This Week in the Life

We are trying to make it a bi-monthly tradition to have Owen's best friend's family over for Sunday dinner. So last Sunday we had them over.  They have an almost 1-year-old and so we bring down the high chair for him.  After they had left, this is what we found in the living room - I guess he didn't get enough the first time.

On Monday, the missionaries came over to help Chris with some yard work.

The Missionaries hadn't had an opportunity to work out in a while, so Owen volunteered to be their weight set.

And one...and two...and one...and two!

OK next Elder!

On Tuesday we had our home visit for the adoption.  Our case worker came and saw the house, visited for a minute, asked a lot of questions and then left.  We are pretty sure that we passed and we should be officially approved in a week or two.  So our profile on itsaboutlove.org will soon be up for everyone to see.  Hopefully we will then we selected to adopt a child.  

We had tried to hang some things on the walls earlier in the week, but we finally got it done on Tuesday evening.  It only took us 17 MONTHS to hang things up.

Potty training is still a constant battle and every time we take a step forward, we take five backwards.  There is a Stake Father and Sons campout in a few weeks and we thought that we could use that as motivation for him to get a little closer to being potty trained.  So we put up a calendar/reward chart.  We put stickers on each day that he has good day using the potty.  Here is an example, complete with some antics.

  

The boy got a hold of the camera later in the week.  A few examples from our budding photographer.  

This was just a cute picture of a dinosaur reading a book about a super hungry dinosaur.

Over all it was a good week.  Beki is really busy in the lab as usual and Chris is busy getting ready for the end of the year concert this next week.  On Saturday we took a few hours to take Owen to see "How to Train Your Dragon".  It was a good one and the boys (yes plural) left the movie wanting a dragon or two.  It is one that we will definitely be buying when it comes out.  

For Mother's Day, Chris made breakfast and Owen made Beki this: 

He is really into rainbows right now and loves to draw them on everything and insists that Mom and Daddy need to make a rainbow for him every time they color.

Happy Mother's Day!

Things that Bug Me!

Warning !!! Angry Rant!!!

Ok, so not all of this is going to be an angry rant, but as you can see from the title, we are going to be discussing things that bug me. (I should add that these are things that are bugging me from the last week only...) To help I figure that I would just alphabetize the list and I will color code them depending on level of angry rantiness...yes, that is a word, I just made it up.

A stands for Ankles

As Beki mentioned last week, I had a Teacher vs. Student basketball game last Friday. The teachers had practice earlier in the week, and to mix things up, we brought in some students from the aftercare program to play against us. Now, not to brag - ok to brag a little bit - but students like me. Probably because I treat them honestly, respectfully and don't yell at them (See T stands for Teachers and U stands for Unions below). Anyway, the problem with being well liked is that all of the students want to guard me. Now, you must remember that these students are 4th, 5th and 6th graders, so they are small, and have a tendency to get underfoot, which is how I turned my ankle the first time. It wasn't too bad, I went home and iced it and wrapped it, blah blah blah. I played in the game on Friday - where we destroyed them of course - and I was a little sore, but not bad.

The problems began on Saturday. We were working on the yard when I stepped wrong and turned it again, pretty bad this time. I spent the next day and a half with my foot either in the air, or in a bucket of ice, and only managed to make it to work because the Bishop brought over a walking boot and crutches. Of course nothing cool like this can come into the house without the boy immediately needing to play with it, so here you go:

He loved the boot, but life got really good when he discovered...

Crutches!!!!!

C stands for Cabbies

What a job...you get paid to drive poorly, cause traffic hazards when you stop in the middle of the road to pick up/drop off people, and just generally impede traffic. Nice. I hate you.

G stands for General Mills

Let's talk about Cheerios. How could I possibly have anything bad to say about Cheerios? How could I despise the cereal of my youth? How could I ever think of talking bad about the simple goodness of Cheerios? Well, the picture speaks for itself.

This is against everything that the Cheerios of my youth stood for. They have been pushing the envelope for sometime with their yogurt Cheerios and their fruit Cheerios, but this is a total sell out. You're dead to me Cheerios!!!!!

