SILLY TAPE MEASURE!!!

Make an online slide show at onetruemedia.com

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Thanks to Ammon's Great Aunt and Great Grandma in Utah, he will be sporting some pretty nifty kicks and some trendy styles in the months ahead! Thanks Lisa and Grandma! I think they're going to be a hit!!!

YEA!!!!!!! or not.

Well he did it. All of that grunting and growling has finally paid off. Ammon crawled. It was kind of an awkward scoot wiggly crawl, and he didn't get anywhere very fast. However, the forward movement was there. I wish you could have seen his face! He was soooooo proud of himself! He was squealing and wiggling, bursting with joy! When he did it Jimmy was so proud he almost cried, I was relived cause Ammon had been a ball of frustration for days but in the back of my mind I knew my life just got a whole lot harder. But I suppose that’s what being a parent is all about. Every transition is bitter sweet.

hello cough, cough, cough...

I often wonder what it must be like to not understand any language. I'm fascinated watching Ammon learn communication from us. You start with crying, followed by smiles and giggles then silly sounds and gurgles and at last...WORDS!!! Now Ammon isn't at words yet but I can see him adding to his "vocabulary" daily. This last few weeks, for example, we have spent alot of time in Olympia at Jim's mom's house. She has cats, which in all other circumstances are totally sweet kitties but when it comes to my lungs, we just don't mix. With asthma comes coughing, which usually lasts for a few days after our visit. When I cough, I always get a reaction from Jim "Are you OK?" and I think this exchange has convinced Ammon that coughing is just another way of saying well.....something. So now he will answer my coughing with one or two of his own! Cough cough cough with a little grin on his face! Being a mom is so cool!

loads of laughs

Ever walked in on a conversation and been totally lost? It's usually pretty darn funny too. This site is full of notes, to-do lists, and random signs and pictures that people have "found". Like the note that fell out of someones backpack at school with sleep-over plans written out, or a love note left on the wrong car (oops!) Jim and I enjoyed this site immensely and our cheeks and tummy were exhausted by the end...........totally recommended for a downer day! Here is one of our favs.....

Action! List!
FOUND by Jane Pulliam in Tacoma, Washington
I manage some apartments. One night the garbage was overflowing with a plastic bag full of Coke cans. When I opened the bag this "Action List" was inside. Two things strike me as funny. The first is that getting a job is more important than getting off heroin. And second, besides a dozen empty Coke cans there were two empty half gallon jugs of chocolate milk. What happened to number nine?

http://www.foundmagazine.com/

COOKIES!!

Last night we went down to Olympia and took part in a tradition shared by most families, but never by mine. We made cookies! Jim's Mom is an amazing cook, and has been giving me pointers so that one day I too can feed my family delicious and edible food! Cookie baking has been a family favorite for them, and they where gracious to pass on the knowledge! We made two batches of loved and well known cookies, Jan Hagel (which is to die for!) and sugar cookies for decorating, we also made a new one, we'll just call them "stained glass cookies" instead of the weird name the recipe called them. In these cookies you basically make a sugar cookie dough, cut out your shapes then crush candies and put them into the middle cutout of the cookie (we used Jolley Ranchers) then when you bake them, the crushed candies melt then re-harden when cooled, and in the end they look like a very lovely stained glass window!

Despite one very un-timely and uncomfortable asthma attack, the evening was wonderful! Having everyone in the kitchen laughing and working was so much fun! I can see why families love to bake cookies for the holiday's!

Weed and Weights Don't Mix

My best friend and I recently made a goal to run a 5k this spring. I know that's not the most impressive thing you've heard all day, but for two asthmatics, 3.1 miles is a big deal! Anyway, we run three times a week in the lovely and convenient weight room located in the "A" building across the parking lot. Today was day three of this weeks workouts. Bethany came over, we bundled Ammon and made our way towards the treadmills. As we where in-route I was telling Bethany how I had scared myself a few nights before letting my imagination run wild while running late at night, that perhaps someone was hiding in the bathroom. I got so scared that I left early! I had just finished telling my tale when we entered the room. We heard voices coming from the bathroom! We suppressed giggles at the irony and started getting ready when two very young and somewhat suspicious boys emerged from the bathroom and quickly exited without saying a word. Hardly half a minute passed and I hear Bethany exclaim "You've got to be kidding me!" I ask what she's talking about. Then, pointing toward the bathroom she says, "they hot boxed the bathroom!" Sure enough at that moment I could smell it too, those two juveniles had violated the weight room with weed. Trying not to laugh I went and told the manager down the hall. Heading back towards the weight room I could now smell it in the hall. We decided to skip out today (we didn't want to bake Ammon's little brain as well as ours) and headed back to my apartment. As funny as something that "situational" can be, I'm still miffed! Now even something as wholesome and personal as working out has become a thing I have to be cautious about, stepping around other peoples bad decisions. I hate that Ammon was there just as much as I hate when people curse around him or when we have to walk through a cloud of smoke every time we leave a public place. On top of this now I need to "scope out" the weight room to see if there are any half baked teenagers hiding habits from their parents before I can work out. I only wish I'd gotten a better look at em.

We, like sheep

Mass transit...do we even know what that is around here? I thought I did. I thought the answer to the problem would be some trains, you know, light rail! monorail! subway! the CTA to be transplanted right here in Seattle! Wouldn't that be great? We'll it worked for cities like New York and Chicago, why not here? Yea, I thought I knew....till I had to write a 10 page research paper for my English 102 class on "travel" or something having to do with it. I decided to talk about the huge void of mass transit in Seattle, something I greatly miss from the mid west. Well for one of my sources I stumbled upon something rather interesting, check it out. I think this could be the coolest thing to ever happen to the great northwest!

http://kinetic.seattle.wa.us/~prt.html