Reading Material

I'm the kind of king that doesn't spend a lot of time on his throne. As a consequence, I rarely get a chance to read the Reader's Digest which sits on the rack next to said throne. Since I don't really like Reader's Digest, it all works out okay.† Standing there the other day, however, I read part of an advice column that was excellent. I think the trick is that they have a man writing the advice column for once.

Dear Abie,
The other day I set off for work, leaving my husband in the house watching the TV. I hadn't gone more than a mile when my engine conked out and the car shuddered to a halt. I walked back home, only to find my husband making love to our neighbor. He was let go from his job six months ago, and he says he has been feeling increasingly depressed and worthless. I love him very much, but I don't know if I can trust him anymore. What should I do?

Sincerely,
Frustrated

Dear Frustrated,
A car stalling can be caused by a variety of faults with the engine. Check that there is no debris in the fuel line. If it's clear, check the jubilee clips holding the vacuum pipes onto the inlet manifold. Or it could be that the fuel pump itself is faulty, causing low delivery pressure to the carburetor float chamber.

I hope this helps.

† On a side note, my goal of getting a joke published in Reader's Digest continues to elude me, so I guess it really is harder than it looks to write a terrible joke.

Take at look...

at my ward's new Relief Society 2nd Counselor:


Yup, it's me. I'll be released from Ward Newsletter and Historian as soon as they find someone to replace me. I'm actually not too nervous. Maybe I'm finally getting old enough that this sort of stuff doesn't intimidate me anymore. I guess PTO president was probably good prep too.

Unicorns and Princesses

My firstborn turned 8 this last Friday. I gave her a well-timed present the night before. She was going up the stairs while I was going down and we managed to collide in the dark. I knocked her down the stairs and she was pretty sure she had broken her arm. She’s world class at milking it for all it’s worth. I felt pretty bad about the whole thing. She probably did sprain her wrist so we wrapped an Ace Bandage around it. We didn’t get much sleep that night. I told her she could talk about it at show and tell, but when she got home she said so many people were asking her about it that it wasn’t necessary.

For the actual birthday we started out the day with waffles, her request. Our tradition is happy meals for lunch on birthdays, but she was having a pizza party so we delayed that till Saturday. Sadly the pizza party didn’t happen. It was okay though because we had pizza for dinner that night. After dinner we opened her presents. The main present I bought her was a Nintendo DS game, Mario party. That ended up being super lame so I gave her the Zelda game I had been saving. Now I have Mario Party listed on half.com since we can’t return it. E had a pretty good time albeit a tad grumpy due to the previous night.

Saturday we had her friend birthday party. She chose a unicorn theme. I draped crepe all over the front room and taped purple balloons everywhere. The kids really enjoyed that, they thought it was pretty magical. For the party we played limbo, hula and pin the horn on the unicorn. To top it all off we had an indestructible unicorn piñata at the end. Even J had a hard time breaking it open.

We were pretty exhausted when it was all over, but E still had a birthday party to attend that night. Her friend has the same birthday so she was pretty excited to go. All in all I think it went very well. We are excited for her upcoming baptism on April 12th.

Stats

E and P both had their well child checkups this last Tuesday (8 year and 6 months). E is in the 8th percentile for both height and weight. She’s been slowing down more and more in her growth. I haven’t really been worried about it since there are short genes in the family. The doctor did say that she may not end up short. There is something called Constitutional Growth Delay. That is when a child starts out average size and gradually moves down on the growth charts compared to their peers. They hit puberty a little later, but catch up in growth. He said that tends to run in families and that kids also tend to be an average of their parent’s heights. It’s obviously not for sure, she may still end up short, but it was interesting to think she may be taller.

P is quite the opposite. She is in the 90% in height and the 20th for weight. Her head is about average. She’s a tall skinny girl like her mama. She loves eating, but doesn’t eat a ton. We are working on getting her crawling right now. She can hold herself on all fours for a few seconds.

Otherwise, everything else went well. I have appointments set up for the 3 oldest to have their eyes checked in a couple weeks. I imagine at least two of them will end up with my bad eyesight.

Comics

As we were walking into the school for the concert, another girl told E she looked beautiful. Then she said that she looked just like Cinderella. E said thank you in this kind of embarrassed yet proud/happy voice. It probably made her day to be told she looked like her idol.

L was drinking some apple juice yesterday morning. He said “Mom, this makes my face happy.” He’s getting a lot better at expressing himself and reasoning.

J brought home one of the new fangled grocery bags yesterday - the cloth kind you are supposed to use instead of environment destroying, global warming causing plastic bags. Apparently they are having a contest to see who can use it the most. So I'm supposed to let him know everytime I use it. His unappreciated comment to his coworkers was "seems awful expensive to throw a bag like this away everytime I shop". If you get that you will laugh like crazy, if you don't I'm not explaining.

Spring Concert

E and B had their Spring Music program yesterday. E was first. As soon as she located J and I in the audience she started hamming it up like crazy. That child has no shame. She is definitely destined towards a career in drama. B did well too. He wasn’t super excited at going. He didn’t understand why he had to change his grass stained pants. He did a great job singing though and even did the actions. Thankfully the program was fairly short. I thought it was well done.

Photo Shoot With Daddy

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

E had her first play on St. Patrick’s Day. It was called “The Lost Pot of Gold” and she played the part of Toby. She did a great, albeit wiggly, job. She obviously knew everyone else’s parts because I could see her mouthing their parts when it wasn’t her turn. If they messed up then she would get them back on track. I’m so proud of how hard she works and the enthusiasm she puts into it.

There's a new sheriff in town:

She has started sucking it in a normal way, just not in this picture:

She's a Maniac

P's first two teeth have come through. I found this in the toy basket and stuck it in her mouth. Surprisingly she enjoyed sucking on it. I just think binky babies look so cute. If she didn't suck her thumb then she would be one right now. At least I get some pictures to remember.

This is P sleeping during church on Sunday. I took the picture during the RS practice song. I'm sure everyone around thought I was crazy. I always have my camera with me though so I couldn't resist.
P's new favorite activity. I think she is training to be a future aerobics instructor. If you look close you can tell these were all taken mid-jump.

Out of Control

On a separate topic, have you guys heard about the lady being charged with child endangerment in Chicago? She left her sleeping 2 year old in the car while her other two kids gave money to the salvation army. She locked the car and stayed within sight of it the whole time. I read this and was absolutely astounded. This has gotten ridiculous to the extreme. How about a little common sense here. It is amazing how many kids can fall through the cracks while a perfectly good mom gets prosecuted. Oregon's law is fairly open ended. A child under 10 cannot be left unattended for an length of time that could endanger their safety or health. You could probably be fairly liberal with that, but I guarantee that won't help you if CPS disagrees with you.