A Daily Slice of Awesome

There are a few things I've noticed over the past week or so that make me both happy and sad at the same time. I think there's a fancy word for that but I can't quite put my finger on it, nor am I motivated enough to go and get my dictionary out. I love how simple things make children happy. I love how a red balloon from a restaurant can make my son the happiest kid on earth. I love when my daughter tromps around in pink rubber boots and a church dress. I like how she finds puddles to jump in, even if they are half-way across the parking lot. I like that a really cool fort-building set was initially not the most exciting thing they got for Christmas, but when it got to be time for bed time and the possibilities of sleeping in tents were realized, the present suddenly skyrocketed to best thing ever. I love that just about the only thing they really want and require is time and attention. Sometimes I'm more willing than other times to give it, but the investment alway...

It's winter, so to be expected, but holy cow, did it rain a lot today. I think it went hard, nonstop, for several hours at a time. Now, it's Oregon, and again, winter, so it's not like it's really unexpected, but there is something awesome about seeing the parking lot outside my office slowly turn into a lake. Then of course, there's moving someone into their house in the rain. It's nice. You get cooled off as you struggle with that oversized chest of drawers. Someday I'll be able to say I moved half the ward's furniture into their homes, upstairs in most cases, and in the rain. I should also add a quick shoutout to cheap tacos. There aren't a lot of options for lunch around the facility either. There's a Pilot station on the other side of the freeway that hosts a Subway and a Taco Bell. I hit the Bell fairly regularly and while there may be a certain amount of shame involved in going through the driver-thru, a few tacos really hit the spot. ...

In celebration of paying off student loans, we unloaded a bunch of our gain on some things I needed--new shirts, some running shoes because I'm going to attempt again to find some form of exercise that doesn't make me feel like I want to shoot myself, and then a nice dinner. There is a pretty good restaurant here in Salem called Table Five 08. They change up their menu periodically and tonight they served something called Pork Chile Verde. Man, that was good. It even had squash in it, which is something I typically loathe, but somehow, they did enough good things to disguise its evil presence. I would have taken a picture, but I ate it too fast. It was awesome.

A few days ago, my kids and I were enjoying a little time playing Minecraft. It's kind of fun having them watch me and ask me a lot of questions about what I'm doing or what I should do. Usually, it's a lot of them telling me what I should do. Sometimes their suggestions are pretty awesome. My son decided we needed a sign in the small outpost we'd created from all the baddies, as they've referred to them as. In case the picture can't be seen well, it's "Daddy's World, No Bad Guys Allowed." I like that. I don't think the game really cares about our edict, but I liked the sentiment. It's pretty awesome in fact.

I was skeptical at first that this really was a worthy investment, but Carpet Cleaners are pretty awesome. Amazon is a little scary. I don't know if my wife went in search of carpet cleaners or if it just sensed that our carpets were that dirty, but there was a sale on a highly rated cleaner, and we decided it was time. It was quite satisfying, and a little disturbing, to see something akin to really rich chocolate milk being sucked up from carpets that are vacuumed regularly. I'm not pointing fingers, but my kids room, the entry to the porch where they are constantly wearing muddy boots, and the area around their shoes were particularly horrific. Several hours and wet carpets later, our house smells heavenly of clean. Now that's awesome.