Juggling and eating at the same time

While I was reviewing some pretty old family filmstrips I ran across this one of my cousin in 1977 at a family Christmas party, his brother is juggling veggies and fruit and he takes a bite out periodically and then his brother takes a bit out of it.  Pretty funny, I added the cheesy music since the projector sound really didn't do it for me. 

Grass Surfing at Freestone Park

We had fun today on our Christmas Break at Freestone park, in Gilbert, AZ.  It was our nephew's non-party birthday party. 

Numero Cinco Omega Baby Update

Hear ye, Hear ye, the ultrasound lady has spoken and we now know with a great degree of confidence the gender of our next child.  We were also pleased to verify that most importantly the baby is healthy and should be just fine.  Our tradition is to go purchase something that will demonstrate the gender of the baby so that our other kids can guess by looking at it, ie. baseball themed clothes = boy, pink hearts clothes = girl etc.  Today we went to the store right after the Ultrasound and as we were walking into the store we ran into this license plate which ironically enough demonstrated what we were in for:

You got it, we're blessed to have another boy making it a total of 1 Girl and 4 boys in the family.  That will amount to:

4 Missions

4 Eagle Scout Projects

12 Pinewood derby cars

Countless super activivities

It's a good thing Aaron is into Scouting because he's going to be doing a lot of it.

McKenna is really excited to maintain her status as sole princess in the family so we're glad the pressure isn't on to "try" for a girl next time around ......  what the heck, did I just say next time around?

More pictures:

Dad Rundalls Final Flight

This week we had the opportunity to see the inner sanctum of Honeywell's flight operations in Sky Harbor airport.  We attended the take off of Alicia's Dad's (Burnell Rundall) final flight before he retires as chief pilot for Honeywell corporate aviation in Phoenix.  The airport puts on quite a show by sending the fire trucks and airport security out and they give them a "two hose" salute of sorts by spraying copious amounts of water in a huge arc over the airplane as they taxi for their last take-off.  Here are some pictures and a short video clip of the spectacle.









STAY TUNED! We will hopefully find out baby #5's gender on tuesday 12/9, no secrets or surprises for us. 

Tate Jones is Two!!!

Happy Birthday Tate! We celebrated his birthday a day early on Veteran's day because some of his cousins had earned a trip to Chuck your Cheese we tagged along and partied. I think I'm still feeling the effects of the worst pizza in the world, let's see, here's my rankings of pizza's:

1. Sourdough Pizza - East Mesa, yum
2. Barros on a good night
3. Nellos - pizza crusts appetizers rock also
4. Pizza Hut Taco Crust (ultra thin crust)
5. Rosati's Thin Crust
6. Some pizza I had at a cool place in Detroit - no clue of the name anymore
7. Freezer pizza's - Tony's, Totinos, Any cheap wad red baron knock off
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8. Way down here you have crap e cheese and peter piper pissa...., I mean pizza.

We had fun with the cousins, here's a picture of the cake we built (tribute to pedro) for Tate:

Here's Tate rockin into his two's!!!!

Annoying sayings, I knew I had some of them right

I love reading about new words, the history of words and phrases, and slang.  I think I have a propensity for picking up phrases and vocabulary and have several non-standard dictionaries such as: 

The Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins

NTC's Dictionary of Slang and Colloquial Expressions

The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms

The Little Hiptionary - pretty cool but doesn't have a lot of new info, some new words and office humor

Anyway, I found that a writer  compiled a list of the top ten most overused phrases  using the Oxford Corpus (a massive only word database of more than 2 billion words), compiled in a new book I will buy called "A Damp Squid" and here they are:

The top ten most irritating phrases(see news article here):

1 - At the end of the day  -- I had a boss that used this whenever he couldn't articulate what he really meant to say, or maybe just whenever he thought things were final and needed no more debate.  Either way it got supremely annoying and he had no idea that he used it so much. 

2 - Fairly unique

3 - I personally

4 - At this moment in time  -- I've been know to use this, yikes

5 - With all due respect  -- I never use this, apparently I have no respect

6 - Absolutely  -- Yikes, what's wrong with saying absolutely?

7 - It's a nightmare 

8 - Shouldn't of  -- 

9 - 24/7

10 - It's not rocket science

What words do you overuse?

