weeks ago Bountiful City held their annual Summer Fest with food, crafts, music, and dancing from countires around the world. These people come from all over the world to little Bountiful just for this festival and our hosted in people's homes. While watching the news one morning I was reminded that is was starting and seeing that Quinn and I have never benn and I really didn't feel like cooking that night we decided to check it out. The day was hot but we loaded up Emma and the stroller and headed out. This also fell on the day before the olympics were to begin and we arrived just in time for the open ceremony where they have all the counties line up and march in with their flag and in full costume. They all looked so beautiful and we were excited to see how our country was going to represented. We think they were dressed for square dancing or clogging we didn't stay late enough to see.

We had dinner from the Colombian stand - chicken/beef empanadas and grilled corn-on-the-cob. Then we hit the Navajo booth for a piece of flat bread smoothered with cinnomon honey butter. It was all really good. We walked around and looked at all the booths and then stayed to watch the first two countries dance, Costa Rica and Greece.

The Colombian food booth

Our messy eater!

The Olympic Flag!

Greece

Costa Rica

One of the Merchandise Booths

A funny thing happened on the way to the post office

It started out as a simple task: mail a package at the post office for Lauralee. It kind of ended up like a Seinfeld episode.

I have been working at my new job in Midvale for about 3 months and I'm still not very familiar with this area of the valley. I Internet searched for a post office near my work so I could go on my lunch break. There was one close by: 35 Center Street, Midvale. I briefly glanced at the accompanying map and saw that Center Street is right off of State Street, which is right near where I work. "That'll be easy enough to find," I thought to myself.

At lunch I drove towards where I thought I remembered Center Street being. I drove and drove and drove. "Hmm," I thought to myself after awhile, "I'm in Sandy now." Midvale had come and gone, and I never saw a Center Street. So I needed to turn around but couldn't, because there is a chasm so large in the turn lane on State Street that I'm pretty sure they've been filming Journey to the Center of the Earth there.

After my massive detour just to reverse directions, I drove north on State Street, past my original starting point, thinking that maybe I had read the map wrong and gone the wrong direction. I drove and drove. Past Hooters. Past Night Flight Comics. Past Dr. Johns Novelties and Lingerie. Past "Get Some" Guns and Ammo. Past Christian Ministries Gift Store. "Uh-oh," I thought, after I'd passed my 23rd car dealership, "I'm in Murray." The only place for me to turn around now was in a car lot, where I was accosted by salesmen. I managed to run one over and winged another. A third one held on to my windshield wipers for dear life. I turned the wipers on and even sprayed the wiper fluid but he remained unfazed and shouted at me over the sporadic honking of my horn that he would have to clear it with his manager, but that he had an awesome deal for me. I finally rolled down the window and started whacking his knuckles with a snow scraper -- one by one until he slid down the hood and off the car. As I drove away I heard him shout "I had Jazz tickets to give away!"

Anyway -- where was I? Oh yes, the elusive Center Street. Since I'd been driving for about 15 minutes by now and didn't want to drive 15 more minutes looking for Center Street, I decided to head back to work, verify the address, and print that stupid map. Parking at my work is horrible and there are never any parking spaces even remotely close to the building I work in. I was going to park in the 'visitor' parking since I would be inside for only a moment. But of course, all the visitor spots were full. So I parked in front of a fire hydrant, crossed myself (there's got to be a Catholic saint of parking violations) and ran inside to my desk.

Closer examination of the map lead me to this important fact: "Center Street" has a second name, which is 7720 South. How a street called 7720 south can be in the center of anything is beyond me. This is a real beef I have with Mapquest. Mapquest, like so many out-of-state visitors I talk to, is totally befuddled by the fact that our streets here have numbers instead of names. So anytime a street has both a name and a number (even if the name is 50 years old and not found on any street signs) Mapquest habitually lists the name. Case in point: Mapquest's insistance that 800 West, the main "through" street in Woods Cross, is actually "Onion Street." Ask any Woods Crossian (I haven't looked that up on dictionary.com, but it should be a word) where Onion Street is and you will get a blank stare. Or possibly a zucchini. But you won't get an answer because none of us have ever called it Onion Street. It probably hasn't been known as Onion Street since the Great Onion Famine of 1907.

Anyway -- where was I? Oh yes, the elusive 7720 South. Armed with my map, I headed back to my car. There was no parking ticket on it, but as I got into my car, who did I see walking toward me? Why, it was the guy at our work in charge of safety, security, facilities and (of course) parking. Was he just walking to the other building, or did he want to talk to me? I don't know, because I started the car and floored it out of there before he got to me.

I headed to the 7720 South, immediately made a wrong turn, and ended up in a residential subdivision. "This is an interesting place for a post office to be..." Reversing my course, I unknowingly drove right past the post office, which was set off the road a little ways. I was looking at the wrong side of the street, and all I saw was an abandoned building and an empty parking lot. Is the post office gone? I reversed direction again and was about to give up when I saw it: shining through the trees like a holy grail (an actual grail, not the conspiracy of a secret royal bloodline of the offspring of Mary Magdalene).

