Always looking for an excuse to do something stupid (for charity)

I've done my share of stupid things. I once took Mikkena river rafting rafting on the Provo River during spring run-off. In high school I continued to drive my van for a month after the break lines were cut. But now that I've gotten a little older I confine all (most) (OK some) of my risk taking to charity. That's why I jumped at the opportunity to, um, jump into a frozen lake to support the special Olympics of Utah. I put together a plunge team of troubled youth (it seemed to fit), and raised $300 in sponsorships.

The location was the beautiful, pristine, and tropical Utah lake. I don't know many people that want to swim in Utah Lake when it's 90 degrees out, so I was surprised by the amount of people who wanted to jump into it when it was frozen. After they cut a hole in the ice I could see that it was as disgusting as ever. I don't know why I was surprised by the nastiness. I guess I expected the water to be less nasty because it was so cold. But no, there it was nasty and frozen. I was kind of hungry so my plan was to jump in with my mouth open and just see what happened.

This is a shot of the "maybe this isn't such a good idea" thought I get sometimes. But I ignored it and it went away like it always does.

I'm not breathing in this picture, that didn't start again for another minute or so.





2/3rds of my brain froze, so I think I'm missing some memories, but suddenly I had a doughnut in my hand. I wanted to meet the genius who thought it was a good idea to hand the plungers a doughnut while they were still dripping with pond scum. But after I ate the little bacteria-infested crud-soaked delicious morsel I understood. MMMMMM Good!

Thanks for everyone who sponsored me, especially Stacie for the last-minute pull-through so we could meet our goal! Without you, my stupidity wouldn't have had a cause. I think we should have more of these. I'm thinking dodging traffic for the homeless, or cliff jumping for cancer or something like that.

Evil Christmas-Hating Tomatoes

After a wonderful Christmas Eve with family, we decided to settle in for the night. Mikkena asked if she could wake us up as soon as she woke up for presents the next morning. Knowing that this was going to be a bad idea, I reluctantly agreed. She smiled and went to bed. I kissed Amber goodnight, and waited expectantly for Christmas morning. It seemed like everyone was looking forward to a nice Christmas morning, everyone except the tomatoes......

12:30 AM Christmas morning the tomatoes attacked, and they brought with them their dear friend Eddie, the Christmas puke.

This picture location is merely coincidental.


From 12:30 Am until 10:00 AM Amber was back and forth from the bathroom throwing up. I tried my best to support her, I got her ice-chips, went to the gas station to buy Sprite and crackers, but mostly all I could do is say "Oh Honey", or "I'm so sorry you're sick" after every puke. The saddest part of the story happened at 6:30 Am when Mikkena woke me up beaming, "Can we open presents now, Daddy?" "Wait, what's that sound?"


HUUUGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!


"Dad, what's going on in the bathroom?"


HUUUGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!


"Its nothing sweety we'll come get you when mommy's done"

The ironic part of this wonderful Christmas story is that Amber is an extremely picky eater. She won't eat or drink any food that is even nearing its expiration date. Amber decided recently to try to waste less food. Instead of throwing the evil, Christmas-hating tomatoes away, she scraped the mold off and ate them anyway.

Christmas 2008 took another bad turn when I went to work at 3:00 for a swing shift followed by the grave-yard shift. Between my "Oh, honeys" and getting ice chips, I probably landed 2 hours of sleep (which was two hours longer than Amber). I tried to sleep, but guilt is powerful when your wife is puking her guts out.

For those of you that have never gone 48 hours without sleep, I suggest you try it at least once. I got to a point during my grave shift (around 5:30 AM) when I stopped being able to perform routine tasks. It took me almost three minutes to open a door, and at another point I got up and walked out on a conversation I was having with another employee in mid-sentence.





Well that's the poor-us wrap up! I hope your Christmas went better than ours. What was your worst holiday experience?

