Mrs. Bluth has the day off today

As you can see from the post title, Mrs. Bluth is taking the day off from blogging. I, Mr. Bluth, have the day off from work so I decided to try "blogging." First I had to find how she makes a blog. Mostly I just read the blog by typing in mrandmrsbluth. . . and it pops up and I read and enjoyed. So I tried that but apparently there is no way to add a blog post from that URL. Luckily I started typing in "blog" into the magic Google bar and it brought up the "Dashboard" (I guess that's what they call it). Then I almost created a whole new blog instead of a new blog post. But now I am here blogging. Oh wow, I have to enter in my own paragraphs. This may have been a bigger project than I was expecting. Hold on.

Ok, here we go. With paragraph breaks.

Summer lately has not been very summerish. As I write this it is gently drizzling outside my window and the temperature has been in the 70's all week. Oh well.

On Monday Mrs. Bluth and I met up with some friends to participate in a brilliant game that combines 4 of my favorite things: basketball, bumper cars, whiffle balls, and Top 40's music. Instead of a basketball, the sport of "Whirlyball" uses a whiffle ball and little lacrosse/beachtoy/plasticky things to throw the ball from teammate to teammate. With the end goal of scoring a basket. While seated in joy-stick controlled bumper cars. While listening to Top 40's hits such as "Suit and Tie" and "I Love It."

We played 4 games of 15 minutes each. The strategy of the first game was figuring out how to get the bumper cars to obey our orders. If you think joy-stick controlled bumper cars sounds intuitive, well, maybe for you it would be, but it sure wasn't for us. We switched up cars after the first game and realized that our new car didn't respond the same way our first one had! So we re-learned how to drive. We also dedicated ourselves to learning the strategy involved to score in this game. We started with the "swarm soccer" approach. Everyone slamming into each other and yelling and trying to make short passes. We evolved to the "cherry picking" approach. This meant leaving someone on offense the whole time and just trying to throw the whiffle ball down the court where they attempted an easy lay-up.

Interestingly enough this wasn't that good of a strategy. It turns out that flinging a whiffle ball down the court was not as easy as it seems. A common occurence was for the ball to careen off a light or the ceiling on the way down. And unless you were dead on with your throw, your teammate would have to corral the ball in some corner of the arena and the other team would have had time to react and recover. Also, it turns out a lay-up isn't really a sure thing in whiffle ball. It's probably about the same level of difficulty as a contested three-pointer in basketball. Or a first date from a girl in your study group. Deceptively difficult to come by.

Anyways by the 4th game the team in the black cars dominated. The cars were a little more agile and responsive and that goes a long way since (because?) the only way to score is to get a million tries from right underneath the basket. So whichever team could get the best position for a rebound and a reshot always won.

I guess that is how life is too. Sometimes you get the car that is a little more agile, responsive, or just plain better. If you have that car, then you are more likely to get more rebounds and shots. But at least either way you get to play the game. And in the end, we all won. Why? Because someone had bought a flat (which is like 12 pounds) of strawberries for 98 cents. Which is like a penny a strawberry.

Now if I can figure out how to put a picture up I will.
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 Success.

Blessed

Mr. and Mrs. Bluth have been very blessed these last few weeks with Mrs. Bluth starting a new job and just a few days later having Mr. Bluth being offered a part-time job at a firm in the Loop.

We are feeling very grateful and our love for the city of Chicago has not stopped growing. Many visitors at church shared their testimonies and a couple mentioned that they thought it was quite a privilege to live in this beautiful city and we agree.

We have walked and walked and walked all around this city and we still cannot believe all the things Chicago has to offer.

We were blessed with an opportunity to give service by helping to paint some rooms in the school we use for church. The paint job took a lot longer than expected and Mrs. Bluth learned that she is okay with keeping her walls white for a little while longer due to the amount of work it takes to paint a single wall.

We added something to our repertoire of domestic adventures!
Freezer jam. Easy. Full of sugar. But so delicious. And Mr. Bluth calls this a blessing.

We went jogging/exploring one morning and we came across the Chicago Tribune building which has stones from buildings and landmarks from all over the world. We searched until we found the stone from the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake and feel blessed to have a piece of Utah with us out here in Chicago.

Mrs. Bluth married a great man because he will go to anything with her including symphony and children's choir concerts in the park. We attended an Independence Day Eve celebration on Wednesday and it was a great way to start off the holiday. We were definitely among the youngest generation that was in attendance and the most memorable parts of the night were watching the older generation sing all the words to the songs from their era. The most touching part of the night was when they did a tribute to those who have served in the armed forces and each branch would stand up when their song was played. The orchestra powerfully played the patriotic songs that we all love to hear.

Our celebrations continued the next day as we participated in our own 5k, went to the beach, and ended the night with a BBQ and fireworks.

While we had no Stadium of Fire and all the other outrageous activities anyone in Provo can participate in, we had a wonderful day with our little family and with our friends.

This Fourth of July we more fully recognized our blessings of living in this beautiful country and we feel very blessed with the opportunities and experiences we have been given.