Yeehaw! Life moves on, and what more could you ask for but a new Hobbit Movie coming out

Ok, One of my greatest joys in life is to spend time with the kids watching movies like Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings. The Lord of the Rings trilogy has been one of my favorite book series of all times(I've read it at least 6 times), actually is my favorite, although Harry Potter comes in close. Leeshe is quite tolerant of my LOTR addiction, the kids are a mixed bag, McKenna likes Harry Potter so never wants to watch LOTR, the oldest boy LOVES LOTR - go big Z, Gollum freaks our Aidan out, I haven't brainwashed our youngest yet since I do maintain some discretion when it comes to fantasy violence and young children. Now that elections are over and life continues I have another 2 movies to look forward to in about 3 years, yes you heard it right, the Hobbit and some made up sequel to it (prequel to the LOTR movies), 2011 and 2012, here's a link answering all of your burning questions:

http://www.theonering.net/torwp/hobbitfaq/#1.1

That's some exciting stuff there, I'm sure that brightens your day after the past couple of election months. I'm excited for the Hobbit because hopefully it will be a much more fantasy based and light hearted movie, the book is far more "fun" and "fantastical" than the Lord of the Rings series. Where LOTR deals with the one ring, horrible wars, and evil, this touches on the ring (where Bilbo finds it) but focuses on a fun fairy tale like adventure all throughout the book. Hopefully it won't be too dark and be more reminiscent of the book.

The excitement doesn't stop there though, we've all got 3 more Harry Potter movies to look forward to.

Giddy up, election day is almost here and OVER! Everybody better be voting :-)

Leeshe gave me some great advice last week which I think I followed pretty well, she challenged me to avoid looking at any blogs or news sites for a day, it resulted in a marked improvement in my attitude and outlook on life. Regardless of how things go, it's great to know that we live in the BEST country in the world, we have the Gospel in our lives, and awesome families. I read a great quote from our Late Prophet Gordon B. Hinckley which really helped pick me up:

I stand here today as an optimist...I realize, of course, that we are best with many tragic problems...I have seen a good deal of this earth. I have seen its rot and smelled its filth. I have been in areas where war rages and hate smolders in the hearts of people. I have see the appaling poverty that hovers over many lands. I have seen the oppression of those in bondage and the brutality of their overlords..I have watched with alarm the crumbling morals of our society.

And yet I am an optimist. I have a simple and solemn faith that right will triumph and that truth will prevail.

Have fun and get out and vote! Check out this dude's blog posting: http://www.arizonaconservatives.org/2008/11/arizona-proposition-102-get-out-and.html

Big days in Zane's life

We had some fun times and momentous occasions this past week in our family and in the life of Zane our oldest dude. On Saturday 10/25/2008 Zane turned 8 and was baptized a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. We had good times that day, a baptism, confirmation, a huge family and friend party with great food and tons of fun, and a special dinner just with Zane and one friend at Black Angus cuz he wanted steak. I can't say much more than it was such a blessing to be reminded of the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in our lives, the wonderful and very simple plan of our Father in Heaven to make it possible to live with him eternally and be with our families forever. We felt the presense of the Holy Ghost during the baptismal proceedings and were reminded how important it is to live so that we can have it's constant companionship. One funny thing happened, we had some sort of accident during the immersion and when Zane got out of the water he noticed his nose was bleeding, I guess I made dang sure that he got completely immersed and in so doing squashed his nose :-)

Here are some pictures:

A very cool cake, the black frosting contributed to the mess below

Scouting Here We Come!

All right, we've finally got a boy in Cub Scouts (after more than 6 years of being in scout callings without a scout to call my own). Zane put his whole heart into memorizing the Scout Promise, Law of the Pack, Motto, Meaning of "WeBeLoS", Sign, Salute, and Handshake. He really did an awesome job and passed off his Bobcat badge, it was fortunate that the pack meeting was delayed (only fortunate in this aspect, otherwise it was a giant HASSLE for other reasons) and he was able to attend and get his Bobcat just days after starting. The Cubmaster, Brother Walton, asked if I could do the presentation of the award since I had been the previous cubmaster so I put on my cheesiest faces and tried to act as hammy as ever(although it comes pretty naturally). I gave Zane a harder time than any other new bobcat and grilled him on all of the above items he had to learn, he rocked it all, didn't miss a heartbeat. I think we have the makings of a real boy scout here!

Rattling off the Cub Scout Promise

Brother Walton the Cubmaster with full beard, the ultimate Scout Stud!

Zane doing the color guard on his first night

Baby # 5 Update (Omegaman?)

Ok, I only joke about Omegaman(meaning last man) because we expect the baby to be a boy (that way if it's a girl we're surprised and we're not let down if it ends up being a boy).  Can you tell we have some odd preference for another girl?  Enough of that.  Here's some alien pictures we caught on the ultrasound on Tuesday, pretty exciting to know that it's healthy. 

3D Image - Much cooler looking than the alien ones

Alien Face Above

Sucking on it's thumb?  Or Waving?

