I’m sure you were all so…moved…by this. I have been.

You see, earlier this week, everyone was asking me “How’s the baby doing? You getting any sleep?” and I felt obliged to make some comment about how his feeding schedule meshed with my need for rest. But Johanna doesn’t like me saying anything, because the truth of the matter is that so far, he hasn’t caused me to lose much.

Glen is really pretty mellow, and Johanna doesn’t want a bottle lear his mouth for fear he will stop nursing altogether. So my job consists of nudging her when I hear him cry (she is wearing ear plugs because of my snoring), and getting a diaper from the closet for her. I lose a total of 5 minutes of sleep whenever he wakes up, which isn’t anything at all.

Some of you out there will undoubtedly cry “foul” when you read this, saying I should do more to help out. And I would LOVE to do more. But nursing is out of the question. Occasionally Johanna does let me change the diaper, but this is just the way things have worked out so far.

So no more asking if I am losing sleep. The answer is “Yes, some, but not enough to fuss over.” I am sure that the simple act of writing that statement will call down the wrath of Murphy’s Law, and the road will get rocky from here. But I won’t make a peep…Johanna won’t have me complaining at all…if anyone gets to, it’s her.

Chances are that none of you are going to buy me anything on here (though I wouldn’t complain… wink wink). But a Christmas list gives you a little glimpse at what makes us tick – the things we enjoy and dream about, what our priorities are, that sort of thing.

Later on I will try and convince Johanna to post hers as well. It might be kind of interesting to see if there is any overlap. But for now…

Mike’s Christmas List (disclaimer: this list is subject to change without notice)

• 3 (min) white shirts for church
• new garments (several)
• flat screen hdtv
• money to fix the car
• new electric razor
• new computer mouse (Logitech MX620)
• a funny hat to wear at brown-topper night
• enough wood to build some new shelving around the house (eg. Home Depot gift card)
• 1 year supply of contact lenses
• baby Glen to be born
• new shed for the back yard
• new sprinkler system in back yard, and new grass to go with it
• new driveway
• supply of blank dvd’s (to clean off the media center from it’s 64 episodes of “Curious George”, 48 episodes of “Super Why”, the recordings of “The Incredibles”, “Inspector Gadget”, “Oceans 11″ and “Apollo 13″)
• $50 to spend on iTunes
• small picture frames to take pictures of the kids/family to work
• photo paper to print pictures of the family/kids
• webcam
• plane tickets to fly to Oklahoma (yes, Sarah, we want to come visit next year!)
• BYU winning against the U and getting to a BCS bowl
• coupon good for one date night to Chinese Gourmet
• steak to cook on the BBQ (yes, with a covered back porch, you CAN have a BBQ in December)

In other news, this Thursday, Johanna and find out whether the bun we are baking is a little boy or a little girl! Needless to say, everyone is pretty excited around here. Not to jinx things, but we are both hoping for a little girl, and the chinese fortune cookies from lunch last week say “You will get your hearts’ desire” – that’s gotta count for something, right?

Missionary Mary has sent us some pictures, which will make their way into the appropriate gallery in a few minutes here. She seems to be doing well, as always, but the email this week was a little scattered. She wrote a huge, detailed one, and it got deleted before she could send it, so the remaining time was spent trying to patch together thoughts. She did ask me about posting video on the site…I will have to write her and ask her to just send them to me. I will need to downsize them before posting them – full resolution video might be too much for my internet connection to serve up right now.

Aiden’s first week of school is going well, for the most part. He has been disciplined once already, moved from the front row to the second row because he can’t stop talking to his neighbor. The teacher put him next to a girl, hoping that might quiet him a little. She doesn’t know that all his best friends in the ward are girls. This could be interesting.

Lastly, Johanna is about to delve into the world of scouting, as this week she starts her new calling as the Cub Scout leader in our ward! I think she is excited, but probably not as much as I am. I loved scouting as a kid, and am looking forward to helping out where I can. I know that Sarah has a wealth of knowledge on how to do the scouting stuff, as she is her wards’ Primary President and all. We’ll have to touch base some time and get some killer-awesome hints on how to keep little boys entertained with rocks and sticks without throwing them at each other.

Anywho, this is getting sorta lengthy, so I will go post the Mary pictures now. TTFN!

Last night we went to see State Fair at the Sugar Factory Playhouse, and it was a pretty good show. Some of my old friends there haven’t seen me since I was a single, not-even-anyone-on-the-horizon sort of guy. Finding out that baby Dodge is on the way was a real shocker.

But even with all this great news, the most memorable part of the recent week was when we decided to take the kids to a free puppet show at the West Jordana library for Family Home Evening. It was the Starry-Eyed Puppet Show, and it was really something else. What made it so great? Well, let me tell you…

Johanna’s friend Heather told us about a free puppet show at the library, and since we didn’t have any concrete plans for the evening, we decided to go and see if it was any good. We got there quite a bit early, and had some time to wait in the kids section of the library. There is a ‘bug’ theme going on right now, and kids are able to sign up for contests and reading clubs to earn prizes – plastic bugs among them. Of course, for little boys, there’s not much that can top a good plastic bug.

When the puppet show finally got under way, and we were completely amazed at the quality of the show. We thought it would be some hokey little thing with a card table and a guy with some socks on his hands or something. But there was a complete 2-tiered ‘puppet-stage’ with soundtrack, silly-string-sneezing noses, giant spiders (remember the bug theme), and the kids went crazy! The show was actually funny enough that most of the adults were laughing a bit, too. And since it was at the library, of course it was educational to boot.

The show was about things that “Bug” us, and one of the first I can recall was rap – a sorry excuse for music, in my humble opinion. They had a rap about the life-cycle of a butterfly. Then they had another thing that “bugs” a lot of people – bad poetry. Some boring-to-tears worm came out and read poetry about daffodils, and all of a sudden, daffodils are flying all over the place at this worm…he never does finish the poem.

During “scene changes” a puppet comes up singing “eency weency spider” to the audience, but he isn’t supposed to be part of the show. So the master puppet tries to shoo him off, and calls on his friend spider to help. Each time the scene changes, the singing puppet reappears, and the spider shooing him away gets bigger…until the spider is HUGE and the little puppet runs away screaming! A classic joke, but well played here.

The main story was about a worker bee who noticed that all villains are popular, while nobody remembers the heroes in those books (eg. Dracula, Moby Dick, etc.) So he decides that in order to be famous, he needs to be bad. But every bad thing he does ends up saving some other bug’s life, and he gets frustrated. In the end, his conscience gets the best of him, and he is awarded for being a good worker bee.

All in all, it was a really fun little show, and Johanna thinks it might be something we could do on the side for extra income – put on puppet shows. We will have to see about that, but this much I can definitely say: the Starry-Eyed puppet show was a real hoot, and I will not second guess the programs that the library puts on for kids again. I highly recommend looking into the nearest public library to see what youth activities they have planend in the near future – and going!