Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Easter post - yeah it's a few months old

Since I was on a photo kick, I also organized some other pictures that Malia has taken on her camera. She took pictures over Easter when she got her bike. I'm not sure why there are half a dozen pictures of her Candyland game. It may be part of a plot to guilt my mom into playing with her again. Malia stacks the deck when she plays the game. I don't know exactly how she does it and it just may be dumb luck after all, but she always wins. She manages to get the right special cards to jump way ahead on the board, and always manages to get my mom to have the card that sends her way back near the beginning when she's close to the end and winning. Yep, my daughter is a Candyland shark and has now been banned from play for several months now. Maybe around Christmas time we'll play with her again. If she can refrain from cheating.

As a bonus to these pictures there are quite a few (blurry - sorry!) pictures of Hannah crawling around. She looks so adorable. Well, as adorable as you can look when you are blurry.

Enjoy!

Pre and Post Adventure to the Zoo

It appears that I am an idiot because I'm having difficulty figuring out this new gallery that I'm setting up. So you'll just have to click a link to actually see the pictures until I can figure it out. Also, I can't get her actual pictures from the zoo to load up so you get to see the pre-zoo and post-zoo ones.

On with the fun. Prior to going to the Zoo on Sunday, I replace the batteries in Malia's camera. She wandered around the house taking pictures while I was getting things ready to head to the zoo. I think my favorite is the picture she took of the light switch. Apparently she liked the way it looked against the green. You can't tell it's green because the flash on her camera went a little bright. I haven't figured out how to turn it on or off yet.

Enjoy!

After we left the zoo and jumped in the car to head home apparently Malia decided to take some pictures. I had no idea that she even took these until I was unloading pictures from her camera. I wondered why she was giggling the entire ride home. Now that I think about it, I should have noticed a flash. It appears that the flash on her camera is auto-adjust to light. That makes it even cooler than I previously believed.

Enjoy!

I promise to continue trying to get the actual zoo pictures up as soon as possible.

Friday, September 26, 2008

Hogle Zoo visit

I'm messing around with my MobileMe account and I'm not sure how to connect everything up yet. Go here for the Zoo post until I can figure stuff out.

Unless I figure out something really cool, I'm not going to continue with that blogging attempt. I am now too tired and irritated to post the stuff here so I'll do it tomorrow.

I've got some good adventures coming up

I really enjoy teasing people with the future of posts of mine. Rugrat and I hit up the zoo yesterday with Aunt Allee. After a slight delay in start, we had a grand old time. I actually took pictures so I'll put together a slide slow post about it tonight while I'm getting angry at the Presidential debates. I know I shouldn't watch because it's just going to make me pissy, but I can't stop myself. After the fun of the zoo we hit up the DI and got some sweet items. That's a whole other post of fun. And, the piece de resistance will be happening tomorrow. We'll be attending the Gem Faire. That's right, it'll be a grand old time.

Just thought I'd give you all a teaser so you knew I was thinking of you.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Brigham City Municipal Airport Appreciation Day

Not all the time when we head up to visit the parents do we just sit around all weekend and just hang out. Occasionally random fun things come up for us to do. Krissy called and invited Malia and I to head on out to the Airport Appreciation Day. They just recently finished up adding a new runway. Now, I know most of you are thinking what, Brigham City doesn't have an airport. Au Contraire my friends, it's just really small. Think Airport 2 small in the SLC Valley except I think that one may be slightly larger than the Brigham one. Anyway, apparently with this new runway they can now land up to a 737 size airplane. Pretty sweet eh? Yeah, I don't really know, it just sounds cool.

We were lured out by the promise of free hotdogs and soda. Unfortunately either they didn't plan for many people or they just forgot to say when they would be available because we go there before one and they were packing up the grill already. That tells me they'd stopped cooking hotdogs awhile ago because you sort of have to wait for it to cool down before breaking it down. They did still have some desserts left which you will see in the pictures. I have encountered the elusive candy bar on a stick. This one didn't have the candy coating stuff on it, but they were still delicious.

