Saturday work-day!

First thing this morning, Paul and I went over to Jim and Jill's to help stain the deck. That went pretty fast since Jim had already done the larger flat parts. Paul and I just did the rails and the smaller flat sections.

Then we went over to Paul's and hauled gravel to cover the areas in the backyard which will be covered by the deck and other strategic locations that don't have grass.

Nothing better than getting out and doing some hard manual labor for a while. Since I live in a lovely Townhouse with an HOA, outside projects are hard to come by, so I use Paul's yard. Can't wait to help build the deck!!!

Griff Helping with the Watering

Griff and I were hanging out with Grandma and Grandpa H and he decided he wanted to water the plants out front.

We also got to be there for Jim and Jill to open their mission call to the NEW ZEALAND, Wellington mission! WOW! That should be pretty cool for them, I know they'll do great. They leave Sept 8.

I AM IRONMAN!

Sean and I went and saw Ironman, it was AWESOME! Lately the comic books turned movie haven't been very good, but this one is different. Big props to John Favreau for creating a really good movie - not only for comic fans, but really for anyone who likes a really good action/adventure movie.

I'm not a big Robert Downey Jr. (I think the last thing I really liked him in was The Breakfast Club - yeah, it's been that long!) but he was really good in this. His little attitude really comes over well at Tony Stark and it works perfectly. Gwenyth Paltrow wasn't bad as Pepper Potts, I'm not a huge fan of hers either, but she was good in her role and didn't look completely boring, like she usually does. It was probably the strawberry blonde hair, which I happen to like a lot :-)

Jeff Bridges is really good as Obidiah Stane, though I didn't even recognize him right away. Carlee Bobby was in it as was the guy who plays Pinter in Seinfeld, so that's always good.

Anyway, the movie was well worth the early-bird $5.50 at the Cinemark and I would highly recommend it to any action/adventure fan.

Just for Reece

They'll be at Usana - June 30, I bet you want to come up and go don't you?!?!?!?!?

Griffin in Heber with Thomas

Since this is the Memorial day weekend, and I don't have Griffin this year for Memorial Day (there isn't a big enough "rolling eyes" icon for how I feel about this, but...) I took most of the day off on Friday (I meant to take the whole day off, but my job doesn't allow for that, somehow...) and surprised Griff with a trip to Heber to see Thomas the Train.

I thought he would love it but I quickly discovered 2 things: 1) There were no other kids there over 3 unless they were with their younger siblings, and 2) Griff no longer likes Thomas the Train. How do I know, he informed me when we got there, that he's too old for Thomas - LOL. That kind of made me sad because when I was working in Colorado Springs I would bring him home Thomas the Train toys every time and he loved it! Though, to be fair, he was 3 at the time.

On the drive out, it was raining. I wasn't too worried about it since we'd be inside the train for the ride, so we clipped along, talking about the canyon and how it was made, how Deer Creek reservoir was made, why there were herds of cows along the road, if we had passed the turn for where we were going, explaining how gliders work (the airplane kind they have out at the Heber airport), and finally finding a parking spot at the train depot.

We got there just in time for our turn to ride with Thomas. I was looking forward to a nice, long, relaxing train ride. I was quickly disappointed when we went out about 10 minutes and stopped and went back. I mean we BARELY got outside of Heber neighborhoods. I should have known it would be short when the departure times were all 45 min apart. We did see Llamas, but the pics didn't come out well, darnit.

Getting ready to roll

On our way out of the Depot

Griff learned all about irrigation on our trip (this is one curious kid!!!)

This is where we stopped, you can see the Soldier Hollow Golf Course in the distance

So, we took lots of pictures, Griffin went and played and got Thomas tatoos, and played with the Thomas toys (that didn't last long as there were way too many sub-3-year olds crying over who had Thomas, blah, blah, blah), and went and met Sir Topham Hatt.

