Boys at the Park with Grandpa & Grandma Brimley

My parents came to visit a few weeks ago. We did a lot of fun things - one of them was going to the park one evening. The "Tumbleweed" park is gigantic and full of fun things for he kids to do. This evening in particular was one of the first cool ones (90 degrees) and nobody was at the park, so the boys had the run of it. Thanks for the cute pictures, dad!

I love the pure enjoyment on Parker's face in the slide picture! I just love my cute boys!

Parker's Post

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Love Parker!

What People Do While Driving

Today, while out with the boys, we were driving down the street when something metal in the car in front of us caught my eye - the guy in front of us was playing a trumpet while driving his Mercedes Benz!!! I kept looking to make sure that I was not imagining things - nope, it was a trumpet all right. We past by the guy when he turned left and there was the gleaming instrument in his hands! This was the all time oddest thing I have ever seen someone do while driving . . . maybe he is quite the multi-tasker?!

Later I was telling my mom about what we had seen and she starting telling me of an odd thing she saw last week while driving - she saw a guy trying to smoke, drive, and talk on his cell phone all at the same time. She said that it was interesting watching him try to balance everything when he needed to drop ash from his cigarette out the window. Wow, what has happened in this world to people driving and only driving - is there some dangerous expectation that we should all be trying to accomplish two plus things at once while attempting to safely arrive at a destination?!

Sunday we went to ASU campus to let the boys run around (you'll hear more about the experience later) - when Andrew and I were driving home we both mentioned how amazed we were to see students riding their bikes and trying to either talk on their cell phones or, heaven help them, text! What has changed in society!?

So, I ask each of you - what is the oddest thing you have seen someone trying to do while driving, riding a bike, etc? I am sure each of you have some interesting things to add.

Weekend - from mid-October

I found this draft of a post dated 10-18-09. I guess things got a little hectic.

"Cole to Lowe's with oversized sandals that look like mine and his hardhat that says Boss on the front, on backwards

hanging pictures and things

yardwork

campus - 1 x fountain, 3 x crash"

The trip to Lowe's was a blast. I love that he has no idea that he is wearing a goofy outfit and that he just enjoys himself. Sometimes it is really tough to keep a straight face when people look at me. But half the fun is acting like there is nothing out of the ordinary. Like when I went to Target with a girlfriend and he little brother years ago and he was wearing an actual army helmet around inside the store.

The other fun item of note here is the campus line. We took the boys to ASU campus to run around after sunday dinner. It is free of cars, and for the most part on a sunday night, people. Cole fell into the fountain in front of the college of business about 4 minutes after we got there. Mindy gave him her socks and we wrung out his shorts. He never did put his shirt back on.

Mesa Temple Painting

Because I just wrote about cleaning the Mesa temple, I wanted to post this new temple painting that my brother just finished!

For those of you who don't know, my brother is an amazingly talented painter (I'm not opposed to bragging!). Jeff, my brother, recently started painting the LDS temples. He has done quite a few. Tomorrow I actually get to see the original of the Mesa temple!!! (There is nothing quite like the originals!) Jeff has several of his paintings here in the Phoenix area at a Scottsdale art gallery. Tomorrow, 4 temple paintings are being dropped off at our home so that I can deliver them to the art gallery! I am very proud of my brother - he has taken a long road to get where he is at!

Enjoy the amazing painting of the Mesa Temple!

Here are the other three paintings that Jeff just finished: (Los Angeles, Idaho Falls, & Washington DC):

Ode to Sticky Floors

An original by Mindy Sue Butler


Sticky floors, sticky floors,
Will you ever go away?!

Sticky floors, sticky floors,
Will there ever be a day …

When I can walk on you and not stick on through,
But glide peacefully on my way? (Deplorable sippy cups!!!)

Oh sticky floors, sticky floors
Will you ever go away?!

The Weekly Ongoings!

We are loving Phoenix - not the heat mind you - but the ward and the area are great! I am quite amazed at how small the world is when one is a member of the Church: Mary Shumway, a good friend down the street, was two years ahead of me at Timpview, Liz and Mike Fuller were in Mark and Deanna's ward for quite a while (even knew Ryan Sipherd and Dave Gill), a nanny for Blake Roney's family lives down the block, a neat lady in the ward's mother lives in Chad and Laura's ward, I baby sat for our Bishop's cousins (his aunt and uncle lived in the PV 4th ward) . . . it just goes on and on! We are having fun being involved in many play groups and activities. People actually act like they want to have us around here, unlike in Tucson.


Here are a few of the notable happenings from this past week:

The boys have each learned to say "Happy Halloween" and "Trick or Treat", they just have no idea what they mean or are used for. It will be fun come Trunk or Treat night to see if they catch on to what the phrases mean! (The ward Trunk or Treat is the weekend before Halloween)

Side note: okay, so does anyone else have pets who eat plastic?!!! I just had to chase Jack around the house so that I could get a long licorice wrapper out of his mouth - half swallowed mind you!

Back to what you all really came here to read.

As some of you may know, we have all our furniture back - soooo amazingly wonderful! And with having it all back, we have our fridge. Our fridge happens to be a water dispenser type. The boys, not having been around the fridge for almost two years, are intrigued by it. Cole has quickly learned how it all works and is apt to ask for a cup so that he can get ice (his favorite feature) and water. (Cole also always makes sure that the cats always get ice with their water!) Parker, on the other hand, has quickly learned that he is still a bit on the short side to, what might be his words, get that thing to work! But, Parker is not a quitter, he has learned to find other ways, and the other day that is exactly what he did! . . . I walked into the kitchen to find Parker in the middle of a large puddle and a bat in his hand! That little stinker is a smarty pants, I will give him that one!

