Adie

After church today, Adie insisted on going naked, well, almost naked; she had her diaper, some bloomers, and her dress shoes on. She was also being quite playful and cute, so Sabrina insisted I whip out the camera. As it takes me at least a minute to actually get "the" camera out, we ended up taking 50 pictures or so. Here are a smattering of our favorites.

Open Mouth, Insert Foot

I have a personal rule that I don't ask someone I suspect is pregnant if they're pregnant. I wait for them to announce it, write it in the "Who's Expecting?" list at church, tell me or hear it from a reliable source. I have just heard way too many stories about people asking the wrong people or at the wrong time. Why then, did I break that rule last night?

Our next door neighbors, while seemingly very nice people, are extremely private. They keep to themselves and seem to be perfectly happy with that. I am lucky to get more than a 30 second conversation in with them when we arrive at our parking stalls at the same moment. However, having been their neighbors for a year and half now I have been fairly certain for months now that the wife of this couple was not just putting on quite a few extra pounds in only her midsection, but was really and truly pregnant, probably 7 - 8 months along. So, when we both pulled into our parking stalls at about the same time I decided I was going to ask when she was due. The curiosity was killing me and I thought it would just be weird to share a wall with people and not know anything about their impending birth, so I asked.

Her response was, "Actually....(long pause, as I start kicking myself for butting in - you never want the response to a question like that to start that way) we lost the baby this weekend." Oh man. What do you say to that? I just felt awful - awful they are going through that, awful that I had to bring it up, awful that I waited so dang long to say something to begin with.

I think in a way it's good that they know that I know because, in case they need something, they don't have to explain their situation to me. I can just help without any questions. In fact, I'd like to help them. I asked them if they were alright and if they needed anything and they said they were fine. But, seeing as how our relationship hardly exists I would have been surprised if they had said anything different to someone they don't really know. I hope I can find a way to help them without making them too uncomfortable. I can't even imagine what it must be like to be in their situation. Right now, I am praying for them and I know that is a good thing, but maybe there is more I could do. In the mean time, I have learned a lesson I thought I had already learned: There are certain things you just shouldn't ask about.

Final Final

Today might have been the last day I ever went to a final. I studied hard for it yesterday afternoon, spending several hours on a flight simulator. That's right, my last college final was flying an airplane. We designed and built wings to attach to a plane body (glider) for my Aerodynamics class final. I managed to pull out an A, with my wing achieving a time of 2 minutes, 9 seconds. We launched them by attaching a 300 foot bungee cord, stretching it tight and letting it fly. We could then RC the planes down. Definitely not your typical final, but one that was enjoyable none the less.

It's rather odd to think that I might be finished with college classes. I feel I've learned so much, but I've also learned how little I actually know. I could study forever and never learn it all (well, maybe I could, I guess we'll have to see after an eternity if I've got it all down yet).

Oh, and we have our car back. Yay!

Lots of Pics, Events, etc. (con't)

Ok, I decided to break it up into multiple posts. That was getting a little lengthy, and don't worry, we have plenty more to go.

The next Saturday we went to the Hogle Zoo with my mom. She was really excited to take Adie up there. Adie had never been. Unfortunately, as you'll see in the pictures, we discovered she was sick, so it wasn't the most enjoyable time for her I don't think. However, she had moments she enjoyed.

These pictures are some examples of how Adie felt part of the time. The poor girl just wanted to lay in my arms.

After resting a bit and having lunch, she started to feel better so we decided to stay longer. We discovered if she had a carrot to chew on she was fine. She ate carrots the whole rest of the trip.

For those of you who grew up going to Hogle Zoo, I bet you have at least one picture of you at the gorilla house to see if you "measure up". I couldn't resist getting a picture of Brett doing this.

I hate spiders so this one was extremely appropriate for me....

Grandma took Adie on the train ride there.

Adie checking out the ducks while shoving her mouth full of carrots.

Now Adie is watching the white alligator (or the girl next to her...)

Here we all are at the end of our zoo journey. Doesn't Adie look like she had the time of her life?

Brett took some great wildlife photos too, but I'll let him post those if he wants to. I just did the people pictures. Besides, this has taken way too long to do already. I need to get dinner going! I guess you'll get yet another picture post here soon. If I get in the mood again to upload!

Lots of Pictures, Events, etc.

I have again been a slacker about adding pictures. I wish they just had a drag and drop feature so I didn't have to find the file name and upload it and then reformat the text because it always gets messed up when I upload a photo. Yes, my life is hard, but that's why I rarely put them up. Basically, I am lazy. So, now that I am at it, I am just going to upload a lot in one post about what we've been up to for the last month.

First up, St. George. Over Memorial Day weekend we went down to St. George to hang out with my aunt and uncle and attend Julia Blockburger's blessing. The Saturday after we arrived, we went out hiking in Snow Canyon. What a beautiful place. I love it there. I highly recommend it as a great alternative to going to Zion if you don't have a lot of time to drive out there and you don't already have a National Parks Pass. It's only $5 per car for the day.

