Duck & Cover

The other night we were over at my parents' house and my Dad had this clip saved on his DVR.

We watched it with the kids and that's all they play now. Our activity for family home evening was practicing the duck & cover technique. The kids would pretend to be at the park or in school and then Lesley would say flash or someone would flash the lights. Then everyone would hit the deck. We have had some pretty interesting conversations about the atomic bomb and which countries are our friends and which are not.

Some of the parts I liked most in the video are:

The fact that the monkey gets totally obliterated by the explosion.

The two kinds of attack - with warning and without warning. LOL

Cub Scout Tony almost giving himself a concussion trying to duck and cover into the curb from his bicycle. That kid flew off his bike.

How was the farmer going to know when the danger was over? Would a Civil Defense worker come out to his field and tell him it was safe to get up?

And last, but not least, a turtle by the name of Burt.

I Like Turtles sound bite turtles sound bites

I wonder what these videos would be like if they were produced with the latest technology and regarding our current threats.

White "Christmas Eve" Eve

We woke up this morning in beautiful Mescal, Az to a partially white Christmas. The kids woke up early because the weatherman had predicted snow at 4500 ft. Since Mescal is around 4200 ft we usually get the 4500 ft snow.

Here's a shot of the trampoline from our living room window. Any ideas as to why there is a circle on the trampoline where the snow didn't stick?

As you can see from the pictures we are not very well outfitted for snow.Little Parky Puppy made snow angels on the trampoline.Bella and Livvey made a snow duck. There wasn't enough snow to make a snow man so their creation turned into a duck. We had several rabbits running around the yard as we played. The kids think they were hanging around waiting for a chance to snag the carrots.
The occasion brought such joy that the family spontaneously broke into song!

Go Cats!!

Adrianna was so glad that the Cats beat USC in their house yesterday that she begged us to put her Arizona onesie on her that John & Robin got for her. She had it laying out on her little dresser in the NICU all day and she finally couldn't contain her excitement. Actually she would have worn it all day but her mom thought it would be to big for her, but her mom was so excited that the Wildcats won that she had to put it on her.

I realized last night as I was holding Adrianna that the Wildcat football team hasn't lost since she was born. She's their good luck charm. If they win their bowl game then that theory will be solid and I'll call the (new?) Athletics Director and see if we can workout some sort of sponsorship. Maybe we could have ESPN do a piece on her.

On a more serious note, I just wanted to thank everyone who has been praying for our little AJ. She is doing great. She has put on almost a pound since she was born and we are expecting her to be released from the hospital tomorrow. I know that her progress and health are the result of the faith and prayers of many of you and I want to let you know that your prayers in our behalf have been felt in our lives this week and can be seen in the strides that Adrianna has made towards overcoming this obstacle. From conversations Lesley has had with the nurses this week, we have learned that Adrianna was in a more critical condition than we had originally known. It has been confirmed to me that the Lord has had a hand in this and has blessed us to keep her with us in this life. Again, I am so grateful to all who sent their petitions on Adrianna's behalf.

She's Here!

Adrianna Joyce Howe arrived at 1:15 A.M. November 27, 2009. She weighed 7 lbs 2 oz and was 20.75 inches long.

She had two knots in her umbilical cord and it was wrapped around her neck and chest. She had a pretty rough go of it and was very purple when she came out. She pinked up pretty quickly so we thought we were in the clear.Her breathing became shallow and her heart rate was too high so they took her to the NICU to monitor her and give her some oxygen.After a few hours they brought her back to our room and she seemed to be doing fine. I went to my parents' house where the older kids were staying so I could help take care of them. When I was loading them up to go to Lesley's parents' house to see their cousins, Lesley called me to tell me they were taking her back to the NICU because she has a bacteria infection and that they needed to do a spinal tap to test for meningitis. What? Could this year get any worse? I dropped the kids off at their nana & papa's house and rushed to the hospital. I had my dad meet me there and we gave Adrianna a priesthood blessing. During the blessing I knew that everything would be OK. Here's a shot of her under her oxygen hood in the NICU. Lesley affectionately calls it the "Tupperware bowl".

The test results came back and she does not have meningitis. Woohoo! She does have to stay in the NICU for 8 more days while she finishes her round of antibiotics. This next week is going to very long. Her siblings are all very anxious for her to come home so they can play with her. Parkin hugged my laptop when I showed him the following video.

Cheer-Uh-Cow-Uh National Monument

It is actually spelled Chiricahua, but I figured for the sake of my non-Southern Arizona readers I would spare them the embarrassment of mispronouncing it.

I took Wednesday off of work so we could take the kids out hiking. All of the national parks waived their admission fees in honor of Veterans Day, so we figured we'd take advantage and check out the monument. We've also been trying to walk Lesley into labor so we figured several miles of hiking would be a great family trip and help move things along. It hasn't helped with labor yet but we all had a blast.

This first shot is under a rock on the Echo Canyon Trail.

This one is of the kids hanging out in the shade. It is amazing how some of these rocks stay balanced.Here is one of Lesley and the boys over looking the canyon from Massai Point. The faint mountains in the distance are the Dragoons and Benson is just on the other side of them.If you look closely, you can see Lesley and the kids back inside the grottoes. This is on the Echo Canyon Trail. We stopped and ate lunch here.We found the rod of iron which Lehi saw in his dream. We followed it but a mist of darkness caused us to lose our way.Near the entrance of the park there is an old ranch house and cabin. Here is Parkin standing in one of the doorways.

