Jonathan's Day of Glory

Jonathan had a great day yesterday! Last night was a scout court of honor. He got another merit badge (engineering) and 2 Eagle Palms... the silver palm and his second bronze palm. Yea for him! Yesterday was also parent-teacher conferences at Oak Canyon. All of his teachers raved about him. I like parent-teacher conferences with my boys. It's all positive, positive, positive! It makes me wonder how I would feel about PTCs if I had academically or behavior challenged children. Most of Jonathan's teachers really emphasized that Jonathan really understands the material. Jonathan took a midterm in his AP class on Monday. His grade was very confusing to him... he got 101/92 and was worried that the test had been entered into the grade system incorrectly. His teacher told him to "chill" and the score was correct. She explained to Jonathan that he was essentially a curve-wrecker. The test was out of 110 points and Jonathan got 101 points. The next high score was a 92. She went on and explained to him that his score skewed the results and hurt the other kids' grades so they threw his score out and made 92 points the top grade and gave Jonathan extra credit for his awesomeness. He felt really good about that. The only thing that I thought was a little odd at Jonathan's PTCs was that Jonathan isn't known as "Jonathan" at school. Everyone, teachers included, calls him "Jon". Whatever; he'll always be Jonathan to me!

Sale/Sell

I cannot stand it when people use these words incorrectly. I understand mixing up homonyms, but theses aren't homonyms... For example... from a message board today I read... "they were wanting a sale out on presales". What does that mean? The word is SELL out. Regularly I hear about a "great 'sell' at Nordstroms". Oooooo! A double pet peeve! First, it's a "great SALE". Second... where did that second "s" come from in the store called "Nordstrom"? I know it's ticky-tacky, but theses are two of my English language pet peeves!

Meet Mo-Mo-Mo

Mo-Mo-Mo is Miles current obsession and best friend. Miles walks around literally with a monkey on his back! Mo-Mo-Mo is his monkey leash and he's been wearing it for 2 days straight now. Trust me, it makes diaper changes and naptime interesting! I hope he still likes it when we go to Puerto Rico!Oh, and what do you do with a child who loves apples, but only on his terms? Miles loves apples, but only if you hand him the whole apple. If you cut the apple into slices, he won't eat it. If you remove the peel, he won't eat it. The problem is that Miles won't eat apple skin. So, I hand him an apple, which makes him very happy, he bites it, chews it, then spits the skin out onto the floor. Yuck! But like I said, it's all on his terms... modify the apple in any way and he won't eat it!

Last Blue & Gold for a LONG Time!

We are approaching a nice long break from the Cub Scouting program! Two more Pack Meetings until Nolan moves up to the 11-Year old scouts! We attended our last Blue and Gold Banquet for seven years last week. Nolan raked in the awards... 4 Activity Pins (Citizen, Outdoorsman, Scholar, and Fitness), his Compass emblem with the East and West Compass Points, and his Webelos badge! Yea! He really wanted to earn Outdoorsman and had all the requirements competed except for one... sleep in a tent you helped pitch. Nolan managed to con Dan and Jonathan into sleeping outside with him 2 weekends ago (yes, in February in Utah) so he could complete this requirement. While I enjoyed a nice toasty night inside in my bed, the boys slept outside in the rain, but don't feel too bad for them, they took the 9"TV/DVD player out with them, ran an extension cord from the garage to the backyard and watched movies. Talk about roughing it!

New Game

The name of this game is "Miles, Where is you hair?" Miles thinks it is fun to pull the cap off and find his hair!

Their Eyes are Bigger than Their Stomachs

McDonalds is running a promotion right now that caught my boys' attention. 50 chicken McNuggets for $9.99. Last Friday, I caved and bought them this horridly offensive meal. Nolan was having a cow because I told him that Miles got to eat McNuggets too. He didn't want to share with Miles because there wouldn't be enough McNuggets for him and Jonathan. Well, the big boys went to town on the McNuggets and Miles threw his on the floor. When all was said and done, the big boys couldn't eat all the McNuggets. Miles ate ZERO (his went in the trash), Jonathan stopped after 20 McNuggets and Nolan only managed to eat 12. There are 17 leftover McNuggets in my refrigerator if anybody want to stop by for leftovers!

