Oh Kimi, and other things.

There is a look on a persons face when you know they are glad to see you. It's a look that you only get from a friend. Someone who knows you and enjoys seeing your face. This look is taken for granted by way to many people. Even though it has been 3.5 years since we left Pullman, I still miss that look. Don't get me wrong, I got that look from people in Alaska. But never the way I got it in Pullman. There were people I never really hung out with during the week, but every Sunday I would see them and be greeted with that look. Pullman was kind of a cruel trick for Dave and I. Never again will we have friends the way we did in College. I long to be with those friends again. I miss them the same way I miss my family.

In Alaska I had several good friends. Most of them were military so we all moved on at about the same time. However my very best friend in Alaska stopped being my friend about 9 months before we departed Alaska. I still do not know why this happened. This has left a hole in me that has yet to heal. It left me feeling disposable and resulted in a lot of sad days on my part. Nothing Dave said or did has been able to compensate for the loss of that friendship.


Along comes Kimi Gale. Kimi is the great eraser. Before she got here I was so bummed about not having any friends in Georgia. I missed my Army friends, my Alaska friends and as always my Pullman friends. Kim has been here for a month. Words can not describe the impact she has had on me and my whole house. She just brings a beautiful spirit with her. A spirit I have been privy to all my life, but never really noticed until she arrived. I have gone from feeling very sorry for my self, to not caring that no one gives me that look. Who really cares if no one cares that I'm around? If I've made Kimis day, I'm happy. Making her day is not a difficult thing to do. For the next 18 months I'm sure my blog will have a lot about Kimi on it. She is such a major part of our life now it's not possible to exclude her from my writing. Dave and I both love having her in our home.


At church the other day Kimi had really bad breath. Well apparently my mom has taught Kimi not to chew gum. Or maybe she just doesn't like it. What ever the reason she didn't want to have anything to do with my gum. She kept telling me I could just give her a cert. I don't use certs. So finally I made Kimi chew this piece of gum. For 10 minutes she gave me the stink eye, while I tried to talk her into chewing the gum. Finally I figured she would have had to have it chewed. I let her spit it out. I am not kidding.... there was no more then 3 chews on that piece of gum. Also.... the same day I got a full lecture from Kimi about the cookies I just made. She kept on telling me they had too much sugar in them. (I know this is straight from my moms mouth to Kim's.) Finally Dave asked Kimi how come our cookies weren't ok, but her ice cream was fine? She replied by informing us that ice cream has milk in it and milk is good for you. It was a fight we couldn't win.


One more Kimi story and then I'll stop. I can't wait to see Kimi in heaven whole. I really hope she still likes me when she can see all my flaws. The other day I was in a bad mood. Dave called me grumpy and I called him a turd. He then grabbed my arm and pulled me into our food pantry, shut the door and then tried to hug and heckle the grumpy out of me. Upon leaving the pantry Dave was met with the wrath of Kimi. She was not happy that he had called me grumpy and grabbed me by the arm. She laid into Dave like I have never seen before. Apparently my dad has never openly called my mom grumpy. Dave got the wrath of nine hells on his head. And all out of protection of me. Yes I think Kimi will be a very good person to have on my side some day. Seeing he would not win, Dave said sorry and showed her a Jack Black video on you tube. All was forgiven. She really is easy to please.

Daves family shows love through teasing. I have learned this the hard way. I know that my father in law loves me. Of this I have no doubt. However he will push my buttons and tease me until I am on the verge of giving him the bird. Dave is the same way. Teasing is just a way to say I love you. Kimi and I however pretty much grew up in a tease free zone. We got it a little when we were young, but for the most part never got teased. Kimi and Dave are on an interesting path of discovery in the teasing department. It's a work in progress.

Ok I know I've mentioned before that little boys are perverts. It just never ends. The other night Abe and Dallin were taking a bath. After several minutes we were able to convince them to stop touching their dangles. From touching they moved on to watching them float in the water. This was amazing to both of them. But there was no touching. Upon exit of the bath tub Abe points his freshly clean behind at the back of his brothers head and says "Do you want to smell my clean bum, bum?" At this point both of them burst out laughing. I don't ever remember doing this to Kimi or any of my friends. Boys are so weird. I would love to think that they will out grow this. I have however been a wrestling manager for a high school wrestling team and I know my husband played Frisbee hoo ha smash in the MTC. Please tell me my boys are normal. They seem normal, but I would never do what they do!

