I have a cold

Not a man cold, mind you, just a regular old cold. But I hate it.

p.s. Dan doesn't act much like this man when he has a cold. He just sleeps and ignores everyone.

david sedaris

I love David Sedaris. Usually. We heard him on NPR a few weeks ago. I almost peed my pants.

To listen go to the link, which should be This American Life November 21. Click on "full episode" and let the episode load. Drag the timer to start at 6:00.

rock band elmer style

here's the jeff elmer family band. casey has to be the best screamer/singer we've ever had in our house (with dan a very close second). also, check out the drumstick twirling by dan in the second one. amazing.

sorry you can't hear the songs very well, the TV wasn't very loud. the first song is ballroom blitz the second is sabotage. (if you don't know what either of these songs sound like i put them at the top of my playlist so you can hear.)

silly guys

the other day while in the car dan was calling everyone "cookie-head jenkins" (if you know what movie this is from you are a long lost sibling of dan's). the kids thought it was hilarious and were getting giggly. sam - sitting in the way back - says (laughing), "it just keeps getting funnier and funnier every time you say it!"

the other day after my grandma's funeral jack turns to dan and says, "dad, when you pass away i want to get guitar hero so i can play it and then i can give it to my kids." what a wonderful family heirloom.

one more

How can you not love Jack Black?

blog vacation

I've been trying to get a few things done around here, thus the lack of posts. Here's something to tide you over. (It may be a while).




ps - I can only recommend David Sedaris books to you if you have a high tolerance for the crude and the crass. But he's got to be one of the funniest writers ever.

I have to post this

Even though I sent this to some of you, I thought I had to post it.

I like to get to these things before I have to be asked

I made some Niman Ranch lamb tenderloin with garlic, black pepper, and Indonesian soy sauce for dinner. I hope that sounds OK.

Is that the baby? I'll get her.

As long as I have legs to walk on, you'll never have to take out the garbage.

Ooh, look, the NFL playoffs are today. I bet we'll have no trouble parking at the crafts fair.

I know. Let's take you shoe shopping.

Don't want anyone "falling in" in the middle of the night.

I don't have to have a reason to bring you flowers.

Hold that thought a second. I want to pull over to ask for directions.

Dan writes

Yes, Dan writes, but not on MY blog.

I came home Sunday to a guilty looking Dan who said something like, "don't be mad, but I left a comment on Razy's blog . . . I know I haven't left one on yours yet . . . "

Am I offended? Yes. Truly.

However, I will lead you to the comment because, as you suspect, it is hilarious. (His is the longest and by "anonymous".)

Dan - you owe me a guest post (or your own blog.)

world war three (according to Jack)

Jack set up all the army guys/cowboys/indians/policemen/firemen on the dining room table. This took around an hour and no one was allowed to get near for fear that they might knock everything over. Basically, they're all set apart in groups fighting each other (or ready to fight each other.) Endless fun.

boo hoo

I forgot that last week I found out that Flight of the Conchords was supposed to be here in a few months for a closed show. I tried to send them an email telling them to put on a show for everyone, but I had the wrong email address and it didn't work. They actually came last week and I'm so sad I didn't get to see them. Here's another video, just to make me feel better.

my favorite

This is one of my favorite videos



ps - My lovely mom is staying with the kids for a week (while we go to Hawaii). She's even coming here to do it. I'm pretty sure I can never repay her (for staying a week or for all the other lovely mother things she does/has done for me.) Thanks mom.

the only good thing about potty training (besides the final result.)

Charlie is certain that this is how you put them on. (Because he can see the picture when it's in the front.)

stache

I just found a new website that you should all go and visit. Click here.

funny

So, this isn't my normal humorous video, but it is funny. And no, it didn't happen in Dan's office.

Merry Christmas 2006

Another year, another fity cent (not to be confused with rapper sensation “50 cent” to whom we don’t listen). Guess what? We spent a bunch of cash on the house this year (see last year’s letter for house details) and it looks…pretty much the same. Actually it looks a little barren after we took out 5 ginormous trees from the back yard thanks to two guys from West Valley and 4 illegals (I can now never run for public office.) Regardless, we press forward undaunted and are growing accustomed to its idiosyncrasies. Get used to the house play by play, you’ll be hearing about it for years to come.

But seriously folks, during this special Kwanzaa season as we gather around the kinara and light the mishuma saba, the H*s like to remember that this season is more than just the zawadi we give and receive. It’s about family. So as you pass around the kikombe cha umoja in your homes remember the umoja you share and rejoice.

Charlie (2)
Likes:
Candy, candy and more candy.
Flannel blankets, and lots of them.
Pulling hair off the cat.

