New Suit

I picked up my suit today. I put on the shirt, tie, and suit coat so you can see a picture of it. (That's right, I put the stuff on just to take a picture for this blog...)

I guess the picture doesn't really show the detail in the fabric. The suit will be displayed at Stake Conference and at Kate's baptism. No other viewings are currently scheduled.

Birthdays

Emma's birthday was last Saturday. We got her a number of presents, Ruth enjoyed the card that had the dancing hamsters on it. The picture I have provided shows how absolutely crazy Emma's hair is in the mornings.

Tonight we had a little gathering to celebrate the birthdays of Tom, Tara, Emma, and Kate. The curly candles were my idea... The girls seem to have enjoyed themselves. We have left over ice cream, (Dreyers - 4 different flavors - $2.50 each this week) if you want to come over and have some, you are more than welcome to.

Garden Update

We've got a number of tomato plants growing out there, with tons of tomatoes on it. We also have 2 zucchini plants. This makes for lots of tomatoes and zucchini. We have a green pepper plant, and get an occasional pepper off it. We have some green beans - not a lot, but enough for the occasional handful of beans. I have replanted peas a couple of weeks ago, they should be ready when it cools off enough to be the right temperature for them.

Last night I accidentally watered the garden for about 18 hours. I expect to be overrun by tomatoes in a day or 2, as sunny and warm as things are around here.

Every other day, we make a big pot of something that contains at least zucchini and tomatoes. Yesterday for lunch we made chili. We've had taco stew, beef stew, chili mac, spaghetti, and other stuff. We've been making more than we eat, and freezing the leftovers, there are 4 meals waiting for us and counting in there.

In a day or two, we might need some help with our tomatoes... We also might need some new recipes that involve zucchini and tomatoes.

Cable service

We have cable service again, every can come and visit us now.

The guy came yesterday, and was here installing the the early afternoon. I got in 1 1/2 baseball games yesterday before the evening.

The service seems nice, it has more channels for the buck than Comcast had. It also has a channel guide, and you can mark shows on the guide, so when it's time for a show to start that you want to see, it will change the channel for you. (We did this last night to catch the Superhero gadget episode of Mythbusters.) Maybe that's how Comcast is now, but it's too late for them.

Tara was able to get the little girls to help with their chores this morning, so they were able to watch a couple of shows on Disney. They seemed pleased. Hopefully it will be just the motivation they need to do their chores. (Several of the girls have been resisting...)

We changed our phone service at the same time, Comcast had finally figured out a way to try to force us to pay more for the service we had, so I switched. (For one, our current provider does a package for phone, tv, and internet. I also had no plans to retain the comcast service, it seemed to me that paying them more just because they said I should was the wrong thing to do. I waited until nearly the very last minute, I figure Comcast spent about $20 total trying to tell me about the change and trying to get me to "upgrade" my service.

Conversation a 4 year old had with herself

We were driving down the street, Emma was playing with her hands.

Emma: "My pointy finger will stand up by itself, but my middle finger won't stand up by itself. I have to hold it up. If I try to make it straight by itself, it won't do it."

I interrupted at this point, and let her know that wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

Conversation with a 4 year old

(On today's fun walk)

Emma: "Dad, when they knock down your office, you will have to sit in the grass to work. You won't have a desk."

(They are knocking down the wings of my building)

Me: "Yeah? Maybe. Or maybe I will have to sit in the dirt."

Emma: "Sit in the dirt? That's silly. You couldn't work sitting in the dirt. Maybe you would have to get a new job."

Me: "Get a new job, huh?"

Emma: "Yeah. sit in the grass or find a new job."

There you have it.

Game Time

Age of Empires

Dad and I were the only ones ready to play this evening at 7pm, so we tried us vs. 2 expert computers with no treaty period. This didn't turn out in our favor, really. The computers ended up winning on a trade victory. (I turned back the first trade victory, but in the process got my town attacked and knocked down. We weren't prepared to do anything about the second trade victory try.)

