We will once again be garnishing one little girls wages

Some of you my recall this story: http://kecoproductions.blogspot.com/2008/09/we-will-be-garnishing-one-little-girls.html.
Well here is kind of a sequel.
So the other day, Connie needs to go somewhere in the van and she goes to look for her keys and can't find them anywhere.  We'd lost our spare key some time ago, so those keys were the only ones we had for the van.  For days we searched and prayed to be able to find those keys.  Gracie would pray especially hard every night that we could find the missing keys.  It was so cute.   Finally we resigned ourselves to getting new keys.  We called the dealer and they wanted some ridiculous amount of money for a new key.  Something like $50 to tow the van to the dealership and $160 for a new key (the keys are expensive because they have some kind of chip thing in them that the car recognizes).  Well we thought this was way too expensive.  So we decided to try a local locksmith who would come to our house and get us a new key for $150.  This key worked out fine and we thought all was well.

So 4-5 days after this, Gracie came upstairs from the basement all excited.  She had found the old keys.  For some reason they were under the slide in our basement.  We figured Jonah must have somehow gotten a hold of them and dropped them there or something like that.  We were a little pertubed, but figured oh well, these things happen.

But then the story continues.  Connie tries to use the old key and the van won't start.  Then she tries to use the new key, and the car won't start.  And we are thinking we are just having bad luck with cars.  So we call our mechanic and have him tow the van to his shop, because we think the electrical system is shorted out or something.  He spends a lot of time try to track it down until finally he figures out the car won't start because somehow when we got the new key the van was reprogrammed to recognize the chip in it, but then when we started using the old key the computer got all confused and ended up not working for either key.  So then we had to ended up having to take the van to the Honda dealer to get the computer reset and get some more new keys and our grand total cost for losing the keys  ends up being $400 (including the $150 from the first new key).  So we grit our teeth and say, GRRR, I guess these things just happen.

But that is not the end of the story.

A day or two later, Gracie confesses to Connie why she was so excited to find the keys, "Mommy, I really wanted to find those keys because the other day when Montie (her cousin) was here, you said he had to go home and I didn't want him to go, so I hid your keys so you couldn't leave.  But then I couldn't remember were I put them".

The funny thing is, I just can't get that mad at her.  She knew she did something wrong and she did her best to fix the situation.  And she was so happy that she was able to right her wrong that it seems like it would send her the wrong message to give her a harsh punishment when she had already done all she could do to fix it.  So I guess in the end, instead of thinking of it as $400 wasted, we can think of it as $400 invested in learning about repentance and making things right.  And we got a fun story out of it too.

Trying to lose my clydesdale status

I have never had some one come up to me and say, "You are big fatty!" or even gently said, "You know, you would probably feel better if you lost a few pounds".  In fact, most of my life, if I had said to someone that I was overweight, they probably would have accused me of having some sort of eating disorder or weight loss fetish.  Even now when I tell people I am over 200 lbs some of them look at me and are like "what?!? no way".  But it is true, I currently weigh about 207 lbs.  According to BMI tables (which really are not that useful) I am overweight.  According to my questionably reliable body fat measuring scale, I have 20% body fat, which puts me on the high end of what is considered healthy.  Now most people, if they were to see me would say, "You are not overweight, you don't even have a gut", but there has been more than one person who hadn't seen me for years who said, "Wow, I didn't recognize you, you are so big".  Now, I like to think these people didn't mean that as an insult, I think they meant it more as "you are not a scrawny little stick anymore".  But even if they did mean it as an insult, and even if the BMI says I am fat, and my scale says my body fat percentage is a little high, I still think I am pretty healthy and don't have any weird weight self esteem issues.

Me as a stick. I have no plans to return to that state

Except for one.

I hate getting my $@%#$ kicked when I ride uphills on a bike.  It drives me crazy.  People who having only biked for a short time will leave me in the dust on a hill.  I remember once when I thought I was in good shape, I was puffing up a long hill and this old white haired man in his street clothes on a granny bike passed me and I was like "What the #%@&#^$?!?!?!?".

So this year I have done something to force myself to change that.  I have signed up for the Park City Point to Point mountain bike race (http://thepcpp.com/).  78 miles of single track with 14,000 feet of vertical gain.  That is freaking 2.5 miles of vertical gain.  If it was on the road it would kill me.  Being on single track, it will completely and utterly obliterate me.  And I don't want to be obliterated.  So since climbing is all about your power-to-weight ratio, I am fixing to lose me a little weight.  Not a lot.  But enough to no longer be in the Clydesdale category (In most races, the Clydesdale category is anyone 200+ lbs).

So here is my crazy weight loss plan:  Quit eating so much.

