Friday, August 31, 2007

Good things and bad things

THINGS THAT SUCK:

-110 outside
-95 inside because of our faulty air conditioner. Side note to future home buyers: PAY YOUR OWN INSPECTOR TO CHECK AND SEE IF IMPORTANT THINGS LIKE THE AIR CONDITIONER AND THE DISH WASHER WORK.
-Paying for a new air conditioner when you have a warranty that says that all of the appliances in your new home are guaranteed for a year.
-Old Republic Insurance company
-Finishing a good book
-Running after your haven't run for 3 weeks when it is 100 degrees outside
-Getting approved for lots of thousands of dollars worth of debt
-Missionaries walking into your house while you're nursing your baby...says Adam, "Don't worry babe. Every missionary has got to have a good breast feeding story. Just think, you can be that for Elder Sanderson." Great. Glad to be of service.

THINGS THAT ROCK

-The fact that once we get through this hot weather hell (pardon my French) it will be excellent, pleasant weather for the rest of the 9 months of the year.
-Being able to enjoy 85 degrees inside because we have grown accustomed to having it be so much hotter...85 is cheaper than 75.
-A NEW AIR CONDITIONER THAT WORKS WONDERFULLY...and probably saves us money in the long run because it works so much more efficiently than the thirty year old excuse of a machine that was in there before.
-Insurance sometimes? Sort of...I don't know, I guess insurance companies rock when they decide to follow through with what they promise to do for you. I am having a harder time with this one because I am still pretty mad that they won't replace it for us like the warranty says they should. Oh well.
-Reading a captivating book and getting excited every time you have a few minutes to sit down and read it.
-Running again after three weeks. I missed that.
-Getting approved for lots of thousands of dollars worth of loans. Good. Adam can go to school and we won't starve.
-Having the missionaries in our home to teach an investigator. Wow. I can't believe I have been a member of my church this long and I have never had that experience. I hope we can keep doing that on a regular basis because it has been a pretty remarkable thing to be a part of.

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

The beach and other weekend activities




Don't you love it when you have multiple things racing in your head to post about? Its like everything in my life happens, and I evaluate it based on its worthiness to post on my blog. Is that cool or sad? I actually have enough things that I want to write about that I could post everyday this week. Let's be honest though; I'm just not an everyday poster. Its just not going to happen. But these pictures from the beach are pretty cute


so I want to get those up first. We went down to Thousand Oaks on Saturday to see my aunt Stephanie and her family. It was a lot of fun. They just moved into a new house down there and it was actually quite a beautiful hour and a half drive. Each time we go somewhere on the coast and tell our various family members to stop by our house, we realize that they would really have no reason to come our way...don't get me wrong, I love it here in the Inland Empire, but there is not much to attract people coming from the beach towns. That's why we go to them. So I may not be able to repay the hospitality that our gracious aunts and uncles will no doubt show us in the years that we are here. Oh well. I felt really bad because we brought Duane thinking that he could go play on the beach with us because dogs seem to be acceptable just about anywhere in this state, which is cool, but not at the beach we visited. So Bret and Steph were nice enough to let him play in their backyard-and I might add they have about the only decently sized kid/dog acceptable backyard in the state of California. I felt pretty stupid because they are not really dog people and are both pretty meticulous. I didn't want to annoy them with my pooch, but they were so nice and I think he had a good time perusing the hillside they live on for mice and what not. Their little girl Caroline (the one I'm holding in this pic) is the cutest little thing I have ever seen. She would have walked right into the depths of the ocean smiling and laughing the whole time if I would have let her. After the beach we got some dinner and went back and got in their hot tub. Caroline kept dunking herself as if it was the funniest thing to see, which it actually was. I hope my kid is cool and tough like that someday.

We had to come back for Adam to speak in church on Sunday, which was excellent. Otherwise, we would have taken further advantage of the Paulson's sweet house and stayed the night. He recently got called to assist the ward mission leader which means that I need to be a whole lot better of a fellow-shipper. What??!! Go out of my comfort zone? AhHHH!!!!!!!!! Anyway, I have a really neat story about this that I will tell later but I think this is going to be really good for me. Adam is naturally good at that sort of thing, well, all things, really. He seems to be quite excited to assist in the missionary work in our ward and although it scares me-why? I don't know- I am excited to be a part of it. I got called to teach the six year old class, whom I absolutely adore. I really like primary. They are so funny; I have to do sharing time on Sunday. Any ideas for a sharing time on the Holy Ghost? Let me know if you do. Leave a comment or email me at aaburr@gmail.com.

And finally, this is what we do on Sundays with no family around...its nice sometimes, but we often get kind of bored...



