Family Archives - iWatson Blog

Merry Christmas

Christmas is officially over, and it’s been a good one! Of course, we were spoiled by everyone. Here is a recap of the week events.

Christmas Eve

Jacob and I wanted to go swimming with my boss. My boss usually goes swimming Christmas Eve with his family and We’ve also gone. The Lehi swimming pool is only open until 12p, so we had to hurry. It is like herding turtles when it comes time to get Jacob moving, so we didn’t arrive until 10am. We found out that my boss had to go into work, so we didn’t get to see them. Jacob and I had a lot of fun swimming though. We got dressed and headed out.

My mother and father are buried in the same city, so we decided to go visit their grave site. I don’t go there very often, and it would be embarrassing to count how long it has been. We have a family friend who goes and keeps it nice and pretty!

After the cemetery, we ended up going to visit Lehi Roller Mills and then home to get ready for dinner with Grandma, Aunts, and a Friend. We had a great ham dinner and opened PJs! One of the neighbors passed out Sky Lanterns to the neighborhood and instructed everyone to go out and light them at 8pm. It was super awesome! I’ve seen them in YouTube videos and pictures, but never in person! It was super cool to see and there were a TON going up around us! They went up and eventually disappeared. I did see one falling to the ground after it has burned out. I’m curious what the aftermath looked like after. Good thing they were biodegradable.

We spent the night wrapping gifts to each other and then trying to get to bed. Jacob doesn’t get up super early, so that is a relief. He once slept until 10am, but he only lasted until 8:30a.

Christmas Morning

Aunt J went and picked up Grandma T and they came over here to have breakfast and open presents. We had a blast opening gifts. Jacob totally got spoiled! We already had a ton of legos in our house, and we have a ton more now. He loves putting them together and I get to help every so often.

I received a Ring Doorbell and I can’t wait to install it! I’m a little scared to install it. Having a camera on the front door will be interesting. Watching the boy in the summer will be interesting. I find my tools out in the front yard at time. Considering where we live, It may be overkill.

After opening presents, we went over to Grandma T’s house for presents and then back to our house. We were instructed by Jacob that we weren’t going to leave the house until the next day. He played..played.. and played with his toys some more. I ended up working a bunch.

Day after Christmas (Thursday)

One of my goals this break was to clean my office. It has always been a dumping grounds for stuff. When the house is cleaned, and something needs to be “hidden” it goes in there. I spent a lot of time cleaning the room, which it still isn’t done, but I’ve made a good dent. My time is usually spent on our kitchen table with my laptop. This allows me to spend more time with my wife while she is watching TV. A room where I can get work done where it is quite would be nice. We headed up to Great Grandma’s (Jacobs) to visit with family. Very cool family with a lot laughs!

Saturday….Dentist..

Jacob HATES the dentist and had to have a tooth pulled and a few cavities filled. We had to be to the Dentist at 8:15am. I woke up at 7:50a (I was the first one up), so we had to get Jacob up, ready and off to the dentist. We have a 15-minute drive to the dentist. I don’t think I drove too fast, but we made it there by 8:20a. The place was a total disorganized and we had a hard time checking in and then had to wait until 10am before they could get him back. It went well, but he ended up biting his lip a ton after surgery and it was bleeding pretty good. His lip is super swollen now and looks bad. The dentist instructed us to keep him from walking and keep a good eye on him. It was hard to keep him from walking for 2 hours. Jacob was on the move after about 3 and that is as good as we could do! He was fine and there were no incidents other than the bloody lip!

Sunday

Pretty relaxing day today, so nothing to exciting to report. Church was pretty good. Our neighbor gave a talk. It was great to hear from him (and the others). Jacob switches classes next week (New Year.. New Class) He had some awesome teachers, and he is sad to be loosing his teachers. I’m hoping he is a good kid during class. We finished off the night with some games. We had a great night until we had to put the boy to bed. I’m hoping we aren’t the only ones who have a rough time getting their kid(s) to bed.

I hope everyone has a great New Years Celebration this week. Keep safe out there and if you drink remember not to drive! You have options with Lyft and Uber.

Christmas Month

I am going to do another blog post this week.

Having the holidays over is going to be awesome! There are a lot of festive activities and parties, but it is one right after another! The weekends are usually crammed packed, so you don’t have much down time. Sunday after church are usually my favorite times. We are chilled around here and take it easy.

I have loved every event that we have attended and done this month. Earlier this month, we attended a Christmas Party with my family. Getting together with this side of the family, usually only happens once a year. My family means the world to me and I wish that I saw them more! As I’ve mentioned, my father passed away several years ago (30 years now). We have since found out that he had a daughter before he got married to my mom. It is a crazy DNA story that I will have to expound on sometime. She fits right in with our family. There are a lot of resemblances with her and my family that are spooky. Each get together, we learn more and more about her. So much fun!