BidCactus

BidCactus is a website that I found yesterday and I keep going back to it to "watch". It's quite an interesting concept. It's an auction website that only the owners can put things up for sale. They mostly sell gift cards, but I've seen Chi hair straighteners, laptops, and flat screen TVs on the auction block too. Here's their deal... auctions start at .01 and increase in increments of .01. Every item sells every time and auctions only last 10 minutes (but time gets extended when a bid is placed within 10 seconds of the ending time... no sniping allowed). Stuff goes for a fraction of its retail value... but of course there is a catch... you have to pay to bid. Before you can bid, you have to purchase a block of bids at .75 per bid. So every time you bid, it costs you .75. If you win, you pay winning bid price, but have already paid .75 times the number of times you bid. The site owners are making a huge profit! Here's a few examples of what I saw yesterday...

A $50 Target Gift card was listed. It cost the company, presumably, $50. BidCactus needed to sell the item for .67 to break even (67 bids at .75 per bid). It sold for $4.44, which means that 444 bids were placed at .75 each. The site took in $333 from the auction. They cleared $283 plus the winning bid on the $50 gift card auction. Someone walked away happy paying $4.44 plus however many bids he/she made @ .75 each for a $50 gift card.

A $100 Disney Vacations Gift Card sold for $3.23. The company took in $242.75 from the auction and made $142.25 plus the winning bid.

An LG 47" LCD HDTV retails for $1199.99. Someone bought it on BidCactus for $49.63 plus the .75 per bid made (and the winner made a lot... I was watching this one closely and I think the winner made well over 200 bids before he won). BidCactus took in $3722.25 on this one item alone and cleared about $2575. The TV only needed to sell for $16 for BidCactus to break even.

While I find it fun to watch, I won't be a BidCactus user... it's to much like Vegas for me and I'm not willing to risk the .75 for a chance to win something bigger and better. I'll take my .75 and go get a soft serve ice cream cone at Arctic Circle!

For the Birds

Nolan was watching a DVD of Pixar film studio's "shorts"! They are really cute and clever. Miles was watching alongside Nolan. The sort "For the Birds" came on and it struck Miles as hilarious! I think that this is the first time that Miles has found something to be funny on his own. He was dancing around, jumping, and laughing at the "short". Of course, when it was over, he wanted "more"!

Climber

I've never had a climber before. Miles is the master! We find him everywhere he shouldn't be. He gets his own treats from the pantry. He knows to pull out the chairs from the table to get up on to the table. He even climbs on top of his toys. I am constantly taking him down from high places. He lets me know how much he doesn't appreciate that. He's fast at it too... I run downstairs to grab something, come back up less than a minute later and he's on the dining room table. He's going to crash hard someday. Yesterday he crashed getting off of a chair, but lucky for him, his head landed on top of a pile of fleece fabric that he had thrown on the floor just a minute before.

Can't Share in Her Happiness

Who am I to judge? How others choose to live their lives and what they choose to do with it really isn't any of my business, but sometimes the choices others make make me sad. There's a lady I've know for more than 12 years. She was on her second marriage when we met. She and hubby #2 were married 17-ish years and had 4 children together before divorcing last summer. I do not know what struggles they went through, but being on the outside, their divorce was a surprise to me. I was sad for her, him, and all the children. The kids took it hard, of course. We moved and lost regular contact with this family. Well, flash forward a few months... my friend just announced her engagement. I don't know why I'm not happy for her, but I'm just not. I'm glad I found out about her engagement via the internet because there is no way I could have even faked a sincere "congratulations" in person. But, like I said, who am I to judge? I wish her happiness. I hope her children are good with it all, and may her ex find peace and happiness in his life.

Federation Piano Festival

Nolan participated in the Federation Piano Festival on Saturday. He played 2 pieces... "The Train Robbery" and "Sonatina in C major". Getting ready for the festival was very stressful (for me...) as Nolan procrastinated his preparation. As of Wednesday, his pieces were "learned" and memorized, but not polished for a performance or judging! Nolan worked really hard on his two pieces on Thursday and Friday. He made dramatic progress! On Saturday, he went to the festival and was rewarded for his hard work... he got a "Superior" rating! Good job, buddy!

The Biggest and The Littlest

Miles thinks Jonathan is pretty cool. Jonathan, however, think Miles is a pest. Miles doesn't understand Jonathan's "go away" cues and loves to hang out with his 'Gantor. Last night was one of those rare nights when Jonathan found Miles to be charming. Miles saw Jonathan reading a book, so Miles went and got his own book and sat down by Jonathan and read his book too.
After reading time, Miles snuggled up next to Jonathan and together they watched part of a movie. Pesty persistence paid off!

Silly "Sammy"

Amy had fun with my camera last night.

Yes, this is the screwdriver that caused all the problems at bedtime last night.