I didn't have my real camera with me so the pics aren't super good. Plus it was really windy and so it was hard to get shots that didn't have hair in the way. Haylee and Malia got to get in ambulances, University Hospital Life Flight helicopter and some crazy contraption some guy in Layton is still building which appears to be a one-person helicopter. Or as Rob called it "death trap". Enjoy!


Thursday, September 18, 2008

Political Rant - may contain cursing

I have to admit a real disappointment in my gender. Recently all I hear and see are references to women throwing their hat in with McCain now that he has picked Palin as his running mate and Clinton is no longer in the race. This pick completely banks on Hillary supporters only being supporters because she is a woman, not because of her stance on issues. The posts I've read and comments I've overheard even outright admit that it's because she's a woman (I'll have to look them up, I'm too tired and irritated to do it right now). I have a real problem with this. I am not even remotely opposed to women being high up in government and I would have gladly voted Clinton come Election Day were she to be an option. NOT because she is a woman though. Her stances on most issues most closely reflect mine out of all the candidates over the last year and a half of campaigning. That is what my choice was based on, not that she is a woman.

These women who have determined they now support McCain when six months ago he was considered the devil to them because he was in opposition to their chosen female candidate should lose the vote. Frankly too many women over the years fought too hard to have a say in what happens in government for some to throw that away in my opinion. You should vote for the person you think would do the best job and who has beliefs and stances on subjects that are how you feel. You don't switch based on gender of the candidate. Palin and Clinton are nearly direct opposites when it comes to stance and policy. They don't believe in the same things nor would they fight for the same things. For women to make a switch because "She's a woman, she'll do stuff for me even though we don't agree on any issues and I really just want a woman up there because it's about damn time a woman was in the big time" is stupid and bullshit. Yes, I just called them all stupid and I just don't care anymore. To be fair, it's certainly possible that those who have now determined they are voting for Palin carried the same beliefs all along and were only backing Clinton because she was a woman, but my comment stands.

You shouldn't base your decision on who should be President and Vice President of the United States based on the gender of the person or even the race of the person. These are not what makes the person qualified or not qualified for the position. Also, why the big hubbub over experience in general? I don't get it. NONE of the candidates who have been part of the race have ANY experience being President of the United States. NONE!!

I honestly don't care who people vote for come Election Day if they are voting for who they truly believe will be the best person for the job. That's how I will make the choice. You look at the candidates and what they say and more importantly what they do to back up what they say and you make a decision on who you think should be elected. It's not difficult. It won't kill you to be informed. Don't vote for someone because that's how everyone else you know votes, or that's how your parents or your third cousin's uncle's sister votes. Inform yourself and make an INFORMED decision.

Sorry about the rant, but lately it's been driving me batty. Maybe I'm wrong though and it's all about which oppressed group's turn it is to have someone in a position of authority.

I do agree with Palin on one thing though. I too have no clue what the hell the Vice President does.

edit: I found out what the VP does. Wikipedia is helpful.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Two unrelated pictures

Yesterday a friend and I did some recon at the nearby Harmon's grocery store for additions to our Zombie Apocalypse Preparation kits and encountered the following:

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I think they meant spigots. At least I hope that's what they meant, because that's what was in the basket.

Today I've decided that my boss may finally be dropping over the edge into true insanity. I glanced over to ask him a question and he told me to talk to the apple. This is the apple:

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I'm not entirely sure what to make of this outside of insanity. That or he's in a good mood because he's on vacation for the entirety of next week.

