That's it!

Look what I just spotted in a web at the back of our shed:


Yep. I think this is the first time I've actually seen one, and I'll tell you one thing--the spider love around here has come to an abrupt end.

(Oh, and in case you were wondering, the photo isn't mine...no way I was going close enough to this thing to take a picture!)

More Food for Thought

Here is a link to an interesting article about protecting marriage, especially addressing whether or not Proposition 8 is a manifestation of intolerance. I'm happy to see intelligent thinkers really addressing the issues and standing up for what what's right.

Weston's One Year Pictures

I gotta say, I think he's pretty adorable...

We couldn't decide whether to have him wear the patch for his pictures or not. We finally decided to have him wear it, but then take it off if he wasn't cooperating. He did okay, but they couldn't get any pictures of him really smiling with the patch on...he doesn't smile as easy when he's wearing it. However, when he's got it off, the wandering left eye is pretty apparent. I really like this next picture...he's not looking directly at the camera, but it shows a lot of his personality.


As for the one below...I've never seen so clearly the resemblance between Weston and his daddy. Brian's family likes to claim that the Hansen genes are weak (meaning they think all the grandkids look like the in-laws) but this kid bears a striking resemblance to Brian. (It's off center because Brian's done something funky with the margins on the blog to accomodate the diaper charts.)


I think that between the three pictures, he's captured fairly well. I still wish my sister Janae could have done a photo shoot with him when she was here, but JCPenney is an okay substitute.

More on Proposition 8

I've had some difficulty articulating my feelings about why it's so important that we fight to protect marriage here in California. Today a friend e-mailed me the link to a fantastic video put together by the Proposition 8 campaign about the social, moral, political and religious ramifications of legalizing gay marriage. I strongly encourage you to take the time to watch it--after watching this I felt much more solid in my understanding of why the church is taking such a bold stand on this, and why it's so important for us to be involved. Click here to watch the video, and please, spread the word!

Impostor!

Since I know you've all been anxiously awaiting an update on our friendly arachnid, I'll oblige you. We left the little critter (okay, BIG critter) on our front porch during Stake Conference on Sunday, but when we got home I decided he had to go. I just couldn't handle him right there every time I walked in the door. He had caught a couple of tasty treats overnight so I figured his web had served its purpose. We tried to just scare him off, but he wouldn't be scared. This was my first clue (aside from the pictures Brian took, which just didn't look quite the same as the previous ones, superior photo-taking abilities aside) that this might not be the same spider. The spider we all knew and loved ran for it the second I came within a foot of his web. This one wouldn't budge even when I tapped on his web with a stick! So, I broke the anchoring strand on the bottom of his web. He still stubbornly stayed put. We sat and watched in fear and amazement to see what would happen next. Suddenly he began a very quick descent, then stopped about halfway between the roof and the railing, suspended on one of his nifty spider threads. I shrieked and pulled Cole back several feet, then told Brian, "Go get a jar...it'll be easy to catch him there!" So he grabbed a jar and caught him. We still thought this was our buddy, so we took some footage of him scrambling around inside the jar (he was not happy about being held captive) and then took him across the street to the dog park and let him go. It was a sad parting but he'd made the faux-pas of invading our personal space...what could we do?

But then the pieces started falling into place. His lack of fear, the difference in the way he looked in the photos...then I went and checked where the previous web had been (you'll remember how I'd noticed he never builds a new web before taking down the old one) and voila! The old web was still there! I suppose my check with a flashlight the night before hadn't been thorough enough. Sure enough, Sunday evening our familiar, scaredy-spider buddy was back. It's nice to know that our "real" spider friend had the grace not to come too close for comfort like that.

As of this post, I think I've made four posts about the spider without making any posts about my family. So, I hereby swear that we'll post a real update before posting spider news (though the way things are looking we may have to adopt him). Ha ha...

No longer our neighbor

**Warning all arachnophobes...the photos in this post are very detailed (meaning they will freak you out even if you don't click on them)**

Does the title of my post give you hope (or sadness) that the spider chronicles are over? Stay tuned...