Because it has been so hot here and we have tried to get the boys out to play as much as possible, we always carry Gatorade with us. Cole has taken a great liking to the stuff and is always asking for it. The funny thing is that he calls it "Gay Gay". To cut huge costs with the stuff, we have found that the powered Gatorade is much cheaper and works very well in the used bottles. The only downside to this is that Cole thinks he can then make his own - luckily I have caught him each time before he actually started the pouring!

I had the opportunity to go help clean the Mesa temple last Thursday night. What an interesting way to see the temple, especially one I have never been in before! I was very impressed by the beauty and uniqueness of the Mesa temple. Because it was my first time there, one of the night custodians took me on a detailed tour of the temple - very amazing! The one sad thing is that when they updated the Mesa temple in the endowment rooms for the movies, they painted over three of the four walls where the original murals had been. Even though it was nice that they left one wall, it makes me sad for what was lost so that there could now be three white walls - sigh! The baptismal font is beautiful (at least they did not touch those paintings!). I have never seen a temple with a font like Mesa's. The oxen are done in the same materials as the outside of the temple. I got to know much of the bottom 10 inches of the temple well as I cleaned chair legs in the sealing rooms, washed down baseboard in the basement, and literally scrubbed the scrub clean off magic erasures/sponges on the grout and tile in the men's changing rooms of baptismal font! Even amidst all the cleaning, it was a really neat night!

Well, I best wrap this up so that I can go to bed! I will add more later! Love and Smiles!

Cole the Squirrel

Cole is a squirrel! He likes his room straightened up each night, and if we do not take the time to help him do so, what ever was on the floor ends up on his bed. Some nights Cole will even go so far as to open his door several times - when he should be in bed - and one-by-one places outside his door whatever he does not think should be on his bed (it is pretty funny to watch if you are sitting outside his door listening to hear what he is up to!).

For the pictures below, this particular night Cole had more on his bed then I had ever seen (which tells you the state that his room was in before he went to bed!) I should also add that some nights Cole will collect blankets from around the house and also insist that he should sleep with them! (I think that there are four extra blankets on his bed this night)


Notice also the way that Cole is sleeping in the following picture. (Andrew tries to sleep like this most nights - he just tries to do so on my side of the bed so he oft times does not actually get his leg off the bed!) I love my boys!!!

Previous post...and these last two weeks.

So I found that previous post in the drafts when I logged in just now. It has been almost two weeks. The stats test is done and returned. I got an 86 on it. I was thrilled, the average was 80. I could describe the grades in statistics language, but I won't. That week turned out to be an insane one. Something that Tuesday was nuts, oh yes, I went to Tucson for the day and I wasn't able to do much of my preparation for class on Wednesday. Then the teacher had me be a case grader for the in-class case discussion which meant that I had a paper due within 24 hours of the completion of the discussion. I had a hectic day on Thursday which included a trip to one of the plant nurseries that was closing a location and having a huge sale. I then got sick that evening right as I finished my paper. It was a long night. Friday was a bit of a wild day since Mindy and I were both feeling lousy. We both took long naps that afternoon. Parker was asleep at the same time and luckily Cole didn't do anything horrible to himself or the house during that time. On Saturday morning our HT took me to the nursery and we got the plants for the yard. We got them for about 1/4 of the list price. I tried digging the hole for the first one when I got home and the ground was like concrete. It was mechanically compacted clay. So I headed to Home Depot to rent a chipping hammer (think small electric 25-40lb jackhammer) to dig the holes. I was still feeling lousy and weak, so I had to take a break about every 10 minutes. We got the holes dug by about 3pm and I returned the hammer. I then had to write my portion of the project paper for my Organizational Behavior class, shower and get to a Stake Center in Tempe for Priesthood session. Immediately after that I had a team meeting for the OB paper.
Sunday was much more civilized.
I had a case study paper due on Wednesday so that took a chunk of time on Monday and Tuesday. I was on campus studying from about 3-8pm on Tuesday. Then on Tuesday afternoon Ledcor CMI called and left a message for me on Mindy's cell phone. CMI is the Civil, Mining and Infrastructure branch of Ledcor. They have an office in Phoenix and I had sent my resume to them in August and never heard back. I called them on Wednesday and the guy said he wanted to talk to me on Thursday. I went to their office on Thursday and the guy asked me if I could create project schedules. I said yes and he started talking about all the work they need done, and that we would have a meeting on Friday to discuss a specific schedule. So I now have two part time jobs. We feel incredibly blessed because we didn't know what we were going to do when the Tucson job wrapped up.
I had an OB project meeting from 4-8pm Friday night, and another one today from 1-5pm. We've now got it all written and making sense. Now we just need to polish up the references and that kind of stuff.
This morning I took the boys to find a sprinkler supply store. On our way to the store we passed a motorcycle dealership that seemed to have a lot going on, so we stopped at it on the way back. They were have a big sale and the factory truck was there and they were doing demo rides. I signed up and then took the boys home and sped back there on my bike. I got to test ride a BMW RT1200R. It was really comfortable, I just wish I'd had more time to get comfortable on it and really enjoy it. Maybe if my dad listens to me, he'll buy one and then I can borrow his.
Please email Mindy asking for the posts about the boys...there is lots to tell and she's had all kinds of fun with them recently.