Lincoln's First Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year

My apologies for not posting these sooner. I didn't have enough material for Thanksgiving to post by itself, so I waited for Christmas. We signed up for a free 1-month trial of Amazon Prime so we could take advantage of the free shipping for Christmas presents…and then I didn't have time to prepare this post because we were furiously watching shows on Amazon Prime before our free trial ran out.[1]

Lilli Turns Two!

A week ago yesterday Lilli turned two years old. While I was at work, Lilli helped Leann make the cupcakes for her birthday. Well, maybe she just helped lick the frosting off the beater… I came home half an hour early just for the occaision. When I walked through the front door I saw that the apartment had been transformed during my absence. There was yellow crêpe paper strung all over the kitchen—including streamers attached to the blades of the ceiling fan (which is actually pretty cool when you turn it on). Lilli was running around with two punch balloons (Leann prefers these because they're less likely to pop). And there was a big pile of presents in the living room. For dinner we ate her favorite food: beef pot pies.[1]

Cute Little Curls

When I was born I was a little baldy. Soon my hair came in (though now it's on its way out) and for a while I even had a fringe of curls but eventually those got clipped. As far back as I can remember I haven't let my hair get long enough to see if it still curls. My sisters' hair doesn't curl anymore, so I suspect that it was just a thing of childhood. Lilli finally has enough hair that she has that same fringe of curls (so I guess it's heritable). Throughout the day the curls get kind of limp but right after she takes a bath they really pop.

Map Projection of Blue Jeans

I was sitting in Elder's Quorum [1] last week watching the fellow in front of me playing with his infant. The little baby boy was wearing a tiny pair of jeans. Just for fun, I began sketching in my notebook the pattern of yellow stitching. Since I was drawing in only two dimensions, I flattened everything. Rather than simulate three dimensions through the use of shading, I sought to capture the entire surface. As with rendering a two-dimensional map of a three-dimensional Earth, I was forced to introduce distortions in order to capture the details I wanted and present them in a particular way.[2] So, I present to you my map projection of blue jeans.

Autumn Photos

This post is just a smattering of photos I've taken this last autumn since it's pretty much over. Two nights ago we got so much snow that fallen tree branches (and even a few fallen trees) now litter the streets of Provo. So winter has unequivocally begun. All but the first three of the photographs are from a walk Leann and I went on to scout out a place to take some pictures of Lilli. Our neighbor, who has a nicer camera than we do, was willing to take photos of Lilli with her cousin Lizzie in their Hallowe'en outfits.[1]

Hallowe'en 2012

Last Saturday Leann ran in the Provo Zombie Chase.[1] She was joined by her friend, Jordan, and my sister, Ashley. To do so they had to sign a waiver saying that they understood that they would not be allowed to jump headfirst into any of the mud pits and that the water they would be running through had not been tested for chemicals or pathogens. Based on this I expected them to have to run through the swamp and brush around Utah lake trying to get away from 'zombies' who were chasing them. If the 'zombies' caught them they were either out of the race or they became 'zombies', too. No such luck. They just ran around a dirt track which had a few obstacles like a pile of gravel, a cargo net stretched across two shipping containers, etc. They didn't have to run through swamps or mud pits. Furthermore, the 'zombies' hissed and snarled at them, and sometimes lunged at them, but they didn't actually chase the runners. I was rather let down, but I guess it wasn't really my race anyway. But at one point they did get to shoot at some 'zombies' with paintball guns.

Agent of Chaos

One of Lillian's favorite things to do is take something that is neat and orderly and destroy it. This makes it difficult to fold the laundry [1] or make towers out of her blocks.[2] If she sees a pile of papers and/or magazines on the coffee table [3], she thrusts them all to the floor (and will even start tearing them apart).[4] And she likes to help unload the dishwasher (but she doesn't care about putting anything away). We've even resorted to creating things that are appropriate for her to destroy, like filling an old tissue box with shreds of paper so she can pull them all out and scatter them. But every once in a while she still has a bonanza.

Just Like Mommy

A while back I posted some of the ways that Lillian tries to be like her Daddy.[1] But she spends most of her waking hours with Leann. So while Lillian has picked up a few of my interests and behaviors, she's more likely to pick up Leann's. Since Leann's birthday was last week, I thought it would be nice to share some of the ways that Lilli tries to be just like her Mommy. (Note that I've been preparing this post for a while, so Lilli is going to look young in some of the pictures.)

