Who Needs Diapers Anyway?

Ben wore “big boy” underwear all day yesterday. I didn’t keep track of the number of times that he used the toilet. It seems a little pointless now.

He did have one accident though, and I’m still waiting for him to go #2 on the toilet.

Get That Man a Napkin

Everyone knows that Spiderman is Ben’s favorite. A few months ago he learned about Venom, one of Spidey’s coolest villains, and he’s been a huge Venom fan ever since. I got him a Venom comic book, and he asks me to read it to him every night before bed. Last night he observed that Venom has green slobber drooling out of his mouth. “He slobbering. He need a burpie”.

Looks Like I’m Gonna Stay Fat for Awhile

Jared’s 6 months old now, so I can take him to the gym, but they want me to pay them 3 bucks per visit to watch him. Ben is 4 dollars a month! If I go to the gym 5 times a week it will cost more than 60 bucks a month for Jared. My membership only costs about 20 duckets a month. How does that make one lick of sense?

Ballpark moments

Marie and I had dinner with her Dad yesterday, so I was talking to him about baseball, and I remembered a couple of cool things that happened at ballgames that Marie and I have attended.

We lived in Phoenix Arizona from February 2001 to July 2003. While we were there we went to a handful of Arizona Diamondbacks games.

During the seventh inning stretch of the first game we went to together we were singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”, and Marie said “root root root for the Cubbies”, the Cubbies! Apparently she’d heard the song plenty of times from Cubs fans, or Cubs games, and it didn’t occur to her that rooting for the Cubbies is inappropriate at a game between the D-backs, and the… I forget who, but it wasn’t the Cubs.

We took Ben to a game when he was very young. He was starting to learn to clap, but it was hard to get him to do it. During the game I noticed that when the crowd was cheering Ben was clapping along. It was way cute.

I discovered the beauty that is Brat’s and Sauerkraut at a D-backs game. I loved it so much that I wanted to go to games just to get it.

Finally, my proudest sports moment. The D-backs had only recently acquired a guy named Shea Hillenbrand, and he was doing tremendously well at the plate. The other team was intentionally walking the guy that batted before Shea, and Marie said “They’re walking him to get to Hillenbrand?” She knew it was a bad idea, and then guess what Shea did. Yup, he hit a Home-run. I was very impressed that Marie had actually learned something about strategy in a sport. Not that Marie’s dense or anything, it’s just impressive, because she’s so not into sports.

Record Breaking Day

Ben peed on the potty nine times on Monday! That shatters his previous record of, what was it, two? No poos on the potty yet though.

Here’s Water in Your Eye.

Today was Loredana’s birthday party number four. For the uninitiated, Loredana is one of those Citizen people that live with us. As always, summer parties in the “Big House” have water activities outside, which means that Uncle Brad (that’s me), gets into shenanigans with the kids, and sprays them with the hose. For the second consecutive party I succeeded in spraying Emma (another one of those Citizens), in the eye. She really hates when I do that (I don’t do it on purpose).

In an effort to calm Emma down I decided to demonstrate the harmless effects of getting water in one’s eye. I sprayed the hose directly into my wide open eyeballs, and said to Emma, “See it doesn’t hurt”.

“You closed your eyes!” She protested

“No I didn’t. They were wide open. It even stings.” Ha! I’ve got her now.

“See.” She says matter of factly.

“Oh.” I guess she got me.

Late Night Ponderings

At night Marie feeds Jared in bed, and they both fall asleep. Sometimes I’m the one who puts Jared back in his playpen. When I do, I pick him up to put him back, but he’s so sweet, and beautiful that I just want to hold him for a little while first.

Tonight I sat in a chair and held him, and stared at his sleeping face, and I thought about life. I’m terrified of losing someone that I love. I always have been. Nothing scares me worse, especially when it comes to my boys. I pray every day for the safety of my family, and the people that I love. One of life’s great injustices is when a parent outlives his child. I beg my Father in Heaven that it’s a lesson that I don’t learn from experience.

My cousin Kent died a few months ago. It hurts me just to think of the pain that his Mother went through.

So, I’m still staring at Jared, hoping that I go before he does, and I start to think that maybe birthdays aren’t as overrated as I’ve come to think. I guess that every year you can add to your tally is cause for celebration. Right? Life is a wonderful, beautiful thing. I’m just happy I could be here.

Is There a Doctor in the House?

The other day I slipped on the stairs, and my big toe rolled under my foot. It hurt somethin’ fierce, and now it has a big purple bruise. I wonder if it’s broken. I’m not gonna bother with the doctor though, because I’ve busted my toes up before, and they told me that they don’t even do anything for it. Busted toes are a surprisingly low level of pain anyway. Don’t get me wrong it hurts, but compared to other bones I’ve busted like a foot, or finger it’s not so bad.

Potty Animal

I’ve been trying to potty train Ben lately. About once a day I take his diaper off, and let him wear his “big boy” underwear. After about an hour, or so I put him back in a diaper. Well yesterday was a day of firsts.

It was the first time that he told me that he needed to go pee. In the past I either made him sit on the toilet every half hour until he peed, or he just peed in his underwear.

It was the first time that he peed twice in the same training session.

It was also the first time that he pooped in his underwear. Poopy underwear is no fun to clean up. I sure hope that the experience helped him to learn that pooping on oneself is a bad idea.

I'm It.

I got book tagged, so here goes.

How many books do you own?
C’mon, how many people actually know the answer to this one?
It’s a lot.

