YAY!! Word(s) of the Day

For those of you who haven't see this yet.....I am making it a habit to share interesting, educational, and sometimes funny words with my family via email. I then post them to my blog to save for future reference and to share our fun with the world.
Here's this week's edition of "Word(s) of the Day"
I found an article that does a great job of clarifying some simple terms that are misused often in IM (instant message)  and text conversations at my work. Pet peeve of mine? Absolutely!! So....Learn it. Understand it. Don't mess with it. This  guy and I are on the same page. Read on.

Pet peeve: Yeah, Yay, Yea and Ya

by Brad Guigar

It's time to address a pet peeve that's been bothering me lately. I keep reading comics that misuse "Yeah" and "Yay." Often, I see novice cartoonists writing one when they mean the other.
Yeah (yě'ə) is a slang of yes. "Yeah, I agree that Larry Fine was the Forgotten Stooge." Nine chances out of ten, if you're using a slang for yes, you want to use yeah.
Yay (yā) is an excited exclamation or a cheer. "Yay! Our team won!" If you're cheering, you probably want to use yay.
Yea (yey) is also a slang for yes, but it's not interchangeable with yeah. Because yea rhymes with hay. Unless you're quoting Biblical text about walking through the valley of death, you probably shouldn't be using Yea.
Ya (yah) can be used either as a slang for yes, but again, it's not interchangeable with yeah, and it shouldn't be used unless your character is speaking with a thick German or Swedish accent (in which case, it's actually a slang for Ja): "Ya, I would like more meatballs."
Ya (yah), of course, can be a slang for you, as in "End this column already, would ya?"

Cutest Kids I've Ever Seen

OK, I might be a bit biased. But these girls are DANG cute. I just love them. This is them dressed up in their matching Christmas PJ's that Grandma Sue (Laura's mom) sent them. Thanks Sue! Melia wore them for two days straight after she got them. I am a super lucky dad.

What to wear under a kilt...

Ever wonder what someone wears under a kilt. Well....I still do. This is Andrew Ringwald (aka Ringer) sporting one of the only dresses that is still fairly socially acceptable to wear by a man. It takes the right kind of guy to sport this form of attire and Ringer pulled it off quite well. Props man. I just felt left out and thought I would show some leg too. This is at our work Christmas party at the Sierra Nevada Brewery Company. It was a fun Christmas work party complete with great music by a live band (Steel Breeze), a great venue (Sierra Nevada Brewery's Big Room) which included a lot of alcohol needless to say, great food, lots of work friends and plenty of dancing. The only thing that would have made it a perfect night would have been if Laura could have gone. Darn those nursing schedules. She would of had a blast. I took a friend, Christopher (aka toph or toe) that I met through Blake, who's own holiday work party was cancelled this year due to budget cutbacks. (He's a government employee, but I don't hold it against him). I had a great time with Toph, Blake and Dani. I work with and sit next to Blake. He rented a tux for the evening and was the only one to do so. Super slick too. All in all it was a fun filled evening topped off with a Hummer Limo ride around downtown Chico. Yeah, that's how we roll.

Blake and Dani.....aaahhhh. Cute couple.

Me and my date. Ain't she perty?

This is Mr. Jared Gilmore that went MIA half way through the night. If anyone sees him, please return him to us. We really miss our cuddly friend. You'll probably recognize him as the larger, but easy to hug Amerrcan!!, that at times likes to put his hands together as if to be praying. Not that he IS praying...he just likes that pious position for some reason. We're still paying for the therapy.

Need a job? - Chico, CA

If anyone is interested in a job in Chico, my company is hiring. Let me know if you have any questions. Here's the link to the job posting.

Inside Sales Representative Position - Improvement Direct, Inc. Career Website

Guy Love. Don't deny it.....embrace it.

There comes a time when the friendship bond between two men turns into an undying romance. I'm not talking about battin' for the other team. I'm talking about the possibility of love one straight man can feel towards another. You know....the kind of love our wives and girlfriends make fun of us for. The kinds of feelings society can't seem to embrace because it's not macho enough. I have often wondered how to explain this feeling, how to help those not lucky enough to find it understand how even manly men can proclaim their love for each other. I dedicate this song to those guys that I have had the privilege of sharing this bond with. This video is the best way I could think of to share the beautiful layers of......guy love. (Don't forget to pause the music on the blog, turn up the speakers and enjoy.)

Food For Thought?.....just a nibble.

Once in a while I send "Word(s) of the Day" to my family. I'm in school and am enjoying the learning process so I share some of what I learn with those that I feel will enjoy, or put up with, my rants. I thought this was interesting enough to post. So, here we go. When I was younger, I had often thought of what the oposite gender role of a polygamist would be thinking that the word referred to a man with multiple wifes. I played around with the word molygamy, giving reference and associating it with (at least in my young mind) Patriarchal (male) and Matriachal (female) terms, as being the opposite gender role. However, in doing a little follow up research and getting quite far off the topic from the research paper I should have been writing the other night, I found a simplified explanation for these multi-marital relationship terms. Here are the three words and definitions that answered my conundrum.

Polygamy is when a person in general has more than one spouse.
Polygyny is when a man has more than one wife.
Polyandry is when a woman has more than one husband.

This also incites discusions on how the word polygamy stuck. Why don't we in the LDS church use the more correct term of Polygyny when talking about church history since we don't have anything in the church's history that deals with women having multiple husbands? It's not that important. Just a thought. Here are some more marital terms if you want to fully confuse, and in some cases disgust yourself. Like I said, WORDS of the day!!

