Driving

I'm fairly laid back about most things, but there are a few areas of my life where I'm pretty uptight. One of these is driving. I like to leave the line as soon as the light turns green. I get pretty annoyed when those ahead of me don't. I like to drive at least 5 over, especially when the speed limit is ridiculous, like 35 on a 5 lane road (2 lanes each way and a middle lane).

The other year, we were stopped at a light. If there's an open lane, I normally take it even if I have to turn the opposite direction soon thereafter. I figure If I can't beat them off the line, they'll be going fast enough that there will be separation between them and the car behind them and I can squeeze on in. I was with Suzy, and I was looking out the driver side window in an attempt to watch the light so I could tell when it would turn Red in anticipation of mine turning green.

I was successful in my endeavorer, but Suzy made a comment about at least being discrete about it when checking out other women. It was then I realized that while I had been staring steadfastly out my window, a car had pulled up with a woman in it. Suzy and I had a good laugh after I explained what had really been going on.

Bad Habits

One of my bad habits is to always try to seem like I'm listening even when I'm really not. The evidence of this bad habit is found in my responses. One of my common responses when I didn't hear what Suzy says is "I Love you". I guess I've figured out over the years that that response is relatively safe.

Well, this morning I was upstairs giving the kids a bath as Suzy was headed out the door to a meeting. The kids were of course noisy. I heard her go out the door, then come back in and yell something up the steps. My response? " I love you, bye!".

When Suzy got home, she said, "So, you didn't hear me when I was headed out the door, did you?"

I fessed up at this point. She then let me know that she wasn't coming back in just to say goodbye.

I had been in her purse last night looking for something, and had moved her keys from her purse to the counter in my efforts (something I've done in the past). She got out to the car and realized that she didn't have her keys.

What had she yelled up the stairs? In an exasperated tone, it was apparently, "When you take my keys out of my purse, will you PLEASE put them back!"

Quick Quips

Faith will often say as she's getting ready to go to the bathroom, "Please get out, I need my private seat (privacy)".

Kate and Faith recently watched some type of fairy movie where someone must have said "Faith Trust and Pixie Dust". They've been repeating this for the last few days. During Lunch time, I was in the kitchen while Kate and Faith were talking. They had just been saying it again, when Faith said, "Hey, that's me!" ("Faith").

Kate, in quite the supercilious manner, "No Faith, Faith means to believe in Jesus. So, it means Believe in Jesus, and trust in Pixie dust."

Some Statistics

I've been working on my upcoming lesson (Enlarge the place of thy tent - Isaiah 54–56; 63–65). Because of the reference to Stakes, I thought I'd do a little research on Church growth and the growth of stakes (and Temples). I found some interesting trends.

The blue in this graph is the number of Stakes. The red the Number of members per Stakes (actually I put stakes and districts together). I find it interesting that there seems to have been a policy change at some point to allow a larger number of people per stake, and you can see the up-tick in the red line, and the slower growth of the # of stakes in the blue line.

Church membership growth has been mostly linear over the past 30 years or so.

Its cool to see the huge growth in the number of temples in such a short period of time.

I will go, I will do

I was asking the girls some questions the other day. You can tell that Faith has been listening to the things we teach, but she hasn't quite put everything together in its proper place yet. I'll see if I can get the video up this weekend, but a couple of highlights:

Me, "Faith, who's your favorite prophet?"

Faith, "Jesus Moroni"

Suzy, "Faith, what's your favorite story in the Book of Mormon"

Faith, "Ammon goes and gets the plates"

Squeezable

Inscription from the Top package of Charmin.

Inscription from the bottom package of Charmin.

We've had the bottom package of Charmin sitting in our garage for quite a while. We recently purchased the top package of Charmin. I ended up putting one on top of the other for no particular reason. Well, a few days ago as I was walking by, I noticed something interesting. They both claimed to have "30 Jumbo rolls" of toilet paper. Yet one package was significantly smaller than the other.

If you'll notice, the Top package says "Equal to 83 regular rolls". The bottom says "Equal to 75 regular rolls"

Now that would be okay if the package with more toilet paper was equal to the 83 rolls. Such is not the case! The top package has 866sq ft of TP. The bottom, 937sq ft.

Either someone randomly assigns the "equal too X number of rolls", or else Charmin regular rolls went through a drastic size shrink. You probably already did the math in your head, but that amounts to a 17% shrink of the regular roll size, and an 8% shrink of the Jumbo rolls.

The Human Fly

We have been besieged with flies of late. It seems they've been proliferating all over Boise. One of our "favorite" activities is to kill the few that find their way into our home.

Faith was sitting by Suzy, twirling Suzy's hair as she often does when she's tired. Well, Suzy jokingly said...hmm....I feel a fly in my hair! Faith just looked askance at her. A minute later, she moved to Suzy's back and Suzy, hoping she'd catch on, said, "Now the fly is on my back!".

Faith promptly jumped up and ran out of the room. She came back holding a book. With which she proceeded to use to hit Suzy on the back, killing the "fly". Suzy burst out laughing as she realized what had just happened.

bobbing for apples

Various and Sundry

Something we commonly say to Faith,

"Faith, don't fall out of your chair."

Why you may ask? Because Faith will sometimes fall out of her chair. Like the other night. Twice.
She also runs into walls sometimes. Just the other day, she was pouting in my closet, I went in there, and she attempted to run around me. Unfortunately, around me was the wall, which she promptly ran right into.

Kate wanted to go into the backyard, but Faith was standing with her back to the door and wouldn't move. They started arguing and pushing, and Suzy stopped them and said "Let's redo this nicely instead".
Kate obliges, runs back out of the room, then back to the door and sweetly asks, "Faith, can you please move?" Faith says NO twice (They tried it this way twice). Then Suzy says, Faith, why don't you play Kate's part. Faith immediately says "Okay!". So she runs out the room, with Kate's back to the door and asks sweetly, "Kate, can you please open the door." Kate nicely opens the door and they both go outside.

I think we're going to have to remember that technique for other times.

Kate and Suzy were talking.
Kate, "I wish Papa didn't have to work, then he could stay home all day."
Suzy, "Well, he has to get work in order to get Money."
Kate, "I wish Money just fell from the sky, then Papa wouldn't have to work at that golf job."
Suzy, "What golf job?"
Kate, "You know, where he has to golfing all the time."

Suzy politely informed her that he actually did that for fun.

Boys are like Dogs

Kate keeps asking hard to answer questions about why Jace is "different" as she sees his diaper changed. Suzy was talking to her about it, saying that's what makes boys boys and yes, girls are different. Then after a short pause, Kate pops out with "Boys are kinda like dogs."

Suzy attempts to clarify, "Yes, boy dogs also have (insert name for man parts here), like boys do."

Kate, looking a bit perplexed, "No, they just both try to chase you if you scream and run."