Check This Out

Hey everyone, I just came across this video done by the BYU college of fine arts and communications (my alma mater-yeah!), it's a really cool song and beautiful photos.
http://joytoeveryone.com

Christmas Photo Outtakes

I tried to get a cute picture of the kids for Christmas cards, and I think I did get ONE cute one. You don't get to see the cute one, but here are all the other ones, and yes Anna and Matt took those pictures of me so I can't be held responsible.

Snowed In

The weather outside is very frightful today. Snowing and windy-perfect for staying in and finally getting around to writing a blog post! A couple of weeks ago my Dad was cleaning out his garage and found a whole box filled with my old middle school and high school papers. I had a fun time going through it, but ended up chucking almost everything except two papers I wrote. I thought it might be fun to share one of them I wrote when I was a junior in high school (almost 11 years ago!). So without further ado, I give you "The Great Eclair Heist"

Weddings are nothing but trouble. My cousin Philip was in the army and was only home on leave for a few days when he decided to get married. That's when the trouble started.

Because of the very short notice, the whole affair was thrown together. The reception was only twenty minutes after the actual wedding. At the time I was eleven and my brother Bryan was sixteen and my cousin Drew was fifteen, and when you get two teenage boys together with eclairs-you have two hungry boys with a plan. These two Einsteins decided that wouldn't be able to eat all the eclairs they wanted during the reception and it was only logical that they would have to save some for future hunger attacks. When they said "save" they actually meant "steal".

At first the plan was to sneak the eclairs two by two right out the front door-it was to be the crime of the century, but it was spoiled by a large crowd of adults gathering in the hallway.

Plan B: go with bulk. The head genius said to me, the official guinea pig, "Hey, Beth! why don't you go outside and stand by the window, and we'll hand the whole box out to you." Glad to be included in the plan, I said, "Okay, sure."

I was standing outside the kitchen window shivering when the widow creaked open, and the pink bakery box came sliding out. Bryan whispered, "You got it Beth?"

"Yep", I said.

There was about a one inch space between the top of the box and the bottom of the window where I could see Bryan carefully coaxing the loot out the window. All of a sudden I saw my two conspirators disappear. I felt some evil presence enter the kitchen. Then I saw IT--The mother of the bride...we were toast.

IT was looking around the kitchen for an explanation to the box of baked goods sticking half way out the window. This lady just happened to have one glass eye, and I am not making this up, only one eye slowly turned and met mine--there was fire in that eye!

It was February, but I started to sweat. I ditched the eclairs and did the only thing a kid in my situation could do--I ran.

When IT finally found me hiding behind a bush, I got the lecture of my life. I mean I was blamed for everything from ruining the whole wedding to her dog Sparky's recent death. My partners in crime denied everything. As for me I humbly gave up the eclairs and was sentenced to dish duty.

Well there you have it, I hope it brought back some fond memories of your own youthful pranks!

Happy snow day!

Long Time No Blog

Hey Everybody! It's been a while since we posted anything. Not too much has been going on outside the normal wash-rinse-dry-repeat cycle, but here's what we have been up to the past couple of weeks.

Kent: Has been kicking butt and takin' out the trash at work as usual, and was rewarded with a pay raise (yeah!). He has also been playing a game on the 360 called "Fallout 3" which is pretty cool (even I think so).

Anna: Is a very good helper, she loves to wash dishes. She has also been painting a lot lately and is quite creative. I have been teaching her to read, she is a quick learner, but she hasn't had that "A-Ha!" moment yet where it all comes together.

Matt: Gets funnier by the day. He came up to me the other day and said, "why am I so weird?" He has so much energy and is a really fun little guy.

Beth: I recently joined a gym and hired a personal trainer to help me get more in shape for running. It has been a lot of fun (and a little painful!). Other than that I do lots of laundry, and cleaning and fall asleep on the couch every night while Kent is playing xbox (aahhh the soothing sounds of machine gun fire!) It's a pretty good life.

Don't Make Him Angry...

This photochop was produced by one of the members of the team Kent works with after he expressed some frustration with a persistent sales engineer. Evidently, it was the most frustrated anyone had seen him get. Kent doesn't get angry, and is mostly sedate, so...

Snow Day!

We had our first snow of the season today! It was very exciting to wake up to a beautiful white world. The kids and I had a great time making snowballs and stomping through all that fresh powder. We even made a mini snowman family! And now the results you have all been waiting for... the winners of the caption contest. The overall winner was Grandpa McLean for the funniest, and an honorable mention goes to Brenda for the longest caption-Great work guys!