When not trying to pull the duct tape off his diaper with his chubby little fingers (a necessary precaution, believe me), Charlie also enjoys beating the sh%# out of those who displease him. He seems to sense that he’s two and the repercussions for his actions will be minimal. We’re not just talking about Jack and Sam; but Leigh, the boss’s kid, senior citizens, small animals, day laborers, liberals, etc. Look at him sideways and you just might be absorbing a pint sized back hand…I speak from experience!

Sam (4)
Likes:
Hugging his best friend Amy.
Saying bye when Dad leaves for work…over and over and over again.
Getting his picture taken, he’s a bit of a poser.

Sam now has the opportunity to bust the chops of “Chewy” our new cat…yes, a cat…don’t look at me like that…I know…I said I know! While not fully embracing the acquisition of said cat, I was allowed to pick out the name which the boys readily approved as they immediately sensed a Star Wars connection. I was thinking more of a south of the border connection myself (Chuy), but was fine with their interpretation of Chewbacca. We were surprised Sam would still entertain the idea of having a cat after a different neighborhood cat (an enemy of Chewy apparently) by the name of “Mr. Smiles” smacked Sam upside the head. I believe that’s the proper phrase…or maybe it’s “went upside his head”, regardless, Sam was extremely upset. Mr. Smiles, of course, was nonplussed and just went on his merry way…smiling of course. (Oh how I hate Mr. Smiles, as I hate Hell, and all Montagues!)

Jack (6)
Likes:
Fast cars and fast wo…I mean candy…he likes candy.
Video games, you may have heard of these, apparently the kids dig ‘em.
Row, Row, Row Your Boat on the piano (he’s been playing for a little under a year now.)
After getting a lesson or two on “busting a move” and proper dance floor etiquette from you know who, Jack has been developing a few moves of his own. While dad slumbers in the other room, Jack and brother Sam like to break it down ala Saturday Night Fever by pushing away the chairs in the dining room, turning off the lights, and cranking the iTunes, effectively creating their own private Dance Party USA. We’re talking the Bee Gees, a little Erasure and when they want it really “off the hook”, the original Star Wars theme. Their moves are first class with only minimal vogueing. All of this is a surprise considering Soul Train is not a Tivo staple in the H* home. However, I believe Don Cornelius would be proud.


Leigh
Likes:
Big guys with goatees that can bench press a lot of weight, and although a bit on the husky side, have the reflexes of a jungle cat.
Leaving the kids with Dan immediately upon his arrival home from work.
This Old House on PBS.
While Dan is thinking deep thoughts, like “If I take this next left I can go to that Maverick on suchandsuchstreet with the good Diet Pepsi and still only be 10 minutes late picking up the kids”, Leigh is looking to better the H* home and family through the execution of multiple projects of various sizes and complexities including making curtains, planting flower beds and stripping, priming, sanding or painting something (let me tell you, there’s always something to stripped, primed, sanded or painted in this house.)

After seeing a lack of hipness in the quilt patterns out there (I think you all know what I’m talking about!), she started to design and prepare for distribution her own quilt patterns. Dan, seeing an opportunity for future leisure and sloth (because of the all the well known quilt tycoons out there), encouraged Leigh to aggressively pursue this avenue to untold riches. Marry this up with her zest for furniture building and I feel an early retirement coming on.

Dan
Likes:
Pants that still fit after some no holes barred gorging.
It’s dark, fizzy, tastes like manna from heaven and rhymes with “riet nepsi”.
Watching the McLaughlin Group on TV, especially when Pat Buchanan is really giving it to Eleanor Clift on the proper role of government…I can see you all knowingly nodding your heads in affirmation.

Dan continues to live his rock-and-roll lifestyle as a highly desirable technology risk consultant for Protiviti. Sorry ladies; this stallion was tamed a long time ago! He still travels but has been home enough this year to remember Jack, Sam and Phil’s…er, I mean Charlie’s names. Dan also put a lot of time in the saddle this year…the mountain bike saddle that is. It was all part of his plan to buy a mountain bike that cost more than a gastric bypass procedure. It says a lot that rather than lose a few pounds off the H* frame; Dan would rather expend a pay check or two to shave a few pounds off the bike frame. The biking went well, with a number of large animal encounters including a moose that failed to signal while merging, a gang of Elk (yes, a gang; look it up) that just about slammed into him while riding in Park City, and a few squirrels with bad attitudes, probably hopped up on meth (Ute fans no doubt.)


From all of us to all of you, we wish you a festive and prosperous Kwanzaa and hope you keep the nguzo saba in your hearts not only during this season but throughout the entire year.