This weekend, we were able to meet with Jacob’s birth grandma, J. She lives in North Carolina, so we don’t get to see her very much. She is divorced and has two adult kids that keep her busy! Jacob’s birthmother has made some decisions in her life that aren’t the best. It’s rough to see her go through this troubled time. We have so much love for her and the decision she made to place with us. We just don’t love her decisions she is making now.

We told Grandma J to meet us at Leatherby’s, so we could have food and desert, if she had eaten, since it was going to be late. We show up and see a sign that says, “We are temporarily closed for remodeling….” There was no mention of this online. I look it up now and it still says it’s open! Am I the only one who relies way too much on the internet to tell me what is going on? We ended up going a block or two over to “Crown Burger”. You can’t go wrong with burgers, can you? We had a great visit with J.

Before the meeting with J, we had family photos taken. I was dreading it, but it wasn’t as bad as I though it was going to be. I’m not much of a suit person, but it went better than I thought.

We went through the Christmas In Color display this week in South Jordan, UT. It is a big parking lot filled with Christmas lights synced to music and it is amazing! It is a pretty fun thing to do as a family. Jacob enjoys it. Hopefully the biggest of scrooges can come through with a little Christmas spirit or a song or two stuck in your head. This year, they added vertical lights have this 3D effect to them.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas this year. I hope you don’t get caught up in the whole retail nightmare of Christmas.

Memories…

Here is a picture of my mom and dad. My father is smoking in the aunts house. Seems crazy now, but we never thought about it back then.

This week my boy wanted to listen to Alvin and the Chipmunks Christmas Song. It made me think of my Aunt Margret, who passed away last year. It brought back a lot of memories that I cherish. Memories of hanging out at her house, her laugh, and the many fun things we did with her. When I was a boy, I would hang out at her house a lot. I first heard this song at her house many moons ago. If I could only call her up and tell her how much my boy loves this song, and the memories I have of this song.

While driving to work, I was thinking about the people in my life that try and avoid memories or places that bring up memories about certain people. I’m curious why? My father passed away when I was 15 years old (about 44 days before my 16th birthday). I would be lying if I said it wasn’t a traumatic experience and there was a lot of anger towards his job where he was killed. He died in a work place accident, but of course, I had to hold someone responsible. I wasn’t happy with the place he worked for many years.

My father was a smoker and he smoked in our house (this was the 80’s, it was acceptable…right?). To this day, if someone is smoking around me, it still brings up memories about my father. I hate the smell of smoke, but I cherish those memories of him. A few memories are: Long drives down by the lake to on his way to have coffee with his friends. Sitting in the bowling alley, impatiently waiting while he talked, and talked with his friends. I was an impatient kid. 🙂

My mother has also passed on, from Cancer (as mentioned before), and I’d say there isn’t a day that doesn’t go by where I think of her. The memories are awesome, and I will be sad when they are gone.

All of my grandparents have passed on. My father-in-law has passed. It is so crazy! I’m a bit jealous of my friends that have both sets of parents an grandparents!

One thing I love about Facebook is the memories. We live in a society now where “dropping by” to visit someone is a bad thing. That is one thing my mother and father would do a lot. “Hey lets go see …..”, and we would drive over to their house. No cell phones, and calling their home phone took too long! It was great, but now you don’t see anyone unless you are on Facebook or make prior arrangements.

People tend to only post the “good” things that are happening in their life, but I don’t mind it. I still get to keep up with them. It is hard to tell if they are going through a rough time. If you have a friend who has passed on and they have a Facebook account, it is a bit of a memorial. You have a place to leave memories and photos from the past. There are many times I’ve gone to my parents grave site and spoke to them as if they were there listening to me. If my parents had a Facebook account, I’d probably write a message or two to them. We do have a group where we can post photos of them and share memories.

I asked my wife about this why people try and avoid the memories, and her response was that they may be avoiding the places where they died or the memories about them dying. I can totally understand this. The memories of their death are probably the most traumatic. The experience was tough, but I know that I grew so much from going through my experiences. It was definitely rough, but it is a memory and something I’m never going to forget.

What are your thoughts?

Thanksgiving Weekend

One shot I took at Temple Square. The snow made it look epic!

Thanksgiving weekend is coming to a close. It is Sunday night and in 12 hours, I have to be back to work! I’m not super excited to go back. Another vacation day could come my way, and I wouldn’t care. 🙂 We had a great time. Here is how it was spent….

