Bradbury's Monsters

How to pray.

2010-04-11T20:27:00.000-07:00

Max has a new thing. Most evenings -when he wins the contest of who gets to say prayer at dinner- Max blesses everything in the room, says amen and then celebrates with an air guitar solo. We don't know where this came from but I tried it in church today and it went over very well.

Try it in your own ward and see if we can get it to catch on.

Sophie uses her time in celestial suplication as a platform to pass around insults, for example: Bless sintky daddy and stinky mommy and stinky Max.

Thankfully Jake is not praying yet.

Jacob Danger Indeed!

2010-01-24T20:13:00.000-08:00

So my mom is in town, and it is awesome. It has been a week since she came and we don't even drive each other nuts. Anyway, the first time she walks in our house the kids want to show off the house and naturally take her straight to their room. There as they proceed demonstrating their awesome monkey skills of climbing all over their bunk beds Jake joins in the fun and tries to climb up the ladder that leads to the top. He goes two steps up and falls off proceeding on the way to the floor to hit the edge of the bed and splitting open his skull. I am not kidding, my mom was not in the house for more than 5 minutes, she didn't even have a chance to take her coat off. So, I, being a great nurse that I am, asses the damage and run my little "Danger" to the nearest ER where my favorite brave doctor is actually working at the moment. Two pop-sicles and some strong mommy arms later Jacob was a proud owner of 3 stitches.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

2009-12-22T12:27:00.000-08:00

What do we love about Christmas;
Does our delight reside in things?
Or are the feelings in our hearts
The real gift that Christmas brings.

It's seeing those we love,
And sending Christmas cards, too,
Appreciating people who bring us joy
Special people just like you.
By Joanna Fuchs

Thank you to all our friends and family for keeping in touch with us through this blog. Hope this holiday season is bright and merry for all of you.
Love, Bradburys

Home Sweet Home

2009-12-12T20:53:00.000-08:00

Since a lot of you have not made it to our house with a vesit yet, I thought I better post some pix of it. That and my mom has been bugging me. Anyway we have about 10 acres around the house most of which are up the mountain behind it.
This is what our house looked like back in November with the first snow.

We have a creek running in front of the property separating it from the road and an LDS church that is right below us. Aaron is dreaming of putting a draw bridge over the creek of course it would naturally have to be remote controled.

There are a lot of gorgeous trees everywhere and to top it off we have an orchard with all kinds of fruit trees.

And here is what the house looks like today after we got 5 inches of snow dumped on us. I think our driveway is going to make a nice sledding hill.

Inside the house we have plenty of room for all kinds of guests, so come and visit us anytime.

2009-11-28T19:15:00.000-08:00

Happy Birthday Max! I can't believe it's been 5 years. Although Max might not make it to 6 since his grandma gave him a set of drums as a birthday present.

the story of my life...

2009-11-21T14:10:00.000-08:00

Oh boy, do I relate to this old soviet cartoon now! The only difference is that I can't rebuild a car, yet.

Cousins

2009-11-07T06:22:00.000-08:00

Now that we live only 3 hrs from our cousins Katya, Niles, Dale, Ragan and Isai, we get to see them more often. It's been fun watching them growing up. Recently we went there for baby Isai's blessing and had a very good photoshoot. Here are some pix, hope you enjoy them.

Spooky Halloween Party

2009-10-16T21:17:00.000-07:00

We had our Halloween party early this year since we had to travel a lot this month. We had a great time especially since KK, PK, Ava and Grandma decided to join in the fun. It also wouldn't had been so awesomly decorated if it wasn't for them. Our castle was transformed into a haunted house. We had our own Baba Yaga (Ukrainian witch), and yes, you can all call Max and Jake sons of a witch now, especially since it was not a big stretch for G to become one.
Hope you all have a great time this Halloween and eat enough candy to last you a whole year.

2009-10-04T13:40:00.000-07:00

Haircuts

2009-09-28T20:20:00.000-07:00

They were being SO quiet, but this is what happens when Max and Sophia get a hold of scissors.

Our Monkey children at the Zoo

2009-09-28T06:53:00.000-07:00

2009-09-27T20:25:00.000-07:00

This is from one of our trips to SLC. We met some friends from Arizona and even though it was short we had a great time. Thanks Emily for adjusting your plans.

