Birdhouses, Firetrucks and LOTS of Pictures!

It has been a while since I have posted anything on here. It's been a busy week! Brody has gotten to do a lot of fun things and we have loads of pictures from this week.

For Family Home Evening last week we painted a birdfeeder and put seeds in it in hopes that it would bring birds to our backyard for Brody to watch, which as of yet hasn't happened. He loved helping us paint it and I thought it would be fun to paint each other but he didn't agree. He doesn't like to KNOW that he is messy. He can go out and play in the mud and be fine but once someone points out to him that he is dirty or messy, he wants to be clean.

We have been trying to figure out what everyone is going to be for Halloween. Bridger's was easy since we have a costume from Brody 2 years ago that he can wear. I found a firefighter costume at Old Navy (thanks, Anita!) for Brody and it came in the mail yesterday. Brody wanted to try it on and he loves it. It was Adam's day off so we decided it would be fun for Brody to go see a real fireman. Adam took him to the local fire department and Brody met the firemen and even got to sit in the big firetruck. He came home and told me all about it ("Mom, Wireguck, Wireman. Big Wireguck!"). Adam said the firemen were so nice and said Brody could come back anytime. This morning Brody woke up and wanted his fireman hat so I am pretty sure it is going to be a permanent accessory for a while.

I have been busy with my calling. We have our visiting teaching conference coming up as well as our humanitarian aid project that we have been working on. We are sewing school bags and filling them with school supplies to send to Salt Lake, which will then be sent to different places around the world. We also have our Stake Relief Society Dinner/General Broadcast this Saturday, which I am pretty excited about. There is something powerful about being with a room full of women listening to the prophet together.

I am going to try to figure out how to put a link on here so you can see more than just a few pictures every week. We have been taking so many great pictures and we are going to be getting our family pictures done next week by a wonderful couple in our ward. They are soooo talented and we are really excited.

I love you all. Keep in touch, okay?

Service Change

I gave a talk in the service member's group today where I teach the Gospel Doctrine Class. Boy did they all get an ear-full of my voice today! The first speaker left me almost 30 min to fill, but as it turned out that was just about what I needed for the talk I had prepared. I know what you’re thinking, but it wasn't boring, and only one person was asleep that I could see. My topic was service to God, self and others. Prior to this talk I’d never coupled service and change as principles working together, but the idea came from wikipedia strangely enough. When I searched for service on wiki the first page that came up was for service in terms of economics. This is an excerpt from it:

In economics and marketing, a service is the non-material equivalent of a good.. It is claimed to be a process that creates benefits by facilitating either a change in customers, a change in their physical possessions, or a change in their intangible assets.

By supplying some level of skill, ingenuity, and experience, providers of a service participate in an economy

Services can be described in terms of their main attributes.

• Lack of homogeneity - Services are typically modified for each client or each new situation (customized).
• Labor intensity - Services usually involve considerable human activity, rather than a precisely determined process. The human factor is often the key success factor in service industries.
• Buyer involvement - Most service provision requires a high degree of interaction between client and service provider.
• Client-Based Relationships - Is based on creating long-term business relationships.

The part that caught my eye (and my spirit) the most was this: It is claimed to be a process that creates benefits by facilitating change. I realized how true that is; that as we serve others we facilitate a change in them and in ourselves for the better. In studying for the talk I also thought of the war in Heaven in a different light. I realized that one of the fundamental differences between the plans of Heavenly Father and Lucifer was that Christ volunteered to SERVE in a capacity so far reaching that it would facilitate the change of ALL children of God, while Lucifer did not want to serve, but to enslave. I'm so grateful for the Service rendered by our Savior that facilitates our change.

This is one of the stories I shared. Its from a talk by President Faust.

Some years ago a priests quorum decided to gather food for the needy as a service project. Jim, one of the priests, was excited to participate and was determined to collect more food than anyone else. The time arrived when the priests met at the chapel. They all went out at the same time and returned at a specified time later in the evening. To everyone’s surprise, Jim’s cart was empty. He seemed rather sober, and some of the boys made fun of him. Seeing this and knowing that Jim had an interest in cars, the adviser said, “Come outside, Jim. I want you to look at my car. It’s giving me some trouble.”

When they got outside, the adviser asked Jim if he was upset. Jim said, “No, not really. But when I went out to collect the food, I really got a lot. My cart was full. As I was returning to the chapel, I stopped at the home of a nonmember woman who is divorced and lives within our ward boundaries. I knocked on the door and explained what we were doing, and she invited me in. She began to look for something to give me. She opened the refrigerator, and I could see there was hardly anything in it. The cupboards were bare. Finally, she found a small can of peaches.

