Rah! Rah! Rah Rah Rah!

"Rise all loyal Cougars and hurl your challenge to the foe.

We will fight, day or night, rain or snow.
Loyal, strong, and true
Wear the white and blue.
While we sing, get set to spring.
Come on Cougars it's up to you. Oh!

Chorus:
Rise and shout, the Cougars are out
along the trail to fame and glory.
Rise and shout, our cheers will ring out
As you unfold your victr'y story.

On you go to vanquish the foe for Alma Mater's sons and daughters.
As we join in song, in praise of you, our faith is strong.
We'll raise our colors high in the blue
And cheer our Cougars of BYU!
Rah! Rah! Rah Rah Rah!
Rah! Rah! Rah Rah Rah!
Gooooooo Cougars!"

How about those matchie-poo t-shirts we're sporting? Reese and Quincy have some too, but some friends of ours offered to keep the girls for us, so we favored leaving them at home. Thank goodness we did, it was a very late night...but i have to say i was hoping to get a photo of us all in our matching shirts for the scrapbook. Aaron always makes fun of those families who wear matching old navy t-shirts on 4th of July, so i know being "twinners" for the game was a huge sacrifice for him that probably wouldn't have happened at all were it not for the cougar pride deep inside him. (Plus, i threatened to wear a Boise State shirt if he chose not to participate)



The game was on saturday night...the same night as our stake conference adult session. Our stake president actually made a comment regarding the game in a leadership meeting the previous week and said, "I am aware there is a big football game the same night as the saturday night adult session, but I know the faithful will attend" ...Aaron figures that statement can be interpreted either way, and we had our game tickets long before conference was scheduled. We spotted the 2nd ward bishop at the game, the centerton ward bishop, our ward high council representative and eighteen other families from our stake at the football game, so we may not have made the right choice, but we did make a popular one!


And this is why big hair should really be confined to the states of Utah and Texas...nice view, huh? The only thing more annoying than her big-mormon-mom-hair was the fact that she harmonized with the cougar fight song. Seriously, who does that?

Sadly, the cougars ended up losing a very close game, but we had a great time and it was definitely worth the trip to Tulsa...it gave us plenty of time to think about the poor little deer we hit going 50 miles an hour on the drive home. more to come on that...

Appliance Revolt!

My oven died, and I think I killed it. My garden produced a zillion tomatoes this year, so I decided to be all domestic and can them when aaron's mom was here to teach me how. (thank you Lynda! I now have 19 beautiful jars of stewed tomatoes in my food storage closet...am I Suzy Homemaker or what?!)

Anyway, we were almost finished and my stove started making this terrible buzzing noise, so we turned off the burners...and now my oven beeps. After 37 seconds it beeps once and flashes E2 F1 on the display. THEN, 24 seconds later it beeps 3 short beeps, and sometimes then the display says E1 F0. My range works fine, but the oven doesn't work AT ALL, and the beeping is driving me MAD! I looked up the owners manual online and it says that if you have a letter F followed by a number you need to call the whirlpool service people.

Sooo today i have someone coming to look at it today to give me a "diagnosis". The REAL problem? When I grouted my beautiful new countertop i think i cemented the range top in place. It is a built in, so i guess i didn't realize that even hard-wired build in range/ovens can slide out so you can service them when they break. oops. Looks like i'll be ripping up a row of tile so we can fix the oven....if it can be fixed! The cheapest slide in that i have seen so far is $950...but most run anywhere from $1200-$1800! That better be one fabulous oven if i have to replace it!

Oh! And my dishwasher stopped working suddenly too! Now it only runs if you put it on the pots and pans setting...which i guess i can live with, but it still takes WAY more water and energy than necessary.

So there you go, my appliances hate me! I'm just hoping for a positive (meaning fixable) diagnosis from the oven guy this afternoon. He'll be here sometime between the hours of 1 and 3 today.

"they survived on wild berries, Locust and honey"

THIS is what is keeping me awake at night! Not just the sound they make...but also the nightmare that one might take a jackhammer out from behind his enormous wings, drill through my bedroom window and then eat me alive. This guy was on our front porch...i'm certain he died waiting for one of my kids to go outside unsupervised, so he could swallow her whole and disappear unnoticed. The plate is there for a visual effect of just how big these suckers are. Now i understand why we have such big birds here.

Blurkers Day

Blurker: {BLRR-krr} noun: one who regularly reads blogs of others without making oneself known to the blog author. See also: sidetracked bloggers, aaron and meg's invisible fanclub, people who can't live without me, "anonymous said...", everyone i go to church with, and people who consider themselves not funny enough to come up with witty comment for my very witty posts.


