Mr. Boo's new chair

Grandma Susan bought Boo a Boo-sized chair for Easter. He *loves* it. He packs it around the house, even bringing it up the stairs (glad I didn't see that one in progress!). The funny thing is that he's had to practice sitting in it. Every so often, he ends up squatting next to it and looking around to see where it went. Lately, he's taken to putting toys on the chair and then sitting on the toys.

But what really cracked me up was when we went over to my sister's house. He found a teeny-tiny doll chair that belongs to his cousin, set it down, and tried to sit on it. Such a puzzled look when he couldn't get down low enough without falling!

Thanks for the Cookies: Mom's the Greatest

So I should just email mom, but willden.org email via the webmail app is sooooooo dreadfully slow I avoid it as much as possible. My email program can download my incoming mail with no problem, but the wireless service provider does not provide an outbound mail server, so using the webmail is the only way I can send mail from my willden.org account.

Anyway

This is to thank Mom for the box of No-bakes. They were great. I shared of course, and almost everybody who had one(or more)was amazed at how good and MOIST they were. After a couple days in the mail, and a day or so in the mail room until the company picked the box up, and they were moist and chewy.

People jumped at the offer of a No-bake and then raved about the fact that they weren't dry and hard. They came yesterday, and that last few were still moist this afternoon.

You make awsome cookies mom. Good job from me and the guys.

We need new books . . .

We signed up for the Scholastic Book Club when Boo was born, and got three books per month for about 8 months. At that point, I decided we had lots of books at home, and we could always get more from the library. So I canceled the Book Club.

We don't go to the library with Boo because he likes to pull books off the shelves by the double handfuls. Glee! Once, he diverted himself from pulling books off the shelf when he discovered the loud noises that could be made by smacking the metal shelves. That was also not very popular with the librarians.

I read to him a lot because it's something I can do sitting down. Not surprisingly, both of us have most of his books memorized. I was reading a book of Dilbert cartoons, and Boo asked me to read it to him. So I did. Dilbert has been the book of choice all week. There's just something wrong with a toddler enjoying cubicle humor.

We've got to get the poor kid some different books. Maybe I'll pull out Calvin and Hobbes.

Cleaning off the Dresser

I've been tidying up since Dirk left. Sifting through the pile on his dresser yielded normal items, like a bucket of spare change, random cough drops (wrapped and unwrapped), pants, socks, belts, padlocks, keys and sample sizes of lotion. There were also a few unusual items, like bullets, a plastic canvas friendship thingy, smoke bombs, and glow-in-the-dark stars. But the most puzzling item I found was a six pound sack of cement. Because every man needs a small bag of cement for his dresser . . .

That question tag thing

What were you doing 10 years ago?
Ten years ago I was in my second year of law school. I was managing a BYU student housing complex with 80 students in it, and working as an assistant to a professor whose passion was religious liberty. I got very involved in a conference dealing with religious liberty, in which I got to meet a bunch of very high mucky-mucks, such as a Supreme Court Justice from Portugal, a South African intellectual who was instrumental in ending apartheid, and a law professor from Kazakhstan who flirted with me (I still have the bracelet he gave me).

5 things on my "to-do" list today :
1-Visit with a friend who came over
2- Drop off cards to the ladies I visit teach since we didn't visit them this month
3- Load of laundry
4- Eat
5- Spend lots of time outdoors with Mr. Boo
(Does anyone else write to-do lists backwards? These are five things I did today. I didn't have them on any kind of a list in advance.)


5 Snacks that I enjoy:
1- Bread and jam
2- Cold cereal
3- York peppermint patties (must be name brand)
4- Dove dark chocolate (must be Dove)
5- Chocolate milk

3 bad habits:
1- I dunno. Ask Dirk. I'm sure I've got some, but I'm so used to them I don't notice them anymore.

Places I've lived:
1-Utah - all over the Wasatch Front
2-Connecticut
3-Wyoming

5 Jobs I've had:
1- Attorney
2- Newspaper stringer
3- Research assistant
4- Apartment manager
5- MTC teacher

5 Things people don't know about me:
1. I'm sick and tired of special effects in movies. I want to see shows that are good stories about believable characters. I don't care if the CGI team can blow up a building and crash a car with maximum flames and multiple camera angles.
2. I have depression. I'm off meds, and mostly stable, but I have a few quirks. For example, noise and crowds will frequently set me off, which makes me seem somewhat anti-social at family parties. I love the people; I can't handle everyone all together at once unless I'm having a really good day. Dirk has learned to recognize the expression I get when he's got 20 minutes to get me out of there before I start to cry. He didn't make it at the Porter farewell party, but I managed to hide before bursting into tears, and afterwards everyone thought it was because I was worried about Dirk. Mmmm, no. It was just too much noise and too many people. I have the same reaction in the mall at Christmas time.
3. I think taxes are really interesting. I have nifty monologues about why the death tax is a good thing, why a flat tax just can't work, and how stupid it would be to try and replace the income tax with a national sales tax. Sadly, not many people want to hear my monologues. Sigh. But every so often, someone does question why the Church can run on 10% tithing, and the government can't just impose a 10% flat tax, and so I get to tell them all the differences between taxes and tithing. That makes me happy. Probably makes the person wish they'd never brought it up, though.
4. I have really good hearing. I hear a lot better than Dirk does (based on a website test we took). This means I always want to turn down the radio and the tv. I have yet to find an advantage to excellent hearing.
5. I have memorized several entire books, such as "Jamberry", "Sheep in a Jeep", "The Belly Button Book" and several other important childhood classics.

