Father's Day 2013

Happy Father's Day!

My five little girls paid tribute to me this morning with some original artwork, among other things. Here's the stack I got this morning.

Ivory likes her dad. And...Her dad likes Her.

look on the back.

Ivory.

This is a faters day present.

Dad,

I love you very much. The things that I like about you are...

You have glasses like me

You care for me and love me

You make good dinners.

You have brown hair and eyes like me.

You are a good dad

evernight you come to tuck me in

You are the best dad ever in the whole entire universe and the whole world.

From and love a loving and caring person who loves and cares for their dad

Ivory Elaine Cazier

Tyler brigham Cazier

I think this one's pretty self explanatory.

June gave me this one. It's a Dad's Worksheet.

Once there was a king and queen. They had three wonderful sons. All of the princes had rich brown hair. The princes were handsome. The first was an excellent leader. the second was very smart. The third prince could fix everything he saw. 

The second prince left Potato Land early in life for Quest Academy in the Kingdom Hive. Quest Academy really work him. He had so many History Quests, Novel Reports, and Journeys-Into-Science, that Math-Out-Of-This-World seemed easy...but then, he met the most beautiful princess. With sky blue eyes and beautiful brown hair. And a perfect personality. 

They immediately fell in love.

They married a few weeks later, on December 23rd, and built a small, temporary, castle, and the beautiful princess gave birth to another beautiful, brown-haired princess.

The castle was so small that the baby princess had to sleep in a closet, so when they found out that they were to have a second brown-haired daughter, they made arrangements to build a new castle at once.

In their new castle, the gave birth to three more children, two brown-haired, and one blond princess, and they lived happily ever after (even as the princesses went to Quest Academy to start their own happily ever after)!

Who was the king? Grandpa Cazier

Who is the queen? Grandma Cazier

Who is the first son, the leader? Uncle Kolby

Who is the second son, the smart guy? Dad, Tyler, me

Who is the third son, the one who could fix anything? Uncle JR

Who is the beautiful princess? Mom, Maleen

Who are the four brown-haired princesses? June, Robyn, Ivory, Daisy

Who is the blond-haired princess? Pearl

Happy Father's Day! Love, June (that's me)

I think I'm going to adopt this version as the official "How Maleen and I met" story.

Dad!

Mommy and Daddy, I love you.

You are so awesome, Dad.

Dad is so nice, cool, and pretty.

I love him so much!!

Love, Pearl. 

(I think June helped with this one.)

Dar Dad,

You are a good dad. 

You snuggle with me a lot and 

that is my favorite thing.

Here are some things I like about you,

That you have glasses

Dating with you

like what you make

I like to kiss you at dinner time and sometime I kiss mom.

Love and from, Daisy

(I think Robyn assisted with this one.)

Da

Is

Y

From Daisy

And this is a story entitled, "The Family"

written and illustrated by Ivory Cazier.

The Family

written by Ivory Cazier

illistratted by Ivory Cazier

Once upon a time...

A little princess girl named Ivory was born.

(waaaaaa)

Her father named Tyler was the king

The mother named Mallen was the queen and she was 

married to king tyler.

Ivory had a good family.

(I think I'm looking good here--I think we're doing the Macarena.)

One night while the king and queen were sleeping 

the baby princess was stolen.

(the baby is gone.)

The badguys name was Mr. Shooshie. 

His name was that because he ate shooshie.

(Did I mention he was fat.)

(Shooshie Shooshie)

In another family there was a prince named Eric.

He was a little boy that was up to save princess Ivory.

The boy went to the castle where the princess was kept.

We was brave and went inside it.

He found her locked up.

(waaaa!)

(I was informed that this is a blanket that locks

Princess Ivory down.)

25 years later

The King and queen found out the prince had saved Ivory 

so they had a wedding. 

And (I didn't mention it) they lived happily ever after.

The End

Best Dad Ever.

I agree.

So I certainly got the best reading material for Father's Day this year. But I also got some other fun gifts. Like this shirt that Maleen and the girls gave me. It says, "Visit Scenic Mordor." This I think is ridiculously funny. Maleen, of course, knew this, and hence the shirt.

