Goodbye Blog

This blog will be discontinued. We may start a new one somewhere else some time, I'll let you know.

Selective Memories

Wow, I had no idea my little episode of verbal diarrhea would get such positive response. Thank you everyone for reaching out with love and support. I didn't even know that many of you still followed our little family blog. To my dear friend whose comment I had to delete, thank you, you made my day :-). I hope hearing the other side of things has provided some insight into your own marriages and lives. I know some of you thought Chris and I were Utah's Golden Couple and I'm sorry to have let you down, but I guess we all have flaws. Some of us just hide it better than others. If any of you want to find out what happens next in the Happily Ever After Tale of Professor Man Candy and Mormon Ex-Housewife, e-mail me. We'll probably start blogging soon.

Much love,

Christine Hendricks

PS I truly harbor no bitter feelings toward the LDS church. I shared truly positive experiences and members of the church always made me feel welcome and loved.

Mmmmmmmm, Chocolate

Have you ever been sitting around on a Sunday morning when suddenly, out of the blue, something totally wonderful happens? Like maybe your Grandpa starts making brownies and when he's done he lets you lick the mixing spoon? Then maybe the chocolatey flavor is so intense that you try to absorb it through the skin of your face. It's pretty much the best thing that ever happened to you in your whole life. You probably spend half an hour trying to glean every bit of chocolate off of that thing. It gets even better when your Dad decides it's the funniest thing he's ever seen and gets pictures and puts them on the family blog so that the whole world can see how much fun you had eating brownie batter.

Yeah, it's probably the best thing that has ever happened.

And the winner is... Squirt!

The many long and hard days of remembering to feed the fish have finally paid off for Laine, Eve, and James. After much deliberation and lots of excited yelling about which pet would be the best, with a few vetoes by Grandma, the three children decided to get a water turtle for a pet. We did a little reading and looking around at the pet store and ended up deciding on a red-eared slider that the children have named Squirt. He's active and interesting, eats little goldfish, and the kids are having a ball with him so far. We set up his aquarium with a basking rock for him to rest on with a basking light for him to rest under, a castle for the fish to live in, and an industrial strength aquarium filter so the tank would always smell fresh and clean. Red-eared sliders start off pretty small, a juvenile like Squirt has a shell about four inches long, but they can grow up to be over a foot long. They live about 50 years if properly cared for, so this is looking like a pet for the long haul.

The Pet Situation

As some of you may recall, several months ago we added a new family member in the person of a small betta fish named Bluetail. The kids really wanted a dog, but I figured that was something they probably ought to work up to from something smaller, so we ended up making a deal: if the kids could remember to feed the fish every day for two months, we would get a new, bigger pet. Well, after a few false starts, we're just a few days away from the landmark day of two months of perfect pet-keeping. Deciding on what the next pet will be has been quite a project in itself, we've made a few rounds to various pet stores and here are the lists that the kids came up with.



This first one was their first crack at it a few weeks ago, it features (for those having trouble reading the picture, man I love kid spelling):
GOLDFISH
HAMSTER
GUINEAPIGVPLL
CARNARY
eeL
TURTUL
FROQ
GUPPY
BLACKMOLLY
BUNNY.P

They put together the second list after spending half the day on Saturday visiting some more pet stores. For the picture reading impaired:
Mice.v
HAMsteR.v
TURtule.vLW
Rabits
Ginuqig
fi*sh
blakmoley
GuPey
Goldfir*sh
eel
Grble
rat
Lisrd
S*naKe
Chranchla
PiG
Knarey
Parakeyt

I'm quietly trying to steer them towards a nice, low-maintenance aquarium with a mess of little feeder fish and a swimming turtle, but I'm pretty much ok with any of the stuff on the list, except maybe the Chranchla (tarantula), since those can be poisonous and I don't think they'd be very good for a two-year-old. I'm also trying to play down the small, quick things that can escape from stubby pet owners that have the reflexes of a three toed sloth on valium, but I figure we can have those as long as we set up a child proof cage so they can't let 'em out without adult supervision.

Fairies and Reading and School, Oh My!

For those who have never had a chance to witness my girls voracious reading habits, you should probably know that for a four and a six year old these girls are serious readers. Laine devoured the first sixteen Magic Tree House books and Eve followed close behind. Their new favorite reading materials are the million and one fairy books written by a group of authors that all share the pseudonym of Daisy Meadows. The fairy books consist of a bunch of series, each with seven books, each featuring a different set of fairies. Eve is currently loving the weather fairies while Laine chomps through the rainbow fairies. I think they're having a contest for who can finish first, but I can never quite figure out the rules of the competition. As far as I can tell, the winner get the first go at the dance fairies series, but I could be wrong, it's hard to tell, the girls talk fast and laugh a lot when I try to understand the game.


