A Sentence I Never Thought I'd Put Together

I was a little rantier than usual last week. I'll try to tone that down this week. When I get going there's no stopping me. Except donuts. Donuts are great. But not Dunkin Donuts, and that's depressing. It's only here in Utah that Dunkin is not good. Other places they're fantastic and I was so excited when they first came here. Then I ate one. Not so excited. I was in JFK airport at 3:30 in the morning and the only thing that was open was a Dunkin Donuts shack, and those donuts were still better than the Dunkin we have in Utah. I was trying to be healthy, so I thought I would get a donut and a banana, thinking the two would cancel each other out. When I picked up the banana the guy behind the counter said, "I just want to let you know that the banana's are $3.50 each, are you OK with that?" I said no and put the banana back. And got another donut for $1. True story. I appreciated the Dunkin Donuts shack employee honesty. I'll never forget that Dunkin Donuts shack employee. Never.

Speaking of donuts I had to put together a sentence I never thought I'd have to put together the other day. We had Lehi Bakery donuts, which are the greatest of all the donuts. The girls were outside playing and I was watching them. They found some ants so they're blood lust was in full swing. Mirinda wanted to kill an ant, but she didn't want to use her fingers. So I'm watching her to see what she'll do. She thinks for a second, and then uses the end of her donut to attempt to squish the ant. I said, "Honey, don't rub your food on the ground." Then I said, "I never thought I'd have to put that sentence together and lob it at another member of my species. Thank you for that." She ate the donut and the ant was find. Win win win.

Priya started preschool this week and loves it. She is really smart and loves to learn. She also still qualifies for early intervention, so she'll be going to preschool 3 days a week and early intervention 2 days a week. Mirinda met her kindergarten teacher this week and really likes her. She starts next week. I'm so depressed that the both of them are going back to school. I'm really trying not to show it. People seem confused when I say that, but seriously I don't want them to lose the ability to be creative and have fun and use their imagination. Education is extremely important, but I never want them to lose the child like innocence. I realize I can't really control that. If you've ever listened to Logical Song by Breakfast in America, that's exactly how I feel. 

I really think one of the issues is we want our kids to be successful so we focus so much on grades and homework. Between that and screen time we're forgetting how to use our imaginations. We don't have the creative outlets that we used to. We end up with kids that can't communicate so they go deeper in their shell. That's my goal I think. To help them learn what they need to learn, but never lose the spark of who they are, and never squash their sense of happiness and wonder. I think we all want that. I often think about the dedication that CS Lewis wrote to his goddaughter Lucy in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe: 

"My Dear Lucy,

        I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it. I shall probably be too deaf to hear, and too old to understand a word you say but I shall still be your affectionate Godfather,”

—C. S. Lewis

That's really what I want. For my kids never to be too old for fairy tales. You can be responsible and should be. Homework must get done. Responsibilities need to be fulfilled, That doesn't mean we need to become unhappy robots in the process, and I really think that comes from fantasy and imagination. I hope that wasn't too ranty, but that's what I mean when I say I'm depressed about my kids going back to school.

We've got a new podcast episode coming out next week. We're reviewing the Biergarten at Lagoon, so please watch for that. Please give a listen and give us a review. We really appreciate it!