Monday, September 15, 2008

Another conversation with Malia

Malia and I went to the Hogle Zoo yesterday. I'll wait while you recover from the shock. I know it's a surprising thing. Because it's nearing the end of the visit of the white aligator, and she managed to behave all week without a big tantrum or snotty mouth, I bought her one of the stuffed white aligators. Okay, mostly because they were half off the regular price and I still got my 20% as a member after the 50% off. I like to think that I'd have bought it otherwise, but I probably wouldn't because I'm too cheap. Malia decided while we were at the zoo (on the carousel in fact) that her alligator's name would be George. Yeah, I don't know either. I thought it was settled until I had the following conversation in the parking lot of her daycare this morning;

Photobucket: Grab George and let's get inside.
Photobucket: Mother, I told you that's not my alligator's name.
Photobucket: Um, you didn't, but okay, what is your alligator's name now?
Photobucket: white alligator
Photobucket: That's not really a name, that's just describing what it is.
Photobucket: Well, then what is the name of the white alligator at the zoo.
Photobucket: Well, there wasn't a name on the sign so I guess it doesn't have one.
Photobucket: Then if the one at the zoo doesn't have to have a name, mine doesn't either.

After delivering that last line, she walked off to the door. I really couldn't argue with her logic. Sometimes I feel like the kid, not the parent. Welcome to the loony bin, white alligator. Also, I am not a chocolate caramel and candy coated pretzel, but it just looked so yummy I decided to use it to represent me in the conversation.

Friday, September 12, 2008

Another post a long time in the works (AKA I'm lazy)

It's finally my turn to toss up pictures for others to steal. I have another lovely post that I've been meaning to toss up for awhile. Kami brought Hannah down a couple of months ago for her first visit to Hogle Zoo. She loved it! The day we were there happened to be opening day for the Conservation Carousel so there were people dressed up and they handed out cotton candy. Nothing like free sugar to start the day off right. There are pics from when we went to breakfast beforehand. I'm way too lazy to post each picture individually. This shouldn't come as a surprise since I'm just now getting around to uploading the pictures and creating a couple of slideshows. Photobucket only allows for 50 pics per slideshow so I had to split all the pics into two slideshows.






Maybe I'll add videos later, but they aren't really exciting. If you have an overwhelming desire to see videos of a pacing cheetah, weirdly calm meerkats, and I think there is one of me trying to get Hannah to pay attention to me, please let me know and I'll get around to posting them sometime this year.

Quickie

I'm sure all of you know my feelings on the subject of the 3 Star Wars movies and the 3 Star Wars ripoff attempts for more money. I just found this quote on Great White Snark and had to share because I completely agree:

"One day, I’d like to see “Star Wars enthusiast” become synonymous with “American” and anyone who enjoys the prequels be labeled “pinko commies.” That’s the world I want to live in."

This is what procrastination on my part gets you...

It's a blog of all blogs today. Seeing as I've been behind on updating with many fun adventures. Also, these are not in any order other than the one I've inadvertantly created by uploading the pictures associated.

Malia and I went to the Willow Park Zoo in Logan a few months ago. We happened to be there on a day of fun where they had a Curious George theme going. We spent the majority of the time there avoiding the dude dressed as the Man in the Yellow Hat and the one dressed as a clown. Malia wasn't too bothered by the clown guy, but he bore WAY too much resemblance to Pennywise for my comfort level. That aside it was nice to wander through and check out all the birds. They don't have many animals, but it's a peaceful little zoo. Malia loves the playground there because there are swings and slides and apparently it gets no better in life than that. This picture was taken at the tail end of the trip which you can see in the what the crap are you making me do mother? look on Malia's face:

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A couple weeks ago on the one weekend in August we didn't head up to Brigham, Malia and I hit up the Hogle Zoo. Do you sense a theme here? If not, wake up. We wandered around as usual and she harassed me into taking a picture of her sitting on the brass Tiger statues in the Asian Highlands. The Asian Highlands is the newer area they built over the original cat house. Yes dad, I said it, the cat house! Is it bad that I'm 32 years old, but I still have the sense of humor of a 12 year old boy?