Wednesday, 11/27/2019, I took a vacation day to spend the day with my boy at home. We hung out in the morning and then about 1pm, he headed upstairs to play. I ended up watching a movie or two and checked on him. He would yell “Go downstairs”, so I obliged. So much for hanging out with him. Later that day, he ha a friend over and they had a bit of a tiff. We went out for desert to intervene (@ Purple Turtle) — All in all it was a great night.

Thursday, 11/28/2019, Thanksgiving was pretty crazy. We met up with Carla, Mother-in-law, and Jessica (Sister-in-law) at The Big Bear Diner. We had a great meal! They ha a modified menu, so it was pretty small. Due to my Menieres disease, I had to avoid the turkey. A big fat burger was what I had (see image). The others had the Turkey dinner. After dinner, we went to see Frozen II, which was SO good! We loved it. My boy even sat through the movie and he was super quiet! Amazing! When the movie was over, I went Black Friday shopping with a friend. We had a great time battling the crowds! It was awesome spending time with the in-laws and with my friend Bill. I even met Glen Stucki at Walmart while shopping. He is a cool guy, you should check him out! Celebrity!

Black Bear Diner Thanksgiving Dinner – Burger – It had a little problem with the meat.

Black Bear Diner Thanksgiving Dinner – Turkey

Friday, 11/29/2019, was a little unplanned. Our friends talked us into driving up to SLC to have a little stay-cation with them! We packed clothes for 1 day if we decided to stay over night. Unfortunately, when we decided to head up, a storm was moving through, so the drive up was a bit crazy! I hate driving in snow, so I was freaking out a bit! We made it though and went to a place called Dave and Busters for some food and games. We checked into a hotel and then took Trax up to Temple Square to view the lights. If you haven’t been, I’d suggest going to view the lights if you do it during Christmas. It’s a beautiful place all year around, but the lights during Christmas are pretty epic!

Saturday, 11/30/2019, We slept in until 9:30a and then decided to go swimming before we checked out of the hotel. About 11:05am, I got a text that said “KSL NEWSRADIO: NB Lanes of I-15 blocked at Lehi. First responders may need to close SB lanes as well for hazmat response. ….“. My friend had also sent an image and another warning (see image). It was insane. So 9 hours late they would re-open the freeway, but it was super crazy! We decided to just have fun instead of going back home, so we went swimming for about 5 hours. For dinner, we ate at our favorite place, Charlie Chow’s, and then went Ice Skating (our boy did, not us). We had a great time, but it was a bit of a crazy day!

Sunday, 12/1/2019, We cleaned up the basement and setup the tree and decorations. It was a pretty relaxing day! The boys schedule was all jacked up from the stay-cation. It wasn’t your typical relaxing day, because of all the cleaning we did. We had fun though. As we brought out the ornaments we were telling stories about how they came to be. When my wife showed Jacob the ornament we bought when we found out we were going to be his parents, he came over an gave us both hugs! It was pretty precious! There were many hugs after that. I’m a grinch, but that warmed my heart! It was pretty cool!

I hope you all had a great weekend! I only touched the surface of what we did. We have some great friends we spent the last 3 days with. It was awesome! I’m thankful for friends and family!

Gratitude

“The quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.” – Oxford

Thanksgiving is this week, November 28th, and I’m pretty excited. I love spending time with my family! We don’t do anything special. This year, we are going to go to Black Bear Diner for their Thanksgiving dinner. We have been going to Sizzler which is pretty good, but there are family members that 1) Want leftovers and 2) Don’t want to over eat! I have one suggestion for #2 –> Willpower! 🙂 I usually don’t exercise any kind of self control.

I’ve been checking out the Black Bear Diner menu and I will most likely get a hamburger, since I know I can get one with out salt and make it low sodium! Having to live with food restrictions puts a burden on family. I’m pretty thankful for my wife and her ability to make low sodium meals. She is able to salt her food and make it taste better.

I wanted to write a few things that I’m thankful for.

Family – As I mentioned above, I love my family and spending time with them! The older we get the lower the numbers get! My parents are both gone and my brothers do their own thing. We hang out with my in-laws and it is fun. We like to go to a movie after dinner and possibly do some shopping after. Black ~~Friday~~…~~Thursday~~…Weekend. — It’s pretty much a joke, but I like going out! There are some good deals and I enjoy seeing the madness. I hope that I can spend more time with my family in the coming months. Making time to see them is my problem and I need to work on it.

Job – I am thankful for the Job that I have. The people I work with are awesome! They make going to work worth it. My job allows me to be creative and think of new ways to solve problems. The job can also be very stressful, but I’m thankful for the opportunity to grow.

