Just a quickie...

I had to share this... I saw it on Facebook and it needs to be passed along!! Remember the Muppets?

Pink or Blue? I smell a contest!!

What are your guesses? In fact, maybe we ought to start a little contest here to guess gender, weight, length, & due date! I think it's a great idea!! So, for those of you that glance your way over here from time to time, add a comment w/ your guesses. The person that gets the closest guess to all 4 will win something really outstanding from us. Like, how about you get to change a couple of really bad diapers? Or maybe a 3 a.m. wake-up call to come rock him back to sleep? Or babysitting him for the first time? I can hear the voice in your head now, "What? That's not a prize. I don't want to rock him back to sleep! Wait a minute, did I read that right? He just said 'him'! Was that really what they're having or were they just picking a gender for the sake of not having to say 'it'?!? I think he actually might have slipped up and told us the gender!!"

Yes. It's true. IT'S A BOY (I did it small so it didin't jump off the page at you all!!)!! I'll let Jana elaborate a little bit more (she did below this posting), but suffice it to say that we were both pretty sure that the news we received from the ultrasound tech wouldn't be a surprise, and we were right. By yesterday morning we were both fairly certain that another boy would be joining our family, and almost as soon as the tech put the jelly spreader on Jana's belly, there it was! Definitely a boy... and BTW, it doesn't look anything like that baby in the upper right corner of this page. Ours looks more like a black and white blob, almost like a Rorschach test, with little bits of grey sprinkled in.

It's a baby ???

Well, for those of you who follow this blog (Is there anyone?) We did indeed find out the gender of the bean...We are way excited to announce that we will be welcoming another BOY! What?! Not what anyone thought it would be. I thought the bean was a boy lately and yes, there is no doubt about it! My Mom was the most excited. When I told her she shouted and laughed and was so excited that it made me feel really good. I think the boys are happy. Nicholas is really fine with any baby as long as there is a baby and Ethan says it's great but less enthusiastically. But it will be great. We got lots of cute pictures but I'm too lazy to put them on right now...maybe Clark will later. Oh, and most importantly, everything about the bean looks good and right on schedule!

Surprise!

Surprise this is Not Clark and I have changed the background without his permission. (That's not to say that I need his permission.) Is this background manly enough for Clark to continue blogging? I think so. So, the main reason that I haven't been posting is because I have no visuals to go along with my ramblings. Our camera is broken...so hint hint, (Clark) that would be a good gift for Christmas. I think that as a girl you need some visual proof of an event otherwise there is nothing to write about. Did it actually happen? There have been many fabulous moments I have wanted to preserve over the last few months too...Like Halloween and the sinful;) Twilight movie that I went to with some fun friends from my ward and a lot of other very important events that are now forgotten because we don't have a camera so I can't remember what they are. Maybe that is because my brain has shrunk since I have been incubating the bean. Most definitely that is the reason! I am so so so excited about the bean BTW! We hopefully will find out on December 11th what we are having. Everyone wants us to have a girl including Nicholas, Ethan and me. (and Clark too I think) Of course we will take what we can get, but we would like to even out the hormones in this house just a little bit. Immediately my mind jumps to the thought "be careful what you wish for". I think it might be fun NOT to find out what we are having but Clark says no way. Instead he is opting for us knowing and not telling anyone else. I don't know how well that would be received though, any thoughts? Okay this is the post about nothing so I'll end there with one more note:

Happy Birthday to my Brother Kenny today! How old are you today? You must be ancient by now right? I can say that because I am by far the youngest in my family!

A shotgun weekend...

At my work, we do a lot of business with OC Tanner. Our sales guy invited me to a pheasant club last Friday, with some of his other clients, to go on a pheasant hunt. Since we've already established that I'm a manly-man and don't believe in blogging, taking Twilight quizzes (I'm a Jasper, btw...), or buying sweaters for myself at the Gateway, I'm not too ashamed to tell you that this was my first pheasant hunt. In fact, I bought my shotgun a week before the hunt and loaded it for the first time just a couple of hours before I shot my first bird. I was a little concerned that I wasn't going to hit anything, but as you can see, it all worked out ok. Nicholas thought it was the coolest thing ever, Ethan didn't want anything to do w/ the birds. I ended up taking them w/ me on a campout w/ the scouts and having them for dinner that night. In case any of you need to know a quick & effective way to clean the birds, let me know! It involves stepping on the wings & pulling the legs... ;)

Sheesh...

President Obama & the Utes beat TCU... is there any reason to go on?!? Surely these must be signs of the end of the world! No, I'm only kidding... (kind of!)

