June 8, 2003

Well, today is Kari and my three year anniversary. Three years. And they have been good ones, too. I admit I'm glad the first two years were spent childless. Not that I don't want Elijah, but I wanted to selfishly spend time with my wife before the children started coming. Of course, now we have Elijah, and I don't know what we would do without him. Well, I do know, but it wouldn't be the same.

Kari and I spent a weekend out of town. I got Friday the 6th off of work so we could go to St. George, Utah. St. George is one of those dinky little towns that reconfirms every stereotype you might have about smalltown, Utah. There is little to the place, except a college and . . . oh, they have outlet shopping. They aren't far from Vegas. That's something. So why did we want to go there? Well, in a year, the Charles Rutherford family is having a reunion and we found a large house to rent in St. George called the Greene House. We went to see the house and to scope out the area. Most of the area can be seen in half an hour or so. Hmmm, kind of an ugly town. Ugly area. I can see why my parents are more interested in Cedar City, only a few miles up the road. St. George is also very hot, Tucson hot. We were happy to stay in our hotel with the A/C on most of the time. We would have gone swimming, but the pool was always, and I mean always full of little kids. Actually, one of the pools at our hotel was closed because there was an "accident" involving a small child who couldn't hold it until the bathroom. Ah, well.

So at the beginning of our weekend, rather than getting a good night of sleep and then making an early start on the day, Elijah decided to scream most of the night. Turns out not one but two teeth were coming in. Nothing we did could console him. So at about 5:30 in the morning, I started feeding him ice chips (usually a sure-fire winner) to ease his pain. It actually worked and he calmed down (of course, Kari had been taking care of him up to this point and needed a break, so as soon as I went to get him, she fell asleep). But Elijah wasn't ready to go back to sleep, and I was wide awake. So he played with his toys while I watched TV. Not much on in the morning, but I was too tired to do much else and too awake to sleep. Around 8:30, he fell asleep on the couch, sitting up. It was really cute, and were I not so tired, I would have gotten a picture (I try to always get a picture). I still couldn't sleep, so it wasn't till about 9:30 I went to bed. Kari, still tired from not falling asleep until 5:30, stayed asleep. We didn't get up until after 11:00. So much for catching up this weekend.

Grandma and Grandpa Olson and Aunt Heather took care of Elijah while we were gone. We went to a horrible Mexican restaurant on Friday night and rented a couple movies. We were able to watch them on our portable DVD player (purchased with excess money from our recent tax refund). Kari and I did some shopping on Saturday and checked out the Greene house, took pictures of it for everyone else. We found a couple of really cool small used book stores, got some books we had both been looking for. It was exciting for a couple of bookworms like us.

It was nice to relive the honeymoon and have each other without needing to share for a while. Now we are back home and back to reality. And that's ok, too. We spent time with Elijah this evening. His teeth are still coming in and he's a little sick, but his babysitters tell us he missed us. First time he has spent significant time away from his parents. He's a good boy.