For the second game, Dave was ready to play, the 3 of us played against 2 expert computers again. For the second game, Dave played the part of "bait", and nearly was wiped out. It seems the computers used the better part of their resources attacking Dave, so we were able to attack fairly soon thereafter and beat both computers.

Restaurant Review

Village Inn

The girls wanted to take Tara out to dinner for her birthday. Tara's birthday is tomorrow, but we have 3 hours worth of interviews lined up at the Stake Center, so I wasn't available for tomorrow, we went tonight.

The service seemed kind of slow. I'm not sure why, it didn't seem all that busy there.

Tara ordered a Cesear salad, I got the chicken fried chicken. The girls all got cheeseburger kids meals with fruit. Emma was disappointed that it wasn't buffet style on the fruit. Tara and my meals we ok, but that was it. Just ok.

Annual raises

When I got back to work today, the envelope with the notice of my annual raise was on my desk. The chief engineer of our team told me about it passing me in the hall. I opened it up, looked at it, and called him up on the phone. I said "Did everyone get a pay cut this year?" (The chief engineer doesn't have prior knowledge of what the pay raise is. He's mostly there to go to meetings, remind us to bill our time, and generally tell us when we are being really mean to someone.) His response was "WHAT? YOU GOT A PAY CUT? HOW CAN THEY DO THAT, THAT'S NOT FAIR!" I said "I didn't, I was just trying to get a rise out of you." I think it worked.

Anyway, it's a little bit more than I was expecting. (Although a little of a little isn't all that much, but it's not something I'll thumb my nose at.) Most years I get a 4% or 4.5% raise, which is the most they can give. (The department average is usually 2.5% or 3%, I think. This year I got a 5.59% raise. I'll take it over a bucket of chicken.

Costco - Life in the fast lane

I went up this morning to purchase my new suit. (I'll get you a picture when its back from the tailor.)

Afterwards I stopped at costco for baby formula and chips. (This is actually what I went in for.) I got in the shortest lane, there were 2 people in front of me. They had a girl doing "pre-scanning" of the stuff people were buying, so when you got to the register, all you had to do was pay. I was in line for only a minute.

They said they tried it out in California, everyone down there loved it. It would have been a super short visit if I hadn't gotten distracted by the projection alarm clock. It puts the time, internal temperature, and phase of the moon on the wall. It also has 2 different alarms, so you can set alarm times for 2 different people.

Me - 3 Mice - not sure

Last night I went out to get some glue traps. The package I bought had 4 of them in it.

I baited the things with peanut butter. One went under the sink with the 2 snap traps, one went behind the bathroom sink, one went under the bookshelf in the front hallway, and one went behind my bedroom door.

Within an hour or two, the bathroom one had moved. I didn't know if it was one of the girls that did it, but there ended up being a set of little mouse footprints on it. This mouse had gotten away. I put the trap back.

This morning when I got up, I looked behind the bedroom door. The trap was gone. I found it 12 feet away in the hallway, it looks like the mouse put up quite a fight, but got away from that one also.

The trap under the bookshelf was undisturbed. The trap under the sink had a mouse, and the snap trap right next to it also had a mouse. Hopefully what happened was that Houdini was trying to teach the other mouse about glue traps and how to get away from them, and in the fray after the stunt didn't work, Houndini got knocked into the snap trap.

The traps are now in the kitchen, bathroom, and under the bookcase. Hopefully we don't have any more mice in the house, and if we do, hopefully "The Brain" is now gone, and all we are left with are "pinkys", so they walk into the traps...

Game Time

Age of Empires

Rob, Dave and I played tonight. (Dad was stuck in a meeting and came 45 minutes too late...)

We played us vs. 5 expert level computers, and gave ourselves a 30 minute treaty time. It looked for a little bit like we weren't going to win, but I took a bunch of dudes over to one of the computer player's towns while Rob and Dave helped protect my town center, and I did some really mean things to that little computer until it gave up.