Valentine's Box

Back in the "old days", when we not only learned to read, write, spell, and calculate in school, we had time for art! One project that you could count on doing every year in grade school was making a Valentine's Day box/container. I remember weaving hearts together one year to make a Valentine's envelope. Then on Valentine's Day, you brought your Valentines that came with that cheap envelope that couldn't be sealed to school and distributed them after lunch, but before the party. Most the valentines were just valentines signed with a name; occasionally you'd score and someone would tuck a few candy conversation hearts into that unsealable envelope and tape it shut... boy, I thought those were a real treat!

Flash forward 30 years... how things have changed! No longer does the making of the Valentine's Box happen at school. It becomes one of those home projects where each kid feels like they have to "out do" at least every kids in the class, if not the whole school, by having the coolest box. What makes a box "cool" is debatable... some kids think the biggest equals cool, or the pinkest, or sparkliest, or most unique. I think the "coolest" is the simplest! Now, I really shouldn't complain too much... at least at Nolan's school there isn't a theme to follow or a contest to determine "coolest box", but it's still a pain to make a box every year... why can't a brown bag suffice? Anyway, since Valentine's Day is NOT cool if you are a 5th grade boy, the box making can be a challenge. It can't be pink at all or "lovey looking"; it has to be "manly". This year, Nolan's box is a brown hairy monster that eats the valentines.
Now, the giving of Valentines has also evolved since the 70's. Finally the Valentine's manufactures grew a brain and got rid of those unsealable envelopes. Most valentines seal with a heart shaped sticker. Gone are the days of the "occasional candy conversation heart surprise"; treats are now expected with every valentine... a miniature candy bar is standard. This holiday has turned into another sugar-high fest. Not to be left out this year, Nolan is giving "Fun Dip" valentines because they are not lovey at all and they taste good. In exchange, he should bring home 32 valentines, each complete with their own treat.

Long Night

Last night Miles threw a 90 minute super-sized tantrum at bedtime because Dan wouldn't let him sleep with a screwdriver. He finally fell asleep around 11 p.m. and woke up at 3 a.m. demanding breakfast (he was told "no way") and has been up since. Well, actually he fell asleep about 10 minutes ago. This better be a long nap or we're in for a long day!

Utah Legislative Session 2010

I don't what what it takes to be elected to the Utah Legislature... obviously not much of a brain or common sense. Before I completely trash this group of people, let me recognize the one intelligent thing they've done so far this year... it's illegal in Utah to collect rainwater and use it to water your plants/yard, etc. Utah law basically says that if it doesn't come out of a tap, then the water belongs to the State and therefore if you collect it, you are stealing. A bill passed committee to reverse that law and allow people to collect rain water for home watering usage. Yea!

Okay... now, why the Utah Legislature is stupid. First, there is Senator Buttars. The man is an out-of-touch idiot who has a history of making racial comments on the Senate floor and yet he manages to get re-elected by his constituents. Utah, like every other state in the nation, is facing huge budget cuts and he has come up with as great solution to the problem... eliminate 12th grade. Yep, that's right... he says that seniors in high school are just killing time and wasting taxpayer dollars that last year of high school, so it should be eliminated. Brilliant!

The second reason the Utah Legislature is stupid is because they don't care about the safety of children. Last year, Utah finally got a booster seat law passed that requires all children to be in a car seat or booster seat until the age of 8 or they weigh 80 pounds. I like that law. This year, some guy has pushed a bill through committee that only requires children over the age of 5 to be in a booster seat if they are traveling more than 4 miles from home and traveling on any roads with a speed limit of 45 mph or higher. How stupid is that? All the data I have seen shows that traffic accidents occur more likely to occur within a one mile radius of your home. But his legislature thinks it's too much to ask to require parents to put their kids in an appropriate safety device for trips to schools, church, etc. Stupid.

Ding! Dong! The House is Gone!

No regrets today... just a lot of relief! We closed on the PG house!

He's a Poser

"Miles, can you say 'cheese?'"