Home – I am extremely thankful for the house we live in! It keeps us warm and safe. I’m thankful that I have a job to help us pay for it. We live in a great neighborhood and have awesome neighbors! They are what makes it great to live here.

Vehicles – I am thankful that I have something that can get me from point A to point B.

Health – My health isn’t the best, but I’m glad I can still be mobile and get around and do the things I want. Improving my health is something I need to work on. Hopefully I can keep up on it!

I have only listed a few of the things I’m thankful for, but there are many-many more! This list could go on for ever. There isn’t a day that goes by where I’m not grateful for many things. Being more verbal about the things I’m thankful for is one of my goals.

I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving week(end)!

National Adoption Month..

November is National Adoption Month.. I have been thinking about this all week. Adoption has touched our life, but it wasn’t an easy road! I can’t remember when our journey started I think it was around 2010 or earlier. We always knew we were unable to have children of our own and this is the road we would have to take.

Adoption requires a lot of training. It seems like you have a lot more training than a lot of parents have. I feel like we were more prepared than most, but yet still scared and unprepared as them too. We had many disappointing moments through our journey. Where we were picked and then they chose someone else. It is always so heartbreaking to go through.

We had one adoption that went pretty far and the birth mother (BM) decided to parent two days after she gave birth. She had one son prior to this birth, but was sure she couldn’t parent the second. We were pretty certain this would go through until she wouldn’t let us come see the baby for two days. We received a call Sunday night and our case worker calling to tell us the bad news. It was devastating. It felt like someone had died! You go through a lot of emotions and it takes a toll on you.

Several months after we went through the failed adopting, my wife had a friend contact her. This friend had a sister that was thinking about placing her baby. We contacted her and did a lot of chatting and getting to know her. We had planned a trip to Hawaii, but she wanted to meet us. The week before we were going to go to HI, we had to jump on a plane and went out and met the birth mom. It was a great visit. We took her to dinner and chatted a ton! It was awesome! The next day, we met up and hung out all morning. We visited a park and went for a walk. We didn’t want to take up too much of her time. It was a great visit and we felt that it went pretty well!

While we were in Hawaii, we got a call from the BM and she decided to pick us! It was some excellent and scary news! We were just picked, which was exciting, but now we had to make plans! In two months, a baby would be due! After our previous experience, we had to be extra cautious. It was super exciting though! There are so many things to prepare, but you don’t want to get too excited to jinx everything.

We got a call on a Friday, almost 2 months later, with news that the BM was going to give birth that night sometime. We jumped on the next plane and were able to get out there and be there for the birth. It was an amazing experience. We were able to be in the room for the birth and I was there to cut the cord. Amazing experience. We had to spend the next week in a Days Inn until the paperwork was signed, so we could fly back home. I could write a super long post about all the things we had to do.

One awesome thing is, We have been able to maintain a great relationship with our BM and her family, and her mother is still considered Grandma (one of three). It’s been great!

I watched a movie last night called “Instant Family”. It dealt with Foster Care. Very good movie! It was very interesting. The situation where you are placed with a child for a few months and then they are removed from your home, for whatever reason. This is a situation that would be hard for me to deal with. I feel like it would be almost as bad as getting to the point of a placement and having it fall through. I have a lot of respect for foster parents and birth mothers who place their child.

Abortion is a bad word in my vocabulary, but I don’t want to open a can of worms here. I know there are situations where this may be the only answer, but I don’t condone it. I have several friends that are looking to adopt and I’m sure there are many more I don’t know that would be willing to adopt a child that is given a the opportunity to come full term.

Where are you from?

We are owners of a timeshare. Yes, I was a sucker once, or I still am, but I bought into the dream of owning points into a timeshare where I could vacation all I wanted. I could “even sell the points to family and friends to make back my dues”. It’s a bunch of crap they tried to feed us so we would buy into their property. Now it is 19 years later, and they are still trying to find ways to make you spend more money. Timeshares are a bunch of crap, but there are some cool benefits from using them and going on vacation.

Strangers are one of them. There are many opportunities in life where you can talk to complete strangers, but there is nothing better than sitting in the hot tub with complete strangers and striking up a conversation. It seems like no one is phased by you asking “so where are you from?” It is a pretty simple question. We’ve spent the last 5 days here and have met some pretty awesome people in the hot tub. We all come from completely different backgrounds. We’ve met people from all walks of life: A Plumber, A Oil Field Worker, A Single Mom with 4 kids, and Even a Marine just getting out of boot camp. It’s been pretty awesome. Some of these people you would never imagine meeting.