I still have to work out some of the details.  Like overcoming the fact that I really like eating food and I eat  even when I am not hungry but I just want to taste something good.  And the fact that I don't really know how much food I eat now, because it too much trouble to keep track of it, so I don't really have any way knowing if I am eating less.
So I think how I am going to overcome these obstacles is weigh myself everyday and that that constant reminder will help me have second thoughts about eating when I am not really hungry.  I know that this "plan" probably won't work for most people, but I know myself I and I know if I have a constant reminder of what I want to do, and where I am relative to that goal, I can self flagellate  myself to get it done.
So my weight today is 207.  Tune in soon to see if my willy nilly weight loss plan has been effective.

A Christmas Poem For Our Neighbors

Every Christmas season, as is the custom in our land, we try to give a little gift to all our neighbors.  Most people give cookies or treats of some kind, but we have tried to avoid that because you can only eat some many treats before you get sick of them and have to start throwing them away and then you feel bad you are throwing away your neighbors treats. So we have tried to do different ideas.

One year we we worked with a neighbor and made like 200 decorative white paper bags with sand and little candles and gave 4 to each neighbor, with a note about putting them out on Christmas Eve so we could make our whole neighborhood look really cool.  It was a great idea, and would have been really cool if there hadn't been a huge snow storm that dumped two feet of snow on Christmas Eve.

Another year we bought tons of Martinelli's sparkling cider (you know that stuff comes in champagne type bottles).  That actually worked out pretty well, but after seeing the final cost, we decided in the future, we don't love our neighbors that much.

This year, Connie came up a great idea.  I have had somewhat of a sour throat and cough, and so she has been making me hot lemonade with honey.   Then she thought, "why don't we give lemons and honey to the neighbors, because everyone gets colds this time of year".  Then she wrote a great poem to go with it.  We wanted to publish this poem here, so that in a few years from now, when lots of people have copied Connie's awesome poem and spread it all over the country, we can prove that, yup, it all started here.

With out further ado, here is the poem:

T’was the start of the Christmas Season  and all through the town,
Every throat  was a’scratchin, every sick face a frown.
For cold weather was bringing more than just holiday spirit,
It was bringing flu bugs, sick germs, and other nasty things with it.

Dear Santa is no help with this holiday plight.
His sleigh full of presents is not what we need on this night.
Dear Grandma is one who can come save the day,
With wisdom, not magic, tucked snug in her sleigh.
For what more could save our noses from being so runny,
But a home remedy of hot lemon with honey.

Juice a half lemon , then add a tablespoon of honey.
Mix in a mug of hot water, and here is a remedy, quite yummy.
For extra nutrition and more flavor I think,
Shave a little of the lemon zest  and add to the drink.
Now sit back and relax, drink the hot brew quite slow,
Feel all the holiday stress and sickness just go.

Have a Merry Christmas and we hope it will be,
Full of laughter and fun and 100%  sick free!

Was dat?

There is quite a bit of variety in when children say their first word and in what that word it is.  Sometimes it is hard to tell what a child's first word is because sometimes they say stuff that kind of sounds like a word, but it is hard to tell if they actually know what they are saying.  Sam's first word was "ball" and "Mama" was close behind.  I think Gracie's first word was "Dada" but it didn't necessarily mean "Daddy" it meant "adult person who can help me" without regard to gender.  Another one of her first words was "lellow" which meant .... "I want water".  I am not totally sure how that came about, but I think it come from "bottle", though I don't know how she would have learned that because she hardly ever used a bottle.
For Jonah, it is really hard to say what his first word was or even if he has really said one.  He babbles all the time and he seems to be saying something, but it is really hard to tell exactly what he is saying.  He certainly understands language pretty well.  The other day Sam and Grace came in from playing outside, and as is too often the case, left the front door wide open.  I was downstairs and yelled upstairs at them to come close the door.  They "didn't hear me", but little Jonah did and he went over and shut the door and then looked over at me like "look I did it".   While I say it hard to really say what was Jonah's first word, he does have a clear first "phrase", which is "Was dat?" or "What's that?".  Anytime he doesn't know what something is, he points and says "Was dat?" and is usually quite pleased when you tell him the answer.  It is a little hard to catch on film, because as soon as you pull the camera out, he wants to look at it, but I caught a little bit of it while reading him stories tonight (At the end of it is a good example of him almost saying words but not quite.  He says "Was dat?.. A doggy! (though it is really a mommy otter, but it does kind of look like a dog):

The beginning of keco productions

It was a sunny day in May of the year 2000 in Zion's National Park. I had just started along the trail to Angel's Landing. I was there as part of the annual camping trip my church group made to Zion's. It had already been a pretty fun trip so far. I had gone on my first canyoneering hike down a slot canyon called Pine Creek that had involved nine rappels and swim through water holes where the canyon was only a few feet wide. It had been a blast. And now a bunch of us were headed up to the top of Angel's Landing.

