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)

Okay okay okay…so it’s been almost a month since the last post on here. Life has been busy. We’ve had a vacation to Pineview Reservoir (and we forgot to take the camera…GAH!) and some really good days at work (any day with a $500 bonus is good). I plan on making a more detailed post tomorrow, but for now, I am obligated to put up some pictures for my siblings.

You see, Mary has taken my advice and stopped sending everyone huge attachments. Instead, she is emailing me the pictures, and I post them on the blog for the family to enjoy at their leisure, without cluttering their inboxes. So a number of these pictures are from her.

In addition, Sam is flying out to Washington DC for his internship, and as part of the trip he is making a stop in Oklahoma to see Sarah and family. Of course, Leah is in the “everyone needs to play princess tea party with me” stage, and Sam is no exception. So there is some real quality stuff on here from his visit to OK.

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!

Amazingly enough, we found it at the second store we went to. My sister Sarah told me that my other sister Rachel had been referred to a store by my other sister Liz (!!!) and that I should check it out. The name of the store was Teton Nalder, but when we started looking for it, I misspelled Teton as Titan…and we couldn’t find it. So we started looking at any warehouse on KSL with good prices.

On the 7th we went out shopping with $350, and at the first warehouse we found something we could afford, but we wanted to wait until we had looked elsewhere before committing to it. Then, at the second warehouse, things got interesting.

When we arrived, Johanna reminded the sales rep they had talked on the phone, and that they had advertised a really inexpensive mattress. When we went back to see it, she said she only had twin mattresses to actually lay on, the larger ones weren’t on display but were in stock. Then, ‘FLOP,’ she shows us the most embarrassing excuse for a mattress I have ever seen. Johanna’s sideways ‘are they SERIOUS‘ glance says it all. The mattress is covered with little blue rockets, and looks old enough to have come over on the mayflower.

Johanna said “We’re looking for something a little higher quality than that…” and the sales rep obliges us with ‘FLOP,’ something dating from the civil war – blue without the rockets. At this point we were about ready to leave.

On the way out I saw the REAL mattresses, the nice ones with pillow tops and memory foam. I laid down on one and asked it’s price. The sales rep, desperate to keep us there, said it was $375 or so, but if we would buy it right then, she would give it to us for $350. Johanna thought it was comfortable, but I wasn’t totally sold – it was a little firm for my taste. So the rep left while Johanna and I talked it over.

I said I still didn’t want to spend money on that one. A mattress is a long-time purchase that you have to live with. I couldn’t live with a mattress that firm. So we decided against it, even though it was a nice one in our price range. We started walking out again, and saw their two top-of-the-line models. On a whim, I laid down on one.

INCREDIBLE! A wonderful, WONDERFUL Queen mattress with memory foam, encased coils, just the right firmness, I was near tears! I lay there and told Johanna to try it out. “But it’s out of our price range” she chided. “Just try it out, this is what I am looking for. We can check for this firmness elsewhere, but I want you to feel this!” She obliged, and agreed, it was really, really comfortable.

But was it in our price range? The rep was desperate to get us to stay. It was about $475 for the mattress without tax. But if we would buy it right then, it was going to be $475 with tax. That was a better price than the other warehouse, but I was still nervous about the price of buying a box spring. She offered a mismatched one for $50 more, but I was still hesitant. Then, she offered to just include one. That meant we were getting a retail $1,200 bedroom for just $478.67 with tax. The other warehouse couldn’t come close. And that did it.

Agreeing to pay our $350 right then, and the additional $128.67 the following week, we went out to fill out the paperwork. Taped on the table we saw:

“Checks payable to Teton Nalder”

I guess some things are meant to be.