Merry Christmas 2005

Current Details:

What we’re listening to:
Dan’s car: Keane: Hopes and Fears
Leigh’s car: Sinatra Christmas Album
Jack and Sam: Franz Ferdinand: You Could Have it So Much Better
Charlie: Johnny Cash: I Walk the Line

What we’re reading:
Dan’s night stand: American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson, Joseph Ellis
Leigh’s night stand: The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands, Dr. Laura
Jack: Hop on Pop, Dr. Seuss
Sam: Way Down Deep in the Deep Blue Sea, Jane Peck
Charlie: War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy


For those of you not in the know, we have been living in the great state of Utah for the past year and a half after a four year stint in the San Francisco Bay Area. Why Utah you say? Is it the ubiquity of Jell-O, the multi-level marketing contacts, the abundant food storage? Actually Leigh and I had NO plans of returning to Utah until we found out we could buy a house without selling our spleens on eBay. Then it didn’t seem quite so bad.

We are currently living in a home that has been in my family for nearly 90 years, complete with the tombstone of my great, great, GREAT grandmother lying in the driveway between the recycling bin and garden hose (I’m SURE she would have wanted it that way.) The house resides in a neighborhood full of U fans, who’s well known disdain for BYU (beyond their disdain for reading, or speaking in complete sentences) leads us to keep the Y paraphernalia on the down low. We are looking to purchase the house within a few months and will spend the next three years wondering what we were thinking when we purchased a “fixer upper” where we could “do the work ourselves.”

Individual Happenings:

Jack started kindergarten this year and is the first of our progeny to brave the public school system, where no child is ever left behind. He is a big fan of Star Wars and was the young Obi wan Kenobi (i.e. Ewen McGregor instead of Sir Alec Guinness, for all you Star Wars geeks out there) for Halloween. One of Jack’s favorite activities is getting Dad a “cold one” out of the fridge as well as accompanying him to the local Maverik Country store. Actually those are Dad’s favorite activities but Jack performs both with the flair and style one would expect from a young son. Jack also likes to wrestle with his dad (shirt off) and play “jungle boy” (shirt AND pants off, as any self respecting jungle boy would present himself in the wild) with his brother Sam.

Sam is a professional chops buster. If you’ve got chops, he’s busting them. Chops have been busted before, and chops will be busted in the future, but none will have been busted with such alacrity and thoroughness as when Sam is busting them. A head strong 3 year old who likes to watch Sponge Bob Square Pants, Sam always introduces himself as “Sammy” and will commence with the chops busting (mentioned earlier) if you call him anything different.

Sam demonstrated a complete lack of awe and wonderment at Dad’s eloquent Thanksgiving invocation when not 30 seconds into the prayer, he exclaimed “BORRRRINGG!” Dad took the cue and concluded the prayer shortly thereafter…but not before asking for world peace, an end to hunger and a winning BYU football season. Sam also enjoys swimming in our lap pool (i.e. tub) for hours on end.

Charlie turned one recently and is walking around like a drunken sailor. Like all our children he goes by many names including Charlie Charles, Charlo, Chachi, Curly, Chawwee, Chollee, and Little Charlie Chipmunk. His cherubic form also leads us to call him “round”, like his brother Jack before him. He finds time in his busy schedule to pull out all the towels from the hallway closet, eat whatever happens to be on the floor, and wipe his runny nose into his hair to humorous effect.

Leigh (a.k.a. the Director of Standards and Practices) has discovered that boys become exponentially more difficult to take care for as they increase in number. Part of it may be due to Jack and Sam’s canny ability to turn anything into a weapon and start play fighting. Every stick is a sword or arrow, and everything from a chicken nugget to a half eaten cheese sandwich is a gun.

And speaking of weapons, thieves beware, for earlier this year Leigh was trained in the arts of home defense by her ex-Marine father-in-law. The training was intense and grueling as Leigh fired multiple rounds from the family shotgun, learned to load it with her eyes closed (in case of a possible night mission, I suppose) and generally pushed her limits under the steady hand of Lt. Col. H. (Ret). However, all this training was for naught when Dan’s car stereo was stolen that very same night in front of the house with nary a response from the H. camp.

Dan continues to rack up a plethora of frequent flyer miles traveling for Protiviti. He claims that as a consultant, his job is to make people think he knows more than he actually does. Of course once he opens his mouth the subterfuge is up!

In other news, while Dan was preparing for a trip to Europe, and the sleeping woes associated with extreme time changes, he decided to “leverage” (consultant term) Leigh’s new prescription of Ambien, which, in the right hands, makes excellent sleeping pills. Having been trained in medicine (i.e. Biology 101 and a few seasons of Scrubs and E.R.) Dan decided to disregard the suggested dose on the bottle, preferring his own internal wisdom of “whatever Leigh takes I need to double or triple it.” Twenty minutes later, around midnight, Dan was crawling on the living room floor in a deep stupor making spurious claims that he invented Sans-A-Belt slacks. Leigh, fearing the worst, decided to call 911. Luckily the fire department was discrete by only sending FOUR firemen in one big fire truck with the lights blazing. After pulling Dan off the floor and slapping him into consciousness, they determined he would be just fine and were able to drag him to the bedroom and throw him in bed. Apparently budget cuts prevented them from offering a story and providing a drink of water.

