Random Funnies

There are a few funny things I wanted to document before my ever atrophying memory loses them:

June's Birthday Terror:

June really seems to adore babies; she always notices them in movies, photos, at church, etc. And I once saw her playing with a friend's baby doll, so I thought that was a reasonable present to get for June's birthday. I asked my dad if he'd wrap up one of my old baby dolls (remember the American Doll Bitty Babies?) to give to June. But, being the doting grandfather he is, my Dad decided to go buy a very nice, new, high-end baby doll. An Asian one, for reasons that I believe are obvious (Asian babies are the cutest. Oh, and June is a quarter Japanese)

The only problem, of course, is that this baby is super creepy looking. And I'm sure it didn't help that we introduced it to June by telling her it's her cousin Lisako. So now Lisako is this small plastic creepy thing.

June would have nothing to do with it.

She would yell, "NO!" and back away from the doll. Rika, with her mild case of sadism, took to following June around with the baby.


My dad, undaunted, resolved to return with the Caucasian, less creepy baby doll.


But here comes a confession: I was a little worried about this. I mean, how would that sound to people? "My daughter doesn't like Asian dolls; only white dolls." Plus, I suppose I had to admit that there was a little part of me that has been worried my children are a little racist. Back when Dane was probably about 18 months old, I bought him a baby doll, too. I wanted a Cabbage Patch Doll, so I bought the cheapest one with yarn hair that I found on eBay. It is a mixed race baby doll, with lovely caramel skin tone. And so far neither of my kids have cared about it in the least.

So I worried, if June goes for the Caucasian baby doll, it might confirm my fears.

Luckily for race relations, June hated the white baby too.

So my kids may not have developed their maternal and paternal instincts, but they aren't racist.

Teat Time

June loves to play with Dane's little tea set. She can entertain herself for quite awhile pouring and sipping water, or occasionally punch.

She calls it teat.

"Mommy, I wan teat please."
"Mommy, more teat!"
"Mommy, I need teat!"

Adventures in Newsprint

I was taught at some point to clean mirrors and windows with Windex and newspaper, since it won't leave lint that rags or paper towels do. So I keep a stash of newspapers in the bathroom cabinet with the cleaning supplies. And since I don't actually subscribe to any newspapers, whenever I get those free mailings, I throw them into the cabinet.

One weekend we were all working together to clean the bathrooms, and Dane and June found endless amusement with their very own pages of the newspaper. They used them as pretend blankets, as mats to stand on, etc. At one point, Dane pointed to a picture and said, "This man is naked and has huge muscles," but when I looked at it, it was just a shirtless guy, so I didn't think anything of it. Then I noticed that June's page had a large ad for free HIV testing, and while I found it amusing that my toddler is playing with something such an ad, I again didn't think anything of it.

When we finished cleaning the bathrooms and I was gathering the newspapers back up to put them away, I noticed photos of a drag queen pageant and a bunch of scantily clad men posing on poles.

Apparently, the newspaper my kids had been playing with were pages from the Gayly. And while I support the right to free speech and all, we decided the pole dancing and cross dressing were topics to be discussed with our children at a later date. And probably not with visual aids.

Disasters

We had a little string of minor disasters in the fall.

Washing Woes

For the first time in roughly a decade, I had a major laundry dye disaster. Without thinking, I put a green checked tablecloth in a load of light colored laundry, resulting in lots of green clothing. Most of the clothes didn't matter, so my pride is what was damaged the most.

Within the week, another major laundry disaster:

We had allowed our ironing pile to get too large and extra wrinkled, so Joel scooped it up and threw it in the dryer with a damp towel. Unbeknownst to him, he had also scooped up a red crayon and a pink crayon.

Since the ironing pile almost exclusively contained Joel's clothes for work, it was a pretty big laundry disaster.

But thanks to Google and mom blogs, the vast majority of his clothes were salvaged. And I will post the magic mix here in case any of you ever dry your clothes with some crayons:

2 max amounts (line 3) of laundry detergent
1 cup Oxiclean
1/2 cup 20 mule team Borax
1 cup Shout liquid
1 cup white vinegar

The websites I found this remedy on made it sound like one treatment magically got it all out, which wasn't the case for us. We soaked and washed the clothes probably five or six times, rubbing the stains by hand with Zout in between washes. I can't say it was a miracle cure; a couple of the shirts and pants were ruined, and some of the salvaged clothes still have a couple of little spots. But all in all, I am grateful most of the clothes were okay.

Bad News Bites

Back when I was working on Halloween costumes, I couldn't find the yellow rib knit that I needed. So, inspired by all the wild sunflowers that I'd seen around town, I hatched a plan to naturally dye some white rib knit yellow.

I ventured out to collect the flowers and found quite the cache of flowers. They were all on the edge of a ditch, and I was only wearing flip-flops, so sometimes I was standing kind of precariously. Walking around in the brush, I kept getting scratched and stuff, so when I felt some prickles on my feet, I didn't think much of it. But the prickles kept increasing, so I looked down and found that I was standing right on an anthill. I brushed them off, but they had managed to crawl around between my toes and under the straps of my sandals, so it took a while to dislodge all the ants. At this point, I just brushed them off and didn't give them a second thought. But by the time I made it back home, the bites were burning, and I finally gave my foot a good look.

