Shut Up Joe!

It was the funniest thing. Yesterday me and Amy and the kids and Joseph (my 12 yr old brother) were driving all over creation buying stuff. Joe was making weird noises, he does that sometimes for no other reason than to be annoying. All of the sudden, with the most sassy accent you could imagine, Crystal says "Shut Up Joe!". It was sooooo funny! And Joe needed it. We tried to tell Crystal she shouldnt say that, but Im sure she saw right through us as we probably say it all the time, making us hypocrites.

House Final Walk Through
We got an email from the builder saying that our house is scheduled for the final walk through on the 7th of Janurary. That is a week from tomorrow. The final walkthrough is where the builder and the superintendant walk through with you and show you how everthing works, which light switches do what, how to turn on/off the propane/water/electricity etc. You also look at anything that still needs to be done. Then about one week after that you can move in. So we are looking at moving in on the weekend of the 14th-15th, which is good since my last day at the storage units is scheduled to be the 15th.

Amy is bumbed that it is going to take a whole extra week longer than what she was hoping, but I want everything done right and for no one to be in a hurry.

Tomorrow we are going out to look at the house again. They should have put in the cabinets, and they may have even started on the carpeting. Then we are headed from there down to Oak City to stay the entire New Years weekend. It will be fun.

Merry Christmas

What a christmas weekend it has been. We drove to Idaho Thursday about 6pm-ish. It was a nice drive, the kids slept most of the way there. Then when we got there we just hung out and watched IRobot (which by the way is an AWESOME movie). That was about the extent of that day. Nice and relaxing.

Friday we did lots more TV watching and Jan made lots of treats. I ate and ate and ate till I was sick - literally. So I quit eating the junk and Janis had made some real nice vegetable soup which made me feel WAY better! Then some of Amy's cousins came over and we played "Battle of the Sexes" which is a really hard game. You basically have to answer questions that only the opposite gender would know. Like how do you stop a run in a female's stockings? Or how many weeks is a full pregnancy? But the women have to answer manly questions as well, lots of them having to with beer that I didnt know the answer to either. It was pretty fun and the girls beat our pants off. Then that night Grandma Dot came over (Janis' Mom) and we sang songs and read the Christmas story.

Saturday (today) we got up and werent allowed into the room for a bit so grandma could get her camera ready. Then we went in and Crystal and Rooker went berserk on their presents. Crystal got a glow in the dark Care Bear that she just loves to death. I am afraid it has replaced Mr. Frog now. Rooker got a bunch of farm animal figurines that he played with for a while. He never spends much time with anything except Buzz Lightyear and Woody from Toy Story.

Around 11ish we drove out to my parents. Just about everyone arrived at the same time. We all sat in a circle and kind of took turns opening presents. Marie made these awesome pics of our kids for Amy. Mom bought everyone nice Oreck vacuums and dart guns. We played dart guns forever in the basement, it was a blast! Then we just ate junk food and messed around. Joe got this huge basketball game where you throw balls into the hoops and they roll back to you. Pretty fun.

Amy's mom and Jon got me the computer game World of Warcraft. Its a HUGE online multiplayer game where you actually become a character in a virtual world. Every character in the game is another player. You can go on quests in groups or solo, and you level your character. You can build your skills and weapons and then go fight that dark side (which is also other players). You can build your own house and live in it. The map you play in is HUMONGOUS. It has large landmasses seperated by huge bodies of water. It has entire underwater cities, lots of dungeons, hundreds of quests, different animals you can tame and ride, spells and skills to learn. Its a HUGE game. It costs $50 to buy and $15 a month to play. So anyway, Ill give it a run and see if I stick with it. It should be alot of fun.

Our house is still coming along, but it will never be fast enough. I am certain we will get in sometime in Janurary, but when is unknown. They have been saying it will be done on the 4th, but I think it will be at least another 1-2 weeks beyond that. The sooner the better!

Ok, going to bed now, nighty night!

What a weekend

Ok, so everything and everything happened this last weekend. It was just crazy.

Mormon Tab Show
We went to see the Mormon Tabernacle Christmas Show and it was excellent. I thought it would just be some dumb choir concert, but it was actually choreographed and stuff. They had dancers dancing in the aisles, they had a bell choir, they had these 10 drummers come in and start pounding away, it was cool. What a concert.

Marriot Stay
Of course every year we do the Marriot Stay where the whole immediate family and anyone else who wants, goes and stays one night in the Marriot attached to the Crossroads Plaza. It was really fun. We just ate at the food court, watched a pantomime, played a few dumb arcades, sat in the hot tub, suffocated in the sauna, order room service, and played a new dice game called Stack. It was pretty fun. BUT THE BEST PART was that all our 3 kids were in Idaho with Grandma Durfee on the farm. It was great. It was so nice to sit down at the restaurant and not have to get anyones food, or have to tell anyone to sit down, or not have to worry about them in the pool. It was such a good vacation!

