www.micahandlindsey.com

I am a total Dr. Laura fan.  I admit she can be harsh at times, but I love the candor and everyone knows what she is like before they call in.  And to be honest, I think she has excellent advice.  To set the scene…..my little niece has been a little nervous about starting up school this year.  She is plenty popular, and does well in school, but I think the change of teachers and people in her class just hasn’t settled with her yet.  No biggie, but when I picked her up from school yesterday, I got the best idea.  I told her it was my dream to call in and get on the air with Dr. Laura, and this might be the perfect opportunity.  We called in, and on about the seventh try, we got through to the screener.  I thought I would be the one on air, but unfortunately they informed me my niece would be the one to talk to Dr. Laura.  We called her “Allison”, and about 15 minutes later we heard Dr. Laura say, “Allison…..how can I help you?”

My little niece is also some what of a fan, but she was totally nervous that Dr. Laura would yell at her and get mad.  I told her she only does that to adults….not kids.  Dr. Laura started out by asking her what the problem was.  “Allison” said that when she got to school, she sometimes was a little scared and nervous.  Dr. Laura continued on with more questions, to which “Allison” responded with the same answer over and over.  My niece kept looking at me and whispering, “I don’t know what to say”, so about the fourth time, I whispered back, “just tell her what you think.”  Dr. Laura asked another question, and my niece looked at me confused and at a loss for words, so I whispered, “tell her about the time when you…..”.  This is when Dr. Laura interupted and asked “Allison” to pass the phone along to her mother (me).  I got on….SO EXCITED…..and said hi to Dr. Laura.   To which I got this response.  “With all of the coaching you are doing in the background, it seems to me you are the real problem here.”  Then my phone went dead…..Dr. Laura hung up on me!  I was SO surprised and mad, that my two nieces with me were in hysterics laughing.  I tried to turn the radion on to catch anything else she might say, and all I caught was, “Maybe you should take her to the doctor and wait in the waiting room.  How is a kid supposed to get along in life with a mother who is always coaching….blah, blah, blah.”

The rest of the night, anytime I would say anything, everyone in my family would respond, “Well, you know what Dr. Laura would say”, or something obnoxious to that effect.  I even had two Dr. Laura books brought to me throughout the night.  Hilarious.

I am still a fan, but as far as yesterday goes…..Dr. Laura can jump in a lake!

I am nice…..so of course, the UCLA shirt made it.  BUT….I also headed to the BYU bookstore to get Scout a BYU jersey, and made a deal with Micah.  I said that Scout would wear the shirt of whatever team was in the lead.  Scout showed up sporting a UCLA T shirt, but soon after had a BYU jersey over it.  On top of the “interesting” game, the most “interesting” parts were:

1. When Gabe started to taunt Micah with how bad UCLA was playing, and Seth (the taunter of all taunts) told him it wasn’t nice to be rude to people.

2. When Micah conveniently left behind his UCLA sweatshirt in the car because it was “too hot”.

3. Finally when Micah said at half time, “we’re out of here…I knew it wasn’t going to be a good game, and I want to catch the USC game at the cabin”.  But on the way home when I wanted to see if UCLA managed to even get one point on the scoreboard, he wouldn’t let me change the dial to that station?!!

42-0 at half time was pretty bad, but when we heard the final score, Micah was disgusted.  In his defense, he had said all along that UCLA should expect to win two games total this season because they are injured and don’t have the depth they need.  I guess the beauty of it all is that he spent his business school days at USC, so time to to leave UCLA behind and jump on the bandwagon.

Besides the UCAL/BYU game, the weekend was great.  We stayed at a cabin in Park City with Seth’s family and some other friends.  The theatre with football games was a highlight, but my favorite day of the weekend was when we went over to a little lake and canoed and fished.  Everyone loved it!

I pride myself on being fairly smart (ask my mom about my IQ story)…but every once in a while I feel dummed down. Like the time I realized that a quarter was named a quarter because it was 1/4 of a dollar, I was amazed I had never thought of it that way before. The latest dummed down moment I had happened last night. Micah came home from work and stuck a piece of bread in the toaster. When the toast popped up, he was totally irritated that it was burned. He looked at the settings that go from 1 to 7, and he threw his arms up in the air and annoyingly asked who always turns the dial up to seven?! I told him I did, and that he would be pleased to know that I knew a great trick for turning bread into toast quicker. He was already on to me, but I still proceeded to explain that I like my toast out faster, so I turn up the heat/dial. He looked at me and started cracking up, and then it hit me. It doesn’t turn the heat up, the “7″ just cooks the bread for longer. Don’t know how I never caught onto that one, but 32 years into my life….I have humbly learned something new.

I guess talking on my cell phone while driving is more dangerous than eating, while driving with one knee and trying to hand Scout his book that fell to the ground. I hope my money goes to making this state a safer place….OH….and to world peace!

