Recovery

Last week, we had an amazing week. Mom and Dad Griffin, Brandon, & Dustyn came to visit us for a week, well, almost a week - they had to head back early one day due to severe weather threats apparently. However, Stacey and I know the real reason - Mom was sick of losing at GOA! We had so much fun with them. I think we stayed up until at least 11 pm every night playing either GOA or TICKET TO RIDE. Even dad was into playing the games - though we know his dream would have rather been watching the Rockies play! We didn't see much of Hunter and Ryan during the week as they spent most of their time playing the Wii with Dustyn. Unfortunately, I had to work all week and had only the evenings to spend with the family, but when we were together we played hard. I guess one day I got to come home early because of a huge snowstorm that shut down the whole city! By the way, we had great weather the week before Mom showed up, and then somehow she knows how to curse the weather in Denver. We haven't had warm temperatures since she showed up. But we are willing to sacrifice the cold and the snow to have everyone here. We hit Ci Ci's pizza, which I think has become a staple during visits to Denver, and 5 guys burgers (which may become a new staple). We did not hit Lamar's doughnuts, however! I am still trying to recover from the lack of sleep I received while everyone was here - but again, it was well worth it! We hope they will come back soon - we know Dad will since he missed out on his baseball games....

Can't Wait to Grow Up

Yesterday, Hunter told Stacey that he couldn't wait to grow up and be a man. Stacey talked to him about how he had to go through Puberty first and explained a little about that, while citing examples of Brandon growing tall, talking with a deeper voice, and getting facial and underarm hair. Well, this morning Hunter got out of the shower and declared that he was growing underarm hair and going through Puberty. I told him that first his voice had to change, to which he replied in a much deeper voice, as deep as he could muster, yet still pretty high pitched, "I am going through puberty. I have short black hairs growing out of my arm pit." Stacey then came over to him and felt his arm pit and said "It's as soft as a baby's bottom!" We all laughed. Then, I talked with him a little bit about enjoying being young and how you only have a short time of being a kid but 80 years of being an adult, "When you get older then you have to be all mature and everything." He replied, "Well, you don't act mature." TOUCHE.

BUSY RYAN

Ryan is our arts and crafts child. He can do some of the most amazing things with paper, scissors, and some glue or staples. He loves to make and color whatever he can find. The other day I brought him home a box of letterhead from work that we no longer use. He was so excited to get it and he immediately put it to use, drawing, coloring, and cutting. One day, he decided to make a sacrament try which he completely made out of paper and staples, and it turned out great. The other day Stacey sent me an email with the title of RYAN HAS BEEN BUSY. She attached the picture that is on this post. Ryan was downloading pictures from Lego.com of lego cars, buildings, etc. Then he cut them out and placed them into his very own lego town. Creative and busy little boy!!

Week in Review

This week was a busy week at work, and very stressful. To go along with this being billing week - which is always the most stressful week of the month - our server at work went out on Monday and one of our attorneys had a major filing deadline at midnight. Why did he wait until the last day you ask? Well, that is one of the things I had to deal with. The, the copier went out, and the server went out again - the Managing Partner yelled at an attorney who complained to me and then I had to talk with the MP about her actions, and she cried. Then, I had to deal with an angry paralegal who felt it was unfair that the Senior Partner downbilled her on a case, then I found out it was going to cost $20,000 grand to upgrade the server and get new billing software, then the server went down again. Anyway, that was just part of my week....I didn't even mention the fact that forks are disappearing at the firm...yes, that was a major paralegal complaint - but I got it taken care of...

I was so happy when Friday night came (however, I got home around 7 pm because the server went out) and I got to go play basketball with my boys at our weekly Friday Basketball night. That helped to eleviate alot of stress - that and playing Madden '09 on the Wii.

Saturday, I got up at 6:30 pm and ran my two miles and did a bicep workout with Ben Tenney. After that, I ran home, quickly showered, and got ready for a temple session with Stacey. What a great session that was. There seems to be something more special to me about attending the temple with my spouse. Afterwards, we got to sit and talk about things that have been on our minds. When we got home, Ryan wanted to build a crane with his legos, so YESDAD appeared to save the day, though YESDAD wasn't really excited about building legos. After a couple of hours of lego building, YESDAD convinced Ryan to make cookies with him. The rest of the day was relaxing and filled with no stress -- except after I ate a QDoba burrito....

Sami has been doing some cute things lately. However, she always does cute things. One thing she figured out this week is that she can go down the stairs on her butt, but it doesn't always work for her and she ends up rollin down the stairs. She also has been into having conversations with us, though her conversations are "Jabba, jabba, jabba, jabba..." But she honestly thinks she is talking to us and it is so cute. The other day, I got her a bottle and forgot to place her on her favorite drinking spot on the couch. Well, she went over to the couch, put her bottle on it, and then came over to me and said "Jabba, Jabba, jabba" and pointed to the couch. Of course, I apologized profusely as women tend to have long memories about those silly types of things....