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Another fun day was the day eBay had our summer employee party at Lagoon. This was Malia's first trip to Lagoon and she absolutely loved it. Her favorite parts of the day were riding on the Puff the Fire Dragon kids coaster and the Log Flume Ride where my butt got all wet. She barely got wet at all, but was more than a little excited that I ended up with water soaking both sides and the butt of my pants. I am pretty sure it took at least an hour to all dry. Malia was excited that they had hot dogs at the BBQ so all was good in the world even though she said the train ride was not as fun as the one at Hogle Zoo. Here is the lone picture I managed during the whole day:

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Well over a year ago my sister Kami had a party celebrating Hannah's blessing. There was much fun and I just found this picture I snapped of my cousin's boy Cayden wearing Malia's princess crown. No real story there, just thought it was funny. You can also see in the picture that this is pre-hair chopping off for Malia.

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Another phone picture I discovered. This is one of Malia's favorite outfits to wear:

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My most recent adventure was not one really involving Malia except that it was for her class at school. Her teacher asked if I could help out with some things at home since my work schedule doesn't really allow for me to come help in the classroom during the day. Of course I said I would do what I could. I received a stack of 12 of these:

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Which I then was tasked with tearing out all the pages and grouping them together by page number. Do you know how much fingers hurt after spending 3 1/2 hours tearing about reading workbooks? I still don't understand why they can't give the kids the actual books instead of just the individual papers at a time. Did I mention there are 151 pages in this thing? ARGH! Anyway, here is what I ended up with:

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I also made the apparently inappropriate choice of working on these while sitting on my bed and sort of watching TV. Have any of you seen that Hole in the Wall show on Fox? It's painfully addictive and even though it hurt to watch, I couldn't bring myself to change the channel. Especially the larger people who it doesn't matter how you bend, there is no way your fat butt is fitting through that hole. Anyway, since after tearing out the first book one page at a time I came up with the brilliant plan to just use a razor blade to slice through the pages instead. I say brilliant because I managed to not cut myself one single time. Anyone who knows me knows how impressive this is. Unfortunately the razor cuts didn't always match so I ended up creating a little bit of confetti... which I now get to sleep with each night until I change my sheets because I can't get it all off.

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Maybe I'll keep up to date better so you all don't get marathon posts like this to slog your way through.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Fun conversation with Malia

Sometimes I have the most odd, yet entertaining conversations with Malia. The way her mind works cracks me up and creeps me out sometimes. We were chatting on the drive up to Peach Days last weekend when the following conversation occurred just after we passed Smith & Edwards.

Photobucket Image Hosting: Mother, I've decided what I want to be when I grow up.
Photobucket Image Hosting: Oh yeah?
Photobucket Image Hosting: I've decided I want to be a cowboy when I grow up, only I'll be a girl, not a boy.
Photobucket Image Hosting: I thought you were going to be a Marine Biologist. What changed your mind?
Photobucket Image Hosting: There are scary things under the ocean and I decided I don't want to swim with them.
Photobucket Image Hosting: Okay, then what are you going to do when you are a cowgirl.
Photobucket Image Hosting: I think I'll ride horses and wrestle some cows. I might even wrestle some bulls too if I get big enough.
Photobucket Image Hosting: ...

There you have it. My daughter wants to grow up to ride horses and wrestle cows and bulls. I don't really know how I feel about this, but it's entertaining. I love her definition of what it means to be a cowgirl.

Before anyone asks, she does indeed call me mother. Either when she has something she considers really important to talk about or when she's angry with me. It's rather entertaining.

Monday, September 8, 2008

Peach Days 2008

Peach Days is just about the best time of year. It's not that it's much different than your run of the mill festival or carnival, it's just that it's "ours". I've never missed a Peach Days and I've only missed the parade once (Paul's Patch employee Number One!). I apologize in advance for there not being many pictures, but I rarely take my camera with me because then I'd have one less hand for carrying yummy food!

Friday evening Malia and I got to my parents about 7:00. This was about an hour later than I'd planned, but I blame traffic. Stupid people taking my sneaky backroads and making them all backed up. I think I spent an hour between Bountiful and Farmington. My brother with his impeccable timing decided to call just as we were getting ready to walk down and get some dinner so we didn't head down until after 7:30. I decided to hold off on the Scuba Burger and have one with Mel and Ryan, so after we got our peach cobbler (yummy!), I headed to the pulled pork line while the parents took Malia to get a hot dog and get themselves Scubas. I love the pulled pork sandwich place because it's not just the sandwich. They give you baked beans which are wonderful and they make these peach fritter things that I'm going to attempt making if I can find decent peaches. After some massive Malia wrestling on the part of all three of us, random distractions of Dad by every person we walked past, and not giving in to my desire to duct tape my daughters mouth shut permanently, we got back to the house and had dinner.

