First day of preschool, and a minor surgery

Thursday was the boys first day of fours preschool.

Last year they went to threes two days a week, so this year they are pros!

Still impossible to get them both to look at me and smile at the same time. This was the best
we could do.

Happy Noah entering his classroom.


Goofy Levi posing for me as I was leaving.


Hooray! No tears this year, which makes it much easier on mommy's heart to leave them.


Interjection by Jason, because Paige says this story is "embarrassing" and refuses to write it on the blog: Levi and Noah are apparently the highlight of their preschool. Not that I am bragging about their stellar behavior, because the highlights are usually for, uhhhhh... "mischievous" behavior. Not to disappoint, Levi had to come up with at least one antic on his first day back at preschool.

Sometimes Levi has a hard time remembering to put his underwear back on after using the bathroom. On the first day, he did manage to remember to put them back on, as well as his shorts and other clothing. Only problem... he couldn't get the undies pulled up "without any wrinkles." So instead, he came out of the bathroom with his underwear... on his head.

He gets this from his mother...

(Obviously pictures from around the house, not from the preschool incident.)

(Note: Those are his sister's pink undies, not his.)

Says the office coordinator at the school, who collects "Levi and Noah stories" to tell to her twin boys... "We LOVE your family!! And not just for the constant source of entertainment. Mrs. Richardson will soooo appreciate your boys. I was totally rolling on the floor watching her completely redress Levi."


Back to Paige...

Later in the day, poor Levi had to make a visit to the dermatologist to have this...


a pyogenic granuloma removed from his chest.


Not a pleasant procedure for a little boy, but smiling again by bath time.


Daddy took this gross picture of Levi's war wound. We are hoping they got the base so that sucker doesn't grow back. If it does, Daddy is taking him to that appointment!

You might be married to a country bumpkin, part II

Grandma sent some CDs with all of her pictures from Michigan. There were a few good ones, so round II is here...

Luke, lookin' mischievous...


I can only imagine how many times Grandpa heard "DAD! HOLD ON TO THEM SO THEY DON'T BREAK THEIR NECKS!!" yelled up at him. They seem to have survived just fine though...


I wonder if he climbed up here all by himself. And if anyone had a clue where he was when he was doing it...


This picture cracked me up. Ella looking grumpy, Levi and Noah looking goofy, and Isaac and Max looking on, probably thinking "Who are these crazy kids???"


Luke, driving the ol' John Deere...

Squeaky McGee

Levi discovered tonight that if he plugs his nose, holds his mouth shut, and blows really hard...

...his eyes squeak.

He wasn't convinced, being sure that "my eyes can't talk!" I told him it wasn't his nose, because it was plugged. Either way, it gave him great pleasure, and he walked around the house attempting to make himself pass out from excessive eye squeaking.

His mother and I were a little worried he might hurt something, so we told him to stop or he might pop his eyeballs.

Weird. Fairly cool... but weird.

And yes, I am pretty sure it is actually his eyes. I grabbed his nose and pinched it tight enough that I am sure no air was squeaking out his nose.

And no, no matter how hard I squeaze my own nose and blow... my eyes don't squeak. Bummer!

Shhhh, don't tell Paige...

...that I just found this by the garage light switch.

Saw it just as I reached to turn off the light.

Mere seconds after I had just groped around in the dark to turn on the light.

Yikes!

That snotty, wanna-be, so... you-know-woman as your best friend...

Have I posted this before? I don't think so, although I may have emailed it to a few of you. I ran across it today and figured I would upload this to youtube.

This was a message left on Paige's cell phone.

No, we have no idea who either of these girls are.

Yes, it was actually on her phone. I recorded it off the phone using the computer microphone.

No, she didn't have caller ID so we could call her back and give her a hard time...

Yes, we were laughing until our sides hurt the first time we heard it...

Put some pants on that kid!

Angie sent me this picture of Luke that she took on our Mexico trip a few months back. Too adorable...



A semi-related, pantsless anecdote...

Paige, yelling across the kitchen to Levi: Hey Levi! What happened your undies! Put them back on!

Paige, muttering to Jason, sitting at the table: I say those sentences far to often in this house for us to be a normal family...

I married a country bumpkin...

Judging by the 447 pictures on the camera when Paige and the kids returned from Michigan, approximately 93% of their waking hours were spent outdoors. Generally participating in some redneckish type activity. You might be a Michigan redneck if you...

Feed barnyard animals at the fair...


Compete in little kid tractor pulls...


Let the youngest slurp down copious quantities of sugary beverages...


Climb on piles of logs that weigh 5 times as much as they do. Seriously, isn't this the kind of thing you hear about on the news, and think "What kind of negligent parent would allow their child to be crushed by a 600 pound log!"


Gotta be a redneck tooth joke around here somewhere...


Feed barnyard animals in Grandpa's front yard...


Eat s'mores on the front yard for no reason at all...


Play on Grandpa's tractor...


Bath in municipal water fountains, in lieu of an actual bath...