So Tom Hanks has let me down. I have been a huge Tom Hanks fan for the last 20 years. He said that Mormons are unamerican and gripped about all the money the church gave to the Yes on prop 8. What a stupid thing to say. The church didn't give any money to Yes on prop 8! That is not the way they spend tithing. Members of our church yes, but the church... heck no! As for unamerican.... what a moron. He clearly knows nothing of our history. OHHHHHH, I'm so sad by his comments. I've always thought that we would be good friends when I got to Hollywood. I was wrong. How is it that the Mormons get all the credit for Prop 8 passing? Why do people think we have so much power? Prior to the vote I didn't see a single Yes on prop 8 rally on TV. They were all No on prop 8. 80 % of blacks voted yes on prop 8. And yet the mormons get 100% of the glory to it passing. Oh I hate that I can't stop watching the news!

The boys started Mixed Martial Arts. They love it. I know they are probably a little young for it. But they really wanted to do it and they are loving it! Abe and Dallin are both in really good schools. I'm pretty darn happy with our set up here in Georgia.

Dave's school is awesome. Most days of the week he is home by 4:15. I love it! I know it's short lived and that we will probably face another deployment soon. But for here and now we love it! Our house is awesome, Dave is home and the weather is pretty warm. Yes we have it really good right now.

At the beginning of January Scout (our dog) turned 3. Dave made her chicken and rice and we had a cake for her. She is such a spoiled dog!

A whole month of fun!

Oh my we have had a big month! The month began with me finally locating the couches that I wanted. This was a very big deal. I found the perfect leather sectional! The only problem was.... it cost 8,000 dollars. After a day of pouting because I knew I couldn't have it I threw my self into stalking Craig's List. If I couldn't have my Bassett sectional new I would stop looking for new all together. One evening after checking Craig's List for the 200th time that day, a new ad had popped up. 500 Bucks for a leather couch, chair and ottoman. All purchased at Haverty's 3 years ago. The pictures were great! I e mailed them right away. First thing the next morning the sellers called me. I made arrangements to go take a look at the furniture. It was in a very nice neighborhood. As I walked to the door I noticed small home made confederate flag hanging in the window. When I got in the house I noticed a few other confederate flags. All very Americana style. So I took one look at the couches and bought them. They are in mint condition! The wife had the husband post them on Craig's list. He had never heard of Craig's list and he didn't think they would sell. So he listed them at 500 dollars. (They had five people waiting to see if I was going to buy them.) They have a truck and we don't. So they agree to help us move the couches. I run home and tell Dave all about the couches. I also mention to him that they have confederate flags hanging in their house. I said isn't that nice that they honor their heritage like that? Dave then said, "Honey I'm not going to argue with you about this.... those people are dirty racists. Anyone who still flys that flag believes the south should have won. And what did the South stand for?" I had no good response for what the South stood for. But I insisted they weren't racists. David told me I was wrong and left it at that. We went and got the couch's and brought them back to our neighborhood. We'll let me tell you a little about our neighborhood. We live in a very nice neighborhood. There are a lot of teenage kids in our neighborhood. It was Saturday and as we drove in most of them were out side enjoying the day. Our neighborhood has 139 houses. Of those 139 houses Dave and I are sure that 3 of them have white families living in them. As we round the corner to our house our teenage neighbor/ babysitter is out side with about 10 friends washing the car and listening to music. The music was a little loud, but not so loud that I could hear it in the house. It was fine.... it was 3 in the afternoon. So I'm all excited about the couches! Dave and the husband bring them in the house. As they are doing this the wife leans into me, looks up a little and totally under her breath says "so what do you think of your neighbors?" I could have died! Dave was right! They are dirty racists! I then started going on about how wonderful they are and how lucky we are to have them, and how the daughter baby sits the boys all the time. She then took a step back and said "oh well that's nice." I couldn't believe it! We now have 500 dollar, brown leather, racists couches in our house. By the way Dave thinks the husband is the leader of the KKK. He is tall as Dave, thin with a pot belly in the middle, blue jean pants pulled up above his belly button, white t shirt tucked in and..... a huge confederate flag belt buckle! Wow! That's all I've got to say about that.

