Loving Life

St. Patrick's Day Dinner:
     I have always loved St. Patrick's Day, not because of its origin and meaning, but because I find it more of a celebration of GREEN!  I love green!  So we invited a lot of young couples from our ward to come to our house to eat lots of green food.  Our place was packed with over 12 people.  We made chicken divan, rice, and rolls.  Everyone else brought other yummy food including green vegetables, spinach soup, and lime bars for dessert.  It was so much fun!

Charles' Possible New Job:
     More on that to come when we have more details, all we can say now is that it is in Tooele.  Looking forward to the commute and we're especially excited by the trend of gas prices.

McGuirk Effect:
     My life is filled with school and I thought that I would give a little look into something that I have learned about and find fascinating.  The McGuirk effect is when your mind's lip reading skills will take over your brain's listening skills.  Watch this video on YouTube and then watch it again with your eyes closed, you will hear something different.  But this doesn't always work for everyone, there is a small percentage that doesn't have their mind trick them.  In the video the man is saying "ga ga ga" and the audio is "ba ba ba" so when you watch the video you will hear "da da da" but when you know what's happening and listen again, you will hear it correctly.

Baby update:
     I feel like I am slowly getting more and more ready for the baby to come.
-Stroller: check
-Crib: almost check (its in the mail)
-Clothes: kind of check (still gathering, I'll probably go to DI and see what they have)
-Blankets: check (I made a lot of baby blankets when I was a child and have gotten one from my Mommy)
-Wipes: check
-Nursing cover: check (its in the mail)
-Excitement: check
-Baby name: hmmm... not yet
-Car seat: still researching
-Diapers: cloth or disposable...?  Still figuring everything out
-Diaper bag: haven't even thought about that yet
-Baby proofing the house: I'll give myself a few months after the baby comes to do that since I just got it together
-Latest HTC Android Phone With All The Latest Gadgets and Gizmos: Still shopping around
-Facebook Page: Almost created.  He'll have more friends than we do.
hmm... What else do I need?

Finally Moved In:
     I feel that we have now officially unpacked everything and put things where it needs to go!!!  You may ask why it finally all happened now, well it is because...

Colleen and Girlos Came to Visit:
     Tuesday evening I got a phone call from Colleen asking if they could come visit us.  Since they live in Idaho I was a little confused.  So, on Wednesday evening they came over.  The little girls are growing so much and I love seeing them all, too bad Nathan couldn't come.
     On Thursday we went to the Living Planet Aquarium in South Salt Lake.  I always forget how quickly kids can be done looking at things and want to move on to the next thing.  I thought is was funny that the girls did NOT want to touch the stingrays.  They about screamed and cried when Colleen tried to help them touch the stingrays as they flipped out of the water up to the side.  Unfortunately the penguins weren't jumping into the water but yet they were still cute.  We did a bunch of other fun activities that Colleen will probably put in her blog.  It was a SO fun!

At the Living Planet Aquarium

Touching/looking at stingray

BYU Basketball:
     Well, there's always next year.  It's so sad that a team that good ended with a less-than-hoped-for performance.  Congratulations to David for winning the bracket competition in our threesome.  Charles came in second place and finally beat Annette since she beat me last year.  We were all pretty close.  David, you can come to our house in your bus and collect your prize for winning which will be a scoop of our special homemade ice cream that Annette refuses to eat for undisclosed reasons.

Horsey Droppings:
     I (Charles talking) went with Uncle Karl to a house down the road that said "Free Horse Manure-U Haul".  We took the Benz (the one Annette drives) and put down the back seats and lined the inside with a giant tarp.  We filled that car full of horse dung, unloaded it into our garden, and then did it a second time.  I cleaned up pretty well except I forgot to clean up the floorboards in the front.  Oops.  The white horses had a hard time figuring out what the white Benz was and they sniffed it and tried to stick their heads in the windows.  We're going to have the best fertilized garden this side of the Mississippi!

A little bit more pregnant and Charles' run-in w/ the law

Here I am at 21 weeks, three weeks ago, hmm maybe I should take another picture that is actually current

For Valentine's Day Charles made me a bling board! I love having my jewelry all organized!  Yea, now it won't get broken all the time

Now it's Long-winded Charles talking...

Last Saturday, I was pulling into my cul-de-sac and saw two cop cars slowly circling around by Karl's house.  I wondered what they were looking for.  I drove to the end of the cul-de-sac where they were and pulled into Karl's driveway.  One of them decided to turn into Karl's driveway, got out of his car and started to come up to me.  I kind of got excited...you know, hoping he might ask me to keep my eye out for America's Most Wanted or even just wondering if I had seen any suspicious characters walking around lately.  Instead, what I got was a very unpleasant surprise.  


He said that he did NOT like the way I pulled into the driveway.  I was shocked.  I have a car that rides pretty low and Karl has a driveway with a fairly large bump that you can't take fast if you cherish your chasse.  In addition, his driveway is at MORE than a right angle to the road.  You have to do a lot of turning to get into my parking space.  I must have looked like an idiot as I was dumbfounded by his comment and the aforementioned barrage of thoughts contrary to the possibility of the accusation.  Oh well.  Instead of arguing said, "I'm sorry.  I didn't mean to be reckless."  Well, this cop only had his foot in the stirrup for getting on his high horse.  He said, "Do you see all of these little kids playing around here?"  I looked around and saw two older boys playing basketball at the other end of the street and I think one little girl was also playing down at that end.  Not an impressive showing for his use of the words "all of”.  "If one of them had been playing right here, you would have flattened them!” he screamed.  "Ok," I said in partial disbelief that he was getting so riled up over it and partially because the possibility does indeed exist that I could hit a child if you were to take a red-hot poker to my eyes.  "NO!” he said.  "It's NOT ok!"  "Now, I want you to come to a complete stop before you enter into your driveway from now on," he commanded.  I was blown away.  "A complete stop?” I asked incredulously.  "A complete stop," he reaffirmed.  


I don't remember if I said I would, which would have been a lie, or if I just stood there silent, but then he asked me what I was doing because I was half in and half out of my car.  I told him in a I-hope-you-know-I've-lost-all-respect-for-you tone of voice that I was putting my computer into its case which I had been doing before he approached me.  The way he asked, you might have thought he was paranoid that I was loading my shotgun...or maybe a bong.  After all, you can never be too careful as a cop when you're dealing with hoodlums with BYU stickers on their rear windshield.  He waddled off and I would bet you that he looked up my license plate to make sure I didn't have any warrants out for my arrest or that it wasn't a stolen car.  He would have found, to his chagrin, a flawless record.  


I mulled the whole story over in my mind trying to make sure I acted reasonably and appropriately given what just happened and I woke Annette up from her nap and we scoured the internet only to find that there is no law that you must stop as you enter a driveway.  There IS a law that you have to stop before you cross the sidewalk when exiting a driveway, but not entering.  Can you imagine the havoc that would ensue if everyone who lived on a busy road had to stop before entering their driveway?  Anyway, I wrote a little email to the AFPD telling them about my experience and let them know that their cops need to be a little more amicable.  I'm totally down with friendly driving advice from a cop and I'm okay with him delivering his advice in a serious but friendly way as long as he’s not making up laws just for Charles T Martin Jr. to follow.  I'm trying to give this poor man the benefit of the doubt.  Maybe his kid was killed by a crazy driver.  Maybe he just got demoted.  Maybe he had a rodent climb up his pant leg that morning. Maybe...any ideas?