“I could hardly believe it. There were all these little kids running around that needed to be fed, and she handed me this can of peaches. I took it and put it in my cart and went on up the street. I got about halfway up the block when I just felt warm all over and knew I needed to go back to that house. I gave her all the food.”

The adviser said, “Jim, don’t you ever forget the way you feel tonight, because that’s what it is all about.”

Whoa! Nice toothbrush!

I wanted to add a little to the drama of the ward campout. This weekend demonstrated once again why buying toys for Brody is dumb. He ran around the whole night and day exclaiming “big stick” and picking up that big stick to “hit twee.” That was his entertainment. Well, that and playing swords with Brad and I. For some reason he would pick the biggest stick he could find for Brad to use and then pick a small one for himself, so of course all of the onlookers would see a large man picking on a little boy and root for Brody. I think it was all part of his master psychological warfare plan – and it worked. Before long he had Brad pinned and crying like a…, well, like a toddler.

Brody also enjoyed making smores. In fact he liked making them so much he didn’t bother eating them. Brody has a bit of an eating quirk; if there is anything hanging off the spoon/fork, or over the sides of a sandwich (like gooey marshmallow) that will spill over onto his cheeks, he wont eat it. He gets mad and frustrated. That’s why we have to cut his spaghetti into itti-bitti pieces, and that’s why after trying to take a bite out of a delicious smore he said “Dad eat?” and then he retreating back to the comfort of dousing “moshtees” in fire.

Let me tell you, there is nothing so comfortable as a cool autumn night under the stars, camping with your boy and enjoying nature. Let me also tell you that that is not at all what happened. It poured rain all night. And when the rain wasn’t drumming on the roof of our tent there were some strange animals making strange noises and when that wasn’t happening Brody was tenderly stroking my face with his fist or gently nudging my body with relentless kicking. It was wonderful. I got so much sleep. The other joy of the night was hearing Erica move on her plastic water-floatation-device-made-into-a-bed. Ah yes, the sweet sound of sweaty skin skidding over plastic. Music to my ears. Thanks Erica!

Speaking of Erica, when we all woke in the morning she decided to show off by pulling out her bag of wonderful toys. She reached her hand into the magic bag as we all watched in suspense and pulled out….stay tuned for next weeks edition!

“Whoa! Nice Toothbrush!”

That is what Brody said when she pulled out that very normal looking toothbrush. It was quite funny. He acted like it was the coolest thing since “big sticks.” Kids say the darndest things!

After a breakfast of pancakes and meat cooked on rusted grills by Chefs Erica and Brad, we all decided to take Brody swimming in the superbly clean waters of the lake. Superbly clean is a bit of an exaggeration, I guess. In truth I was afraid to open my eyes or mouth and felt like I was swimming in fish excrement; and I probably was. It was fun though, and Brody enjoyed looking for the fish and watching the ducks and flying through the air at and break-neck speeds.

It was a good weekend and I’m glad we were able to go – even more glad that we had good friends there to hang out with and make good memories with.

As a side note, some of the occupants of the campgrounds found me too irresistibly handsome and couldn’t keep their paws off me. They also couldn’t keep their mouths off me, and I have the itchy red bumps all over to prove it. Sometimes it’s difficult being so attractive. (Perhaps you know what I mean. Perhaps you have no idea.) ;-)

Jess and I began working on some family History projects for the church. It is really easy and quite cool, so if you haven’t already started on your own you should go to www.familysearchindexing.org and start as well. You’ll like it.

Ward Campout

Friday night was our ward campout and Adam, who usually works on Saturdays, was able to get the day off to take Brody camping. When Adam got home from work on Friday it looked like a storm was coming so I went to weather.com and saw that it was supposed to rain until about 10pm at Mistletoe State Park, where they were supposed to camp. He decided to go anyway because he is on the activities committee and felt like he needed to help. I thought he was crazy...and not just because it was going to be raining the whole time. Brody isn't the greatest sleeper and I just imagined Brody awake all night in a tent that he had to stay in because it was wet and soggy outside. On the other hand, I was thrilled that I would be able to sleep in with Bridger! So they went and it rained but they had fun. We have a 2-room tent and so Adam and Brody shared it with our friends Brad and Erica. Side note: Brody is in love with Brad and Erica. He calls them Ba and Etty. We are devastated that they are moving to Germany this month. Anyway, back to the campout...Erica woke up in the middle of the night frustrated with Brad telling him to stop kicking her. Brad woke up confused saying he wasn't kicking her. So they turned their flashlight on and saw Brody crawling across Erica's legs. I guess he looked really confused or scared and then said, "Daddy?" He was looking for Adam and it was so dark he couldn't find him. It cracked me up when Adam told me.