Why cats hate Thanksgiving, Plus... photo lessons, by Mikkena.

Ahh Thanksgiving....... good eats, and good time with the fam.... unless you're a cat, then Thanksgiving is pure hell.

First you get locked in a room for hours with no toilet eating dry crumbly kibbles while everyone else is pigging out on turkey, and the rest of the time you're getting beat up by small children. That's why Tally decided it was time to strike back, Ninja style.

I decided that my niece Erin needed some training.

Lesson number one involved a grapefruit, but in the end, despite extensive training, the score was:

Tally 1-Miniature people 0

Congratulations Tally! You've won a complementary de-clawing. What's that? You want to see what's behind the mystery door? Maybe it's some spam.

This is our lone family Thanksgiving photo. I don't know what I was doing. It was time to be silly and all I could think of was to pick up a stupid roll. I'm going back to "how to look cool in a photo" school. At least Amber got in bunny ears and Mikkena got a cute head tilt. Roll.........lame.

I think that we could all use some lessons on how to look our best while being photographed. And since we all know I am not qualified to teach this lesson, I will let Mikkena do it.

Lesson #1. Don't participate when other people are trying to ruin a good photo. The expression on Mikkena's face clearly states: "I don't know this moron behind me", or "it's hard being a moose".

Lesson #2. Commit! Go big or go home. Follow this rule or you'll end up picking up a roll.

Lesson # 3. Stay hydrated. As a side lesson, it's very important to properly locate your straw with your tongue before you drink. Straw inflicted stab wounds do not make for good photos.

Lesson complete!

The "Hangin with the Hills" costume of the year award

I showed up to my daughter's Halloween party to find out that either she was held back for a few years without my knowing, or I have inadvertently sent her to a school for Oompa Loompas (not that I have anything against Oompa Loompas). Apparently all of the mini people running up to hug her when I drop her off in the mornings are her classmates. I just thought she was really nice to kindergartners. Maybe we should scale back her morning dose of human growth hormone.


Now to highlight some interesting costumes!


First off, This guy!



This costume was so spot on and so common in Eagle Mountain, that it took me a second to realize that it was an actual costume. I think the giant pumpkin baby tipped me off. I also realized it was a costume because he was wearing a shirt under his ripped up wife-beater. Who does that?

My nephew Tagan. The only way to make this kid more squeezable and lovable is to put him in a furry Elmo suit and crocks.

Sherine's 30$ D.I. "find" was certainly creative. It got even better when her husband joined her in his D.I. tux. I am personally glad that the 'ol puffy sleeved dress got one last night on the town.

And the "I can't believe they had the guts to go out in public wearing that" award goes to this fine couple. I certainly thought "shotgun wedding" was going to get the Hanging with the Hills "costume of the year" award, but that was until I saw this little guy at Mikkena's school.

He's going for "eighties nerd". Kudos for the half-tucked-in shirt, high-water pants and mullet. This was genius in a sea of transformers and punk-cheerleaders.

Candy-wise, Mikkena had her most successful Halloween ever. We went to a neighborhood trunk-or-treat, a ward trunk-or-treat, and Halloween night we went trick-or-treating with Amber's brother and his family. The sheer amount a candy that we hauled in certainly tested our no-sugar resolve. I wanted to thank all of you commenters who supported me through this. Here is a snippet "you will never be able to completely give up sugar. I just thought I'd let you know so you won't be disappointed when you lose your will power". Thanks Mom.

I decided that because it was Halloween, I would take a break from my otherwise successful no-sugar goal. Let's just say I found out first hand how people OD. Even though my new tolerance was 5 pieces of candy, I ate 50. I paid for it today, but I got back on track by chewing three packs of sugar-free gum, drinking a 44 oz diet coke with lime, and chewing all of my fingernails off. We gave the rest of Mikkena's candy to charity.

