A little more than six weeks ago I acquired a Venus flytrap while at The Home Depot. I think I was there looking for stuff to revive certain parts of our lawn that are less than spectacularly healthy. Anyway, I was inspired to spring the few bucks to buy this plant by the fact that our house is constantly full of flies. It could be because the kids leave the back door open all day. It could be because we have four kids in diapers and that makes our house a particularly delectable resort for these pests. Whatever the reason, I was intrigued by a plant that murders flies to live. I mean, I love to murder flies but I have yet to test whether it is truly a matter and life and death to me.

As it turns out, the plants they sell at The Home Depot are pretty much meant to played with for a few days and then tossed. At least that's the impression I get. I've taken it upon myself to try to make the plant a healthy one. I re-potted the plant, arranged for sufficient lighting and moisture and so far it seems to be doing very well. I'm currently in the process of trying to propagate the plant through a couple methods. First, I'm using a cut flower that I've been working on for a few weeks. Second, I just started a pulled leaf today. It remains to be seen whether either method will work.

The plants are very interesting so it's been a lot of fun to watch and experiment. I'm embarrassed to show a picture of it because it's not very attractive. First, I had it in sort of a mini-terrarium and the shape of the container was making the leaves grow in strange directions. I cut the top half of the container off so that the plant is free to roam, but it's looking pretty crazy. Also, it seems that there are at least three plants growing based on the number of traps. If my propagation attempts are successful then I'll try experimenting with splitting the main plant.

You can see in the picture that there is one trap with a fly corpse in it, another with just the head showing and less obvious is one with a yellow-jacket in it. The plants caught the flies on its own, but I gave it the yellow-jacket (I heard that's like ice cream for these plants). In the background you can see a round container with the flower in it and in the far rear is the pulled leaf.

Watch for more exciting updates!

Bryce is becoming quite the young man. He now has six teeth - four on top and two on the bottom. He also gets up on his hands and knees regularly, although he doesn't actually crawl. He still prefers the army crawl, which is probably a better bet if he needs to sneak behind enemy lines anyway. He likes to get on his hands and knees when he is watching out the back door. He'll rock back and forth a bit, but he remains quite stationary.

I finally went on another mountain bike ride last Saturday. It was the first time I rode since munching it in June while riding Downieville. I was worried that my wrist might not be happy since I still have occasional shooting pains when I tweak it wrong, but it was actually all good. We rode the Hole in the Ground trail, which I haven't done since 2004. It was about like I remember it. A lot of uphill and some great and technical stuff along the way. I'm definitely a better rider than I was the last time I hit this trail, which made it a lot more fun.

I'm basically all caught up on my blogging. This means that I can neglect the blog for several months. Ha! Actually, I'm going to blog one more time to share all sorts of wonderful and uninteresting information about my flytrap. And I need to fix the top of the page again so that the linking works. Hopefully tonight while mommy is partying.

My task now is to try to convey the gut-busting excitement we've experienced over the past couple of weeks in a way that will not bore you. Actually, this will be long and boring. Go grab a Pepsi and get comfortable. I'll wait.

Two weeks ago we had quite an exciting day. It was a Saturday just like today (except two weeks previous). I was bringing the kids inside after playing around at the front of the house. The front door was open and Emilie was folding clothes. I should mention that Emilie is scared of bees. And crickets. I'm not sure which one terrifies her more, but she is comically scared of them both. A yellow-jacket wasp flew through the front door and landed on her causing her to jump and scream. She used some clothing that she was holding to fend the wasp off. I grabbed a cup and captured the wasp because I had plans for it.

I took the entrapped wasp and put it in the freezer for about 10 minutes until it appeared to be immobile. I then grabbed the wasp by a wing and fed it to my Venus flytrap (more on that exciting topic later!). At first I thought I froze it too long and had killed it, but a minute or two after the trap closed the wasp came to life and started to freak out. But by then it was too late.

Just as I was stepping away from this delightful activity I heard glass break and then screaming. I ran to the bedroom and found Jaxon precariously poised over a pile of broken glass and Emilie scrambling to clear the area. Jaxon had apparently found a drinking glass somewhere and had broken it against the exercise machine. He was bleeding quite heavily from his hand so I took him to the sink to assess the situation. I could see several small cuts on his hand and one large laceration that appeared to be quite deep and uncomfortably close to his wrist. Unable to determine how bad the cut was, I put pressure on the cut with my thumb and we took Jaxon to urgent care.

Fortunately, the cut wasn't as bad as it initially appeared. Jaxon screamed like a dying rabbit the whole time. Only stickers and bubbles could temporarily sate him him before the terror and pain returned. The doctor cleaned the wound, checked for glass, glued the cut shut and covered it with butterfly bandages and gauze. We were in and out of urgent care in less than an hour (yay for American health care!). As soon as we got home Jaxon crashed and had a pretty good sleep.

Meanwhile, I went down to my dad's shop to do a little bit of work. As I was getting ready to leave my dad called me over and I made my way to the back hallway. As I rounded the corner I saw a giant lizard that had somehow gotten into the store. We briefly discussed how we were going to catch it, but then I realized that it was on tile and couldn't move very well. I just reached down and grabbed it as it slid around ineffectively trying to escape. As we started outside to let it go, it managed to get about halfway into my shirt sleeve. We got to the bushes at the edge of the parking lot and I started to pull it out of my sleeve, but it worked its way all the way into my shirt where it had free reign. My dad had to stick his hand up the back of my shirt and he eventually fished it out at the back of my neck.

