President Scar...

Every time I hear Obama speak and look at what he has done to our country while in office I can't help but see in my mind Scar from the Lion King promising all the Hyena's as much food as they want.

It sounds so good!

Who doesn't want food you don't have to work for and the ability to be lazy and do whatever you feel like while someone else takes care of you?

We all deserve that, right?

The only problem is... that doesn't work.

Before long the food runs out and all you have are a bunch of fat hyena's (soon to be starving) complaining that nobody is taking care of them.

I know Obama tells people what they like to hear but he has shown us over the past four years that, just like Scar, he can't change the "circle of life".

It is what it is.

The "something for nothing" philosophy can never work and before long we will all be paying for it one way or another.  (and we already are)

There has to be wisdom and order and Barak Obama simply doesn't understand that, which means he does not understand how to run a country.

Clearly.



"I don't want to live in a country where everything is free but us." --Paul Ryan

Hey Shorty, It's Your Birthday!

My baby turns 6 today!

This year I went with a turtle theme because they have tortoises at Zaharis and you can buy baby tortoises for $40.  Morgan REALLY wanted one.

Dane got one.

But I said no.

I know, I'm mean.

But to show her I really love her lots we got her as many turtle things as we could.

I made her a turtle cake.

And decorated all festive like. 

She liked it.

A lot.

And she liked her new turtle friend "Fluffy".  I told her he's way easier to cuddle than a live tortoise. :)

Morgan is one of the funniest, spunkiest, most confident little girls I know.  She makes me smile every day.

The other day I was recounting stories of Olivia when she was a baby.  I had tons of them.

Morgan kept saying, "Tell one about me.  What did I do?"

I felt horrible because I could hardly think of anything.  Morgan was a baby at the hardest time in my life and my brain simply didn't store a lot of her baby-hood.  I do remember she was an amazingly good baby, she drooled a lot, she would never take a bottle (just mama), and she always made me smile.

There are plenty of things I remember about her now.  Like her uncanny ability to make up the perfect names for animals (Livy will even ask her to name things she gets because her names are always so cute).

She also makes up words and just incorporates them into her daily language.  We have to know how to speak Morgan around here.  For example, about 2 years ago, when she was either 3 or just barely 4 she told me she needed to go "Flickey".

"Flickey?  What's that?" I asked.

"That's when you have to go pee AND poop."  She had fully created the word, had a definition for it, and used it like we all knew it.  And she still uses it…well, we all use it now.

Just yesterday she created another word.  When I picked her up from gymnastics she exhaled all tired like and said,

"Whew. Well that was just piff!"

"Piff?" I asked again, "What's piff?"

"You know, when something's really hard or tiring."

Oh well of course, silly me.  Who hasn't had a day that was just piff?

She continues to be obsessed with animals.  She's gone from wanting to be an animal when she grows up to wanting to train them or own a pet store.  The latest thing she's told me she wants to do is teach animals how to swim…most especially "mouses".

She's smart, logical…very logical, straightforward, happy, and goofy.  Not many people really know Morgan because she doesn't open up for just anyone.  She's quite selective.  But once you're in her inner circle she is very loyal.

We sure love this girl and I feel very lucky to be her mom.

Lessons from Bambi...

The other day we watched Bambi.

It taught us some lessons.

Owen constantly complains about dinner.  He hates it, it's disgusting, he doesn't want to eat it.

After spewing these words out of his mouth Shane reminded him to just keep his mouth closed and channeled Thumper by saying,  "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."

Owen then realized that Bambi actually teaches us a lot of good lessons.  "Another lesson," he recounted, "is that we shouldn't shoot animals because look what happens."  We all solemnly nodded our heads thinking about poor Bambi's mother.

And then, perhaps another lesson I hadn't really thought of before, Owen said, "And it also helps us to see how Abraham Lincoln must have felt."

Mmmmmm-kay.  I hadn't really thought of comparing the shooting of animals to the shooting of presidents before, but I can see a connection here I guess.  Good point.  May we all refrain from shooting animals AND presidents because "Look what happens."

Bambi is so much deeper than I had ever realized.

Thirsty?

While we were at Greer Shane was pretty well confined to his bed a majority of the time.  The pain and the pain medication left him in a pretty bad state.  So let's all just remember that as I tell you this story.  He looked a little like this. :)

One morning he was clipping his fingernails into a cup.  He didn't want to get up to clip them but he didn't want them all over the bed either (which I appreciated), so the cup was his solution.  I, however, told him I thought it was disgusting that he was clipping his nails into a cup.  It just grossed me out.

Fast forward to the late afternoon.  Shane was still in bed and needed me to get him some pain medication.  I got his pills and grabbed "the cup" off the night stand, not remembering anything from earlier in the day.  I filled it with water from the bathroom faucet and gave Shane his pills without another thought.  He thanked me and started drinking and then started spitting the water out, back into the cup.  I thought he was doing this because I got the water from the bathroom faucet and not from the kitchen but it still seemed like a  big reaction to me so I asked, "What's wrong?"