James on the other hand is pretty easy to figure out. He's excited to be a school boy one day and get to go to school like his sisters. Some days he likes to borrow Eve's backpack, put it on upside down, and walk around the house announcing that he's going to school. He's so cute it's unbelievable. He also loves being turned upside down and tickled, but I figure that's pretty standard for age two.

I had my birthday yesterday, we celebrated by going to the state fair and seeing a bunch of animals and some art and riding some of the carnival rides there. The girls had a ball at the photography exhibit doing the photo scavenger hunt, they found all the pictures on the list except for the dog with the hat. They also thought seeing the sheep get sheared was pretty cool. One of the weird challenges of being a single parent is that you don't automatically have someone to take the kids to get you a present using your own money anymore. Took me a while to figure out what to do, but I ended up slipping my mom some cash and telling her to take the kids shopping. That ended up pretty well, they got to go get some presents for Daddy and I got some shirts that don't fit and a very delicious chocolate cake. All in all it was a pretty good day.

School, trips, and a new routine

The kids finished up their second week of school on Friday, and the adjustment to the new flow of life is well underway. The three little monkeys wake up each morning to grab some breakfast and try to sneak in a few cartoons while try to sneak in some work before the day gets going. Laine heads to school at 8:20, most days I'm able to walk along with her up to H. R. Driggs Elementary. The morning walk is nice, all of the kids in the neighborhood walk to school so it's like a little parade to school every day. Then it's time to get some work done, conference calls or research or putting together documents for my current project. At noon it's time to switch gears again and get Eve off to preschool and James down for his nap. A few more hours of work to hopefully finish my work day (so I don't have to get back to the grind after the kids go to bed) then it's off to pick Eve up then take Laine to Kung Fu, take Eve to dance lessons (starting this Thursday, she's so excited), run to the bank, pick them up from lessons, shop for food, buy more socks (how do they always lose their socks?), make dinner (something awesome!), feed the kids, go over homework, get teeth brushed, tuck them in with books for our new bedtime reading routine, say prayers, read scriptures, then make up a new and original bedtime story on the fly from stuff they choose, hugs and kisses, lights out, then head upstairs and blow off some steam (so I can do the whole thing again tomorrow). How do single parents who don't have awesome families to help out survive this?

Then of course it's time to start prepping things out for my next trip to the East Coast for business. It's been pretty steady at a three-day trip (three full days there, which means four nights away) once a month, sometimes with more notice than other times. I only had a week's notice on this last one, and I found out that it only takes eight adult relatives in a coordinated schedule to replace one superdad. Pretty good on their part, I would have thought it would take at least ten of 'em. Seriously, how do single parents who don't have awesome families to help out survive this? On the upside I get my airline silver medallion next trip, that's 25,000 miles I'll have flown and now I won't have to wait as long in the security line every time.

Laine seems to be loving her first grade class, Eve has no complaints about preschool, and James is still the king of afternoon naps. Thanks to everyone who helps so much, we really couldn't do this without you.

It's Starting Again

The potty training has commenced in earnest now that the boy understands he get M&M's every time he successfully makes a deposit in his little froggy potty. So far he's managed to get three pees in the thing, still no solids but we're making progress. His sisters have figured out a method of sitting him down and making him drink a bunch of water to make him go, which seems to get results (and therefore candy), but I'm not sure if it addresses the fundamental issue of recognizing when you gotta go and getting to the potty in time. We'll keep reinforcing and rewarding and hopefully he'll get motivated to pay attention to his little bladder.

In other news this week we got a crate of fresh peaches off of Emo's peach tree. We've had em fresh and raw, in crepes, in cobbler, and in peaches and cream. Thanks Emo, they've been great.

In case you didn't know...

There are a few things you should be aware of about the boys in the family. The first thing you should know is that I am the best cook ever. In case you don't believe that, Eve went ahead and made a sign for us to put up in the kitchen to let everyone know.

The second thing you should probably be aware of is that James happens to be the cutest sleeper in the world. He's a very busy little guy and sometimes he just gets so tired he needs to sack out on the couch with a pillow for a blanket.

The third thing you should know is that James at age two knows more about picking up girls than most guys learn in a lifetime. Check the video, you'll see him captivate three older women using nothing more than his charm and acrobatic abilities.