So that was how our month began! On the 19th Kimi arrived. She will be living with us while my parents are serving their mission in Detroit Michigan. They will be on a 18 month CES mission. Teaching at UofM in Ann Arbor. Having Kimi here is great! My mom brought her here and was able to stay for about three days before heading back home. The boys loved her visit. Dallin keeps on asking me when grandma is coming back.

Dave and I both feel like having Kimi in our home is very much a blessing for our family. However, it does come with it's challenges...

Kimi and I are both the children of my parents old age. (My parents do read my blog, hope I don't get in too much trouble here.) I'm sure that when my parents were a little younger and had 4 kids under the age of 7 the moved a little faster. But in my life time everything has always gotten done in it's own time. This has caused strife in my marriage to Dave. If Daves mom (Roma) says lets go to a 4pm movie, at 3:30, everyone says great! They get ready, get out the door and make it in time to grab some popcorn before the movie. This would NEVER happen in the Gale house. We are a slow moving bunch. Kimi has adopted this same quality. This has been a bit of a challenge for this unstructured, fly by the seat of our pants family. After a couple of weeks of this Dave came to the conclusion that Kimi is like a bear who just woke up from hibernation.

The other challenge we have run into with Kimi is.... she doesn't really complain about anything. She will ignore you, she will mutter under her breath, she will lash out at something very little. But if something is really bothering her she doesn't say a word about it till it's too late. We are working on communication.

For example: Kimi and I go to the gym pretty much every day. The first time I took Kimi to the gym I kept a very close eye on her. She was on a treadmill in the back row and I was on the elliptical one row in front of her. After about 20 minutes I stopped looking back every 30 seconds. At about 28 minutes I glanced back to check on Kimi again. There she was.... walking on the treadmill.... with her shirt off!!!! Yes she did have a sports bra, but non the less, her shirt was off. There was no Hey Jodi I'm hot. She just took her shirt off in a military gym full of soldiers. I couldn't get my fat pregnant butt of the elliptical fast enough. Lucky for us there were probably no more then 40 people in our section and she was in the very back.

Christmas this year was great! It was so fun to spend the season with just my little family. On Christmas eve Dave made us a Mexican feast and we played games. It was really nice. They boys got just the right amount of gifts. Kimi was so fun to watch. We got her all the High School Musical bedding for her room. She loved it. She also got an I pod from my parents and I put all her music on it for her. She Loves her new I pod! Dave got a Blue Ray and the perfect Pull up. And I took the grand prize! Dave bought me a Canon Rebel! With all the extras! I could have died! I have loved photography for so long and been wanting a really super camera. Dave has grown sick of me not having a hobby. So he bought me the camera. At first I was going to return it to the store. But then I opened the box and couldn't part with it. I love it! Hopefully I'll get really good at photography.

For New Years Eve we went to Sea World in Orlando Florida. Military gets in for free, so we took advantage and rang in the new year in style. I was totally amazed at how smart those animals are. Kimi and Dave rode the big roller coaster and they both loved it! Then Dave, Abe, Dallin and Kimi rode the wet roller coaster. Thee of them loved it, but Dallin hated it! He got off and told me that he didn't have very much fun. There were fire works and noise makers at midnight. We really had a wonderful time.

The only draw back was our hotel! It was awful! I was in charge of finding a place to stay. It was dirty, the beds were tiny, it was run down and the AC was so loud it reminded me of being inside Grand Coolie Dam! Usually I am very good at finding nice places for very little. But this time I failed! The place we booked it from gave it 3.5 stars and compared it to the Double Tree. UMMMMM... not even close!

While in Orlando we went to breakfast at McDonald's. No big deal, but this McDonald's seemed really big from the out side. So we go in and holy cow it was huge! It was the worlds largest McDonald's! I ate eggs Benedict and David had waffles! Dave was not as impressed as I was. I was totally blown away! I took tons of pictures.


On our way back we stopped in Daytona Beach and let the boys play. It was 65 degrees and windy, but Abe didn't care. He hit the water like it was a hot day. Dallin mostly stayed on the shore and played in the sand. Abe is totally my child and Dallin is all Davids.

We had a great Holiday season and are so happy to have Kimi with us now. I'll try to blog more often so I don't end up so wordy.