Mobile Blogging!

Now I'll be able to blog on the go. When we get to Moab and find a camping spot, I'll blog the location for those of you who are going to suprise us with your presence. he he

I'm Officially That Person.

I won't go into details just now, but I wanted to let you know the wedding went beautifully. Haiden is the cutest baby boy on the planet. I changed his dirty diaper 3 times and would do it again in a second! I wish we lived closer so I could smother him with love on a daily basis.

Jory had fun entertaining the girls: Sprout, Smiley and munchkin. Hopefully I'll get some pictures posted before next year.

As I expected my cousin with the baby boy same age as Jack would have been, was there. I broke down and bawled mid reception and had to escape from the tables to not make a scene. I thought I fled fairly inconspicuously but after the 5th or 6th hug of support I realized I must have caused a spectacle. Unfortunately my drama caused my cousin to take her baby home early. I don't know what to do, it's not fair that the sight of him causes me to break down. It's not my cousin's fault, it's not her baby's fault. I honestly don't know how I will ever "handle" seeing him. He will always be what Jack could have been.

Anyway...I said no details.

We're leaving for Moab tomorrow after work, we'll be staying in Tuba City, AZ for the night and arriving Friday afternoon. Sandflats is not expecting to fill up so hopefully we'll find a spot if not our regular site in Cluster F.

I promise to post more after we return on Labor Day.

Peace Out!

Utahrd Bound

We leave for Utah tonight. Hopefully we'll see some friends while we're there. We probably won't check emails that often or at all, so call us if you want to see us!

Peace Out!

What Happened to Encouraging Creativity?

"Chandler school officials have suspended a 13-year-old boy for sketching a picture that resembled a gun, saying it posed a threat to classmates. But parents of the Payne Junior High School student said the drawing was a harmless doodle of a fake laser, and school officials overreacted.

``I just can't believe that there wasn't another way to resolve this,'' said Paula Mosteller, the boy's mother. ``He's so upset. The school made him feel like he committed a crime. They are doing more damage than good.''

The Mostellers said the drawing did not show blood, bullets, injuries, or target any human. They said it was just a drawing that resembled a gun. But Payne Junior High administrators thought the sketch was enough of a threat and gave the boy a five-day suspension, later reduced to three days. Chandler district spokesman Terry Locke said the sketch was ``absolutely considered a threat,'' and threatening words or pictures are punishable.

The school did not contact police and did not provide counseling or an evaluate the boy to determine if he intended the drawing as a threat. School officials issued the suspension Monday afternoon. They notified the student's father, Ben Mosteller. He met with school officials and persuaded them to shorten his son's suspension from 5 days to 3.

Ben Mosteller said that when he came to the school to discuss his son's punishment, school officials mentioned the seriousness of the issue and talked about the massacre at Colorado's Columbine High School - the site where two teenagers shot and killed 12 students and injured 24 others in 1999. The Mostellers said the Columbine reference was extreme and offensive. They have contacted the district's governing board about the incident involving their son."

I think school officials have taken their 'power' way too far! Had this rule been in place when I was in school, 90% of the students would've been suspended! I used to draw when I'd get bored, which was most of the time and some of them included my teachers being hurt or humiliated in some fashion not just a gun if you can call his drawing that. But I never actually harmed or humiliated any of my teachers. That's not true, I got into it once with one of my teachers in high school and instead of allowing her to demean me in front of the class, I stood up for myself and told her off. She ended up crying and I was sent to the Principal's office.

I'm sorry but I must also mention that it scares me that they say a 13 year old drew that so-called gun, because it looks like a 6 year old was drawing his house or an airplane. And what gun has little stick figure people climbing all over it? What happened to encouraging creativity?

While driving home last night I heard another story about power monger administrators. Chandler's Basha High School had changed their tardy rule. If your child is one minute late, one time they have to to go to 4 hour Saturday school (like the Breakfast Club). ONE MINUTE, ONE TIME! I wonder if this means that every time you are late, you get a Saturday or if your late Monday, you may as well be late all week because you've already earned a Saturday? Apparently last year the rule was on your 4th tardy you earned a 4 hour Saturday. When asked why it was changed, they said "it didn't work." So instead of coming up with alternatives they put on their power hungry hats and decide to go insane!

And these are the people teaching our children. Jory and I have always talked about how we would home-school our kids. This is another reason why we will be doing that!

Let me try this again.

As I was saying we've been busy getting ready for our Pootah trip for Christopher's wedding with a quick turn-a-round the next weekend back into Utahrd for our fall Moab trip to which we only have 1 maybe with tentative hotel reservations so we might be camping alone. We gave plenty of notice so I wonder if I scared everyone off because I mentioned we were going for Jack's birthday and angelversary. I can promise tears will be shed but I swear I will do my best to hide when it happens because I'm not much of a public cryer. Since we didn't receive any confirmations we didn't reserve a spot and will probably end up where the wind takes us. Give us a call if you decide to wander down and we'll let you know where we are.

For those of you who want to see us while we're in Northern Utah, your best bet is probably going to be at my parents house in Smithfield (7 minutes north of Logan or 1 hr 15 minutes north of SLC) Saturday night Aug. 25th, 7 pm or later. My brother doesn't believe in "receptions" so they are having a PARTY aka Kegger after the wedding (which is being held in my parents huge backyard) and he has officially invited any of our friends that are willing to make the drive. Don't worry it's totally casual and by casual I mean shorts and tshirts...I might throw on a Hawaiian shirt with my shorts for the wedding, but I will probably change into a tshirt as soon as the "I do's" are said. I know it's a drive, but it's closer then then 11 hour drive to Arizona which none of you have made ;) Not that I would expect any of you to come to Phoenix to see us, we moved, therefore we travel to see you all. Just saying. If any of you are interested, email or call me and I'll give you directions.