I stands for Immigration

Regardless on how you feel about what is happening in Arizona, and no matter how the media and famous people in Hollywood try to misconstrue the facts, just remember that it is not against the law to be an immigrant in Arizona, or anywhere else in this country. It is against Federal Law to be in this country ILLEGALLY, and now it is against State Law in Arizona as well. Sure there are some provisions in the law that may lead to racial profiling, but 70% of the people in Arizona are sick of nothing being done about it.

R stands for Recitals

Yes, this one is in green, because it is not an angry rant, in fact it is the exact opposite, it is A Rant of the Awesome!! Then why is it being included in a list of things that bug me you ask? Because it wasn't the fact that I got to go to a Tuba Recital that bugged me, it is the fact that I don't have a Tuba of my own that gets it on the list. (Plus I need to give you some back story to explain the picture.) We have some friends who moved to another part of Maryland last year, but we take turns visiting every month or so. Frank - the dad - is a Tuba player in the Marine Band and he was giving his Master's recital this weekend. So we loaded up with Dean and his family in their "Van of Awesomeness" and all traveled down.

Their van has a DvD player, so the kids watched cars, while ridding in the car! The recital was awesome (not sure what the non-tuba playing crowd thought about it, but it was awesome), but it just reminded me that I want a tuba to play as well. Come on Ebay!! (No really, there is the tuba that I want on eBay - it ends on Monday, I hope I win...) And if you are wondering why this entire section was labeled T is for Tuba, remember that above I already stated that T stands for Teachers. Which brings me to...

T stands for Teachers

Now the temptation here is to make sweeping generalizations about teachers in general, and while I frequently have lots to say about that I will save such comments for our next section about Unions. I want to bitch (I apologize to my mother for that one, but I'm not taking it out.) a bit about how I am treated by my fellow teachers. The nature of my current position forces me to rely on classroom teachers allowing their students to leave their class to come to mine. Even though I have a memo from the Superintendent stating that such is the case, frequently teachers decide that they are working on something and the students can't come. Even better is that I have teachers telling students that coming to my class is a waste of time because music is not going to get them anywhere in life. Yep, elementary school teacher's crushing children's hopes and dreams - welcome to the public education system.

The most frustrating part about it all to me is that these same teachers are always nice to me in the teacher's lounge, and then talk behind my back - all except the one teacher who likes to send me emails about how I am rude and none of the other teachers like me - but at least I know where she stands. Anyway, teachers are just as petty, mean spirited and vindictive as the students they teach. "But wait," you say, "if I were petty, vindictive, sub-par at my job, and yelled at the customers all day I would be fired, why are there so many crappy teachers crushing the dreams of children?"

U stands for Unions

Yes, I belong to the union, I don't have much of a choice in that matter, I have to pay the Union money either way. I understand that Unions have played an important roll in creating better working environments, etc... But today I really question the modern purpose of Unions. Consider the following:

-On the first day of School next year I will be tenured. That means that regardless of how well I teach, as long as I show up for work on time, and enter my grades on time, I can't be fired.

-I get 10 paid sick days and 4 paid personal days every school year. That means I can take off 14 days per year - that is almost 3 school weeks.

-I pay $33 per month in Union dues. Where does all of that money go? In return I get a magazine every month that is full of cartoons making fun of administrators.

I could continue, and start going on about the metro union (Really, you get paid more than me to sit in a booth and NOT help people?), the garbage man union (You can't lift over 50lbs? Really?), and the barbers union (I did not make that up).

I am sure I could think of lots more things to gripe about, but it is getting late. We will take more pictures this week so that we can have a better post next time.

Chris' Birthday and a few other things

So I sit here at the computer this lovely Saturday morning and I honestly can't remember what happened last week.  When I do these post (and Chris normally does them on Sunday's, but I don't know what happened this time) I have to go and look at the calendar to remember what the heck we did all week long.  But my calendar is suspiciously empty for the past weeks, so I will have to wing it.

