Just Because

 I think I counted around 15 pull-ups total wrapped around his legs. haha

 I wuv this little spitfire!

 

He was NOT happy when I took this and claimed I "hut" his eyes.

These kids LOVE having their daddy read them a bedtime story. It is one of my favorite things to do at night: listen to Brannon read to them and hearing the two little stinks laugh and fight with each other.


I wanted to record this story since this is pretty much our family journal. On Friday this last week Brannon was in downtown Salt Lake City driving back to the office after having lunch with a co-worker. They stopped behind a few cars and a bus at a Trax crossing that had the arms down and red lights blinking. Brannon said he heard screaming and looked on the tracks to see a young man in a Jazzy-type wheelchair stuck on the tracks. NOBODY was getting out of their cars to help him, so Brannon threw the truck in park and jumped out of his truck to help. He ran to the man only pausing briefly to make sure the Trax train wasn't going to kill both of them and ran onto the tracks to help the man who was frantically jiggling the control switch on the chair. A homeless man standing nearby also ran out onto the tracks to help Brannon lift the high centered chair off the tracks and pull the man to safety. The Trax train was not able to stop until it got about 15 yards away from them. Brannon wouldn't want me sharing this, but I thought this was a true act of bravery and it revealed to me that Brannon's inner core is good through and through and selfless. Brannon didn't know if the train was going to stop, but he ran out onto the tracks anyway. The homeless man was also very brave. I would like to think I would have done the same thing. I'm sure a lot of us would, but I think most people are frozen in moments like that and hope that someone will come to the rescue. We are so lucky to have him in our family!

Home Improvement Before and Afters

 Basement Before-the color of the baseboard in that picture is the same color the entertainment center below used to be.

 Basement Before

 The entertainment center was painted Black Bean, which actually was more like Brown Bean.

 Worse than Before: I felt like I was standing in the Buckaroo Fan Club den. My school mascot colors were black and orange. Knockout Orange was definitely NOT the autumn-spice color I was going for. Standing in the basement with this color on was an attack on the senses and incited great waves of anxiety, nervousness, and paranoia. What made this even better was that Brannon hired two labor ready guys, Maury and Pablo to paint this awful color on. It took them 9 hours and I was sure that Maury was going to kill Pablo before the end of the day. Poor Pablo couldn't speak a lick of English and Maury was a know-it-all homeless guy with zero patience for poor painting tactics. I heard Maury tell Brannon that he had been arrested the night before for beating the crap out of another homeless guy. At one point I heard Maury start yelling at Pablo, and I feared that we would have a crime scene on our hands in the basement and that we would just have to sell the house and move away to forget the awful memories forever tied to the color orange. Thank goodness Brannon intervened and there was no crime committed in our basement besides that of the orange assault on our walls.

 This painting mishap occurred the weekend before Halloween and Brannon was leaving town on Monday, so I made him go to Sherwin Williams with me on a SUNDAY (I know, it was an EMERGENCY though!) and pick out a new color. Thank goodness my brother is a manager for Sherwin Williams and hooked us up with a major discount because this was a MAJORLY expensive mistake! I painted the entire 1st coat before Brannon got home on Halloween. Then we spent the next three nights painting until 2 in the morning. There is also a small bedroom that we painted the same color not pictured. We love the new color, called Drizzle. It feels very soothing and serene in our basement now and we have pretty much eliminated ALL traces of that dreadful orange.

 

 The weekend after Halloween we carpeted the three bedroom upstairs. I was tired of cold, creaky floors and we are absolutely LOVING it! Taj and Haivi spend a lot more time playing in their rooms now. Our rooms are SO much warmer now. We hope to carpet out basement too by the end of spring. It is amazing what new carpet and paint can do to update a home!

Halloween

 Brannon was on a business trip the week of Halloween and got back just in time to take the kids trick or treating. Thank goodness papa came to town and helped us carve a pumpkin the night before. Taj was very worried about the pumpkin guts and kept telling papa to "washa hands."

 We dressed Haivi as Minnie Mouse because we don't go anywhere without her minnie mouse "baby."

 I love her pose in this one!

 She dug into Taj's spoils and pulled out a few things for herself-that's my girl!

 We did buy Taj a fireman costume that he picked out himself, but he wanted nothing to do with it, so we dressed him in what he wears every day and figured people would think he actually dressed up for Halloween. Well it worked. It wasn't hard passing him off as a cowboy to the city folk.

 Taj's first house and he scored a king sized Snickers!

 Taj really figured out Halloween this year and I ran from house to house with him. He would run to the door, knock, and then ring the doorbell. He had to do it the same way every time and when people opened the door, he would rush right in their house and help himself to a piece of candy. At least he was polite and only took ONE piece of candy, haha!

Haivi having a Kit Kat.

Gwamma's Antiques

 This is what I look like when I drive the jeep. I have to sit on the very edge of the seat and pull myself under the steering wheel so that I can get the clutch pushed all the way in.

 Thank goodness for the bat, the rotting seat belt, and the garden hose. You never know when you will need a survival kit on the blue mountain!

 Isn't she a beaut?!

 Little Miss Haivi is just happy to be around all the action!

 Taj on the antique trike

You will find at my mother's house a plethora of antiques. Antique tins, antique dolls, antique washstands, antique floor roller, antique hair brush, antique highchair, antique bed, antique dresser, antique trike, antique wagon, antique jeep. Well whether or not the jeep is an antique is debatable, but it sure looks like one to me and feels like one even more when you are driving it. Every time we go to Monticello the highlight of Taj's time there is "widing da jeep." I HATE driving that thing. Maybe I would like it more if I had longer legs, or maybe if the jeep had power steering, or maybe if the breaks weren't so squirrely, or maybe if when you run over even small pebbles that you don't bounce and lurch and rattle across the road, or maybe if when you shift from 2nd to 1st that the gear head doesn't try to chew your hand off. I am grateful that most of the time my dad or mom takes him on a ride, but sometimes no one is around except me and when that happens Taj practically drags me out the door and I cannot refuse that pihrana grin and those blue eyes of his. We always take a short drive up the mountain road, lurching and careening and sputtering out way up. Last time I took him a bee flew in with us when I stopped to get us turned around (which always required great effort on my part). Anyone that knows me knows that I HATE bugs, especially bees and spiders and when either of those foul creatures get in my space, I have an out-of-body experience and am consumed by temporary bouts of insanity. This time around I only screamed once and nearly lugged that antique of a jeep into a ditch. The steering wheel is as big as a dang wheel that steers a ship and with white knuckles and arms burning from turning the wheel a hundred times to the right then a hundred times to the left, I managed to right our course and we slowly lugged our way back home. Taj is a great co-pilot. He never shows any emotion on his face whenever I take him for a ride and he gives me confidence that I don't look like a complete idiot trying to tame the red antique jeep.