We are approved!

The best Christmas present came early this year, the Monday before Christmas we were finally approved for adoption through LDS Family Services. We are really excited, it has taken about 8 or 9 months to get this far. Now we have the opportunity to see what happens, and we pray that all who work with us will be guided to the right places, etc. It is a big step since we first set off to start a family, so now that dream is closer than ever.
PS - with our new internet, we hopefully will be posting more frequently and adding more pictures, etc. :)

The Ice Age is over - we have the Internet!

I am typing this post from our house - a feat I haven't been able to manage in probably 10 years (except for college and Mike's parents' house). We are really excited to finally have some technology in our home, now we won't be completely in the dark when it comes to the outside world. Anyhew, that is exciting, just thought I would share the good news :)

Mighty Mike's Majestic Monologue of... Majesty!

Soooooo... I thought it was finally time for me to post something completely independent of Risa. And in this blog, I will proceed to blow your minds with an account of the last little while. Or not.

So, Risa and I just attended adoption training over the weekend. Wow - that was awesome. I cannot lie - I TOTALLY did not want to be there (not that I don't want to adopt - because I do with every cell of by body - but I thought it would be really boring and not helpful). However, it ended up being really good, and my wife is super spectacular for putting up with my initial whining. We learned all sorts of neat stuff. I won't get into the details - that would probably be really uninteresting for you.

Over the weekend we also saw the movie "IGOR" on the big screen. I liked it quite a bit. Of course there is ALWAYS something that could be better - in this case it was the ending mostly, but surprisingly, Risa didn't like it so much, which is weird because she is generally way less harsh on animated films than I am. I personally think that even animated films should be able to feel the wraith of my critical analysis and stand up to it. A few have - like "Nightmare Before Christmas" (tis the season baby), and "Monster House", but most fall short. Speaking of critical analysis, I have a game critique that I simply must expound on here. I recently played through "Advent Rising" - a game created here in Utah about 3 years ago and which Orson Scott Card wrote the story for. I gotta say - every game should have a professional writer working on it, because it pays off. The story in this game was AWESOME. Though, that was also part of its downfall. The game was more like a movie "trying" to be a game. In my opinion there needed to be way more gameplay and way less cutscenes. Plus - it seemed that, because they spent so much time on the story, the gameplay mechanics suffered. The geometry didn't mesh well, the progression system was a way cool idea, but was overall pretty limited and superficial, and I found myself saying "what - the game's over already? Come on!"

Anyway - Risa will probably get mad that I spent all my time talking about a game critique. Plus, I need to go facilitate "weird movie night" now that my aunt Laura and cousin Gage are here. So - I will write more later. Peace,
Mike.

There was a summer?

Here we are at the end of the summer, and I didn't even know it had come along. We have been working away and Mike is busy with work and starting new classes at ITT (he teaches there), and I am just drooling away at my job and trying to get things done around the house. The biggest change for us this summer is our decision to "go green" and eat vegetarian style. Not completely vegetarian, we're still transitioning, but a few friends of ours eat a kind of whole foods/vegan diet and it works very well for them as far as health goes, and so we thought we would give it a try. I've made green smoothies now for a couple of weeks, those are fruit smoothies with spinach in them, yum, and we're feeling pretty good. I also got adventurous and made "Veggie Joe's", recipe by my good friend Tami, I'll like her blog, and suprisingly enough it was really good. It smelled just like the real deal, but it was so much more healthy and we feel good when we eat it. I know we get a lot of weird looks and people tell us we're crazy, but can we really get any more weird? We will see where it goes, but I think the sucanat (sugar cane natural, a healthier form of sugar) is here to stay.

A day of Mourning

Our Savannah monitor lizard, Calcifer, died yesterday. It has been a hard day for me, he was our first pet together when we were married and had been with us for over 2 years. He wasn't doing very well over the weekend so we took him to the vet and spent a lot of moolah but it looks like there must have been other things wrong as he didn't get better. He was a sweet lizard and will be dearly missed. We buried him up in the hills this morning, I hope he is happy where he is now. I wrote this for him today, I hope you don't mind me putting it on here. It is free verse style, so it doesn't rhyme.

An Ode to Calcifer

I remember
the day we got you.
We couldn't afford it.
We got you anyway.
You were so small,
the length of my hand.

Feisty as ever,
Hungry always,
Never trusting.
Always plotting
your next escape.

We found you
battling the dust bunnies
in the corner
by the fridge
in that first, tiny, apartment.

We found you
after hours of search
curled away
inside the roll of wrapping paper
That was my favorite
of your hide-aways.

We watched you
grow
out of the small sink
out of the tiny tub
out of the many cages
and hide-aways
we made your home
and, of course,
out of the layers
and layers
of perfect, small, scales
each one bigger than the last.

We held you,
or rather, tried
as you'd burrow
behind the pillow,
discretely wriggling
your way out
of the harness
that held you

Food, your passion
unless
it wasn't what you wanted
You'd refuse
with a simple close
of your eyes;
nose turned up,
indignant.

How you loved
a warm shower
a firm scratch
behind your ears

Your majesty,
your independence,
and yet,
your gentleness,
your grace,
your beauty,
all hauntings
of your presence
here,
with us,
though all too short
your stay.

Mission: Launch

Welcome to our Blog!

I know the name is weird, but it looked a lot better than +5 blog of Awesomeness or whatever Michael wanted it to be. You'd think he was trying to scare people with the ideas he came up with. Anyhew, to warn you, if you see the names Mike and Michael interchange without any other specifications (ex. Mike L.) then it is the same person, I (Risa) just call him by different names depending on my mood.
I am hoping to get this blog looking pretty so that you all can get to know us better (maybe even more than you've ever wanted), but as I'm stealing Mike's work computer to do this, it may not be updated that often.
Let me know if you have requests!
Thanks for coming!