Saturday Stuff

Yesterday was a really fun day. Our ward primary had a Halloween carnival, which I had forgotten about, so I had to hurry and finish Matt's spider costume. Luckily Anna wanted to be Cinderella again so her costume was no problem! Here's a few before and after shots.

Spider Huggged!






Since yesterday was our wedding anniversary we all went up to temple square to have lunch at the Lion House Pantry, which is where we had our wedding lunch 6 years ago (aaahhhh!). After lunch we walked around temple square and enjoyed the beautiful day.

Later that night we had dinner with my family, my oldest brother Bill was visiting from Georgia-it was really fun to see him! All in all it was a really great, beautiful day!

This and That (and that other thing!)

It has been awhile since I have updated our blog, so I thought I would just write a mish-mash post. First a few words about the title. I have decided to rename our blog to "The Whistling McLeans" at least for now for a couple of reasons. The first being that my first choice of title namely, "THE BIBLE", was already taken. The second is that the name "Stickly Speaking" doesn't make sense without the adorable stick figures of all us that was supposed to appear with the title. So I am going to stop feeling guilty because I haven't gotten around to redesigning our blog with stick figures and just rename the darn thing. That being said, "The Whistling McLeans" is a very fitting name because we all are very talented whistlers (except Matt, but he's learning). Even Anna who just turned 4 can whistle, and especially likes to show off her skills when we are at the check out at the store.
They split our ward again today, this makes the third and hopefully last time we will have split since we moved here. I was relived that we stayed in the same ward, but I did loose a couple of kids from my primary class, which is a little sad.
Boy, are we sick of being sick! first I had a nasty cold with extra sinus congestion, and then last tues/wed Kent had the flu-urg! So now we are all well and will hopefully stay that way for a while!
This Saturday will be our 6th wedding anniversary. I think we have built a nice cozy life together in these past six years. Kent is a good Hubby and a good Dad too-and I sure love him!
Recently I have started running with a friend because it's too dark/scary/boring to run by myself all the time, and she has talked me into training for the Salt Lake half marathon. It's not until next April, so we have plenty of time to get ready, but I have to admit that anything with the word "marathon" attached to it makes me a little nervous! That being said, I think it will be a great goal to work towards.
Well, I think that's about it! phew! oh yeah, that is a picture of my bike, isn't it great? Have a great week everyone!

The challenge is complete

Yesterday, Bethany and I completed the last day of the hundred push up challenge. It's great motivation to do something hard like that with a committed partner. It is a lot of fun, too! Our routine over the last 6+ weeks of driving through the challenge has been to watch a show (we've been catching up on the newer Battlestar Galactica via Netflix) and do the pushups during the commercial breaks (or at least where they would be...). This provides a nice break betwixt sets.

Now I'm thinking we'll start the program over so that we can maintain the strength that we've gained this first time through the program. Then on top of the maintenance on our upper bodies we'll convert the program to a simultaneous hundred sit up challenge to whittle away at our flabby torsos.

It's nice to see the comments and see that all this technology can attract long lost family and friends like c.l. It gets me remembering lots of latent, good memories that make up who I am today. It also makes me wonder how people find our little, tiny plot in cyberspace. It will be interesting to see who we can (re)connect with over time.

Bethany has had a cold the past couple of days, but she continues to keep the house and the kids in shape. She's great. :D

Aren't You a Little Short For a Stormtrooper?

 

Sorry we haven't updated in a while. Not too much has been going on. We had a wonderful(if rainy) conference weekend. Kent's parents were here and we had a really nice time. The kids put the grandparents to work reading stories and playing games-so a good time was had by all.

Picnic at the Park

Kent had to work late last night so the kids and I took our dinner down to the park. It was a beautiful evening and we had a lot of fun picnicking and playing.
P.S. Thank you for all your kind condolences for the untimely death of my mac.

R.I.P Mac 2003-2008

 

"Ode to Mac"
My little computer died last week.
although you did your job
a replacement I soon will seek.

You could talk and tell jokes too,
oh, mac you were so cute
But your screen is black, and now I'm blue.

Free of power cords, keyboards and mice,
now to computer heaven you will go,
where all old macs and PC's meet-and it's nice.

Saturday Morning Run

I hate to be a bore and have two fitness related posts in a row, but I couldn't resist sharing these pictures. Last week a friend invited me to go running with her on this trail that is in the hills just above our neighborhood. We went at about 6:00 a.m. so it was dark and the lights down in the valley were pretty awesome, but I wondered what it looked like during the day. So I ran the same trail last Saturday morning by myself and was just loving the landscape--I decided I had to come back again and bring my camera (which was kind of a pain-but hey, what's a photographer to do?).
This first one is on the uphill side and as you can see, having the trail lined with lovely sunflowers makes running up this hill only slightly more pleasant.