Momma, eto dlia tebia

2009-08-10T20:16:00.001-07:00

Happy Birthday to ME!

2009-07-27T22:09:00.000-07:00

I am 25..... again!
We went to Lagoon and had a great time. The kids were so excited when they saw the rides, they started to shake. Sophie's eyes nearly popped out of her head on the Rattle Snake Rapid, and Max went on the "Terror Ride" 3 times in a row. Brig would ride anything that resembled a train and Calvin and Ava were good troopers. By-the-way Max makes a great hat when going under the waterfall on the rapids.

Party Time!

2009-07-27T20:02:00.000-07:00

So far in Vernal we have had 2 big parties both in a house we hadn't even moved into: Jake's blessing and Sophia's birthday. Both were tons of fun! Sophia loved her b/day party, thanks to Grandma Susie and all the guests! Turning 3 has not dampened her spirit or attitude it's just given her a much larger vocabulary - which she uses more like a weapon than a way to communicate. Max loves to analyze connections and today mentioned several times just how "unique" he was. It is remarkable how well he understands things and even more remarkable how well he remembers things that we wish he wouldn't (mostly things his mom said but wants him to forget). Jacob is almost 6 months old, weighs 26 pounds, and is growing out of 18 month clothes. He is a very happy boy and is mastering the back to front roll. He will be crawling soon. Hopefully by putting him in the very small 6 mt old clothes they will act as restraints and delay the crawling for several more months.

We have finally moved all our stuff to the new house but none of it is put away. Boxes are everywhere and preclude any more parties until we can get this place straitened out. Number one on our priority list is to acquire a TV that is larger than the one Dad just bought. Wish us luck.

I Love Danger!

2009-07-10T14:30:00.000-07:00

Thank you very much Aunt Stormy for our awesome shirts!
We sure love our Danger!

6 is a crowd

2009-07-06T20:35:00.000-07:00

Last week for about 3 days I was learning what it is like to be a mother of 6. My very brave big sister had her baby, so I came down to watch her kids and brought my monsters along. To tell you honestly, I am not a very good mother. I lost Ragan (Alia's 18 mo old)a couple of times and Max ended up with a big goose egg on his forehead and a laceration above his right eye that Aaron had to fix once we got home. Thank goodness for our personal ER doc, I am sure he will save us a lot of money while the kids are growing up.

Congrats, Alia! He is a beautiful baby boy. The little guy was breach, so he had to be sectioned a couple of weeks before the due date. Both mother and her little miracle baby are doing fine.

Vernal's Freemont Petroglyphs

2009-05-17T18:32:00.000-07:00

Grandpa "B" recently came to see us! He stayed the whole weekend and we had a great time! We totally wrecked his diet. We went on a hike and saw the petroglyphs in Dry Fork Canyon and drove all over town looking for a new home. Well, we finally found one and it is cool! Next time you come Grandpa, we'll have our own petroglyphs in our backyard, and maybe there will be a little less hiking involved.

Hook'em Horns! Go Texas!

Three of a kind smiles.

Trying to communicate.

Dinosaur Land

2009-05-17T18:24:00.000-07:00

Alia came for a visit with Dale and Regan. We took them for a tour of Vernal, and of course we had to go to the Dinosaur museum.

Belated Easter

2009-05-17T18:15:00.000-07:00

Sorry, we haven't posted anything for awhile. So let's catch up:
For Easter we had our Grandma and a strange looking, pink eared attack bunny come for a visit. Needless to say, kids loved all the candy.

Fun With Our Cousins

2009-04-02T12:40:00.000-07:00

In the last two months we have had some good times with our cousins. Brig, Calvin and Ava all joined in a high fashion photo shoot at grandmas. Matching shirts compliments of the KKK.
Brigham says: "gimme some sugar baby!"

Ava's shirt reads "if you can read this the bitch fell off"
Ava and Calvin have excellent table manners.

Calvin had such a good time, he was ready to shoot himself.

Our Life in Vernal

2009-03-31T13:47:00.001-07:00

Still alive and surprisingly enough, no kids harmed (other than emotionally). We finally had the internet installed so we are back in the digital age again and our life is finally slowing down a bit.

Most smart people try to do major stressors one at a time, like move, have a baby, and start a new job. Not us, we thought that the “band-aid ripping” effect would be more fun, so we did them at the same time. Now that we are all moved in and settled we can relax a bit and enjoy life.

