First Impressions

As many of you are aware, Michael Jackson died recently. My perception of Michael Jackson has always been rather skewed thanks to one of my brothers. The first time I heard the song "Beat it", I thought Michael Jackson copied Weird Al's song "Eat it". I learned that this wasn't true from watching a video of Weird Al's life.
In this video Weird Al goes to Michael Jackson to ask if he can make a parody of one of his songs. I tried to find it on youtube, but didn't have any luck. My memory is that Michael Jackson is sitting on a really nice chair, and dressed up in a sequin suit coat with white gloves on. I don't remember him giving Weird Al an answer, but I do remember his gloves suddenly splitting to show long fingernails and hairy hands, and before Weird Al can do anything Michael Jackson has turned into a Monkey of some kind. This is how I pictured Michael Jackson for years afterward. Thanks for the memories Mike.

Karl is Graduated!!

Yesterday Karl found out that he passed his last class for his Master's Degree (not that we were worried about him passing it). So he now has his degree. I think we'll get his diploma in the mail sometime soon.
Saturday we had an open house to celebrate. I was worried that we either wouldn't have enough food, or would have WAY too much. Around 40 people came, which was close to what I was expecting, so the food came out just right. We had an extra 24" sandwich to eat, which lasted a few meals. And a bunch of brownies which we're still working on, so overall, pretty good planning.
We enjoyed the open house and enjoyed showing off our house. It feels good to have people compliment your taste in furniture and decorating.
So now we're back to regular life, although it's weird to have Karl not needing to study every evening. I think it's spoiling me.

Bumps, Scratches and Cuts

This has been a dangerous weekend, for that reason I'm glad it's over.
On Friday I was cleaning and noticed something sticky on my hand, it was blood. I had cut my finger somehow. It's only about 1/2 inch long, and stopped bleeding without a bandaid.
On Saturday Kaleb went to a parade with his Grandma. During it he walked away from her for a minute to get a free bracelet, and when he turned back around he had a cut above his eye. Luckily the ambulance driver that was called said Grandma should just take him to the doctor. He has a good cut above his eye and a pretty good black eye.
Later on Saturday Von was on a trampoline with some cousins and collided with them. His fat lip only lasted until today.
On Sunday I went visiting with some other Sisters in my ward. One of the ladies we visited lived in the basement. After the visit I was walking up the stairs, and tripped. I scraped my arms and legs up pretty bad. My knee only bled for a few minutes though.
So now we're all recovering, and hopefully will stop hurting ourselves...

The first concert

On Saturday we went to the first concert we won free tickets to. We decided to take the boys to it, and Karl's mom came as well. I was a little nervous taking them because the last concert we went to had a lot of drinking. I shouldn't have worried, it was a very family friendly concert.
The concert was at Silverlake Ampitheatre, which is in Eagle Mountain. It was the culminating event after a week of celebration for our troops. The concert was pretty good, and it was added to by some fun things courtesy of the military. There were 4-5 military vehicles to look at and in, Von gave a hug to the soldier in the tank, which the soldier wasn't expecting. Halfway through the concert there were about 6 people sworn in to the military. I hadn't realized how similar their vow was to the vow the President makes when he is sworn in.
My favorite part was how they started the concert. They said to look at the sky, and a helicopter came out of the clouds, and dropped 2 parachuters. Luckily my boys had found some binoculars earlier in the day and insisted on taking them with us. The first one landed about 30 feet from us. The second was carrying an American Flag and landed right in front of the stage. I didn't know you could be that precise when parachuting. A couple minutes later a plane did a fly-by. It reminded me of the one at the beginning of Top Gun.
Overall it was a good concert. I'm looking forward to Toby Keith and Trace Adkins in August.

Neighborhood Water Supplier

Something interesting has happened since the weather heated up. We live across the street from a soccer field, and most evenings there is at least one team practicing on the field. At some point during the evening we get a knock on the door and at least 1 kid, sometimes 5 or 6 asking if they can fill up their water bottle from our hose.
We think it's cool, definitely not something we thought of happening.

Staying Busy

Well, I'm finally pretty much over the stomach pains. As long as I don't push myself really hard and don't bend over a lot I'm ok. This has enabled me to get my house cleaner again and to go to the park with my boys.
Unfortunately I've had a migraine since Sunday, which has slowed me down again. Hopefully it will go away soon.
My boys have done some fun things lately. We have a bunch of little bears that are used for counting activities. They came in a package of 50, but I'm sure we have less than that now. We also have a bunch of Chevron cars. Kaleb and Von have been cramming as many bears into each car as they can and then driving them around.
Yesterday Kaleb found his matchbox cars and played with them for a couple of hours. When Karl got home he taught Kaleb how to parallel park, which Kaleb can do pretty well. He kept playing and this is what it looked like when he was done:

New Moon 'Trailer' :)

The Twilight Saga: New Moon 'Trailer'

Spelling

I heard something on Uncle Jay Explains the News and I thought it was very smart.
English spelling rules are very simple: Every word has its own rule.
Once you get that down you should be fine...