So Chris' birthday was Monday and he turned 31 (on the down hill slope)!  She had been making cheesecakes like mad the week before for various functions, and Chris wanted a Reese's Peanut Butter Cheesecake for his birthday.  She made it on Sunday night (since cheesecake's have to age - learned that in the whole process) and finished it up on Monday, right before we ate it with the missionaries.  Chris decided to play hookie from work and when Beki asked him what he REALLY wanted to do that day - he said yard work - yeah, he is getting old!  He got nice cards and some new golf balls - that maybe he might actually get to use this year.

We went to lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings and it was the prefect place for him to do his 2 favorite things at the same time - eat and watch sports.

This was the best picture of Chris with his birthday cheesecake.  It truly reflect how he feels about being 31!?

The Reese's Peanut Butter Cheesecake of Awesomeness!  

Opening cards and boxes - Owen needed to help!

Read the words - what does it say!

Oh, golf balls, lets got play golf.

As the week went on, most things blur together.  Chris is doing a lot of work in the yard and since Owen always wants to play outside - it give him something to do while Owen plays with the neighborhood kids.  Even though, they spend most of their time undoing everything Chris is doing. 

We had to cut down a tree right after we moved it and the wonderful people that did it, left it laying the back yard and never returned to finish it.  We had tried multiple times to barrow a chainsaw to cut it up, but each time we had issues.  We finally bought an electric chain saw, and the the log of shame it no more!!  We also have a lot of firewood for this coming winter.

Dancing the robot - from a Phineas and Ferb episode- here is the link on Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kz9b0Gk-JDI

He still loves to play in the rain with an umbrella.

Owen got his sticky apply hands on Mama's glasses and thought it was a blast.  There was A LOT of cleaning that had to take place afterwards in order for Mama to see out of them.

So Chris and Owen were coming down to pick up Mama from work and go to Chick-fil-A for dinner (school fund raiser) and Chris kept on seeing a weird flash from the back seat.  Owen had managed to get the camera out and had taken about 20 photos of everything in the car and out the window - but his favorite subject was himself!

Owen discovered the paints that we had bought for a Christmas project and he NEEDED to paint things that instant.  He painted a green train, a red frog, blue turtle, and a purple dinosaur by the time he was done.

Chris got to play in the Staff vs. Parents Basketball game at his bast school and then a student's vs. teachers basketball game at the same school the next week.  It was "fun" for him - if he wants to add an angry rant latter, I am sure that he will.

Beki has been very busy at school and trying to make her boss happy - which she is currently failing at - no matter where she is spending her time, it isn't on the thing the boss wants.  So, her Doctorate of Philosophy degree is now a Doctorate of Doing What Your Told -so much for leaning to think independently.  It doesn't help that she doesn't see the boss that often, since the boss is very busy in the administration aspect of things at the university.  Beki has a particularity painful meeting this past week, and is struggling to have a desire to do much of anything at the lab.  She was thinking independently and trying to follow where the data was leading her to get HER PhD project off the ground.  But it seems that now she will be spending all her time, NOT thinking independently and not getting HER PhD project off the ground.  It is going to be a rough next month for everyone.

On a happier note, things with the adoption are moving forward nicely.  We have our home visit on May 4 and we will see how it goes.  We are excited to finally get to the point where a birth mother could actually pick our family for her baby.  So far, it has been over a year of paperwork, more paperwork, and waiting.  It is so close now, but we are not getting too excited because it would take a long time for someone to choose us.  

This box is for me!

It was hot this week - remember that 6 weeks ago we were covered with something like 68 feet of snow (give or take a few) - we hit 90 degrees. The boy doesn't seem effected by the heat, but Papa is. Our afternoons consisted of me trying to convince him to stay inside until it cooled down, and him trying to convince me that we needed to go outside. (Now before you go thinking that I am the laziest father ever, see my rant below about public schools and air conditioning.) He decided that we needed to compromise - he came up with the idea that he would go out to play, and I would watch him from the window. He had barely gone outside when the door opened and he came running back in. "Ha," I thought to myself, "I knew it was too hot for him." Except that he wasn't coming in because he was hot, it was because he had found this:

Owen loves packages that come in the mail. If there is a box he must know what is inside it. But he was especially excited this time, because as he explained to me, and is showing all of you:

"O - W - E - N, that spells Owen Papa! This box is for me!!! Lets open it RIGHT NOW!" In case you can't tell, this is from Beki's family - the giveaway would be the ridiculous amount of duct tape that made it almost impossible to open. Had it just been me opening it I would have been ok, but the boy was not happy with the pace at which things were happening, so he kept trying to help with the scissors.