I've been going crazy trying to unpack and still feel like I'm months from being finished. I KNOW we've been in the house for almost 3 months now! Our garage is still packed with boxes and furniture, I just don't think we're going to make it all fit. Going from our house in Utah with 3 bed/2 bath(potential 5 bed/3 bath) with the unfinished basement with loads of storage room to our new 3 bed 2 bath with no basement is a huge challenge. We don't have the closet space I'm used to so I don't know where to store anything, which is why I haven't unpacked a lot of it. I think a few trips to the goodwill are in order.

I've also been working on our fence project. As with most AZ homes, we have a block wall fence and state code requires so many bottom blocks have holes for flooding. These holes are big enough for Mazzy and Jimi to escape through so we had to come up with an idea to fill the holes but not completely so water can still escape. We came up with folding hard plastic mesh into a box configuration and gluing them in with liquid nails. There are around 100 holes and I've cut less then half of the mesh boxes out. I've only got like 6 holes filled so far and have already finished off a tube of glue. This is a more timely process then I ever imagined. The supplies are so cheap, it feels wasteful to hire someone to fill them as many people do here. I took some pictures the other day so I'll post some soon so you can see what I'm talking about.

Since this is so long already...I'll go on.

Jimi has turned into the Destroyer of all things! She recently started eating everything in sight. She's chewed through 99% of all their toys, both Jory and my underwear and now she's moved onto eating our shorts and pants. I don't think this was bothering Jory as much as me until Jimi ate a giant hole in Jory's favorite pajama pants. It was pretty funny and I'm sure he won't mind me sharing the story with you.

Normally when Jory and I get off work, we immediately change into comfy clothes, tshirt and pajama pants for Jory. The other day we were out having our usual cigarette right as I came home from work and in mid sentence Jory reaches back to his bum area and says "What the Fuck?" he turns so I can see this giant hole where his boxers are peeking out. And by giant I mean the pj's no longer have any ASS at all! I have no idea how he didn't notice this until now, when were out in our front yard for all to see. Luckily we do live at the end of the cul-de-sac and as far as we know our neighbor across the street was not at home.

So back to Jimi the Destroyer, she ate through her favorite orange stuff bone, the one I'm sure I've mentioned before because she would go hours running around frantically with this orange bone in her mouth trying to find a safe place to put it. It didn't matter if she didn't want to play with it right that minute, if you even glanced at it she would grab it and and try to find a place to hide it. I actually have cell phone video of her and Kai (her half sister - my boss' dog) fighting over this very bone. I'll try and get that posted too. So I went to the store to find a replacement orange bone because you could hear her heart breaking when we took her best friend away. I looked at every single toy in Petsmart and found no orange bone, no any colored bone. However I did find these new indestructible toy bones that had a picture of an army dude and his army dog with big teeth so that made me think there was no way Jimi could chew through it. I also got her the new small Bobo Loofa toy (you know the one that looks like a wiener dog from the commercials where it's the real weiner dog's favorite toy and when it got ruined the owner took the dog to Petsmart and the cashier scanned it while it was in the dog's mouth) because I figured it was the same size as the orange bone.

While waiting my turn in line Jory called me or maybe I called him, doesn't matter and I told him I was going to buy a doggy swimming pool, it was only $7.99 and he told me I wasn't going to buy it and that was that. Sometimes I like to let Jory win, because well, he loses so often. he he
Yes our dogs are spoiled and once the fence is done I will buy them the pool.

Anyway back to the toys, so I get home and hand Jimi her new bestfriend and she sniffs it, she knows it's not the same but she doesn't seem to care and takes it to the floor and starts eating it. Five minutes later the Bobo the wiener dog was missing two legs and both eyes. We take Bobo away and I show Jory these new can't be eaten bones and Jory was like, ya right....he was totally right, the next morning we found Jimi had finally eaten a hole in it. I'm not sure what's going on with her. I'm trying to think like the Dog whisperer, so I assume she needs daily walks, but it's like 110 degrees outside so I don't normally walk them in the summer. They're lucky if they get to walk down the street to the mailbox after work and that was really only during monsoon season when it was 80-90 degrees. I'm still adjusting to this morning shift so I'm not willing to get up an extra hour early to walk them when it's still in the low 80's. She's too old for teething so, do you have any idea why little Jimi girl has gone crazy on us?
I know Jory is going to say it's because I had her privates taken out....he's always telling her it was me that took her privates away because he thinks that will make her love me less and love him more. She loves anyone who will rub her belly!

I'll end it here...I have some work to do and only 15 minutes to do it in LOL!

Remember...email or call me if you want directions to my parents house.

Peace out!

Been Busy

I don't have time to write a real blog, but I feel ashamed that it's been a month since I posted one.

We've been preparing for our upcoming Utah trip for my brother's wedding and the Moab trip. We've been...correction I've been working on tons of house projects, Jory's been catching up on Naratu, Narato, Nurato? Jory's also been passing kidney stones or so he thinks so I'll cut him some slack. We've been running back and forth to the auto shop getting my AC fixed, it's finally good.

Times up, gotta go.