Recap: Ice, Pizza, Coffee, board games, Elsa/Anna, Art, and friends.

Again, a New Year’s resolution has gone to die. It’s been almost three weeks since my last post. Mostly because I have a case of writers block. So when that happens it will be a quick little blip of little observations from the last three weeks.

Midway Ice Castle. 

We took the boys there a couple of weekends ago. Great drive, cool (get it ice) castle, big crowds, long line for an ice slide, HIGH prices for what it was. It was worth saying we went once but not sure I would go again. I appreciate the work and the attention for detail that went into making the castle but, and this is a big BUT: How many flipping times do I need to hear Let It Go. We get it. You made an ice castle just like Elsa (or Anna. I don’t know. I have boys. They saw it twice: their first and last.). It wasn’t the just the original we heard. How many damn variations of the song is there? They put a little How to Train Your Dragon music in there but not enough to offset Elsa (?) saying that the bloody cold doesn’t bother her anyways, while I’m watching people shill out $5 for hot chocolate.

Maxwell’s Pizza. After the Ice Castle (LET IT GO! LET IT GO!) We met some friends for dinner at Maxwell’s in Park City. If you haven’t been. Go now. It’s fantastic. Alex loved it so much he ate half of a pie by himself. When you see the size of the pizza and throw in a couple of Buffalo wings you’ll be impressed. That meal but more importantly the company of great friends more than made up for Olaf (oh he’s the snowman), sorry Anna(Elsa?) singing about being one with wind and sky and not complaining about the cold or being alone.  (Somebody stop me. Dear god. That was three weeks ago and I’ve memorized the lyrics)

Art Fair. The boy’s school had an Art Fair to show off the hard work the students have done up to this point in art and music. That’s Alex’s self-portrait (black hoodie with a red block “U” on the shirt. I’ve never been so proud GO UTES!).

Connors interpretation of a Christmas village.

I always like going to these things. It’s fun to see what they have been working on. Yes they are the next Picasso and Renoir. Thanks for noticing.

We get to skip over Valentine’s DAY! Mandy and I don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day. We get the boys some little chocolates and little gifts but we don’t get other gifts. It’s a Hallmark Holiday. Don’t be seduced by the glitz and glamour of roses and chocolate. It’s a made up holiday. Spend your money on a family activity instead.  Even Anna wouldn’t celebrate this holiday.

Friends. Spent another Saturday night with at a friend’s house. I love that we have friends that we haven’t seen in a couple of months and no matter what we can slip back into the swing of conversations like there was no time apart. We had dinner, gave the kids pie and soda while we played board games, had coffee and talked and laughed. I need more of these nights. So does Elsa apparently. Otherwise she wouldn’t be singing about liking the cold. (Really I need help. PLEASE HELP ME. I can’t STOP).

Finally I want to end on a semiserious note. I rarely get misty or serious here because it’s not me. However, I want to say, be kind to people. I won’t get into the details but there was a moment last week when a random act of kindness brought a smile to our faces and lifted us. It was just a kind word. That was all. It was three words but even now as I write this I get a smile on my face. The person was a stranger but it was the greatest feeling and the exact right time. So remember your actions no matter how small or trivial might have a bigger impact than you realize.

So there it is. A quick little recap in our lives the last couple of weeks. Thank you for reading. Remember to Let It Go!

Highlighters and Beakers

One of my small joys in life is watching cartoons in the mornings with the boys. Sure, they aren’t Thundercats, Transformers, or Voltron (BEST) of my youth but they’ll do. Last weekend we saw a commercial for a DisneyXD show Star vs the Forces of Evil (don’t ask. I haven’t watched it and don’t plan on it). During the commercial nachos comes up as a plot point of some future show. The girl character (Star, I’m assuming. Again, this isn’t Voltron) at this point says, “oooohhhh triangle food.” This of course jumpstarted the conversation about triangle food. The general consensus between us all, was there is not bad triangle food. Think long and hard about it. We did……….Times up. You can’t think of a bad triangle food. Pizza, nachos, corn chips (more specifically purple Doritos), Toblerone bars, carrot wedges, pie, cake, etc. Now of course there can be bad pizza, bad nachos (any gas station with liquid cheese qualifies here, or bad pie but all in all the category of triangle food is fantastic. Really if you can think of a bad triangle food let me know, so here at home we can have another thought provoking discussion on shapes and food.

Two weeks ago I commented that my muse, Connor, had failed to leave anything in his laundry of late. I actually thought about changing the name of the blog. However, as if he was reading my mind, or my blog, he came through last week.