It's All Empty

Today we said good-bye to our Pleasant Grove house. It's cleaned out... totally empty except for a piece of PVC pipe, house keys, 2 garage door openers, 4 owners manuals, the Pleasant Grove/Lindon emergency guide, and the ugly flower pot that was sitting on top of one of the water heaters when we moved in (and it's still there). Tomorrow is closing! The buyers close at 8 a.m. and we close at 3 p.m. We've moved on, but it was good to take a last look at the house and reminisce. For example, we changed every bit of flooring in that house. Dan had to go admire the "best tile laying job ever" in the kitchen and marvel one last time and this tricky tile he cut... it looks like a tomahawk. I remembered why Jonathan's room had a wallpaper border... I didn't want to tape off the ceiling when painting it so I stopped painting a few inches from the ceiling and hid that with the border. Jonathan remembered the many colors of paint that Nolan's room tried on as we tried to find the right combination (I never was happy with that room). I remembered Jonathan breaking a kitchen cabinet in two during an impressive tantrum. Until today, Jonathan never realized how ugly the shelf paper was. One last look across the lake, one last look at Mt. Timp from the front porch, one last look at my favorite tree we planted... a small, twiggy Paperbark Maple that now stands 15 feet tall and I can no longer span its trunk with my hands. This spring I will find Paperbark Maples and plant them in the parking strip area at out Lindon house. I loved that tree! I closed the closet doors, turned out all the lights, and shut the front door for the last time in Pleasant Grove today. It's a good thing... we're looking forward to having only one house payment and one set of utility bills to pay. We will only have one driveway to shovel. Now we'll be able to focus on improvements and upgrades to our Lindon home. Still, a chapter closes, but there's still the next chapter to write!

Smelly Cat

Beijing smells bad and Nolan decided to do something about it...








As you can see... not the most successful experiment! But Nolan says 'Jing doesn't stink anymore!

Spider = Ball

Miles, the youtube addict, was watching little kid song clips with Dan last night. One of his current favorites is "Incy Wincy Spider." I hate the clip for a couple of reasons... first, I was taught the title of the song is "Eency Weency Spider". Second, they sing "Out came the sun and dried up all the rain" to an odd tune. Whatever, I am not the targeted audience... Well, the spider in the clip is this blue animated round thing with legs... Miles got excited and pointed at it and called out "Ball"!

Dear, oh Deer

Today in Nolan's class, they were doing proofreading exercises. One of the sentences read, "Do you have dear Mr. Henshaw, Alice asked the clerk." Nolan's teacher called on someone to share a correction she had made. She told the class to underline "Dear Mr. Henshaw" because it is a title of a book. Nolan, who forgot that Dear Mr. Henshaw is a book that thought that the sentence was referring to a meat shop, called out... but I thought it was "'Do you have deer, Mr. Henshaw', Alice asked the clerk." He laughed so hard hard at his interpretation of the sentence that he had tears! His teacher decided that Nolan's interpretation of the sentence was valid and gave him credit for his revision!

Food Again

Smith's last night... Regularly $148.58

• 9 bottles Sobe Lifewater
• 2 bags Pepperidge Farms Goldfish Crackers
• 5 boxes Wheat Thins
• 5 boxes Triscuits
• 2 boxes Zesta Saltines
• 6 boxes Krusteaz Cookie Mix
• 2 boxes Quaker Chewy Granola Bars
• 2 bags Nature Valley Nut Clusters
• 4 bags Kraft Shredded Cheese
• 1 bag Sargento Sliced Cheese
• 6 containers Dryers Ice Cream
• 2 containers Daisy Sour Cream
• 2 gallons Milk
• 1 Bagel
• 3 bags Quaker Rice Cakes
• 1 can Rotel Tomatoes

I paid $32.87. I took Nolan shopping with me. Both he and the lady behind him were impressed!

Up Close with a Millionaire

Last night was Meet a Utah Jazz Player night for the Junior Jazz basketball league. Neither Jonathan nor Nolan are playing basketball, but I thought they'd still like to go and see a real NBA player close up. Jonathan's homework load precluded him from going, so just Nolan and I went. We figured it would be one of the bench warmers making the appearance. To our surprise, it was the star... Carlos Boozer. Nolan thought it was pretty cool. There was a Q & A session, then "Boozer" made a half court shot (after 9 or so tries). The kids got to go down on the floor and do some drills while Carlos Boozer (nice last name, by the way) watched. Then the kids all swarmed "Boozer" and Nolan got to get a "high 5" from him. Pretty cool!

Drum Line

Jonathan is in the percussion ensemble at his school. Today they "played" (what is the right word... banged?) the "prelude" music for the school assembly. Jonathan was a cymbalist today. It was really hard to get a video of him as the students walked through the middle of the ensemble to get to the bleachers.

Mid-day Meal

Dan is ecstatic! He has successfully passed on the "passion far ketchup" gene possessed by the Belnaps! For lunch today, Miles wanted string cheese. He ate 1.5 string cheeses before walking over to the refrigerator armed with a measuring cup and spoon and demanding course #2 of his lunch... straight ketchup. Yuck. So much for the spoon...