So far we are liking Vernal very much. It has been somewhat of an adjustment since it is about 20 degrees cooler here than in AZ, but no one has frozen yet.
Our house is beautiful and huge. I get a lot of exercise going up and down the stairs and from one side to the other of the house chasing the kids.

We went to our cousin’s, Felicia wedding last month. Max and Sophia contributed to our preparations to leave by flooding the upstairs bathroom and smearing poop all over the toy room carpet all in the 15 minutes before we were supposed to leave. The house survived but the kids and their parents have some deep emotional scars. Afterwards Sophia stated that she and Max were not in trouble for their misdeeds, she said “ NO DAD we are not in trouble: we’re kids and we’re funny!” We couldn’t argue with that but the duration of those funny kids lives might be significantly shortened if they continue to be that funny.

I am sitting at the computer and holding my baby boy in my arms. It is a very warm thing to do. This is about the only time when he gives any snuggling at all. When he is awake he is straight as a board and has a will of his own. Cuddling Jacob is like cuddling a 2x4. He started to smile recently (mostly associated with various gastrointestinal phenomena) but we love every second of it. Max and Sophia love their baby brother. Max is very soft and gentle with him and tries to be helpful to his mom. Sophia tries to be helpful too mostly by smothering Jake in her very tight grip and intermittently testing his eyes for durability. For those of you who did not receive our baby announcement or those who did not believe their eyes, our Jake’s middle name is Danger and we have the birth certificate to prove it.

I had to post this picture, cause I think it's so cool! Aaron is really good!

2009-03-31T13:12:00.000-07:00

Jacob, 1 month old

This is a playground where Aaron played when he was Max and Sophia's age.

That's one poutty Max!

Sophia is dressed to the nines.

Max, Sophia and Jacob Danger fresh from the hospital

IT'S A BOY!

2009-02-07T07:17:00.000-08:00

All right folks, our wait is over! After having babies with enormous heads and laboring with them for 24+ hours, I finally got a break and after only 3 really hard pushes monster # 3 decided to present himself to the world and an ecstatic mom and dad. Aaron was on the receiving end and got to catch him. Our beautiful baby boy weighed in at 9 lbs 3oz and 21 3/4 inches long and was born at 11:13 pm with good healthy lungs 10 toes and 11 fingers and three legs.

Mom is feeling good and is getting ready to tackle our next task of unpacking our new house. Dad feels bad because he forgot to bring a copy of Star Wars to the hospital so it could be the baby’s first movie.

We still have one small dilemma. We need a name. Something tough, strong and dangerous. Like Francis maybe? If you have any suggestions please send us a note, The winner of this contest gets a bronzed dirty diaper!!

Thanks for all your support and help.
Love Aaron, Galima, Max, Sophia and ??

And the baby’s name is…

2009-02-05T08:00:00.000-08:00

We started driving to Utah on Tuesday at about 4pm. Everything was going great, we made it to Vegas, had a nice dinner and kept on driving. At about Saint George I started having contractions. Oh boy, did it hurt! It was hard to get comfortable sitting in the packed to the brim car and the contractions were only getting stronger. We decided to stop for gas and to empty our bladders. After I got back to the car the contractions subsided and… a miracle we could keep on driving. Everything was going well more or less until we got to Spanish Fork where I started to scream with pain. Max and Sophia were such good sports and kept on consoling me, I think I scared them a bit. Anyway, turned out that instead of rushing to a nearest hospital all I needed was to empty my bladder again. Aaron was really looking forward to doing some major speeding and when he got pulled over use the excuse “my wife is in labor!”. Sorry hun not this time. We are safely in Lehi hanging out at “Grandma’s” house and are going to see our new obstetrician today. We'll keep you posted on any new events.

What comes first our move or the baby?

2009-01-29T13:31:00.000-08:00

Aaron came home a week ago and said “Let’s move now, before the baby comes. What do you think?” Of course I did not think much about that idea. I am miserably pregnant! I don’t want to do anything but lie comfortably on the couch with occasional meal being thrown at me. Yet we are moving now. I mean now! Thank goodness we’ve recruited some help, so it should go pretty fast. And Aaron is right, it should be easier to move without a baby on our hands. So we are moving to Vernal, Utah!
The baby, if all goes well, will be delivered in Salt Lake and not somewhere on the side of the road. We’ll have to pack some medical supplies just in case. Keep us in your prayers.

