It's a BOY!

So we didn't mean to find out what we were having, but we know now that we are having another boy. His due date is March 24 and so far everything looks great. He moves around alot and is constantly enjoying the bouncy-ness (is that a word?!) of my bladder. We will have to do some rearranging of rooms in the future, but we are excited to welcome him into the world in less than 19 weeks. YEA! Over 1/2 way through.

He's 2!!!

Cameron is 2 today! I can't believe how fast time goes. He is such a fun kid to be around and even though he definately has an attitude as well. I'm just hoping we don't have another day where I spend time cleaning his crib wishing it was chocolate I was cleaning up. I'm not sure if I can handle that anymore!

Pregnancy Update

I thought I would just give a quick update. I am now 16 weeks (5 months if you prefer). I saw the doctor yesterday and the heartbeat is steady and strong. I have an ultrasound scheduled in 4 weeks on Nov. 3rd so that should be fun. Devin doesn't want to find out what it is, and I am in agreement so we probably won't know what we are having until the birth.

It is quite inconvenient to have to travel so far to see the doctor for 5 minutes! We left our house at 3:50am and got home at 6:15pm. We were so exhausted we put the kids to bed about 6:50pm and didn't hear a peep from any of them! We tried to stay up, but at 7:15pm we were ready to crash, so we did. Pretty pathetic! It was a long day, but we were able to get some needed groceries and we even got a few birthday presents for Contessa & Cameron plus a new carseat for Cameron. So all in all it went well. Of course, I was sick most of the day, so poor Devin had to deal with everything plus the kids pretty much on his own. He didn't complain though. He encouraged me to sit as often as possible which really helped.

So that is were we are at with this pregnancy. Everything seems to be going well so far.

Goals...

They say the key to goals is to write them down so that you can look at them and have something to work towards.  I think this has really been my problem with goals through out my life.  I dont write them down, and I dont let other people know them.  So I guess I'll try that here.

1.  Lose weight-I don't have any specific number in mind, but I know its alot.  My biggest problem has been a lack of motivation.  I went to my doctor a few months ago for a check up, hoping that would scare me into it.  Unfortunatly (or fortunatly), to use his words, I was "shockingly healther than I should be".  I was a little worried about by TSH as it was borderline low, and thyroid inactivity I learned runs on my mother's side, but I also don't want to commit to daily medication the rest of my life.

2.  Be a better father.  I know I'm not a bad father, I just don't feel like a good father.  I guess I'm spoiled in this regard.  My father was an incredible father, and my father in law is just as good.  Also, I had alot of good examples growing up in young mens.  I really am trying harder to become more involed in Tessa's and Collin's lives in paticular, as I don't feel I had the same type of relationship with them at the stage in life Cam is at when they were that age, and sometimes I feel like I might portray to them I like him more that I like them, which is not the case at all.  

3.  Become a happy person.  I know, this is not me at all.  I'm eternaly pessimistic, glass half empty, sarcastic, and sometimes just a plain a-hole.  I have a touch of manic depression.  Lately, my manic periods are getting shorter and my depressed periods are getting longer.  I tried SSRIs (antidepressents)  a couple of years back and felt worse being on them than being off of them, so I quit them.  For someone who works in the medical field, I am extremly distrustful of western medicine.  Pharmacuticles in this country are nothing but marketing hype instead of solutions most of the time.  But I think my biggest obstacle in this is I've been fighting it alone.  I think this is the closest to opening up I have ever been.  I like to keep my private things private, but sometimes, I think I have to give in and let others help every once and a while.

4.  I want to see every national park, at least in the Western US.  I not only want to do this for me, but for my kids.  I want them to see the wonders God has created.  I am ashamed to say, I grew up in Arizona and lived there for 25 years and I never saw the Grand Canyon untill a year ago.  And I only scratched the surface there.  I am within a day's drive of so many places, less than a few hours to a lot of them, and Great Basin NP is in my backyard.  I hope I will realize how miserable theme parks are and visit a NP or two instead.

5. Visit England again.  Most people don't know this, but when I got my mission call to England all those years ago, I hated it.  I thought there had to be a mistake.  I was supposed to go to South America.  I kinda kept my disappointment hid, because it seems like in LDS culture, to serve in Brittan is consitered a great achevement.  I even had people ask me how I managed to get to go there.  They thought I must have slipped a few Benjamins' in with my papers.  In fact, I almost consitered comming home twice.  Once when I was out after about two and a half months, and again at about 18 months.  But I thank God for understanding and inspired mission presidents who help me realized the importance of my work.  I learned to love the people and the country.  I still have a few quirky habits like occasionally saying distinctly British things and a love of Marmite, which I have almost every morning at work.  Ive even been told on occasion that I have a bit of a accent, which is funny, since its been almost 10 years, and I never really had a accent to begin with.  I also hope to once again find the level of spirituality I had then.