My Mom, Trilby and Skylar all adamantly say NO.  Micah thinks it is funny, and Calin just giggles when she sees him.  I would obviously add a black eye, try and get a doctor to add an orange or black arm cast, and I already have an ankle brace for him.  I don’t see a problem.  But I think my mom was particularly against it because when she got him up from his nap, he was wrapped in the ace bandage.  She was disgusted, and I said it was probably the warmest sleep he had ever had.  She then asked why he didn’t have a shirt on. Oops.

For only three days, we definitely had an adventure!  We started off South, and ended up inland a bit at Julian — an old, gold-mining town famous for their apples and apple pies.  I went to Julian years ago with my family, and was glad to be back with my little family.  We stayed at the Orchard Inn and had our own little cottage.  Scout loved the pond with catfish in it, but his favorite feature was the apple tree that was just outside our room.  He would pick the apples, hold them like they were beautiful treasures and eat them.  He loved them, and as soon as he was done, he would say “more” about a hundred times until we went and picked another apple.

We woke up the next morning and walked the streets of Julian.  After that, we got in our car and drove down a secluded street to see what it had to offer.  At the end of the road was a “U-Pick” apple orchard.  They also had pears and a whole grape vineyard we also got some samplings of.  The orchard was massive — probably close to 2,000 trees with 7 different varieties.  We walked up and down the rows and had the best time picking the perfect apples to fill our bag.  Scout in the meantime was holding his little treasures and eating them whether they were off the ground, had fallen in the dirt, or perfectly shined by his dad.

After picking apples, we headed down the highway to see what else our adventure had to offer.  After farm stand stops, animal farm stops, etc….we stumbled across a church bazaar in a tiny town called Descancso - population about 200?!  The whole town turned up to the party.  They had a deep pit BBQ going alongside the live auction, craft stands and kid’s game booths.  Scout and Micah were pros at the fishing booth.  We got snow cones and nachos, enjoyed the country band and were cracking up at the poor guy who was trying to raise money during the live auction with not a whole lot of takers.  He even asked if Scout was bidding when Scout put his hands on his head.

We then drove on and happened upon a Mexican rodeo. We passed it by because we were looking for a spot to camp, and it was going to be dark soon.  After a couple of tries, we got a great camping spot at Lake Dixon.  It was totally secluded, and overlooked the lake. All was great until Micah pulled out our miniscule tent that would have been tight for just the two of us.  Scout and I had pretty good sleeps, but poor Micah said he didn’t sleep a wink.

The next morning, we didn’t want our adventure to end, so we went to Megan’s house and kidnapped Trey for breakfast.  Micah ran in with  sweatshirt over his head, and when Trey came out, I was driving the car with a bag over my head.  He said Scout gave us away.  We asked him if he was scared, and he said, “I knew it was someone in the family, and that it was a joke…so no I wasn’t scared.”  Brave little boy!

We ended our adventure with a couple of hours at the Wild Animal Park.  We were all pretty exhausted, and Scout hadn’t had a nap in a couple of days….so it was time to head home.  We had a blast, and are looking forward to our next “choose your own adventure” vacation.  Even Micah who is a big time planner, and pre planner and pack three days early type of guy liked the idea of the unknown.  We packed in a split second (Scout and my stuff was literally in a trash bag), we had no plans or expectations, we drove wherever we wanted, and the unknown turned out to be great!  I can’t wait to do it again, and possibly cross the California border this time around.

Micah and I were thinking of something fun to do over the three day weekend. We thought Yosemite would be too crowded. I vetoed Mexico due to pregnancy and a 16 month old. Vegas — been there, done that. The list goes on and on…..

So I have always known I wanted to start a couple new and fun traditions with my family - when I had one anyway. One I came up with a while back was a “choose your own adventure” road trip. It will be up to our kids to tell us what freeways to take, what direction we should go, where we should stop, etc. I can just imagine being a kid and getting to tell my parents everything to do. We could end up in Texas or North Dakota…..but the beauty of it is the adventure and the unknown.

So even though we don’t have kids who are old enough, rather than plan and plot, I said we should just hop in the car and drive. So off we are — north or south, east or west….who knows? We’ll wake up in the morning, grab a couple of outfits for us and the babe, stick them in a grocery bag, grab our wallets and camping stuff (we don’t know if there are hotels where we are going) and choose our own adventure! –Jim, I know you’re jealous!–

For my birthday treat, Scout decided to have me sleep in a little twin bed with him, while he woke up and fussed/cried/screamed/whimpered for about two minutes — every twenty minutes….just long enough for me to wake up abruptly and then try to fall back asleep. 40 times later, I took him down and fed him dry Cheerios with a sippy full of milk, and the went and took him to Tristen’s bed who was spending the night.

8 pm - 8 am…..12 hours!  Not so bad.