Thursday, August 23, 2007

Yard Work and such

We don't really have a yard. But we do have plants on our little patio. Its sort of like a stepping stone toward becoming capable of caring for a yard someday...someday. I never understood why people raked leaves. I always look at piles of leaves, in the fall especially, and think it looks so beautiful. Why would you rake them and throw them away? Live and let live. Nature is so charming the way it is so why interfere. I thought so especially when I moved into our lovely new abode and inherited the beautiful beauganvia (I really have no idea how to spell that) growing on our patio, escalading up onto the walls and roof. The bright pink paper-like flowers shed worse than my dog-except the effects of such are much more beautiful. I have been sweeping them into the dirt that surrounds the patio since we moved here thinking, "Oh, that's so lovely. A bed of bright pink completes this serene scene quite nicely." So yesterday, while Adam and I were enjoying that serenity eating breakfast-my new favorite hobby-we literally almost suffocated. We had been gone for two weeks and returned to this awful, thick musty smell outside. Had it rained and ruined the couch? Did Duane do something terrible out there? Epiphany. This is why we rake leaves folks-and throw them away, I might add. I get it now. Otherwise, pretty though they are, they smell of death. I was beginning to think that something had actually died out there. Duh. The leaves had died. Sometimes my head is so thick. So alas. The leaves must be raked.

What else? Oh yes. I am in constant pain all the time now for some random unknown reason. I feel like I'm ninety. It started last Tuesday after I went to Lagoon-against my husband's advice. Ever since then I have had this constant wrenching pain in my low left back. I have self diagnosed it as sciatica and Dr. WebMD says it should just go away within two weeks to four months. Awesome. I love phantom pain that appears for no apparent reason which I am supposed to just wait out. Unfortunately I didn't snag any of Matt's powerful painkillers before I left. Fortunately though I didn't take all of my percoset from when I had Eli. That's how bad it hurts. It barely takes the edge off. But the part that makes me the most angry is that I can't run. I can barely walk. So if I run the marathon in October I will be even less ready than I was planning to be. I didn't want to train very much anyway because its too hard to do long runs while I am nursing and I don't like leaving Eli that long. Anyway my back hurts all the time and I am really not happy about having this kind of intense pain when I did nothing cool to incur it.

Everything else is great though. We have a few more weeks before Adam starts school. And it looks like I am probably going to start working from home next week. I spoke with my prospective "boss?" ( I hate that word.) and I think we are going to meet on Monday to discuss terms. But right now we are just getting everything set and enjoying the heat and our once again functioning air conditioning. Everyone pray that it keeps working.

Monday, August 20, 2007

Me love you long time


Wow we missed our late night office marathons while we have been away. We had a grand old time vacationing (sort of) in Utah and Idaho but we are truly glad to be back home. It is weird how quickly a place can become your home. We had so much fun mingling with all of our family, playing up at our favorite place in the world: Atlanta, ID, and welcoming Cam home from Japan. I thought we would be so sad to come back to California. But after two weeks both of us were missing our own bed and our normal everyday routine. Imagine that. And of course we were going through office withdrawls. We have a highly ambitious goal of getting through season two before Adam starts school so good thing we are home now...although its amazing, well depressing actually, how much more food we need to buy for the week when we don't consume two plus meals a week at one of our family's house. At least our parents' food budget has probably decreased. Small consolation.



I seriously think that the ranch in Idaho is my favorite place I have ever vacationed-second maybe only to Lake Powell. I love being able to take my dog, baby and husband to a place where we can spend concentrated amounts of time doing all kinds of different things that we absolutely love in such a pristinely beautiful setting. We went on a super sick motorcycle ride up to two small lakes. It got pretty tricky and my poor little 100 pound sister was riding a bike that weighed about two and half times as much as she did so Adam is the only one who made it all the way up, but the journey was intensely beautiful. If I was nice, I would have switched her bikes but then Adam would have seen that I am not nearly as tough as I purport to be. This is what my hot husband looked like when we got back:

We went canoeing and swimming in the pond, hiking and running through the gorgeous and aptly named Sawtooth mountains, hung out by the natural spring water pool,

ate excellent food and mingled with wonderful company.

And, what's more, I had no short supply of willing babysitters. I love that place and I hope Nana and Wayne aren't too exhausted to invite us back next year. We didn't spend near enough time there this summer but I suppose I never could. I am posting my favorites but go here to see more: http://picasaweb.google.com/adamcburr/TripToUtahAndIdaho

We came home to Utah to welcome Cameron home from Japan. He's not even weird! It was so cool to hear him speak Japanese and to learn more about the culture and the difficulties he faced as a missionary. We still keep calling Eli "Eri" in honor of Japanese culture and we had quite a good time with the Jap jammies and kimono he brought us.

