Mr. Perfect is famous!

Well, sort of. His name has appeared on a sign. Here's the proof:

(Look at the Structural Engineer section.)

Way to go, Mr. Perfect!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

I know it's been a while since I blogged. Life gets like that. We had a wonderful Christmas, with a fun Christmas Eve Brunch with all the kiddos. The girls brought their boyfriends, and a fun time was had by all. Presents were opened, food was eaten, games were played, and quality time together happened. What more can you ask for from a holiday? Not much. Game Boy also came over after church on Sunday to see what we gave each other and basically hang out. Hanging out is fun.

New Year's will probably be on the quiet side. Game Boy will be with us for movies, games, food, whatever. If we seem boring to others, at least we're having fun.

I hope you all have a save and happy New Year!

Another new birthday tradition for Mr. Perfect

So, a couple of weeks ago, on Mr. Perfect's birthday, we went to The Forgotten Carols. This year, he also asked if we could catch Voice Male's Christmas concert. Well, I love their music almost as much as Mr. Perfect does, so of course I said "YES!" and we bought the tickets right then.

Oh, yeah. This will definitely be a new Christmas tradition for us, whether or not it's part of Mr. Perfect's birthday or just something we do this time each year.

I love spoiling my man. He so deserves it.

Papa Carrot

So, I've been making mini carrot bread loaves to give out for Christmas. I found this amazingly wonderful loaf pan at Orson Gygi (highly, highly recommended store, and no, they are not paying me to say this). It makes 9 mini loaves at one time. And they all bake at the same speed! Just look!

Well, as you may have read, we had a bumper crop of carrots this year in our garden. We weren't able to harvest all of them before the cold weather, but Mr. Perfect knew what to do. You cover the plants with leaves or tomato vines and you can pick them throughout the winter. In fact, the ground wasn't even frozen under the mulch. Hurrah for our side!

And so it was that I discovered the father of all carrots. It was HUGE! Not just huge; massively huge. Well, at least for us. In the following photo, the red pen next to it is just a standard sized pen.

Isn't he a beauty? And don't worry, I picked enough that he was not sacrificed to the deliciousness of carrot bread. He will probably end up as sticks or slices for a salad.

A Grand Experiment

Okay, I got an early Christmas present. It came very early so I could use it at the Christmas Recital, which turned out to be a really good thing. The place were we hold the recitals usually records them so I can give the parents a CD of their child playing. Well, this year, when I got to the hall, they told me that their recording equipment wasn't working and they wouldn't be able to do the recording. Voi la! We pulled out the Christmas present, and were partially saved.

You see, the new present is a lovely, high-def, fully-1080p camcorder. Yes yes yes yes yes yes!

So this experiment is to see if I can put the movies on here and have them work. I won't post the one of the recital. It's just too big. I don't even know if it will fit on a DVD so I can give it to the parents yet. But here's one of Mr. Perfect discussing our cabling problems. You see, the camcorder takes various cables, one of which is HDMI so you can hook it up to things like high-def T.V.s or an HDMI-capable laptop. It took us three cables before we got it right and could watch the videos on the T.V. Hurrah for our side!

Anywho, here's the vid from YouTube:

Now here it is imported straight into the post:

Hmmm...the color is not as good, but I can control the display size. I think I like that trade off.

Now I just have to figure out how to make DVDs for each of the piano families...

Genius Child #3 missionary pictures

Geinus Child #3 is currently serving an LDS mission to Boston, Massachusetts. He loves it. He loves the area. He loves the people. He loves teaching about Jesus Christ.

Here are couple of pictures he recently sent home. You can see the joy in his face. He's a great man. And though we miss him very much, we know that he is in the right place, doing the right thing.

We love you, Genius Child #3. We know that Heavenly Father loves you and is pleased with you.

Wordless Wednesday

Mr. Perfect's new birthday tradition

We've started a new tradition for Mr. Perfect's birthday. Last year, I bought him tickets to The Forgotten Carols. It was the first time either of us had seen it. We loved it. It made us laugh. It made us cry. It is seriously better than Cats, and we will be seeing it again and again.

Now, anyone who knows me, knows that combining Mr. Perfect's birthday with Christmas is a HUGE no-no. Don't even think about giving him a birthday gift and telling him "Oh, that's for Christmas as well". That's a sure way to be shunned for a good year or two. But The Forgotten Carols is something he loves and wants. So, we went again this year. And it was really nice, because it was the 20th anniversary for the show. So, we broke down and bought the new CD. We have the original one from 1995 or 1996, but this has a couple new songs and different singers. Some I will always love more from the original, but others I like better on the new one.

The only thing that made us sad was that we went on a night that the Cottonwood High School choir didn't sing, so we didn't get to see All Strings Attached. And she's a senior this year, so she won't be in it next year. *sigh

Anyway, back to birthday stuff. We went on Mr. Perfect's actual birthday this year. I don't know that we'll always be able to do that, but it will be nice to try. Any year it falls on a Sunday is out (they don't perform on Sunday), but other than that, I think we could do it.

And the fun isn't over yet. Tonight, we'll be heading to Most Happy Girl's parental home for dinner, with Drama Queen and Game Boy along for the fun.

How cute are they?

Okay, I just couldn't resist these photos of Game Boy and Drama Queen. We were at a family Christmas party, and they were just being...well...themselves. (Especially love the second one.)

Life is stranger than fiction

Last night, we saw the oddest and coolest thing. We were stopped at the Trax train crossing at Redwood Road and 8000 South waiting for the train to pass when Mr. Perfect asked me, "Is that a deer?" Sure enough, there was a deer running up the track followed closely by the train. After the crossing arms raised, we were trying to remember if it was a buck. Mr. Perfect wondered if it was an escaped reindeer, fleeing a petting zoo or Christmas festival somewhere. Could have been. However, I did not see a red glowing nose.

If it had been in a book, I wold have though "Yeah, right." Now I'll have to put it in a book.

(P.S. For those of you wondering, no animals were harmed in the writing of this blog post. The deer was able to avoid being hit by the train and quickly left the tracks after being herded through the crossing gates.)