The other brilliant gift that found my hands this morning was a framed piece of art from Maleen. It has one of my old missionary shirts' pockets cut out of the shirt. The pocket is stretched over quilt batting to make it puff out a bit. Then, the focus of the piece is the missionary name tag that graces the pocket. It's my original, somewhat worse-for-wear name tag. It brought back some great memories just seeing it.

Maleen was also able to raise her Dad on the telephone and had good talk with him.

I had a good long yak with my father up in Idaho. He's been great through this process of selling our house. He's always been there for me and always had excellent advice (if I was smart enough to take it). I owe a lot to my parents, for sure. I only hope that some day my children feel about me the way I feel about my parents.

Why I Shaved My Head

Before you go all crazy rumor mill, this is the Stallion, not Maleen; and yes, I shaved my head.

That story starts on this blog: http://wedigdoug.blogspot.com/. Doug, the star of WeDigDoug, was recently diagnosed with stage 4 Ewing Sarcoma. He started chemo shortly thereafter, and is currently in the middle of his prescribed treatment schedule. He expects to make as full a recovery as is possible.

Doug also works on my team at DHI.

After he commenced his chemotherapy, of course, his hair became weak and become to fall out. He then took up the only hairstyle popular with cancer patients...the bald look.

Immediately a few members of the team started scheming to see if we could buoy Doug up. We thought we might go visit him at Huntsman Hotel...and wouldn't it make it a surprise if we walked in sporting the same hairstyle!

I must say I felt more than a hint of consternation.

My wife has correctly noted that "I do think that song is about me." My precious locks!

But do not underestimate the power of social pressure, especially allied with a good cause. My teammates offered to provide a "Manhood Revoked" card when I successfully failed to shave my head. This, of course, was something far more precious than my lovely quaff.

For your viewing pleasure, he's the video summary of 2 May 2013's events: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNA0I6WnKZg.

For those of you who are not inclined to watch that AWESOME video, the following is the static photography version.

The stars of the play include these guys.

Jeff Foster, my awesome boss

Dorel Kynaston, host programmer

Tyler Cazier, the ugliest semi-bald guy around.

It looks much better fully shaved...everybody says so.

Brett Larson, web programmer

Caleb Iverson, web programmer

Langi Hola, host programmer

Brandon Allen, fellow designer.

Brandon agreed with Arthur that

they would both shave their heads if one did.

Eventually Brandon could take the pressure no longer.

He just sat down in the chair...everyone cheered.

Arthur Golebiowski, who couldn't bring himself to sit in the chair

once he saw Brandon's bald head.

Ron Francom, AKA "The Barber"

Here's the aftermath. Their was less hair than I expected, though this is still a LOT of hair. We wondered aloud what we should do with that hair.

Of course, we found something to do with the hair. We went out to the parking lot and opened the first unlocked car we could find. We have no idea who's car this was...

At the end of the day there were a few more bald heads in the world, and some friends who were a little closer together because of it.

A Little Note Before Father's Day

I've been attending the FPS GOLD Directions Conference this week, which is our annual user conference at work. It was held in Salt Lake City this year. Even so, I was still gone from 6:30 in the morning until about 8:00 or 9:00 at night. This makes my nightly ritual of hanging out with the girls pretty difficult.

Ivory made a special note for me and stuck it under my pillow on my bed—she was sure I'd eventually find it there. And she was right.

It has honest-to-goodness original art expressing a simple phrase: "I love you!" Since I'm not one of those puffy-eyed softy dads, of course I just smiled and didn't get one of those annoying emotional lumps in my throat or squeeze out any tear—or that might be a complete lie.

She reminds me as well that "This is isn't for fathers day," which means I might have another one of these babies. YES!

Maybelline Hates Me For Not Investing

Where do I even start? My brain is in constant flux. And I admit that I spend half my time trying to pull my thoughts back together after one of my children has interrupted another tenuous try at two minutes uninterrupted time.