Bright and early Saturday morning Kami arrived with Hannah and the race to get ready to go to the parade began. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get a 5 year old ready who is both excited beyond belief and not wanting to do anything you ask? Trust me when I say it's no party. Eventually we got going with the parents and met up with Krissy and Haylee and Rob. We got to our prime spot in front of Zions Bank (thank you Krissy's work) and sat down to wait. Here are a couple of pictures that I've shamelessly stolen from my sisters blog of us waiting for the parade to begin.
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It was near impossible to get us all looking at the camera so Kami just finally gave up and went with this one.

We made it through the parade, took all our stuff back and then headed down to find some lunch. We bypassed the stuff by the Scuba burgers and headed down past the carnival and rides with Malia hollering the entire time about how she NEEDED to ride a ride right then. We were able to distract her, but only with the promise that she'd get to ride something later in the day. We ended up hitting the booth put on by the La Familia restaurant in Logan. Holy huge burrito. I'm pretty sure it was almost as big as my head, and I have a pretty big head. They also had some pretty good tamales. Malia had water and spent most of the time the parents and I were eating complaining about how she just wanted a hot dog. We finished up eating and then wandered through a few booths. Malia got some lovely butterfly fairy wings. I got a sweet paperweight that I've just realized I left on my parents mantleplace of a dragon. I talked my dad into buying one that was a southwest scene with wolves for mom. It's pretty sweet. Hopefully I will remember to get mine when I visit next time. Grr, I can't believe I forgot it. Soon after finding the wings, we found a book booth and mom got some new peek-a-boo books that Hannah loves to replace the ones that are falling apart having been used through multiple grandkids by now. Mom also got a really cool book on Africa that has pieces so you can put together a diorama of animals. I think she and Malia are going to put it together next time we're up there and maybe I'll remember to do pics. We grabbed Malia a hotdog because that's the only thing she'd eat and headed back for lunch and naptime.

Well, naptime didn't actually start for Malia until approximately 10 minutes before everyone started showing up for the late afternoon fun. Mel and Ryan got there and after a brief (okay maybe half an hour) delay including a tour of the parents house, we headed down for the fun. All Malia wanted was to ride some rides, so she got to do some of the inflatable slides and obstacle course. Then we wanted through some booths and bought some frogs. Here's to hoping she doesn't kill them off like she did the fish. After we were done wandering and gave up the quest to find a deep fried twinkie we went back to the inflatables and Malia had some more fun. Oh, and I wasn't looking for the twinkie for me, I was just hoping to find where they were so I could direct dad the right way. We ran into Krissy and Haylee so the riff raff got to do some sliding and bouncing together and then we ran into Natalie with Ava and Dylan. So, I ended up being the adult supervision to take Malia, Haylee, and Dylan on the Carousel. I wouldn't have gone on it except they had no seatbelts and I didn't trust Haylee to be able to retain her seat on the horse if she got too excited. Here is a lovely slideshow of pictures of Malia on various slides courtesy of Ryan's iPhone (man, I want one).



After this fun, we again headed for food and got our Scuba burgers (
mmmm, finally had my Scuba burger. It's the best burger and pretty close to the only one I have all year long) and headed back to my house where Mel and Ryan were again subjected to crazy Kelly family entertainment. Ryan and Mel can now vouch for the fact that I can be out-talked though so that's possibly a good thing. Hope you guys had fun at your first Peach Days and that my family didn't scare you too much. =)

I did manage to miss out on the book sale this year, but I'm holding up okay with the loss. Malia passed out on snuggling with me at around 9:00 Saturday night and didn't wake up when I took her into bed so I call the day a complete success.