The Divorce

This weekend we finally clued in the children to what we had decided on months ago. We're getting a divorce. This probably doesn't come as much of a surprise to most of the people who read this, and for those that we didn't tell personally, sorry, it's tough to spread the word on something like this without the kids finding out and we wanted to make sure they heard it from us first.

We picked up Christine at the airport and took the kids out for a picnic at the park. We told them we were getting a divorce. Laine started crying immediately, Eve saw that and started crying too. James just kept grinning, he's a little bit little to understand what's going on. We explained to the children that we would both always love them, and that it wasn't their fault, and that everything would turn out ok in the end. Eve cheered up after about a minute, then went off to climb the monkey cage. James scampered after her, still grinning. Laine asked a few questions and cried some more, we held her and answered the best we could. After a few minutes, Laine seemed to decide things were going to be ok, and her tears dried up and she went off to play with Eve and James.

I'm sure there will be more tears in the days ahead, but they seem to be taking it very well so far.

Anyway, the legal gears are churning, everything is agreed on, paperwork is done; we don't know when we'll be official, probably sometime in September. Thank you to everyone who has been so supportive to both of us and to the children.

Uncle Jim and Aunt Shauna

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This Saturday we had the good fortune to be invited up to my Uncle Jim and Aunt Shauna's place. For those not close with the Bradley clan, Jim and Shauna live up in the mountains about a bazillion miles from civilization. This is a very good thing. They have all the great stuff up there that us city dwellers miss out on, horses, cows, swimming holes, rivers in their backyard, peace and quiet, and old fashioned good clean fun (which is a weird name for it, cause it usually involves getting dirty).

It's about an hour out of Salt Lake and we managed to make the drive with only one or two "Are we there yet?"s. Only got lost twice, once because the streets stopped having street signs, once because the houses stopped having numbers. It's rough finding something that's not on a neatly numbered grid, sometimes I forget how nice it is to live in a city that looks like my old geometry homework. We arrived to meet the two friendliest dogs on the planet, which didn't stop the kids from freaking out for a few minutes before getting brave enough to stand on the ground while the dogs were with sniffing distance. Jim and Shauna greeted us next, they didn't sniff and lick as much but they were at least as friendly as the pair of labs playing on their front porch.

I'd like to pretend I don't brag much, but if you're reading this you probably know better than that by now. This time I'm serious though, I have the best Aunts and Uncles on the planet. Jim and Shauna are a great example of why I can say that with such confidence. If you ever have the opportinity to meet them you should definitely take it, cause they're straight up great people.

The first activity up there was catching a horse, followed by grooming the horse, then riding the horse. All three little buddies were brave as could be and hopped right up on ol' Cactus's back for some trots around the arena. I even gave it a go. Cactus was a good sport and didn't kick any of us.

After the horseback riding, we were hot and dusty, so we changed into our swimwear and headed over to a real old-fashioned swimming hole. Well, mostly old-fashioned anyway. The folks around had dammed up a spot on the river big enough to be a pool and had it all set up with some stairs going down into the water, canoes, little inflatable rafts, deck chairs, and tables with big umbrellas in case you wanted to sit in the shade. The kids had a ball there, swimming, wading, boating, and sunning. James found his new favorite thing in the world, a green plastic canoe paddle. I haven't seen him that fascinated by anything in a long time. He didn't really want to do anything with it, he just loved carrying it around and stirring the water with it a little bit.

After the swimming hole we headed back to Jim and Shauna's house where they grilled us up an awesome dinner and the kids played until they were about half past exhausted. We had early church in the morning, so we headed out with some happy good-byes to the people and the dogs and made our way along the long gravel road back to the highway then back to the strange land of cell phones and asphalt we call home.

Thanks Jim and Shauna for a really truly great day.

One More Month Till School

Another week has flown by at the Bradley household. I spent half the week in Virginia on business, which the kids didn't seem to mind because it meant they got to have another fun slumber party over at Hamoni's house. They were especially glad about that since their Pemo is back in town and living over there these days. The girls had a ball and I suspect James had so much fun he didn't sleep at all, he was a very tired boy when he got back in any case. The girls are still enjoying their summer routine of playdates with their cousins and long happy hours of reading in the hammock or playing at the pool.

Here are the kids piled up on the chair in the front room:

And James likes to carry books and sometimes pretend to read them.