Eventually we got it open, and of course there was an obscene amount of easter candy inside.

But as cool as the candy was, it what was underneath the candy that really got Owen excited. It was a pair of shorts and a new Thomas the Train shirt. Owen immediately started taking off the clothes that he had been wearing, because he NEEDED to wear the new clothes right away. As I was helping him get them on, I noticed that the clothes had been purchase for the future - they were 5t.

Either they were purchased for the future, or Grandma and Grandpa White are just trying to help Owen fit in with the culture around here:

Along with the hot weather, Costco had their Strawberries on sale, so it really felt like summer here. Owen loves strawberries, and especially loves to stick them in his mouth whole!

Owen's friend Maddy came to visit and they decided that they needed to share the rocking chair while watching a movie!

Since General Conference was on Easter Sunday, Owen had to wait a week in order to wear his new Sunday Clothes to church. He really likes the zipper ties - he can put them on all by himself.

While the yard is still a complete mess, Spring has brought about some of the poor neglected flowers blooming. We thought we would share a picture or two with you.

WARNING!!! ANGRY RANT!!!

So we had a little heat wave here in the D.C. area this last week - really not a big deal, temps in the 90's, but the humidity was low, so it didn't feel like you were being steamed alive - until you went inside my elementary schools. The weathermen in the area had been talking about this heat wave for a week, but somehow, the powers that be in the schools failed to get the air conditioning up and functioning. Not only were the schools hot and miserable, but the students would come in from lunch recess smelling lovely...yuk! By the time I would return home from work, I was exhausted, hot, and smelling like school children...

And in a totally unrelated rant - mice! I HATE THEM! THEY MUST DIE! Unfortunately Disney makes movies and TV shows where mice are the heroes. Owen is now very concerned that we have mouse traps, and when we catch a mouse he tries to get them out to play with them...good times. /End Rant

Spring Break and the Great Easter Egg Hunt

So this past week I have been on Spring Break - one of the benefits of being a public schools teacher. I will admit that I had hopes of spending most of my break playing video games and sleeping, but I knew that my "list" had way too much on it to ignore it for an entire week. Since we have a backyard we invited some of the other children in Owen's primary class to come over for an Easter Egg hunt on Saturday, so I had a week to get the backyard cleaned up, and to get the playset safe for kids to play on.

We decided to move the playset to the back corner, which was an amazing feat of strength made possible by the missionaries, whom we invited over to be our manual labor. In the end we also built a border box and then filled it in with pine bark chips. We think it looks pretty nice.

WARNING!!! ANGRY RANT!!!

(The following paragraph has nothing to do with Owen...if you are here only to read about his cuteness, ignore the red block of text and skip down to the pictures. The following has lots to do with things that are bugging me, and since this is a blog, I am allowed to vent.)

So getting the bark for the playset exposed me to things that just drive me crazy. I needed about 145 cubic feet of bark to fill under the playset. That is 72 bags of bark from Home Depot. I figured that it would be cheaper to purchase it in bulk from a local nursery, so I called three or four. Not only was it more expensive from the nurseries, it was TWICE as expensive. This baffled me...how do these places stay in business? The answer is actually very simple, they make a killing because people here are too lazy and incompetent to do things themselves. We ran into this when we wanted to redo our kitchen. At the IKEA they have contractors who people hire to install their kitchens. Isn't the whole reason that IKEA exists is so that people can do it themselves and not have someone do it for them? When we were looking at ceiling fans last summer, there was an electrician hanging out there who informed us that it was against the law for us to put a fan in ourselves and we should hire him to do it. (This is a whole different rant that I need to get out later.) Anyway...People here do nothing for themselves, and so contractors make a killing by charging outrageous prices. In the end, I made 4 trips to Home Depot, where they still believe that you can do things yourself. /End Rant

With the playset complete and the backyard relatively hazard free, the Easter Bunny visited our house, and hid color coordinated eggs for Owen and each of his friends. (Everyone thought that I was rather silly for hiding a different color for each child, but my siblings understand...)