6.  Become a better husband.  I've got to give it to Amy.  She puts up with a lot of sh!t from me.  I sometimes wonder why she's stuck around.  I'm glad she has, as I couldn't afford a divorce at this point.  (Clarification-I know Ive been pretty serious this whole post, but this is the sarcastic side of me peeking out)  I'm a good provider of all things physical (at least I like to think I'm a good provider if you know what I mean!), but I have a lot to work on as far as emotional.  I think working on my own self esteem and self image will really help me out as far as this one goes.  When I can truly love myself, loving others will come naturally.

What I've realized in the last few paragraphs are 1.  I shouldn't blog after being up all night at work and working all the next day, and 2., well, I cant think of that right now, but I will at some point.  So anyways, post up a goal of two of yours and that way we can guilt each other into acheving our goals.

Another cash offering made to the Mother Church of the Cult of Mouse

I hate theme parks.  I hate the parking, I hate the prices of tickets.  I hate the crowds.  I hate the lines.  But year after year, I somehow decide that this year will be diffrent and make a pilgramage to some theme park located usually somewhere in Southern California.  First off, the location.  Southern California really has to be one of the most beautiful places on earth.  Too bad its full of Californians.  For you Californians out there, why do you feel entitled to allways drive in the left lane when faster traffic comes up behind you, even if the right lane(s) are empty?  And do you know what the cruise control in your car is for?  Anyways, I digress.  Californians aside, it looked like this would be a decent trip.  We arived in excellent time, even after my GPS put me on two toll roads, one for 2.5 miles, and another for 1 mile, costing me $4 for less than 4 miles of driving, and not to mention, it took us around the back side of Garden Grove/Anaheim, and we had to drive back into town.  The hotel, the Hyatt Orange County/Garden Grove, was a very nice hotel with nice hotel amenities like $15 a day parking, $10/day internet (thank goodness for ICS in Windows Mobile and a unlimited data plan), and $5 for two tylenol.  But luckily we were across the street from a Target and lots of resturants.  So Friday comes and we load up on the shuttle bus (was very nice not to have to pay parking at Disneyland) and off to the park with the other perfect yuppie couples.  Things for the most part went pretty well this day.  We took a mid day break and Amy and Cameron took a nap while the other kids and me went to lunch and to browse around Fry's electronics for a while.  We went back to California Adventure later that evening and it was decent (it sucked the only other time I went there).  Saturday was a diffrent story.  It was packed.  It was hot.  It was humid.  We were miserable.  We did go to Blue Bayou since it was Tessa's birthday and had lunch there.  The only other time I had gone to Blue Bayou was 9 years ago when I went with Amy's family when we were dating.  It seems since then, they have upgraded the resturant from casual dining to fine dining, and by adding the occasional white aspargus and other fancy ingredient, have found a way to double the prices.  We droped a C-note on lunch, and that was not including the birthday bucket we had ordered the week before when we made the reservation that they didnt bring, but then again they didn't charge us for.  I guess I'm just not geneticly inclined to go to theme parks for more than one day.  As a kid, the trips we took to places like this were wake up early, drive there, do it, and come home that night.  I just cant go on the same rides over and over (except Pirates of the Carribean, my all time favorite).  I did go on quite a few rides I had never gone on before since I am a huge wuss and was afraid of them.  I quite enjoyed Splash Mountain and Indiana Jones.  I also went on Autopia for the first time ever, and it sucked.  The only ride I didnt like was Soaring over California.  Collin and Tessa loved it.  They went on it twice, once with Amy and once with me.  I hated it, I was freaked out the whole time.  I'm not much of a flyer to begin with, and between the simulated close encounters with the mountains, ocean, and land, the thing that freaked me out the most was seeing the feet dangeling from the row in front of us.  Saturday night, we headed out to Ontario to meet up with Scott, Miss, and her kids Sam and Ethan.  We went to the Ontario Mills Mall and had dinner at a resturant there.  Those Mills mall people have the same archetectural vision as the LDS church.  It was exactly the same as AZ Mills.  I guess they want you to know where you are going whether you are in Ontario, Tempe, or wherever else they build their malls.  And I would once again like to thank my GPS for not only sending me about 20 miles out of my way, but also putting me into the middle of a huge traffic jam.  Whoever said technology was making our lives easier was full of it.

Just an Update

I guess I should get back to actually updating this thing! Man, I have been lazy.

I am now 12 weeks and everything seems to be going well. I had a check-up Monday and no problems so far. YEAH! I am mostly over the morning sickness, but it does hit me on occassion still. I am also forced into maternity clothes as my other "fat" clothes don't fit anymore. I am going to get sick of them fast!