Aaron's First Triathlon - Rocky Point Sandy Beach Sprint Triathlon

NOTE - Don't forget to read the first post below this one, it's much more important

We all went down to Rocky Point, Mexico this past weekend on October 2 through the 4th to experience Aaron's first triathlon. Sadly Alicia could not participate in it with him like they had originally planned so instead we made a nice family vacation out of it. This was supposed to be the first Annual Asquared Triathlon BUT we'll wait for next year when Alicia's not toting a little kid around in her tummy.

How did we get to this tragic point?

Aaron saw a shadow under one of his "pecks", when that happens you realize that "the bro" or "manzier" is not the answer, rather a major man mastectomy OR better yet get fit and lose that flab. Alicia and Aaron decided to do a triathlon in order to set a goal that would be more challenging than just losing weight and something we could look forward to. Why the heck did we pick Mexico? Well, we figured it would be fun and we might actually enjoy the trip.

How'd it go?

The Triathlon was a "Sprint" triathlon, it was a 400 meter swim in the ocean, 12.8 Mile bike ride, and 2 mile run. In Aaron's case it was more like, 400 meter flounder, 12.8 Mile barf fest, and 2 mile walk / run. He loved every minute of it and learned a lot, not only that but he saw some cool stuff along the way:

• At least 2 dudes that were bigger than himself participating(see red circles)
  
• A chick blow a farmer john while riding her bike(depress one or the other nostril, not both, and blow firmly to dislodge mucus, try to miss your arm and shoulder
  
• A dude barf twice on his bike without stopping, oh wait, that was Aaron - awesome. It was actually pretty funny, I couldn't believe I did that since I had been so careful with what I ate and drank. It was probably a mixture of the salt water I ingested while swimming and the fact I hadn't eaten for 3 hours. Next time I'll take the 30 seconds to suck down an energy gel pack during the ride AND bring 2 water bottles or a camelback.

As you can see, Aaron has a weak stomach, here's a synopsis of all the sports he's enjoyed tasting his last meal again on:

• Deep sea fishing when he was 9, yeah mexican twinkies and sunny D- not really the breakfast of champions
  
• 4 out of 6 snow ski trips, it took a long time to be able to eat skittles again, that was some rainbow colored bial!
  
• Aaron rode his bike to work twice in his life, both times
  
• Papago park got to taste his last meal once on a bike ride
  
• Once after a particularly fun spinning class - he should have eaten something before going

Lesson learned - drink more water, eat something not too early and not to close to excercising.

Would you do it again?
Heck yeah, it was really fun to spend time with the kids, they were yelling and rooting me on, Zane is actually excited enough that he and I are both doing a triathlon on Thanksgiving morning, this time I won't be sucking in saltwater since it's in a 50 meter heated pool. Having a goal like this was so much better than just dieting, I've still eaten good foods while focusing on being more active. I've lost over 10 pounds in 2 months and am still excercising between 3 and 4 hours a week.

If you decide to sign up for one I highly recommend Eric Harr's book "Triathlon Training in 4 hours a Week", it was a truly inspirational book with just the right kind of plan for someone like me who has never been an athlete. Whether your goal is increasing your rank or just finishing he's got the right plan for you, I've already calendared my next 8 weeks of training using his plans.

Pictures

The dark stains on the shirt are remnants of Aaron's reverse paristalsis

Yes, extra water, I'm eyeing Zane's water bottle and subsequently take it, but I gave him a hug in return

Aidan worked up a real sweat those last few hundred meters

The kids and Alicia were there at every transition and it was awesome to hear them rooting for me.

Asquared - Aaron & Alicia and Kids(4 current, ONE on the way)

Aarrgh - we've tried to avoid the blogging frenzy but since most of our family members are blog nuts it appears to be a decent method of sharing our joyous and fun filled tidbits of family life with those we care about. That said, what's more incredibly fantastic to share than that we're going to have a BABY! Yep, that's baby numero CINCO, 5, or as Aaron like's to say "Omega"(see Wikipedia: Omega (the last letter of the Greek alphabet) is often used to denote the last, the end, or the ultimate limit of a set)

Alicia in front of 5 dozen roses

We told the kids and Alicia's Parents a couple of weeks ago on her Mom's Birthday, we gave her mom a charm for the April Birthday we expected the baby to have and she wasn't quite sure what we meant by it. The kids were dumbstruck, it was fun to have such a huge surprise although we don't recommend getting pregnant just to have something to surprise people with unless it's in the plans already and then by all means freak people out.

The baby should be born on April 28, 2009 (Alicia's brother Eric's birthday) or a day later on her dad's, we gave her mom a boy charm so having a 4th boy will certainly seal the deal on it being the last of the "set", if it's a Girl we'll quit while we're ahead.