Happy Birthday Mommy!

We celebrated Nicoles 27th birthday yesterday with friends, family and a giant Costco cake (Nicole's favorite).

Ketchup

Well, I am angry at Basketball. So instead of swearing and throwing coca-cola at the t.v., I am going to play ketchup on our blogsite. When last I blogged...Oliver was a few weeks shy of 3 months. We took a trip the beginning of February for Grandpa LeSueur's 80th birthday party. While we were there, we got to meet Oliver's 2 new cousins; The Other Girl Cory Jr. also know as Dotty Brown and WBPVII a.k.a. Seven, Bill and Ashley's new son. Above are all three in action. While there, Oliver went to Disneyland for the very first time. Now, before you all get judgemental and say how crazy Nicole and I are for taking a "less than 3 month old" baby to Disneyland, you should knw that we got in for free. Plus Cory and Mary and Dottie (who also got in for free) and Darin, Suzy and their kids were there. We took turns going on rides, so we all got to have some fun. The one and only ride Oliver participated in was the Jungle Cruise. Now when Oliver is 3 and screams about wanting to go to Disneyland, we can tell him that he already went once and if he doesn't remember, we have pictures to prove it. We got some more pictures taken down in California. They are on our picasa site if you would like to see them. Oliver is getting bigger every day. His head is roughly the size of a bowling ball and his body is trying to ketchup. He teased us last weekend by sleeping all the way through the night, only to have refrained from duplicating this glorious act since. He has graduated from his first round of clothing. Nicole boxed up all of his 0 to 3 month clothes and we are now working on his 3 to 6 and 6 to 9 month collection. He wears everything twice before it doesn't fit or before he poops all over it and ruins it. He does however fit into his Lakers hat now. Its just too bad they are so horrible this year. He try to talk all the time now. But this has caused him to develop an uncontrollable salivating disorder. He wears a bib during the day to mop up this excess of slobber. It goes perfectly with his hound-like jowls that hang off of his face. Nicole told me today that she is teaching Oliver the alphabet. They learn a new letter each day, name words that start with that letter and practice the sound. She says that he seems to be picking up a lot and will actually mimic her when she blows raspberries at him. We got him to laugh for the first time today but it was at the expense of me wearing myself out while jumping around and acting like a monkey. Hopefully we can get it on tape. Him laughing, not me acting like a monkey. It's retardedly cute. So now he is coming up on 4 months of age. Were trying to teach him tricks like sitting up, rolling onto his stomach and using the toilet.

Now that we are all ketched-up, we can go back to our weekly posts.

Oliver and Dot

Oliver and Dot. More pictures will follow soon.

Guy Smiley

Our little friend has been smiling a lot lately. Nicole got these great pictures of him today. It's nice to know that beyond all the crying and fussing and not sleeping through the night, he is still a happy baby. And now we have the proof to show it.

Oliver is now 10 weeks old. At some point we are supposed to start saying 2 1/2 months instead of weeks, but I don't know when. Someone told me recently that you start saying months based on their clothes size. But if I said Oliver was 3 to 6 months old, you would be left guessing what the crap that means. And don't even get me started on the 2T, 3T, 4T sizes. I don't even know what they mean.

Another person told me to use weeks up to one year and months from that point until they are two. But I don't think it is right to force people to do that much math. If someone asks how old your baby is and you say 44 weeks, they should no longer be under the obligation to care how old your baby is.

Oliver is really into boots right now.

The Day I Blew Up

A lot of people have seen my charred body on our "pictures" link and have been asking a lot of questions about what happened. For some reason it is very difficult to explain in e-mails, so I drew a picture and will try to explain using it as a reference.

In the early morning on September 25th, Corwin and I were at work with our Dad in Fontana, California. We were all in the rear electrical room at Wal*Mart where I was working on a 480 volt panel. Suddenly everything around me turned white and became very loud (eerily similar to when the nuclear bomb went off on last weeks "24" episode).

In the back of this panel were three buss bars, each of which carries 277 volts of electricity. Something, probably made of metal, crossed over the bottom of the two left most buss bars and caused an arch. The same concept is used to super heat metal when arch-welding, but obviously that is more controlled. I was on my knees when it happened putting me level with the explosion.