I've been a little concerned that my interest in the spider is driving him away. After the picture I posted last time, where I caught him mid-scurry, I didn't see him at all for the rest of that day (yes, I was checking). The next morning (yesterday), the web between the two houses was gone, and this was his new hangout:


Thankfully he still preferred to build his web on the neighbor's side of the fence. I wanted to get a good shot so I ran over to the neighbor's side to snap my pictures, and sure enough, somehow he sensed me there and took off to the eaves again. After the second such encounter he disappeared, and his web remained empty all day yesterday and most of the day today. I am learning a lot about the habits of our friend though...I have never seen him build a new web until he's taken down the old one. So even though I was worried that he had disappeared, I had a feeling that as long as his web was still there, he'd be back. This evening, just before dusk, sure enough, there he was. I was happy. It's strange--I've always hated spiders so I don't know why I'm so fascinated with this one. I went and put my kids to bed, content in my knowledge that my friend had returned. An hour or so later, I was on the cell phone and it wasn't getting good service inside the house, so I stepped outside onto the front porch. I was sitting, unsuspecting, on the porch swing, chatting away, (it's completely dark outside by this time) and was startled by movement just above the railing of the porch about a foot in front of my face. I froze, looked closer, and sure enough, it was the spider! Now, I've got to tell you, that this encounter was much too close for my comfort. In order to get up from the porch swing I had to lean slightly forward (toward the spider), so it took me a few moments to get up the nerve, but I ran inside and grabbed my camera, because I was pretty sure that the spider was in the process of building a new web. I'll post the video footage tomorrow...it's taking too long to upload tonight. Try to continue living your life as usual in the meantime. :)

As creepy as it was, and as much as I don't know how I feel about this monster spider building its web on our front porch, I sat outside for about 30 minutes watching him at work and it has got to be one of the most fascinating things I've ever seen. I don't know if I'm going to be able to destroy, or ask Brian to destroy, such painstaking workmanship. But do I really want to harbor this thing right in front of my house? I don't know...

Brian got home from Stake Conference and showed me that he should have been the one taking the photos all this time. Check these out!




These have got to be some of the best spider photos I've ever seen. Do all spiders have that super-short third pair of legs? Oh, the things we're learning about spiders around here.

I was right about his habits though. After watching him build this web, I took the flashlight and checked the spot where his other web had been, and it's completely gone. I am really intrigued by this. He doesn't ever abandon a web, he very deliberately removes the old one before moving on. Isn't that cool? This is also why I feel confident that I'm watching the same spider and not a few different ones. He's becoming somewhat predictable, and it's really kind of fun. Cole loves going outside every day to check for the spider web--it's a little biology lesson going on right outside our door. So long as he doesn't actually move in, we'll probably keep watching and learning, and you lucky blog readers will get to join the fun.

Yes, he's no longer our neighbor...he's our resident.

The spider adventures continue...is it Halloween already?!?

Well, because some of us are morbidly curious about the behavior of this spider, I'll continue blogging our neighbor's activities. I was encouraged by my brother Bart's comment on my last post, which, if you missed it, said "Maybe I'm sick, but I think it's fascinating!" Well, Bart, maybe you are sick but if so, I am too. Must run in the family. Consider yourself warned though, if you got the creeps from my last post, you probably don't want to click on this pictures in this post.

The morning after I discovered the grasshopper caught in the web, I went outside and this is what I saw:



Yep, the spider was still hard at work on that grasshopper. If you click on the picture, you'll notice that the grasshopper is quite diminished. And, unless I'm imagining it, the spider looks bigger. I'm also a little disturbed by the state of the grasshopper's head (or lack thereof). Ick.

Here's another view. I took these pictures (the one above and this one) within seconds of each other, but I'm mystified by this one. Where's the grasshopper? You can see little flashes of green, but it looks like mostly spider. Maybe it was a trick of the camera lens.


A few hours later I checked outside again, and both the spider and the grasshopper were gone. All that remained was a somewhat tattered, very abandoned-looking web. I wondered if the spider had moved on to greener pastures, and as I checked on and off throughout the day and he didn't come back, I thought our spider adventures were over. In the evening, I checked again, and lo and behold...


At this point the web was reduced to maybe 1/6 of it's original size. It didn't look like it was anchored to anything...it was just this little wispy thing hanging from the eaves of the house. But the spider was hanging out there anyway. The next morning (Wednesday) the spider and the remainder of its web had disappeared, and I figured for sure the spider had packed his bags and moved away. Then this morning, I looked out again (as you can tell, I kind of missed the guy) and saw that this spider was just as clever as our previous residents!


Here's his new web, spanning our two houses again. I have to admit I think this is a pretty smart web-building strategy...I had to take two or three photos at different times this morning to get one where you could actually see the web. It is often virtually invisible, and of course, that's all the better to catch unsuspecting insects. You'll notice the spider is absent from the web in this picture...I think that the way he has anchored his web to the fence below and even as far as the sidewalk (how do they do that?) makes him more aware of our comings and goings, because when I try to walk closer to get a good picture, he inevitably scurries away (thankfully he tends to scurry to the eaves of the neighbor's house and not ours). I did catch one shot of him mid-scurry though...