Last thing, as I was cleaning the kitchen last night (yes, probably trying to make up for something that had to do with a women's long memory...jk, Stacey) I turned on some music for Sami to dance to. I went back to cleanin and then Sami came over to me and kept grabbing my leg and I couldn't figure out why. Finally, I turned to her and said "What are you doing?" She was trying to step on my feet so I would dance with her on my feet, which is something that we have been doing alot lately. So, I took time out from my hard work and danced with Sami. She whispered sweet "Jabba, Jabbas" to me...

Day 3

I know a lot of people have been anticipating me writing about what happened on Day 3...would you believe one person has been wondering...okay, would you believe that in my mind I thought people were wondering but actually no one was? Anyway, Sunday morning was rough to wake up to. Hunter, Ryan, and I slept in until about 8:30 am. Hunter was in no shape at that point to go to church. However, Ryan had to give a talk in primary and I had to give a lesson in Young Men's. So, we skipped Sacrament Meeting and Ryan & I went to primary. I helped Ryan with his talk then I ran home to check on Hunter. He was fine, so right before I gave my lesson I ran back to the church, gave the lesson, picked up Ryan right when church ended and raced home. Again, Hunter was fine. We spent the rest of the day watching movies and playing the Wii. Hunter and Ryan watched the old Parent Trap movie twice. They loved that movie. I took a little nap and enjoyed the boys being quiet. Hunter seemed to get over his sickness pretty quick and actually probably would have been fine going to church.

The next morning, I took Hunter to school with his Solar System project (I hope to get some pictures posted at some point) and Ryan went to work with me. I spent about an hour at work finishing up a couple of things and Ryan & I headed to the airport. Stacey's plane came in early, but we missed each other. Both of us spent about 45 minutes waiting for the other person to arrive. Finally, we caught up to each other. Stacey and I enjoyed a nice lunch together at our favorite joint - 5 Guys (fresh hamburgers and French Fries made from real Idaho potatoes - one day we went in there and the potatoes were from Idaho Falls - by far the best fries). Then, Stacey dropped me off at work. We are so glad to have her home....and Sami.

Day 2

Though many people bet against the fact that Hunter, Ryan, and I would survive one day without Stacey, we actually made it through 2 days - sort of. Saturday started off normal. I actually got up at 6:15 am and went to the gym, leaving the boys home alone. Hunter was awake and I knew I wouldn't be gone long. I came home to find Ryan talking to Stacey on the phone, as she called early to check on us. Next, we cleaned up the house -- of course, it didn't take long until Hunter and Ryan's room was messy again. But they cleaned and vaccumed their room and helped with other things around the house.

After doing our chores, we decided to go the Southridge swimming pool. We spent a couple of hours there playing and lounging on the Lazy River, as well as spent some time in the hot pool. We had a blast! After swimming, we came home to change our clothes, and it didn't take long for Ryan to fall asleep on the couch. I let him sleep for about 20 minutes, before waking him and taking the boys to Ci Ci's pizza. Of course, we ate way too much pizza, pop, and brownies, but we were so hungry from swimming that we just kept going.

When dinner was finished, we went back home and watched Horton Hears a Who and enjoyed a nice bowl of ice cream. Since we had tried to watch it the night before and all fell asleep 10 minutes into it, we decided to watch it again. This time we suceeded. Hunter and Ryan decided they wanted to watch another movie. I made it about 20 minutes into that movie before falling asleep. I woke up some time later and Ryan was trying to sleep but Hunter was awake. At that point, I turned the TV off and we all tried to get some sleep.

About an hour later, Hunter woke up complaining of stomach pains. I got him a trash can and got him settled back into bed (on the floor in the living room as we decided to sleep on the couch/floor once again). I had barely turned off the light when Hunter yelled "Here it comes!" I turned on the light, he ran into the bathroom and proceeded to throw-up in the toilet. After what seemed like 10 minutes and several gaggings from myself, Hunter finished. We cleaned up and crawled back into bed. After about an hour, Hunter's watch alarm started beeping and I turned if off. Hunter said his stomach still wasn't feeling good and he went to the bathroom and unloaded some more. Again, we cleaned him up and got him back in bed asleep. (** editor's note: the second time Hunter threw up I had to try and hold in my laughs. If you have ever seen this, he looked like the kid in the movie Second Hand Lions when the kid tries tabacco for the first time - he goes into these major convulsions and spits out the tabacco - Hunter looked just like him!)

An hour later, Hunter's watch alarm went off again. This time I made sure I turned it off. However, an hour later the alarm went off again. I about through the watch outside for the night, but spent the next 15 minutes trying to make sure the watch was off and the alarm would never come back on. About 4 hours later, my watch alarm went off telling me it was time to wake up for church....