Lamentably, we left before we got to see Matt make a full recovery from his knee surgery. Poor guy tore his ACL and had it fixed while we were there. I can't say much other than that it looks like it just sucks. But it is pretty funny to watch someone come out of anaesthesia. We also missed Marc's first football game, Natalie's birthday--HAPPY BIRTHDAY!--and probably a bunch of other exciting things that we wish we could flash ourselves back to Utah for everyday. Happy twenty first birthday to Cameron too (we were there for that). We are glad that you are home Cam! You and everyone else come visit us whenever you like!

Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Teeth already??!!



Poor baby. My not even 4 month old baby has two teeth!!! How sad. I have been so frustrated with him this past week because he has been inconsolably irritable and has completely refused to sleep. It didn't even occur to me that he could be getting teeth this young. So this is mostly what he has looked like every day for the past week: screaming a good portion of the 24 hours in a day. Actually he was sound sound asleep about 2 seconds before I snapped this picture; I was trying to capture a restful moment that was refreshing and relieving. But I guess I disturbed him...obviously. He has been so much better in the last two days since they broke through and I felt so bad once I realized what was happening. He has finally slept through the night the past two nights and been an absolute sweetheart. I was afraid that my sweet little baby had been captured by an evil crazy baby spirit. But it was really just painful sharp things cutting through his tender flesh...I feel so bad. Chelsea thinks that her presence here has distracted him enough so he doesn't react to the pain anymore. I happen to believe, however, that giving him tylenol every four or so hours might also be helping. All of the books give you a list a mile long of "things" to do to help a teething baby. They say "as a last resort" give him tylenol...are you serious? I am not an expert at this but yeah right. If my kid is in pain, I am going to give him medicine first and then do everything else like rub his gums and give him a frozen teething ring to chew on. Sometimes I wonder if these people who write all of the books about raising children have ever actually raised children. I am just so glad that he seems to be feeling better and that his sweet disposition is starting to return.

12 mile long post


Sometimes I forget why I love to run. I remembered many of the reasons I do as well as some of the reasons why I forget that I do on Saturday. I have had to come to terms with the fact that I am now running buddyless. Prior to our recent move, I had been running most days of the week with my mom and/or sister for about 10 years now. But on Saturday I had to suck it up and run a twelve-mile training run all by myself. I found this really cool pseudo canyon-nothing like Provo canyon-but I mapped out a course through this canyon and through the really ritzy part of Redlands; I was actually really excited. And I am quite proud of myself for doing it all alone. I realized that as much as I love the companionship accomplished on my usual long runs with my family, there are many other things that I truly enjoy about the run itself. I love how observant I become when its just me and my thoughts; when I am forced to look at the world passing by at a much slower pace and I am all by myself, I speculate a lot more about why things are the way they are. I notice every piece of litter on the ground and wonder why it was so important that its owner dispose of that piece right then and there. Seriously. Couldn’t they have waited to find a trashcan? And this was odd: I saw no less than about 5 rear view mirrors on the side of the road. Isn’t that an important accessory for your vehicle? If it fell off, wouldn’t you want to hang on to it and try to reattach it? Apparently not. Anyway, I really do enjoy being alone with my thoughts from time to time. And it was the first time that I have really thought the lomas were linda here (Loma Linda means beautiful hill.) I ran by a seemingly endless grove of orange trees that smelled and looked delightful. I also love the constant goal making and achieving that takes place on a long run… “If I can just make it to that tree then I can take a drink of water…” or “I will walk for one minute if I can get to the top of this hill.” I won’t talk about the running metaphor for the journey of life because you get the picture. I am not going to lie though, I sometimes hate it. Towards the end I really just wanted to quit. And while I was running up a not so subtle hill on my way into Redlands, I really thought that I did not want to run the marathon again. At all. I hated that hill. And I hated how sore I started to get. And thirsty. But I finished it and I felt great for doing it. I came home and my husband, baby and dog were sitting on the beanbag watching the Simpson’s. What a nice bonding experience for them. Anyway, I love to run…mostly. Chelsea is here this week to run with me and I am going to Utah and then Idaho next week so I’ll have plenty of people to run with and it will be great. It has been so nice to have Chel here. She has been so sweet with Eli and she is such a good little running errands buddy. She loves to just do the day-to-day things like fold laundry, run to the grocery store for one item and make soup. So she comes here and does all of the mundane things that I do everyday with me and loves it! I love that about her. So things are good, we are having fun in California and we are excited to go back to Utah, go to Idaho to the ranch, and then back home to see CAM!