These two are the view from the top (that's Utah Lake on the very left).
The last one is evidence that the native hillbillies have been here. All in all it's about a 3.5 mile run, and with some good music on my ipod it makes for a beautiful workout.

100 Pushups or Bust!

A couple weeks ago Kent and I started the hundred push up challenge. It's a 6 week program, and at the end of it you should be able to do 100 pushups, hence the name. Kent and I are about half way through week three, and it's getting kind of tough! Last night after all our sets were compleate Kent had done a total of 105 pushups and I did 71-woot! So I'm calling you guys out to join us in the pushup challenge. You can find the program at www.hundredpushups.com. Everyone starts at a different level, so no excuses!

Back in Time

Lately I have decided to start taking more pictures with my "real" camera--my big SLR. In my camera bag I found a roll of film that I took last September when we were visiting the in laws in Hamilton, Montana. There are a few pictures of the parade we went to that was celebrating the opening of the Ravalli County fair. The great thing about small town parades are that they are A)short. B)you can always find a good spot. C)everything is considered a "float" from tractors to truck beds. D)you get lots of candy. and last but not least, they are E)short. There are a couple of other photos of the kids playing at the park etc.

Where there's smoke, there's...

Well, we were going to keep the suspense up for another day, but we have to share. The picture in the last post is a parked fire engine. Parked right outside our house. You don't see the ambulance that is also parked outside our house. Nothing to worry about, so don't get your heart rate up.

Late Sunday night there was a storm with a LOT of wind and a LOT of rain. Bethany and I were watching a bit of TV before we went to sleep. Beth said that she smelled smoke. I retorted that her nose was broken, and kept on lounging in true pre-Labor Day fashion.

And then I started to smell something funny, too. It smelled just like a campfire. I inquired if Beth's feet had been washed with soap lately, and she didn't reply. Plus Beth's feet don't smell like they're on fire usually, so... We sniffed around and thought that the smell was coming from the basement area. Our basement is unfinished, and all concrete-y, not very combustible. But, the smell was definitely stronger in the basement than upstairs. (Don't worry Scott, your stuff is still safely tucked away under your drop cloths.)

We couldn't see anything smoking or on fire, and did the rounds of the inside of our house a few times. Nothing.

So, we decided to get the right people involved -- we called the police. Yep. And they sent the fire department as well as an ambulance just in case something exciting was actually happening. We could hear the sirens coming even though I distinctly remember telling the dispatcher on the other end of the phone line that nothing was on fire. The big, noisy trucks with the flashing lights drove past our house, down to the end of the street (we live on one end of Pumpkin Patch Drive) and started backing up to find the right house. Bethany called our next door neighbors to try to mitigate the panic and inevitable heart attack that would follow. I flagged the fire truck down and the crew unloaded in full regalia -- oxygen tanks, fire axes, etc.

To make a long story slightly shorter, the fire crew (in full fire gear, mind you) swept our house from top to bottom, inside and out, to find the source of the woodsy smell that we though was coming from our basement. And the best part? With 3 firemen in full gear walking around our house, the basement, the attic -- it didn't wake the kids!

Well, they smelled it, but they couldn't come up with anything more than Beth and I had. So they went back to their firehouse and commenced to play poker and smoke cigars. Probably not. Beth says that the firemen were "hunky". and more than likely, they went back to the firehouse and commenced watching "My Turn on Earth". It IS Utah, after all.

And with the firemen's assurance that our house was in no apparent danger, we went to sleep.

Then Monday, we made the last post, still not knowing what had caused the smell, but having an experience to share.

Fast forward to today (Tuesday), and I came home from work early because Norm, whom I car pool with each day to work, was having some severe allergies and went home early from work. My family was gone to the in laws in Sandy, so I strolled around the grounds to see how many of my newly spread wood chips had blown into my neighbors' planter beds during the weekend storms. More than a few.

Sorry for the length of this post. I should write a novel.

In the course of my inspection, I found this:

This is just under the eave of our deck, right next to the house. That's an electrical transformer that plugs into the outside power outlet, some wire, and a joiner (can't think of the real term just now) right in the middle of the charred area. These components used to run the landscaping lights in the southwest portion of our yard. What I imagine happened is that with the heavy rain, the joiner/junction got wet enough that it shorted out and super-heated the wire coming from the transformer to the joiner. An electrical fire erupted around the wire, and was then put out by the continuing rain. Here are some more photos that show more of the damaged components.