See how invisible that web is? Pure genius. I'm very curious to see what he's going to catch in his web this time. I don't know if he can outdo the giant grasshopper, but I'm not underestimating his abilities.

Here's how Weston feels about our spider (notice his patch):


How appropriate, huh? Well, Happy Halloween (a little early this year)...nothing like spiders to get you in the holiday spirit!

Our New Neighbor

**Warning: Violent Content! There are pictures of dead things in this post.**

(Okay, it's really not that bad, but in case you think it's that bad, you can't say I didn't warn you.)

There's nothing like living in California when it comes to neighborly closeness. We were thrilled to finally live in a house rather than an apartment, only to learn that the houses here are built so close together that we can still hear our neighbors' phone ringing, and, unfortunately for them, they can hear our kids crying. Another indicator of how close the houses are is that several times this summer I've noticed clever spiders bridging the gap between our houses with their webs (yep, that close). This morning as I was rinsing dishes in the sink, I glanced out the window and saw that we have a new neighbor. A big, fat, leggy neighbor.





Check out the size of that spider! Now, this guy didn't try to build his web between our houses--his web is securely fastened to our neighbor's house alone (and it is a beautiful web!). Perhaps that's why when I looked out there again tonight, his web was still there, but this time, with a new addition:


Make sure to click on the photo and look at the detail. (I'm surprised that I got a much more detailed photo at night than in the day--I would've totally missed the severed leg if I hadn't taken a picture.) I must say, I have never seen an insect even close to the size of this grasshopper get caught in a spider web! I thought that bugs that size would destroy a spider web long before they got caught. Apparently if you are as big as that spider, your web has the strength of steel.

This picture has enough gory detail to make my skin crawl, so I can only imagine what it's doing to Jamie, our arachnophobe friend. I couldn't resist, but I hope you'll forgive me!

Protecting Marriage

As many of you know, here in California we are in the middle of a very emotionally charged election issue about protecting the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman. Essentially, here is the issue:

"In the year 2000 Proposition 22 was passed by 61% of the people of California to state that 'Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.' This summer four judges on the California Supreme Court overturned this by a close 4-3 vote. This November will be our one and only chance to overturn that decision by a popular vote at the elections." (This information comes from the website www.protectmarriage.com - you can visit this website to get more information about the issues. It's a great resource.)

It's been a very interesting situation, because this is one of the only cases in recent history (if ever) in which the church has taken a stand on what seems to many to be a purely political issue. I know that even for many members of the church there are questions as to whether this is the appropriate course of action. However, the First Presidency has asked the members of the church in California to get involved, both financially and with our time, to support the campaign to fight to keep this definition in the constitution of California. Our ward, together with the other wards in the state, have been putting together groups of people on Saturdays to make phone calls or walk door-to-door, surveying people as to their stand on this issue, offering more information and asking supporters to post signs on their lawns. As we've gotten involved with this, we've had to really think about what we believe on this issue. And we've decided that it matters.

That being said, the campaign needs help. As of right now, our side is losing in the polls. Running this campaign is expensive, and there's so much more to do. We need financial assistance to produce commercials, fliers, signs, and buy TV and radio spots. Those who are fighting against us just received 1.2 million dollars from the ACLU, and have the backing of major companies. They are fighting hard and we need to fight back! WE MUST PROTECT MARRIAGE! There are so many consequences to this. Here are a few facts to dispel myths that the opposition is spreading:

1: Prop. 8 is About Preserving Marriage; It’s Not an Attack on the Gay Lifestyle. Proposition 8 doesn’t take away any rights or benefits from gays or lesbians in domestic partnerships. Under California law, “domestic partners shall have the same rights, protections and benefits” as married spouses. (Family Code §297.5.) There are no exceptions. Proposition 8 will not change this.

2: Prop. 8 does not enshrine discrimination in our Constitution.

3: The legal meaning of marriage is up to the people to decide, not four judges.

4: The narrow decision of the State Supreme Court effectively renders all civil marriage meaningless and will result in tremendous confusion for children. The state Education Code (§51890) requires that teachers instruct children as young as kindergarteners about marriage. If the gay marriage ruling becomes permanent, teachers will have little choice but to teach young children there is no difference between gay marriage and traditional marriage.

