is a hot, relaxing shower. Unfortunately, our water heater went out over the weekend so I woke up to icy cold water. It definitely wasn’t my preferred way of waking up. Luckily, our landlord came over this afternoon and spent two hours installing a new water heater for us. (It’s times like this that I love renting instead of owning.)
Scott’s family had a great idea of celebrating Thanksgiving a few days early. It allowed all of us to get together and celebrate. Naturally, there was a little chaos getting 13 adults and 5 children together in one room, but I think we all still had fun. There was good food, and entertaining company. What more can you ask for?
Apparently, I forgot to have someone take a picture of me . . . that’s okay. Grandpa Michael took enough pictures of me eating to make up for it (he was sitting across the table from us).
The cousins had a lot of fun playing together. They loved to chase each other and play with the Fussball table. Unfortunately, the Lily & the boys were running around too quickly for me to ever get a photo of them together.
The adults played a few rounds of This vs. That (a very fun game I would recommend to anyone that likes word games) and then a game Maddy put together for us.
She printed off 9 8-1/2 x 11 pages that when put together made a picture of someone in the family. She did this for 6 photos. We were put in pairs and assigned a member of the family’s photo to assemble. We didn’t know which picture it was, just who we were looking for. The pages were all face down, so we had to pull a page out at a time, determine if it was ours or draw another picture. (We were too busy running around to take pictures of us playing the game.) Grandpa Michael and I were on a team. We weren’t very good, but we had a lot of fun. We only had 2 of the 9 pages of our picture when the game was over. In our defense, we had the hardest picture to assemble.
Candice and I were lying in bed not sleeping this morning but not wanting to get up yet either. Suddenly we heard Lily in her bedroom shout, “I want chocolate milk!” Assuming that she had just woken up and was ready to get up, Candice got up to check on her in her room.
However, when Candice looked into her room, Lily was still sound asleep. Apparently she was dreaming about chocolate milk and shouted out in her sleep that she wanted some. We both laughed at the realization that Lily is exactly the same in her sleep as she is in real life.
That’s right . . . we found out bright and early this morning that we’re having a baby boy! When Scott told Lily, she replied, “I want a sister.” Up until today, she has told us that she wants “a brother and a sister.”
The baby is big and healthy. The doctor thinks he stands a good chance at being bigger than Lily (8 lbs 15 oz). Oui! But I can’t complain. This pregnancy has been so easy for me. I just hope the delivery follows suit.
(his feet)
Now we just need to decide on a name . . . which is easier said than done. (Apparently, Scott and I have very different taste when it comes to boy names.)
Lily was excited all week for her Uncle Reed to come home. After praying for him every night, and drawing pictures for him for two years, she was looking forward to Reed coming home. She informed Scott and me several times that Uncle Reed is her friend, not ours and that he’s going to take her to the park and go down the slide.
She wanted to make sure we didn’t leave her at home, so she decided to pack herself in our suitcase!
When we got to the airport, there was a lot of waiting around. Naturally, Reed was the last one off the plane!
(Mom, Ann & Erin took pictures of Reed, but we video taped him, so I don’t have any photos to post of his actual arrival.)
We had a lot of fun that weekend welcoming Reed back to non-missionary life. We played games, went shopping for clothes (he came home with practically nothing), and did a lot of catching up.
Lily informed me today that she “likes Uncle Reed.”
We’re glad you’re home Reed!
We took Lily down to my parent’s house for Halloween. We had a lot of fun going to Mickayla’s soccer game, trunk or treating at the church . . .
trick or treating, and going to a Halloween party with Erin, Mickayla, and Will
I love how all six of us matched the farm theme even though we had planned our costumes separately.
A week ago, I came home to a very excited Lily Monster. She went with her dad to the store and bought a pumpkin! While Scott did homework, Lily & I painted her pumpkin (or rather Lily painted her pumpkin while I did the only thing Lily would let me do: supervise).
She had a blast mixing all the different colored paints on her pumpkin. After it dried, I painted a spider, spider web & the words Happy Halloween. I need to take a picture of the finished product.
Last week, I took Lily to a local pumpkin patch. We had fun petting the animals, going on a wagon ride, exploring the very muddy corn maze, and eating pumpkin pie together.
On Saturday, our ward had an early Halloween party that Scott took Lily to. 
Isn’t my daughter the cutest chicken ever? She even bawks when she wears her costume!
I don’t know how many of you actually followed my private blog, but I decided to discontinue it, and start a new one that I titled “Oldgeezer Says . . .” I decided, like Erin, that I just wanted to have somewhere that I could go to share my ideas, and I didn’t like the name of my old blog or it’s URL 
because it didn’t really speak to the purpose I wanted. Oldgeezer Says . . . is intended for my ideas on life, politics, technology, and just about anything else I deem worthy to discuss. So it’s sort of a broad range of my ramblings if you will.
Because I will discuss some things political, it may be a slight bit controversial to some. Feel free to disagree with my opinions and comment in support or in opposition to them if you like. I don’t claim to be an expert in any particular topic, so I accept difference of opinion. I only ask that all comments be pointed to the discussed topics and not made into personal attacks. I promise to do the same.
If you want to check out my blog visit:
Home Depot has free Kids’ Clinics the first Saturday morning of every month. The kids get to build the monthly project with the help of their parents, and get a pin for their Kids’ Clinic workshop. I wasn’t scheduled to work until 12, so I decided to take Lily to the clinic.
Lily had a lot of fun going to Home Depot with me. We made a fire station savings bank together, met paramedics and firefighters, and went inside an ambulance. Lily loved being inside the ambulance and talking to the paramedics and firefighters. It was a fun mommy-daughter outing.
