Congratulations Keith!

Keith just got appointed to the HOA board. Now, every Thursday, he will be will be dealing with financial responsibilities that won't require our check book.
Allison is finally sprouting in the verbal sense. She can say many two-word phrases including "more please" and "thank you."
We all just got over the flu. Thank goodness it hit before Thanksgiving.

New Addition to the Family!

I am really good at letting life get in the way of social networking. Three weeks ago we went to the air port to pick up the latest addition to our family: Giulia! -It is pronounced the same as "Julia"
Giulia is from Italy and wanted to spend a year in the United States. So she is here to stay until the end of the school year, May 2010. Let me tell you, Giulia is a golden child! Not only does she like playing with the kids, eating sushi and reading, she is a fabulous cook. She has a wonderfully bright, yet humble personality. She is very mature for her age; and yet, she still has a wonderful time going to High School. It has been so much fun helping Giulia experience so many things for the first time. We are seeing all the things America has to offer with a new appreciation. Giulia and I share very similar music tastes, Ella Fitzgerald to name one. Believe me, I can go on and on; suffice it to say that I want Abby and Allison to be just like her. She is absolutely the perfect teenager.
In other news, Allison just said her first two-syllable word this last week: "nigh-nigh." We had a speech therapy assessment, and she is up to speed cognitively, but verbally, she qualifies for therapy.
Abby and Allison are Mushrooms for Halloween. Many people have been confusing them for strawberries. None the less, they are real head-turners in the most adorable sense.
If it inspires anyone for me to say this, I have been in the habit of waking up at 5:20am, give or take, and running, if I haven't gotten to bed too late the night before. It is so therapeutic for me. I find myself needing this outlet for stress more and more. I can now jog (or trot if we are being completely accurate) 45 minutes or so without walking or stopping. If anyone knows my sedentary history, I may as well have crossed the Himalayas. My stomach hasn't shrunk, much to my dismay, or any other part of my body for that matter. Still, maybe I can get through December without any net weight gains.
Keith is running for a slot on the HOA board. He just loves local politics. I hope he gets it. He longs to help contribute to positive change. He has started filling in on a soft ball team. He also has been helping his parents with their remodel. You can't beat those Schmidts for hard work and loving it. Of the vast pool of things that surpass my understanding, their love for hard work is something I admire so much, but waver in my ability to acquire.
Here is something that makes me embarrassed to be from the same city as this high school girl Giulia spoke to: She said she spoke to a girl that had no idea, before talking to Giulia, that people in the world spoke any language besides English.

Staycations

This is Keith again - blogging while my wife is away at the enrichment night that is, ironically, about blogging. My last entry expressed my desire, but apparent lack of commitment, to blogging daily to track my kids' progress in life. Here's a 1-month recap:

Abby is a little over 3.5 years old. Just last week she learned how to remove all of the safety locks on our doors. It's like the prisoner that gets the keys to the jail cell... she proceeds to let all of the others free. She also has a couple of favorite phrases and words: she really likes to use the word "imagination" and she also likes to start her sentences with "Actually, ..." She picked up a dead fly outside, ran up to me and said "Look Daddy! It's a FLY!" I replied, "Yep, it's dead and yucky, so go wash your hands now." Her comeback was "Actually, it's NOT dead. It has a imagination." I stand corrected.

Allison likes to point but does not say much. She says gibberish with A LOT of voice inflection. She must really think she is saying something, and she will every once and a while. She has to point out every car she sees and say "Ca". She has said a couple of phrases like (when running her hands through Abby's hair) "What's that? It's hair." Then she will say nothing understandable for an hour or so. Then she will be putting on her shoes and say, perfectly, the word "Shoe." I don't understand how she can say things so well, and then go back to gibberish. It worries me a lot, and I keep trying to get Lucy to play dumb with Allison so she has to explain herself more, but mommy thinks that is mean. I think it's meaner to encourage the kid to stay an infant.

Work is...definitely work. I'm about to redo the steering linkage on the Ranchero - if you knew how bad the current arrangement was, and you were driving it, you would be excited, too.

Lucy's birthday is Friday and I have no desire to spend a bunch of $ on a vacation. I like being home - my loved ones are here and it is more paid for than anything else. I like staycations.
That's about it. I'm not much for creative writing.

August 17, 2009

This is Keith. At our Mormon mens meeting ("Priesthood") someone spoke about being there for your kids. I was glad to feel like I am there for my kids. He had an interesting practice of writing down daily things that he saw his kids do each day, and then giving them the notes he had taken about them little by little once they were 12 years old. He said it showed the kids that he loved them and gave them insight into themselves. I would like to do something like that, except my handwriting is TOTALLY illegible. As such, I think I will use this blog to accomplish the same purpose. Here it goes... day 1.

I see Allison in the morning before I go to work. She is the early riser. Her cute little blue eyes and blonde hair, coupled with the excitement for the new day, are a great start to an otherwise mundane office job day. Today was no different. It is always a treat.

We had some daddy-daughters fun today. I inflated the air mattress and stacked the inflatable pool on top of it (empty) and the girls had a trampoline of sorts. They had a blast. They play pretty well together. Abby hunted down some grasshoppers and observed our Peach tree was growing cucumbers: short peach tree, tall cucumber plant. I thought she was mistaken, but she was right. It looks pretty wierd. Later on, I sat with the girls in the van as mommy went into the store, recited the book "We're going on a bear hunt" from memory ('cuz we have read it 1,000 times), and sang all of the nursury songs I could think of. Thanks to Lucy for teaching me how to play with the kids. Being with my family is hands down the highlight of every day.

Funny Words from the Kids

Abby at Winco: A man was in Winco with a black patch over his eye and Abby says "Mommy! Is he a pirate?".
Abby in her room looking at a picture of Santa: "Look Daddy! It's Santa!... We like Santa, 'cuz he doesn't KILL us. Look! There's a tree behind him!"
Allison can't say many words coherently, but she can say "Shoe" perfectly. It's weird.
Abby and Allison play together well and share things well, usually. It's cute to see them so excited to be with one another. I hope it lasts.

Keith is stoked because the time has finally come to do some long overdue upgrades to the Ranchero. He's going to re-do the front suspension, cut some things out, weld some things in, re-do the steering column, install a brake proportioning valve, power brakes, install new high performance cylinder heads, camshaft, etc... and make a fuel injection system from Mustang parts. It should be a lot easier to drive, a lot faster, and a lot easier to stop. He thinks it will take 3 months to do, so it will probably be done in a year. Some of this stuff is easy, and some is crazy difficult, but he has done a lot of the crazy difficult stuff before. He previously reworked the whole steering system so he can have power steering (adapted parts from 3 different year/make/model cars). It all works fine, crazy as it sounds.

July

Allison said her first word today, in context, and then said it again later in the day. Her first word was the same as Abby's first word: "Uh-oh." On occasion, she will repeat a word or sound she hears. Our garden is giving us tomatoes daily, we have 4 watermelons waiting and lots of other experiments. I am disappointed in the strawberries and the cucumbers. My basil is finally starting to flourish.
I bought a big jar of cookies/crackers shaped like letters and numbers. I am surprised at how much Abby has been holding out on me how many letters she actually knew. I expect she will learn the entire alphabet before the jar is finished.