The Fair is a Veritable Smorgasborg

In our family we have a really really fun Annual tradition that we carried out last night...The Arizona State Fair! Okay, go ahead and say it. The fair is ghetto. Heres the thing...We know its ghetto and We LOVE it! We just bring a couple of semi-automatic weapons and a stroller and our appetite for deep fried goodness and cotton candy and we EMBRACE THE GHETTO-NESS. Like most things in life if you look at the fair through the eyes of a child, you see how incredible it really is. The rides, the lights, the smells, the animals. It really is a lot of fun.

This year we went with my old friend Nick Carter and his girls and my mom met us there with her Argentine exchange teachers that she is hosting right now and we had a ball. We always go on dollar ride night and we don't play the midway games, but we do indulge when it comes to food. We get everything that strikes us. Carmel apples, Indian Fry Bread, Roasted Corn, Giant Turkey Legs, you name it!

Babyham loves the lights and the music. We were listening to a loud rock band and he started moving and shaking to the beat of the music. I think we might have another rocker on our hands.

Jack loved playing with Nick's girls. Amanda is five and Allison is seven and they are two of the cutest girls in the world. Apparently Jack and Allison had a special connection, because they decided to hold hands for a large portion of the evening. It was absolutely adorable, but the best part was how proud John was of Jack for being a ladies man. Especially because Allison is SEVEN years old. What can we say, he likes older women. Allison is a tiny little thing and Jack is a giant, so you can see they make a cute couple despite a three year age difference. GO JACK!

When we were on the way home, we must have hit something in the road becasue we all heard a loud pop but then didn't think much of it. A few miles later we completely blew out a tire on our van. Of course we were on a completely dark stretch of road with no flashlight in a scary part of town. it took John a little while to put on the spare tire in the dark, but eventually we were on our way.

This morning I asked Jack what his favorite part about the fair was and he knew exactly what his favorite part was. He said without hesitation "When our tire exploded!" I told John that next time we ought to save the money and instead of going to the fair, we'll just stay in Queen Creek and have car trouble. Once again, the world through the eyes of a child is a much more exciting place!

To all of the crazy carnies, deep fried twinkie vendors, the toothless ride operators and the largest horse in the world: SEE YOU NEXT YEAR!

I swear this will be my last political post...for a while

classic!

Baby handcuffs

If I ever wanted to imprison Abraham, I wouldn't need to put him behind bars, I could just give him a toilet. EVERYTIME he gets the opportunity, he puts his hand in the toilet to feel the water. then he invariably pulls the lid down on top of his hand and traps himself. he gets mad and tries to escape but in the process, just ends up pushing down harder on the toilet lid. It reminds me of those monkey traps where they put something shiny inside of a jar with a tapered lid and the monkey reaches in and grabs the object and cant get their hand free because it is fisted. All the monkey has to do is let go of the object to get loose but it never does.

Anyway, this scenario with the toilet has played out so many times that I finally had to take some pictures of it.

Abe is at that age where he automatically puts everything in his mouth. At the beach he ate literally pounds of sand and seaweed. Its so odd to me that kids would be hardwired to do something that has such a potential to make them sick, but then I look at my healthy little uber kinder shoving handfuls of filfth into his mouth and tounge kissing the dogs and I realize that this has got to be natures way of making sure they get all of the exposure they need to build up immunity to disease... either that or simply a way of thinning the herd.

I saw a movie yesterday (Baby Mamma) where a mother sees her toddler covered in a brown mystery substance and she asks, "is that chocolate or poop? she then gets down to examine it and smells it and then TASTES is and says, "Oh its just chocolate." This would have totally grossed me out before I was a mother, and now I totally get it. I guess all of that germ-y exposure we get as babies just prepares us to be parents.

Jacked up religion

This is a conversation that I overheard yesterday and butted into between Jack and Ella (my niece) right after a small fight that had broken out between them.

Jack- "You know who makes you wanna fight?"