There were seven or eight of us, most who I knew, a few who a didn't. One who I didn't know was this chit chatty red head girl. She had never done Angel's Landing before and was like "What is it like at the top", and I was like "It's like a 1000 foot drops all around you, and to get there you have to walk on these narrow ledges and they have chain you have to hold onto" and she in her mind was like "Is he trying to be funny or scare me or what?".

Well we all kept walking up the steep switch backs and talking and trying to guess were different people we came across came from (because there are always a lot of foreign tourists at Zion's) and eventually this girl is like "My name is blah blah blah" and I am like I'm like "I'm Kevin, and I think I have been trying to get a hold of you". Now you might think that sounds like some kind of weird pick-up line and if you did, you be totally wrong, because I don't think I ever used a pick-up line in my life, except to someone I already know and who would know I was just saying it to be stupid. In addition, I had specifically decided before coming on this trip that I wasn't going to try to meet any new girls, because I was a little tired of the whole dating process and didn't want to ruin a good trip with stress and frustration. So anyway, the reason I said "I have been trying to get a hold of you", is because I actually had. I was the executive secretary for the Bishop of our church group and so was in charge of making appointments for him and he had been trying to make appointment with her. So then red head girl was like, "Yeah, I go home a lot on the weekends" and so on a so forth and we talked about where she was from and such.

After a little while we finally go to the top part of Angel's landing and she was like "Hey, there really are chains here!, I thought you were kidding!" and I was like "nope". So then we are hanging out at the top of Angel's Landing and she starts feeding some of the squirrels that are running around. And I, using my super suave womanizing skills am like "Dude, didn't you read the sign, you not supposed to feed the squirrels, people food makes them sick". She was a little embarrassed and I felt bad, but someone had to speak of for those poor neglected lazy fat squirrels.

So then, we are hiking back down and some people in our group are like, "Who want to go to the bottom of the Narrows and hike up for a ways?" and I was like "I do, that sounds cool" and red head girl was like "I want to too" and I was like in my mind "I wouldn't mind that"

So we hike up the Narrows for a few miles and get to the bottom of Orderville Canyon and decide to hike up it for a ways. There is a lot little waterfalls and ledges you have to hike up in Orderville and red head girl is keeping up with all the guys and I am starting to think "red head girl is kind of cool". Well after a few hours we all decide to turn around.

For those of you who never done Orderville Canyon or the Narrows, you are basically walking in a river running through a narrow canyon. The river at this time was about knee deep and there are lots of slippery rocks. So anyway as we all are hiking back down, one of red head girl's Teva's straps breaks. This makes it very hard for her to walk through the river. So we all consult together and someone comes up with the idea to give her one of their socks and put it all the way over the teva to help hold it on. This works pretty well, but it is still pretty hard for her to walk on the slippery rocks and she starts to fall behind. Well, noble gentleman that I am, I stayed back to help her along. Sometimes, just to make sure she didn't fall, I held her hand for a little bit, you know, just to give her some extra stability. She seemed to appreciate the help.

Eventually, we made it to the bottom. It was getting late and some of us had to work the next day, so we all piled into some cars, and somehow me and red girl ended up in the same car sitting next to each. As we were driving home the driver cranked the radio up to help him stay awake. A Ben Folds Five song came on and I was like "I like this song" and red head girl's like "I like this song too, did you know it was about blah blah diddie blah da blah?" And I was like, well chalk up another cool point for red head girl. We got home sometime late late at night and we all went our separate ways. But I said to myself, "Self we should hang out with red head girl again sometime".

And I did.

So that was day that Ke(vin) and Co(nnie) that would some day make the world renowned keco productions blog met.

Toddling Along

Little Jo' has been crawling for months. He started crawling months ahead of both Sam and Grace. In some ways I think this made him take longer to learn to walk, because he is so proficient a crawling that he could get around quite fast and thus had no motivation to walk. Or maybe he didn't want us to know that he was a zombie. I was watching him walk and thought "I have seen something like this before". Stiff legs, funny arm movements, strange sounds coming out of the mouth... that's when I realized the uncanny resemblance to a zombie(though if Jonah is a zombie, he is the cutest darn zombie that every existed). Check him out:


Also as a bonus extra feature here is re-release of Gracie's first time walking, we were at a wedding reception, and Gracie wanted to be part of the action. She had taken a few steps before, but here she finally figured out how to put all together. Unfortunately, we have no footage of when Sam first started to walk.

Sam's First Mountain Bike Race

So Sam, without any prompting from Mom and Dad, decided that this summer he wants to train and bike a marathon (26.2 miles). This last Saturday, I was doing a mt. bike race and there was a kids race and we asked Sam if he wanted to do it as some training. He totally wanted to try it and he did great (got 5th place and had lots of fun). They let parents come along and so I got some great action highlights.