As always let us analyze the photo here. Using my Sherlocking (about to be trademarked) skills, we can deduce that my son is addicted to candy. See the Dum Dum, Mamba, Tootsie Roll and mini KitKat wrappers. The next obvious question is where is the little Oompa Loompa getting the candy from? This is mostly leftover Christmas candy that he has pigeonholed somewhere. Which again begs the question, where? A search by search room has yielded no clues as of this writing but rest assured the cache will be found…..Ok maybe not. The subsequent load of laundry have not given up this amount of wrappers, so he has most likely eaten through this Christmas load. Valentines and Easter are just around the corner however. Stay tuned. That is a Lego shield from some unknown character. As of this writing, it still sits unclaimed and lonely on top of the dryer.

There are still more items there. In fact, the two items that actually made my heart stop for a minute. The object that actually stopped me dead for at least 15 seconds (no exaggeration there) was the highlighter lid. If there was a highlighter lid, WHERE WAS THE REST OF THE BLOODY HIGHLIGHTER?????? Good lord almighty, I cannot imagine the carnage that would be associated with a washed, and more devastating, DRIED highlighter in a load of laundry. The only saving grace was this was mostly blues and reds for school clothes. Maybe the yellow wouldn’t fully transfer to those colors. Who am I kidding? Of course it will ruin school clothes. School uniform clothes that are that hard to keep clean and in one piece as it is. Now an evaporated highlighter is added to the mix. Where is the rest of the damned highlighter? During this search I found the beaker. The what, you ask? THE BEAKER!!!!!!! The broken in half beaker I might add. The beaker that still had liquid in the other half. WHAT WAS IN THE BEAKER? Where did it come from? What was in the beaker? More laundry flying out of the dryer, more wrappers, more glass, Mandy rushing to the scene, Alex being indifferent and finally the culprit arrives. “Connor, I calmly (if you can count the vein in my forehead pulsing and fist clenched calm) start, “why is there glass and a highlighter cap in your pants?” His reply, “There’s my beaker.” Like I should be finding a beaker all the time in his pants. “Connor, what was in the beaker?” His reply, “I don’t know Papa but it’s gone now.” As a parent do you ever have those moments when you are not sure if you are going to throttle the child or laugh uncontrollably? Yeah, this wasn’t one of those. “Connor where is the rest of the highlighter?” His reply, “don’t know Papa.”

Ok at this point I need to emphasize the point, I love my son more than myself, but this damn vein in my forehead wasn’t there two minutes ago. The beaker it turns out came from an after school science class he is in right now. He loves this class. He is convinced it will help him with his inventions someday. He still cannot answer what was in said beaker (there is someone out there who does and I hope she responds to this to let me know what was) but no laundry was harmed so the vein is starting to recede. The highlighter itself was never found but again no laundry was harmed, so the vein is gone at this point, after all it's only hundreds of dollars worth of uniform clothes. The look he was giving at this point was all teeth, grin straight back and eyes squeezed shut. God, I love this little boy.

Sherlock, Bulgaria and Bat Caves

A small little rant before I get into this week’s two main point. I need sunshine. Not the sun weakly trying to pierce through the light cloud cover. Not a yellowish/orange orb that floats behind the inversion taunting me. We haven’t seen a real sunshine event since about October. Ok, I might be exaggerating a little bit but it’s at least since November. Alas, we are getting more snow this weekend and yes I know we live in a high desert and need it but good night, I need the sun. I have some old man Transition Lenses in one pair eyeglasses. They have transitioned in weeks. Either from out of practice or the transitionsany (I know not a word but it should be) chemical decided it needed work somewhere and headed south. I need that bright blue sky, with that brilliant sunlight that shine’s so brightly off the snow that when you stand on your front porch to breathe in the view, you need sunglasses. Unless the transitionsany part took off. Oh well.

First main point: Alex is awesome. He had a big day last week. First, he played Sherlock Holmes in his school’s Wax Museum presentation.

There were 2-3 kids per station playing the same character. As a visitor to the museum, you would walk up, press a button or insert a key to get the characters to come to life. He would then recite a speech that told you about the character. It was fun and he did great. Then that same afternoon he competed in the school geography bee. He was so excited for the bee that he studied over his Christmas break. Mandy had an app downloaded on the iPad and we scooped up multiple books at the library for him to use. He took 5^th out of ten and while he was a little disappointed in himself, his attitude of, “Well, now I know what it’s like and I can be better prepared next year,” was awesome to hear. Congrats buddy.

Takes after his old man! Ok and Mandy too. I wouldn’t have been that optimistic at that age, ok or at my age now. Either way we are proud of his accomplishment but even more so of his attitude.

Second main point. Musashi. It is a Midori Sriracha sauce that is great on pizza or just about anything else you can think of. It will change your life if you like hot sauces. Flippin amazing!

