August 9, 2009
Christian starts school tomorrow and has been on a quest for the past week to find the perfect three ring binder. It is good to see him excited to start school. Karl and Christian went to ‘meet the teacher’ night and met his teacher Ms. Hawkins. She seems nice and really sharp. When Karl and Christian returned from ‘meet the teacher’, Lori who had stayed home with Vayden, asked several questions about it. Now Lori is always quite the inquisitor asking many questions about things. One of the questions she asked Karl was “What does his teacher look like?” Karl in a moment of stupidity and without thinking answered “She is kind of hot.” Let’s just say it is very doubtful that Karl will be attending any parent teacher conferences this year. On second thought, you have to wonder if maybe Karl did think about his answer after all . . . those parent teacher conferences so boring.
It has been hot here in Arizona and no one has wanted to go outside much.
Very Vayden
Vayden continues to add to her little personality. She has a bunch of new faces and sounds. Whenever someone does something she approves of or likes she claps her hands. She now points her little finger at you and wags it lecturing in some language that sounds middle-eastern in origin. She is quite the adorable little character. Now that is easy to say since we are her parents and we are bias. But everywhere we go she makes friends and attracts attention. This past week we went to dinner at Black Angus and the hostess asked if she could keep her during our dinner. Although tempting she stayed with us and made friends with the tables around us. While Lori was at work Karl, Christian and Vayden went to McDonald’s and several of the workers came out to the dining area to talk to her and brought her little free stuffed animals. Whether it is the doctor’s office or Walmart, people seem to be drawn to her magnetic little personality. Vayden loves people and actually reaches out to them first many times.
Vayden has also become very physical lately. She loves to just roll, tumble, fall and wrestle. She is freakishly strong too. She hasn’t been working any on walking. Why would she since she can now crawl faster than we can walk. Too bad there is not a baby Olympics, we know she could take the gold in the 50 meter crawl.
Completely Christian
Christian started football this past week and we are really proud of him. He practices everyday from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Christian is taking football very seriously. It has been as hot as 115 degrees this week and he keeps asking to go early. He is listening to everything his coach is telling him including eating properly and getting extra rest. Christian seems to really like the intense practices. Baseball had a lot of down time for Christian’s personality, but football keeps him really focused. He never complains and when his coach tells him to do something, he does it! This is pretty amazing given that his coach is telling him to do some pretty difficult things, especially in 115 degree heat. Christian has not complained once. Karl is particularly proud of him. It seems to stir something in a father to see his son being so focused tough. The coach has run them a lot this week and he will occasionally specifically ask Christian after several laps to sprint to the front. Christian is already tired and covered in sweat, but gives it his all and sprints to the front.Christians coach looks, talks and acts like the comedian George Lopez. He is pretty entertaining. He tells the boys things like, “Some coaches will lie to you and tell you it isn’t going to hurt, but I am not going to lie to you. When you get hit by four guys from the other team trying to tackle you, it is going to hurt! I don’t care if you cry, I cried when I played football. You can cry all you want, just as long as you get up and get back to huddle ready for the next play. If you are going to be crying a lot just bring extra water so you don’t get dehydrated ok.”
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Family Stories
Christian or Howard Hughes
We finally got around to getting Christian his Star Wars ship this week. Grandma Jan and Grandpa Duane had promised him a Star Wars ship if he got good grades in school for the whole year. Now Christian has many Star Wars ships (probably more than any one boy should have), but he has never exhibited this behavior with one before. After he got the ship out of its box he wiped it down with toilet paper to get all the finger prints off of it. He continued to clean it for the next hour or so meticulously. Finally he wrapped it completely in toilet paper like a mummy to keep it from getting any fingerprints on it. Lori and Karl were just watching exchanging glances at each other wondering what prompted this odd behavior.
