Winter

Ahhh winter. My least favorite time of the year. I was getting a little stir crazy so I decided to trek out and get some pictures. Winter is freezy cold, bundling your kids up, shoveling your driveway, ice melt, heat bills, inversion, dreary days for days on end, ice, warming up your car, scraping off the car, etc. but she sure takes some pretty pictures.

Okay, okay, winter is also cozy sweaters...that's something.

And Christmas and hot cocoa.

Okay, I've tried, but those are the only good things I can think of that winter has going for her.

It does make things look awfully pretty though doesn't it.

Cameron Here...

Well, school's almost back in session so I thought I'd blog once before I get too busy again. It's going to be nice though, this is my last semester ever. It's about time. For anybody within the sound of my voice who is going to college, thinking about going to college, or who knows someone who is going, heed this advice: Don't change your major in college. Ever. Unless you want to take forever getting out. But the light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter and brighter every day.

One thing I have noticed about blogs is that they are posted on by women, mostly. At least the ones of the the friends and family that I've seen. The one exception is Drew and Alecia's blog. That one seems to be written almost all by Drew. The other thing I've noticed about blogs is that when people have a playlist of songs playing on their blog, I always without fail pause the music and have no desire to listen to it. I don't know why, but I just don't like most of the music, I guess.

The holidays were good around here. We got Erin off the pacifier, like Amy said. That was great. I got a new transmission in my car, that was not great. But we had a good Christmas. Although, we did end up shopping in Wal-Mart, which I hate. Aisles are too narrow, products too crappy, and the fellow shoppers invariably smell or look like they do. They converge on the crappy products, too. If you try to go down an aisle, you have to be wary of there being more than one person in the aisle, or they'll surely stop at the same point and block the whole thing. Even if there was a little room to squeeze by, who would want to risk rubbing up against that smell? I would have just dumped the cart, but we had stuff in it, so I had to wait for the human log-jam to clear, or a few times, I actually went down an aisle or two and came back down the other way to catch up to Liam. Don't even get me started on the checkout. This was even the Centerville location, which is new and "clean", not the 13th south store, which I lovingly compare to if the state of Utah was the human body, that store would be the anus.

We even went to Kmart. I haven't done that much shopping in, well, about a year I guess. Optimus Prime was on the TOP shelf at Kmart. Seven feet up. I had to arch my neck to see the dumb thing. Liam wanted me to hold him up to see it. So I got it down. Then he wanted to see the GI Joe's. They were at my eye level, so I had to hold him up and stroll along until he said to stop. Then he wanted to see all the other toys that were way too high for any little kid to see. I was so put off by the obvious lack of planning/stupidity of whoever laid out the shelves that we put everthing back on the shelf that we had hidden in the cart from the kids, and drove over to Target instead. Kmart is only better than Wal-Mart because there aren't any fellow shoppers, be they dirty or otherwise.

Wow, how was that for a Christmas rant? I prefer Target and Shopko, Happy Holidays to anyone supporting those stores.

Over Thanksgiving we went and saw Twilight. (Yes, nookie points big-time for that one!) The movie was okay. I actually tried listening to the audiobooks in the car, but I couldn't stomach my way through the first book. What's up with the way that series ended? Amy has told me all about the series, and I gotta say, that it ranks right up there with The Matrix movies for endings that make you want to punish yourself for wasting hours of your life that you'll never get back. Heck, I feel like I'll never get the 20 minutes back that Babe spent telling me how the whole thing goes down. But at least it was time spent with my wife. Good times.

Liam's funny, he keeps talking about moving to Bear Lake. We went there last summer and now he wants to move there permanently. I don't have the heart to tell him that it's not always warm and sunny up there, and that the lake is probably a bit freezing right now. He mentions matter-of-factly how we are going to buy a house at Bear Lake-this, and when we live at Bear Lake-that. Glad he enjoyed it.

One thing I've noticed since I've been around the house a bit more over the holidays. I like to watch the kid's show Arthur. It's really funny. DW cracks me up. The Simpson's doesn't have to worry about being overtaken, but it is a good show. Better than Sid the Science Kid, certainly. I don't know how Amy can take so many kids shows. Curious George is pretty good, too. Listen to me, I'm either getting too old, or I haven't been able to watch good TV in a while and my standards are slipping.

I don't know what else to write. I'm off to bed, and nightmares about shopping at Wal-Mart.