As the photos show, the wiring was charred right into the transformer box and just past the joiner thing. I'm not sure whether the transformer box is still functional. Those things that I'm holding are some of the wiring that is fused with the wood chips it was on and what's left of the joiner that was in the middle of the charred, burned area by the house.

Before the firemen were at our house, the fire must have gone out. Plus, with it dark, wet everywhere, and windy, you wouldn't see this spot at all.

Now you know what almost went down Sunday night. As my mother would say, we thank our lucky stars that we have a house that isn't black, smoky and mostly open air.

Wake Up the Neighborhood

This photo was taken last night at around 11:00 p.m. Leave a comment and tell us what you think happened!

Haircuts All Around

For a couple of weeks now we have been trying to talk Anna into getting a haircut. I wasn't thinking anything drastic, just a trim, because everytime I bring the hairbrush near her head she starts complaining and screaming (If she knew any swear words she would probably use them!). I heard about this place called "Cookie Cutters", it's a hair cut place for kids. I have been talking it up to Anna for a few days, and this morning I showed her pictures on their website, and she was finally sold. I took both the kids in this afternoon and it was so awesome! They let each kid pick a movie to watch and they got to sit in these cute cars and airplanes while they got their hairs cut.


Anna loved it! Her stylist was super nice and even blow dried and styled her hair. After their cuts they got balloons and a sucker so of course they were in heaven. This is was Anna's first real hair cut and she got about 3 inches trimmed off. As for Matt, this is probably his 50th haircut-so no big deal-but he does look handsome!

Following the Rules

This is Anna eating breakfast while watching cartoons. She is not allowed to eat in the living room, so she scooted her chair as close to the living room as possible while still technically in the kitchen. That girl is great!
Summer is coming to a close. You can tell because just when it has finally cooled down enough to allow our lawn to be green again, the kids (not our kids, the neighborhood kids) have resumed trampling our lawn on thier way to and from school. Not only are we on a corner lot near the elementary school so lazy 5th graders cut across the lawn, we are lucky enough to be the bus stop for the middle and high schoolers who shuffle off the bus each day with their slouchy pants and cell phones. I never thought I'd turn into that old person who is always yelling at kids to get off their lawn-but I have been seriously contemplating purchasing some water ballons and putting them to good use!

Bear Lake & Back

This past week the kids and I drove up to Bear Lake to go camping with my family. My brother Bryan and his family drove down from Washington and Anna and Matt had a great time playing with some of their cousins. Bear Lake is a really fun place to take kids because it has a sand beach and the water is shallow. So we spent the first day at the beach playing in the water and building sand castles.
The next day my sister, Sarah, and I made a treasure hunt for the kids, and they had a great time finding the treasure-they had so much fun that after they found their treasure they made another treasure hunt for the grown-ups to do!
Later that day we all went on a hike on the limber pine trail. On Thursday we were going to go to the beach again, but it was so windy! So we drove home to find...a giant pile of wood chips in the driveway! Oi! So I spent Friday and Saturday shoveling wood chips and doing laundry! But we had a great time on our camping trip-It was great to see everybody.
This last picture is the view of the lake from our campground.

Bachelor days have come and gone again

This past week, Bethany and the kids drove through Wyoming and back to Northern Utah to get to Bear Lake. The in laws had a big whooptie-doo together on the shores of the lake. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I took time off from work and partied by myself at home. By partied, I mean I did back-breaking work in the yard and under the clothes washer.

So they went to the in law infestation Tuesday and got back Thursday evening. They brought with them a car full of sand, and a week's worth of laundry. They must have had fun.

Since they took the car, I was left defenseless and immobile, much like a newly born kangaroo. It is nice, though, to have the opportunity to not have to go anywhere.

As I mentioned, while they were away, I had plenty to do. I painted a section of wall behind the clothes washer that was just drywall. We had replaced a section of wall that had been damaged when one of our pipes started leaking last year and just hadn't finished the job. I also replaced the floorboard on the other side of the wall (through the wall). I mowed and trimmed the lawn.

But the big project for this week started when we had 7 yards of shredded bark dumped on our driveway Tuesday morning just after I was left to myself. We started a project last year that entailed spreading shredded bark over the planter beds in our yard. At that time we didn't have enough shredded bark to finish the job, and we didn't really do it right. We didn't put weed block down under the bark, so we still had to pull weeds every Saturday. Not this time. Tuesday morning through Thursday, I moved the existing bark out of the beds where it was, put down weed block, and then put that bark back.

