Water bottle contraband

Yesterday Brent caught Sarah and Lauren hiding in Tyler's room taking "hits" off the water bottle.  As funny as that sounds, I alone created this obsession in my children.  Explaining to them that the water is stale, probably squirming with germs, and has just gotta taste bad, doesn't seem to have much effect. Even that nasty warning of "it'll probably give you diarrhea" does absolutely nothing.  Merely by saying "don't drink that!!" I've instilled in them a permanent desire to snatch and drink.   Wouldn't it be great if this worked across the board?  "What ever you do, don't do your chores!!"  "Please, stop eating that broccoli"  "I don't want any hugs and kisses today!" I suppose if sneaking my water bottle is the worst thing they do, I don't have much to complain about right?  And I do get lots of hugs and kisses.  Like I said, not much to complain about.

The birthday grinch

We have a serious problem in our house when it comes to birthdays.  I'm just not very good at them.  Sure we have a family party: cake, singing, a few presents.  But if I throw a huge party one year, won't they expect that every year?  And if I do it for one child, do I have to do it for all four? Every year!!? That's way too much pressure.  I'll stick to the low key, low cost, family get togethers.  Although my feelings are quite clear on this matter, I  still feel mildly guilty about not writing the "see how my glorious children have grown?" posts.  So in my repentant state, I was going to write about Lauren's birthday. Until I realized I hadn't written squat about anyone else's.  So here's my birthday blog for the year.

Sarah turning seven

Abbey turning five

Lauren turning three

Tyler turning one

So there's my four awesome kids.  They are glorious aren't they?

Where in the World are our Hits?

You might notice that we have a map at the bottom of our blog. The map records the time and location of all of our visitors. So after seeing some fairly random places listed we (or maybe it was just me) decided to see who it was that was visiting our blog.

Over the month of July we made a record of all the hits to see what we could find out about our friends, old and new. We recorded about 300 hits. Tuesdays and Wednesdays seem to be the most popular days to visit.

Top ten locations
1 Irvine, CA, United States
2 Las Vegas, NV, United States
3 , , United States
4 Provo, UT, United States
5 American Fork, UT, United States
6 Dallas, TX, United States
6 Denver, CO, United States
6 Williamsburg, VA, United States
9 Los Angeles, CA, United States
9 Mesa, AZ, United States
9 Newport Coast, CA, United States
9 Placitas, NM, United States
9 Roseville, CA, United States
9 West Jordan, UT, United States

Top States with number of hits
1 CA 103
2 NV 40
3 UT 37
4 VA 17
5 AZ 10
6 ID 8
6 CO 8
6 NM 8
9 TX 7
10 OR 5

This list is not that surprising as some of the top locales are where we live (Irvine) and have lived (Provo, Williamsburg, Roseville). Most of the other top places are either close to those places (American Fork) or places where we know many of our friends have moved (Las Vegas).

Of course we really do not know who everyone is that is visiting our blog but we do have some guesses. For example, we can only assume that Kobe Bryant must be checking us out from his place in Newport Coast. Also, “, , United States” must be our friends in the CIA (from Williamsburg) who are able to search the web while hiding almost all of their information (don’t be surprised if this sentence is mysteriously erased at some point in the future).

Top Countries besides the U.S.
1 Switzerland
2 Australia
3 United Kingdom
4 Canada
4 Taiwan
4 France

People that I would like to know who you are, the repeat visitors from:
Denver, CO
Lynn, MA
Palm Bay, FL

Top 10 one-time visitors in no apparent order (i.e. coolest, most random places)
Saskatoon, SK, Canada
Placé, France
Taipei, Taiwan
Baton Rouge, LA, United States
Juneau, AK, United States
Honolulu, HI, United States
Laramie, WY, United States
Omaha, NE, United States
Randolph, NJ, United States
Rexford, NY, United States
Spanaway, WA, United States
Tulsa, OK, United States

Ok so that was more than ten.

We would love to hear from all of our friends, please leave a comment and include your city.