It's easy to look at this issue and think, "Really, what does it matter if gays and lesbians have the right to marry? How does that really affect me?" Well, I think the above points address some of that, especially #4. Secondly, I think it's not always easy to see into the future and understand how something like this will affect society as a whole, but for now it's enough for our family that a prophet has said that it matters.

If you have the means and would like to fight for a good cause, please go to this site and donate. And if you feel inclined to do so, feel free to copy this information to your blog. We need to spread the word. Thank you!

*A note to clear up any confusion about this post: for those of you who have Google Reader, you may have seen another version of this post earlier. I deleted it shortly after I posted it because I decided that rather than just copy and paste, I wanted to take the time to write my own thoughts about it. So this is the completed version of my earlier post.

Word of the Day

Mistake (noun): Yummy meat that Dad cooks on the grill.

For example, as in "Da-da, I want more sauce for my mi-stake!"

Cole's Best Friend

Here is Cole with his favorite toy, Sunshine Symphony.


Another toy, "The Breadboard", is making a strong play to be foremost in Cole's affections, but that's a story for another day. For now, Sunshine reigns supreme. Cole and Sunshine go way back to before Cole was even one year old. It was then that Cole's Aunt Jennie and Uncle Jonathan united Cole with his lifelong friend. Here is a picture from the early days.

I don't know if Jennie and Jonathan knew this when they first found Sunshine, but he has fabulous secret powers. Not only is he well versed in Classical music (a special power in its own right to be sure), but he also has a functional bowel. Just take a look at this sequence of photos:

You can imagine our surprise (and Cole's delight) when we first discovered that Sunshine's diaper was full of candy. You may also imagine Cole's disappointment when we subsequently found that Sunshine's bowel is irregular, producing other non-edible items just as often as not. Items like blocks, plastic pegs, seashells, and binkies have all found their way through Sunshine's intestinal tract. Speaking of which tract, we have theorized that it is because of Sunshine's remarkably short intestine, and his lack of bile-producing internal organs that the sundry items arrive unpolluted and edible (in the case of candy). Nonetheless, Sunshine has demonstrated extremely sensitive skin; for this reason, we always ask that Cole use wipes before closing Sunshine's diaper back up, as you can see in the pictures above.

Well, as you can see, Cole couldn't ask for a better friend. He would no sooner part with Sunshine than would Jack (of beanstalk fame) be parted with his famous golden-egg-laying goose.

Finally, here is a movie of one of Cole's more recent diaper-changing experiences. (So much character-building responsibility for one so young!)

The ABC's of Me

Thanks, Tara, for the tag! Here goes...

A. ATTACHED OR SINGLE? Attached
B. BEST FRIEND? Brian
C. CAKE OR PIE? Definitely pie. Lately I've discovered that I really don't like cake.
D. DAY OF THE WEEK? Saturday...I love having Brian at home.
E. ESSENTIAL ITEMS? diaper and wipes
F. FAVORITE COLOR? green
G. GUMMY BEARS OR WORMS? both! I love anything and everything gummy.
H. HOMETOWN? Fountain Green, UT
I. INDULGENCE? Reading a good book
J. JANUARY OR JULY? Neither. I love fall and spring but don't have much use for these two months!
K. KIDS? 2 boys, ages 3 and 1
L. LIFE ISN'T COMPLETE WITHOUT? my family
M. MARRIAGE DATE? August 2nd, 2003
N. NUMBER OF BROTHERS AND SISTERS? 3 brothers, 2 sisters
O. ORANGES OR APPLES? If the oranges are good and juicy...oranges. But there's nothing nastier than a dry orange.
P. PHOBIAS OR FEARS? Losing someone I love.
Q. QUOTE? "Look to this day, for yesterday is but a dream, and tomorrow is only a vision. But today, well lived, makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope. look well, therefore, to this day." Sanskrit proverb
R. REASONS TO SMILE? So many I can't name them. Life is good!
S. SUPERMAN OR WONDER WOMAN? Superman
T. TAG 5 PEOPLE? Any five of you that are so inclined...you're it!
U. UNKNOWN FACT ABOUT ME? Is there such a thing? I don't keep secrets well.
V. VEGETABLES? Vine-ripened tomatoes. I love this time of year!
W. WORST HABIT? Munching
X. X-RAY OR ULTRASOUND? What?!? I don't get this question.
Y. YOUR FAVORITE FOOD? Lately, it's Indian food.
Z. ZODIAC SIGN? Cancer