Bye Sweetheart. Stay Safe.

We saw Dirk off at the Air Base this morning. It was an early morning. We got there early enough to get a couple of chairs. The departure point was an airplane hangar with about 200 folding chairs. The other 400 people had to stand. There were many, many soldiers and families there.


We got there about 7:30. Dirk had to have his final duffel bag weighed, and then we mostly just sat around and waited. Benji played with his stuffed fish, because every boy needs a stuffed fish.


Dirk and I had already talked ourselves out about his departure and the upcoming year. There wasn't much left to say that we hadn't already said forty times. But, you know, it's nice to have someone you can talk to about something forty times. I will miss talking to Dirk about nothing in particular, even if we've already said it. Sometimes you talk just because you want to hear each others' voices even if there's nothing to say anymore. That's easier to do when you can lean on each other, rather than just talk on the phone.



Quite a bit of family came to see Dirk off because my sister and her family had another soldier to say good-bye to. My brother-in-law's cousin, Kindy, has been living with them for the past several months, so their family came to see Kindy. Giving Dirk another hug was a happy bonus for all of us.





Susan, my folks, and my brother Mike also came. I'm sure Kelly felt bad he couldn't get off, and we missed him too.



It was odd to watch Dirk walk away towards the plane. There were so many soldiers, and they all blended in to each other. That camouflage really works! Benji hugged a couple of knees dressed in 'daddy pants' before looking up and realizing it wasn't Daddy after all. He had a hard time with the early morning combined with the noise and crowds. I don't think he knew what was going on, but he knew it wasn't all happy.



I didn't cry. I'd already done some crying, and I'll probably do more later, but not at the air base.

I've skipped a lot of the details of exactly how the procedure went, since Susan did such a great job at describing the ceremony on her post. Be sure you read her post too.

Dirk just called me from his training base. The flight was about an hour and a half long. Just before they landed, the pilot had them look out the window. They were below the peaks of Mt. Ranier on one side of the plane and Mount St. Helens on the other side. It was quite a breathtaking view. He's in transient barracks (which means they're in lousy condition) with lots of other soldiers. The weather there is warmer than here, but it's still about in the 60s. He does not have Internet access yet because the provider is charging an arm and a leg. He may go in with a bunch of other guys for shared access, or the battalion is talking to someone about getting a better rate. He did not give me a snail mail address yet either. When I get that, I'll send it around on the email.

When I got home, a couple of friends in the RS Presidency dropped by to see how I was doing. I live in a good ward, and I have good friends here. With my wonderful family too, I am surrounded by a lot of love and support and I think we'll make it through this year just fine.

Many thanks to my brother Mike who took most of the pictures I've posted. I'll get the rest of the pictures into the gallery in the next day or so.

Boo's Favorite Bye-Bye destination

Note: this was originally written and attempted to be posted on Thursday Feb 21st



Mr Boo loves fishies, fishy was one of the first non food signs he really learned well. And be it Cabela's or the fish tanks at Petsmart or Walmart, he goes crazy for fishies.

What's funny is, as usual when we get to Cabela's and he starts his hand waving like crazy, someone always thinks he's just being really friendly. Tonight when I videoed him at Cabela's, there was a mother there with a little girl about the same age. The mother was saying to her little girl, "He's saying Hi, can you wave hi back?" to her little girl, until I explained what he was really doing. At which point she was even more impressed.

And of course this isn't the first time I've come home from work, to a little boy just dying to go bye-bye. He doesn't really care where to, just as long as he gets to go somewhere. Sometimes mommy comes along, sometimes she stays home, and sometimes like tonight she takes the opportunity to go to the library, which isn't really easy with Mr. Boo as one of his favorite games is to pull every book he can reach off the shelves. And Lil Boofer does not make it easy for Da to pick up after him.

Once Spring arrives, these stir crazy days will be less common as they will be able to go to the park, or just for walks, but currently, Boo and Da get tired of being at home all day every day.

Oh and I spoiled him, as usual. He now has a stuffed Rainbow trout to go with his Buffalo, two bears, and wolf; each known as Buffalo Boo, Boo Bear(or blue bear as it is blue), Car Bear(It stays out in the car seat), and Wulfy Boo. Fishie has yet to be named.

Okay I surrender. I've been trying for the last two days to get the video of him visiting the fishies uploaded. But it refuses to finish the process so I can publish this post. So here is the post sans video.