Wednesday Tunes

I know its not Wednesday but we can pretend that I posted this yesterday.

I want a new bike!

Or maybe one for T. Well if you click on the link in the upper right hand corner of my blog, it puts me in for a drawing to win one of their bikes. They give away one bike per week, for I don't know how long. So click on the link every Monday morning for me!

Thanks!!

More Family Reunions!

It feels like we have a LOT of family reunions, we do but we don't, really. This year we have had three, one was my dad's Grandma's, the Reeve's family reunion which was held at the park by our house and only lasted a few hours. Then we had T's dads side that we have every year. And then we had T's moms side, which is what this post is about. We could have a few more reunions and then that's all we would do all summer long. We should have some in the winter time.



This reunion has become an annual event and has been at the City of Rocks for the last few years. We have stayed in the same campground, pictured above, next to the Sisters for those you know the area. The campground is great, there are rocks for the kids to climb all over, while they could get lost and I'm surprised that they didn't, they would have to go out of their way to get lost. And the best part is that it's all by itself, so we can be as loud as we want, or as loud as our kids tend to be.



This year it was cold and it rained on us! We ended up spending a chunk of the time at T's grandpas house who lives just outside of the City of Rocks in Almo, Idaho. That wasn't too bad, we rode the atvs around and raced around the house. Though it was too cold to go swimming and I was actually looking forward to that. Which is strange because Im not a big fan of swimming, it's just not that fun, maybe for like ten minutes.



While they look a lot alike, they are almost nothing alike. Both of them are hilarious in their own way and they both are very much boys.



This year we did some rock climbing, well the kids did. So we have been going to the City of Rocks for the last 4-5 years and we never gone rock climbing. The City of Rocks is known for its rock climbing and people travel from all over to climb there. This year we (buzz) brought his gear for the kids and let get use to climbing. B was a little nervous the first time but quickly relaxed, at least going up. Coming down, Z was about the only kid who felt comfortable, the rest of them wanted buzz to help them. And Cash money, well he made it as high as he is in the picture above! He'll climb rocks left and right but once we put the harness on him he froze up and wouldn't go anywhere.

I'm kinda a Big Deal on Twitter

Haha! I have a few other blog posts in the works and hopefully I'll post those soon. In the meantime I thought I would share my fame with you all. City Weekly posted a blog quoting one of my tweets. I know some of you have tried twitter and most of you have not. Im addicted! It saves me a whole lots of time, the people I follow are always posting links to news and other items that I no longer have to search for.

Anyways, my tweet was about how I wish Rep. Mathason was more of a man like Barny Frank. There is a great clip on the link above to reference what I'm talking about. I agree with Frank that it's too bad that congress is not debating a single payer health care system.

Favorite SYTYCD Dance

This is my favorite SYTYCD dance of all time. It was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Choreography!



So, your probably wondering why I love SYTYCD? Well, I don't dance, I can't dance. I did take some lessons when I was in Jr. High (ya, that helps the self confidence of a jr. high boy) and I have taken some classes with the wife. I have three little sisters that dance, so I grew up spending whole days at dance competitions, which really isn't that bad when your Jr. High and High School age cause those things a chuck full of girls the same age! Then I married a dancer/cheerleader who now teaches dance and my daughter dances. This life time of conditioning has lead me to appreciate and enjoy watching good choreography and dancing.

So there is the short of it.

Christiansen Reunion

Cash, B, Jet, Z man & Luda (aka Ludacris)

We made our annual trip out to Ibapah last weekend for the Christiansen reunion. It was a lot of fun and the kiddies had a blast! B is now to the age that she can remember last year a little bit, add that with the anticipation that Z man was going to be there, she was supper excited. Cash was just excited to go camping and both were excited to play in grandmas new trailer. Here is the link to last years reunion.



They have all sorts of games and activities for the kids, along with rope swings, a huge teeter-todor, a pond and ATV's. The people who take care of the ranch do an excellent job! We pitch our tents on grass, we can throw blankets out on the grass and not worry too much about the kids getting dirty.