We finally won after nearly 2 hours of playing. By then, I had 2 diapers that needed changing, and we didn't end up playing a second game...

lunchfight.com - I'm #1

I've been playing a stupid little game on lunchfight.com for about 2 months. It's really a dumb little game.

Anyway, tonight I finally reached the top of the heap on the site. I don't expect it to last too long, so I took a picture to make it last longer...

Male horses can be mudders, Cats can be mousers, it's all so confusing...

Last night I spotted a mouse in the house. Our old neighbors to the West always complained about mouse problems when they lived there, and Tara says our neighbors to the East have had some recent mouse problems over there, but until now, our house has been mouse free.

I went last night and got a couple of traps, the mouse I was looking to catch was a brown mouse. This morning, we were awakened to the sound of Mary screaming. It turned out that she woke up, and went into the bathroom, and the little brown mouse had come in under the door on her. Mary has been a little skittish ever since.

I checked the traps, and caught a little gray mouse. I hope there is just 2 of them. I went looking in the basement, and didn't really find anything, I also couldn't find where they were getting in. (Tara thinks it could be from all the doors we have had open lately. One door was propped open for about 3 hours yesterday while the girls played outside..) There we 2 holes in the kitchen, and one in the bathroom where the mice could have come up from the basement, these holes are all now plugged with steel wool. I'm not sure what else to do, and can't find the hiding spot for the stupid little thing...

Strawberry banana pancakes

At the beginning of the month, we bought what we thought were packages of dried fruit. (From costco, there were 10 apple and 10 strawberry banana) It turns out these were freeze dried fruit. if you hold the package too tightly, the fruit disintegrates. This makes it harder to eat.

Tara's idea was to use the stuff for flavored pancakes. We tried it today, the girls really liked them this morning. Ruth and Emma both ate 1.5 pancakes.

Entry by Lily

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Game Time

Age of Empires

We played the first game - Rob, Dad, and Dave against me and 2 computers. It was supposed to be 2 hard computers, but I forgot to switch the difficulty level, and it ended up being 2 medium computers. As soon as the other guys attacked, the computers wanted to give up. (and they basically did.) The game didn't last too long.

The second game was a Free For All between Dad, Dave, and me. I ended up winning, and the game didn't last all that long...

Shrek

We took the girls in to see Shrek the Third tonight. I was hoping the theatre would be cooler than it actually was.

The girls seemed to enjoy the movie, about 2/3 of the way through I went to the back to hold Lily, she wouldn't sit still. (She was too tired.) As the characters were storming the castle, I heard all kinds of laughter from the middle of the room. The girls thought parts of it were hilarious. (Especially the part where the ladies were fighting, I think.)

For some reason, they didn't think the end, where the parents fell asleep, was all that funny.

Walking slowly

On Monday morning, I walked to work. It turns out this was a really bad idea. By nighttime, my ankle hurt so bad I could hardly walk on it, I couldn't sleep with it. It took more than an hour to find a position to sleep with it. It's hurt ever since.

Walking with a hurt ankle tweaks the back. My back has been severally tweaked all week. It's getting better, but still hurts.

I've been pounding down the ibuprophen this week. It's starting to help. I thought about going in to see the surgeon who worked on it before. It turns out that he doesn't do ankles anymore, only knees, hips, and shoulders. I guess it's good to specialize. The receptionist told me the office had someone who did ankles, she asked if I needed surgery. (They also had someone who could see me if I didn't need surgery, and would refer me over, if necessary.) I didn't make an appointment, I figure if the receptionist was ready to schedule me for surgery, I really didn't need to be running in to see one of the doctors in that office.

I've been taking it easy, and the ankle is starting to get better. Hopefully the back will follow.

74%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

Mingle² - Dating Site

I think it's the fact that I have a work blog that sent me this high.