Ella- "Who?"

Jack- "The Devil."

Ella- "Yeah, the devil makes you wanna fight and Jesus makes you wanna do good stuff."

Jack- "The Devil is a really bad guy. The baddest guy there is."

Ella- "Jesus is a really, really good guy. Jesus is in control of everything I do."

Me- "Woah, Ella, Jesus has set a perfect example for us to follow and if we are smart we will follow it, but he is not in control of everything you do."

Jack- "Jesus is in control of everything I do...except when I fight, then its the Devil."

Me- "no, you guys are in control of yourselves. Jesus wants you to do good things and the Devil wants you to bad things, but you get to choose.

There was a thoughtful pause and I could see that Jack was thinking really hard.

Jack- "Hey Ella, do you know who the Devil is?"

At this point I was expecting either a philosophical remark, "our enemy" or a doctrinal remark, "Jesus's bad brother" or even a simple identification "Satan". This was not so.

Jack- "Obama."

Don't worry, I spent the next five minutes trying to convince Jack that contrary to what he may have overheard his daddy saying, Obama is not the Devil. He is just a guy running for President that we don't think would be a good choice, because he wants to take away our guns and raise our taxes. He is NOT THE DEVIL. Just a person who we disagree with about alot of things.

Senator McCain might want to consider hiring Jack to do some campaigning. He already knows how to sling mud.

I Wanna be Sarah Palin when I Grow Up

I guess it comes as no surprise that the Kramer's love Sarah. I saw this little clip of her and I just had to include it onour blog because its such a great example of how great she is.

Sheriff of Naughty Ham

So Abe has just been into absolutely EVERYTHING lately. This scene with the dog food and the dog water is played out multiple times a day. It is his work and his glory. Nothing makes him happier than the discovery that the laundry room has been left open. He can hear it open from anywhere in the house. He can also hear the fridge being open from anywhere (its almost supernatural) and tries every time to make it there before it closes so that he can just put his chubby little hands on all of the cold stuff. I really don't know what is so exciting about it except that he isn't allowed access and that makes him want access. Nothing is more offensive to him that when he has target locked the fridge and he is headed over full speed and then Bam...it gets shut right before he can reach in. its a cruel world, Babyham.

This is also a common scene in our home. Abe has taken to rubbing whatever food he is eating into his hair. Especially the cement like substances such as oatmeal and rice cereal. I have found that the most effective process is to just throw him in the sink after every feeding and hose him off. Needless to say, he loves this program.

In this one Babyham is showing his standing skills. He has been letting go of things and standing for a few seconds at a time. Part of me is so proud of him to see him so strong and mobile and the other part of me misses my helpless infant. He is a super fun baby but he is not a snuggly baby because he has a lot to get done. His babywork schedule is pretty full. He has started saying "mama" when he sees me and it definiely seems like he is identifying me and not just randomly babbling. Also, he started picking up on some of the sign language we do with him and now at the end of a meal he lifts his hands above his head and doed the sign for "all done" This is usually when the aforementioned cement food in the hair incident will occur.

Haws Cousins

I just wanted to post a few pics of our Family hanging out with the Haws's. Lauren is the little sister I never had and the daughter I hope to someday have. She reminds me so much of myself when I was her age and we even have matching glasses, which I think make us look like twins...okay moybe not twins as much as sisters....okay not sisters as much as like aunt and niece. We'll go with that. She is so much fun...Hey LoHa, when are you going to come back over and spend another weekend with us?

Here is Milan and Jack in one of their wrestling fests. Its so great for Jack and Milan to spend time together becasue he can gett all of his boy-aggression out on someone who can take it and appreciates it. Jack and Ella are best friends but she'll never quite understand the beauty of a great headlock.

This is Ellyse who is the queen of babies. Its fun to go over there and watch her with all of the kids. She is such a natural mommy and a teacher and she is just so good with all of them. Its hilarious to see her carry Elan and Abe like this because combined they weigh about as much as her.