Griff by a cool, old train

Griff and Thomas

Thomas and Harold tatoos

Trying to play with the trains - too many little kids though :-D

Griff and Sir Topham Hatt

Griff meets Mini-Horse - Rob and Big were not there though

Then when we were done at the Train Depot, we went to one of my favorite places to eat - Granny's in Heber. I haven't been there in years, but boy is it good! Good old fashioned greasy burgers and "English Chips" and some of the best shakes you could ever ask for!

Griff at Granny's waiting for our food!

After a fun day in Heber, we went home for a while and played Wii, and that was the end of our day. The weekend was cut way too short, but we had a really fun day anyhow and Griff was awesome the whole time!

Old Furniture

The sectional sold to the first people who came to look at it! Pretty happy about that. They didn't want the tables though, so I still have those. While I was waiting for the buyers to show up at Sean and Stacy's storage unit, I opened the door to the unit and RIGHT by the handle was the biggest black widow spider I've ever seen! I jumped back about 10 feet! So,I found something to throw at it, knocked it out of the web (it almost fell on me, I jumped 10 feet again!) and I squashed it. It made this huge POP when I stepped on it, pretty gross!

So, anyway, the tables are still available, maybe $50 for the two of them together.

Ry and Baby Q at the hair salon!

After moving some furniture to Sean's storage unit, we went down and got haircuts (THANKS for fitting me in Stacy!) and while Stacy was cutting Sean's hair I got to take care of Baby Q! She was pretty good most of the time and then she just wanted her mama. So, as soon as Stacy was done she came and took over and Quincy couldn't have been happier. She is super cute and so small! She's pretty fun to hold...

Then we went to Ernies and had delicious sandwiches, then Sean and I went to Kai's Farewall BBQ for a while, it was such nice weather - it was nice to be outside for a while.

Griffin day 05/15/08

We started off going to Max N Cheese with Grandma and Grandpa H:

We had a good time, the food was good again. Griff went with the cheesy noodles with the Octo-Dog (though he didn't like that it was cut to look like an octopus, so he didn't eat it.

After we were done we went to Jump On It (I called ahead this time to make sure there were no private parties ruining things for us). We had a great time. They are replacing some of the worn out tramps, so that's good. last time we went I did a back flop on one and actually hit the floor, the trampoline was so loose. So, hopefully that won't happen again. :-)

Here's Griff making a Hoop (he did it in one take!)

Here's Griff making friends and playing "laser ball." I have no idea what laser ball is, but they basically jumped around amongst several balls while screaming like girls - see if you can decide what the object of the game is.

Two items

1) You may have noticed I removed the music from my Blog. I think you'll all enjoy the silence of reading my musings unfettered by the raucus rantings of bands I happen to like. I know I was getting SUPER annoyed when the music came on everytime I came to check my blog - so ENJOY! :-D

2) New movie review - "What happens in Vegas" (see links on the right) and NO, I did not crash and burn this time, I made it through the movie and walk to the car uninjured - the sign in my office now says "Days without an injury - 7" (knock on wood.)

Weekend with Griffin

Well, Griffin was over this weekend. It was cut short by mother's day, but it's all good.

Here is Griffin playing at Boondocks - the miniature golf place near my house:

The place was PACKED! I guess the first warm day of the year brings everyone out for some family fun. It took us like 2 hours to play 18 holes of mini golf, and these aren't difficult holes! But he loved it and wanted to play another 18 holes.

Griff is also quite the Wii player, he enjoys Golf and Baseball the most, but is also really good at Bowling! He also creted his own Mii, so it's actually him playing the games :-D

So here are some videos of Griff playing Wii.

Rest assured, I don't let him play too much, he knows if he sits on the couch too long he'll get a fat tummy and he's not into that! He likes having a skinny tummy. :-D I also use this information to talk him out of wanting to buy candy! I hope he never grows out of that! I do hope it doesn't lead to male anorexia, however. ;-)

Oh the outrage!

