Family Pictures

Nothing brings a family closer than taking family pictures - not!

Thanksgiving in The Land of Pima

We got back from The Land of Pima on Sunday afternoon. We had a great time. We did the following:

• Ate far too much (gained 5 lbs)
• Played the Wii far far far too much (it rained and Mario Cart was fun)
• Chased cats
• Routed wood
• Followed Santa through the streets of Safford
• Ate Mexican food
• Went to WalMart 8 times
• Bought Milk for $3.19 a gallon (rip off!!)
• Bought Gas for $1.799 a gallon
  
• Road the Quad far & wide - nearly drove into a ditch twice
  
• Got my truck covered in mud
• Helped Grandpa Lon in his shop
• Installed Office 2003 on a laptop
• Struggled with up & down internet (it was just terrible I tell you!)
• Bought Christmas gifts
• Went on a date with the wife (we saw 4 Christmas')
• Watched the Cardinals loss
• Watched Handcock on Kyle's iPod Touch
• Jaedyn barfed all over Kyle - Kyle took it like a man (You aren't a real man or real woman until you've had a child barf all over you)
• Nursed Jaedyn back to health
• Took pictures
• Played with many cousins

Below are some pictures from the Land of Pima AZ...

Heading to Pima

I can't wait to 'get the heck out of dodge' and go to the Land of Pima for Thanksgiving. It's funny, of all the holidays I like Thanksgiving the best. All the women cook and all the men do man stuff. Gotta love it!

When I say 'man stuff' I basically mean I will be keeping the kids out of the kitchen. I think I'm supposed to keep myself out of the kitchen also for some reason...

I plan on taking a lot of pictures. I will post them when we make it back into town on Sunday night.

My Latest Playlist

Below is my latest playlist.  What does this say about my tastes in music?  I have Little Big Town mixed in with White Zombe.  Should I be institutionalized??  Probably... no sane person would have the Beastie Boys and Crosby, Stills & Nash on the same playlist let alone the same computer.

Mee-la

I don’t get it. People are always mispronouncing my wife’s name... it’s not Mee-la its Mel-ah. Like Mel Brooks with an “ah” at the end. Mela.

Mela also responds to the following names:
* Mela
* Mel
* Mellie
* Mellum
* Honey
* Chick
* Woman
* Damn-it Woman!
* Pretty Wife
* Sweetie
* Love Bunny
* Hey You
The way she responses to the above names varies.

Mela will have to post all the clean names she refers to me as on her blog...

I was tagged by Mela

Thanks Mela for Tagging me. I was running out of things to write about.

8 television shows that I watch
1. Mad Men
2. Breaking Bad
3. Dirty Sexy Money
4. Heroes
5. Chuck
6. How I met your mother
7. Battlestar Galactica (please please let there be new episodes!)
8. My Own Worst Enemy
I don’t know about you... I’ve kind of lost my taste for TV. We DVR everything and I am so far behind on so many shows I don’t know where to start. I guess not watching that much TV is a good thing. Gotta love hulu.com!

8 Favorite Restaurants
1. Rubio’s
2. Taco Bell
3. Pei Wei
4. Macaroni Grill
5. My Own BBQ Grill
6. Mela’s home cookin’
7. Karen’s home cookin’
8. Red Robin

8 Favorite Singers or Bands (I’ve been into country music... sorry Kirk & Lisa)
1. Rodney Atkins
2. Rascal Flatts
3. Rush
4. Queenryche
5. AC/DC
6. Big & Rich
7. Sugarland
8. Little Big Town

8 Books I have read lately
1. Brsingr
2. The Great and Terrible series
3. Harry Potter (4 times)
4. LDS Handbook of Instruction books 1 and 2
5. Complete Dune series
6. Twilight (too much kissy kissy not enough killy killy)
7. Mere Christianity and many other CS Lewis books
8. An Inconvenient Book by Glenn Beck

I haven’t found anything exciting to read lately...

8 things I did yesterday
1. Went to QT for my 52oz Diet Coke (Mormon Coffee)
2. Two Client visits
3. Worked on revamping internal stats reports
4. Dissected 1,820,179 line transaction file to find instances of the letter “a” in the quantity field. Easy using SQL...
5. Wrestled with the kids (it’s tickle time!!)
6. Wrestled the wife ;)
7. Tried to get the 2009 Stake Calendar into Outlook 2007 and get it to print right... (Outlook 2007 really sucks)
8. Met with the primary president (we need nursery workers really bad), the Bishop and did two scout board of reviews.

8 things I am looking forward to
1. Thanksgiving
2. This weekend
3. Windows 7
4. Quantum of Solace
5. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
6. My next long bike ride
7. The Market and the Economy to rebound
8. Go home and play with the family this afternoon

8 things I wish for...
I don’t know... World Peace...?? My kids not to grow up so fast...?

Now the election is over...

Many of my friends are ecstatic Obama and the Democrats won. My mom and my sister are included in this list. I am happy for them. I hope their party can “fix what’s broke” in the nation.