Moving on.

Boys at the age of 8 years old have many loves; video games, ice cream, Star Wars, Marvel, Batman, Superman( I refuse to just say DC Comics. Batman is the greatest superhero of all time but Marvel overall is a better lineup. Don’t agree? Plead your case and I might listen), soccer, Star Wars, Batman, ice cream, baseball, Nerf guns, those infernal Legos and the such. Connor is no exception. He has a Manchester United fathead on his wall. He loves Batman. We have not let him watch the Dark Knight series yet but I think he is counting down the days until he can. His world is going to be drastically different when he turns 13. Ice cream is another matter however. He doesn’t love ice cream, he tolerates it. If we go to DQ, he gets a smoothie. If we go to Baskin Robbins, he goes for the Daiquiri Ice. It’s who he is and it’s awesome. This Connorism happened a few months ago after we had a trip to the DQ. He and I shared a love for the peanut butter cookie dough blizzard they had. I think he liked it because it was the only blizzard that had Jurassic World on the side of it all summer. When we arrived home with our ice cream, Alex disappeared while the rest of us sat in the kitchen. Connor kept making vroom and whee-ee-ee and whoosh noises while he ate. The occasional explosion or crash would take place but the sounds would invariably end after the ice cream enter his mouth. After, a few minutes of this, I asked him why the sounds. “Just opening the Bat Cave, Papa. What did it sound like?” The emphasis was on the “What did it sound like.” I took it more of a, “Duh Dad. Bat Cave. Duh.” And then he just continued to eat away like I hadn’t asked.

Year in Review and Resolutions I plan to keep (really!)

Did you miss me? Probably not, this blog is more for me than the reader. However, if you’re reading this than maybe you did miss me? Again, probably not but hey, its being read and we move on.

Life has been crazy since I last posted about Connor’s Soccer masterpiece in April. Alex made All-Stars in baseball. Connor and I went to Cub Scout day camp again. Dad came up in August and we golfed for three days straight. Alex almost killed Dad in a golf cart accident……maybe not almost died but Alex did run a cart off the path after taking a corner too tight and Dad pushed on the accelerator instead of the brake in his attempt to help Alex. Hilarity ensued. Took a family trip to California for beach relaxation, San Diego zoo, and an Anaheim Angels game. OK and one day at Disneyland (I’m so weak willed and unable to say no to my family). Connor absolutely loved the zoo and Alex was in 7^th (get it 7^th? Oh wait I haven’t told the story yet. Hold please) heaven after we were randomly selected out of the crowd at the Angels game to sing, “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” on the field during the 7^th (get it now) inning. He even allegedly picked some dirt from the outfield to bring home. Connor played soccer again in the fall and loved playing goalie. Alex made a comp baseball this past fall and hopes to do so again soon. Went to many Ute football games and one RSL game this fall. I went to Chicago on a business trip, was home for all of 8 hours before we took off for our birthday trip to Disneyland over Thanksgiving……..BLOG DETOUR!

If you are a regular reader of this blog you know of my love/hate relationship with all things Lego and Disney. That being said, we planned this birthday trip to Disneyland over Thanksgiving for months. With Alex and Mandy’s B-Day being on Turkey day this year we were ecstatic to be going. However I wish we would have spent more time here:

Than here: (Editors note: I couldn't find a good picture from our trip that properly told of how crowded it was. Trust me, it was crowded. In the absence of a crowded photo you get this)

This was night of day four. Connor's fun card had been punched.

Not that we didn’t have fun and enjoy our five days (FIVE DAYS!) in both parks but we had to enjoy our five days with approximately 2.5 million other people each day (numbers give or take 50k people). I now know what the term, “herded like cattle” or “packed like sardines” means. Never in my life have I been more prone to a nervous breakdown mixed with claustrophobia and a sprinkle of rage. My family, especially the boys, were great to be with and we did have fun so it wasn’t all bad. However, when I am constantly thinking about how many people I can push into Rivers of American to make room to walk past Pirates of the Caribbean before security catches or congratulates me, it’s time for a Disney break.

Back to the blog. Had a great Christmas break with trips to Zoo lights, visit’s with family and friends from out of town and we are basically caught up  for the year.Wait! Almost forgot. We saw Star Wars The Force Awakens. TWICE! Yes it was that good. Yes I would see it again in the theater. Yes I am a geek. Yes I just wrote twenty or so words using horrible grammar. Don't care. It was that awesome. I have heard people say it was a retread of the original (New Hope Episode Four. Not those prequel craptastic movies. OK the third Revenge of the Sith was pretty good but not as good as the original three. Sorry another detour. My humblest of apologies) and it may be a retread. BUT AN AWESOME RETREAD! Go see it if you haven't seen it. Go I'll wait.