I took full advantage of only having one child again. They didn't get home from the campout until about noon (they went swimming at the lake) so Bridger and I played together in the morning and then after his morning nap I took him to the gym and dropped him off at the daycare there and I went to a Zumba class. I only went to it because it was the class that was going on at the most convenient time for me- I didn't even really know what it was. It is a latin dance exercise class. Let me tell you- I am not coordinated in any way to dance, let alone dance fast and exercise at the same time. Watching me try to do what the instructor was doing was probably like watching a train wreck. By the way, the instructor was WACKED. What a strange person. She is a little mousy lady with way too much energy. She reminded me of "The Crazy Prescription Lady" on SNL, played by Cheri Oteri. She even looked like her. It was an okay workout but I won't be going to it again.

Today was Stake Conference. Last night I got to go to the adult session while Adam stayed with the kids. It was soooo good! The talks were all about the The Proclamation to the World: The Family and a guy in our ward gave an excellent talk comparing families to the structure of a home. The foundation should be built on the "Rock" or Jesus Christ, the walls are made up of the relationship between the husband and wife (each 2x4 of the framing is something- love, compassion, repentence, forgiveness, etc.- things that make a marriage strong). The roof is the father that protects and watches over his family. The warmth and comfort of the home is the mother. Then he said that all homes need to be maintained. When things go wrong within the relationship, like an argument, we should fix it up or clean it up and take it to the curb to be picked up with the garbage and never remember it. The whole talk tied in so well with the Proclamation and I just loved it.

So I'm not really going in order but I thought of a couple of cute things from this week. When Brody wakes up he always asks where Dad is. I tell him he is at work and since he has discovered money (when he finds coins he gets excited and says "My mun!") I told him that Dad goes to work so he can get more money. Now whenever I tell him that Dad is at work, he says, "Dad more mun?" and will even run to Adam when he walks in and ask for some money. So the other day Brody and I rounded up all the coins from our drawers and pockets and purse and wherever we keep money and we made a little piggy bank from a mason jar and he got to put all his money in his "mission jar". He put the coins in one at a time and loved it. Now when Adam comes home and Brody asks him for money, he gives him whatever change he has and Brody gets to put it with his other money in his mission jar. He loves it and now we will be able to start a mission fund for Brody!

I went to Michael's on Thursday and got a bunch of stuff to make Halloween crafts. I am pretty excited about it. If they turn out cute I'll post them on here. I don't have very many Halloween decorations for the house so I hope they turn out.

Tonight Brad and Erica came over and made us pizza. It was yummy. After the kids went to bed we played Canasta Caliente and Erica and I actually won. Now I finally know what it feels like! It's not that much better than losing really.

Oops! okay?

I, Adam, regret to inform all avid readers that I did it again. I won. I just can't help myself. I totally wiped the floor with Jess, Brad and Erica. Thank you for playing.

In truth, I'm not here to brag. I guess that my humor doesn't come through the blog as much as I hoped it would because obviously my previous post was just a big joke and some folks didn't get that. The real event was quite simple; Jess and I went out on a date and laughed more together than we have in a long time. It was so much fun, and I'm so glad I have her to be my best friend and eternal companion. I loved it. I loved (and love) being with Jess. She is awesome (and hot). I am so glad that we have been married for 5 years and I can hardly believe how much we have grown together and learned together.

The blog is not a contest to see who can get more comments, and I am not a big fat jerk.

Copycat

Hello Friends. I just want you to know that between Adam and I, I am the more diligent poster to this blog. Adam writes one silly blog about a date that he completely exaggerated about and he gets 8+ comments!!!! Seriously? The most I have on any one post is 5 and that is because people had pity on me. I guess I'm not as spirited in my writing as Adam is. At least I don't brag about how good I am at EVERYTHING in my posts!!! Hahaha. If I did it would take up more than a couple paragraphs.

Okay so now to the news of the week. Brody has started to copy what we say. The other day something happened (I don't remember what) and I said, "Oh crap!" and he piped right in and said, "Oh grap!" It was then I realized I have to start either spelling or editing my vocabulary. I don't swear or use vulgar language, but I certainly don't want my 2 year-old saying crap or shut up or stupid. Instead he can go around saying "Oh C-R-A-P!" Just kidding.

Something else funny that he said this week: The other morning we got him out of his bed and brought him into the kitchen for breakfast, where all of my craft stuff was on the table from the night before. He said, "Wow! Nice stuff, Mom!" Adam and I just looked at each other like "Did he just say that?" or "Where did he pick that up?" It was funny.

Since we figured out what was wrong with Brody (his body being clogged with poop) and gotten him cleaned out, he has been a completely different child. He is so much happier and he is eating better. It is so nice! It makes me wonder how long he was suffering. Anyway, he loves to help me with ANYTHING. If I ask him to do something and he doesn't want to do it, I just add, "Will you help mom and..." and he totally does it. He loves to help put the laundry in the washer, set the table, load the dishwasher and vacuum. It's too bad that when he becomes able to do it right he won't want to do it anymore.