I look at politics like I look at sports. I love the Diamondbacks. Often you will hear me yelling and cussing and getting frustrated at some managerial decision. There have been many times where I was yelling at the TV “Pull the pitcher, PULL HIM!” and then 3 runs later the manager finally pulls him. Does it mean that I’m not a fan? No.

To some degree I feel the same way about being a Republican.

Here are my thoughts on how we have come to this point as a party.

Bill Clinton did more for the Republicans than he did for the Democrats. Under Clinton the republicans were able to find unity, a message, a voice and they were able to come into power in 1994. Twelve years later they were just as bad as the Washington insiders they defeated.

George Bush did more for the Democrats than he did for the Republicans. The Democrats were able to find unity, a message and a voice. Hopefully the Obama presidency will wake up the conservative wing of the Republican Party. Hope

Bush is a good man. I think he means well. I totally agree with the WSJ article that the treatment of Bush has been disgraceful. My biggest problem with Bush is he’s not a conservative. My second biggest problem with Bush is he was too nice. He should have dealt with the Democrats with the same attitude he fought terrorism. They are the enemy and they and their philosophies must be defeated.

1 Kyle 1:1 “Nice guys get screwed.”

If the republicans can get back to being true conservatives then they will start winning.

Halloween

Halloween was fun this year.  Mela did a great job with the costumes.  Jaedyn was a Pirate and Andrew was a Choo Choo Train Engineer.  I know I'm biased but I sure of cute kids!

Opinion: The Election

I can’t wait for the election BS to end. Please, for the love, just let it be over!

I have what I call a serious case of the OJ Syndrome. This syndrome harkens back to ’96 when OJ was on trial for the first time. It seemed like there was nothing but OJ on TV or the news for a year. I finally lost my mind and yelled “fine just let him go already!” If the price of not seeing OJ’s face or hearing about him or reading about him is letting him free THAN SO BE IT. Unfortunately, this ended up being the case anyway but that’s a whole other story...

I’m feeling the same way about this year’s election – just end it. If a true conservative (someone we haven’t had in 20 years) were running then I would think differently. In today’s world I can see little difference in either of the parties. Basically, I dislike McCain just a little bit less than I dislike Obama. It seems like we have a democrat (McCain) running against a socialist (Obama). I really wish Palin was running against Obama – that would make things interesting.

All of the contention and arguing and debating and name calling and other general BS the current election has generated has really left me with a bad taste in my mouth for all politics. I’ve said this before: We get what we deserve when it comes to our leadership in this nation. All the true leadership in America wouldn’t touch the presidency with a 100 foot pole. I don’t know too many people (myself included) who could survive the anal exam given by the media, the campaign and the American people.

Life is good...

I really don’t have all that much to write about...

I went to the dentist yesterday for the first time in 10 years and I was amazed to find I am cavity free. I guess I owe my good teeth to genetics because it couldn’t be personal hygiene – 100s of gallons of diet coke and I don’t think I have ever flossed...

My kids are growing up! The Boy is a boy now and the Girl is a little girl now. There isn’t anything better than coming home from work and them running into my arms giving me hugs and kisses. I love it when my kids try to scare me. I will be standing in the kitchen and I will hear them coming down the stairs whispering to each other “let’s scare daddy...” They will sneak around the corner and go “raaar!!” I always pretend to be scared, then I chase them and tickle them. All other joys in life pale in comparison

Scanning Pictures...

I have been sick for the last couple of days so I've had a little time to scan pictures. If you want to see pictures of me when I was skinny and spiritual, you can click on my mission pictures on the right. I have a ton of pictures so I'm still adding to the gallery.

From Kyle's Mission

Scary...

Scary world we live in...

A member of our ward went out on Saturday night to get an air mattress at Walmart. Some relatives were on their way into town and they needed a place to sleep. Brad Garrard never made it back home. No one knows what really happened. His body was found less than a block from his house. He had been shot in the chest. His truck was found on fire out in the desert.

Fox 10 news

AZ Family

AZ Central

Brad Garrard was a heck of a nice guy. He served faithfully as one of our 11 year old leaders and in our Cub Scouts.

All of this brings me to some thoughts on our world... Is it just me or are things getting worse out there? Am I going to have to start carrying my gun with me into work at 4:00 in the morning? Are we just going to have to have a curfew in the Christiansen household? Are we going to have to put GPS devices on our kids? Is this what we are coming to?

The Garrard family lived in a nice neighborhood. One that you thought you could walk around in at night. One that you thought you could just live peacefully and raise your kids. We live in a nice neighborhood. I hope we aren’t in any danger... but I guess one never knows.

Let me tell you this... I will up and move to Pima, AZ without ever looking back if I ever thought my family was in danger. My credit or some bank’s balance sheet means nothing to me when compared to the safety of my sweet family. I would sooner live dirt poor a single wide trailer in Pima where my kids were safe.