What was the last book you bought?
How to Win Friends and influence People by Dale Carnegie.

What was the last book you read?
Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith by Matthew Stover

Name 5 books that mean something to you.
A Return to Christmas by Chris Heimerdinger
A heartwarming story about a family who loses their three year old son in a tragic accident, and how they cope with the unbearable pain. I read this thing in one sitting. (Fiction)

How to Win Friends and influence People by Dale Carnegie.
If you want to go anywhere in life you’d be well advised to read this book a few times. (Non-fiction)

Embraced by the Light by Betty J. Eadie

A woman dies in the hospital and visits heaven before returning to finish her life here on earth. They call it a near death experience, but it’s more like a died and came back experience, If you’ve ever wondered what heaven is like, or what happens to you when you die you should check this one out. It was awesome reading about this ladie’s account of heaven, even if it’s taken with a grain of salt it’s still a fascinating read. I read this baby in one sitting too. (I’m not bragging that I read books in one sitting. I’m just saying it was too good to put down.)
(Non-fiction)

The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
This is a series of seven books, but I love them all too much to pick one. Four children discover the magical world of Narnia when they walk through an enchanted wardrobe. These are my favorite non-fiction books ever. I never read any of them in one sitting, but I did read one a day for seven days in a row once.
(Fiction)

The scriptures (The Bible, and The Book of Mormon). I didn’t want to put the scriptures in here, but it just didn’t seem right to not mention them, since they’ve had more impact on my life than anything else. Besides, I don’t remember the name of that really cool financial book that I read.
(Non-fiction)

Somebody Has to Cook.

Last week I made dinner for the “big house” crew. That’s The Parker family, the Citizen family, and my family. 14 people total. If you don’t already know (where the heck have you been?), we all live together (on purpose), in a ginormous, 6,ooo+ square foot house.

Each week one family is assigned to cook for everyone. Cheryl generously takes everyone’s turn, and does it every week when she can. She has a new gig that makes it hard to do it every single day though, so the remaining two families have to pick up the slack. Well it was technically the Linford family’s turn to go, and by Linford family I mean Marie. Oh, but have you already forgotten? Marie has that sweet new gig at Pulte, and doesn’t even get home before dinner starts sometimes. That’s where I come in.

I’ve been watching ludicrous amounts of the Food Network, since Marie started being the bacon bringer homer, so I’ve been printing recipes and salivating over all of the yummy stuff that they make on those cooking shows, and last week I gave it a shot. I made four dishes: Pasta Pomodorini, Tomato Avocado and Red Onion salad, Olive Oil Braised ‘Taters, and Grilled Asparagus, and all it took me to make it all was about two and a half hours.

I liked it all, except for the asparagus, which I burned. Most everyone said it was pretty good, which I appreciate even if they were lying (I’m not saying they lied. I’m just saying that I appreciate the compliments even if they did). Hopefully next time I make any of those dishes I’ll make them better now that I’m a seasoned veteran.

Gone Fishin'

We got back from our annual family reunion trip to Fish Lake, Utah yesterday. It was boat loads of fun, like always. People always ask me how many fish I caught, and the answer is always that I didn’t even go fishing. My new joke is that not going fishing at Fish Lake is my new annual tradition. I used to go fishing there. The first nine or ten times we went to Fish Lake I went fishing and caught a grand total of less than zero fish. How can you not catch any fish at a place called Fish Lake? Well I pulled it off. I was the only one too, because my relatives always caught plenty of fishies. Then one year I caught two fish, and unceremoniously retired from fishing.

Now I spend my Fish Lake days sitting around with the other non-fishers shooting the breeze, and catching up. It’s the only time I see a lot of my extended family, so it’s fun. I also have a tendency to play a little volleyball. Some people don’t like to be on my team, because I can give people a hard time for screwing up if they’re consistent at it, but I just like to think that mediocrity isn’t my thing, and they can play on the other team if they want to be satisfied with not being good. Of course that attitude can backfire when everyone gets too mad at you to play right. One of these times I’m gonna remember that it’s just a fun pick-up game of volleyball, and I’ll try not to take it so seriously.

Last year my brother Kevin and I put a bunch of useless crap in a root beer can and buried it in the dirt. We called it our buried treasure, and referred to the junk inside as “highly valuable”. We marked up a bunch of trees with clues on where to find it. The clues are mostly arrows pointing in the right direction and a number, indicating the amount of steps to take in that direction. I dug it up this year. I had to do it myself because Kevin’s on his mission to the foreign land of Colorado, but I buried it again, so he can dig it up with me in two years. I got a pretty good chuckle out of seeing what we had put in there, stuff like matches, jelly beans, and coupons for toilet paper. What really made me laugh was a note that I had written on a napkin. It was a quote from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”. It goes like this (try to read it with your best French accent, it’s much funnier), “I fart in your general direction! Your Mother was a hamster, and your Father smelt of elderberries!”

After I was done with last years buried treasure I made a new and improved buried treasure for this year and buried it in a different spot. It’s so much fun that I think I’ll bury at least one treasure a year from now on.

Fun With Words

English is tough. There are a lot of words that are spelled similarly, and people have trouble keeping track of them all. Here a re a few of my favorite ways that people find to muck up our language:

To, two, and too.
Correct usage- I too will send two letters to you.

Their, there, and they’re.
Correct usage- They’re having too much fun over there in their underwear.

These ones are symbols, not words, but people mess them up all the time.
“, and ‘
“ means inches, and ‘ means feet, so a 6” tall person would be incredibly short.