Butt-kickings, detox, and angelic beans

I just had my butt kicked today. It might have been the worst butt-kicking I have ever received. It even beats the time I received two swirlies for showing up to school wearing my Leprechaun costume (mostly true story). Except this time it happened where it hurts, in something I care about..................................................... Scrabble.

Final Score: Amber 347 Jared 153

She beat me by 200 points. For those of you who don't play Scrabble, that is a BLOW OUT! It's like when (insert your favorite sports blow out story here).

Anyway,

We are trying to eat more healthily. The boys at my work are doing an addiction exercise where they give up something difficult for two weeks. Knowing my propensities for sugary deliciousness, I was roped into giving up sugar. Judging by the last couple of posts, this was well timed. Amber and Mikkena decided to join me, and we extended it to a month. I won't lie, not eating sugar is the hardest thing I have done in a long time. For a few days I got depressed, but now I'm back. Strange things happen when your body detoxes from high sugar levels. Fruit starts to taste good. Who knew fruit actually tasted good. I always looked at fruit as bad impostor low-budget candy, but I ate an apple the other day that was better than all of the bad impostor low-budget candy I have ever eaten! Also, I have officially adopted caffeine-free Diet Coke with lime (the lime takes away the disturbing after-taste shivers). It's definitely a tentative adoption, we haven't signed the papers.

So, with the family on board we made some adjustments to Mikkena's birthday celebrations. Instead of birthday cake we went and had low fat (and I think sugar free, although I didn't check) frozen yogurt at Amber's new favorite trendy frozen yogurt place with a stupid name.

This was the real test of my commitment to not eat candy. There was a self-serve topping bar filled with candy and fruit. There they were...........................................not just jelly beans, but Jelly Bellys, and I was feeling snooty. Perfect, glowing, speckled little beauties like little angels from heaven. They were singing to me, "it's OK no one will ever know. We are delicious".

One death glare from Amber snapped me back to reality. I got fruit, and it was still good, but not Jelly Belly good.

Babies and Pumpkin Guts

I'm so excited about Halloween that I just put a dentist on retainer. But sadly, I am starting to realize that 28-year-old trick-or-treaters are kind of creepy. For the last couple of years I've been able piggyback on Mikkena, because 28-year-old guys taking their daughters trick-or-treating isn't creepy at all, it's adorable! Later I steal all of her candy. But today I realized that my window of opportunity is closing fast. This week Mikkena is turning 10. Pretty soon she will be too old to be my trick-or-treating excuse. I need another baby, and fast!







In addition to stockpiling black market insulin, we decided to prepare for Halloween with a good 'ol fashioned pumpkin carve.

Guess the movie.

My favorite part of carving pumpkins is having a big bowl of pumpkin guts to run my hands through and throw at people. Good times.

severed limbs and electric chairs

I've got to thank Jack Skellington the next time I see him. Dressing up as John Travolta, going door to door begging for tasty morsels, screaming till you pass out.......man, I can't think of a better holiday. We started off this month's festivities by going to a haunted house. We went to the Scream Asylum in Provo. I give it 3 out of 5 dead clown heads (for those of you who don't know, that's the official haunted house rating system). It was cheaper than other houses, but it was shorter too.

Going to haunted houses is always a blast, especially when one member of the family screams at the top of her lungs for 15 minutes and then runs into a wall (I'll give you a hint, it's not the 9-year-old). Three years ago, Amber used her 10-year-old nephew Cody as a human shield to fend off evil clowns. He's still not over it. Really, ask him.

Each year the trip starts off with Mikkena teasing Amber about last year and bragging about how she "totally saw the guy with the chainsaw coming". That is until we actually get there.

"Daddy, I think this is a bad idea"

After being attacked by a headless man carrying a rack of dismembered body parts, Amber was awarded the quote of the day.

"Jared, hold me! Mikkena can fend for herself!"

Well we made it, and we got to keep the cool 3-D glasses. If you look closely you can see my ruptured right eardrum. It was a scream!