TV service

We ordered cable TV this week. All those who have been avoiding our house because of the lack of TV service - you can come back over after Aug 29. We ended up dropping our netflix subscription from 4 disks at a time down to 2 at a time. We figure that if we have TV service 2 at a time will pile up ok, we should always have one here, since there is only a 2 day turn around on the disks now.

The driving motivation for the service is sports. Tara is sick of listening to baseball, football, and basketball on the radio. Tickets are too expensive for all of us to get season tickets.

We (Meaning me) plan to remove Disney, CArtoon Network, and Nickelodeon from the channels that fly by when flipping through the channels. This should cut down a little on the watching of these channels, which was the primary reason for getting rid of our TV service in the first place.

We also have a back bedroom free if you need a place to stay. Just warn us before you hit the door step.

Anniversary presents

This year for our anniversary I ended up getting Tara an iHome iPod alarm clock stereo. The hotel we stayed at in Vegas this summer had one of these things, they are pretty nice. The Sudoku "very important papers" didn't come in the mail yet...
Tara got me a Green Lantern shirt (no green lantern tights, thankfully), and a shirt that says "Save the Drama for you Mama". This one should be a hit at work.

We went to the temple this morning, the girls were over at the Stake President's house. (They behaved, which is always a bonus when they are at someone else's house.) We ended up going and doing a session of sealings.

That about wraps up our anniversary plans. Tomorrow I have about 8 hours of church stuff. Tara has up to 5 hours of church stuff. Maybe I'll make dinner, but that's about it. We are boring people. Or really exiciting people with 5 kids.

NickleCade

Or more like the "Dime-" or "15 cents-" Cade these days...

This afternoon, I told the girls that if they got all their chores done, I would take them to the nicklecade. At 5:30pm, I told them the offer ended at 7pm. Mary was the only one to finish. (Kate's not done yet, but she's still working on it at 9:45pm...)

Anyway, I took Mary over to the place. She didn't quite get the hang of the Skeeball, she kept trying to throw the balls up into the cage instead of rolling them. She ended up riding all the little kiddie rides. She also seemed to like watching me play some of the games, she says her favorite was Mrs. Pac Man. She also seems to have liked Rampage. (With the big king Kong guy beating up buildings.)

We did a lot of things that gave out tickets, her favorite of those was one that had 6 buttons, you were supposed to hit the button that lit up to make a frog rise to the top of the thing. She tried beating me at it about 5 times... We ended up with 200 tickets, she got prizes to bring home to her sisters.

Happy Meals are toys.

Missy has been taking Mary and Kate the past few Thursdays to her apartment complex to swim. They have also been going to stores and have a good old time. Ruth and Emma are generally disappointed that they haven't been able to go, and jealous when Kate and Mary come back telling them all the things they got to do.

This past Thursday, we took the younger girls out to lunch, to counteract the jealousy factor. We went to Chuck-A-Rama, where Thursday is make your own tacos day. I had 2 taco bowls, with meat, beans, cilantro, rice and corn. They were pretty good.

Missy ended up being ready for the girls to come back earlier than we expected, so we had her bring them to the restaurant when we were done. Kate and Mary looked a little bit upset that we were eating out without them, but they had enough sense not to make a big deal about it.

As we were getting in the car, Emma asked Tara if we could go get a Happy Meal. We had been trying to get her to eat in the restaurant, so it was a frustrating to hear that, but it turns out that Emma thinks Happy Meals are just toys. We still didn't get her one.

Restaurant Review

Our Anniversary is Sunday. we ditched the kids and went to dinner tonight.

We went to Outback Steakhouse. They ended up cooking Tara's steak a little too much, it was all dried out. We ended up sending it back, the manager came and comped both our appetizers. We ended up having about $15 taken off the check. (And Tara got her steak back to take home, and the tossed her side dish back in.)

Not a bad deal. And my steak was good.

Game time

Skipbo

Tara - 1
Me - 0

Hit the Deck

Tara - 1 (1 point)
Me - 0 (107 points)

At least Tara can look forward to winning once a year.