Contessa is enjoying 2nd grade and just started girl scouts and soccer which she loves both. I am the "cookie mom" so I may be contacting everyone to buy a dozen boxes of cookies each in February & March! So start saving up now! (just kidding, I will only make you buy 6!)

Collin loves kindergarten and riding the bus. He is also starts soccer today.

I have Cameron's schedule perfect now! After I drop off Collin for afternoon kindergarten, Cameron takes a nap so I get 2 1/2 hours to myself! YEAH for me! I love this schedule.

We are hoping to visit family the end of October since it will be the last opportunity before I can't travel anymore (plus Devin's work is crazy in the winter). We will see if we can pull it off.

So that is the little update on our family. Maybe I will update more often. I'll see if I feel like being less lazy!

I know most of the time I post something here, it's usually of a satirical  nature, but I want to change gears a little here.  Every once and a while you meet someone who brings out the best in others.  Someone with the ability to lift up others.  Ely lost a great member of the community this past week in Dr. Bruce Wilkin.  Though I only worked with Dr. Wilkin a little over two years, he always impressed me with his dedication to his craft and to helping others.  Health reasons forced him to retire last year, but on the few occasions I ran into him around town since then, he was allways happy and smiling.  After attending his services today, I really gained a appreciation as to how incredible he really was, how selfless and caring he was to all.  I wish I had the opportunity to know him better, because it seems there was so much more than just the Dr. Wilkin I worked with.  So take a minute and think about someone who has inspired and touched you in your life.

God be with you, Dr. Wilkin, untill we meet again.

Just another reason why I hate Utah...

Ok, just let me start with an apology here.  I will be making generalized steriotypes that some of you may or may not fit into, but be assured, this doesn't pertain to anyone personally.

So we had to go to SLC for a Dr.'s appointment for Amy (she can talk about that if she wants, I'm not going to) and do some school shopping and food shopping.  So we get into town early on Monday and get quite a bit of stuff done.  And since the hotel we stayed at had a full kitchen, we did most of our grocery shopping done Tuesday morning.  So we were sitting around the room trying to figure out something to do, so Amy thought about going down to Thanksgiving Point to go to the farm area there.  So we make the trek from our hotel in Taylorsville down to Lehi, not a short drive by any means.  Of course, the shake from Iceberg Drive Inn definetly made the drive a little easier.

So we finally made it down there.  Now let me preface this by saying for the most part, I like Utah.  Its a beautiful place.  But for some reason, I hate Utah County with a passion.  The fakeness that abounds in that place reminds me of the movie the Stepford Wives.  So anyways, we get to Thanksgiving Point and the first thing we see is a line around the building for the Imax theater.  Im not worried I say to Amy, that just means no one will be at the farm.  That wasn't the case.  I guess it was $2 Tuesday and the chance to save a whole $1.50 over the regular admission price of $3.50 was just too much a draw for the Common Utah Mormon Housewife (Commonus Domesticus Deseretus).  The CDD is between the ages of 22-35, has between 1-4 children who have never been disciplined in their entire lives, and exists solely for her trophy abilites.  They travel in large luxury SUV's from outlying master planned communities and often congragate in groups, often leaving the care of the children to one's mother, mother in law, or a ugly friend, so as not to disturb their gossiping time.  So after we find a parking place in the back of a unmaintained dirt parking lot, we get in the line that stretched almost around the building.  As we got close to the door, this should have been my first clue to get out of there.  The entrance is also the exit, and countless CDD's just plow their double strollers into my children without so much as a warning or apology.  And if you dare to make eye contact with one, you will recieve a look that says its your fault for being in my way.  As I mentioned, they often congragate to participate in gossip or other idol chatter by stopping in the middle of the sidewalk.  At this attraction, this proved to be a problem, as the sidewalks are only standard neighborhood size and are usually bordered by animal pens on one side and block walls on the other.  This proved to be a problem many times during the trip.  Time after time, a CDD with a double stroller would just park it in a way that no one could get by and take a picture of one of her children by a goat.  Finally, after seeing what must have been 100 diffrent types of goats, we get to the 2 play house play area.  There was a short block wall where me and Amy had a seat while the kids played for a while.  After we let the kids play for a little bit, we rounded up the kids and decided we had had enough and were heading to the door.  I get Cam in the stroller and start heading down the sidewalk when a couple of CDDs jump in my way and block the sidewalk.  Not wanting to be rude, I sit there for a couple of minutes thinking they will move in a second or two, or will notice me in front of them and move to the side so I can get by.  Needless to say, I must have either blended in well or was just not visible to them (just how, I would like to know), because they didn't even notice me.  I continued to listen to their conversation about buying a $200 gallon of tanning solution that turned out to be the wrong color, when Amy, who had almost made her way out, turned around and noticed I wasn't there.  She came back to pick up her fallen comrades, and the two of us lifted up the stroller with Cam in it and walked across the rocky area next to the sidewalk to open sidewalk.  None of the 20 people we passed even bothered to move over so we could put the stroller down.  We escaped with our live and our children, though we had lost our sanity somewhere in the park and wern't going back to find it.  So if you want something to do in Lehi, just go to Cabela's across the freeway.

