NOT Keeping up with the Joneses

"Life in the fast lane
Surely make you lose your mind
Life in the fast lane, everything all the time
Life in the fast lane, uh huh" - The Eagles

First of all, I want to say that we are not getting rich over here.  We have a budget, wear clothes some would consider old, and are happy with a sale on groceries where we save a couple bucks.  We live in housing provided by my work.  The neighborhood is relatively nice, but is definitely not considered a upper-class or posh.

That being said, I was driving home the other day and saw a neighbor of ours unloading a new vehicle.  I had to do a double-take and then pull out the camera (see below).  I know, it is not the best photo, but I was trying to be inconspicuous.  Anyway, I realized…. I live in a place where my neighbors own a Ferrari! (and actually this is not the only neighbor who has one)

I then realized that even though there are plenty of fords, chevys, mazdas, hondas, and other “regular people” cars, there were also a lot of these:


So, I went for a drive around the block and snapped some photos.  These are all cars in our neighborhood… most of them worth from $50K to well over $100K.  I’ll repeat what I said before.  We are not making that great of $$$, and there are lots and lots of neighborhoods around that are WAY more upscale than ours.  So, the Jones are either doing a lot better, or (more likely) putting a lot more credit into their vehicles.  Needless to say, we will NOT be trying to keep up with anyone in this country (yeah, like we’ve ever worried about keeping up with anyone before ;).  Compared to the 15 year old Saturn we drove in Hawaii, our almost 10 year old Honda MRV still feels like enough luxury for us.
A quick sample of the cars the neighbors are driving:

		Life in the fast lane? VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Doorways

"Got to sit down take a rest on the porch.
Imagination sets in pretty soon I'm singin'
Doo doo doo Lookin' out my back door." - Creedence Clearwater Revival

So the other day I opened the door to go to work and two peacocks were sitting a foot away on our front porch.  I have no idea where they came from or what they were doing there.  By the time I grabbed the camera, they were slowly meandering away by the pool.  I just had to smile.  It seems like at least once a week here you see something...  well, something you just don't expect.

The view out the back door doesn't change much, but it is still pretty cool to watch the sun set next to the tallest building in the world.

The Cars are back!

"I don't mind you comin' here
And wastin' all my time
'cause when you're standin' oh so near
I kinda lose my mind" - The Cars

This has nothing to do with our family or the Middle East... but it is worth mentioning.

I've been listening lately to The Cars new album "Move Like This" lately.  It is their first new album in 24 years and you would've never guessed.  If you grew up in the 80s, or like any of The Cars classic hits, you should give it a listen.

Even the videos are like running into an old friend and picking up right where you left off.

Get 'Em Some

"You know curtain climbers, and rugrats, and tricycle motors,
It don't matter what you call ,em.
You gotta have a whole house full of 'em.
Ain't nothin' in the world like youngins.
Getcha some!" - Toby Keith

Yvonne's sister Kaitlyn and her husband Tim have been unable to have kids of their own and want to adopt. Apparently, the process involves a lot of paperwork, self marketing, and prayers.  They asked family members to spread the word....  I told Yvonne that we should loan them our kids for a week so they could take them for a test drive before they get too serious. I mean, it might only take one night of 3 kids 3 and under for them to change their mind.  You can only take being awakened so many times in the middle of the night by poopy diapers, calls for drinks, and demands to "please hold my hand" ...  But, then I realized that I'd actually miss all the great parts of our kids. So, I'm spreading the word.  They'll just have to live with the consequences ;)

They are set up on LDS social services:
https://itsaboutlove.org/ial/profiles/25493550/ourMessage.jsf

And, they have a website of their own here:
http://www.timandkaitlyn.com

Please keep them in mind if you are aware of any adoption opportunities and feel free to spread the word too.  They really will make great parents.

Happy Mother's Day!

“Hey, hey little fighter girl
It's you and me up against this whole wide world
Sleeping together in the lion’s den
Got your earrings in my pocket till I see you again” – Mason Jennings

So, Yvonne got what most mothers are probably secretly hoping for on Mother’s Day.  She got some free time away from the kids.  She got the chance to sleep in as long as she wanted, lounge in bed, watch TV, and read books almost all day long.  She didn’t have to make any meals and in fact had them brought to her right in bed.  Doesn’t all that sound nice?

Yvonne didn’t think so.  That’s probably because the part of the story that I didn’t tell you yet.  Let’s rewind just a little bit to Saturday.  We went to a youth activity (Yvonne is in the YM presidency) at a school gym.  Everyone was having fun.  The youth and leaders were playing volleyball or badminton or basketball.  Yvonne was with our kids and some of the young women in one area of the gym with a balancing beam and some tumbling mats.  She was busy impressing the young women with her not-recently-used gymnastics skills.  Yvonne being who she is wasn’t quite satisfied with a trick she had just done.  So, wanting to show that she can still pull off a perfect 10, ran full steam ahead, jumped, flipped, twisted, and landed…. POP!

Her mind was willing, but apparently her Achilles tendon was not.  … And that was the end of her fun for the day. Fast forward to the next day (Mother’s Day) and she was sitting in the Hospital in a foreign country waiting to have an operation to surgically reattach the two ruptured pieces of her Achilles tendon.  Just what every mother wants, right?

Fortunately, the surgery went well and she is now back at home.  Her biggest gift for Mother’s Day was a pair of crutches and thigh-length cast.  She is a fighter though and even though she can’t put any weight on it, or carry anything while moving around, she hasn’t slowed down much.  She even went to church and taught her lesson. Her biggest frustration is that she has to wait for me to keep things clean and organized in the house and I don’t have quite the attention to detail that she does.  Actually to be honest, her biggest challenge was probably yesterday when I took the kids out to the pool and she could not join us, but could only watch from the window.  Just because we love her, we made sure to track lots of water into the house so her frustrations would hopefully cancel each other out… if only it worked that way ;)