It’s pretty fun playing the getting to know you games with complete strangers. We usually sit in the hot tub until the security guard comes and kicks us out at 10pm. We usually say our good byes “It was nice meeting you”, “Have a great trip”. Some of them we have talked to a couple of times. We never share Facebook links or Instagram names. We may never see them again. It would be fun to keep in touch. With Facebook, you can at least see their feed and be like “Hey, I know these guys from Tuscan, Arizona.”, or “There is that crazy guy from California that likes to grow stuff in his back yard.” The 30+ minutes you spent connecting with a complete stranger was well worth it and it has meaning, to me at least. I enjoy those times.

It reminds me of a time over the summer, where we were staying in Park City, Utah. I went for a walk to check out the homes up there. Some other random stranger was taking a walk, he was a resident up there, and we crossed paths. He ended up inviting me to go for a walk with him. He had a daily route he took, so I walked it with him. He told me about his failed marriage and his crazy ex-wife. He talked about his kids and his plans to sell his house in Park City and move to some ski town in Idaho. It was pretty interesting. Real cool guy. I’ll never see him again, but it was an awesome experience.

I say take time to talk to random strangers. Get to know those around you. Everyone has a story to tell. It doesn’t take much to sit back and listen and ask questions.

What is that?

Football is hardly ever on at my house, but I turned it onto “Thursday Night Football” for some reason. The announcers were talking about the team supporting Cancer and my boy asked “What is that?” Hmm. I wasn’t sure how I was going to respond. I could have said:

I would have just said “OK Google: What is cancer” and she would have read something like:

“Cancer is the uncontrolled growth of abnormal cells in the body. Cancer develops when the body’s normal control mechanism stops working. Old cells do not die and instead grow out of control, forming new, abnormal cells. These extra cells may form a mass of tissue, called a tumor. Some cancers, such as leukemia, do not form tumors.”
https://www.cancercenter.com/what-is-cancer

I didn’t do that, but I did say something like

“It is something that happens in your body where your cells in your body get sick and it ends up taking your life.”

I told him that is how his Grandma Watson (My mom) passed away. Unfortunately, she passed away in 2007, many years before he was born.

Even though I have had several people near me experience cancer, such as Leukemia, Skin Cancer, Cervical Cancer, Brain Tumors, Colon Cancer, etc. I still feel like I’m pretty uneducated about it. It’s something I see in the news daily. Reading the obituaries and stories about people of all ages dealing with it is heart breaking. When a child is involved it is even worse!

A few days after the football game, we saw a St. Jude Children’s Hospital commercial and he wanted to know if that is where people go with cancer. I don’t know much about St. Jude, but a quick search has revealed that it is a very good place. They do a lot of research on cancer and are dedicated to help children with cancer. If you want to check it out here is a link: https://www.stjude.org/

When my mother was battling her cancer she was the recipient of many units of blood. There were surgeries that required blood or times when she just needed it for some reason or another. I made it a goal of mine to try and donate as often as I could. I have recently been unable to due to some blood pressure issues, but hopefully I will be able again soon. If you can donate, I encourage you to go out and donate. If you can’t, encourage those around you who can. You can learn more here: RedCross. I have also signed up with Be The Match to see if I can help someone. It’s been over 8 years since I’ve done it and I haven’t heard anything.

I definitely need to learn more and help my son learn more. I found this cool site on the St. Jude website where you can send Halloween Jokes to the children of St. Jude. It sounds like fun!

60th birthday party a week before she passed.

I wish I was never…

“I wish I was never born”..

“I wish I was never born” are the words that came out of his mouth. He was angry but it still hurt my feelings. If he only knew what he was saying. We say a lot of things when we are angry, but do we really mean them? I started to imagine my life without this little boy and it scared me!

I started to think about those moments in my life that I like to call the “What if?” moments. What if they never happened? I feel like, I have grown from each crazy/tragic event in my life.

One event that comes to mind is my father’s death. There is nothing worse than having your patent(s) get hurt or pass away. My… Our world was turned upside down. I believe I was in shock for months after. I believe my life was changed for the better on that day. I love my dad to the core, but I believe it helped me realize that I needed a change. I feel a bit guilty that my life is better now.

Another event is my son’s birth. Someone made a huge sacrifice to help our family grow. Seeing his birth was amazing. I can’t imagine what life would be like if he was “never born”. I wouldn’t change this for the world. My son’s birth mother may not be making the best choices in her life, but I still hold a special place in my heart for her.

I know this isn’t going to be the last time he says something like this. How I respond to it is going to be the key. I hope I can handle it.