These pictures were taken in Utah while we were looking for a house. Kids were really good sports.

Max is a good packing partner.

the house. it is just a rental for now, but a beautiful one. Aaron is spoiling us, brand new house #3. Come visit us anytime.

Trip to Utah

2009-01-29T12:34:00.000-08:00

Sometime in January we visited Utah. We came to do some house hunting, but couldn’t resist stopping at Grandma Susie’s house where we saw our little cousins Briggadie-Brig and Calvin-the-amazing. Aaron also squeezed a snowboarding trip in and we hang out at Grandpa Joe’s for a little while. And of course on the way out of town we stopped at Alia’s and made them late for church. The trip was very productive even though we didn’t buy any houses.

still x-mas

2009-01-17T12:01:00.000-08:00

Grandma Susie was brave enough to come and see us in Pinetop and we had a great time. She drove to Kingman with us and did the "Grandma duty" of making cookies with the kids. Thanks Grandma, we sure love you.

2009-01-17T11:50:00.000-08:00

We also went sledding, to Sophia’s dismay. Max was the daredevil in the family and took on a steep and bumpy hill where he caught some impressive air.

Our VERY white Christmas

2009-01-17T11:10:00.001-08:00

Guess what? It snows in Arizona! We spent our Christmas in Pinetop in a cabin covered with snow! We shoveled every day just to get out of our driveway and I even pushed our vehicles more than once. We were ill equipped for such an ordeal. Especially since I forgot everyone's jackets. Still we loved almost every minute of it: Aaron lost his phone somewhere in the snow, so we’ll be back looking for it this Summer. Enjoy the pix.

Merry X-mas!

2008-12-06T12:57:00.001-08:00

Yep, we already seen Santa this year.

Happy Birthday Max!

2008-12-06T12:16:00.000-08:00

Max is 4! He was so excited, now he is a BIG boy!

Some dinosaurs crashed his party, so Max and his guests fought them off with the paintball guns.

This was Max's first shot. Take that Tyrannosaurus Rex!

While the hunting party celebrated those sneaky dinosaurs laid some eggs, so we just had to make sure all the eggs were destroyed. We made delicious Dino omelets!

Happy Birthday Max!

Viva Las Vegas!

2008-12-05T14:01:00.000-08:00

We did it! We ditched the kids and went to Vegas for a night of debauchery and entertainment!
We had some very good steak and then went to a ridiculously expensive show, the Blue Man Group. We had a great time especially after the drunk lady sitting next to us got up and left. Any band with 3 drummers totally rocks! After the show we went gambling or more like watching others gamble. Nothing like strolling a casino floor called the "pleasure pit" with your pregnant wife in tow. We stood and watched the pole dancers together, I'm not sure who made who more uncomfortable. We sacrificed 10 bucks to the one arm bandit and of course Aaron lost and Galima won, overall we were up 9 bucks!!! Take that evil corporate casino. We saw a hooker get arrested and some drunk people joining in a inebriated dance. We did not go to bed until 4am!! (which is a heroic venture for me!) We had an awesome time but decided that we are done with Vegas for a while!

The Hualapai's

2008-11-24T13:23:00.000-08:00

November 16th we went into the Hualapai mountains to watch Adam fly over us and wave to him or get his attention in any other way (hence the gun ;). We climbed to the highest point we could find as close as we could to the coordinates that Adam gave us. We did see Addie's airplane but he was about a mile or two away from us. Still we had good time and enjoyed the "air-show" Thanks Addie!

The Crazy Bunch!

2008-11-07T19:30:00.000-08:00

It is a bit late, but better late than never, right?
We celebrated Aaron's B/day with now a traditional cheesecake. No burn injuries this time. And the next morning we left for Utah, where we explored the job market.

Somewhere in Utah. It was a gorgeous sunset and one of the best views of the mountains which you can hardly enjoy on the picture. Still, you can see how incredibly big I am getting.

And of course I couldn't take all the "crazy dress-up" credit all to myself, (at least I do it on Halloween only ;)

Happy Halloween!