While I am disappointed that my candidates (McCain & Palin, for those of you don't know me) aren't going to be in the White House come Jan. 20th, I fully support the process and the office of the President. I've been telling the boys for months that if Obama wins, we're moving to Taiwan! So on the morning after the election, the boys were asking Jana if we really were going to move and if Obama was going to take away our guns... (with sarcasm) I have no idea where they got that idea!! ;)

Other than that, what else is going on... Halloween was kinda weird. I mean, I know by nature Halloween should be weird, but come on... 70 degrees, a warm rain & mosquitoes?!? A week or two before that, we had 6 inches of snow! A few days after Halloween, more snow!! I went out w/ the boys & Josh Peterson, and I gotta say, they did an excellent job of canvassing the neighborhood. This was the first year that we got around the entire Perry Homes subdivision. They had a great time... Jana sat on the porch handing out candy, and then sent Ethan over to dance on Ken Hargis' lawn. He puts his speakers in the window, plays disco music, & makes funny comments over the mic. I see a karaoke competition coming up at our next neighborhood BBQ!!

Jana's doing well w/ the baby thing. No throwing up so far! There have been some close calls though. Typically when I'm going over train tracks, making left turns, making right turns, going straight, going slow, going fast, breathing, existing, etc. Pretty much anything and nothing can cause a wave of nausea and cause Jana to put out her arms, close her eyes, breathe deeply and say, "Stop [insert any action/activity]! It's making me sick..." In fact, we were coming home from Highland a few weeks ago and I decided that I needed to clean the windshield. Jana was asleep in the front seat. I pulled the windshield-wiper-stick-thingy to pump out some fluid, and as the wipers jumped across the windshield, it made an awful, scary noise. It scared Jana so badly, in fact, I'm still trying to find an animal noise that compares to the sound that came out of her, but scared her right in to nausea. Oops... my bad. Anyway, overall Jana's doing great!

Eight years later...

Well, I guess it's time to annouce that we will soon be back in diapers. No, I haven't become incontinent. We're jumping back into the baby thing! Nick is nearly 10, Ethan is 8, and come end of April-beginning of May we'll have #3 joining us. In fact, the baby should be arriving about a week after I run the half marathon. If we time it right, I could be recuperating in a bed right next to Jana... ;)

There'll be more posted on this topic a little later. I'm in Tulsa tonight, just working on some work stuff & thought I better update our family blog. But that brings me to something that's got me a little... um, perplexed:

Why, out of all of the people we know (that have blogs), WHY AM I THE ONLY GUY POSTING STUFF?!? I look around at all of our friends & neighbors blogs, and I'll be danged! Everyone else's blogs are being maintained/updated by the wife/mom/master of the house... Now, please don't misinterpret my confusion. I'm not at all suggesting that this should be Jana's thing & she should be the one posting & keeping everyone informed. Ah, here's the perfect analogy:

Let's pretend I'm at The Gateway, walking around by myself, just doing a little window shopping. Stopping at a store window front, I see a sweater that I really like. I enter the store, go over to the sweater table-thing, and start holding up various colors to see which one looks the best (remember, we're pretending. In real life, I just grab whatever color I think is my size, buy it, go home, try it on, it doesn't fit, jump back in the car, return to store, return sweater. Repeat 3 times...). I select a sweater in a navy blue, and proceed to the changing room to try it on. As I'm sitting there, waiting for a room to become available, I finally start to look around and take notice of my environment. "Wait a minute...", I think to myself. "Why do I feel so immasculated all of a sudden?" I ponder. GASP!!! I'M IN A WOMENS CLOTHING STORE!!! Running out, with my head pulled back into my shirt like a turtle, I run for the door, however a little confused because I really liked that sweater!

Do you see what I mean? Anyway, I've decided that, you know what, I like this blog thing! I'm going to embrace it, but don't be surprised if I tell a random story about guns or beef jerky or big engines or some other manly topic. And I'll DEFINITELY be encouraging Jana to take the lead on our blog!!

NObama!

It probably won't matter much, but I've got to vent. After watching the VP debate and reading the anti-Palin articles that followed, I decided there wasn't enough anti-Biden. Believe me, its well-deserved! The dang media is so liberal that its a pretty safe bet that you won't hear this on any of the major news outlets.

I know it's a lot to read, but I'm trying to eliminate some misinformation. Here are some false statements Biden made in the debate and the truth:

BIDEN: Complained about "economic policies of the last eight years" that led to "excessive deregulation." 

THE FACTS: Biden voted for 1999 deregulation that liberal groups are blaming for part of the financial crisis. The law allowed Wall Street investment banks to create the kind of mortgage-related securities at the core of the problem now. The law was widely backed by Republicans as well as by Democratic President Clinton, who argues it has stopped the crisis today from being worse.

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BIDEN: Warned that Republican presidential candidate John McCain's $5,000 tax credit to help families buy health coverage "will go straight to the insurance company." 

THE FACTS: Of course it would, because it's meant to pay for insurance. That's like saying money for a car loan will go straight to the car dealer.

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BIDEN: Said McCain supports tax breaks for oil companies, and "wants to give them another $4 billion tax cut." 

THE FACTS: Biden is repeating a favorite saw of the Obama campaign, and it's misleading. McCain supports a cut in income taxes for all corporations, and doesn't single out any one industry for that benefit.