Scarf down spaghetti with your country cousins (and likely destroy Grandma's carpet in the process)...


Attempt to guard your cheerios from your cousin. I believe Luke underestimated the sneakiness...


Ride Grandpa's pony...


Head to the waterpark, in lieu of a bath...


This could end very, very badly...


Camp out in the "back 40"...


Share s'mores with your little brother...


Rinse off in Lake Michigan, in lieu of a bath...




Then I fly out to Michigan, after a month of outdoor activities, and stay for one day before driving them all back across the country. And where do we go for the one adventure while I am there?

Indoors...

To the geeky kid's science museum...

If Paige ever posted on here, I am sure she could tell you all kinds of tales of the fun they had in Michigan. All "4H chick" jokes aside, their summer trip to Michigan is really one of the highlights of the year. They have so much fun running wild around the country, something they never get to do in Phoenix. Paige gets to spend some long quality time with her family, which she greatly appreciates since I dragged her out here to the barren wasteland. And I get a few weeks all to myself, which is something the anti-social introvert in me truly craves.

But it is always good to have them back home again...

Three movies I am itching to see...

In order of release...

District 9. I know nothing about it, other than that the trailer looked cool. And Peter Jackson was involved. Yeah, like the Lord of the Rings guy...


Surrogates. This preview looked cool enough, I went out and bought the comic book "graphic novel." It was a good story, although re-watching the trailer it would appear they changed the plot somewhat...


The Road. Read the book a while ago, before even seeing the trailer. I knew the movie was in the works, but delayed. Then I finally saw the trailer in the theater when I saw "Hurt Locker." This movie should be really good. The book was excellent. Dark. But good. (Sorry, only youtube I could find had this goofy lady talking at the beginning. Skip to 42 seconds for the trailer.)

Life is a vapor...

This is the husband of one of my high school classmates. She wrote on her Facebook when she posted it: "Please watch this...so good! So. Good. I hope to have the kids watch this when they are a couple years older, regardless of what happens to Z."

"Regardless of what happens to Z." I've got a hard time grasping the weight of that situation, at age 32, with three young kids. Pray for Mandy, Zac, their kids, their family, their faith...

More clunkers...

Apparently my rant the other day wasn't so far off base...

From here...

Producing new cars takes a lot of energy, too. Manufacturing a new Toyota Prius, to take one example dear to the hearts of Obama-voting conspicuous green consumers from Seattle to Madison, uses the equivalent of burning about 1,000 gallons of gasoline...

More obvious, and more galling, is the economic stupidity. If we could stimulate the economy by destroying consumer goods and replacing them with more expensive greenwashed alternatives, then we should all go burn down our houses and have Washington subsidize new ones with solar panels on the roofs and maybe little wind turbines out back. But neither an individual, nor a family, nor a nation is able to build wealth through the wanton destruction of assets

Another good article here...

And, the following videos, not for the squeamish...

A whole bunch more here...


OOOhhhhh, the humanity!!!



If only that had been on purpose... could have stimulated the Zeppelin industry!

Why adopt?

At some point here, Paige and I will have to do a post on how we came to the decision to adopt. But for now, I'll let Paige's cousin do the explaining for me. They are adopting from Ethiopia as well, and have been waiting forever for their boys. They wrote a letter to their agency, and Jason explains in two sentences the bottom line motivation...

As Christians, we owe everything to God’s relentless, pursuing, patient love for us in Christ. When I was powerless and helpless, Christ died for me (Rom 5:6). The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and give His life as a ransom for us (Mark 10:45). I have been adopted into God’s family because Christ was willing to do whatever it took to bring me to His Father and now my Father so that I can cry out loud “ABBA, Father” (Rom 8:15).

Therefore, we wish for it to be known that we are not in this endeavor simply “to get a child” so that if one case doesn’t work out we will just get “another referral.” We are commissioned as Christians to “visit orphans in their affliction” (James 1:27), bring justice to the fatherless and plead widow’s cause (Is 1:17).

Read the rest of their post here...

Let's just say that the pizza drawer...

...has seen a little more action lately than the fruit and veggie drawer.

This is what I find in the bottom of the fridge after 5 weeks of living alone. Maybe it is time for my family to come home, ya think?

This could be trouble...

I've had this sitting in my garage for years now, just begging to be put to use somewhere...

Today, my sister gave me this, after picking it up off someone's driveway...


Considering these two...



This could end badly.

We may need to make sure we use these...

Life is a highway

I wanna ride it all night long...

We may need to upgrade to one of these with all the kids we are going to have here...

From their website... "I use the services of Paula Webb, founder of the National Interfaith Council. She is a non-denominational ordained minister who has studied Pet Ministry. She offers support, love and a service tailored to your pet . She can perform a religious service, with Bible passages, or a service tailored to your wishes."

Pet Ministry?

And I am dying of curiosity to know what Bible passages they use... for a pet.

What the?




If the first one wasn't big enough, maybe this would do...

Good... funny...

Good...


Funny...