Concerning Hobbits

I realized the other day that I'm raising hobbits. These girls are starting to be very hungry. We had 2nd dinner the other day. Both of them had dance class. Mirinda does Bollywood Dancing and Priya is in a dance and tumbling class. They love to do it. I smoked a sirloin roast this week, and they had that with corn on the cob and watermelon. I'm not exactly starving these girls. They ate all their food. After picking Priya up they wanted to go to Costco because some Wonder Woman halloween costumes are there, and they both want to be Wonder Woman for Halloween, so they wanted to show me the costumes. I told them we'd wait until the Halloween stores opened up before buying a costume. It was then they told me they were both hungry. So I told them we'd find some samples, but it was too late and all the sample places had closed up. Mirinda decided she wanted pizza, and Priya decided she wanted a hot dog. I told them they don't eat that much and we'd only buy one of them, but they were insistent. It's like $3.50 for the both of them together, so I figured I would indulge them, thinking I would eat whatever was left. There was nothing left. Priya ate the entire foot long hot dog by herself. She doesn't eat the bun, but still that's impressive. Mirinda downed 90% of her pizza by herself, and got made at me anytime I took a bite. Then before we went to bed they told me they were hungry. At that point I told them they'd had enough. Right now I'm trying to convince them to go as Frodo and Sam for Halloween. We'll see how successful I am. If they do that I'm going to go as Gandalf the Grey, so we'll see how well that goes.
Priya loves her physical therapist because he's funny and likes to joke with her. The problem is she won't do any of the exercises because she likes to make him laugh. Which means I've got two flirty class clowns that like 2nd dinner, and a lot of gray hairs. She still is doing amazingly well. Honestly the only thing that I'm frustrated with right now is that kids are jerks. They really are. Over the last week I've seen two different times when a kid wasn't paying attention, side swiped Priya, and she spun around and fell down. It breaks my heart to see it. I realize that kids aren't always aware of their surroundings, and how the things they do effect other people. Neither of these times were malicious, so I'm not going to start yelling at some strangers kid. It's extremely infuriating because Priya really beats up on herself when she falls down. That's our job to teach her how to pick herself up again, and it's something she's going to have to go through, but sometimes you want to yell and scream, not so much at the kids but at the parents who aren't watching their kids and correcting this behavior. It comes back to entitlement, and we have a real problem with it in our society. And it's everywhere. It's not just one culture or belief system, it is all over the place. We've become obsessed with our phones and how everything effects us, and not how we're effecting other people, and as a result we've become heartless. Get off your phone and see the world around you. I need the reminder too because it's so easy to go to our phones when we're bored.
I'm amazed at how often I'll hear kids talking about Priya's boot that she wears. It's usually little girls because they tend to be more observant. I'm to the point now that when I hear someone talking about the boot I'll kindly tell them what it's for and why she's wearing it. I don't ever want her to feel ashamed about who she is, and what physical limitations she might have been born with. That kids is amazing. Both my kids are. They're both miracles and I couldn't love them more if I tried.
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Thanks for reading! A little ranty today, but I use this platform to get things off my chest that have been bugging me.

Fried Butter and Annoying Kid

Last week I said that the whitest thing I've done in a long time is go to Classic Skating. Since them I've done something even more white. I went to the county fair. I love going to fairs. When you go to a fair you realize that you're actually doing pretty well in life. It's a tremendous ego boost for me, which anyone that knows me knows that is a big problem I have.
This year was a strange fair though. I'm not sure what happened. Every year the fair has livestock and things to do indoors as well as rides and horribly unhealthy fair food. That's what a fair is. Fried butter and cheating death on a 50 year old ride operated by a drunk and possibly homicidal carny. Then if you survive that you get to go and see some cows. This year the Salt Lake County fair has no rides. It's kind of annoying. I think they were worried about the rides taking away from the animals, but come on. If you come to the fair you're probably going to see everything. Every year they talk about discontinuing the fair because no one goes anymore, so let's take away some of the fun aspects of the fair and have a display about honey. Or a table full of legos. The girls still enjoyed it. They rode the ponies twice. Mirinda rode all by herself the second time, and that was a proud father moment. She was so proud of herself. It made me extremely happy. Priya rode as well, but the second time she wanted the cowboy to walk next to her. She was very flirty. Yep, I have two very flirty girls. I will not allow country music in the house, however.
We still ate some unhealthy food, but it was from a food truck. It was a pizza cone, which is exactly what it sounds like. It was good, but took 10 minutes to cook. I'm not entirely sure how they make any money.
At Lagoon a Beach this week I had a strange experience. Mirinda was riding the water slides, and there was a kid at the bottom of the water slide who was stopping people from going until he wanted them to go. Mirinda was coming down the slide, so I told him to move. He said no cause he was keeping people safe. I told him it wasn't his job and to get out of the way cause my daughter is coming down. He did move, but he moved to the top of the slide and started picking up kids to putting them on the slide. Even if the parents were there he would take the kid out of the parents hands and put them on the slide. I told at him to get out of the way, and he said he was making sure everyone is safe. Then he tried to pick up my daughter, and I yelled at him to get his hands off of her. It kind of freaked him out, but he didn't stop. I went to the lifeguard and she basically said "Yeah, he likes to do that" and walked away. We were there with another family, and Tiff went to go down the slide with her daughter, and she told him (much nicer than I did) that it wasn't his job, and the parents were taking care of the safety of their children. So he left, but he had what I could only assume were his brother and sister start to monitor the slide. I finally had to leave the area cause I was going to start getting really antagonistic. The real issue was he was slowing everyone down and picking up kids he didn't know. I realize he was young, but seriously kid. He was probably 11 or 12. Old enough to realize not to do that sort of thing. It was annoying. Interferers and busy bodies will be the downfall of us all. Or at least be slightly annoying.
Snooty and Slackjaw are on Itunes now! We've had quite a few listens. Please go and listen and rate us. It's a lot of fun to do the podcast, and we'd love to have even more people listening. Go and try some of the places we reviewed and let us know what you think. We just recorded another one the other day. The place we review is called Cafe Wave. It's in South Jordan. The chips. That's all I'll say about it. It will be up next week.
As always, thanks for reading. Keep watching the skis.