Owen was ready to start on Monday...so waiting until the end of the week was quite a chore, but he made it.

The Easter Bunny may have hid the green eggs a little bit harder than the others...but Owen still did a pretty good job of finding them.

Owen and his friends Dean and Lizzy combing over the playset looking for eggs.

Owen found this one hidden in the steering wheel!!!

After finding one in the corner of the yard, Owen had to run back to make up for lost time!

After the egg hunt, Owen and his friends went inside to dye eggs. Owen's favorite color this month is green...so his egg is getting a good soaking in the green dye.

After all of the Easter festivities, it was back outside to play more on the playset. The fact that the kids loved it and were all over it, made the fact that I haven't been able to walk since Thursday worth it.

They also had a good time in Owen's wagon...which hasn't seen kids playing on it for a long time.

They all took turns pulling each other, but Moroni was by far the champion puller, he could pull all three of the other children at the same time!

And if they hadn't had enough stimulation, we busted out Owen's 5000 bubble per minute bubble machine...epic.

So in the end it was a very successful day, and I think that we will have to have the kids over again soon!

(This is the end of the nice part of the post about Owen...what follows is the other part of the angry rant which I mentioned above...you don't need to read it, but I need to write it.)

WARNING!!! ANGRY RANT!!!

So there has been lots of talk around my family about the current political situation and lots of emotion on every side, so I thought that I would weigh in a bit. I think the first problem is that neither side, Democrats or Republicans, are really concerned about what is best for the American people. They are only concerned about getting the "one up" on the other. This has come out in the Health Care problem, where Republicans have adopted a "Hell No" attitude, and Democrats a "Damn the Torpedoes" approach. Now, I don't want to put words in people's mouths, but I think that those who are in favor of Universal Health Care feel that we have a duty to take care of those less fortunate. While those who are opposed feel that the cost is too great, especially with the already increase national debt.

When I was a child, there was a cartoon about the Ants and the Grasshopper. (In case you are not familiar with what I am talking about click the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAd0jOuQg8o. ) The Grasshopper's little song, "The World Owes Me a Livin'" could be the theme song of Maryland. (Now, I am painting with a rather large brush I know, but hang on, you'll see.) I pay 4 times the taxes that my family in Idaho pays. I pay more property tax, income tax and sales tax. Maryland has almost 4 times as many people as Idaho. So with all of this tax revenue you would think that things would be pretty good here. They aren't. The road infrastructure is crumbling - you would not believe the potholes on the freeway - the water and sanitary system is outdated and in shambles - water mains break weekly. Police and Fire Departments are understaffed, the Schools are underfunded and just plain bad, and the State Budget is still hundreds of millions of dollars short. Where is all of the money going? I ask myself this every day...and then I hear my students talking about how you don't need to go to college, you can just have kids and collect money from the government like their mom does. Now, there are people who do truly need government assistance, but we are dealing with Grasshoppers...lots of them.

This is where I think that those who are not used to dealing with Grasshoppers get taken advantage of. Because taking care of others is a very Christian idea, we want to help others. And so we act like the queen in the video, and bail the grasshoppers out. In Aesop's actual fable, the ants do not help the Grasshopper. Somewhere along the line the Disney version became the standard, and now we are over our heads in entitlement programs. (And those who argue that if we weren't involved in the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan we wouldn't be in this mess 1. don't understand our governments need to spend, and 2. refuse to realize that entitlements cost us more than the wars.) So why am I against Health Care? Besides the fact that I lived in England for 2 1/2 years and have seen how it works, I also feel that we can't afford it, and people need to stop relying on the government for everything. Sadly, those who rob Peter to pay Paul can always count on Paul's vote...so the dependence upon the government will continue until there are no more Peters. /End Rant