They're about the happiest little monkeys I know, and I love that I have a job that allows me to spend so much time with them. I am looking forward to the start of school again next month, not that I don't love every minute with my little buddies, but it will make my life quite a bit simpler to have two of them off learning things for a good chunk of the day. Laine will be starting first grade and Eve will go back to Challenger for a daily afternoon serving of pre-K goodness.

James Can Practically Almost Nearly Read Sort Of

The little guy is starting on his letters. He calls A's E's, and R's Rrrrrrrrr's, but he's most of the way there in terms of knowing his ABC's. We're working the ol' flashcard routine with him, we expect full literacy in a week or two.




The girls continue their ongoing quest to get a Master's equivalent in English Literature before they hit puberty. Their latest activity to this end is the addition of Hammock Reading to their daily routine. Hammock Reading replaces the old boring quiet reading time that took up the time slot right after lunch. Hammock Reading is a lot like quiet reading time, but instead of being in bed, it's in the hammock outside and instead of getting distracted by giggling at each others' jokes, they get distracted by tickling each other until giggles break out on all sides. They do manage to get quite a bit of actual reading in despite all the clowning. Eve is quickly making her way through the chapter book version of Finding Nemo, and Laine is still chewing her way through her first 200+ page book, The Model President (with lots of breaks to speed read through Dr. Seusses and little Disney story books).

More Summer Fun

So earlier this year my oldest brother Josh decided that his kids had outgrown the small trampoline they had and picked them up a full sized on. Following Bradley tradition, hand-me-downs got passed along to the next available brother and we ended up with their old tramp in the backyard. It's the perfect size for Laine, Eve, and James; big enough they can all jump on it, but small enough that even the stubby little man can climb onto it without help. As a plus, if the kids ever fall off I don't have to worry about broken limbs.

So if you've ever been a kid and had a trampoline in the summer time, you've probably experienced the wonders of the Sprinkle-Tramp. This summer is the first time the kids have had a chance to enjoy this splashtastic wonder. For those that grew up without fun, you take a sprinkler, run it right under the middle of the trampoline, then turn it on full blast. The resultant water spray wets the tramp so that with every bounce all the jumpers get soaked. When you're two, four, or six years old, there's not much in the world that's more fun.

The girls wrapped up their soccer season this week, and were ecstatic with their participation trophies. Laine wants to do another season just for the trophy. I think Eve might be ready to move on to something else. We've been talking about getting back into dance classes, we'll look into that this week. There's a new dance school just a couple blocks from home that we might check out. The girls are also interested in taking tumbling, so since there's a tumbling place right next to the nearby dance school, they may get their wish.

Happy Fireworks Day

We had a great 4th of July this year. The kids told me (about a dozen times) that it was the best 4th of July ever. The morning started with a neighborhood parade, with Laine riding a flag-waving bicicle and Eve marching with some All-American cheerleader pom-poms. Little James was supposed to march with his revolutionary war style hat and drum, but at the last minute he decided he didn't want to carry those so he got to be the little red, white and blue baseball player instead.

After the long march all the way around the block, there was a potluck neighborhood breakfast featuring chocolate milk, donuts, breads, and some yummy breakfast casseroles (gotta learn how to make those). Then it was time for games with all the little kids rushing to haul water in leaky cups from one bucket to another in a big wet relay race.

We went home after the neighborhood festivities to have a little more fun of our own. Some smoke bombs, pop-its, and growing glow-snakes got the kids all fired up for more pyrotechnics later in the day. Some quiet time relaxing, eating lunch, and watching a few cartoons fixed up our fatigue from the parade. Grandpa made some awesome home-made ice cream and some babyback ribs (gotta learn how to make those). We had Great-Grandma and Great-Grandpa Bradley over for dinner.

After dinner, when the sun finally went down, Uncle Josh and Aunt Sarah came over with cousins Jacob and Andrew who helped us light up a great little firework show. Uncle Paul and I clustered up some ground bloom flowers, the kids loved waving their sparklers, and the sparkshowers provided some oohs and aahs, mostly from Grandma.

I'm not sure what's up with Eve and the bike helmet, I think she just was jealous cause her cousins had hats so she grabbed the nearest thing that would fit on her head.

In other news lately, the girls are both loving soccer and Laine earned her first Certificate of Achievement in Kung Fu (for a 6 strike combo, watch out). Laine also has a serious crush on her school friend named David who happens to take Kung Fu with her, he seems like a nice boy so maybe I won't have to scare him away yet. James continues to be the cutest two-year-old on record, Eve still sings about how lovely she is, and I'm trooping along with work and parenting. Feel free to nominate me for Father of the Year.