Normally this arch would cause a breaker to shut off the power running to these three buss bars, but something malfunctioned and the searing heat kept shooting at me for about 5 to 8 seconds. My dad, seeing the flames had just about stopped, jumped in front of the panel and pulled me out of the way. Corwin avoided the blast. I thought I was toast (get it, toast?).

I did not get electrocuted like Frank Grimes did. That would have killed me like it killed him. Poor Grimey, as he liked to be called.

When My eyesight came too, I saw that the burns weren't as bad as I imagined. In fact I got up and walked around for a few minutes while my Dad took care of the panel. When the ambulance got there, they introduced me to this stuff called morphine and the next 10 days were a blur.

For those who haven't had the stomach to look at the pictures, I had 1st, 2nd and 3rd degree burns on my left arm from my wrist to my elbow and on my left leg from my ankle to my knee. I had 2nd degree burns on my right arm, 1st degree burns from the left side of my face (from the corner of my eye to my ear) and a 2nd degree burn on my ear. I also had 1st and 2nd degree burns on the outside of my right hand and on the lower portion of my right palm. I was holding a drill when it happened, so if you make like you're holding a drill and look at your hand you can see how that happened. This is the least graphic picture.



At some point during my 10 day high, I had skin grafting done in surgery. They took skin from my left thigh and covered the deep burns on my right leg and right arm. Everyone who has seen the grafting, Doctors and regular humans alike, have been very impressed with how good it looks. Most burn victims have to wear what they call compression garments for 12 to 18 months. I wore them for three months.

Most people cringe when they think about the pain associated with 3rd degree burn. But The whole ordeal was not unbearable. That is mostly because they kept me so well medicated at the hospital. I want everyone to know that the pain I experienced was very minimal compared to the other people I met in the burn ward at the hospital.

We appreciate every one's help and concern during this time. Nicole is such a trooper, she was 7 1/2 months pregnant while all of this was going on. She went through quite the ordeal simply trying to get down to California to be with me. We moved into our new house a few days after I got home. My family put a lot of work into painting the house before they helped us move in. It is really nice to have people that close to rely on in these types of situations.

And that's that. I am doing great now. Feel free to see the "pictures" if you don't mind the gore.

The White Ninja

We blessed Oliver a few weeks ago. Nicole's mom was very nice and offered to make his blessing outfit. However, one day when Nicole described it to me, she used the word "feminine" and I freaked out, as I am prone to over react to things. Since then, Nicole's mom has been really nervous about making this outfit. She was working on a second outfit that I thought was going to be perfect for him, but she decided that it didn't look good. Then she found this one at Target in Southern California.

I think Nicole's mom thought it was a negative comment when I said, "He looks like a white Ninja!" All it lacked was the headband and a black belt. To say the least, I absolutely loved it. The blessing went well. Grandpas, Uncles, Great Uncles and Bishops all participated. It was a perfect day. Of course, now the ward knows us as the bearded family since a big percentage of those who participated wore full beards.

Our good friend Kelly McCaleb brought her camera to the after party and got these great pictures. You can see more at our Picassa site (the link is on the right).

This is Olivers cousin Daphne. She is five years old and can't wait to be able to baby sit for us. She will follow Nicole around everywhere waiting for another chance to hold the baby. She is really cute.

This is Nicole's sister Emily. Not much of a resemblance to her sister.

This is mine and Olivers favorite trick, but Mom and Grandma and Grandma and Great Grandma have a borderline heart attack when I do it. So I don't do it that often anymore. Yeah right!

Christmas 2006

It was a great Christmas. Nice and white. Perfect for Oliver's first and for Nicole's family who came up from California. Grandma Dorothy was there too, which is great cause it was her birthday on Christmas day. She got to see her first great grandchild for the first time.

We decided not to get Oliver any presents because he already had so much stuff just from being born. But he still raked it in with the majority of the presents under our tree. It was so nice to have our own house to host our own Christmas morning.

We went to salt lake to see the lights at Temple Square one night. It was as beautiful as ever...and freezing cold.

I am not the only one that is impressed with how good Nicole looks a month after she gave birth.