This was taken of the boys getting their much needed naps about 10 minutes before the tornado struck! Ok, it wasn't a tornado, but it felt almost like one. You could see the clouds rolling in and the wind was picking up, so everyone started to get ready for a storm. I was able to get the boys in our tent just before the wind really began to blow! After the wind blew hard for a few minutes, I had to stop to look if their was a tornado or not, the rain came and boy did it rain! It poured for a good 10-15 minutes and then stopped and about half hour later, cleared up. T and Jet just about got it from a fly away tarp, luckily some kid grabbed a hold of it before it wrapped them up. I love those kind of summer storm, kinda fun really.



They really loved the motorcycle rides from their grandpa.


I'm probably posting way too many pictures, but we did take 150!

I don't know whats going on in here but it looks like one of the 500 fights the boys had.


Here's another fight, if you look closely, you can see that they're all holding rocks, with Z man holding the biggest, looks more like he has a brick. B is out of there! This ended just fine, I don't think any rocks were thrown, though after Z man dropped the brick, Cash picked it up and started running after Z man until I yelled at him to drop it.


We're horrible parents! Pretty sure Jet had some ear aches going on while we were out there, and instead of coming home, we just stayed. The first night he woke up sometime around 3am and screamed bloody murder for about an hour! He was ticked off! Nothing we did helped him, he didn't want anything, finally I just held him still for about 5 minutes and he was out. But this woke up Cash, who was whinny and wouldn't sleep for about a half hour until I threatened him that I would strap him in his car seat and he would sleep in the car. He sunk to the bottom of our sleeping bag, T was in his by now and pouted himself to sleep. Then B woke up around 5am after all of this and need to poop! Whats going on here? Seriously? Needless to say, it was a long night. Luckily for everyone involved, they all slept just fine the next night.


Can't wait for next year!

Crash Money

Well, it took him three years but he finally succeeded in breaking his arm. He had the eventful day on the 4th of July this year. Every year the Rose Park community has a kids parade, where kids decorate their bikes and go from the Day-Riverside Library to Riverside park where there is a breakfast. About half of the way is along the Jordan River, when the trail moves into the park there is a bit of a hill that goes off of the Jordan River trail down to the park. As we were going along, Cash would cruz ahead on his bike, get stuck, (he has a hard time still pedaling forward) wait for us, we would give him a little help and he would be off again. As we were approaching the downslope Cash came whizzing by me, I told him to stop and wait, of course he listened as good as always, not at all and kept on going. I knew what was coming next. As he turned down the hill and disappeared behind a group of people, I started seeing people jumping out of the way as an out of control 3 year old went flying down the hill! He emerged out of the crowd with his feet off the pedals and veered onto the grass, he soon let go of his handle bars and with arms stretched out crashed onto the grass!

Nope, this isn't how he broke his arm. But he did get right up, took a look at his bike and started crying that the had grass stuck in the one of the pedals. We pulled the grass off, threw his bike back on the sidewalk and he was on his way.



After the breakfast and clean up we headed home. T's mom does a big bbq every 4th, so we thought that we would put all of our kids down for nap before we headed over, this would hopefully mean less grumpy kids for the fireworks. So with all the kids down supposedly following our plan and taking a nap, I headed out to work around the yard. As I'm playing with my tomatoes, T comes running out, "Brad, I think Cash broke his arm!" I thought, crap, it's probably sticking out and all gross looking, the sight of it is going to make me sick. But actually it was hard to tell if he broke his arm or not. He was crying like he had just broken his arm, a good steady cry but not hysterical and holding his arm kinda limp. We played around with his arm for a bit, feeling the bone, having him squeeze his fist and move his fingers. We decided that we should take him in just in case, we didn't want to be like the Hiltons and take our kid in hours later.