Retail Hell

A few weeks before the deadline of the Writers on the Loose short story contest [1], I was talking with my friend, Jonathan, on a website, called the Pedestrian, where former members of the BYU 38th Ward Book Club get together. He works at a Stein Mart in the men's clothing department and sometimes has less-than-savory interactions with the customers.[2] He'd just been through one such trying event and he wrote, "I was an inch from knocking over a rack, throwing clothes around, and quitting. No one should have to put up with retail hell." I responded, "Except…GENGHIS KHAN!"[3] This then inspired me to write a story about just that: Genghis Khan ending up in retail hell—all for Jonathan. And while I was at it, I decided to give it a 2012 twist so that I could submit it to the contest.

Birthday Party!

It's kind of hard to believe, but one year ago yesterday Lillian came into the world. We didn't expect her so soon (she was two months early [1]), but we're so glad to have her. On Saturday she had a birthday party with the Crook side of the family (her party with the Martin side is coming up later). Most of her aunts, uncles, and cousins, along with her grandparents came down from the north end of Utah for the party. (Not shown: her Aunt Melissa and her cousin Katie were sitting behind me when I shot this picture.)

Dirty Dash 2012

After 3.2 miles of fantastic muddy fun last September [1], Jordan and I knew we wanted more. So in December when I finally removed the last bit of mud from around my nails, we signed up for the 5.5- mile June Dirty Dash. We trained about four months for the race (last year we trained three weeks). And this time we coordinated outfits courtesy of D.I. (see below).[2] The Dirty Dash was held at Soldier Hollow, again, but they did have a few new obstacles like monkey bars, an artificial waterfall, A-frame walls with knotted ropes, cargo net walls, and wooden arches. Matt and Lilli came along to watch and to cheer us on.

Just Like Daddy

Every once in a while Lillian gets to meet and play with other people, but for the most part her social interactions are limited to playing with Leann and me. So she can't help but start to mimic us. Lucky kid, right? Sometimes…maybe…we teach her, but sometimes she just picks things up by watching us. Here are some of the ways she is or is trying to be like her Daddy.

Find It: Laundry

It's been a while since I posted a Find It [1], but after taking this photo, I just couldn't resist. Lillian is hiding in this pile of clothes. Can you find her?

Why Is It So Difficult?

When I first started dressing myself for Church, I had a hard time matching up the buttons with the button holes on my dress shirt. I would start at the top and work my way down. Sometimes I got to the bottom only to discover that I had an extra button or an extra hole. But in my adult life I think I could count on one hand the number of times I've incorrectly buttoned up my shirt. Fast forward to fatherhood. Lillian's onesies have just three snaps. Just three! So why do I get it wrong so often?

Dress Up

Since we don't take Lillian to Church, yet, we never put her in the dresses we've been given by friends and family. But she's growing out of them. So last week Leann played dress up with Lilli and took some pictures. Here are the highlights.

Book Review: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

One New Year's Day as the Knights of the Round Table are celebrating, a man who is green from head to toe bursts into the hall, mounted on his green horse, and issues a challenge. He will give anyone the chance to strike off his head with his axe, but if they fail, then on the next New Year's Day they must surrender to him the same opportunity. King Arthur accepts but Sir Gawain, his nephew, convinces Arthur to let him be the one to do it, instead. With one blow of the axe he strikes off the Green Knight's head. Much to everyone's astonishment, the Green Knight scoops his head back up, reminds Gawain of the terms of the challenge, and then rides away on his green horse. The rest of the poem is about Gawain's efforts to find the Chapel of the Green Knight and more importantly the temptations he is confronted with prior to the next New Year's Day.

Emo Pants

It seems that every generation has to have a uniquely awful style of pants to wear. We've seen bell-bottoms in the 1960s and 1970s, acid-wash jeans in the 1980s, and baggy jeans in the 1990s. Now we're in the age of 'emo pants'. These unfortunate pants are extremely tight on the legs, yet saggy in the butt.

Is there really anyone out there who objectively thinks that emo pants are fashionable? Actually, yes.

Dress Shoelaces

Simply put: they're awful. You tie them and within roughly three minutes they're untied again. There's no stopping it! I suspect that dress shoe laces have a coefficient of friction even lower than that of BAM.[1]

We can put a man on the moon and fling a satellite out of the solar system, so why can't we make dress shoelaces that stay tied?

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Notes:

[1] Its friction coefficient is 0.02, half that of Teflon. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAM_(material).