2008-11-03T13:05:00.000-08:00

Here is some of our crazy candy day. We went to see Aaron first, and then went to the Church for some trunk-o-treating. The kids were very excited to be getting candy from, people for nothing! After we made some rounds we came to our own car and gave all our candy away. Max seemed to enjoy that part even more, where's Sophie was trying to shove as much candy in her mouth as she could. But being a novice in that business she kept taking all the hard candy and ended up eating not as much as I feared. Hope you all had good times and ate enough sweets to give you diabetes, I sure did.
Love, Bradburys.

2008-09-29T21:20:00.001-07:00

Hey folks,
Sorry we were delinquent in our blog keeping up. It just seems that as the kids are growing bigger our days are growing shorter. I finally got around to it so here is our update.
As everyone hopefully already knows we are expecting a monster #3. So here is the mug-shot of Fred the fetus or Emma the embryo.

The baby is doing great and is very, very active. During the ultrasound this little miracle kept hitting me with his/hers tiny fist already trying to fend off the siblings. Max and Sophia are periodically giving him hugs and feeling her kicks. Sophia’s hugs are more of a death grip though.

I found out that it is no fun to be pregnant when you are 30, and am very grateful to Aaron for allowing me to stay home with the kids. I am already gigantic and as soon as the kids finally give up running around like crazy can barely keep my eyes open.
Aaron is working really hard and now he has a moonlighting job to keep him occupied on those “numerous” days off. We miss him a lot but the end is near.

2008-07-11T21:16:00.000-07:00

One lucky Dad!

We know how to stay cool in AZ!

I am TWO!

2008-07-11T20:53:00.001-07:00

Sophia had a monkey cake on her special day. Both Max and Sophia were very excited and showed us some true monkey behavior that day.

"I am a cowgirl though and through, Yippee-ky-yee! Yippe-ky-yu!"

2008-07-06T21:26:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone! Sorry our mom hasn’t been updating this blog to see how much we have grown. We really think that she is just wasting her time by watching movies and eating ice-cream as soon as we go to bed. So we decided to take matters into our hands and here is what came out of it.

Since it’s been so long we’ll have to start with the time when we went to Las Vegas, think it was in March. Dad spent a month there learning how to waste his time more efficiently in some sort of hospital. Did you know that those things are full of ice-cream and especially TV?! Well, a good thing did happen and our baby cous Eva brought her parents for a visit and they even fit our grandma Susie with them. Boy, did we love every minute of that, especially when both of our parents left us on grandma’s watch!

It was sad to leave Eva but we were about to go to Texas to see our newest cousin Calvin and to rekindle our long lasting friendship with our cousin Brig. It was a long drive and our little bums almost fell off at the end of the trip but we made it. We watched our uncle Addie fly an airplane and even went inside some enormous airplanes. We taught Briggie how to use some “awesome” words and I Max showed him how to terrorize his younger sibling.

Now we are at home and have not been anywhere else since. That does not mean that our life is boring, in fact we keep our mom going 24/7. It’s kind of fun sometimes to see how fast she can run, although it never ends well for us.
Well that’s it for now. Come see us if you are in Kingman. Love you all, or how my little sis says it “Lobe you, see you soon”.

our monsters

2008-03-22T14:33:00.000-07:00

You leave all the "responsible" things in the family up to me and they never, or almost never get done.
We are doing great and are so excited to play with our new cousins! Sophia has a doll that she named "baby Lola" and she carries her everywhere. And Max was just thrilled to learn today about Brig's new baby brother. Now he keeps asking me when we are going to go to visit them.
No new baby news for us. We are busy now with potty-training Sophia who at the age of 18 months decided she was too big for diapers. So now our floors are heavily scrubbed about 3 times a day.
Here are a few fresh pix, hope you like them.

Everyone else is doing it so why can't we?

2008-02-18T02:02:00.000-08:00

Mostly in an effort to keep up with my nutter brudder Adam I will be starting the 3rd family blog. This could evolve into that journal Galima and I have been putting off for 7+ years now. Plus we can post pictures of Max and Sophie doing those irresistibly cute and destructive things they do. This can also be the way Max can teach Brig and Lola all those things their parent wish he wouldn't. Sophie seemed to know them right from the womb, and requires very little instruction.

Now that I have written the first paragraph I can turn this over to Galima with all the other "responsible" things in the family.