When Beth and the kids got back, they couldn't park in the garage due to the huge pile of shredded bark in the driveway blocking the entrance. So the car had to stay on the street for a few nights. Friday and Saturday, Beth and I tackled the two big planter areas, I putting down weed block and she hauling the shredded bark from the driveway to the planter beds where I handily spread it about in a uniform pattern of random barkiness.

We'll get some pictures up of the end result. Sometimes it's hard to comprehend that this is my house and my yard. Most of the time it feels like I work as part of the maintenance crew at somebody else's home while the owner is away.

I should mention that shredded bark dust gets everywhere. I've been blowing shredded bark out of my nose this whole week. And sneezing all over the place.

Out For A Walk

I thought Anna looked so cute with her boots on when we took our strollers out for a walk.

Licked and Loving it

On Tuesday I took the kids to the Thanksgiving Point farm. They had some really cute baby goats and we went for a hayride and Matt got licked by this cow-he thought it was great!

The Dark Knight Followed By a Dark Night

On Friday night Kent and I saw the new Batman movie. In IMAX. The movie was big, it was dark, it was scary and most of all it was AWESOME! The villian in this batman movie is the Joker-and let me just say that he was so good at being phsyco, unpredicable, downright frightening, and even hilarious that I had nightmares about him the night after we saw it. Now I'm going to gush a little--I pretty much love all the guys in this move: Christian Bale, Gary Oldman (the mustache!), Michael Caine (I could use someone like Alfred to clean my mansion!)--They are all just fantastic. The story was good, the stunts were sweet, and I can't wait to watch it on blu-ray along with all the special features.

The biggest loser?

At work last year, the engineering department had an informal 'Biggest Loser' competition for anyone that wanted to participate. For those not in the know with bad "reality" television, The Biggest Loser is a show where a bunch of fat people compete to see who can lose the most overall weight and win the grand prize -- money to spend on food...

But anyway, they decided to do it again this year, except that this year it's company-wide and sponsored. So, this year, they can afford a scale that can measure a person's body fat index, and hopefully offer a better prize than last year. I don't even know what the prize was last year, so it couldn't have been terribly enticing. Also this year, the competition will go from August to April of next year. What this means to me is that there's a chance for those that are serious to make some lifestyle changes rather than binge dieting then binge eating.

While I don't think I'm FAT, I recognize that I'm a tad on the pudgy side (or both sides, really). So, I've decided that I'm going to participate in this Biggest Loser competition. I probably won't win, because I've seen the competition and they're going to be much bigger losers than I am by virtue of them being much BIGGER losers already. Uh Huh. I'll be cutting out some of my basic food groups: soda pop, M&Ms, etc. To do that, I'm going to keep a daily food diary to record everything that ends up in my stomach via my mouth. We'll see how it goes.

The Kids Enjoy Some Juice and Some Shade at Payson Lake

We took the opportunity to go to Payson Lake with a friend from work and his wife. It was nice. It's a long, winding drive up Payson Canyon. I was surprised by the volume of people that were there. They just kept coming. We stayed long enough for the kids to get a little wet, eat a few hot dogs, and each have a s'more.

I was also surprised to realize that I had been there before. I believe it was when Bethany and I were dating. Her family went up on a weekend, and I tagged along.

After returning from the lake, we made a quick couple of stops in town and headed home. I replaced some sprinkler nozzles, pulled some weeds, and trimmed the lawn edges while Bethany mowed the lawn. She's awesome like that.

We also watched Batman Begins on our El Largo TV on HD-DVD. We're excited to go see The Dark Knight, but didn't go this weekend. We've become addicted to seeing movies on the IMAX screen when they're available in that format. It's awesome to see a movie in the theater when the heads on the screen are bigger than your car. All you can see is the movie, and that experience is much more immersive than the "normal" movie-going experience.

We're hoping to get tickets this weekend to TheDark Knight, and we'll be taking my brother and the same friend/wife combo that we went to the lake with.

The jibblies

This gigantic wolf spider lives on our patio and as of today is still alive...somewhere.

I don't know what kind of spider this is, but I think he must have spent some time in the navy if the heart tatoo on his back is any indication. He was on my window today and I had a terrible time getting up the guts to smash him on account of his hairy hugeness. So I went to the basement and got some snowboots on, but then I thought "thats no good, he's probably waiting to jump on me!". So plan "B" was to get a log and smash him from a safe distance-which worked brilliantly, but I am telling you the sound of his hairy heiny being crushed was horrible!