Any of you who are interested in checking out the Stampin' Up! catalog online can go to stampinup.com, click on the "Our online catalog" link and follow the links to the Fall/Winter 2007 catalog. If you are interested in anything or have any questions, email me: jesslinq@gmail.com. I am going to be doing more workshops and classes now that Bridger is getting a little older and I feel more normal now.

Have a great week everyone!

A Kidless Date

As many of our avid readers (aka fans) know, this will be my first posting, as I have previously not had anything noteworthy to write. Today, however, is a day of grand celebration, in which you all will be excited to participate. It is the day of my victory. All hail the conquering hero! To my sweet wife I have but few simple words: "I totally kicked your trash, baby!" Last night we were fortunate to find a friend I work with willing to sit at our home instead of her own on a Saturday night so we could paint the town. Her only price was pizza, which we easily obliged. After tossing the kids in bed we raced off into the night with insane laughter trailing behind us as the feeling of freedom swept over us. Our first stop was a trip down decadence lane (the Dairy Queen drive-thru). We each got blizzards - mine was a cotton candy with too much candy, and Jess's was a chocolate cookie dough with too much dough. We sat in the car at the Adventure Crossing parking lot to eat our ice cream treats while we talked and listened to Colors (there is something quite funny about listening to white guys rap). Somehow our childish giddiness at having these treats faded dramatically as the daunting task of scooping spoonfuls of sweet fat into our mouths became too much for our stomachs to bear. Perhaps you've been there before and now feel like barfing. In any case I opted to throw the last bit of mine at the windshield of the car next to ours and then use my finger to write the explicative "dork" with the splattered remains.* This, of course, boosted my mood considerably and so having abandoned the scene we made our way to the putt putt golf course.

I had warned Jess already that I was an amazingly gifted player not to be trifled with, but she insisted on trifling anyway. I rarely enjoy bragging, but this is a special occasion (our anniversary) , so I will commence. In the 17 holes we were able to play (one was flooded) I sunk the ball in only 2 shots for 10 of them (hold applause). Not only that but on the 18th hole I was able to close my eyes, bounce the ball off an intruding rock and sink a hole in one as the sky simultaneously clapped thunder in praise.* Throughout the course I could be heard for miles yelling such wild phrases as "yeah baby!", "eat that sugar!" and "Man, I'm good!." The experience was only slightly marred by the presence of Jess's purse on my shoulder while she was taking her shots.*** In the end with an astounding 13 point lead, which, I can humbly say would hardly have been possible if not for Jess's unfortunate luck. Thank you, honey. After my victory dance, we held hands to enter the realm of the arcade underworld.

If any of you have never been to a modern arcade, you may not realize that it has become a dance studio in which young men of large stature can, with precision and perspiration, pump out the latest and greatest dance moves on a game called "Dance Dance Revolution" (or maybe dance dance revulsion, I forget which). Jess and I were amazed to see these huge-footed shaggy-haired teenagers dancing as though the world around them didn't exist at all - they didn't even notice Jess staring with an open mouth 2 feet away.*** If nothing else they should have at least had the courtesy to stop and notice how hot she is. Jerks! Anyway, back to the purpose at hand. We found the air hockey table and found it had some credits as well. We played hard and laughed harder, but in the end there could only be one champion. You know who that was, right? Heck yes, it was me! I totally kicked her trash around the block and back again. At this point you may be thinking to yourself, "How could Adam be so harsh and unfeeling as to rub such a ruthless victory in the beautiful face of his 5 year wife?" Well, I am a fan of the truth. The truth hurts sometimes. Being a fan of the truth that I am is very difficult at times. As such, I will also tell the harrowing tale of Jess's triumph over me in one very close game of hockey.*** She shot, I shot, She shot, I shot. It was intense. Suddenly I found myself falling (fallen) behind. Sweat beaded my forehead and ran down my back to escape into the great white canyon. As the last shot was on the line time slowed; I lunged; a quick "no" attempted to escape my lips, but it was too late. The deed was done. I, the great champion of all games everywhere, had been defeated. Tears could not be held back, so in an effort to hide them I joined ranks with the sweating behemoths on the Dance Dance machine.* After few short moments, they quite naturally realized I was too cool to belong and disowned me.

The other highlight of our date was finding an abandoned game booth with curtains on the sides for some sort of shooting game and turning it into a make-out booth. We both won at this little game.

Thanks for reading. I'm sure you are a better person now.

*These marks indicate something that may be slightly embellished, or a flat out lie
***These marks indicate something that is quite unfortunately very true.
******These are six astricksies.