All in all, it’s been another solid year for us. We complain not. That said, Merry Christmas from all of us to all of you! Dan, Leigh, Jack, Sam, and Charlie.

Merry Christmas 2003

2003
Dear Fam and Friends,

This year we thought we’d try our hand at a form letter.

Quick stats on us:
– Current Home: San Francisco, East Bay
– Favorite Country besides US: Uzbekistan (with Azerbaijan a close second)
– Combined weight: 440 lbs.
– Least favorite politician: Tom Daschle
– Favorite TV show: Malcolm in the Middle
– Favorite new state motto: “Our governor can beat up your governor”

Sam
We call Sam our German baby. He is 15 months and just starting to use his yapper to expound on the finer points of being a “wee man.” When he wants to say “Daddy” it comes out “dawden” and has a German tinge. Other words in his vocabulary are: “doggen” – doggy, and “mama”. Sam is also a climbing machine and will do whatever it takes to get into anything he shouldn’t be into. Nicknames for Sam include, but are not limited to, Sammy, Sam-O, Sammy-O, Sammo-wammo, Sweet Sam, Little Guy, Sammy-yoyo (that was Jack’s idea), Samavonovich, The Wee Man, SamSam, SammySam, and Round Guy.

Jack
Jack is now 3 ½ . He loves reading books, going to the park, riding bikes, and doesn’t like wearing pants. He has developed a taste for the Beatles movie Help and can name each Beatle in a British accent. (Next project: all the names of Sly and the Family Stone. I think we’ll start with Sly). It’s good that we are preparing him with the knowledge he’ll require to excel in our modern world.

Being in our familiy he is a big music fan. Leigh and I are carefully steering his tastes to ensure he “chooses the right” in this medium. For example, P Diddy (aka: Puff Daddy, Sean Combs, Honduran sweat shop owner) and Hip Hop in general: bad. The Beatles, Cold Play, and Chopin: good. Jack’s current top five: (1) Jimmy Eat World: You’re Not Better, (2) I’m Trying to Be Like Jesus, (3) The Beatles: Help, (4) Cold Play: In My Place, and (5) Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass: Whipped Cream and Other Delights (that’s not true, but I can’t think of a fifth that he likes.)

Leigh
In addition to a slew of other projects, motherly duties, and wifely endeavors; Leigh spends her time sewing, making quilts, looking for fabric, and facing down the threats of the powerful quilt-making Amish mafia! One would think that quilt making would become repetitive and tedious, but in that you would be mistaken. Apparently there is no end to the number of colors, designs and styles one can apply to this craft. Of course, Dan’s only experience with quilt making was court appointed so an expert he is not.

Lately Leigh has been experiencing discomfort of the neck due to the strain of holding up her newly discovered high IQ. Note: couples should never take IQ tests, if there’s any sort of disparity between the two, you’ll never hear the end of it! Apparently her intelligence is not all encompassing. When asked to name the original members of Three Dog Night and sing the words to the popular Osmond hit “Love me for a Reason” she claimed ignorance and quickly became annoyed. High IQ indeed!

Dan
Dan continues working for Protiviti in their Technology Risk Consulting group. Dan’s typical conversation with others when discussing his job goes something like this.
Eager Inquisitor: “So Dan, what do you do?”
Dan: Wearing a velvet smoking jacket and sipping on a Double Gulp, he adjusts his fez and answers, “Glad you asked friend, I work for Protiviti, and specialize in disaster recovery, business continuity, and information technology audit and security engagements.”
No longer Eager Inquisitor: Looking at Dan with a glazed look in his eyes, “Huh…so, you tried that new Cheesy Gordita Crunch at Taco Bell yet or what?”

Besides work, Dan has taken a hiatus from the mountain biking scene as his wrist heals from the trauma inflicted earlier this year. While skillfully descending a technical downhill section, Dan’s normally cat-like reflexes failed him and 250 lbs of finely tuned flesh found itself careening over the handlebars and into the creek bed below. This delighted his biking compatriot to no end until both parties took in the mangled mess that was once Dan’s wrist. After hiking a mile to civilization, fire trucks, ambulances, and helicopters (yes, helicopters) all arrived on the scene to help. Luckily Leigh arrived as well with a bottle full of Vicadin and rushed our husky hero off to the hospital where doctors set the arm and promised he would be up and underachieving in no time.

May you all gain a plethora of pounds during holiday binging. Diet starts Monday!

Love,

Dan, Leigh, Jack, and Sam