Surprise! Surprise!

Several months ago, Julie & I decided to surprise our girls and purchase tickets to the Taylor Swift concert in Salt Lake City. As our non-girl child had heard enough Taylor Swift to create various mash-up parodies, to both express his desire to never hear a Taylor Swift song again and to annoy his sisters (mostly annoy his sisters), we decided not to buy him a ticket. That meant only one parent would "get" to go to the concert.

Fast forward to tonight, concert night.

6:30 - Julie leaves to pick-up Katie from her drama class and Sarah from a birthday party, neither of which are suppose to end until 7pm. I start making frosting for the brownies that Jordan must take to his Robotics club-thing meeting. (It's some sort of competition. The team name is "The Flying Flatulent Bunnies." The parent-coach didn't know what flatulent meant, but assumed it was better than the Flying Farting Bunnies. Jordan suggested the change.)

6:45 - Julie and the girls are on the freeway. Sarah believes that she is going to her drama class. She has not noticed that they are going in the opposite direction of the drama class. I am trying to decide whether I can use margarin instead of butter in the frosting recipe (I learned last time that you can't always do that). If I have to use butter, I will need to go back downstairs and get some out of the freezer. I decide that would be too much work, besides, what do a bunch of Flying Flatulent Bunnies care if the frosting is made from butter or margarin?

6:55 - Julie is looking for parking. Katie and Sarah trying to figure out why it is taking so long to get to drama class. I drop Jordan off at his club-thing. I ask if it is customary for adults to stay for the whole thing or just drop off their FF Bunny and leave. Jordan shrugs his shoulders. I leave.

7:00 - The concert is suppose to start at 7. I call Julie. She has parked. Katie has taken off her shoes. Julie tells her to hurry. Sarah asks what kind of errand requires them to hurry.

7:10 - Sarah and Katie see Energy Solutions Arena (f.k.a the Delta Center) and are upset. "You're taking us to a BASKETBALL GAME!"

7:15 - Sarah and Katie see large trailers with super-sized pictures of certain pop-star. Euphoric pandemonium erupts.

7:16 - Sarah calls me. "Dad, Dad, WE ARE GOIN TO TAYLOR SWIFT!! Ican'twaittotellallofmyfreinds." Has the concert started? "No, the ticket guy said we didn't have to hurry because it’s just cover bands until Taylor Swift starts at 8:30 and she will play for TWO WHOLE HOURS! Are you coming too?" No, no I'm not. "Oh, that’s too bad." Yes, yes it is. "Isn't Mom lucky?" Yes, very lucky.

7:45 - I start blogging. I have another thirty minutes until I have to go pick up a Flying Flatulent Bunny.

The World Has Gone Crazy

It snowed today. I drove to work in a blizzard. It’s May 24th. I was sustained as the second counselor in our ward Bishopric yesterday. Related? I think so.

Sarah's first words to me after sacrament meeting were, "Dad, does this mean you're old now?"

I asked who had put her up to this and she looked at me funny. "Dad you're the one who always said that people go up on the stand when they are old enough to sleep through meetings."

I'm sure those weren't my exact words.

After a long day yesterday, I was chatting with Jordan and talking a little bit about the changes my new assignment will mean for our family. I asked him if he had any questions.

“Why didn’t we have dessert?”

At least some things never change.

Live From New York...

So I've been in the city the last couple of days on business and have a few observations.

If New York is so influential in the fashion and business worlds, why haven’t they made comfortable running shoes out of patent leather that you could wear to work other than on casual Fridays? Perhaps everyone in New York has so many calluses, bunions and podiatrists no one here would buy them.

There are far too many pretzel & hot dog vendors relative to the number of Mr. Swirlee ice cream trucks. I wandered all over midtown last night and every street vendor was selling hot dogs and pretzels. I did finally find one lonely ice cream truck, but she was in the middle of a call on her cell phone and out of everything chocolate. At least I could still get a cherry-dipped Merlin’s Beard. It says a lot about a city that hot dog and pretzel vendors out number the ice cream vendors by more than 10 to 1. (This is a severe penalty to New York's livability score, let me tell you.)

There are so many people here that right now some one just like you is in Time Square taking a picture of a 20 foot, blue Elvis M&M. The real you would have preferred the picture of the grungy 6 foot Elmo, but you are one-of-a-kind. (I really mean that.)

A Late Night Conversation

It was after 9pm and so I went to investigate the light emanating from underneath a closed bedroom door. The following conversation ensued:

Jordan (sheepishly): "You found me!"

Me (trying to discourage repeat behavior): "I will always find you."

Jordan: "Aah! You stalker!"

Of all the various potential parenting conversations that have ever passed through my mind, none of them ever went quite like this.

The Difference Between (Pre-Teen) Boys and Girls

Julie was quizzing Jordan about girls in his class trying to find out whom he might "like." After getting nowhere, she moved on to girls he thought were "nice." Sarah was also very attentive to the whole conversation.

Sarah: "Yes, Jordan, nice girls like me. I'm nice."

Sarah: "Hey don't roll your eyes at me!"

The line of questioning continued. Trying to make a point to Julie about the futility of the whole conversation, I asked Jordan if he knew who in the sixth grade was wearing make-up.

Jordan: "I don't know, who?"

Sarah (exasperated): "You don't even get it! That's why girls wear make-up; to attract boys. Geesh."

I'm so glad they don't get it.

Valentine's Boxes

I just wasn't up to it this year, so when child #2 wanted to make her box into a puppy, I sold her on making it more abstract, with various shapes in lieu of actual, realistic puppy parts. She bought into the "Picasso's Love Puppy" concept and she seemed genuinely pleased with the final product.


I told her I thought no one else would have ever seen anything like it. I certainly hadn't.



Gratefully, nearly two weeks have passed without any obvious signs of emotional scarring, well not from this any way. Given my track record, that really is an accomplishment.

Because I Didn't Kill Him the First Time...

The unmentionable child has done it again. This time it was Monday evening, during dinner, where it came out that Child 0 had a solar system project and that he was making a stop-motion movie using LEGOs to complete the project. All well and good, until two fateful questions: ‘when is it due?’ and ‘how long have you known about it?’ Apparently it didn’t occur to Child 0 that he had scouts tomorrow night and that he still had to develop the storyline, film it, edit it and then render it before he could actually complete the assignment.

So late Tuesday evening the cinematography is mostly complete and I ask Child 0 if the movie needs dialogue so he can discuss the key elements that had to be included in order to get any credit for the assignment. “Oh, I hadn’t thought about that.” Child 0 went to bed around 1am; I got to bed around 3am. Julie got said child up again around 6am so he could complete the written portion of his assignment.



When he got his grade, I wanted to scream and not in a good way. (He got 100% on the project.)