Even as I wrote that paragraph I was interrupted by three children, and answered four texts. My brain is slowly melting.

This is extremely aggravated by the fact that we are moving.

(Ah, two more children and one more text. It is no wonder that I haven't blogged in almost a month.)

Where was I? Oh yeah, moving. I guess this is a good time for that story, although I feel like I have told it a thousand times since every new person wants a rendition. I apologize if I have spoken with you and have left out many details. Or maybe you were on the other side and wanted me to shut my trap already. (Honestly, house details aren't that interesting.)

But let us rewind to where this all began. About 4.3 years ago, Tyler found a certain real estate site called 'Zillow'. I'm sure many of you are familiar with this site. He thought it was interesting that they not only listed houses for sale and others for rent, but you could list your house under a 'Make Me Move' price. The housing market was quite low at the time, so he put his 'Make Me Move' price out there and then it faded into the background as many things do.

Fast forward to last April. I will freely admit that we have been browsing the housing market, but somewhat sporadically. Zillow would send me updates if a house fell under my search criteria. Then one day, I get a different email from Zillow. It said someone was interested in my house. (Odd, I had just been thinking that I should ask Tyler to take our house off the site....after all, no one was ever going to bite....) The email stared at me, and I stared back. Then I picked up the phone and dialed up destiny. (Meaning the future...destiny wasn't her name.)

The couple on the other end asked if they could come see our house in two days. (They would be there for the weekend from Idaho.) I told her that sure, she could come see it, but it might be a waste of her time, because the house wasn't for sale. But they came anyway.

My neighbor's house went up for sale the next day, so I actually told this young couple that they should look at both houses. They did, and seemed to like ours more. And then they left. Tyler and I sat and talked about moving and if we would and what it all meant. We laughed and talked and then let it drop and we went back to browsing the listings.

A week before Memorial Day, we get a text saying, you mentioned that you might sell for less than the 'Make Me Move' price. What would that be, and when can you move?? Wow. Moving?? We didn't have anywhere to go. But we texted back and she asked if her sister could come look at the house. Sure, that would be okay. Her sister came and browsed our house. People are very different when it comes to looking at your home. Some stand back and take it all in. Others open every cupboard. It is a little surreal. Her sister seemed satisfied and then she immediately went next door and put an offer on my neighbor's home (which was still for sale).

That is when it hit me. This couple from Idaho wanted to buy our home. Her sister would be living next door. Her husband would work less than 3 miles away. I was going to have to find somewhere else to live.

They made an offer two days later. There was a lot of hemming and hawing. At one point, we almost backed out completely. But, we managed to strike a deal and the day after Memorial day, our house was under contract.

It is a bit of a blur. We have a rental to go to. But other than that, no great long term plans. Don't even get me started on the rental process. I alternate between wanting to cry and actually crying.

And glory be...do you know what I think often? You'll never guess, so I'll tell you. I am thankful for my fake eyelashes. Because I cry. Off and on. All the time. I think about leaving my friends around here. And cry. I think about my kids having to leave their friends. And cry. I think about leaving this school system. And cry. Church is a joke. It seemed everyone found out at once, and no one is happy to see us go. Just as I am not happy to be leaving. And I cry.

We have to be out by July 1st, but we'll be gone by June 29th really. We are speaking in church on the 23rd. I already know it is going to be a riot. How am I going to speak while I am crying? But thank goodness that I am not spending a fortune on waterproof mascara. (I've never liked the stuff. I can never get it off.)

I have a LOT of faith that things will work out for our family. But I admit that some days it is hard only seeing  a few steps in front of me. I don't know if I will suddenly see that this path is a dead end, and I need to turn around and start all over deciding which direction to travel. I always thought that I would have all the time in the world to live here. But perhaps these little birds (meaning us) were not learning to fly, so we got pushed out of the nest for our own good. Perhaps.

And in the end, I am content. Because I get to take the most important things with me. I have the best team ever. My husband and my girls keep me going. They rock. It makes me cry.

No surprise there.