I stayed home with the other kiddies, finally getting Jet to sleep. Got a call from T, he had a fracture brake, the doc said that it was the best kinda break for a kid to have and should heal just fine. They first put a wrap on his arm, we could tell right off this wasn't going to last long. The first day that he had it on, he asked multiple times to take it off "It doesn't hurt any more" thinking this would allow him to no longer wear the wrap. When that didn't work he then proceeded on several occasions to start taking off the wrap. Luckily he only had the wrap on for a few days before getting his cast. Casts now-a-days are great! They can get wet! This is perfect for summer, this allows him to still swim and boys get beyond filthy in the summer, if we had to cover the cast in plastic every time we needed to give him a bath, he would never get a bath! At least from me!



He is trying hard to break his other arm! His cast hasn't slowed him down a bit.

Busy

So I know that I have been a huge slacker on my blog but life happens. It's been real hard for some reason to keep this updated, maybe it's because facebook is easier and most of my readers are also friends on facebook, if not all. I've also been super busy with school. I am going to the U for a Master of Public Policy. This is keeping me very busy. Between work and school and the family and a few other projects, leaves me little time for my blog. Hopefully I'll inundate you with some post in the next few weeks before school picks back up.

SYTYCD

So our show, So You Think You Can Dance is back for a 5th season. It took us a while to get into the show this season, that was until last week. Last week was great, probably one of the best SYTYCD shows in the five seasons. Still, no one is really sticking out as a personal favorite. We thinks it's because, so far nobody's personality has really stood out. We really like the following two dances.

You can skip to the dance about -5:40

janette @ Yahoo! Video

Love it!

I am getting really lazy with this blog! Haha! All I do now is post stuff that other people have found!

Happy Monday!

A new twist on the Sound of Music

Who is this kid and where did he come from?

Honestly!?! I'm not sure where this kid came from, he's nothing like either of his parents or his siblings.

I guess this is what we deserve when we try and sleep-in and cash is up doing whatever, well, this is what he does. It's not good to have the two of us parents who are very much not morning people with a boy who is very much a morning person. I think that one day we will learn our lesson but we haven't yet. We continue to let the kids roam free while we try and get an extra half hour of sleep. It doesn't really work because one of us is always getting up every ten minutes to yell at the kids and get them something to eat/drink/watch or tell them, no candy, stay out that and whatever else.



Cash was super excited to play soccer this year. The day they received their jersey's, he had to put his on right then and wore it the rest of the day. He would be excited all morning to go play soccer, we would get there and he would play the first half and be done. Sometimes it didn't even take until half-time, after two or three up and down the fields he would be done. I think during the last game I figured out why he didn't want to play, he's not as fast as the other kids and doesn't get to kick the ball as much. He kinda told me this while I was trying to talk him into playing, not exact words but basically. Hopefully, next year he won't care so much if he is the fastest and play anyway, or maybe he will be the fastest.







Most of the kids played soccer again this year. Cash and G played on a younger team then the others and I'm pretty sure it was the youngest team in the league, their team was always the shortest team out there. It was kinda fun to watch, the ball would go out of bounds and half the yellow team would fall on the ground. By the end of the game there would maybe be three players on the field when there are suppose to be five, the rest would be sitting on their parents laps crying that they didn't want to play anymore.



This next set of pictures is from after b's birthday party (which I still need to post), he is wearing her b-day crown and yes, his soccer jersey. A side note, I don't think we ever washed b's jersey last year, we have washed cash's jersey every week and it has stains. He doesn't like taking it off. Sorry for so many pictures but they tell a better story all together. There are more pictures then what I posted, I tried to cut down the number of pics. Any way, enjoy.



He is a nut and loves to make us laugh and he loves attention. We try not to laugh, cause then that just eggs him on and he keeps going. B laughs at him all the time and that just makes him believe that he is the funniest kid ever making him try even harder to be funny. I feel sorry for our neighbors, they were out in their backyard while the kids were jumping and every time our neighbors would walk by, cash would talk their ears off. It's going to be a long summer for them and a lot of years of crazy kids and early mornings for us.