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BIDEN: "As a matter of fact, John recently wrote an article in a major magazine saying that he wants to do for the health care industry -- deregulate it and let the free market move -- like he did for the banking industry." 

THE FACTS: Biden and Obama have been perpetuating this distortion of what McCain wrote in an article for the American Academy of Actuaries. McCain, laying out his health plan, only referred to deregulation when saying people should be allowed to buy health insurance across state lines. In that context, he wrote: "Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation."

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PALIN: "Barack Obama even supported increasing taxes as late as last year for those families making only $42,000 a year." 

BIDEN: "The charge is absolutely not true. Barack Obama did not vote to raise taxes. The vote she's referring to, John McCain voted the exact same way." 

THE FACTS: The vote was on a nonbinding budget resolution that assumed that President Bush's tax cuts would expire, as scheduled, in 2011. If that actually happened, it could mean higher taxes for people making as little as about $42,000. But Obama is proposing tax increases only on the wealthy, and would cut taxes for most others. In the March 14 budget resolution supported by Obama and Biden, McCain actually did not vote.

Sinclair's "Fall Social" at Snowbird

Another quick one... we went to Snowbird on Saturday for a department thing for work. Every year our department has a "fall social" at some family-friendly place. Lunch & activities are paid for and we usually have a great time. This year was Snowbird, so the activities were bull-riding, alpine slide, zip line, rock wall, & tram. We had a blast and the colors were spectacular! But sheesh, what was in those burgers? It definitely had the texture of mystery meat... ewww.

Just a quick one... Ethan wrote a book! If you weren't aware, he's kind of a Star Wars nut, so he wrote "The History of the Dark Side". I PDF'ed it for all y'all...

Well, here I am again at that mountain we know and love as Timp. A week after hiking it with the fam, we decided to take our scouts up there. They are, left to right, Nick Kennedy, Crick (yes, Crick) Spackman, me in my search & rescue/commando/tactical/survival vest, & Jason Draney. Jason's obviously not a scout (sorry Jason!), but one of the other leaders. We left Syracuse around 5:45 a.m., on the trail by 7:45 a.m., summited and back in the car exactly 8 hrs later. Yep, 15 miles in 8hrs, climbing to a stunning beautiful 11,749 feet. We had a blast...

Some of the funnier things that happened: heading up the canyon, we came around a bend and suprised a group of female joggers (prob students at the Y). Well, I guess the only really surprised one was the girl 3 feet off the road "relieving" herself. She jumped up as we passed her... sure hope she was finished... Hiking down the mountain, we were following a guy that was listening to the BYU game. Midway through the 2nd quarter, he got on this kick of yelling, "UCLA fumbled... BYU scored!" He did it 3 times!! Then, when we got back to the parking lot, we found, courtesy of our national parks finest in uniform, a parking ticket for $125!!! Wait, that's not funny... sure am glad I was the one to volunteer to drive that morning. Don't worry, Jana. I've written them a letter asking them to repaint the stripes at the parking lot AND to pretty please reduce or remove the fine.

Other than that, the only other thing to write about is Nicholas' & Ethan's football game tonight. I'm in Sun Valley right now, so I didn't get to see the game. I'll let Jana tackle that one (dang, I'm good...).

Later!!

Hiking a STEEP mountain!

Last Saturday we decided to go hike the caves at Timpanogas. We got there and got in line and the cave tours sold out to the person right in front of us! But who cares? We can still hike to the top and it will be totally worth it...right? We won't be mad at all when we finally climb the steepest trail known to man only to realize we can't partake in the only reward at the end of the steep hike...the tour of the cool caves with stalactites and everything. Did I mention the hike was steep? It was kind of a bummer to just turn around and go back, but holy cow it was beautiful up there. And it was good for my lazy behind and apparantly for my lazy calves because they are still sore. Aahh, good times...

Finally!!

The Jones Family blog is up and running! After paining ourselves trying to interpret java, html, and a little pig latin, we were able to finally apply an imple-say ackground-bay. Yep, a family of rocket scientists...

For those of you that give a darn, this is as much for you as it is for us. We decided it was time to journalize (I know, it's not a word. I'm a rocket scientist, not a word-type person who knows stuff...) where was I... oh yeah, we need to get stuff down for generations and stuff. What better place than on the World Wide Web! BTW, did you know that some smart people are designing a better web that's supposed to wipe this one off the face of the earth? Yep, it's true... it's called "The Grid". Scary, huh... a world without the internet. Sure would make this blogging thing easier. Read about it here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article3689881.ece

But then again, the scientists at CERN are also creating a super-collider that "might" create blackholes and wipe out our planet. This is all supposed to go live around Halloween. Oooh, scary... Again, why are we all blogging? Kidding!!

Anyway, all that aside, we, The Joneses, will do our best to keep you informed of our joys, our sorrows (ok, not really), and everything in between. Again, only for those of you that give a darn...