I parked the car and opened the back seat to get the package. Lauralee had written the address on a post-it note and stuck it to the top of the box. I took the box out of the car and put it under my arm and the instant I did so, the wind gusted and blew the address right off of the box and halfway across the parking lot. But the wind didn't stop. I casually walked toward it, because it's impossible to not look like a dork when you're chasing after a piece of paper in the wind. I thought that the wind would stop any moment, and I could non-chalantly catch up to the paper and pick it up. But no. That wind kept blowing. I had no choice but to run after it (still with package under arm). The wind toyed with me a few times, but whenever I got within a few feet of the paper, it blew a little further. It blew over to the next parking lot. It blew to the park strip. It blew to the gutter. Then a big pickup truck drove by really fast, and it blew into traffic. Two lanes of traffic. In each direction. Plus a turn lane. Yep, for about 5 minutes, I stood there and watched my little piece of paper swirl around in traffic, get run over, and swirl around some more in 5 lanes of traffic. I wasn't in the mood to play life-sized, first-person Frogger,

Play
Frogger

so I waited until traffic died down so I could run into the street and get it. Eventually the paper ended up all the way across the street, stuck in the weeds of the park strip of an abandoned building. As traffic died down, I took one step into the road and waited for the last car to pass me when I noticed something: that last car was an undercover police car. Great. I have no idea if anyone still writes tickets for jaywalking, but I figured I'd already pressed my luck with the fire hydrant and didn't want to tempt fate. So as long as the police car sat at the red light, waiting to turn, I stood there on the edge of the road, also waiting for him to turn. I kept an eye on the paper, too, which flapped precariously in the breeze but stayed put in the weeds. Finally, the cop turned and left my sight. I waited for traffic to die down again, and I sprinted across the street (package still under my arm) toward the paper. By this time, a woman walking along the sidewalk had stopped -- unbeknownst to her -- somewhere near my paper. As I got halfway through the street, I realized that this lady might think I'm sprinting toward her, and, given the location (empty parking lot at abandoned building) might freak out. But at this point, I didn't even care. I needed that dang paper. In the end, I think she was oblivious to me running across the street, but I bet she found it funny that I picked up what she thought was a random piece of garbage and put it in my pocket.

Sweaty and windblown, I entered the post office, waited in the shortest post office line ever, and mailed the package without any issue.

Note to Carly: you'd better enjoy that stinkin' package!

Quinn

Emma - Eight Months Old!

It was time for new portraits and so here are our updated pictures of the most beautiful girl on the planet. We love her so much and she is just too cute that we had to buy them all.

The Tree House Museum

I guess I've been busy because its been a while since I've posted anything. All is well. Emma gets cuter by the day. A few weeks ago Emma and joined my Mom in taking two of my cousins to the Tree House Museum in Ogden. My brother also tagged along to help with the kids and he had nothing else to do. I think Kaylee and Ryan had fun but most of the activities were too old for Emma. I think we'll go again when she is a little older. But here are a few fun pictures:

Ryan helping Emma down the slide!

The kids on the Fire Truck!

Kaylee

Emma

Lavenders Wild Kingdom

We should open an animal sanctuary.

When we first moved into the house, we had the Great Mouse Hunt, of course (if you haven't heard that story I'd be happy to share it).

After the mousecapade, we uncovered the garden our first spring to discover snakes! Lots and lots of snakes! They were mostly little snakes, but there were a few medium-sized ones too (I didn't tell Lauralee about those). I even found a snake with blue eyes! It was really cool. The snakes have mostly subsided too. There was one that I used to wake up on our side lawn every Spring with the lawnmower, but I haven't seen him at all this year. Maybe he packed up and moved away...

We've got our fair share of snails. They don't cause us too many headaches. It sure is thought-provoking to see them crawl up onto our aluminum siding in the cool of the morning and find them roasted to death by the hot afternoon. The circle of life.

Earwigs? Oh yeah. They're all over the place. They have a taste for anything that Lauralee plants.

Wasps love our house for some reason. They build nests outside in every nook and cranny that they can find. Some nooks and crannies are unbuildable, luckily, because they're already full of old nests from years past.

We've got lots of little birds that call our yard home. They especially come out after the sprinklers have been on. We've got the standard robins and sparrows, but also some magpies, and a cute little family of morning doves that built a nest in the tree by our patio. At least once a year I find a baby bird who is hanging out by our back fence and is learning to fly.

Certainly we can't forget about the multitude of stray cats fed by our crazy cat-loving neighbors. They roam all over the neighborhood, not just our yard, but they enjoy digging up some of Laura's flowers, scratching at the dirt in our front yard, and pooping all over the garden.

We also have the pleasure of seeing a family of hawks that fly by frequently. They live a few streets over but like to fly past our house on their way to the field beyond our backyard. It's fun to watch them circle the field for food or take a break on the fencepost.

Well, last night while I was turning off the sprinklers I found a new and exciting creature to add to our list. Two creatures, actually: raccoons! I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I heard some rustling out along the back fence. This is usually stray cat territory, but I turned the flashlight over there and sure enough, there were two raccoons hanging out on a fallen branch. I'd never been so close to a raccoon that wasn't squashed in the middle of a road. I walked over to them to see what they would do and they just stared at me until I guess I finally entered their "uh-oh zone." One of them scurried over and hopped the fence into the neighbor's yard, but the other one shot straight up the tree it was sitting next to. That was unexpected. So now I'll be on the lookout to see if the raccoons come back. I hope they do. I've named them Batman and Robin, because there are two of them, and they both wear masks.

Quinn