Emilie's parents came by that evening to check on Jaxon and they hung out for a while. Jaxon did pretty well with his bandages all night, but by morning the wound apparently started to itch. By the time I went in to get him out of bed he had removed all the gauze, all the butterfly bandages and had partially clawed the cut back open. Of course, his sheets were a bloody mess as a result. We bandaged it back up and he did pretty well keeping the bandages on for the next few days. He still has a decent scab on his hand, but it seems to be healing pretty well.

All that excitement in one day. Yikes.

Remaining blog topics will be added in a separate post. Chances are you haven't read this far anyway...

Mason has an interesting personality, which we're trying to decode. Sometimes he is so nice that it's almost shocking. Other times he has rages that are so terrifying that we end up locking ourselves in the bathroom until the storm passes. That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but maybe not. For example, during church yesterday Emilie gave Mason some Smarties to help entertain him through the meeting. (For you Canadians, I'm referring to the delicious Smarties and not the nasty Smarties.) He dropped one on the floor, at which point I encouraged him to go pick it up since I thought he would not want it to go to waste (yes, I encourage my kids to eat off the floor ALL THE TIME). Something about this suggestion set him off and he started freaking out. When he starts freaking out he becomes quite unruly. He tried throwing the remaining candies in protest. When he gets like this you could offer him candy, soda, popsicles or anything else you want and he'll just throw it and start screaming in a fit of rebellion. If he gets mad enough his face will turn purple with rage. You have to just let him settle down on his own and then he'll pick up the candy off the floor and work out his problems himself. He does this type of thing at least once every week or two.

Adversely, he can be a very loving and nice brother. For example, while Emilie was in San Francisco with her family I was home wrangling children. Jaxon was outside playing and Chase and Mason came inside to beg for Otter Pops. I gave a "pop" to Mason (as he calls it) and he promptly ran back outside. He came back in about 15 seconds later asking for another one. I assumed he had dropped it in the dirt and wanted a new one so I went outside to figure out what happened. As soon as I got to the porch I saw that Mason had taken his Otter Pop outside to give it to Jaxon and then came back in to get one for himself.

He also likes to take things away from other people. Namely, whatever anyone is playing with. Poor Jaxon is probably horribly confused by Mason's constantly taking and giving. Welcome to life, Jaxon.

What was happening last year about this time? Here's a refresher:

• Sam was turning 30 - read more here
• Birds were waking us up at 4:30 in the morning (and a squirrel posed for a picture) - original story here
• Emilie and I announced that our new baby would be a boy on July 30 - original post here

While all these exciting stories that included the number 30 were happening, I was also setting a goal to read 30 books within the next year. I finally achieved that goal today. In a house full of kids and chaos I'm not sure how it happened, but miraculously it did.

Some of the books were outstanding and some were stinkers. There will be a clear bias apparent in the books I chose to read. I'm always willing to take suggestions, but I'll state that I'm not a big fan of fiction. Soooo, for those dying to know what sort of trash Brad reads, here's the final list:

• Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10 by Marcus Luttrell
• Deliver Us from Evil : Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism by Sean Hannity
• The Proper Care and Feeding of Marriage by Laura Schlessinger
• Standing for Something: 10 Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes by Gordon Bitner Hinckley
• An Inconvenient Book: Real Solutions to the World's Biggest Problems by Glenn Beck
• The Power of the Word by Ed J. Pinegar
• If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans: Ann Coulter at Her Best, Funniest, and Most Outrageous by Ann Coulter
• A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis
• Life, the Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams
• So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish by Douglas Adams
• Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams
• The Naked Capitalist: a Review and Commentary on Dr. Carroll Quigley's Book Tragedy and Hope - a History of the World in Our Time by W. Cleon Skousen
• In the Gravest Extreme The Role of the Firearm in Personal Protection by Massad F. Ayoob
• Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
• Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Emil Frankl
• Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin
• Guilty: Liberal "Victims" and Their Assault on America by Ann Coulter
• Sacred Intimacy by Brenton G. Yorgason
• A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (And Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media by Bernard Goldberg
• A Witness and a Warning: A Modern-Day Prophet Testifies of the Book of Mormon by Ezra Taft Benson
• Book of Mormon Authorship: New Light on Ancient Origins edited by Noel B. Reynolds
• How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must): The World According to Ann Coulter by Ann Coulter
• The Forgotten Man - A New History of the Great Depression by Amity Shlaes
• Liberal Fascism: The Totalitarian Temptation from Mussolini to Hillary Clinton by Jonah Goldberg
• Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto by Mark R. Levin
• 1984 by George Orwell
• The Holy Temple, Illustrated Edition by Boyd K. Packer
• Censorship: The Threat to Silence Talk Radio by Brian Jennings
• The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ
• Glenn Beck's Common Sense: The Evolution of Thomas Paine's Revolution by Glenn Beck

You can always see what I'm currently reading over at Shelfari.