1987 Called

I did the whitest thing I've done in a long time last night. I went to Classic Skating. It was for a birthday party for one of Mirinda's best friends. It was fun, but man it was white. I've got to hand it to them though, that place was hopping. The medley of tunes from The Greatest Showman was a tough sell. It was also like 130 degrees in there. There's nothing quite like seeing a grown white man doing the gangnam style dance dance while drenched in sweat and on roller blades. The girls rode on scooters, and they enjoyed it. I laughed. A lot.
Classic needs to step it up with some of their employees though, or have them do different jobs. One of the guys on the skating rink was creeping me out to no end. It took me two hours to figure out he worked there. How do I describe this guy? I think 1987 was a really good year for him. At the end of the year he brought his friends and family together, and told them he was done moving forward. 1987 would always be the year for him, and he hoped they would support him in that. He had lights on his skates, acid washed jeans, a referee shirt, moustache, and kind of a flat top. He was skating all alone for like two hours just watching people. It was really freaking me out, and I kept my girls pretty close in case Chester (that was my name for him) came to close. I was ready to lay Chester out. Then I saw the other employees had referee shirts on too, and realized he was some kind of crack security squad for the skating rink. That's a good business model. Let's find the creepiest guy possible and put him out on the skating rink with the teenagers.
The night was fun though, and the girls loved to be at the birthday party.
Priya has her new boot, and she is adjusting to it pretty well. It's heavier, so she still drags that leg a little, but she is still going to physical therapy and working on it. What worries me is how hard she is on herself. She fell down a few times yesterday when she was on the scooter, and she kept telling me she couldn't do it. I kept explaining to her that she was doing great, and everyone falls sometimes. I'm glad she's determined, but holy crap girl cut yourself some slack.
I took Mirinda to see Spider Man this week. It didn't go well. She wasn't scared, just bored. We left after an hour. Luckily and unluckily it was $5 Tuesday. It was cheap so I didn't mind leaving, but I really hate what movie theaters have become. It used to be an experience. Now it's a chance for people to show just how oblivious they are to the rest of the world. I honestly blame cell phones. We've become so self obsessed as a people. I'm always amazed when someone will stop in the middle of a walk way to look at their phone, and then get made when you are trying to get past them. We do that in cars too, and then it's even worse. Honestly we need to start focusing more on how am I effecting other people. That's a question we each need to ask ourselves. Not constantly, cause that's dumb, but more often. End of rant.
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As always thanks for reading!
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