Here we are getting ready to head out.

On the trail. Adie even kept her hat on the entire time. This is a rare occurance.

Adie's educating herself about the local fauna and flora.

The next day we spent the day with the Blockburgers, attending sweet little Julia's blessing. It was so fun to meet her.

Adie "holding" Julia. I think they're both a little aprehensive.

The Girls

The B's and the M's together again. It had been a solid 4 months since we'd seen each other. That's actually a long time for us even though we live 4 hours apart.

That evening we spent time at my aunt and uncle's house. Adie liked to play in the backyard. We are so sad that we probably won't have grass, or at least much of it, in our backyard in Tucson.

Just running around

My aunt is a school teacher and her class had pet caterpillars so they could watch the process of metamorphosis. School ended and she still had a few cocoons that hadn't hatched during school but did while we were there. Adie got to help her release one of the butterflies. Adie was mostly interested in trying to grab or eat it.

Don't worry, the butterfly made it to safety despite Adie's efforts.

Adie loved the fresh peas in my aunt's garden. Oh how I can't wait to have a garden!

Slam dunk!

Monday we packed up and went to In and Out Burger for lunch with the Blockburgers before going home. That restaurant really lives up to its name. The line was out the door, but we still didn't wait to long to get in and out of there. Sooo yummy!

Adie loves Crocs. When I bought some she loved to walk around the house with mine so we bought her a pair of her own. Apparently, that wasn't good enough. While at In and Out, Adie tried taking Clark's pair. He made a trade with her.

Great Video!

More Politics

For those of you who don't like our political posts, now's the time to jump ship. I haven't posted in a while, and I plan on posting something like pictures and recent happenings in our lives, but again, I am just too lazy to upload photos at this moment.

I have been reading a book called Blowback by Chalmers Johnson which I wish every American would read. It was published in 2000 and is about the dangers and follies of US Foreign Policy. Again, note the year - 2000, and yet he could see problems arising from, at that time, a relative unknown guy named Osama Bin Laden. He could also see we weren't done with Saddam Hussein yet. He didn't make any specific predictions, but he mentions them as something to watch for in the future. Why? Because he's been studying our imperialistic foreign policy, specifically in the Far East but also around the world, and he could see problems a mile away that us, as casual CNN-watchers, had no clue about.

I haven't gotten far enough in the book yet to know for sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if he mentions Iran in there at some point. Boy, are the war drums beating for a war there! I'd be shocked and extremely elated if we didn't go to war there. However, I fear that no matter who is elected it is inevitable, although completely unnecessary. I encourage you, if you don't take the time to read Blowback, to at least read this short article on why Iran isn't a threat to us. Please consider an alternate opinion if you think Iran is a threat. Just consider it. You don't have to change your mind if, after research, you still think they are a threat. However, please don't brush off other sides of the story without investigating.

It's true that Iran's president (don't know how to spell or pronounce) is a pretty big nut job, but I don't think he's a big enough nut job to try to to take out the US. There is virtually no nation on this planet that can do that at this point. However, if we keep being the bullies of the world, there could be some uniting against us that could be much more costly than the pockets of terrorism we are currently trying to defeat, and then we'll experience some major "blowback".

Cars

A week ago, Sabrina and I had our car break down. Something is wrong with the transmission. We're having a (hopefully) trustworthy mechanic look at it this week. Unfortunately, since we own one car, and we have one car in the shop, we have zero cars right now (it's the sort of math we'll be teaching Adie soon). Fortunately a kind in-law has lent us a car for a few days till we get ours back. It has led us to begin the search for a new vehicle. New meaning new to us, not 2009 model year.

We've wrestled with the questions of how soon do we actually want to have a larger vehicle? Do we really need a second car right now? Are we financially better off to wait? We know (or so Sabrina tells me) that we're going to want 2 cars when we move to Arizona.

We're considering purchasing a friend's vehicle as we trust that they've taken care of it (single owner) and it's still relatively new. We were looking at the cost to put it into our name and came across information that I was surprised by. The government gets to charge sales tax on the private sales of cars. They will do so when you register the vehicle (if you purchase from a private party). For some reason I'm really just fine with the government charging sales tax on new items I buy, but after sales tax has already been charged on an item, it seems like you shouldn't have to pay it again. Maybe I'm out of line, and I admittedly don't have a good argument why I shouldn't have to (other than someone already paid sales tax on it once), but why should the government get to charge sales tax on something lots and lots of times? Or should they?

On a related note, we will almost assuredly be purchasing a car in Utah and not in Arizona. For as much as I complain about the high prices around here, after running several vehicle models through a search on Cars.com, it appears that you can get a newer car, with less miles in Utah than you can in Tucson, and even Phoenix.

Article of the Day

http://newnewsnet.byu.edu/story.cfm/68721

Go down to the "Car Trouble" section. I worry about people sometimes.