Saturday, March 29, 2008

Honesty Anyone??

For those of you who have kids or have been around them for an extended amount of time, are sure to have had some experiences in this matter. Ever wonder what happened to childhood honesty as we get older?? I often wonder how kids can get away with being so honest and truthful, but if an adult said the same thing it is pretty much guaranteed that someone would get offended in some way.


I heard a while back a story that Heidi Klum was telling Ellen DeGeneres on her show. She was talking about honesty in children and then related this story: Her daughter had just completed potty training and they were getting ready to go swimming, so Heidi asked her daughter if she needed to go potty before she got into the pool. Her daughter non-shalantly answered :" No, that's o.k mommy, I go in the pool and no one knows."

Another example that was a little closer to us personally is one Adam related to me:

The other day Adam was talking with a friend of his and he told Adam something funny that his daughter said to him. This friend of Adam's is white, however is skin complection is a little darker than most. (Which I am totally jeolous of by the way since having a baby has hindered my keeping up on my tan. ) The family had been reading about the Lamanites in the Book of Morman recently. One day, his daughter (3 years old or so) said "dad, your skin is brown right?" Dad answered "yes." His daughter replied "that's okay, you're still a good person." Apparently her dad looks like a lamanite. (j/k)

Now Ethan doesn't talk yet (unfortunately), but he obviously has his father's sense of humor. He is constantly cracking himself up at the simplest things he comes up with. Right now his favorite thing to do is run up to you and scratch your leg or arm and laugh. He thinks he is "getting or tickling" you. And to conclude, here are a couple of pictures of Ethan thinking he is soooooooooooo funny.



That would be his bib, which would have been funnier had he not had a runny nose and smeared snot up his head.











I think he was trying to take his shirt off but forgot to take his arms out of the sleeves first.
Ever wonder what made us stop laughing at the simple things in life. Let's bring back the simple honesty and laughter.

Friday, March 7, 2008

Values for Wife


Whilst serving my mission in England, we had pamphlets that we carried around with us that we would pass out called "Values of life". These pamphlets consisted of basic LDS doctrine pertaining to the family and the blessing of having an eternal family. An added tool to use as an approach or something to put in their hands as we were leaving. Some Elders decided it would be fun to recreate this pamphlet and call it "Values for wife". This obviously was centered around their arrival home and the hopes of finding the "wife" that they had earned on their mission through their hard work and dedicated service. Some of you may not know this, but there is a myth out there that says the harder you work on your mission, the hotter your wife will be. If that's the case, I was a better missionary than I thought.

I was talking with a good friend of mine the other day. We were reminiscing about days gone by and the fun we had. We got on the topic of girls that had come into our lives and especially those we had dated. We both acknowleged the fact that there were quite a few, some bad and some that "got away".
Side note: I was the last of my group of friends to get married. I was 26 years old, a little older than the average male in Utah.
During this conversation something was said that caught me a little off guard, yet made me feel good and helped me appreciate Cristina even more than I already do. The statement was "I have added to my list of things I am looking for in a wife, she needs to be like Cristina. She needs to take care of me as much I take care of her." Now I know that I have an amazing wife, but it makes me feel even better that my friends think I have an amazing wife. We went on to discuss this a little more and covered a few things that she does that made him say that.
I really am very lucky to have found Cristina. The way we met and the timing of everything was perfect (that may be a later post). Cristina is everything I could ask for. My values for a wife lie within everything that Cristina is. Besides her taking care of Ethan all day, keeping our house in order, her testimony, being a fabulous mom and a wonderful wife, she is cool too! Here are a couple of things that show just how cool she really is. I've heard that when women are pregnant, they have some pretty strange cravings! Not Cristina. It seems like we were eating steak, buffalo wings or mexican food almost every night (my top 3 favorites). Why? Because that is what she was craving. How lucky am I?! She goes the extra mile to make sure that I am well fed. It's little things like knowing that when I eat celery, I prefer the more white colored celery stocks as opposed to the greener stocks. And no matter how many stupid jokes I tell, she still laughs. Little things like that let me know she cares about me. She definitely takes care of me more than I take care of her. I am the winner here!
If you don't know Cristina, you should. She truley is an amazing person!

Saturday, March 1, 2008

Second Opinion

Let me introduce to you my son, Ethan. He's a normal kid. He's 18 months old. He runs, plays, yells and spits on everything. He does everything your average little boy would do. Here he is wearing his moms shoes (something all kids do, so I'm told, so I'm not worried...yet!) He has just recently started going to nursery. A blessing to Cristina as she is the one that generally takes care of him during church.
After having a son that for his 18 month tenure on this earth hasn't had much more than a runny nose, you get use to him being healthy all the time. Now I know all you parents out there are saying to yourself that I am just setting myself up for disappointment when he gets a virus or is hit hard with a bad cold. Well, you are right. About a week and a half ago Ethan started getting a small rash on his body. Nothing to worry about right? Maybe an allergic reaction to bananas or something. What a closed minded assumption. Conveniently Ethan's 18 month doctors appointment was the next day. The doctor told Cristina that this was nothing to worry about, that it is just a virus and that it would work its way through his system. He even stated that he wouldn't be surprised if he saw 5 or 6 more kids that week with the same thing. Everything else checked out fine with Ethan, so Cristina left feeling reassured that everything would be fine and this would be over in a few days. By that evening a lot of the spots had faded and he was getting back to normal. He went to bed that night just like any other night. A little fussy, but who wouldn't be. Nothing could prepare us for what was to come the next morning. Apparently through out the night this virus decided to step it up a bit.
I had left for work a little after 7 as per usual. As I was leaving I told Cristina to call me when Ethan woke up to let me know how he was doing. I was about 2 minutes away from work when my phone started ringing. Usually the only person that calls me at that time is my boss. However I heard "Open Arms" playing so I knew it was my loving wife. She explained that Ethan had gotten much worse through the night and he was awake. She explained that he was a little freaked out because his eyes were swollen shut. She wasn't even able to pry his eyes open. It was bad!

Upon this new discovery, Cristina called Ethan's doctor. Unfortunately his doctor wasn't in, but the doctor that was, had an opening first thing that morning and was able to get him in. I'm thinking great, now we will have a second opinion as to what this might be. This second opinion didn't help us much. The doctor told us exactly what Ethan's regular doctor had told us the day before. "Textbook hives" was the diagnosis and not an allergic reaction, just a virus along with the diarrhea he had a couple of days before the hives. Sure, now we had two opinions, which are exactly the same by the way, however that doesn't comfort you much when you have a kid that looks like he is related to "Sloth" from the movie "Goonies".
Of course we had to share these photos with our family, you know, to give them a bit of scare. Along with the warning of "Don't freak out", which everone did anyway. One of my brothers was explaining these hives to his 6 year old son. During the explanation, my nephew asked my brother "why did the bees put hives on Ethan? That's not very nice." Hearing this made the situation seem a little less scary, since obviously my son didn't have beehives on his body.
Needless to say, Ethan is doing much better now after dealing with hives for a week. (they just don't go away as fast as you want them to).