I think there were about 12 bites; many of the worst ones were between my toes, so they are harder to see. Just a word of advice: don't stand on an anthill. The bites hurt a lot more than I expected, and they kept hurting for days and days; they itched for weeks. Many of them got all swollen and pus-filled...it was gross. Disaster.

Photo Fiasco

You may have noticed that many of my recent pictures have gray bars across them. Somehow, my memory card corrupted and resulted in lost data on almost every picture. There weren't any major losses, but it was still very disappointing. Most of them can be cropped easily:

But some of them just won't work:




For some reason, the thumbnails show the entire photo, but the actual files are missing data. I reformatted my memory card, and now all is well.

So. Disasters abounded. But if bad things were going to happen, it wasn't too bad.

Oklahoma Happenings

When it comes to the baby, I keep having a feeling of imminence. Or maybe I'm just feeling immense:

At any rate, there are a few random things I want to post about before I'm otherwise occupied with the baby. So here goes:

Dane Swims:

Dane has been swimming with Jiichan almost every day, and he has been displaying an amazing natural talent. Maybe I just have blind parental pride, but he seems to be really good. In the short time since these pictures were taken, he has figured out on his own how to swim, float on his back, change directions, tread water, take breaths in the middle of his lap, turn in circles, and dive into the pool from a 1 meter diving board. Isn't that crazy? Maybe we should groom him to be the next Michael Phelps. We'll see.

Joel's Work Open House:
June 30 was the big dedication and open house for the Peggy and Charles Stephenson Oklahoma Cancer Center, where Joel is the new marketing manager. Dane, my mom, and I went to check it out and admire Joel's fancy new office:

Joel's job has been going well, and he's enjoying it. I think it's going to be a great opportunity, and we're excited for the future.

McLoud Blackberry Festival:
The weekend before Independence Day, we went to check out the McLoud Blackberry Festival. It was really hot and not quite as exciting as I'd hoped, but it was still a good time.
They had a car show, which Dane really enjoyed:

And then we all enjoyed blackberry popcorn, a blackberry snow cone, blackberry soda, blackberry cobbler, and fresh blackberries. The soda was super delicious

Joel squeezed into a tiny roller coaster with Dane, and they had a grand old time:


Cow Appreciation Day:
After our first, great experience attending Chick-fil-A's Cow Appreciation day, we have forgotten to go every year. So I vowed this year would be different. On the day of, I spent all day making costumes that we'd be able to reuse in the future, and we were on our way:

We met our friends, Seth, Wendy, and Eden, at the Chick-fil-A. They are our friends who were in our ward in Sandy, and now they're in our stake, living in Edmond, too! Pretty crazy, huh?
As you can see from this next picture, Dane loves Chick-fil-A, so it was a pretty exciting day for him.


Random Pictures of Dane Being Cute:
One Sunday morning, Dane requested some orange juice, so we put him to work juicing his own oranges. It was a happy morning scene:


And just this past Sunday morning, Dane insisted on wearing his suit jacket despite the 100 degree weather. He picked out a tie and wanted to comb his own hair.

He just looked like such a big boy. It made me a little sad. It also made me excited that he will be a good big brother. He's really excited for the baby to come. I am too. I feel like a lot of my pregnancy with Dane was characterized by fear of the unknown. This time, I feel really peaceful, happy, and excited about things. There are obviously still unknowns and uncertainties, but I am definitely looking forward to the birth of this baby. And soon it'll be here! We'll keep you posted.

Out of Doors

Okay, get ready for a ton of pictures.

As the weather gets increasingly nice, we have been spending more time outside. Dane and I have had picnic lunches in the park a lot over the past couple of weeks (although Dane gets a little frustrated that Mommy can't run and play on the playground with him like she used to). It's a simple way to add a little more fun to our days.
Also, the Easter bunny gave Dane this stomp rocket. I think it's pretty much an awesome toy.
As Dane describes it, you put the rocket on the launcher,

Jump on the purple soap,

And it flies up high in the sky!

We've had a lot of fun with this toy.
I really love this picture for some reason:

Dane likes to have fun with different trajectories, too.


Also, on the last day of April, we had about six inches of snow. A lot of people were frustrated by it, but I felt like it was the perfect kind of snow. It was great for snowballs, not too cold outside, Dane was absolutely filled with mirth as he played, and it all melted away by the afternoon!
Throwing snowballs at Daddy,

Force feeding snow to Daddy:

They just had a grand old time. Notice how fresh their tracks are in the snow and how the snow gets increasingly disheveled as the pictures progress.

Dane was laughing harder than I've heard him laugh in a while.

Snow angel Dane:

Joel would throw big clumps of snow in the air and explode them on his head.

Which made Dane laugh even harder.

Joel also taught Dane how to make face prints in the snow.


Snow snuggles:

A mischievous face:

This one looks like Dane is casting a spell:

Modeling snow hats:

Then Joel tried to dive/slide through the snow:

So, of course, Dane gave it a try:

At that point, he realized that snow is cold, and we headed back inside for some hot cocoa.

Just a couple of our outdoor adventures. Currently, it is raining and chilly outside. I'm learning to enjoy all these variations.