I couldn’t let Scott turning 30 go unnoticed. We went out for lunch at Red Robin for his birthday. Of course, I made sure the waitress knew why we were there so that she could embarrass Scott with balloons, ice cream, and a song. Scott was kind and shared his balloons and ice cream with Lily.
That weekend, we had a party at our friends’ house to celebrate. We didn’t get a group picture, so just image 3 families running around. Thanks Mike & Tiffany for letting us use your house for the festivities!
Scott’s brother, Shane, and his family came up to help celebrate too. They got caught in traffic and couldn’t make it until the end of the party, but Scott and Lily got to hang out with them the next day.
Dacian liked to hold Lily’s hand and lead her around to various places. Lily didn’t seem to mind at first, but then she got tired of holding hands. I think it’s cute!
Thank you to everyone that made Scott’s birthday special!
Today, my supervisor gave us a list of stuff to do before we left. It was a long list that mainly consisted of heavy lifting, which I can’t do. That left me with the “clean the bird poo off the vanity mirror signage” assignment. Not a task I was excited for. I slipped my wedding ring off and put on some no so fashionable latex gloves.
I went over to the appliance department to get the cleaning supplies when a spotted two customers and no sales associate. They needed help, so I paged for Ric to return to his department. While I waited for Ric’s arrival, the customer (a male in his late thirties or early forties) told me what he was looking for. I tried to look at our displays and identify the right product.
While I’m looking, he asked me, “Did it hurt?” Oh no. I know where this is headed. “Did what hurt.” “Did it hurt when you fell out of heaven?” Did he seriously just ask me that question. “Yes!” 
I continue looking for the product, hoping that I just shut him up. Nope. “Someone as beautiful as you has to be heavenly.” Dang it! My ring is in my pocket. This guy can seriously not be finding these latex gloves attractive. Give me a break! “Thank you. My husband thinks so, too.” He stares at me while I look for the product. “I don’t see your wings, so you must not be an angel. You must be a goddess.” Wow. This guy doesn’t quit. I wish I had thought of a quick come back like, “Are you practicing your lines for the bar, because these aren’t working?” Instead, I just said, “Thanks. Ric will be here in a minute to help you,” and walked off.
I was so relieved to go clean bird poo.
I haven’t written poetry since I was like 10 years old. And honestly, I don’t even like poetry most of the time. But today something just came over me, not sure what, but I just felt like writing a poem. I can’t say I’ve ever had that feeling before. But anyway, just thought I’d share the end result. Click on the picture to enlarge the photo to make reading easier.
Lily loves to try on glasses and shoes, especially ones that don’t fit her. Sorry, I don’t have a picture, so the one above will have to do for imaginative purposes. Anyway, today she was wearing a pair of glasses around the house and proceeded to sing a familiar children’s song with her own lyrics. I laughed as I heard, “Pocket full of posies. Glasses, glasses. We all fall down!” Pretty creative, I thought.
No, not that kind of coming out. I don’t like boys or anything like that. My wife is still as beautiful as ever to me. So what do I mean “I’m coming out . . .?”
I mean I’m going green. Most of you that know me know that, although I don’t like to identify myself by a party affiliation like republican, I tend towards republican and conservative ideologies. There’s always been a few things that I can’t like about the republican party, so I hate labeling myself “republican.” Instead I
like to consider myself more of a moderate or an independent. But truth be told, I’m far from being a liberal. Anyhow, my point is that “going green” has always been marked as a liberal agenda, and conservatives haven’t done much in the past to promote going green. So why am I going green now? Well, it’s called “I signed up for for a tree-huggers course by accident.”
As many of you know, I’m interested in Marketing. Well, there just so happened to be a marketing class called “Marketing: Sustainability.” I thought it sounded interesting and supposed that it was referring to the product life cycle and maintaining a product’s marketability, so that it can keep pace with demand over a long period of time. In other words I thought the course was “Sustaining Marketable Products". But instead, the course should have been named “Marketing Sustainable Products.”
I’ve always tried to be somewhat frugal and not wasteful. I do recycle most things that are recyclable, but I’ve never been one to really think about it and obsess over it. Well, looks like things are going to change for me. I’ve already enrolled in the class, purchased the books online, and committed to this class. So whether I like it or not, I’m going green. I’ve decided, that even though I found many of the things taught in the first class session a little absurd, I want to make the best of this and try to learn some things that will be good for me. After all, if I really want to go into marketing, understanding sustainability in relation to marketing could be quite important. So consider me “green-washed!”
As part of my requirements in the course, I am to maintain a blog that discusses my ideas about conservation and reducing my footprint. If anyone is interested in following my blog, the URL is:
www.comingoutgreen.blogspot.com
It should be interesting. Please don’t make fun of me too bad as I expose the environmentalist in me. This is going to be good for me, right? Well, I never thought that I’d ever do this, but here it goes . . 
.
Hey, you never know. Maybe I’ll become a democrat or vote Obama in the next election . . .
I think we can all admit that there is a lot of bad news going around in the media. Here’s a different kind of story.
I have to admit I’m very proud of the company I work for and all my coworkers. This was a project 6 months in the making. It was amazing to participate in it. (The news link has the before pictures, which speak for themselves.)
The day I volunteered, we had over 60 Home Depot employees volunteering their time. Associates as far as 90 minutes away came to help out. Some stayed 12 hours that day to finish all the work that needed to be done. It was an honor to serve a family in so much need of love and support.
Hooray! I’m so excited to be done with both of my exams. I passed my last exam yesterday, and couldn’t be happier to have it over with. I’m still waiting for the results of my first exam. I won’t find out until mid November or mid December if I passed that one.
It was so nice to go home and realize I won’t have to look at flash cards again, and I can read books for fun! I even enjoyed cleaning my house again, after weeks of neglecting it. It’s going to be great to come home from work and just focus on being a mom and a wife!
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