Ammon is Sick

Today Ammon got sick. Not the really scary kind where you rush off to the emergency room, but the annoying that just gives him a stuffy nose and makes him cough and sneeze all over. So I am not worried about him, but now I have to make sure that he sleeps in sort of an inclined position like in the car seat, so that way his sinuses can drain properly. Other than the frequent nose cleaning with the snot-sucker of doom, when he really gets upset, he is pretty happy. So that is good. Also he is being pretty vocal, since he can't really breathe through his nose. That's kind of cute. I recorded some of it for posterity. He is sitting in his bouncy chair right beside me even as I am writing this post, smiling and chattering away. Also he is staring at the new mp3 player I got today as it charges in the usb port. It is called the Sansa Express, by sandisk. It is a pretty cool little device, and while it is charging it has a picture of a dog (I think it's a dog?) running back and forth across the screen. It's the lights that he is staring at, not the mp3 player though. I don't really think he even cares that it is an mp3 player, or would care if he knew what one was. He just likes the lights...

Last Week's Recap:

The family reunion was mostly a large success. I say mostly because I didn't get to go fishing since I didn't remember to buy a fishing license. However my brother, who always goes fishing on every single camp out that we go on, did go fishing. His license cost him $17 for the day as he lives out of state. He did not catch a fish though. His wife did, which was pretty funny since she has never really been fishing before. My brother almost always manages to catch the biggest fish on whatever camp out we go on, so to have him come back with a fish that his wife caught gave us all a little ammunition against him that weekend. It was pretty good eating though, I must admit. She didn't even try it, since she doesn't like fish to begin with. His $17 fish.
I also tried skim-boarding on the beach there at Deception Pass. If you don't already know what that is, I will tell you: you take a piece of 3/8in plywood, cut it into an oval shape more or less with a pointed end and a flat end. Bend the pointed end up a little and put a bunch of coats of paint and shellac and you have a skim board. I guess it is pretty popular, since I saw 20 other people doing it. I tried it for about 3 hours and gave up, because it seemed like too much effort for a 15 to 20 foot ride, which was about as far as I got it to go. It seemed like the guys that weighed less than 140lbs had much better success at it that us 200+ lb guys.
Another interesting thing that happened was that Ammon decided to sleep through the entire night while we were camping. I'm not sure why he did that, but we may have to go camping more often, if only to get a little more shut-eye.
Then the rest of the week was pretty typical: Sleep work eat sleep sleep eat work, blah blah blah. Nothing of interest to report. Except that we are still recovering from the unpacking process. Meaning that we still haven't put everything away yet. That is also pretty typical. Oh well...

We're going camping

This Labor Day weekend, my family and I are going camping. Right now, even as we speak, Rachel is stressing about what to bring, and what to leave behind. What is the weather going to be like, ad can we trust the local forecast? What make it doubly hard is that she is packing for both herself and Ammon. This will be his first camping trip, and she isn't sure what to bring for him. She wants him to have everything he needs so he wont be too hot during the day or too cold at night, but then again there's the problem of trusting the weather reports. We can't bring everything... For women, this seems to be one of the great struggles in life, "What To Pack?" For me, not so hard. We're gonna be gone three days. So A pair of jeans, plenty of clean underwear and socks, three t-shirts, my fleece sweatshirt and a light jacket. And some shorts. And my swim trunks. And...
Yeah, two hours later and we are still packing. Any questions?

Mowing the Lawn

Today I am supposed to mow the lawn. I'm not a big fan of lawn mowing in general. It's not that I hate it per say, but it's the fact that I have to do it every week or else I'll regret it. That and pruning the photinia hedge that I have. I just don't like the fact that I HAVE to do it. But if I don't, then it ends up being even more difficult and taking even more time and then I like it even less. For instance, I have mowed my front lawn (the one everyone can see) each week. I have not, on theother hand mowed my backyard for about three weeks now and the grass back there is about a foot and a half high. So now I have my work cut out for me. Get it? CUT out for me? No? Whatever. It would help if I got some award or something at the end of mowing the lawn, but nooooo, all I get is the satisfaction of knowing that I'm gonna have to do it all over again next week. And the week after, and the week after that too. And that's not really much of an award is it? In fact, it's more like punishment for having a lawn in the first place. You have to mow it and water it and fertilize it to make it look nice. What a waste. I think my neighbors have it right: rip up the lawn and make the whole space into a flower bed. Put in a few bushes and some flowers and cover the rest with landscaping fabric and beauty bark and forget about it. I'll never do that though because I like grass....