Stockton Home
They have done quite a bit on the home. It is all painted inside and they were putting the stucco on when we went out last Saturday. It is coming along very nicely and quickly. I am excited.

Thats it.

After A While

After A While
After a while you learn
the subtle difference between
holding a hand and chaining a soul
and you learn
that love doesn't mean leaning
and company doesn't always mean security.
And you begin to learn
that kisses aren't contracts
and presents aren't promises
and you begin to accept your defeats
with your head up and your eyes ahead
with the grace of woman, not the grief of a child
and you learn
to build all your roads on today
because tomorrow's ground is
too uncertain for plans
and futures have a way of falling down
in mid-flight.
After a while you learn
that even sunshine burns
if you get too much
so you plant your own garden
and decorate your own soul
instead of waiting for someone
to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure
you really are strong
you really do have worth
and you learn
and you learn
with every goodbye, you learn...

Veronica A. Shoffstall

Men's Rules

I got this in an email, I think its pretty funny, and pretty true.

Please note... these are all numbered "1" ON PURPOSE!
1. Sunday sports. It's like the full moon or the changing of the tides. Let it be.
1. Shopping is NOT a sport. And no, we are never going to think of it that way.
1. Crying is blackmail.
1. Ask for what you want. Let us be clear on this one:
Subtle hints do not work!
Strong hints do not work!
Obvious hints do not work!
Just say it!
1. Yes and No are perfectly acceptable answers to almost every question.
1. Come to us with a problem only if you want help solving it. That's what we do. Sympathy is what your girlfriends are for.
1. If you think you're fat, you probably are. Don't ask us.
1. You can either ask us to do something or tell us how. Not both. If you already know best how to do it, just do it yourself.
1. Whenever possible, please say whatever you have to say during commercials.
1. ALL men see in only 16 colors, like Windows default settings. Peach, for example, is a fruit, not a color. Pumpkin is also a fruit. We have no idea what mauve is.
1. If it itches, it will be scratched. We do that.
1. If we ask what is wrong and you say "nothing," we will act like nothing's wrong. We know you are lying, but it is just not worth the hassle.
1. If you ask a question you don't want an answer to, expect an answer you don't want to hear.
1. When we have to go somewhere, absolutely anything you wear is fine...Really.
1. Don't ask us what we're thinking about unless you are prepared to discuss such topics as monster trucks.
1. You have enough clothes.
1. You have too many shoes.

Help! Im surrounded by cheesy romantics!!!

Well, we went out to look at our house again tonight. They have put chicken wire up and black sheeting against the house. Plus they put all the scaffolding up, so they will probably do the stucco and rock work on the outside this week. On the inside of the house they put the texture on the walls, so the inside is rdy to be painted. There was only one small problem that we could see, and that was that there is a spot where the TV is supposed to go in the loft, and it looks like they just sheetrocked right over it and forgot to cut a hole for the TV jack box. Lucky for us, our rep showed up at the house doing a check to make sure they had textured that day, and so we showed him the spot and he said he would get it taken care of immediately. So that was nice.

Then we were going to go hang out at Sadie and Eddies but they were out doing Christmas stuff so we just stopped there long enough for Crystal to use the bathroom. Crystal was bummed that Maddey wasnt there, so we took her and Rooker and Bailey and went to McDonalds and let them play on the huge playset. They loved it. We ate 99cent hamburgers and water. It was fun.

Amy seems to have gotten ahold of a romance book that she is absolutely in love with. She puts it down every 5 minutes to give me an update on whats happening. She is absolutely enthralled with the story. The name of the book is "Almost Heaven" by Judith McNaught. Neither of us has ever heard of the author before, but she sure has gotten Amy's full and complete attention. My mom calls these romance novels "Fluffy Books", and she reads them all the time too.
One day my mom was reading one of these "fluffy books" and I was working on the computer. All of the sudden I saw the HUGEST grin come across my mother's face. I could tell she was beaming inside. I said "did you just read a really good romantic part?" She said "yes" and just kept on reading.

Im surrounded by cheesy romantics!

Anyway, I really dont have a wife till she finishes this book, then I will have a wife for a few days till she finds another one. I guess I cant complain with as much time as I spend on the computer.