"Just take this away please." He frantically handed the cup out to me.

"Why?" I asked again, still not understanding, and then it hit me.

AGHHHHHHHH!!!   SICK!

My dry heaves started to kick in and even more so as I dumped out the water and fingernails into the kitchen sink and had to wash them down. (okay, I'm still dry heaving as I type this. so gross!)

He claims he didn't actually drink any, he just happened to glance down as he started drinking and saw the fingernails floating all around.

So let this be a lesson to you...no fingernails in cups I tell you!

It's just safer that way.

The Shiny New Knee...

Most people don't know that Shane has had chronic knee pain for the last 17 years of his life.

Chronic, constant, unrelenting knee pain.

He tore his ACL at age 21 and didn't get surgery for a year.  And when he did get the surgery it went bad…very very bad.  It caused massive arthritis and bone spurs so severe that just walking was  painful.  Heck, just sitting was painful!

He rubs my back, I rub his knee.

He has done all he can to work through it and live as normal of a life as he can.  He's run and biked and played basketball and volleyball and everything else, always paying for it in a major way the next day/week.

He worked diligently to try to keep it strong but it just kept getting worse and worse, the pain more and more severe until he finally made the decision…"I've got to get the surgery now."

Most doctors don't like to do total knee replacements on people under 40 years old because they only last a certain amount of time, but Shane's knee is so bad that the doctor agreed it would be good to do now.

Unfortunately when you decide you want the surgery "now" you have to figure out a time in your life that you can have a month or more to recover and you have to get on the doctor's schedule and "now" for us meant about 6 or 7 months after the decision was made.

It felt like it was never really going to happen, but wouldn't you know it, it actually did come.  It came on Monday, July 16th at 8 am.

Shane got himself a new knee.

The recovery has been rough, though not many people outside our home would know it.  He has shown up to the kids' 4 hour long swim meet (2 days after getting home from the hospital), to the Pioneer Day celebration at the ward, and to Sacrament meeting today.  At each event he put on a smile and talked to everyone who had questions but I could tell he was putting on a good show.  He was kind and good natured through it all.  Nevertheless, the minute we walked through the door he collapsed, so exhausted and in so much pain he could barely move.

I told him today that perhaps he shouldn't do so much and I think he now agrees.

There is a long road of recovery still ahead, but the promise of being able to use his knee, not only to do things he hasn't been able to do in years, but to live without chronic pain, is something that makes him so excited he can hardly stand it.

It makes me pretty excited too.

I'll make sure to post a picture of us playing tennis, snowboarding, and hiking Kilimanjaro some day.

At least now it's a possibility. :)

Room Rules...

Listen, when you live in a house full of one brother you have to have some pretty strict room rules to make sure everyone is on board with your standards.  Leave it to Olivia and Morgan (but we all know mostly Olivia) to make sure things are clear.

Several months ago she posted this sign on her door:

I believe my favorites are:

#4--No Smoking (you know, since most of us here have a problem with that she just wants to make sure we keep it outside I guess)

#8--No picking noses (just a general good rule of thumb)

#11--No Junking…so important that it had to be added as rule #11 of "10 Room Rules"

Owen couldn't stand idly by without a few rules of his own so he created a sign as well.  It looks like this:

I know it doesn't have quite the flare that Olivia's and Morgan's has but I think he gets his point across pretty well.  

Maybe Shane and I should create some room rules of our own.

I have a few ideas…

The Jerz….

(Photo by Damian Dayton)

People who blog about their pets are so annoying.

So sue me.

This is Jersey.

Damian took a bunch of candid pictures of my family one day and one of my favorites was this one of Jersey.  That's when I knew…I really love my dog.

I never understood people who loved their dogs "like they were part of the family".

We had dogs growing up, but they were always backyard mangey mutts that weren't allowed inside.  I'm not exactly sure why my parents had them because none of us seemed to appreciate having them.

Nonetheless, because of this experience I never intended on having a dog.

Then I had to dog-sit the litter of puppies that Jersey was born in and Morgan and I fell in love with Jersey ("the cow puppy").

She was just so cute.

With some finagling I talked my dad into letting us have Jersey at the apartment and the deed was done.

We became a dog family.  An INSIDE dog family.

Unheard of.

Since then Jersey really has become a part of our family.  I can't imagine life without her.

In the beginning I told Shane I couldn't bring myself to fully love her because she could get hit by a car or run away at any time and I didn't want to cry over a dog.   But somewhere along the line she worked her way into my heart anyway and if something happened to her I really would cry…a lot.

She's the best dog.

I know there are a lot of people who don't understand loving a dog like this and all I can say is, I get it…

….but you're really missing out.