Here are the boys hanging out in an old cattle shoot.

These Mexican Blue Jays were hanging out all over the ranch. I saw this one from the barn and thought it was post worthy.

Is it wrong to pray for a plane crash?

Since I was a kid growing up on Keesler AFB in Biloxi, MS, I have been enamored with the A-10 Thunderbolt. I used to watch those guys fly over my school and neighborhood and imagine what it would be like to fly in one. Since then I have had the chance to see them up close and, thanks to my dad, "fly" in a training simulator. Since it is a single seat aircraft and I am not an Air Force pilot, the chances of me actually flying in one are pretty slim.

But, I digress. I really do not want one of those magnificent birds to crash, I just want one of the pilots to "accidentally" drop a five hundred pound concrete "bomb" onto my house in Tucson. Yes, that would be the house on Bellatrix, the one in which I do not currently reside. I do have renters in it and I wish them no harm, but it would be very convenient if one of the practice 500 pound bombs was to land on the house (while unoccupied) and demolish it.

As convenient as that would be, I know it won't happen. And since I have blogged about it, if it does happen I will be investigated for fraud. So I just want to make it clear that, other than praying for it to happen, I am not making any other arrangements for it to happen.

Besides, I have a much better plan. I draw some inspiration for this plan from the experience that my buddy, Sean, had with the place he was renting while he lived in Tucson. About a month before his lease was up, he found a foreclosure notice posted on the garage of his house. He contacted his landlord and found out that she was indeed in foreclosure. So this means that all the time that she was collecting rent from Sean she was not making any payments on the property to her mortgage company.

And now I unveil my "$20,000 in 6 Months" plan. If I were to stop making payments on the mortgage for my Bellatrix house I figure I would have about six months before I would need my renters out of the house so the bank could take possession of the house. In that six months I would not pay my mortgage payments which would save my X dollars per month. And as we all know, a penny saved is a penny earned. But unfortunately X does not equal a penny or I would not have these problems.

So now for the next 6 months I save X dollars per month but I still collect my rent payment of Y dollars per month. So now I am making/saving X+Y dollars per month as long as I can keep the bank from forcing me (my renters) out of the house. And since I will be defaulting on one real estate loan, I might as well take full advantage and stop making payments on my dream crushed five acres in Benson which will save me another Z dollars per month. That would also allow me to do a little stick-it-you to Flagstar bank. Have I mentioned that I hate, yes HATE, Flagstar bank. May maggots consume its flesh while it is still alive! Did I say that out loud?

And where will we stand in 6 months if I can convince Lesley to follow me on yet another adventure? We will have roughly an extra $20,000 in our pocket, be debt free, and able to decide where we want to live instead of moving back into a place out of necessity. Sounds pretty good to me. I know my credit will take a hit, but who cares? I have excellent credit right now what did it do for me? Absolutely nothing. Besides, I figure, in this economic climate, that soon there will be so many foreclosed aliens that the banking industry/American government will have no other option than to grant credit amnesty to the countless masses and wipe the slate clean. Why not take full advantage of our government's idiotic decisions?

One last note on honesty. This little tid bit was given to me by my coworker, Bill. Is foreclosure dishonest? When I signed my mortgage with the bank on the Bellatrix house, the deal was that I would pay them back the amount borrowed plus interest. If I failed to do so, they would take possession of my house. They agreed that repayment was option A and taking my house in lieu of repayment was option B. Now that I do not want my house (and neither does anyone else for the amount of money that I owe on it) why can't I just give them back my house? This is not dishonest because they agreed to it as a part of the mortgage agreement. I would merely be exercising option B.

Please feel free to let me know what you think of my plan in the comments section. Also, if you have any ideas on how to improve this plan, I am all ears.

Limbo - "State of Uncertainty" or "How Low Can You Go?"

Are we staying in Benson? Are we moving back to Tucson? Are we moving back into the Bellatrix house? Are we going to rent somewhere else in Tucson while our renters stay in the Bellatrix house? Are we going to keep renting in Mescal? How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?

All these questions keep swirling around in my head and I don't know which way is up sometimes. It is very hard to keep up morale when there is no end in sight and no prize on the horizon. I had such a tangible goal for so long that now that it is gone I don't know what to look forward to anymore.

I don't know what I'm working towards in the short term. As always, the long term goal is to become like and live with my Heavenly Father and to achieve this with Lesley, my children, and all those that I love and hold dear. That is always clear and perhaps even more clear than just a few months ago. But what gets muddy is what is between here and there. My attention span is too short not to fill that gap with what's right around the corner: General Conference, Thanksgiving, Adrianna's birth, Christmas, etc...

I am aware that now is the time that I need to put my faith in Jesus Christ and allow Him to guide me to my next path, but I struggle with that. I feel the urge to complain and wonder what else could go wrong. I just need to remember that "The ^aSon of Man hath ^bdescended below them all. Art thou greater than he?" D&C 122:8. That though right there will straighten out even the biggest whiner and help put one's troubles into perspective.