Winds of change...

One of the first things that Jeff & I learned about Great Falls, before we moved here, is that this city is famous for its wind.  It is actually windier here than the 'Windy City'! Who knew? Of course, there are those who curse the wind, but not I!  We've had a few beautiful days here over the past week, as a result of the wind ALL of the snow is gone, or I should say was gone.  It started again, a little more than an hour ago.  I have to say that when the snow comes down the trees are just beautiful!  I'm in awe...

I’m not talking about it…aw, come on now…

When Justin was a young tyke (between 2 and 3 years old) he was busy talking up a storm, and singing too. Unknown to him I started recording him talking & singing, so that we’d have a record for all time of how he sounded. He was singing “Hound Dog” and I managed to capture it, for a moment anyway. As soon as Justin realized he was being recorded he clammed up. All these years we’ve teased him about the fact that we thought he said “I’m not talking about it” when he realized he was being taped. Turns out, when I played back the recording many years later Justin actually said, “I’m not talking about them” as we were having a conversation about the Ninja Turtles at the moment when he realized he was being recorded. Even though we now know what it was he really said, to this day we often tease and say "I'm not talking about it!"

Jared has given us a few golden tidbits that we often chuckle about and regularly use too. He has quite the sense of humor and often likes to tease when he thinks someone is getting into mischief. He loves to tell us “Go to your room for two weeks and no supper!” I’m a bit surprised at how harsh he is considering he’s never been sent to his room! But it’s all in good fun, and we joke about it often. A couple of his other famous lines include “Fine, be that way!” I regularly paraphrase him, prefacing it by informing everyone that it’s a favorite Jared phrase. Recently he’s started to use one of my all time favorite phrases, “Aw, come on now!” In order to appreciate it you have to hear him, as he puts emphasis on key words and it just makes you chuckle. It’s become one of my favorites and no doubt we’ll be saying it for a long time to come…aw, come on now! 

What’s in a name?

When Justin was about five he started asking me for a nickname. I noted that with a name like Justin it’d be a bit hard to come up with a nickname tied to his name. It was about that time that Jared really started to speak. To this day we don’t know if Jared was saying “Justin” or saying “brother” but he started to call Justin “Audie”. Justin has been our Audie ever since. I don’t think he’s ever been embarrassed by it either. Although now that I think about it there was the time when he was playing football on the football field as a sophomore in high school and I was busy on the sidelines screaming, “Go Audie Go!”

For some reason Jared often adds an “O” to the end of words…he calls Jeff “Daddy-O” and when called he often replies “Whatdi-O?” I have always been “Aunie-O” and Justin will forever be our “Audie-O”.

A few years ago my sister Beth came to visit. She has always been Beth or Aunt Beth; our family has never called her anything else. On this particular visit, Jared, being the comic that he so often is, looked at Beth with a straight face and said, “Well all right Betty!” to which she replied, “Well, okay then Jerry!” So now they are both known as Betty and Jerry (and very often he is called “Jerry-O”).