December 21, 2008

The London Bridge didn't fall down it was moved to Arizona!

David takes on the big 3.

Heavy heavy hang over thy poor head.

Whatcha gonna do with a bump on your head?

Nope!

You'll watch it!

Lexie here. I haven't written in awhile, okay, only once way back in February, so here I go again. Jacob is sleeping. Natalyn, Dallin, and Tyrell are playing with the pattern blocks, color tiles, and bears, and David is sitting next to me twirling my hair. After the way this morning went I wouldn't have imagined I would have any quiet time, let alone some free time to be able to write. This is really exciting! For those of you now wondering what happened this morning let's just say the kids lost their computer turns last night for not going to bed well and it is pouring rain outside. Your imaginations can fill in the rest!

It has been reaffirmed in my mind why children are not the protectors in the family. As we were discussing why they need to stay somewhat close to us while they ride their bikes and we are on walks Natalyn and Davey were positive they would be able to protect themselves. David gave me his best growl that was sure to scare away any bobcat (which do frequent the area - although not so much here as in Needles - and we haven't seen any)! Natalyn was just as confident exclaiming that she would simply suck on a candy cane until the tip got sharp and then she could use it as a spear! That's an idea I certainly hadn't considered. We'll continue to leave the job of protector to the parents for now.

Speaking of being protector, included with that is also the added job of being responsible for feeding the kids and in general making responsible decisions. With that said, Dan and I have decided to stay in Quartzite, Arizona until our spelling game is finished. Our original plan was to pass through here on our way to Florida to see the shuttle launch that is scheduled for February 12. The process of decision making is very interesting as two people start talking about what they want and what is probably best for the time being. It was a little revealing for me to realize that one of my underlying fears of not going to Florida right away was pride. I was so embarrassed to think of not going after telling everybody that we were headed there that it weighed very heavily on my mind while we were taking finances into consideration and if I hadn't recognized it, I could have pushed to make a decision that would have been financially foolish. Quartzite is a place we can live virtually free of hook-up fees, save on gas money, and live extremely frugally as we boondock in the desert. Clothes are even optional we discovered! We chose against parking next to the nudist colony, however much I hate doing (and paying for) laundry. Before you all panic and think we're stranded in the desert without any money or way to feed our children (except for the occasional lizard that they catch for lizard stew), I will let you all know we are doing fine. Our decision was based on the fact that Dan cannot be doing free-lance work, and private work at the same time. We're 1 month to 2 months away from finishing our game completely and we have come too far to quit the game now to do free-lance work full-time. Our plan is to live as frugally as we can for the next 2 months while we finish the game, then we will pick up more free-lance work and market our game. When the cash starts coming in again we will continue our travels. There is another shuttle scheduled in May and hopefully we will make it to that one. I can hope!

Quartzite has filled me with all kinds of conflicting and strange emotions. In so many ways the desert is just plain ugly and bland. When we go into town it really does fit the stereo-type of trailer trash. As we come into the desert I realize how alive everything is here. The sunsets are absolutely gorgeous! The cacti are really fascinating. The sharp mountain ranges are intriguing. I'm finding that this place has a very definite beauty worth admiring. Even though the town itself looks like trailer-trash, it's not. The majority of the town consists of seniors that are snowbirds, just looking for a warm, economical place to stay in the winter and take advantage of the flea-markets and mineral shows that come into town. There is nothing trashy about the people we have met!

We have enjoyed magnificent sunsets.

David seems to be confused about who he is lately, which confuses me because I never seem to call him by the right name. After seeing transformers at his cousin's house he wanted to be called Bumblebee, after hearing the story, "Holes" with his brothers he was Zero, today he said, "Call me Scooby."

The ward we went to had a primary president, teacher, nursery leaders, and that's all. There is normally a little two year old boy in the nursery, so David doubled the attendance in nursery. Tyrell, Dallin, and Natalyn made up the entire primary! The youngest family besides us and the couple with the little boy was probably 55. Their were about 300 people in the ward! J-bird is awake now so I'm signing off!

We had fun singing christmas songs around the campfire.

David playing at the Lake Havasu park.

Dallin enjoying the gold fish perhaps a bit too much.

There is a wonderful park near the London Bridge in Lake Havasu.

A picture at Lake Havasu I (Dan) thought turned out neat.

B Y Boo Hoo

Dan here... I've had a few scattered thoughts that I thought would be fun to further scatter across the world wide web. I find the decision making process a very interesting thing. In life we are bombarded by a series of choices in such a rapid succession that we really aren't even aware of the majority of the choices we are making, we rather just flow along and try not to get bumped too hard in the process. It really is important to make good decisions because in the end one's success or failure is likely simply the arithmetic outcome of whether one makes more good decisions than they make poor decisions. With the great number of choices we have I find it interesting which choices we choose to grab on to as a part of our own definition, which choices we let float by and most of all which choices we make habitually without even realizing that we were taking a path that offered an alternate course.

So what does this have to do with our dear sweet cougars of the Provo valley? Not a lot... That's the scattered part. The center of my thinking about decisions revolved around the way I handled my choice of whether to go to their bowl game or not. When I heard they were playing in Las Vegas I was excited because we were in the area and I have never been to a live BYU football game. When I learned that bad seats were $20 dollars, reasonable seats were $50 and good seats were $100 dollars my enthusiasm was dampened. At that point I made a decision that in as much as going did not directly fill any of my current family goals, the expenditure represented too much outgo for not enough income we would not go. So that was the level 1 of the decision making process. The decision had come to my conscious mind, I had evaluated it and made a mental determination of the outcome. The thing that was interesting to me was that even though I had done this I don't believe the decision was truly made until about 5:45 on Saturday when I realized that it was impossible to drive to the game, buy a last minute ticket and view the game. Even though my mind had been made up weeks ago it wasn't until the opportunity had completely passed that my mind would fully release the decision.

I sometimes wonder how much control I really have of myself and how much I just float around in my sea of possibilities and drift from one thing to the next. Even in cases where it seems that I have taken direct control of a choice it seems that currents still push me one way and another. I guess in the end what we get, really is not the ability to control our wind but rather the ability to adjust our sails. Sometimes I think I get caught in the trap of wanting the right decisions to feel good and that very frequently does not seem to be the case.

Back to the Boo Hoo part. I was very disappointed that the Cougars lost the game. I find that emotion funny in that I only went to BYU for one semester, and I most definitely was not anywhere near their football team. Another piece of my stupid thinking is that I really have trouble with the Cougars loosing sporting events. In the scriptures it seems like a major theme is that God chooses a people and then the chosen people kick the tails of their enemies in battle. In as much as the church claims to be God's chosen people it looks wrong to see them get run weary into a defeat. I'm not as bent up about BYU losses now as I used to be, but it is always uncomfortable to see the shadows show up on the wall in the wrong order.