Polyamory · Polyandry · Polygyny · Polygamy · Polyfidelity ·Polytrothism · Polygynandry · Open relationship · Open marriage

Some of these are in reference to relationships in certain animal social behaviors, but I found one mention (not in any of these links) of people starting to use some of these terms in their own lives to justify immoral lifestyles. It amazes me how the adversary has tricked so many into thinking "if the animals are doing it, it must be natural and therefore OK." Bleh! Sign of the times.

August Birthdays... in October?

So for those of you who don't know, my birthday is in August. If you find yourself asking, "Why is he writing about it in October?" then you are in the right place...cause I'm gunna tell ya. Here's what brought this up. In mid-August I was thinking of what I wanted to do for my birthday and came up with the idea to take a good friend of mine, Blake, and his significant other, Dani, to a nice sit down dinner for their birthdays, which are also in August. A Double Date if you will..(August really is the best birthday month. ;) I may be a little bias though...hehe)  Since Laura and I moved to Paradise we haven't taken as many opportunities to venture out and spend time with friends as we would like. So, I decided that a fun night out treating some friends to a dinner would be a great way to celebrate our birthdays. Now, given our financial situation, I was a bit worried how we would swing such an event. Given that it was my birthday I was hoping for a nice restaurant over fast food. After all, who wants to go to Taco Bell for their birthday. Ok, I might. But that's beside the point. Moving on.....So in trying to figure out how to support our event I was blessed with two dinner coupons to a nice Chinese BBQ restaurant that I happen to like "Hulas" here in Chico. I received them as a birthday gift from some very loving family, which I will tell you more about in a later post. Then, not more than a week later I received two more of the same coupons for the same restaurant for being the employee of the quarter at work. Needless to say I was feeling very blessed as I knew someone was granting me my birthday wish. Thank you Heavenly Father!! So, now I had the funds, the plan and the people. All that was missing was to plan a date and rock the night away. HAHA.....not so fast. Here's the deal. My friend Blake that I mentioned, you know, the one I wanted to take out for dinner, the one that I planned this whole event around....yes...that Blake. Well, I didn't take into account that he has one of those magnetic personalities that everyone he knows wants to be around, including me. He is also a recovering weekend worker from a past life as a Target employee. He worked almost every weekend, at least one day if not both every weekend. Once he got outa there it was his mission to have as much fun on the weekends as possible and enjoy every minute. He also loves to travel. Being such.....he ALWAYS has something planned on the weekends. I tried and tried to nail him down to a date and finally, through nothing short of a miracle and a cancellation of one of his weekend romps, we set a date. So, last Friday, Oct 16th we went to Hulas and enjoyed some of the finest Chinese BBQ that Chico has to offer. MMMMM!! Blake and I ate ourselves into a coma while our beautiful matching puzzle pieces sat there making fun of how dorky we were. We know they love us. After Hulas we walked to Target and bought some ice cream and went back to Blake's house where we enjoyed Cookies'n'Creamy goodness and an episode of Glee. (Blake got me hooked and I wanted Laura to see what it was about) All in all, it was a great evening full of laughs and stories. Fun was had by all. Unfortunately, we only took one picture. But if you look closely you can see the strain on the guy's faces as we would have rather been wheeled out after having eaten so much. No complaints though. We would both do it again in a heartbeat. So there you have it. My birthday in October in all of its glory. It really was a memorable one. Thanks go out to Blake, Dani and my wonderful wife Laura for making it a great evening.

Sunday......A Day of Rest??

So it seems that Sundays have turned into the busiest days of the week. Church, meetings, FHE (Family Home Evening. We do it on Sunday mornings since this is the time we have the girls up with us.), Family Counsel, Choir Practice, more meetings, 2.5 hours of prep for church (remember I live with 3 girls).....did I mention meetings? Man, where is the much needed rest. I must say that Laura has been very kind and letting me sleep until almost 9 am on ocassion after staying up doing homework on Saturday evenings. I know...amazing. At least that's as long as she can keep Melia out of the bedroom. She is so cute, but the relentless WAKE UP, GET UP DADDY, GET OUT OF BED, IT'S TIME FOR BREAKFAST, COME ON, before I even get my eyes open can be a bit overwhelming. Oh well. Gotta love her. She has been putting in the effort to try a gentle carress first before jumping into the yelling at you part. We've been working with her on the etiquette of how to wake someone up. She's catching on. Well I guess we'll just have to come to terms with the fact that Sundays are not a day of "rest", just a day of off from all the other things we do during the balance of the week. I guess that's ok.

First Blog Post EVER

Wow, only took me a year to post my first blog since I created my account on blogspot. Well, let's get to it. Lately I've been feeling like keeping a journal and figured this would be the easiest way to accomplish this. As of late my ability to express myself has been limited to school papers that I've been writing. Needless to say I haven't have a chance to really think about or put on paper (or on keyboard as it were) the happenings and countless blessings I've encountered recently. I also haven't had too much time to work on increasing my talents; music, singing, sports, spiritual gifts, being a better father and husband, etc, with school and work taking most of my time. So....with all that being said, it is my hope that with this blog at least I will have a way to quickly jot down the feelings and wishes I have for the future of those talents so I can solidify my need to work on them and have some sort of accountability for them. Now, don't get me wrong. There will be plenty of time for mischief along the way and most of my posts will be nothing short of pointless. But, my hope in all of this is that will have a record of what I've learned on this journey of life and have a list of the different places my nose has led me. ;) I added some pics so you know who the main characters are in this story. Yes, I am out numbered. 3 girls and one boy. But don't worry, I'm holding my own....barely. The two little ones are awesome and Laura, well, let's just say she's amazing at this whole mommy thing. I'm excited to see what the next 8 years of marriage will bring us.