Another story, let's see if this one gets the comments that my injury did! :-D

I'm driving down 90th south towards I-15 on my way to go get Griff for the weekend and I see a woman changing a tire on the side of the road. I immediately thought, I should stop and help her! But, since I was on my way to get Griff I didn't want to be late, so I didn't stop. Well, 2 seconds later I feel bad for not helping, so I turned around to go help. BOY, was I glad I did! I get there and the woman is no less than 8 months pregnant! Now, my first reaction is, "What the crap is a pregnant woman doing changing a tire, trying to have the kid on the side of the road?!?!?!?!?!?!?" Then my next reaction was, "This is one tough chick! Maybe she doesn't need help!!!" LOL

Well, I ask if I can help and she is totally nice and thankful, and proceeds to tell me that she hit a pothole on 90th (if you drive this road on the west side of I-15 - you know how bad it is! Might as well be a dirt road in freakin Mayberry it's so bad!) and her tire exploded! It was completely shredded, and her rim was bent (Sean can relate with this, only this girl's wheels weren't custom!) So, I help her out until her husband gets there a few minutes later and takes over - I had to go get Griff anyway, so I was happy I wasn't going to be late.

So, why the title of the post?

1) The road conditions on 90th South are ridiculously bad, practically criminal! And the fact that the city hasn't been out there to fix them is just asking for more of these blown tires, and one of these days it's going to cause a real wreck. How would the city feel if this pregnant woman had blown her tire and hit a telephone pole and gotten really hurt when she lost control of her car??? You'd think the resulting lawsuit would cost them a lot more than fixing some potholes! Though, this entire section of road needs to be replaced! If I blew a tire on that road, I guarantee the city would be paying of for it!

2) Why does NO ONE stop to help a pregnant woman? She already had the spare out of the trunk and was getting ready to fire up the jack when I got there, so she had obviously been there a few minutes and that road has heavy traffic! I'm not saying that a pregnant woman CAN'T do things, I'm saying I'm outraged that no one else thought to stop and help?!?!?!? I guess they went through the same thought process as me and whatever else they were doing was more important. It's too bad, especially in a place where service and helping others is supposed to be so important to us.

Anyway, I still think the best part of this story is the fact that this pregnant woman was 100% ready to change her own tire! I thought that was pretty awesome. She wasn't sitting there crying, but she was just as determined as could be to just do it! Even with her husband on his way, she was getting down to business until he got there instead of just waiting around, even though NO ONE would blame her for waiting! I would have taken a picture, since I know how some of you feel about not having pictures, but I didn't think she'd appreciate being on some random blog site! :-D

And, I made it in plenty of time to pick up Griff, so it all worked out! :-)

Owwie! :-D

Funny story: I was at the movies (yes I'll update the reviews, I have two to look over actually!) with Arlee and we get out and it is totally raining. I offer to go get the car and drive around so she doesn't have to get all wet. Well, I take off running - BIG mistake! About 3 seconds into my run, I hit a super slick section of cement and next thing I know I'm on the ground sliding on the cement and then POP! I'm back up like I was sliding into second base! I'm hurt (but mostly embarrassed, and I uttered some things that I'm glad Griffin wasn't around :-D ) but I keep going and get to the car. I sit down, and I swear I've broken my clavicle, but it's not broken, just severely bruised I think. Anyway, I'm soaked down my left side and I check my jeans, and they're fine (though I can feel the scrape on my hip without a doubt) and I don't think to check my shirt (I find out later it's ripped, dangit!) Then, I drive over to the door and Arlee has this look on her face like she's really concerned but about to laugh, I'm sure you've all seen this look at one time or another in your life. She asks if I'm OK, and was very genuine but the second I say yes, she starts cracking up - then I'm cracking up too and she said she looked up just as I'm going down but I popped up so fast it looked like a cartoon. Yeah, I can totally imagine that and I'm laughing, but hurt, so it hurts to laugh. This isn't the first time I've eaten it on the cement in front of her, and somehow this time was no less embarrassing! I wish I had this on video, that would be great! LOL

Maybe I should sue the movie theatre? Naw, they didn't make me run on the wet slippery cement :-D

Well, I get home and check my wounds and I have a nice scrape on my hip caused by the rivet on the jeans and a small scrape on my elbow, and my shoulder really hurts. But I'm alive to tell about it and chronicalling everything for you, my loyal blog readers ;-)

Here are the pictures - trying to keep it PG so I couldn't get a real good shot of the hip scrape. And there is no visible mark on my shoulder, it's all internal - just imagine me grimacing and dropping Advil like it's going out of style!