My Disheveled Comportment

Woo yeah, late night at the office last night. Our current connection to the internet is not big enough to handle all of the customers we are adding to the network, so we had to install a DS3, which is a HUGE connection to the internet (45Mbps), and in 30 days, we are putting in a 2nd one. In order to do this, I had to upgrade some hardware on our routers. So we scheduled an outage for yesterday at 11am, but one of our customers is on the island of Pit Cairn, and their only connection to the outside world is their satellite link to us. They called and said they were having a medical emergency and needed their sat link for another 12 hours, so we rescheduled the outage for 11pm last night. I was expecting it to take about 1-2 hours, but it ended up taking 4.5 hours. So I didnt get done till about 3:30am this morning. I didn't think it would be a good idea to drive home, so I stayed the night at my bro's Brett. They had a nice air matress set out in the basement with 10 zillion pillows, 2 blankets, and a body pillow. I was in a commodius paradise of thermal dormancy to which an perfunctory escape was futile. He lives about 2 mins from the office. I couldn't sleep when I got there so I turned on the TV and watched "3's Company" which I think is the most idiotic show in the universe, but it was so late last night, I was laughing my rear off. I don't even remember now what it was even about.

Then I had to come into work at 8am the next morning to finish the upgrade with our internet provider. I finally finished everything about 3pm today.

Not sure what everyone at the office thought about me showing up to work in my PJs, unshowered, unshaven, unkempt, etc. I am sure the unnerving sight of my disheveled comportment was distractingly vexatious to the other cultureds whom would otherwise be more propitious at my manifestation.

Its about 5pm now, and I dont even feel tired yet. Im sure I will probably sleep pretty good tonight.

Me and Amy are headed out to see the play Scrooge in Centerville at Pages Lane Theatre. My mom is going to watch all the kids, one of the perks of living at home with my parents.
I got a note from the builder saying they are doing the carpentry work this week. That means they will probably paint next week. They said they still think we are going to close on the 4th of Janurary.

We will see.

The Hypnotic Depths of Insomnolent Lethargy

Life is really busy right now. At work we have soo much going on, I never finish my todo list by the end of the day, and seein as I don't have anything but a single room at home to my name, it makes it hard to work from home, or to get in the "mode". So I generally don't work from home. But at our new house, I have my own office! It will be so nice. It will be an ivory tower of sequestered asylum providing immunity for me as I leave my wife harborless in the turbulent sea of lawlessness and pandemonium which has taken up residence in the behavior of our kids.
Basically, at work we are doing a bunch of LDS temples in South America, and we also got a job to do some Stake Centers and Family History centers in Japan. And it all has to be done by Jan 1 2005. So there's a bustle about hiring ppl to help with the installs and getting travel arrangements all done etc. But I am pretty certain we will be able to pull it all off. But December is going to be one busy month.

Im trying to get Rodger (my manager) to get me a new cell phone. The one I have STINKS! It is always dropping calls. The one I want is Nokia 6820 that has a calendar built into it, and plus it has the feature to be able to sync it with my the calendar software on my laptop. I have been trying to figure out a calendar system that works for me for a long time, but have never been able to figure one out. I tried a Palm Pilot, too big, I tried a little pocket book calendar, lost it about a million times, and I even tried one on a cell phone, but it was too much of a pain to type stuff in using that stinky little key pad. BUT I did used to have an online calendar, but the problem was that you had to be on the internet in order to look at it. BUT with a phone that will sync with my online calendar...now there is the ticket...at least I hope. Oh to have a perspicuous life of systematic method free of the daily discomposure analogous to the uncoordinated chain of life's typical routine.

Our house...I got an email that said that they are looking at finishing the house on the 4th of Jan 2005. Most likely we will be moving in pretty close to my birthday. It would be a nice birthday present. We are headed out there this Saturday to look at it. We will take some pics. Hopefully they have all the sheetrock done and maybe even a little more. I need to remember to call the propane guy and get our propane tank installed...I keep forgetting, and its probably pretty important.

Amy and I went and saw the movie National Treasure with Nicolas Cage. It was PRETTY good. It was a little bit too unbelievable, but it was a fun movie nevertheless. How can you go wrong with an archeological hunt for the worlds greatest treasure that involves the secret society of the Free Masons? Its fun, but I would wait till it was at the $1 theatre or on video.

Thats it for tonight, I'm headed to bed. Got another busy day at work tomorrow!

Oh yeah, and one more thing. We purchased a Memory Foam mattress pad. You may have seen the commercials where some dude presses their hand into the pad it retains the shape of the hand for a little bit? Well, we bought a 2 inch pad and put it on top of our bed. OH MY HECK, I LOVE IT. They are expensive, but we got ours on overstock.com for $60 - for a King size none the less! It is like sleeping on marshmallows. It enspheres to the shape of your body and ingests you into its hypnotic depths of somnolent lethargy. Ahhhhhhhh. ZZZZZZZZZ.

Now I've gotten myself all excited to go to bed.

Nighty night.