Friday, September 5, 2008

School Fundraiser

I only spammed a few people with this information since I'm such a kind person. However, I figured I might as well toss this up and see if anyone that reads this that I didn't spam is interested. Malia's school is doing a fundraiser and they are selling chocolates and wrapping paper and I think there might be little gifts or candles. I don't know, I didn't look at everything. Anyway, if you are interested, you can go directly to the website and anything you buy will be credited to Malia. The school gets 50% of the price.

If you can't get that other link to work, go here and just use Malia's seller number
(284821) at checkout or by clicking the Give Credit button on the top right just under the search box and she'll get credit as well.

If you don't want to buy anything, that's cool, I don't mind either way. What little I looked at though is pretty cool. Oh, and if you don't want to order online I have a paper order form and booklet that you can look through. I have it at work with me so swing by my desk. The last day for orders is September 18, 2008 so take a look now if you might be interested.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

The first day of Kindergarten (aka Mommy breakdown)

So, I managed to not actually cry for Malia's first day of Kindergarten, but it was a near miss. I did tear up and got the catchy breath thing, but no falling tears so YAY me!!! I think the main reason I even did that was because we were running behind and I happened to drop her off at daycare as all the kids were getting ready to get in line for the bus. Dializ (daycare owner) has an alarm and when it goes off all the grade school kids know to grab their backpacks and get in line to go outside and meet the bus. She practically knocked me over in her excitement.

In fact the first thing out of her mouth that morning was "It's my first day of kindergarten, mom. I get to go on the bus." I'm still unsure if she was more excited about school itself or getting to ride the bus there and back from daycare. That's the best part to me... that I don't have to worry about her getting lost. Dializ takes them out to meet the bus which picks up right in front of the school. At school they get off right outside their classroom and then get picked up in the same spot. Dializ also made them name tags with all their daycare information and stuff so that they get directed to the correct bus after school. She then meets them after they are done.

Since I had taken the day off, I ran back home and finally got her room organized. Mind you, it's not clean yet, but I got all the different bins and shelves and drawers in place so that we have somewhere to put all her toys. It's so cute and I'll have to put up a picture when we get everything put away. I got them to match the color scheme of her bedroom so we've continued the lavender, lime green and pastel blue and pink. Yes, I hate the pink, but what can I do?

I picked her up just as she was finishing up lunch back at daycare. I meant to pick her up before so we could have lunch for her first day, but I sidetracked myself with the organizing. I hate cleaning and stuff, but once I get going I have a hard time finding a stopping place. So, instead of lunch we ran to the library and then went home. Once we unloaded the joy from the library we walked over to the little Korean BBQ place in the strip mall near our home. They have a pretty good selection of ice cream so Malia got her bubble gum ice cream while I had a lovely lunch of egg rolls. I forgot how much I like their egg rolls so hopefully in the future I remember.

Malia then told me about her day. They learned the rules about the playground, the classroom, had a snack and then they learned about the letter B. I'm assuming there was more to it than just discussing big B and little b, but she got sidetracked talking about the playground and I could not get her back on track. Apparently the Kindergarten plays on the blue playground, but Malia got a look at the red playground and has decided that she can hardly wait until she gets to play on it. The red one is apparently far superior to the blue one and I think it's because the red one has swings. On a side note, we had to practice swinging for about half an hour when we went on our picnic in the park so she could be ready for school. She was disappointed that she didn't get to use her newly acquired swinging skills because the blue playground doesn't have any. She did delight in telling me that she did not get in trouble a single time all day long.

So after the ice cream we walked back home and started to put some stuff away in her room but decided we'd rather just have fun so we played some Wii, watched a little Hello Kitty (not my choice, I read a smut novel instead), and that was her first day of Kindergarten. Well, she did tell Grandma and Grandpa all about the riding the bus. Maybe after awhile the novelty will wear off, but I'm pretty sure it's going to remain her favorite part for now.

Oh, this is what she tried to get me to let her wear for her first day: Tried, but did not succeed.


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