 A quick shout out to Apple and my iPhone camera roll for allowing me to look back at our year easily.

I am still in school with a target graduation date of August of 2017. However, if I have more classes like this past accounting class it might be a tad longer. I am sure some of you reading this are either an accountant or a CPA and if you are I applaud you in your career choice. What is wrong with you? Were you dropped as a baby? Did you eat led paint chips as a child? What went wrong in your life that you actually CHOOSE to be an accountant? If I never have to read about credit/debit, contra accounts, general ledgers, balance sheets or the SEC ever again, wait, what was that? I have two more accounting classes. Lovely.

With a New Year comes resolutions. This year is no exemption. I read an article the other day that many resolutions fail because they are not specific enough. People do not have a game plan to change. They state what they are going to change and then attempt to change. This doesn’t work. Like any goal, if there is no plan to achieve the goal in question, then there is no goal. With this in mind…I resolve to write at least once a week on this blog. Connor is my muse for most of the contributions here. He still has his Connorism’s and I have some written down that I can write about. He still leaves stuff in his laundry but 90% of the time it is candy wrappers or drawings, so the name of the blog might change but probably not. I’m too lazy to change it. Writing here is good for me as an outlet. It gives me a chance to escape school, while still working out my pea brain. I resolve to think before reacting this year. I have a perpetual case of foot in mouth disease, especially with my family. So I resolve to think before act. Lastly, I resolve to not be so self-deprecating in life or blogging. If you are new to this little blog or a regular reader here you know that I am the King of Self-Deprecation. What am I saying about myself to myself if I am constantly putting myself down? What am I teaching my two boys if I am constantly putting myself down? If I (we) are to be examples to our kids, we need to teach by example, not by words. Do as I do, not as I say mentality. If I want my boys to be strong and have self-worth, then I better start leading by example. So if I go down that path again, call me out on it.

Thank you to all of you who have read this post and all my other posts. I am truly humbled by all of the past support I have received.

Soccer Masterpiece

I finally have an excuse for not blogging as much: school. School whether it be volunteering at the boys school or more importantly my own higher education. School is consuming most of my life right now. Sure I work, have a family, my boys, my beautiful bride, soccer, and scouts but school is the center of my universe. So when I have time to blog, my idea maker is too full of business management, science and (shudder) macroeconomics to be (or attempt to be) witty in a blog post. I really do hope to sit down in some spare time to write more but I cannot promise anything.

Tonight I was inspired to write, not because of laundry or Lego’s but my muse Connor had another Connorism that I had to share. Connor has never really been into sports. Sure he goes to football games and baseball games but he is bored fast. Finally this year I took him to a Jazz game and he loved it. Took him to a RSL game and he loved it. He’s tried to play basketball before (he used the wristbands as a communicator to call Buzz Light-year and Star Command) and T-ball (he was the kid picking grass and chasing butterflies) but he didn’t enjoy it. For some reason this fall he really started to get into soccer. He wanted to watch it on TV, wanted to play it, started an infatuation with Manchester United and it’s great because he is finding himself in something he loves. Not what I like, not what his older brother likes but something that is all him. He looks the part already:

 

Headband, check. Long flowing hair, check. He wants to be a goalie all the time and enjoys it. His only issue is long desire to pass the ball every time he gets the ball. No matter the situation he always wants to pass. That changed tonight for some reason. A switch went off. He was charging the ball. Bumping other kids off the dribble. He had two breakaways and barely missed both times. He was a boy possessed. IT WAS AWESOME! He may not be the best ever on his team but who cares. He is loving something that is HIM! We couldn’t be prouder.

All of this brings me to tonight’s Connorism. On the way home we were talking about the game. I told him to be proud that he played the whole game and it was ok to be tired since his whole team played the whole game, due to being shorthanded. He asked if he needed to take his cleats off before he went to his room. Yes was the answer. Should he take his socks off downstairs? No those take off in his room, I replied. His answer: “Papa you just want my socks off upstairs so you don’t have to smell the masterpiece stink of my soccer socks.” While I was laughing, it suddenly came to me that he was absolutely correct. Masterpiece would not have been the adjective that I used to describe them but hey, to each his own. What is it about boy’s feet that make them smell like a garbage dumpster filled with fish that has been set on fire (I’ll pause here to let that narrative sink in)? I don’t have girls, and thanks to science I never will, so I don’t know if their feet smell just as bad at this age. I know mine did (and if you ask Mandy, she’ll say they still do) at their age. If my brothers and I were half as bad back then, I apologize to my mother.