Game Time

Age of Empires

Rob, Dad, Dave and I played against 4 expert computers for the first game. It turned out that for the first little while, I played the part of the 'bait'. The others helped keep my town center defended until the point that Rob built up an army and started attacking one of the computers. (This usually has the effect of making the armies of the computers go back to defend the town.) We eventually beat the computers.

For the second game, it was just Dad, Rob, and me, we played a Free for All game. Dad only had an hour to play, so we made it short. In the end, I came out the winner.

The Muppet Show - Season 2

Today was a big day for DVD releases. "The Tick vs. Season 2" was released today. Soon I can get them both together in a set at a reduced price, I hope.
"The Muppet Show - Season 2" was released today. I ordered it off Amazon - $10 off retail price, free shipping, plus I had a $5 off certificate from Amazon from preordering the Harry Potter book, so I ordered it. I think everyone here will enjoy it.

The gift that keeps on giving

Tara and my anniversary is coming up. (This Sunday, in fact. And yes, we both have the same anniversary.)

I've been contemplating for several weeks on what to get her. What do you get for the woman that has everything, and 5 kids any one of which might lose mutilate, or destroy anything you might get her?

I got the answer today from someone at work. (We weren't talking about wedding anniversary presents, we were just talking about this thing. It seemed like the perfect gift.) I'll let the cat out of the bag now:

Soduko toilet paper

It's it great? I should have gotten 2 rolls, one for home, and one for the office. (This is strictly a "Bring your own pen" type of thing, by the way.) The only thing I don't know is if it's single or double ply....

Leather or Pottery for the 9th anniversary? Who makes this stuff up?

72 hour kit refresh

I refreshed the stuff in the 72 hour kits today. We didn't have one for Lily until today.

I ended up leaving in the mac and and cheese and ramen, those were still ok. (Or at least we didn't have anything newer to stick in, and ramen has a shelf life of something like 317 years...)

For both lunch and dinner, the girls had a varying mixtures of:

• Chef Boy-R-Dee
  
• fruit cocktail
• applesauce
• chocolate cookies
• granola bars
• fruit snacks

They seemed to enjoy it. The new kits have:

• fruit leather
• granola bars
• cheese nips
• peanut butter crackers
• cheese crackers
• applesauce
• beef jerky

These might not be the best 72 hour kits in the world, but I figure it's better than nothing, and we need to have something the girls will eat...

Lots of food

We bought nearly $200 in groceries at Costco yesterday. This shouldn't surprise anyone, it's very easily done in that place. Tonight, I went to Maceys and bought nearly $200 in groceries there also. (In less than an hour.)

While I was shopping, there was a guy, his wife, and their baby. The guy kept getting stuff he wanted to buy, and his wife kept telling him he couldn't get stuff. At one point I heard her tell him "This is the reason I don't shop with you. We don't need all this stuff. Why do you keep grabbing things?"

Anyway, I somehow ended up right behind them at the checkout. I was putting my stuff up there, he said "That's my kind of stuff. Look what he's getting!" (I had TV dinners, meat, chips, fruit snacks, etc.)

They were also impressed at the volume. I didn't tell them about the trip to costco yesterday.

Game Time

Age of Empires.

Since it was Rob, Dad, Dave, and I, Rob suggested trying last week's game again. (Him and a Hard level comp vs the rest of us.)

This time, we didn't have our traditional 20 minute treaty period. Fairly shortly after the game started, Rob started doing pretty mean things to Dad.

After a while, I took some guys into Rob's town center and did quite a bit of damage to him. I started bringing my second wave of dudes in to polish off his economy when they walked right into a large army from the comp player. This was just about the end of those dudes.

Anyway, there wasn't any stopping Rob. He and his little friend eventually wiped us off the map.

Afterwards, Dave and I stuck around to play each other. At one point, I really thought Dave had me beat. He didn't polish me off, so ended up winning the game.

Dave wants to do an "All Native American" battle soon, where there are no European civs playing...