Elbow scrape, it's more like a rub kind of like off a trampoline, nothing a little Neosporin can't fix!

Hip scrape - it's the exact width of the rivet on my jeans. But it didn't rip my jeans! :-D

Check the movie reviews if you'd like!

My ABC's

Andrea tagged me and I'm a good sport, I'll play along! This is the ABC's "getting to know you" TAG.
Each player then tags 3 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

A- Attached or single: Single
B- Best Friend: Curt Garbett
C-Cake or Pie: Cheesecake...no...chocolate pie...no...cheesecake!
D-Day: No preference, every day has something good to offer
E- Essential Item: Cell phone
F- Favorite Color: RED!
G-Gummi Bears or Worms: Gummi Bears
H-Home town: Orem
I- Indulgences: Pizza, Ice Cream, candy
J- January or July?: July, give me warm over cold every time!
K-Kids: Big Griff!
L-Life is incomplete without: Family, friends, fun,
M- Marriage Date: TBD :-D
N- Number of Siblings: 5 - 4 brothers 1 sister
O- Oranges or Apples: oranges
P- Phobias or Fears: I've never jumped out of a plane, so I guess "skydiving!"
Q- Quote: "I find the harder I work, they luckier I get." Or, "Choncho, sometimes when you are grown, you wear stretchy pants, it's for fun."
R- Reason To Smile: Hanging with Griff, having Arlee around, success at work, completing projects at home, Jazz winning, Real winning, ManU winning, etc...
S- Season: Summer! Sometimes I might say Spring, but we still have snow this spring, so it's out
T- Tag Three: I'm guessing they've all been tagged? I'll tag Danica, maybe she hasn't done it??
U- Unknown Fact About Me: If I tell, it will be known! If I let you into my circle of trust maybe someday I'll tell you :-D
V- Vegetarian or Oppressor of Animal: I'm a member of PETA (People Eating Tasty Animals!)
W- Worst Habit: Whistling along with songs - especially when I have someone on the phone
X-Rays or Ultrasounds: I've had both, you'd probably never guess why on the Ultrasound, and I'll probably never tell you (see circle of trust above)! So, let's go with x-rays.
Y-Your favorite food: SO hard to choose - Right now I'll say BBQ, since I just got back from TX!
Z: Zodiac Sign: Scorpio

Griffin's day 05/01/08 - MAY DAY!!!

Griff and I had a good night, as we usually do on Thursdays (anyone else think it's REALLY messed up that a state that is supposed to be family-oriented keep kids away from their dads like this? One day a week???? Anyway, just a little rant there ;-))

First up we went to have dinner at Max n Cheese. This is the Kid's restaurant where parents are "tolerated." I think that's pretty funny. They have all the kid's menu items - grilled cheese, quesadillas, hot dogs, hamburgers, sandwiches, etc. And they have a play area right in the middle. That's really all Griff wanted to do, but he did eat most of his quesadilla. There were lots of other kids there, and Griff made new friends. He didn't get any of their names, but he played with them - he's good at making new friends, very friendly, very outgoing! He informed me that when his fish dies (he's been a bit enthralled by death since Sully died so...) he is getting a dog and he's going to name him Max. I don't know how his cousin Max will feel about that, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there :-D

Right out front, ready to eat and play!

Here's the play area, Griff would have stayed here all night
Here is our meal. Griff had the quesadilla, and I had a spicy chicken wrap in a spinach tortilla - really good, lots of veggies and the grilled chicken was tasty!

Next we went bowling at Fat Cats with Grandma and Grandpa H. Pretty fun, even though I had the worst game of my life. Both Griff and I are way better at Wii bowling :-D Grandpa H had a pretty good round, bowled 5 or 6 spares in a row and several strikes.