After that experience, we realized that including travel, we had barely killed just over an hour, and needed something else to do.  Since the kids have seen pretty much every kid centric movie released this summer (I never got to go to the movies as a kid), movies were out.  Then I remembered a billboard for the Living Planet Aquarium in Sandy.  I have to admit, at first I was a little worried.  It was located in what appeared to be a closed down supermarket in a residential area in Sandy.  But since tickets were more than $2, there were significantly less cars in the parking lot, so I thought let's give it a shot.  There were 2 exhibits, and we chose to do the exhibit of Utah species.  It started out kinda boring with a few tanks of trout, but as I looked at things a little deeper, there was a lot of really interesting bits of info on little plaques around the displays.  But trout and minnows will only satisfy kids so long, so we went to the saltwater part of the aquarium.  It's small, but among the best Ive seen.  Hopefully, they will get to build the full size aquarium they want to soon.  I wish we would have bought the membership rather than single day tickets.  Oh well.

Poll Time!!!

OK, I know this is kinda dumb. Ive got this comming weekend off (Fri, Sat, Sun) and it will most likely be my last until December or so, since we should finally be going back to summer schedule at work. Now here's the dilemma. We were originally going to go to Twin Falls, ID to the new temple open house, got tickets and everything. But I was also thinking San Diego because we have Seaworld passes good untill the end of the year. My heart says Seaworld, but my head and wallet say Twin Falls (actually the wallet says stay home, but I'm done listening to him). So I need your help. Which one would you do? OK, Twin Falls is closer (250 miles), has a uplifting spiritual experience, and is closer (I know I mentioned that already, but I wanted 3 good things about TF and could only think of 2). But on the downside, TF is, well, in Idaho. It is close enough that we could come back same day if we get bored enought and do something else Saturday and Sunday. San Diego is more funner, has more funner stuff, and has Tijuana near by (donkey show?), but its much further away (about 600 miles each way) which hurts even more with $4.50 gas, and it also has Tijuana near by (guess I could fill up in TJ for $2/gallon and wait at the border for 3 hours to come back in). Also, if you dont like any of those options, suggest your own, but don't say come to Phoenix cause its too damn hot. Just leave your choice in the comment so I dont have to decide.

Devin.

How we gonna kick it, gonna kick it root down!

Hi, Devin again. I know probably anyone who reads this (the 2 or 3 of you) don't know that I am Basque. To be honest, not too long ago neither did I. Already, I know you are saying to yourself, "what the hell is Basque". Well, that's what I would say to myself. I know most of you don't swear as much as I do (though IMO, hell isn't swearing). The Basques are from northern Spain and southern France (from what I've discovered, I'm from the Spanish part), and you can learn so much more on Wikipedia than I can ever tell you myself. Anyways, my parents came up this weekend, which just happened to be, besides July 4th, the annual National Basque Festival (and parade) in Elko, NV, about 180 miles from us. To be honest, it was a much smaller event than the website made it out to be, and I didn't get to see the weightlifting or lumberjack competitions because Cameron was screaming and Amy had a migraine and was being a not very nice girl, so we had to leave early. But what we see was really cool and wants to make me find out more about my heritage (maybe it will get me working on my genealogy again).

This is a pic I took of Cameron in a little beret I bought for him. I thought I'd go artsy and make it black and white.






Another cute one of Cam my dad got. Love the filthy face. It really stands out in this one.







Collin in his beret. Once again, in a artsy sepia tone.







Tessa in her sunglasses. I guess being almost 7 and a 2nd grader make you too cool for a silly hat.






Children in traditional Basque clothing in the parade. Just after this, they did a little dance. Sorry for the not close up shot, I had the short lens on.





Some more dancing by the older dancers, this one was a dance that was done to sell fish at the market the announcer said. Interesting. Once again, sorry for the crappy shot. I had the zoom lens on and I think I zoomed too much.




I've got plenty more bad pictures where those came from. All of my pictures are viewable on flickr in their unorganized and untagged goodness. I've never got around to properly organizing them, what with all the Counterstrike and Diablo 2 I've been playing a work lately. To keep weirdos from glancing into our lives, if you want to see them, leave a note or email Amy or me and we will send you our flickr info.