It's ok, step 1 is admitting you might have a problem. I too was once a blurker until I started my own blog. After that it seemed like every conversation I had with anyone included the words, "i was reading your blog...", or "oh yeah, i read about that on your blog", or "everyone at my office reads your blog" or "my sister in japan reads your blog"...you get the idea. After that i vowed to show myself to all blogs i read (yes, even I don't know the person. Let's face it, blogger. com has provided everyone in America with access to their very own stalkers)
So as a tribute to our many friends, family, enemies, fans, potential stalkers, and everyone else who might be reading Aaron and Meg's Blog...I hereby dedicate today as Blurkers Day!

Seriously...who actually does read our blog? How did you find us? Do I know you or are you just an adoring fan of our commentary on the bizarro things that happen to us from day to day? Are we related? Do we know the same people? Were we friends long ago? Do you want to be our friends? Do you babysit? Blurkers, show yourselves so the rest our readers can blurk on your blog as well...who knows what we might be missing! (I leave comments.)

Creepy Things

After several encounters with REALLY BIG unidentifiable creepy crawly things, I've decided to start a new series to showcase all the Creepy Things we run into down here in the sticks.




We've run into several versions of this little fellow. Yes, that IS a spider. And YES, his body IS the size of a Quarter...and YES, I'm quite sure he could eat one of my children if they were to get stuck in his web. That is a cricket he is feasting on in the picture.





We watched this little brother take down a cicada twice his size one evening while we ate supper. Talk about a redneck dinner theater! It was like watching wild kingdom live. The only thing more entertaining was watching Aaron try to kill him without getting attacked. I looked him up on the internet and he is a Yellow Spotted Orb Weaver Spider and relatively harmless (meaning you won't necessarily die if he bites you)

More to come...the locusts are out...as soon as we catch one i'll post a picture...they look like something right out of star wars. Kind of gives a whole new meaning to that old music video by The Cure.

Reese Retaliates

Remember that scene in Daddy Daycare when Eddie Murphy goes into the bathroom after the kid says "i missed" and he just gets that look of horror on his face and the theme from Psycho is playing in the background?

Today Reese woke up after only napping for an hour. That is VERY out of the ordinary. Plus, she was hysterics that even I couldn't have interpreted. But when I finally did recognize a word and heard that the word was "YUCKY" I decided to go in and check things out. My reaction could have been replaced with the scene from daddy daycare and at that moment i actually wished i WAS Eddie Murphy because in the movie there really was no mess and in the movie Eddie wouldn't have had to clean it up because there would have been some film school intern to do it, and in the movie Eddie Murphy's DAUGHTER WOULDN'T HAVE POOPED IN HER BED AND FINGER PAINTED ALL OVER THE WALLS AND CRIB WITH IT!!!

I couldn't even speak. I picked up Reese with two fingers and carried her straight into the tub (clothing and all) and scrubbed her down. I refused to speak to her...mostly because i feared that this would be the moment my daughter would learn every expletive imaginable and then she would later use them against me....like by shouting them as they passed her the sacrament in church tomorrow, or while I hold her on my lap during my next recommend interview. So i remained silent as we cleaned up the (NASTY GROSS) mess, aired out her room, and I put her back to bed. I wonder if she woke up later thinking she'd dreamed the entire thing. I guess we'll never know.

Oh, and if you're reading this and thinking that the only children who would play with their own poop are the kids who end up in therapy later in life, do me a favor by keeping your comments to yourself so I can hold back a few more expletives.

What a day! I'm sure this is her form of retaliation I cut off the last chunk of latex on her pacifier last week and now all she has is a little stump that she holds between her lips. Reese, justice is served.

Sleepytime Conversations...Trespassers!

Meg: "Aaron, come to bed."

Aaron: "Ok, I'm just waiting"

Meg: "waiting? ...for what?"

Aaron: "the trespassers"

Meg: "Aaron, wake up. Come to bed"

Aaron: "SHHH! ...they're coming. Leave the light on."

Meg: "Don't shush me. wake up. you're talking crazy in your sleep."

Aaron: "HEY. MEG. QUI-ET"

Meg: "Seriously?! don't get all mean, just come to bed."

Aaron: "you should take some of that advice yourself."


Meg: "Hey Aaron, the trespassers are coming."

Aaron: "Uh yeah, I know....write their names down."